So I decided I simply HAVE to do some work, as seem to have an infinite number of deadlines and all seem to be approaching like a heard of angry coyotes.

My solution? Starbucks. I love nothing more than laptop and a Tall filtered coffee with unlimited refills, nothing better right?… Well no. Today I am sat in Starbucks in Swindon and all I can think about isn’t the work I should be doing but how much I am irritated by the situation.  It’s pretty close to my idea of hell, at least when I want to get some work done.

We have crying babies, odd guys rambling off who seem to be intoxicated, gossiping woman, sticky dirty tables, and in places an inch of left over food on the floor. This isn’t my idea of a good work environment and to add insult to injury? The coffee isn’t even that good. It tastes nice and then when I get to those last delicious mouthfuls I choke as there is a load of coffee beans in the bottom. It’s called FILTERED coffee for a reason Starbucks, you are supposed to FILTER it.

Sigh, ok enough ranting… I need to try and get some work done.

I am a fairly avid user of FourSquare (when I remember to use it) and naturally I am keen to go to (yet another) meet-up!

The first Swindon FourSquare Meet-up is soon approaching! Organised by @TheSourceress I met her briefly at my first outing to the Reading Tweetup, so looking forward to meeting her properly.

So come along and meet people in Swindon who use and love foursquare! Bring your friends who don’t use foursquare yet, make new friends who already use foursquare!

Don’t forget, the Mayor of The Sir Dan’s gets 20% off food! So don’t forget to check-in!

The details…

Twitter Account: @Swindon4sq

Meetup page: meetup.com/foursquare/35294/

Date: Thursday 2nd December 2010

Time: 7:30pm

Where: The Sir Daniel Arms, Swindon

So hopefully I’ll see you there!

Well, i was woken up today by my dad at 7am… Thanks Dad.  ¬.¬ you know i don’t have to be at college until 1pm! Grr… So i got up nice and early, and got to see the untouched snow around my house, yay.

I did take some photos (i stuck my mobile out the window and took a few snaps) but they came out all red.

But then once i had woke up a bit and checked my emails scratched myself and turned on my pc i took a few more pics, which came out better, the sun was out.

 Yea so there is a few pics of Swindon in snow, i was going to take more on the way to college etc, but by the time i got out and about it was all slushy and i didn’t really want to post pictures of icy mush.

Okay so on rge 26th June I had my New College enrollment, so went along spoke to Roger the IT tutor sorted out my course, which was lined up to be BTEC Computing ( Software Development ) and … French. *shakes head and laughs* I know i dont know why i chose it either… was on of those spur of the moment things, i fancied learning french… well yea.. lets just glaze over that shall we So yea, i obviously changed French GCSE to a Maths A Level O.O Now the BTEC is a THREE A Level Course! which is more than i need for university, and more than most do, not forgetting i do quite a bit out side of school, with my business XDnet.co.uk other websites, CALM Charity, and of course Swindon 105.5 (Shameless plugs there!)

But i am told i can drop the BTEC course down to a Double (2 A Level instead of 3) which would make it easier, which i will most likely do unless of course i get as obsessive with it as i do with other computer stuff which i hope i do!

So i sorted this out, with “Roger” who really likes the word “bud” one of those things, flicking through the book of courses trying to find something easy interesting… to do for the next year of my life… and I have this guy i have never met using “bud” as a period (full stop). I mean I’m happy for people to have words like that they use but i mean he used it A LOT! sometimes mroe than once in each sentence.

Im going off on one here, so yea talk to this guy get my courses sorted get my free “can” of drink… which turned out to be a juice pouch… “Hey! Welcome to New College the place where you will get treated like an adult… Have a juice pouch. Look like your FIVE! theres a good boy O.O… and the lady by the tuch shop thing where I got it from must have been paid extra to keep that smile on all day.

So you go over sit down waiting to get my photo taken for my ID… eventually get to sit on a stool have the picture taken from the device which looked like a eye on a stick, i saw my picture and just knew instantly I am going to regret this moment for the rest of my time i have a college ID with that photo; And of course i go that looks awful to the girl manning the computer, while in my head im screaming going o crap i look stonned, drunk and asleep ALL at the same time! NO! And I get that “O Everyone says that” … I couldn’t be bothered to argue, i had been up since 7am with only a few hours sleep because i had been at the station (Swindon 105.5) all day before this (from 8AM to 3.30PM)… its not a good picture, then again not many of me are!

So eventually you get walked up stairs to the computer room, which i happened to have done a “Gifted and Talented” Web Design course in… but i wont go into detail. So i sit down to take this enrollment test, to basically make sure i have a brain. Now bare in mind i was half asleep worn out and had to sit through some crappy flash application to test my Numeracy and Literacy skills, the first question for numeracy was something like “Whats 8 – 6?”, i re-read the question to be sure… it did get more difficult as the test went on, and i ended up with a Level 2 – 3 for numeracy, which supposedly was where i was supposed to be. The Litteracy one however… not so good, i ended up with Level 1 (which of course i was told was where i was expected to be) but what seemed like hours of, On our leaflet we have made 3 spelling mistakes grab this crappy cross and place it on all the spelling mistakes… JUST USE THE BLOODY SPELL CHECKER… Now before i have someone comment about good spelling, and how it’s important etc etc, I know. Its just it gets tedious when you are looking at a tacky looking Flash Application, and just wondering if they would wake you up if you went to sleep on keyboard not generally a good mix

So after 50 minutes and 46 seconds taking the Literacy assessment and 35 minuutes and 52 seconds for the numeracy, i was finally FREE! (ish) now i moved into yet another waiting room (and some how managed to lose my card thing with my Student ID number on the way >< ) then i go to meet what i think was the Physcology tutor who basically went over everything and looked at the score.  yay now i can spend another 15 minutes walking back to the studio!

Bottom line, im both excited and also dreading college, excited something new hopefully much more advanced than the rubbish from Greendown, and meeting new as well as old friends. But then I have that but look how much i have done being off all day! I am going back to having less time to manage my business, and projects and Swindon 105.55.

But I hope i can manage, should be fun, and will probably end up spending more time at studio so can get moe involved with the radio – at the moment im learning the system a little more to be Tech Op, would really like to become deeply involved with the Tech side and also will hopefully getting a show together and running, and besides the fun and hope to get more listeners that just friends and family, it always looks good on your CV!

Just a note, i will be posting a tutorial soon about retrieving and displaying cPanel server status on a normal webpage for users so you can expect that and the script soon too!

Cya.

Dan