And a Happy New Year

So, that's more or less the end of another year then and, in the best of traditions it seems time for a little reminiscence on the past year, you know all the sort of stuff that will be filling the television schedules for the next couple of weeks except this is, shamelessly selfishly, all about me.  Well, it's my blog and I'll put what I want into it.

Starting off with the biggest change, who would have thought at the start of the year that now I would have been made redundant and doing something completely different?  I'll tell you who.  Me.  For the last god only knows how long, there had been regular 'team meetings' at Vertex.  Every time you were summonsed to one it was a sword of Damocles.  Possibly the most surprised people are those that weren't made redundant.  Add to which the fact that I worked with a number of people that were so grumpy that even I looked like Mr Happy at the Happyville convention for the foolishly happy and you have a rather bitter cocktail.  Now, taking destiny into my own hands, if it all does go horribly wrong I will have only me to blame.  Oh, and I won't have to suck up to anyone.

At the end of 2008, I had the plaster removed from my foot.  There was some concern as I had lost a significant amount of weight due to being incapacitated for some time.  Fast forward to the end of 2009, nothing in plaster but I have put on a significant amount of weight due to being an idle git.

I am also marking a whole year of being on Facebook.  It's a good job I haven't dedicated this blog to the changes that this has made to my life.  That would be the shortest blog in the history of the blogiverse.  Facebook has been an experience in some respect; previously, I was completely unaware of the amount of bollocks people could come up with that is of no interest or importance to anyone.  In short, Facebook is marvellous.  That's a  contradiction I hear you cry.  Well yes, I thank Facebook for giving me a whole new subject to be grumpy about.

I was quite heartened to read the other day that there has been a return to more traditional, in a manner of speaking, Christmas gifts for kids this year.  I don't mean wooden spinning tops or bilbo catchers.  In particular, it seems that Lego, a personal favourite of mine, is selling like hot cakes.  Or more accurately selling like a very popular toy.  So much to the point where the most popular sets are selling for multiples of their normal selling price on ebay.  Let's now look in stark contrast at the world's most chuffing ridiculous thing.  I'm sure that most people that know me are aware of my thoughts on games consoles so imagine my horror when I happened upon this monstrosity.  Follow the link to the web page mentioned in the article and it just gets worse.  Whatever your views on gadgets, surely this takes the proverbial biscuit?  It's enough to make even me grumpy.

Seeing as how this may well be my last blog before Christmas, that just leaves me to wish you all a very merry Christmas and hopefully we'll meet again in the New Year.