Dom Davis (The Blog)

This morning, while having a shower, I
Noticed very prominent blue veins on my left arm and hand. They didn’t last long, but given the amount of painkillers I’ve been eating of late I thought I’d better have a quick google just to make sure it was nothing to worry about. The first page I came across made mention of lupus. Now, I’m no doctor, but I do watch House and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that it’s never lupus

For all it’s geeky goodness the iPhone has one major flaw: it comes with Apple headphone which are, to be blunt, crap. They fall out of my ears and leak sound like a bugger. With the original iPhone the headphone socket was recessed meaning only a certain subset of headphones would work with it, plus I really wanted some with a mic so I could make calls with them.

While hunting for headphone I had a number of friends suggest in ear noise cancelling ones. I had tried these previously and didn’t get on with them, however, I was assured that if I didn’t get a cheap pair I’d have a much better experience. A quick look on the mac store shows these headphones which fitted the phone, looked good, had a mic and sounded awesome. There was a problem though, the cable broke. Within a month. So I sent them back for warranty repair, only to have the replacement break weeks later. I don’t expect headphones to last forever (the cables always break) but I expect them to last at least 6 months. After about the 5th breakage I got pissed off and decided to get something more robust.

After much research, much consideration and much asking of friends I decided to treat myself to a pair of these. They are, hands down, the best earphones I’ve ever heard. In fact I ended up having to re-rip my entire CD collection because, for the first time in my life, I could understand what people were going on about with lower quality MP3s. Although my shiny new headphones didn’t fit my iPhone out of the box Shure did sell an adapter cable that gave a mic and fitted the iPhone perfectly. The great news was the adapter cable was also the part that gave up the ghost quickest so, while I was back to cables breaking every 6 months it was a relatively cheap adapter and not a phenomenally expensive pair of headphones. In the 3 years I’ve had my headphones I’ve only had to replace the earbuds once, after about 18 months of use.

Shure also have a great reputation for customer service. Their two year warranty is generally no quibble and you send them back the broken headphones and they send you a brand new set. Since it’s a new set they come with a new two year warranty. In theory these should be headphones for life. This warranty is possibly going to be my saving grace as today I did something rather stupid: I washed my headphones. After a bit of testing I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to get my backup headphones out, hunt for the warranty documentation and hope I could get them replaced.

The good news is that I found all the relevant paperwork, everything should still be in warranty and now I just need to contact Shure and see what they say. Fingers crossed I’ll soon have a shiny new replacement set and will be enjoying fantastic sound reproduction once again.

Yesterdays slushy didn’t happen unfortunately due to a lack of sufficiently sugary drink to apply to the machine. I also have gout in my knee which is a tad sore and difficult to walk on.

Now I’m a great believer in modern medicine and will happily throw great handfuls of pills down my throat if it will work. That said I’m not adverse to more traditional treatments to supplement this. For example, cherry juice is supposed to be very good for you when you have gout. It’s also high in sugar if you don’t get the reduced sugar stuff I normally get.

Yup, you can see where we’re going here can’t you? Cherry slushy to wash down a handful of pills. It’s certainly one way to turn a problem into a resolution start point.

That said, having a knee that I can barely walk on is problematic at best, not least due to the fact I’m supposed to be going clubbing this weekend. I shall be guzzling loads of water over the next 24 hours but if it hasn’t improved by tomorrow it may be a trip to the doctors for a slightly more permanent solution that a never ending prescription for NSAIDs to manage the pain and swelling. Hopefully this will be another set of pills to manage the root cause rather than a “no really, change your diet” answer otherwise meal times could become distinctly dull. At least I’ll have slushy to wash everything down with

* Can you see what I did there?

One of my birthday presents was a slushy maker. I love slushies, especially the Tango Ice Blasts that you can get at the cinema¹. Hopefully when I get home tonight all the required ingredients (ice, salt² and sugary drink to turn into slush) will be in place and I can make some icy goodness. I’m very excited

¹Toys have been thrown out of pram on more than one occasion due to broken Ice Blast machines denying me iced sugary goodness.

²That rather surprised me at first but the ice and salt go into a central “freezing column” used to chill and slushify the drink. The ice and salt don’t actually go into the drink itself.

While we were honeymoon the Zozo and I chatted to a man who was staying at the same lodge as us. He was in his 70′s, looked like he was in his late 50′s and was happily yomping up jungle covered hills in the heat and humidity with people half his age. His secret? He’s never considered himself old and never used age ad an excuse not to do anything.

Too bloody right!

I may be 36 now but I’ll be putting kids half my age (literally in some cases) to shame this weekend as once again the wee hours of the morning come round, the kiddies give up and the average of the dancefloor shoots up.

This year I seem to have developed a severe addiction to Cadburys Creme Eggs. I’ve always liked them but for some reason this year I’m finding it harder and harder to resist buying them. It doesn’t help that the boxes of 6 are on special at Morrisons and I have to walk past the huge stack of them every day on my way home. I’m even more addicted to the Twisted bars they do but thankfully they’re harder to come by and not so easy to buy in bulk. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s the white goo. It’s that combination of pure sugar, water to make it into a paste and then the addition of crack cocaine that makes it so moreish. This years diet is not going well… or indeed at all :S

I’ve accepted my fate for next weekend and have resigned myself to far too many hours on trains and busses and much milling about waiting for same. I do, after all, have the week after off so there is plenty of time to recover. The only thing haven’t worked out is what I’m going to do between 7:30am and 9:30am. Even if I walk from Angel to Liverpool Street I’ll still have well over an hour and a half to kill. One has to bear in mind that I’ll be tired, having been up all night; sweaty having been dancing all night; and dressed down because the clubs I go to are holes

I had considered swinging by the pool at the Barbican. It may be small but it’s cheap and would wake me up, keep me active and allow me to shower. Unfortunately this is closed for refurbishment until next year, so that idea is right out. Shopping is out, It’s a Sunday and nothing will be open. I don’t really want to sit somewhere doing very little because if I stop I will fall asleep so I’m rapidly running out of ideas.

I do have big pockets in my coat so, despite traveling light, I could take a paperback with me and see if reading keeps me awake. What would be good is if I could find a coffee shop that was open and allowed charging of iPhones while drinking industrial quantities of tea.

Ideas on a postcard (or comment).

I have now bought the plane tickets for our holiday and was indeed correct in thinking that I’d not be able to use all my discounts in one go.

After speaking to a very helpful lady I was told that I could use miles + money (basically £100 off for 7,200 airmiles), get transferred through to the Virgin partners line where I could discuss my staff discount or have them call me back when the free upgrade tickets were released which wouldn’t be for a few months.

A little more probing and I discovered that the only tickets you could upgrade were quite expensive to begin with. In the end I went for the staff discount option. It’s the same price as miles + money but doesn’t cost me any airmiles. I also got all four tickets saving us £400 or so, which was nice.

What was a little surprising is that I get 30% off the flights. Looking at a ticket price of £640ish I was expecting to see the price be much less than the £540odd it was. Of course that’s not just the ticket price is it? No, there’s taxes and god knows what else in there too and sadly I don’t get 30% off that.

Given I bought the tickets on my virgin credit card and given their all trips that are eligible for miles and given I didn’t spend any miles buying them I think The Zozo and I now have something like 40,000 airmiles between us. We’re unlikely to spend these on flights before they expire so I may end up converting them into vouchers for wine from my employers. There’s a certain amount of irony there.

I was greeted last night as I crossed the threshold into the house by a not quite full bin bag containing assorted kitchen waste and the body of one ex-mouse. Said bag was unceremoniously dumped in the bin outside ready for collection by the bin men. Not quite the memorial I had in mind¹ but The Brain had at least picked the day before bin day to die.

It would also appear that bereavement leave doesn’t apply to small pets which is a shame, mainly because if I could swing a day off for a dead mouse then perhaps I could also blag days off for dead cockroaches. Not that we keep cockroaches as pets mind you. No, they are food for the spiders. As such they don’t really have names other than “no, not you” and “yes you!” as the great hand of doom looms over the box they call home to select one to it’s fate. Nor could we really argue any great sadness at their passing. I remain indifferent while The Zozo emits great squeals of delight as various arachnids attack and kill their prey with quite frightening speed. What we do have with the roaches is frequency of death. I could phone in several times a week with “boo hoo! Little Yes You the 26th passed away last night, I’m too upset to come in”. But no, they’re not buying it.

¹I wanted proper burial with headstone, 21 gun salute performed by the Royal Artillery while overhead a Lancaster and spitfires in missing man formation did a flyby. Perhaps a short speech by The Queen. Nothing fancy, just something fitting.

The Brain died at 4pm today. Message ends.