It's Official

I am now officially a chav. That's right, I went down to the Job Centre and registered for "Job Seekers' Allowance", in other words I'm now on the dole.

I think I'm going to use my first benefit payment to purchase some Burberry so I don't feel so out of place when I go to sign on.

No suprise there then

Pointless meeting. Achieved nothing. But I got a free meal out of it and won't feel guilty in the future about not having seen him before he left.

Spad.

Just a quickie

Well, I got a phone call from my Dad this morning - he's been back in the country since Wednesday "arranging things" before he buggers off back to Cyprus - and he wants to meet up with me for lunch tomorrow.

I'll admit that I can't see anything good coming out of it - I don't think he's going to tell me anything useful, it'll just be about my job hunting and soforth - but I know I'd regret it if I didn't at least make the effort and see him before he goes. To be honest I don't know when I'll see him again after this - it's not exactly trivial to nip over to Cyprus for the weekend and it certainly isn't cheap. Once I have a job I'd only be able to go if I took a week off and frankly I would much rather use that time to see April.

Anyway, on the offchance that anything useful does actually come out of tomorrow, you'll be the second to hear about it.

Spad.

Well, it's been a week...

...And that's the understatement of the decade.

Where to start...Well obviously there's the issue of my parents divorcing, that's always a fun one. It's still in the process of being sorted out, so I have no idea what the eventual outcome will be - I'm 120 miles away from home so there's nothing I can do except sit here and wait to be told what's going on. Thankfully April, who I will get to in a moment, has been fantastic and I put my current reasonably calm and composed mental state entirely down to her support.

Briefly, on the job front, there isn't one. It sucks and I hate everyone who's been ignoring my CV without even so much as a "Thanks for the application but you're a tard and we hate you". I'm reliably assured that something will come along eventually, but frankly I'd rather that happen before I have to start digging into my savings that are supposed to be for paying off my student loan.

On the social side, at least my housemates are finally returning to Birmingham this weekend so I will actually have somebody else in the house and along with it the ability to visit the pub without looking like a sad loner.

And now on to April; once again I am largely lost for words when I try to talk about her, but I will do my best. Throughout all of this crap with my parents she has been unbelievably supportive & caring and I can't thank her enough for it - I have no doubt that if it weren't for her I would be curled up in a corner somewhere wallowing in self pity right now. Of course I can't not mention the joys of Hurricane Ivan, which passed through Alabama yesterday - frequent power and internet losses at April's end and tales of the damage being caused from the news reports had me somewhat paranoid for her safety and the whole incident made me realise just how much I love her. I will confess that her refusal to accept that she is beautiful can be frustrating on occasion, but I care about her too much to let something like this, so trivial in the grand scheme of things, affect me. I'll help her see the truth if it's the last thing I do.

So let's recap - my plan of action runs something along the lines of:

1) Sort out my parents as amicably as possible
2) Get a job
3) Save up the ~£400 I need to go and visit April

Couldn't be easier...

...I need a drink

My Family - Warning, long-winded rant ahead

First of all I want to apologise to anyone who knows me IRL for not telling you all this before I posted it here, but I just wasn't really sure how to approach it.

Where to start. Well, about 2 weeks ago I got a phonecall from my Mum telling me that my Dad - instead of going to the Isle of Wight to see a friend of his as he was supposed to - had gone off to Cyprus (we have a small house out there) to, quote, "Think about what he wants to do with his life". Not the most shocking news, I have to say, as my Dad spends a lot of time out there - but the lack of any warning was a little suprising.

Anyway, as the time passed he continued to be vague and non-specific with my Mum about what he was doing, when he was coming back etc. At this point he still hadn't bothered to call me and let me know that he'd run off to another country. Regardless, all of this reached a climax on Friday night around midnight when my Mum got an email - that's email, not a phone call - from my Dad essentially saying that he wasn't coming back, that he was with someone else & wants a divorce and that he would be making a visit home this coming week to "sort out" the financial side of things and to deal with his mother (who has mild dementia and has to have an eye kept on her pretty much all of the time).

Right, long story short - I'd always had my Dad pegged as an honest, if very stubborn, guy. We argued a lot, but we got on ok most of the time. However, things that have happened over the past few days have made it more and more apparent that he's been lying about several things, which has made me question everything else he's said.

So, I've spent the last couple of days helping my Mum find out as much as she can about their financial situation so that he doesn't try and screw her out of any money. On the plus side at least my brother is around at home so my Mum isn't on her own. At some point I'm hoping my Dad bothers to contact me but frankly I don't know what the hell I'm going to say to him if he does.

Anywhoo, I just needed to get it all off my chest and possibly explain a couple of grouchy posts I may have made in stark opposition to my general spree of happiness at the moment.

The trials and tribulations of the job market

I would like you to imagine, for a moment, that you are a company looking to hire IT staff.

Now you obviously want the best qualified and most experienced employees that you can get for a reasonable wage, so you put out adverts for the position stating that any potential candidate should have at least 2 years experience in a similar position. After a few weeks, you're not getting many applications - a couple of well qualified people have applied, but they lack the industry experience you want so you dismiss them. By now a month has passed and you still haven't had any suitable candidates apply - although you do have a rapidly growing pile of "not enough experience" applications.

You read a couple of news articles in an industry magazine about the large number of skilled IT graduates looking for work and wonder why none of them are applying - after all surely they'd be exactly what you're looking for.

Then, and this is where it all breaks down in the real world, you realise that they reason that none of them are applying is that being IT graduates they don't have 2 years industry experience - despite the fact that most of them do have at least 2 years experience of doing the work in their own time - and there aren't any experienced applicants for your vacancy because they've all already got jobs.

The moral of this story is: Stop being so fucking picky and accept that the only way you're going to end the drought of experienced & skilled IT workers is by hiring some inexperienced & skilled IT workers so that we can get some bloody experience.

</rant>

A follow up to the Bad News

It's fairly evident, reading through this blog of mine, that my life over the last few years has not met my expectations and at times I have been a cynical, bitter and twisted bastard. I was starting to think that I was never going to find somebody who loved me, as each of my friends found themselves someone in turn and I remained alone - and then I met April.

In a feat which has never been achieved before, she has managed to leave me lost for words. I really cannot describe how I feel about her but, well, just look:



How could I not love her

I can honestly say that I'm happier right now than I can ever remember being and I hope that my experience will convince some of you who are as cynical as I was that good things can happen to you, you just have to be patient.

Spad

Some Bad News

I'm sorry to have to break this to you, but there's a very strong chance that I will no longer be making such cynical and depressive additions to my blog. Despite some truely shitty things going on in my life at the moment and against everything that I had previously believed possible, I have found happiness - and that happiness is a girl named April.

Now by no means am I an overnight convert. I'm not going to be writing sappy, glowing pieces about how the whole world is wonderful, because it's not - but my little corner of it is now a hell of a lot better than it was.

My music recommendation of the week is Mr Blue Sky by the Delgados.

That's all folks
A very happy Spad.

Serves me right

You may remember my mini rant back in May about the apparent lack of attractive, single, geek girls. Well it would seem that the answer is, they're 4265 miles away.

I swear, if I ever run into Fate I'm going to give him a fucking good kicking.

Great things abound on t'internet

Are your friends lazy idiots?

They need the answer to a question, but they just can't be bothered to look for it themselves, so they just bug you about it?

Well salvation is at hand courtesy of http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/

Next time your poor excuse for a friend asks you how to put his pants on, simply direct him to http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/search?query=How+to+use+pants and after a short splash screen to inform them of their stupidity, they will be redirected to the Google search that they should have used in the first place.

The wonders of technology.

Additionally, for those of you using GMail - check out Google's official Gmail Notifier:

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

Get it here

That is all.