jayseven

I'm all for the park bit but due to my eyesight I may make an exit once the sun starts setting, or once people start going to crazy places. I have nightblindness and even though I've known y'all for years none of you really know the dealio so I'll park-it-up and leave when you start having the real fun!

I would make some quesedillas and slice em with a pizza slicer to make little mexican sandwiches of awesomeness. Don't worry about making teh guac or salsa in that recipe (unless you want a srsly decent party). They're quick to make and easy to make delicious. You can make loads during the day then cling-film on a plate. If you are worried about them going soggy you can either microwave them with a cup of water in the microwave or pre-heated oven-cook for a couple of minutes, but if you did that I'd recommend doing a test first to make sure it doesn't fuck up. Otherwise serving them from chilled will be fine. If you're prepping them the day of the party you can even just cling-film them after they've cooled down (if you do it before, the condensation will soggify everything!) and just unwrap when your guests arrive. Fajitas would use the same ingredients but i'd bet people would scoff them down in larger quantities and you'll see you're losing a pretty penny. Quesedillas stretch out the same amount of chicken &c and serve as a better snack food. Nacho-ify your doritoes perhaps! I would recommend not making anything medium or hot spicy. Girls are thrown off by that, plus flavours can work well without the heat. Consider making Sangrita as a chaser for tequila. Sangrita is like an alcohol-free sangria (spanish!). You can probably try adding wine/tequila to the sangrita if you wish but again that's a testing operation first. And perhaps you can get away with some tex-mex options - fried mushrooms, onion rings, jacket potatos with bacon. Personally I'd have a main dish of chili con carne in a big bowl for people to scoop onto their nachos or whatever!

plus side tings! Got to stay positive. I've taken on a new job-thing, and it's been great on one hand because a lot of people now have breaks with me at the same time and have been all "I recognise you!" "yeah I've been working in the far corner for 4 weeks" and generally networking with a lot of people better. I also got my payslip, and it seems I've been paid more than I should've by about 10%. Rumour is this is partly a little share of the commission for the department I was working in (they just introduced it when I started) and also a little bonus for saving the company a bunch of money by spotting a mistake. It's always nice to see a larger pay amount (even if it still doesn't cover costs incurred last month, let alone the month coming up!).

Been working 11 hour days this week, but just been in training for the full-time job. I'm shitting myself over it. I know I will learn with time, and generally I'm the sort of worker who shows improvement the longer they're in the job, but I'm frankly not looking forwards to the week of shit, shit, shit days that I will have to endure while I improve. Working on phones means I'll start off with someone listening to my calls, then if my targets aren't hit they'll sit and give me advice -- it's not how my brain works. I am a good self-critic and I'll learn the best path the more I do the job. I'm too self-aware and I know I'll be nervous and... bleh. It's just daunting. First one in teh office and last one out, I know that other "department" heads are aware of my commitment and I've already angled a move to a role I know I'll be more suited to, but they just hired someone (who isn't great at it, and keeps writing "would of" in really important letters to banks and customers) and no doubt they want to give her ample time to improve. Just starting to feel the strain a few days in. I'd love to have someone a) gimme lift to work b) make my sammiches c) wash my clothes d) cook my dinner e) motivate me f) etc. I am diving in the deep end trying to make things work and I'm appreciative of the help I have received from friends in getting me here -- from visa decline to a place to live and a job in a couple of weeks. But I'm just feeling the hit from the lonliness. I'm really hoping tomorrow is a good day, that I prove to myself a lot of things!

@\-Dem0\- I was honestly quite disturbed by some of those laughs...

Happy birthday charlie, you cheeky chappy!

I can see it now. xboxone parties where everyone is dressed like furniture.

daft has a great point about eye contact. It's vital in all forms of socialisation. It's always interesting, when meeting new people, to see how long it is before they start holding eye contact with you. A lot of people go through stages of never making eye contact; - always looking off to the distance, which comes across as if they're not actually interested in anything you saym rather than the social unconfidence they may be feeling inside - Face looking at you but their eyes closed, or blinking/half-blinking (so weird), or brief glances at you between middle-far distance gazing - longer eye contact I tend to try to reduce the amount of eye-contact I make to a level that the other person may feel comfortable with, if it's a person I don't know. Too much can also be off-putting, so what's crucial here is make the other person feel comfortable. Just the task of doing that can alleviate your own pressure of uncomfortability. I actually can't be arsed to continue with this rant, but @Serebii I would recommend reading Manwatching by Desmond Morris. I read it on a holiday as prep for a psychology a-level and honestly a lot of it has stuck with me. It is a guide to habits, fidgets, gestures and cultural differences in social behaviour. There's a fantasic section on insult gestures around the world -- but I guess more importantly there are great cues for helping you spot whether someone is comfortable around you, scared or nervous or shy or whatever. If you are worried about yourself socially then perhaps you can work on the empathy aspect in order to give yourself a new perspective, or indeed appreciation that others really do know what you are feeling. Essentially I think your social issues are far more important to deal with than any relationship-founding issues.

What's the dealio?

(I know it's a secondary discussion now, but I do want to add my vote to the "riberry is a but of a cunt" motion. He was a nasty player at times, and dives and feels like he somehow deserves stuff. Yeah.) I miss football already

Didn't he set up both goals?

Why certainly

Saw carlton perform his dance in person at a student union night. It's sad to think that's kinda all he does now.

An annoying cumulation of events - people backing out of going out, mate not dropping my xbox off and no digiTV means I can't watch the game... does anyone have any experience with streaming? I've done it once before but forgotten which sites are trustable and not. I don't really know what I'm doing. ... lol went to the source and can stream it via itv.com! Win!

Could coming home and sorting things out in the UK be an option at all?

Goooood news! Starting tuesday I have a full-time and part-time job! I will be working ridiculous hours, starting at 8 and finishing at 6 or 8. If my support worker applications are vaguely successful then this job will only be for a few months -- but enough for me to get money stuff sorted out.

Backwards compatability isn't a huge deal for me, really. I know nothing about the complexities of using new OS from console to console or new nvideoForceX and all that bollocks. What about XBLA games linked to your profile? @Shorty the PS4 was really impressive with its reveal and set a good tone for the gamers and the gaming industry. Xbox didn't build on this (or the fact that it's bound to get the same non-exclusive games that sony gets and so the gaming library for the next generation will be good either way). Instead the presentation seemed to be geared towards the sorts of companies that will invest in advertising on such a system rich in market research and control. It leads the way to betting apps being used in conjunction with the sports shows, potential to watch the same film with multiple friends and chat at the same time from different houses, googling "who's that actor?" on the fly... the potentials for the non-gaming markets are huge and if the console can promise a strong presence in a large number of households with promises of overlaying the screen with stuff... it also means that the broadcasters themselves can pay microsoft to host their own apps that interlink, or offer promotions or interactive elements to viewers. Gives a lot of industries a chance to increase public awareness of their product or service. The focus on what we used to call 'casual' gamers just reincforces this; going for the largest, safest market who know what they like and like what they know -- yearly franchises. It ties in better with their overall business model going forwards, but it ignores what we wanted to see. In this respect, I can understand their preference to use E3 to showcase the more 'core' element of what's in store, but we're a cynical bunch and it feels that they've overlooked us when they needed us most. While the 'casual' gamers like their franchises we're only really talking about a very finite number of games -- halo, gears, AC, fifa/football/other sports, COD. Other IPs like Bioshock (I can't think of others! Arg!) can sometimes hit the casuals up as well. But we feel (correctly or not, I wouldn't know) that we're the guys who invest in the new and the unproven IPs. We feel like we water the sproutlet ideas that actually drive the spirit and backbone of the art inasmuch as the industry. We spend more on games in general, and we spend more of our time gaming. So all we care about are the games! The potential of Rare's back-catalogue being resurrected is most definitely a massive tug at the rose-tinted heart-strings, and there's already a niggling preemptive tinge of regret that I may not get to play them -- I can, of course, be comforted by the fact that 99% of the original team (and thus vision) isn't with the studio anymore, but still. E3 is sure to show us not only these 'exclusive new IPs' which is a phrase that sets off the bullshit alert for being fairly unspecific and meaningless, but it's a chance to see if they can elaborate on their foundation of scary, big-brother reveals so far with some decent, gamer-approved ideas. I'm willing to give the console the chance to shine at the expo, but as far as the horserace goes Sony have shot out of the gates and microsoft appears to have lost their jockey and the horse appears to be having a nap. If steambox can promise to be a gamer-orientated console then it may not be the 'winner' of the next generation of consoles, but I'm sure it'll win the hearts of many of us, especially as we become more disgruntled with the industry's direction. As for nintendo? I think they're at the opera instead.

I don't want to swap consoles instead of games. I don't want to spend more money on less content. I don't want kinect in my house, to pay for a subscription to adverts, to pay for used games. I don't like the way the console is going and I pray that the steam box exists and solves all problems!

Big hugs dude. Hope you're alright.[HDYT][/HDYT]

Won the quiz (or qon it, if you're a facebook friend...) last night! We had a stonking game. First round we got all questions right. And the 2nd. 3rd... we nearly did, but the team went against my answer of Venezuela and instead went for Peru, so we dropped that one. 4th round was music, I got Postal Service and Kings of Leon from intros, the team got 9 others right, so we only missed out on one. Last round was a bastard, we dropped 6 points, but still won the entire quiz by a margin of 8 points, with 15 other teams competing! Such a thrill. We only got 5 questions wrong. There were 3 of us for the first 2 rounds, which is more amazing. Of course I couldn't have done anywhere near as well by myself, but I got those crucial nobody-else-on-the-team-knows-it (including, bizarrely, the city Superman is generally set) that made me feel necessary ... Prize was £45. Which was alright! @Charlie I can Good point.

They were £3.60 when I left for Oz so yeah, 25% price hike. I remember when it was 50p for a day saver :P

Yeah there are some bus options, but the prices just went up (for teh 2nd time in 6 months) to £4.60 for a day saver... Train is the cheaper option at the moment (and quicker of course!)

My dad is an audiobook man. The person reading the book can make all the difference, but generally speaking if you're listening to the book and doing nothing else (i.e. fully concentrating on it whilst walking or on a bus, rather than whilst playing Spongebob on the doolally) then most audiobooks will be fine. Generally they're read by actors, so you'll get different voices for each character. Sometimes they don't know how to pronounce words, sometimes tehy say "hey can we do that again?" and it doesn't get edited out. Most times the book is 'abridged' meaning they've skipped bits in order to fit it on x amount of CDs (but this is becoming rarer and rarer). Honestly I think often times having a book read to you is better because you're actually less likely to skip bits (we've all been there in an awesome moment where we've started reading faster and not really taken it in). Personally, I used to be a fan of chuck palahniuk's stuff (fight club, etc) but nowadays I try to read his stuff and I get too observant of what he's doing (in terms of his chosen repetetive phrases, n'stuff) and it detracts from the detail. Having his stuff read to me would be better. Having said that, I did just borrow 3 of his books from the library. Anyway, in your case, EEVIL, just treat the free book as if it was a book you wanted to read anyway. Audible are the company my dad uses and there are other issues with them (audio books appear a lot later than the paper version, are often abridged as I stated earlier, and sometimes it feels the price isn't great), but their customer service is great so if you start a book then say to them "hey I'm new to the audible experience and I'm not enjoying this free book, but I want to give audiobooks a chance. Could you cancel this one and give me credit to try something better?" they may even be cool with suggesting things for you.

... ok so those bad-stuff posts make my shit pale into insignificance. Hope you are both ok, zell and ganepark.

Working near hove station - I'm 15 min walk to portslade station, which is like 4 min train ride, then 5 min walk to work so it's really fine from here. The work I'm applying for may be anywhere in sussex so I'll just need to be near a train station and this works well; the potential place is in the hanover area of town (west of old steine) which is a bit more of a bitch to get to a train station.