Me Blog!

Time flies when you are having fun or not as the case may be. In my mind all I can think about is ten years ago when my father died suddenly. Has it really been that long?

So much has changed in those ten years. My father would be a grandfather now. Each time I look at my son I always think of how my father would have loved his first grandchild and of course how Lucas would have loved him. Each time I look at Lucas I see a bit of my father in him. Then I wonder what it would be like if he had not died that day ten years ago.

I still remember that day vividly. I was in the server room at work where on any normal day there would be no mobile phone reception but suddenly mine rang and I was surprised to hear my mother in tears when I answered telling me to get home, that my father wasn’t well and the ambulance was there. I remember asking what hospital they were taking him to but again all she said was to come home, come home.

Half way home and I still didn’t know for sure what was happening. My aunt overtook the taxi that I was in on the dual carraigeway. I rang her to stop somewhere and bring me the rest of the way home. I can still remember the exact spot in the road where she stopped her car waiting for me to catch up. It was half way between Midleton and Castlemartyr, just by the lake and it was there I was told for certain that my father had died at the age of 47.

I often have to drive past that spot and each time I do the memory of that day always comes back to me. I see my aunt getting out of her car and hugging me and telling me what I did not want to hear.

I have plenty of other memories of course all of them wonderful of the man who I adored, the man who taught me so much and made me who I am. I will always keep those memories but I just wish there could have been lots more.

To my father, how I wish you were still here.

I feel so ashamed. I’ve just been extremely bad.

Someone in Brazil changed their theme on blogspot and very nice it is too I have to say. His design is excellent but for one thing. He is hotlinking to an image on my server. I’m getting hundred of hits for it so I figured I might goatse him.

Here’s what his site looked like:

Before

I decided not to go for the full on goatse and instead substituted in a picture of an erect penis I got on wikipedia. I have a screenshot but obviously it is not safe for work so you need to click below to see what it looked like after I made the switch:

Read more…

Two short videos. Make sure to watch them in order!

Number 1:

And number two:

Congratulations to Tony and Saori on their recent wedding in Japan. And thanks for bringing me back some sake.

Normally this stuff comes in bottles so I was quite curious when I got these:

Click for bigger

I’m half way through the one with the pink flowers and it’s bloody lovely. I’m going to save the other two for another time though

Last week a friend and I took ourselves off down to the Black Valley in Co. Kerry. The Black Valley has the distinction of being the last part of Ireland to be connected to the national electricity grid. Indeed it is still something of a black spot for telecommunications. As recently as last week a farmer living there was quoted €29,000 to have a fixed telephone line installed.

Having spent the night camped near a river we decided to set off and drive the Ring of Kerry. Some spectacular scenery around there. I have tons of photos which I have to sort through but for the moment here are some photos of the Black Valley:

And finally here is a panoramic photo: Click for full size

For the past few months I have been planning on setting up a new business. Now this takes some planning as you might imagine and having being self employed before for four years before, it takes an additional leap of faith to decide whether I actually want to execute my business plan. Being self employed is a feast or famine affair and can be incredibly difficult at times but I have to find some way to pay for college in September since the registration fees have doubled for this year.

Anyway I chose a name for my potential business but it was going to be dependent on the availablility of the domain name. Much to my surprise the domain was available so I snapped it up straight away.(via the ever efficient and affordable Blacknight of course.)

But there is a downside. The domain name had belonged to a previous business and the amount of spam being targeted to the domain name is quite significant. Fortunately 99.9% of it is being filtered by my mail gateway.

Another interesting and curious side effect is that the previous owners of the domain had also registered a shortened version of it which they still own. Unfortunately for them they configured it as a CNAME (alias) to the domain that I now control and subsequently my servers are busy rejecting mail and web requests for this second domain.

I still haven’t decided whether or not my business plan will make it off the drawing board. I hope to reach that decision in the next few weeks as I’m currently in negotiations with a potential client so watch this space.

Lucas has inherited both my brother’s and my dinky toys. Click for bigger.

You may have already seen my earlier post with the photo of the fossils on Hook Head. I took quite a good few photos of elsewhere on the Hook and here are some of them: