I was going to fill the mood box in on this post, but it wasn't until I was about to that I realised I have a myriad of conflicting emotions going on right now.

Irritation. The schools are off on holiday this week, so my commute should be down to a relaxing 45 minute drive. I say should be, because its been raining here for the last couple of days on and off and since we haven't had any for a couple of weeks, it would seem that 75% of the retards on the roads have forgotten how to drive in the wet. True to form, some muppet managed to flip his/her car over on the A52 this morning turning what should have been a nice leisurely drive in to work into a 90 minute commute from hell. At least when I wrecked my car I had the decency to get it off the road without the need to close it! Lets hope its quieter tomorrow.

Frustration. I can't believe how quickly petrol prices are going up here. I filled up last night at 110.9 per litre. I stop at the supermarket on the way home tonight (I won't even get started on that) and see that its now up to 112.9/L and I don't see any reason why its gone up yet again! To top it off, I passed 3 stations on the way home that had signs up that said they were out of diesel. I'm beginning to think this is simply scaremongering by the press and an element of profiteering by the petrol companies. Unless something happened to the oil price and I missed it. Even so there's no way it should be passed on to the pumps this quickly. Now the government announces it wants to raise road tax. Just how many ways are they going to come up with to tax the motorist....utter bollocks!

Ok, enough ranting. If I don't stop now, I'm in danger of never getting to sleep regardless of how tired I am and trust me, I am tired. I'm really hoping I can get a good nights sleep tonight. I don't need these dreams to come back again. Other than the obvious lack of sleep, they're starting to pre-occupy my waking thoughts as well and they're confusing me. I really thought I'd got past this already. It took me long enough last time. I still can't understand why now, after all this time. It makes me wonder if the person concerned has thought about me recently or if its just something in my life that has triggered this. Who knows? Maybe its just part of some greater plan, or maybe I'm just having a guilt trip. I don't know. I know one thing, if it carries on much longer I'm in danger of resorting to alcohol to get a good night sleep, and that didn't work out too well last time...

...and on that note, I'm going to finish this smoke and head off to bed.

I'm not normally someone who dreams a lot while sleeping, or if I do I can never remember anything about them when I wake up. That is until recently.

For the last three nights or so I've had some very vivid dreams about someone from my past. I'm not sure what's going on with these, but they are vivid enough to have woken me up the last couple of nights. Wish I knew what was going on with these things, or at least why they've started now. If it had been a few years back it would've been at least understandable. So after being woken up again at 5am I'm sitting here rambling on and drinking coffee and trying to figure out why this person should be once again on my mind.

Something else on my mind right now is the cost of pertrol here. I went out to fill the car up last night and was quite shocked to see that prices have hit 110 a litre. I wonder how many other people have realised that this means we breached the £5 a gallon mark. Evidently a few of the hauliers over here have, according the the radio news this morning there are going to be a couple of protests today. More fun on the over crowded roads of this country today then.

Time for me to up and move closer to the office I think, its now costing me arounf £250 a month just in fuel...not to mention the 3 hours or so it adds to my work day. Might cost me a bit more to be closer to the office but I think it'll be worth it, both in time and money.

Well, enough rambling. More coffee and a couple of smokes and it'll be time for me to hit the road. I wonder how long it will take me to get in to work this morning....seeing as its raining and the morons on the motorway will probably be doing 20mph...if the volume of traffic even lets them get up to that speed!

Damn, am I glad its the weekend...and a long one at that.

I had almost forgotten about the holiday weekend, that is until I got stuck on the motorway on the drive home surrounded by the weekend gypos dragging their tin cans behind them. Why did I get stuck? Because one of the idiots towing a tin can broke down and blocked a slip road causing a tailback of about 6 miles. About time they started charging road tax and making MoT tests mandatory for the bloody things. At least it would make them less likely to break down and cause chaos on the roads. Better still, take a leaf out of Clarkson's book and blow the lot of them up!

It's been a busy couple of weeks again, this week especially. We finally started playing 5-a-side football again, so that was pretty much my Tuesday night accounted for. I'm pretty much useless for anything after playing. I guess that what 20 years of smoking will do to you. Those people that know me will know I'm not the fittest person around. I am working on that though, or at least have plans to. Since my last attempt to stop smoking. I've been carrying around some extra weight I need to shake off. I'd like to think I could drop about 25lbs, but I doubt I'll ever get drop that much. I'd be happy for dropping somewhere between 15 and 20. Need to do it now before it really is too late :)

On the subject of football, it was nice to see Man Utd lift the Champions League trophy for the second time. Although watching the match wasn't quite as enjoyable. I still don't like the idea of settling a game of that importance with penalties, it's such a lottery. The John Terry jokes are already doing the rounds. My favourite one is below:

I don't have much planned this weekend, other than more studying. For those of you interested, I passed the CCDA exam last week. Although I wasn't that confident going in to the exam, or during it for that matter. Anyone who've taken exams like this will know that you usually know if you've passed or not even before ending the exam. On this one, I didn't. Was a lot like taking the CNA exam to be honest. It wasn't particularly hard subject matter, it was the diversity of it that made it difficult. Anyways, I'm now officially a CCDA, and I don't plan on having to take that exam again any time soon....if ever.

So, one down and two more to go until I'm done with this particular track of exams. Then its back to basics to re-cert my CCNA and then I have to decide whether I'm going to do the CCNP or the CCDP. To be honest, seeing as two of the exams go towards both certs I might as well do both of them while I have my study head on. That way at least, I'll have an option which track to take for the CCIE cert. Yeah, I am actually going to take a crack at that one. I've been wanting to try it for a few years now and am finally in a position where its of value to the company I work for to get the cert. With a bit of luck and motivation on my part, I'm aiming to be ready to start my attempt at it by the end of this year.

With that though in mind, I'm gonna get some sleep and hit the books in the morning. Well, sometime in the morning, after plenty of coffee!

Here I sit on a Saturday morning, waiting for my brain to become sufficiently active to start plodding my way through the remaining 300 pages or so of dry, sleep inducing text that is Cisco Press' CCDA Study Guide. Yes, it really is as bad as it sounds.

So why am I studying on a Saturday?

Those of you who know me personally will know I'm about as organised and a herd of wildebeast trying to escape a bush fire! So, being under a bit of pressure to get the exams I need to pass (3 of them) completed by June 1st, I went ahead and booked the first one for Monday morning. Knowing that would mean I would have to motivate myself to complete the course material and be ready for the exam. So here I am, rapidly approaching the deadline and still fighting my way through the study guide because I always leave things until almost the last minute! Actually, I'm quite impressed with myself, the fact that I'm actually aiming to have the book finished by tonight and not sitting here thinking, I can always finish it tomorrow...I still have another day before the exam.

So on that note, I'm gonna finish this mindless drivel and get my nose stuck firmly back in the book before I get completely distracted again.

Feeling : Braindead

I'm back on the exam track again and consequently have had my head in a book for most of the day. Hence the fact that I'm braindead!

If I wasn't waiting for this download to finish, I don't think I could be arsed to actually write anything here, then again I haven't been arsed to write much here at all in the last couple of years. In fact, if I had faster net access here I probably would't be writing this....but what the hell, I'll light another smoke and ramble a bit.

One of the reasons I decided to write something here was to make sure this website is running ok on the new server. The fact that you're reading this probably means it is!

So why a new server?

Well seeing as my net access at home is not exactly the broadest broadband and given the fact that I have quite a bit of stuff running out of here already, I was running a bit low on bandwidth. Seems this site gets quite a few hits of late and has been picked up by a few of the major search engines. Who am I kidding, there is only one major search engine these days. The effects of their crawlers on my bandwidth was becoming noticable. So, deciding I could find better a better faster home for it, I decided to buy a new server and move it to a better internet pipe.

So there's quite a lot been happening with me since I last wrote anything here, some of which you will already know if you read my other pointless blog, so of which you won't. I'll get around to writing about it here at some point, but for now I'm gonna submit this and head off to bed. Another day of reading dry technical stuff fast approaches and I need sleep. Not to mention the fact I'm almost out of smokes and need to save the ones I have left for the morning. I do need my nicotine and caffeine to get me started in the morning.