That’s assuming they go the most direct route… Crazy…

The downside of them visiting is I won’t be able to watch Doctor Who on Saturday night, its the last episode of this series and has the makings of being a classic. Maybe I was a little too quick to criticise the writing of Russell T. Davies and the acting of Catherine Tate because the last 5 episodes have been marvelous. So to anyone who does watch it, no spoilers!

In other news, I’m branching out, becoming more focused as I was invited to be the lead “soccer” (urgh!) blogger for a sports blog, this has now been spun off into its own blog (actually it was spun off before Euro 2008 some weeks ago, I’m just too lazy to link to myself). So if you’re looking for some non-inciteful football related nonsense, there you go. Now Euro 2008 is over I need to “research” (read: watch copious amounts of) world football, tough life, the downside is I’ll be podcasting tonight LIVE on Nosebleed Radio, if your free around 8pm EST come listen (and watch other people) as I push the boundaries of good taste and wrap up my Euro 2008 coverage.

Expect cursing…

Oh, and before you ask, CPWABWDGTWATD is my version of APWBWGTTD. If APWBWGTTD stands for “Atlanta People With Blogs Who Get Together To Drink” then CPWABWDGTWATD equals “Charlotte Person With A Blog Who Doesnt Get Together With Anyone To Drink”. I miss the old Atlanta Bloggers, the Charlotte blogging scene sure is lonely…

So the (preemptive urgh) “blogosphere” is all a twitter at the recent spate of rats jumping ship executives leaving Yahoo! So much so there is even a nice automated Yahoo! resignation letter generator. The reason I’m slightly worried is the two main people at Flickr, Catarina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, are leaving Yahoo! too. Add a recent tweet by community manager Heather Champ and things don’t seem to be going well in Sunnyvale.

Trouble ‘t mill, one ownt crossbeam gone out askew on treddle!

Now I’m pretty heavily invested in Flickr, I’ve been a member for 4 years and I have nearly 4,500 pictures on there, plus this site is knee deep in Flickr hosted pictures. So any sudden changes would affect me greatly, but I’m seriously wondering how long it has left, and when I should begin to start looking for an alternative, and the pain that’s no doubt going to cause. I can’t use Zooomr as I have a personal vendetta against Thomas Hawk (over a year old) but I sadly don’t know any other alternatives, can anyone recommend a good Flickr clone?

Not a lot has changed bar the look, and its another third party them, this time I’m opting for the less is more look of DePo Clean by Derek Powazek. Though I do need to get my hands dirty and bend it to my will, so this is just a starting point, there shall be no fancy stuff going on, just simple tweaks and, if your lucky, actual content.

In reality I’m pretty much done with blogging, I’ve been doing it for eight years almost now and it just isn’t as fulfilling as it used to be. When the hefty renewal notice for this domain comes in around August time, it might be time to let it go, while its unique and fun, its certainly not worth the expense of being a .co.uk in a .com world…

Also sadly, the job searching isn’t going as good as I would have hoped, but thats a different story altogether, I’m trying not to let it get me down though. The flip side is I get to live out my dream and watch Euro 2008 for five hours a day, but I’d much rather have a job.

Here’s to my next thirty years!

With Robyn’s parent coming up this weekend, I went with Frank. Like last year we also had passes to the Team Lowe’s hospitality tent, which equals free food and drink and complimentary items from vendors before the race, and because of this all we spent at the track was the price of parking, pretty sweet if you ask me…

The format for the All-Star race has changed slightly from last year, instead of 4 20-lap segments, it was now 4 25-laps segments, but everything else remained. The race in race had a few good moments, like crashes happening in front of us and such like, in the end it was the unlikely combination of A.J. Allmandinger and Sam Hornish Jr who came through to qualify for the main event. Kasey Kahne finished poorly in the Sprint Showdown, but made the main event as the fan vote…

Now after a little wait, the main driver introductions begun, mostly everyone was booed, Kyle Busch especially, all except Dale Earnhardt Jr. As I’ve said before, watching a NASCAR race on TV doesn’t do it justice, the sound of 21 750+ horsepower cars screaming round a bend is really an awesome sound, so I succumbed to the lure of Flickr video and captured the start of the race, poor camera work and all.

What happened afterwards was pretty non-descript really, Kyle Busch had a heavy foot and took a big lead before blowing his engine, but not before Dale Jr passed him to the delight of many, in fact the place pretty much went apeshit when it happened, the only way it could have went better is if Junior jammed Busch into the wall. After this a fight broke out a few sections over from us, seriously. In the end there was no cautions for the whole 100-lap sequence, and Kasey Kahne somehow emerged victorious despite not being in the race until shortly beforehand.

Then came the chaos of leaving a track with 180,000 of your closest friends, it only took 2 hours to get home. Not bad if you ask me.

NASCAR All-Star Race - May 17th 2008 (Set)

Originally uploaded by FLC.

WEEK 1: We moved house, all by ourselves (kinda). Originally we were going to move the boxes and get movers to handle the heavy furniture, but on the Friday night (our moving day) Robyn was like “let’s get the mattress, I want to spend the night here and while we’re there let’s get the sofa too!” No small feat… On the Saturday Robyn’s parents rolled in and gave us a much needed extra couple of pairs of hands. Jason (our then current, but now old, next-door neighbour) also pitched in above and beyond and 95% of the stuff got moved in about 6 hours, many trips to and from the new house, but hey! we’re almost there. On the Sunday we got the rest and then I didn’t go the the Springsteen concert… During the week we sold the remaining two tickets for $350 meaning my quick thinking back in the day made us $650, not too shabby, but I really wanted to go.

WEEK 2: I tidied up around the old house, bringing loose items back when I went. On the Sunday John and Marchellina came down from Chapel Hill to help us unpack and move furniture from the garage to correct places. Big help and awesome job! Now we have a semi-decent looking home instead of a haven of boxes and un-made furniture.

WEEK 3: General unpacking of small items, I put the guest bed and the IKEA Expedit together myself (OK, with a little help from Robyn) and for some reason, the cable company played games with me…

Now we’ve had Comcast in Atlanta and Time Warner in Huntersville, so we know bad customer service… Windstream blows them away with sucky customer service. Firstly they no-showed on the install date, 5 phone calls tracked that down. Then they no-showed the next day when they promised they’d be there, then they postponed us by 2 (TWO!) weeks as apparently, they just didn’t want to connect us. No big deal usually, right? We’ll they have some weird deal with our development where the cable/internet/phone bill is included in the HOA fees. So we’re paying for it if we get it or not, and we’re stuck with them and only them.

Add to this they don’t have cablecards (despite advertising TiVo on their home page) so we’re stuck with basic cable, no free QAM HD channels and a pretty lousy lineup. I say this as they are missing the one channel I need most of all, Fox Soccer Channel. Even if we had digital cable, it’s not in the lineup, in fact the lineup is so screwy that they have ESPNHD but not ESPN2HD, what’s up with that??

So yeah, tomorrow (well, technically today) is the day of the UEFA Cup Final, a competition FSC cover. But I won’t miss it, I’ve found a sports bar in Mooresville that’s showing it, I’ll be there, alone, wishing and hoping for a Rangers win, drinking alone. Sounds like a good reason to liveblog my experience.

As for the rest of this week, Robyn’s parent are coming up Friday night was we have tickets for the NASCAR All-Star race again, my decent into NASCAR fandom continues unabated…

How have you enjoyed the last 5 years of rich and bountiful peace? Just remember that when you’re gassing up on $3.50+ a gallon and prices of bread and milk skyrocket, it’s the rich and bountiful peace you’re paying for. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Sure I have my iPhone but without a wi-fi connection I can only do so much, and even though we moved last Friday the cable company can’t hook us up until next week. Its really sad how utterly useless my home desktop is without that ethernet cable connecting it to everything and everyone, its basically a glorified paperweight right now. So job searching is harder than it needs to be. Luckily I can keep email under control, I hate to think how my Google reader is, easily a few thousand items and rising by the minute. I also have no idea what’s going on in the world outside of my little bubble world, see no cable also means no TV, its like living in the dark ages here!

So I challenge you to go a while week without any kind of internet access (I’ll allow your phone of course be it regular, Blackberry or iPhone), could you do it? Could you easily avoid it? Its become so ubiquitous with our way of living its nearly impossible…

We’re closing on our house on Friday, but all hells broken loose (as usual) and well, shit done hit the fan. Firstly Robyn’s aunt died, so she went off to Pennsylvania for the funeral while I packed, then I lost my job, then we couldn’t delay the closing and now we’re sweating proverbial bullets as I look for a job.

And I’ve had plenty of interviews since I left my job, but I had a potentially good one today that I blew as I couldn’t sell myself. Luckily they have given me a chance to regroup, find my sweet spot and try and sell myself once I’m ready, which is nice, in the meantime I needs to find something, anything fast.

The big downsides is we’ve had to postpone our UK trip as, let’s face it, even if I get a job, I’ll have no vacation to take at that time. And I’m resigned to selling the last of my Springsteen tickets, we’ve already sold 2 for $300 as Robyn’s parent wouldn’t be able to make it with her aunt dying, but now we need the cash from the others, and I’m pretty bummed about it, but somethings are more important…

So yeah, we’re still moving on Friday, we’re not fully packed, should be fun!

Firstly, no adverts. It was like a direct feed from the production truck, complete with Chip Caray pulling a face after handing back to the studio.

Then we were treated with some interesting chatter before and during the national anthem, like comments about Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, saying how they shamed Turner Field for having the clock in the outfield 15 minutes slow, thoughts on the ending of Major League that was on TBS at the time, Chip saying that Steve Lyons loves “face time”, singing along to the anthem and eventually good places to eat BBQ in Philadelphia…

It was very strange, but interesting to see “behind the scenes” as it were.

So here our new house under construction, it’s the one in the middle…

Maybe I’ll keep an eye on this and save the different stages of bird’s eye view, see how different things look over time.

New House

Originally uploaded by FLC.

That should hopefully save Flickr from the copyright infringement that’s rampant on YouTube.

Anyways, as I don’t have a video to use for an example, I’ll use this fine, creative effort made by someone else.

Just don’t expect so see any videos from me anytime soon…

So I finally get to bust this picture loose again, some 5 weeks after it was taken.

This is the infamous picture that scored me 4 Bruce Springsteen tickets courtesy of Greg Economou, the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Bobcats Sports & Entertainment. Seriously…

Time Warner Cable Arena?

Originally uploaded by FLC.

For starters, we’re in the best place to be right now… We can buy a house without needing to sell one. And as the market goes further and further down the tubes, we’ll be making out like bandits soon enough. And even though Charlotte isn’t sliding down like, for example, Atlanta, that doesn’t mean everything is coming up roses here. But we’re ahead of the curve.

So we went to see a single family house, having previously viewed a townhome in this development, we knew this is where we wanted to be. And you know that saying “you know as soon as you open the door”? Oh, we knew… This place is gorgeous, dark hardwood floors throughout, dark wood, stainless steel appliances, the list goes on…

We actually went to see it twice. Now we’re crunching the numbers and initially it looks favourable.

So who knows, there is a downside… If we move soon, we face the possibility of moving the cats to a strange new house then ditching them as we leave for 2 weeks in Scotland at the end of May, or we wait till after then and face the possibility of my brother and his family visiting while we’re still unpacking. Or we move really soon, but too soon for me as we haven’t even begun packing.

EDIT (8:40pm): Well, we made an offer… Now we wait… SQUEEE!

EDIT (1/4/08 3:00pm): Oh shit, our offer was accepted, now we freak out! SQUEEE!

The Brighton at Antiquity (set)

Originally uploaded by FLC.