Under review....

Matia's editing skills and pc skills are much needed.... don't be surprised if the blog will be sanitized shortly, it's currently spinning completely out of control :-)

Ayo is always right!!!

And there you go, me stubborn as always. I have the advantage of a friend that not only is usually right, he's absolutely always right, and has been continuously for the past ten years... and what do I do? I consistently ask him for advice, and then I do the exact opposite of what he says...
And I wake up in the morning, and I see a reply to a text I forgot I sent, and I should have not sent, and... "Holy Sh*T!!!"

Stonehenge in the Amazon!!

Archaeologists with the Amapa Institute of Scientific and Technological Research said they uncovered the ruins near Calcoene, 390 kilometers (240 miles) from Macapa, the capital of Amapa state, near Brazil's border with French Guyana.

"Only a society with a complex culture could have built such a monument," archaeologist Mariana Petry Cabral, of the Amapa Institute of Scientific and Technological Research (IEPA)

The pre-colonial observatory was built of 127 blocks of granite each three meters (10 feet) high, arranged upright and evenly spaced in circles in an open field. The archaeologists do not know yet when the structure was built, but ceramic fragments found nearby suggest that it is between 500 and 2,000 years old.

Researchers are comparing the discovery to Stonehenge, a mysterious stone circle in southern England that was built between 3000 and 1600 BC

Read the full story here:

News Mongabay
or in Italian (translate with Bablefish)_ more accurate content here:
La Repubblica

Warm healthy salad

Lettuce, red and yellow peppers, scallions, beef tomatoes, roasted and chopped aubergines, spicy turkey strips
Apparently it was a success! and having Martin and Sofia over was great, finally we get the bear out of his poker cave :-D
Unbelievably left the place tidy, and - a lot less unbelievably - went to bed way too late once again... so today I'm asleep while walking once again... I can't wait for winter to come over, so that I'll go into hibernation again... summertime is wonderful, but extremely tiring... I need to sleep badly!!! (And do tell it to Zeebee, who wakes me up punctually at 6 each and every morning... but hey, how can you hold it against him, when the only reason why he wakes me up is that he was missing me through the night and wants to play? I cannot wait until his little sister joins the family, maybe they'll play together and let me sleep....) !!!!
Ah yes, of course, didn't post this one yet.
To the dismay of a recently acquired friend (who cannot stand cats, now, never heard anything so terrible!!!) Zeebee and I had "booked" a little sister for him a couple of months ago, and been waiting for her to be born and then to reach an age such than she can survive without her mother.
Given upcoming holidays and all the rest, she'll join the family at the end of July, and unless her face is going to be completely different than what I expect, her name will be Zoy.
In theory she could have come over mid-July, but I'm not here, and Ayo-the-best is going to stay over and look after Zeebee... and I would die of jealousy if he was to enjoy Zeebee and Zoy all on his own... cannot have that!!!
And really cannot wait to have this other new kitten... may be she'll stand smoke better than Zeebee? Each time "something" is lit, Zeebee simply goes off and looks at me soo reproachingly that's unbelievable.

Sleepless in Dublin

Without all of those connotations of the movie (don't even remember if I liked it or not? Which one was it?) the title is appropriate for last night alright.
Managed to hear it all about Simon's kids, guitars, cars, women, recent successes and difficulties - it's always wonderful to become friends, and it's such a slow process that it's even nicer when it happens. It makes me very happy really.
And then did have a great night with another friend, now, I do believe I'm lucky :-)
Only problem is that I'm supposed to be writing this serious stuff, which isn't even boring, mind you, but my eyes are closing on their own accord at the moment, so posting on the blog might wake me up.
Another cup of coffee won't go wasted either, had no espresso left this morning!!!
Anyway: another day, another busy day, another happy day. The glass continues to be half full, and it's been half full for so long that it's marvelous.
And no, I don't flee reality, I just find reality wonderful and interesting and alive :-)

Monday evening... prospect is bleak!!!

Ok, I actually realised I cannot post stuff about these things anymore... but I'm glad to report I've been already successful in influencing the new director's decisions... let's just hope I'll be able to do this for the money also, then it's going to be real cool....
The best news of the day is that I'll be reporting to her, and she's as cool as a breeze, I'll learn tons in a flash!!!!! Just seriously cannot wait :-)
As for tonight.... hummm..... complex thingy here:
1) catch up with Ayo [did I have to do anything on my pc? I can't remember!]
2) catch up with Simon at the 12th lock [ simply cannot say no!!!]
3) catch up with Sofia and offer the shoulder and a much needed hug
3) catch up with Mananan [strenuous exercise needed]
4) kind of trying to straighten up my place?
This is a pretty complex evening.... considering that it won't start before 6 because of the match and the rest....
Ok, but I do need to do something for myself, right?
Guess I cannot say no to Simon and Sofia, might try to squeeze in Mananan, but that's about it... oh lord, why don't days have a span of 48hours?

>>> and as an afterthought... when am I to sleep??????????????????

Monday morning... and I'm dead!!!

ok, last nite I really overdid it....
5 hours sleep aren't enough. Period.
no amount of coffee will put me right today...
and the mood is gray and rainy as it is outside right now...
and didn't even have my ice-cream ... which I guess is icy, stone cold still in the freezer.. ah well!!!!

Delightful weekend!!!

This is paradise. Back in dear old Dublin, with these summer temperatures that are so cool you need a fleece most of the time, and you definitely know if you have a window open as you're basically freezing. Wonderful!!!
Paradise today is to spend it like yesterday: smoking a good few thingies and drinking black coffee - a refreshing pause from the late wine drinking - and spending all the time online, blissfully ignoring the entire and complete mess my place (the lot of it!) is now in.
Oh yes, I should iron some ton of clothes - clean but wringed, so I can't wear it.. and oh yes, I should actually tidy up at least the living room as I can't even walk around anymore, let alone find stuff...
Instead I'm curled up in my armchair, enjoying the latest huge painting (yes, I did it, but it's still a very nice one..), regretting not having my digi-cam anymore, so I cannot upload the painting up here for you all to enjoy (or sneer, whichever).
My wonderful friend Ayo has began restoring one of my computers, and of course I can't be bothered in assisting him (he's a great tech, anyway, despite what he thinks!!! and he knows only too well, that assisting in doing tech stuff is far too similar to work for me to enjoy doing it anymore)...
However, all of his work has resulted in my system being back up and running, and with good enough specs that I'm thinking to actually bother go buy some serious hdd and host TheJollyZone on my own.
At the end of the day, I do need to put some order among my stuff - and even if the room is messy, the bedroom can't be walked in, the kitchen is impassable, the guest room is ok simply because Ayo straightened it out, the bathrooms are some funky experience... well, in this full and complete mess, what am I thinking of reorganizing? My docs and tech stuff, of course!!!!
If I'll actually leave the tech world as it looks likely at this stage, I really do not want to see these ten years of hard, passionate work lost.
And yet, I'm so much 100% into what I do, that I leave zero memory allocated to the past, and this usually results in forgetting everything.
I forgot all there was to forget of my previous life: don't know anymore anything about history, philosophy, literature, theater, art, linguistics, glottology, even grammar (as this blog is - I'm painfully aware - full of grammatical and spelling mistakes.. something that ten years ago would have never happened!)
I want to restore TheJollyZone for good, and put it in a repository fashion. Put there all the gigs of documentation I read in these ten years, all the utilities and tools I fell in love with, basically all my stuff - before I get to forget it.
So there you go - found my DNS hosting, and studying TWiki - the love of the moment.
As for men?
Well, some exercise goes a long way in keeping me fit :-)
And although the best of the best risks to get me falling in love head over heals, but doesn't seem to care that much - right now that I do - of course... well, I might give a call back to Mananan, his idea of a sporty friendship mightn't be that foolish, after all.
Don't know... all of that requires time, and at the moment I'm having a great ball simply tech-ing about :-)

From Venice with... sweat!!!

And here we go, back in Venice and it's warm, really warm!
Defending myself with a big huge ventilator at the back, plus another one in the front, and still dripping sweat while sitting down and not moving at all.... My goodness, and thinking I used to live around here... !!! wow...

Spending a little time teaching my mum how to use the internet - yes, some still need to learn, and it's never too late!!! and it's really a humbling experience to do this and then writing on your blog using another nationality's keyboard... it took the full 60seconds of 1 minute before I could find the apostrophe in the Italian keyboard... now, that was just as frustratingly infuriating as it must be for my mum to learn how to view things in a web page...
Of course, people that haven't a clue about the internet get swayed and misled by the myriads of things any web page presents to them... we forget sometimes, but this is such a new way of communicate for people of different generations that it is still incredible to see how difficult it is for them... exactly as it was for us all that time ago.. But we do forget that, don't we? Like we forget how difficult it was to learn to read and write, and so on.

Anyway, back now to my hot Venice and my delightful little niece :-)

(And yes, I will post her picture sooner rather than later!!!)

Oh yeah... got it alright!!

And it did happen... it's the longest time I've been in the same company, but it's paying off... promoted again :-)
And.. The job is going to be absolutely wonderful!!!!!
I really cannot wait for it to be announced, for me to begin working on it. Absolutely smashing!!!!

TheJollyZone... the business?

Ah, finally.... I think I do know now what to do with this.
It'll take a year to get cert in the relevant skills - then a few months to get info and draw up a business plan...
After all - with the format of the business I have in mind - I should be able to continue working as of now without any problem, dedicating to the business a couple of nights a week and 1 weekend day....
Will do the business plan alright - and if the figure match, there you go, TheJollyZone Inc will be born :-)

Waiting for something major....

Ah well, it's like that. Gone for the interview of the century... waiting to see if the man of the century is actually in love with me.... 2 big ones, don't you think?
And so, please, allow me to be feeling girly about this all thing, and to read up horoscopes (invariably wrong, aside from the main stars ones), numerology (thank god I abandoned it a while ago), and Tarots (the latest of my girly things).
Here is the best, quickest, and most interesting (aside from the fact that it's free) website where you can read your own Tarot online: http://www.ivenus.com/horoscopes/tarot/celtic_cross.asp