I have finally had enough of the sheer quantity of spam emails hitting my inbox from a single spam merchant in the US that has about 500 different spam boxes (at least 500 spam boxes) and as a result of this dickhead company, I have blacklisted *.info.
And who said you can’t block them all…
While I have been looking at my bike rides over in Europe, I have also been looking at bike rides around Manchester. I have found a nice easy(ish) ride that goes from Eccles/Urmston to Wigan. A distance of about 14.6 miles (about 22KM) and should take about an hour and a half each way.
It follows the Bridgewater Canal so I should be able to get some interesting photos along the way. Once I get to Wigan, I can spend a couple of hours wandering around doing some sightseeing or I could find a coffee shop, have a cup, recover a bit, jump back on the bike and ride back.
Either way, it would be a good way to spend a day (or half a day if I want to just have a coffee there).
I have been saying for years that I will do a bike ride around the Bodensee and next year is going to be it. I am going to spend some time getting my bike sorted out and upgrading a load of stuff on it before I head over there.
I am planning on a rather extended trip. Doing Vienna to Salzburg and then going from Salzburg to the Bodensee and then doing the circuit around the Bodensee. I am also going to do the extension around the Bodensee to Shaffhausen and the Rhinefall.
If I plan things right, it should take me about 10 days.
Today I learnt that a rich and important man passed away… and because he is rich and important the news media is all over it like a rash. Yes, the man did advance the cause of technology by massive amounts over the course of his life, but his passing is no different to anyone else who also suffers from that dreaded disease called cancer.
It would be fitting if, out of his passing, a trust fund was setup with a part of his massive fortune to find a cure to this disease that takes hundreds of thousands each year. I believe and hope that Steve, in his wisdom, has put aside a significant part of his massive fortune to fund research into a cure to this disease… afterall, he was only 56 years old. 9 years older than myself and he should have had a long and fruitful life ahead of him.
It is a tragedy to see anyone cut down ahead of their time but it is even more tragic to see someone who is in the lime light suddenly disappear.
My thoughts, at this time, go out not only to his family, but to all the families who have lost someone to this dreaded disease. And hopefully he will, as I said, leave some of his fortune to researching a cure for cancer so that other people wont have to go through what he unfortunately went through.
VALE Steve Jobs
Well, I have reached 100kg. This is my final goal for my weight loss journey… my plan is to get down to 90kg and then hitting the gym pretty hard and putting back on 10kg in muscle mass that I have lost during the course of my diet.
Mind you, it is getting harder to stay on track for the diet. I seem to have loads of cravings for food and it is starting to get to me. I think that another 5kg will be more than enough weight loss (will have lost 41kg by then) as I am going to be heading for the gym starting next week for Low Intensity Interval Training (LIIT) for a couple of weeks just to get my training form right before I move into the High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
The Low Intensity training is doing a set number of reps and then moving onto the next machine, having a break of about a minute in between. The High Intensity training is doing as many reps as possible in 2 minutes, rest for a minute and then jump onto the next machine and rinse and repeat. The idea is to rip through as many reps as possible while doing as many circuits as possible. If you are not sore after you finish that lot, you have to be dead 
Recently, if you are linked to me on Facebook, you will have noticed that I have lost a load of weight recently and I am still currently on the diet. However, once I am off the diet, I will be tucking into good healthy home cooked meals and I am planning on posting the recipes on my new blog… Mark’s Kitchen.
I have already posted a couple of recipes up there (both of them not so healthy… but hey they are good ) and I will be inviting other people I know to post up their favorite recipes.
Check it out and you might find a recipe there you want to try.
planetdomain.com is usually pretty good for their registering of domains, but because I decided I wanted to register myrecipes.id.au as a site where I could post recipes and wine selections to go with it, I thought I would register it with them. Only to have them reject it.
I might think about registering marksrecipes.id.au and see what happens.
I might also see about registering marks.net as well… if I can 
I just logged in to do some blogging since I am bored… and I have noticed that my poor excuse for a blog has been included in a list at The Local (http://blogs.com.au/thelocal/2007/05/30/latest-blogs-15/) as just one of many Australian blogs… even though I am based in the UK and my blog is hosted from the US.
Still, I am a proud Australian and despite living overseas, I still call Australia home… how cheesy was that line? Ohh well life goes on.
I have been lying to myself for the last 3-4 months. I havent been slowly burning out… I am burnt out and it has been affecting my work quality and my relationship with my colleagues for that period of time. I have also been lying to myself that the reason why I cant get going at work is because I have been having bad nights sleep the night before.
I am not 100% up to scratch and I am suffering from burnout. I havent been 100% right for a while and while there are days when I can operate at 100%, there are days when I shouldnt have even got out of bed for all the good I do at work.
I had to actually confront it today when one of my colleagues blew up at me and asked if I was taking the piss and made me realise that I had more serious issues than just feeling like I was burning out and I was tired because I didnt sleep well the night before. It made me realise that I really am burnt out. There is no being on the sloop to burnout for me… I am already there.
I need to go around and apologies to my colleague and let her know whats what because she stormed out of the meeting when she confronted me about my lack of work recently and I really need to sort that out with her.
Recently, on facebook, I have been connecting with a ‘LOT’ of the friends I had back in Port Hedland… where I spent a significant part of my late teens and early 20′s
And you know what… I miss all the times I spent with those lunatics. We were all young and stupid. We all seemed invincible and indestructible at the time, but we are all suffering for it today.
Our excesses were normal in those days, but these days they are seen as binges and abnormal. Our music is strange to the current generation… but they seem to copy it.
In the 80′s, we lived under the umbrella of mutually assured destruction where the world could end in hours.
We lived life to the fullest and we had a fucking ball and we never looked back… and now nearly 30 years later… we are suffering for it