The old one was doing my nut in. I’ve also changed the root of squage.com. Look, I was bored this evening, ok?
It’s not a permanent look… there’s a rebrand happening at some point or other, now that I’ve got “CSS the Missing Manual” and “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” in my possession…
Toodles,
Pat
P.S. Facebookers, you might want to look at where this post came from in order to it to make any sense :-)
On Saturday, I DJed a wedding reception.
As per my usual “hmm, I’ve not DJed in a while, I’d better check what to play and that I’ve got everything” pre-DJing tasks were performed throughout the day, which went pretty well. After a quick trip into Brentwood to grab the lights and PA that I’d hired, I headed off to the wedding reception venue, about 15 minutes from home.
All was going well – I’d got there with ample time to spare (I wanted to do that on the off-chance that I’d forgotten something (perish the thought…)) – so much so that, as the post-wedding proceedings were running late (that’s pretty standard in my experience), I was invited in to have some food with my mates (one of whom’s mum was the bride). This was really lovely of them – and had me in a nice happy mood ready to get going with the set.
Once dinner was finally over, it was getting rather late so I needed to get set up asap so that there’d actually be an evening’s partying to be had!
Alas on finally getting the equipment set up, I realised I’d left my laptop at home.
Not too much of an issue, you’d think. After all, I’d got the CD players, my CDs, the amp+speakers and lighting. Why need the laptop anyway, right? Well, imagine this scenario: you have your entire playlist worked out and in an Excel Spreadsheet. You’ve got a list of ALL your songs, with the CDs they’re on in a handy Excel Spreadsheet. Oh and you’ve managed to download a copy of the First Dance, which you didn’t own on CD, and by the way decided not to bother actually burning it onto a CDR.
Now imagine that this is on the laptop that’s at your home, rather than at the gig.
Yeah.
That was luckily the worst part of the evening, although it remained a bit stressy after that: once I’d rushed home and back, I had the laptop ready to plug in – but of course people saw I was back so expected tunes immediately, so I had to find and select songs inbetween plugging the laptop in, getting it all set up nicely to use – oh and rigging the lighting.
At least it was worth it. I’d managed to keep people… er… close to the dance floor all night. Bit of a tricky audience, but hey – that’s what happens sometimes. It did mean that I spent a fair amount of the evening stressing, thinking “Shit, my playlist I spent hours on isn’t working… and neither are these tried and tested classics… what the HELL do I play next?”, though.
Needless to say by the end of the night I was ker-nackered… but bloody glad I was DJing a wedding reception at a nearby town and not, say, 90 minutes drive away. Now THAT would’ve been interesting…
Pat
Hey there!
A couple of weeks have gone by and Pat’s not been writing any blogs.
Is it because he’s really busy? No!
Is it because he’s had nothing to report? No!
Is it because he’s lazy? But of course! (Oi, it’s been my first few weeks back at work, I’ve been tired! – Pat) So are you saying you’re not lazy? (Well… – Pat) Thought not.
Anyway, I thought it was about time a blog was done, so allow me to fill you in on the highlights of Pat’s past few weeks:
He’s also managed to slip back into the old habits, with such things as the regular “lunch in the canteen, at the same table as ever, then a walk around the building” routine seems to still be very much in fashion! Still, he’s been mixing things up by doing such outrageous things as “getting a jacket potato from the shop across the road” and, even more crazily, “”lunch in the canteen, at the same table as ever, then a walk around the building on a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ROUTE”. He’s living the dream.
Amusingly, as he’s a “new starter”, he was also taken through health and safety stuff and the fire evacuation procedure with HR today. It appears this featured such classics as “if you need to get your monitor moved, you should get technical servic-oh, right, yes, that’s you. You’ll need to do heavy lifting trai-oh, you did, 3 years ago. Oh, right…”. Hooray for beaurocracy!
How wrong he was. And how damned happy he was too. He and Lucy (sister of Vanessa from Uni) had a rather amazing evening at Brixton Academy listening to the most fecking awesome concert ever, raising their hands in the air and dancing around like a fool for such a long period of time that they couldn’t actually walk following sitting on the tube for 20 minutes afterwards (ok, so that might’ve just been Pat)…
In short: Faithless were f***ing amazing. Unfortunately, due to not wanting to destroy yet another camera, Pat decided not to bring his – but luckily he was able to capture the full scale of the amazing light show (lasers and all) with his BRILLIANT camera phone:
Pat enjoyed the match (helped by the fact that it was actually a game played by England that didn’t end miserably) – and the sheer size of Wembley stadium.
He also forgot his proper camera. As before, THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN TELL:
Paul’s wedding reception
Set in the lovely surroundings of rural North Essex, Paul-from-work’s wedding reception was had inside a large white marquee, with an excellent live band, a bar with lots of beer and, well, a fair amount of drinking from various people:
Obviously Pat remained sober throughout, and definitely didn’t end up chasing Elaine around the dance floor with a very frightening, drunk version of the walk from the “Amarilo” video. Definitely not.
Elaine’s leaving do
Pat assures me that Elaine leaving work was nothing to do with him chasing her around a dance floor (Not that that happened! – Pat) Oh, er, indeed. Elaine’s moving on to pastures new, and so fellow work mates celebrated / commiserated by having a lovely evening chatting, eating a delicious meal and, er, drinking. A lot. There are photos… but
That should just about cover it. Oh, also, he and his friends from home managed to come first in the pop quiz at his local pub last night. Live the dream.
Toodles,
Pat
On Wednesday I signed up across the road from work. Yesterday I went for an hour long induction. Today I had my first session.
Yep. I’ve joined the gym.
No, before you scoff at me and point out that I’ve tried the gym regime a number of times in the past, with varying levels of failure, allow me to point out a few differences:
If I’ve (just about) convinced you that this will work this time then that’s good.
Let’s just hope it’s actually true. :-)
Toodles,
Pat a.k.a. “Fruit Cake”
(Apparently “Beef Cake” wasn’t appropriate for a veggie…)
This may come as a surprise to those of you who I’ve not spoken to for a while. I’ve gone back to my former employer.
But wait! Before you say “Hey, what the hell?”, allow me to explain a few things.
Firstly, it’s a good place to work.
One of the things I found through talking to the myriad of people I met on my travels, plus also through speaking to long time friends about their experiences, was that there are plenty of things that my former-sorry, current employer provides and does that exceed many other companies. I’ll not go into details, but I heard plenty of stories from people about their employers that made me think “Jeez, how do they get away with treating their employees like that?”.
Essentially, I’ve been able to get some perspective on it all.
Secondly, I’m viewing this as a positive thing for me.
It’s going to provide me with the funds I need to have a good lifestyle outside work, spend my free time on things I enjoy doing (such as the cartoon bits and pieces, radio stuff etc) with no financial pressures on them, plus save up money for any future plans I might have.
It also means I can start going down the gym with James and Andreas from work. Having people to go with, keep you motivated and help you plan your goals etc is invaluable when it comes to things you don’t necessarily enjoy doing – e.g. running until you think you’re going to die, lifting weights until you think you’re going to die… you get the idea :-)
But, anyway, there we go. I’m back. To a clean desk:
So far it’s been an easy few days, mainly because I’m still waiting on most of my IDs to get sorted out so I can actually start doing anything… but hey, it’s good to see everyone again and I’m looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into the projects I’ve got lined up.
I’m also looking forward to the 28th of September. A.k.a. Payday
Toodles,
Pat
I went to SW4 on Saturday, with Dirty Si, Clara and Dave TG.
“SW4? Hang on, isn’t that a post code? Why’s that exciting?”
Well, my friend, it is exciting because SW4 happens to be the post code for (a part of) Clapham Common!
“Yes, but that’s just a park. You could’ve just as well gone to, say, Hylands Park in Chelmsford and saved yourself the need to go into London!”
Ah yes, but on Saturday the aforementioned Common was host to the rather cool South West Four!
“What? Host to a post co-“-Look, just shut up a second.
South West Four is a day-long dance music festival, with such DJs as Paul Van Dyk, Judge Jules, Pete Tong and Matt Hardwick banging out the Phat Beats from 12pm to 9pm.
“Oh. Cool.”
Yes indeed. It was. There was an awful lot of dancing going on and a fair bit of beverage consumption – mostly all done under the hot summer sun that we’d all forgotten about. Without further ado, here’s a Good, Bad and Ugly review of SW4:
The Good
Weather – Gorgeous sunshine all day, meaning that there was a great feel good vibe to the place… and apparently it meant that there were lots of rather, erm, pleasant sights. I didn’t notice, of course. (*cough*Bollocks*cough* – Squage)
Matt Hardwick – A true trance legend, he played an extended set due to the next DJ turning up late, meaning we an extra 40 minutes of pure unadulterated trance classics. In the words of Dirty Si: what year is it? 1999! (cue cheers and mental dancing)
Paul Van Dyk – Loads of classic Van Dyk anthems – and, oh, the new tune from Filo & Peri called, appropriately, Anthem. It’s fecking amazing.The Bad
The Ugly
We really should’ve just worn shorts.
On the whole, despite my gripes, it was a really good day – we had a lot of fun and a lot of drink, rounded off nicely by some late-night Dominos pizza.
I really am never going to lose weight, am I?
Toodles,
Pat
So, the Quiz Dating thing was actually good fun. Quite a few nice ladies there and with just my mate Mark and I on our “team” of blokes it made things more entertaining. And I tell you what, going abroad for a year is a great thing to talk about :-)
Anyway, alas I was not really making proper notes and so when it came to the day after I only remembered 2 of the girls who I’d liked, so just said “Yes” (via the Quiz Dating website’s “Yes/No”-atron) to them and “No” to t’others. Annoying, as I then received a “Yes” from someone I’d said “No” to… but because I said “No”, I can’t find out who it was.
The two “Yes”s received nothing. I never liked them anyway :-)
Next time I’ll just tick “Yes” for everyone. Or, say, make notes on who the hell the names related to on my sheet.
Pat
What dating? You might ask. Well, you’d be right to. It’s a strange idea that I’d only heard about a week ago courtesy of a good friend of mine. Essentially, you’re in teams of 8. 4 men, 4 women. The men “help” the women in the first round, then they move to another table of women for the next round, and so on. The purpose being that all the men get to be on the teams of all the women, so everyone gets to meet everyone. Less 1-on-1 awkward silence inducing than speed dating, I suspect, but I’ve no idea if it’s any good or not yet!
As you have probably guessed, I’m going to do the aforementioned “Quiz Dating”. Tonight, in fact. In London’s Soho. Why so far away from here? Well the single people I know who are coming along are, well, in London and I figured I might as well give it a go anyway.
I’m terrible at quizzes. Mind you, I’m probably terrible at speed dating too so I guess combined the two negatives will make a positive and it’ll be happy days, right?
Right?
(Hmm, maybe I should get my £20 back…)
Toodles,
Pat
Howdy!
Squage here, just about recovered from the ordeal of traveling in a ruck sack around a fair portion of the southern hemisphere and ready to let you know about a new and exciting drink that Pat and his brother discovered last weekend: Off Your Face Juice.
“What’s Off Your Face Juice?” you rightly ask. Well, allow me to explain. It’s vodka with skittles in. You could be forgiven for assuming such a thing would be called “Skittles Vodka”, but frankly that doesn’t describe its power quite enough. Here’s a guide for how to make your own Off Your Face Juice:
Your delicious Off Your Face Juice is now ready for your enjoyment!
WARNING: Off Your Face Juice may cause an otherwise sensible evening to turn into a mostly-forgotten drunken mess and may lead to the entirety of your next day being written off. Consumption of Off Your Face Juice is not recommended if you don’t want to wake up on your sofa at 9am feeling like your stomach’s on spin cycle and your head had been smashed into by a truck. In fact, it’s probably just best not to make it in the first place. Just have a smoothie or something instead, it’ll taste better and you’ll not feel like you’re about to die, vomit or vomit to death.
Toodles for now,
Squage