Need a rampage

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I’m getting a bit of cabin fever lately. Been locked up inside this building for too long these last few days. Mainly from my own laziness and lack of inspiration to walk outside.

Today though I haven’t got much choice. Flat out cleaning. Making beds, doing laundry, folding laundry, vacuuming, mopping, scrubbing toilets, unblocking toilets, taking out garbage, cleaning mirrors, dusting. It’s not hard work per se, just takes a lot of time to do every room. Yep, every room. Everyone checked out today. There’s nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of trying to make a bed before the next guest arrives. It’s this fast-paced lifestyle that keeps me staying here.

Things are so fast paced that neither Em nor I spotted someone swiping my nice headphones when they were in our room and now someone’s stolen the sign to the hostel from inside the locked gate. Great success. I suppose that’s karma paying me back for stealing all those bottles of mustard and pepper shakers from various restaurants over the last few months. It’s not really fair, since I stole them for communal use rather than personal gain. Not that you can gain much from a sign that has our address written on it.

Emily’s gone to Finland for a few days to get her Eesti visa and to catch up with Heli. Thanks to the Suomi train system she’s probably going to come back with two mortgages after paying for the train tickets to Savonlinna, Helsinki, Lahti and back. Not to mention the visa application fee. I hope the Finnish people prosper from the generous tax subsidies her financial injection into the economy will bring about. It’s not cheap keeping trains looking and smelling so nice.

Someone left half a hip flask of whiskey here in the hostel for free. I’ve been eying it off. So far I’m winning. Now I just need to eye off this tumbler glass and then combine the two in a direct assault on my face. Ok, maybe not my face but the most suitable orifice on it.

To be honest I’d rather be drinking my delicious O’boy but milk isn’t here and whiskey is. Mmm.

Thursday roundup

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That’s right, another randomly timed summary of my world’s events. Are you ready to feel the rush?

Good. Let’s get to it then.

Firstly, hostel related: Viru’s looking rather spic and span, all the rooms are beautifully colour-coordinated, clean and inviting. The sun’s shining brightly through the windows all day long and keeping the place warmer than it should be thanks to the combination of solar radiation and central heating.

The king of the couch is back on his throne, everyone’s checked out for the day and that laundry’s hanging up to dry. Tomorrow we’re getting more guests and it should be a piece of pie.

Nightlife: I can’t recall if I mentioned going out on Monday night. Well, I did. In the manner of all true good nights out it started somewhat spontaneously. Some cheap beer and a half dozen foosball games in the hostel with John kept me occupied for an hour or so and then we went out with Val and Ben while poor old Emily slept on the couch for night shift.

Levist was on the agenda, as always. We stayed there until it closed at around 3am, meeting and greeting some drunk and blind drunk locals. I received the privilege of listening to a 30-something bitterly intoxicated Estonian regale me with his tales of learning kick boxing after being beaten up by Russians and having a tooth knocked out, at least that’s what I think he was saying, since I could barely understand him. He also tried to channel with me telepathically or something by sending out energy from his palm to mine. It reminded me of the guy that tried to hypnotise me then collapsed on the floor and passed out. I’ve gotta keep away from these hippies.

Some girl that lived in a monastery (seriously) also joined up with us for the night. We headed for The Old Club of course, as it was late and it was Monday and we had no other option. As expected, by that hour we were speaking nothing but bullshit. Money got wasted on pissy flaming B52 shots, twice, to no effect. I just couldn’t get decently inebriated. It could have been due to the quantity of food I’d eaten for dinner that dear Emily cooked for me. Probably.

Around 5:30am the slightly toothless Estonian arrived in the bar with, of all people, a recurring hostel guest: Portuguese Miguel. Things felt tense for a few moments as we’d told Toothless that we were going home and we’d had a slightly awkward relationship with Miguel of late so we weren’t sure what to do. We did the normal thing, a pleasant acknowledgment and a civil nod of the head. They were in a group with some others and sat somewhere else and we didn’t have to move. We were happy until 6:30am when we left and wandered home.

Plans: Em and I are going to Vilnius on Monday or Sunday. We’re going to be down there for a few days. Em’s adamant that we have to be somewhere else for our 1 year and I’m too scared to argue. Hopefully Simone will have some free time to show us around, local style. Em wants to check out some little forest cottage that Livijus told us about as well, so if time permits that’d be really nice, too.

Miscellaneous: I read this earlier today. It made me laugh.

Cracking Hollywood’s code.

The system designed to protect next-generation DVDs from pirates has been cracked. Even the hackers are surprised at how easy it was…

Animal testing is hilarious

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I mean, have a look at this fella:

The horror.

Poor guy. Actually he doesn’t look too bad. Won’t be long now until we can all be cyborgs or have behavioural implants! Read about it here.

Apart from that. Not a lot to report. Viru’s rooms just got a major clean out yesterday so now we’re feeling rather dominant over the whole building. Well, this part of it at least. We even got to design the colour schemes for each room so that they look pretty. Aw.

I’ve been feeling pretty tired lately. Not sure why. Maybe I’m just lazy. Not as lazy as palmy, but still. I can’t even be motivated to cut my fingernails, for example.

I think I’ll watch Labyrinth tonight.

Galleries and CSS

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I’ve spent the last 16 hours or so mucking around with my gallery‘s theme. I didn’t like the way the dev-testing theme looked which is fair enough since it’s designed for experimentation rather than aesthetics.

I think it looks rather spiffy at the moment. Nearly seamless, you might say. I’ve barely slept since I started hacking away at it last night. The individual picture pages haven’t been touched yet, so ignore their look for now.

On the hostel front, it looks like we’ll be living in the Viru rooms for at least the next 2 months. I had a feeling we’d end up in here for a while anyway so it came as no surprise when Hugo mentioned it. He’s going back to Holland on the 11th so then there’ll only be four of us looking after both these places now that Valerie’s back.  Well, Ben will be around too, I guess.

I haven’t been to the gym since Tuesday. We were meant to go today but it doesn’t look likely. Not with me feeling buggered from last night and Emily having been fast asleep on the bed for the last hour or two. Damn it, I really could use a shower and a good old scrub of the teeth. What a mess.

Today I caught up with Swedish Martin. He wanted me to see if there was any free WiFi signals that could be detected from his flat in the old town. The building is fantastic, a real Soviet style, scungy dump with dark, narrow hallways and toilets comparable to the one from Trainspotting. His room was freezing as well, I can only imagine how horrible it’d be inside during winter. He shares it with Tambet, an Estonian guy who works in Levist and plays in a relatively famous local rock band. Apparently Tambet has been living there for about seven years. Hardcore.

There were only secure wireless networks available so I was unable to help Martin out. Instead we had a beer and listened to some music while he told me some of his crazy stories. It would have been nice to kick back and relax for a few hours but I had to get back and clean the toilets.

Post calendar

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Another plugin-related post.

I installed the latest version of this Ajax Calendar but it seemed to crap itself when it came to linking to posts. Unfortunately it kept trying to attach my WordPress install directory as a prefix to all my permalinks when it didn’t have to. The default version of wp_calendar didn’t have this problem and worked fine, but it wasn’t sexy like Ajax!

The solution was fairly easy, I just removed two of the site prefix + segments from the livecalendar.js file and now it’s working perfectly. Isn’t it nice when things are simple?

Unfortunately, the Quoter plugin I installed isn’t compatible with the threaded comments plugin that Gus has made look so nice on his site. To be honest I don’t know if I even need both of them but I like each for their own reasons. Perhaps I’ll hack away at them some more and see if I can get quotes integrated with threaded comments. It could be cool. Maybe.

Is this experience?

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I’m currently meant to be working/assisting/developing three separate websites (apart from toying around with this one). All are related in some way but they’re also for completely different people.

Establishing and configuring servers, sorting out domains, setting up software, developing, managing and building websites all feels like a hobby to me. It’s when I think about it I wonder if technically this is actually some kind of contract work, albeit on a rather informal level. The only real problem or weakness I see with myself is that I’m not a very experienced web designer and by that I mean I’m not overly familiar with CSS. I’ve been teaching myself everything else along the way though so I guess that’s not beyond my reach.

So, yeah, I suppose I’m actually getting real-world IT experience and it’s happened by accident. I’m not really making any money out of it but it’s still a service that I’m providing to clients, even if they’re clients that I know personally. Based on that I figure I’m entitled to record this on my resumé, if I ever get around to updating it.

I’m not really interested in pursuing web-design as a career but it’s hopefully all a stepping stone to greater things. I’m more inspired to try and help “problem solve”, in a consultant sense, I guess you’d say. I like knowing a bit about everything so that I can help people with all sorts of problems and know what they need to do or who they need to speak to or what they need to look at. Perhaps it’s from my interest in trivia or general knowledge.

Anyway. We’ll see.

Life goes on

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Then there were three. Three staff that is, although technically Valerie is back today with her friend. I still don’t know how long she’s staying. Meh. Whatever. So yeah, Hector left earlier this morning. Steffi left yesterday afternoon. Bring back Hans, I say.

I’m going to start looking for work in the UK again soon, I think. I’m not really sure how far ahead of time I need to start applying for jobs to secure one and have it lined up for when we arrive. I’d definitely like to have a guaranteed income from day 1 though even if it’s a shitty job or shitty pay, simply for peace of mind.

Makes me wonder if I need to or if it’s worth bothering with all these quickstart type things or just doing it in person when I get there or even doing it another way online. God knows. I’ll work something out.

Livijus wants me to create a website advertising his apartments for him. It should be easy enough, provided I can get some good photos of the place. Working out the best web host for what he wants and getting the domain set up will be more effort than making the page, I think.

I’m going to start being a little bit more specific with the categories that I assign to my posts from now on. I suppose a few different tags can’t hurt and it probably makes flicking through things a little bit more interesting. Maybe.

No vote for me

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I’m not going to be voting in the next Federal election back home. I just have to fill out some form and fax it back to the Australian Electoral Comission. I’ve never sent a fax before. I hope it looks pretty.

So, the gym’s still good. I haven’t been able to go as often this week due to work and other distractions. It’s only going to get even harder to find the time soon as there’ll only be three of us working here within the next week or so. Hopefully Emily and I will be able to at least go separately whenever we find the time. I’m considering taking up morning sessions, as in 9AM to 11AM. I’m generally awake at that time so it shouldn’t be a problem, particularly when the hostel is also quiet during those hours.

Yep, three staff members for two buildings. We’re going to need more volunteers soon. Anyone feel like visiting?

Going away for our one year anniversary is sounding like a difficult achievement. With a bit of luck though we should manage. Either that or just delay it. I don’t know. I’ve got a feeling Em won’t be too impressed regardless.

Stupid head cold has come back to piss me off. I couldn’t even breathe when I tried to go to sleep last night. Fascinating, I know.

Speaking of fascinating, geez it was good seeing Ireland thrash England in the Six Nations last night. The local Irish were dancing whilst the local English could do nothing more than shrug their shoulders in embarassment. After the match we caught most of a groovy little gig in one of our favourite underground bars by a young Swedish band that was touring Tallinn for one show. They played a very catchy, up-tempo cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall that really impressed me.

The band actually stayed in the hostel that night. That happens a lot. We’re cool like that.

We had a little bash for Hector on Friday night. He’s one of the staff members leaving soon. I’ll put some pictures up later when I can be bothered and share them with you all. :) The sangria was good.

Shaping up

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It’s been about a week-and-a-half since we joined the gym. I’m starting to feel a bit of muscle growing back, albeit ever so slowly. Hopefully I can bulk up a bit just so I look nicer in my Spider-Man t-shirts when the weather warms up again.

Speaking of weather, it’s actually snowing again today! Yay. The snowflakes are rather large at the moment. I can see their shapes and patterns with relative ease. Tallinn looks so nice when it’s covered in white. I’m sure it looks nice when it’s bright and sunny too, I either just can’t remember or came here too late. Summer will return soon enough.

The worst thing about actually exercising regularly now is that I seem to be eating a lot more. It kind of defeats the purpose in a way but I’m not really eating too badly, either, so hopefully I’m still shedding a little bit more day by day. Except for today. I had popcorn. A whole bag. To myself. It was good.

I watched Ghost Rider last night. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, there were a few cheesy lines (ok, awful) and Cage looks really strange when he points but it was still fun. I don’t know a whole lot about the character but he seemed pretty cool in the movie, plus his bike looked funky.

Time’s going quite fast these days. I don’t feel like I’m doing a whole lot but I somehow seem to be. It’s hard to work out. It’ll be no time before the 12 bottle of juice we bought in a crate runs out. We thought they were on special for 70 EEK. Turns out they were actually going at 200 EEK instead. Whoops. We were too embarrassed to take them back from the register when we discovered the truth after it was swiped. Never mind.

I’ve started reading The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s enjoyable so far. Unfortunately it’s an old, paperback edition that is literally falling apart. If I speed read it might completely disintegrate. Wish me luck.