Since I came back from my Christmas holidays my elegance and sophistication standard receded 11 steps cancelling the 2 forward I made in the previous months. Today I decided to revert back to my coach and with a lesson on how a perfect girlfriend should be.

I'm back to my roots.

Another practically non existent weekend this month, having had to work both on Saturday and Sunday. This project we've got is stressing me a bit because I've got to finish before I leave on holiday. Hopefully in two weeks time however I'll be in a jungle in Venezuela and forget everything about it. Actually thinking about it I could have worked from home in the weekend but I get too distracted and end up doing nothing. Or playing my new fixation, World of Warcraft.

Yesterday evening I finished off a horrible week in a complete mess. (For the sake of practicability this week started on Sunday and ended on Saturday). It was raining very heavily and I didn't feel like cycling back home from work so instead I decided to take the bus to the city centre and visit my friend in another part of Dublin. When I was going to catch the bus from work to the centre I realised that I forgot my wallet at home so I borrowed some money from the work petty cash to get to her house. I managed to arrive and spent the evening there, and until then everything was fine. Then she lent me just enough money to arrive home by bus. I got the bus at midnight from her home to the centre but the bus driver stopped half way and made us all go down. For what reason I still don't know. So I had to get a second bus from the middle of nowhere to the centre and pay again. When I arrived in the centre I had no money to go back home. I tried to phone my friends maybe they were in the centre but there was nobody so I had to take a taxi back home and pay after fetching the money from the house. Today I didn't forget the wallet at home.

This week I had to learn some advanced Excel techniques. As usual I went to the web to look for some ideas on how to achieve what I was looking for. When looking for information on such a broad and popular subject Google isn't my favourite engine because it tends to return many results of services and courses offering excel tuition rather than the actual tips. I used the following resources to get a much more focused set of results and ideas about what I was looking for.

Del.icio.us - This got me started in the right direction. The first couple of bookmarked sites here linked to several other Excel resources literally flooding me with Excel information.

Google video - A video hosting site might not be the first place to come in mind when looking for excel stuff. After I searched for 'excel reporting' in Google Video I found a whole series of 2mins shows by Mr. Excel on how to power-use excel.

These are some of the best sites I found after searching these sources and linking sites

• My Excel Pages - Loads of Articles on Excel
• Juice Analytics - Nifty Information Representation blog with several articles on Excel with how-tos
• Perceptual Edge - Information Representation Papers and Research
• Contextures - Good examples and how-tos on advanced excel especially on Pivot Tables

From Secular Blasphemy

It would have worked wonders in this case

Murphy's law for antigravitatory cats

One of the nomiated top 10 articles of 2006. very funny.

A periodic table of visualisation methods

An example of many information visualistation methods (charts, mind maps, timelines, parameter ruler ...) displayed in a periodic table.

Surreal art collection

Some great art work around here. Check out Mark Ryden

Crocodile in Gambia

Great desktop photo. You can even make the croc eat some shortcuts.

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1. Canaan - Senza una risposta
2. My Dying Bride - To remain tombless
3. Forsaken - Wretched of the earth
4. Opeth - The baying of the hounds
5. Draconian - The morningstar
6. In flames - Take this life
7. Opeth - The grand conjuration
8. Bloodbath - Cancer of the soul
9. Doors - People are strange
10. Clash - Should I stay or should I go
11. Satyricon - Black Lava
12. Moonspell - Memento mori
13. Enslaved - RUUN
14. Doors - Alabama song
15. Estradasphere - A corporate merger
16. In flames - Come Clarity
17. Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
18. I - The storm I ride
19. Slayer - Jihad
20. Death - Spirit Crusher

Best albums played this year

1. Opeth - Ghost Reveries (2005)
2. My Dying Bride - A line of deathless knights
3. Draconian - The Burning Halo
4. Satyricon - Volcano (2002)
5. Forsaken - Dominaeon (2005)
6. Nazca - Non grata (2003)
7. Canaan - The unsaid words (2005)
8. In flames - Come clarity
9. Dresden Dolls - Yes Virginia
10. Satyricon - Now, diabolical
11. Doors - The best of the doors
12. Enslaved - Ruun
13. Estradasphere - Palace of Mirrors
14. Moonspell - Memorial
15. I - Between two worlds

January: Apprehensive about my move out of the dot. Went to Dublin for interview. More problems in my old work place. Started poker craze.
February: Resigned from work and started working the notice period. The doomest month of the last couple of years. Redesigned Mindspill.
March: Out of the dot at last. The year started taking a twist for the better. First week in my new job. New is nice. The move looks promising.
April: Started getting to grips with living alone and making some new friends.
May: Continued living. Went to Dresden Dolls concert.
June: Went to meet friends in Wales. Back to the ‘dot’ on duty travel. Saw Opeth live.
July: Back to the do for two weddings. Italy win the world cup. Went to Donegal.
August: Went to New Zealand.
September: New Zealand vibe still on.
October: Refurbished room. Parents came over to Dublin.
November: Quiet month. Decided to go to Venezuela. Went to Galway.
December: Went to Latvia. Back home for Christmas.

Best Film: The Departed
DVD Craze: Family Guy
Most useful software: UltraEdit
Project of the year: Moving to Dublin
Best Holiday: New Zealand
New thing tried in 2006: Living alone & Skydiving
Band of the year: Opeth
Favourite Pub: The porter house

This was probably one of the best Christmas periods of these last few years. I went back to the dot for the main Christmas period (between the 22nd Dec and 1st Jan) and had a wonderful time. In summary these were the highlights.

Main Highlight(s): Catching up with friends, cats and family. Went Go Karting.

Saturday 23rd: Her farewell party, she's moving to Finland on the 28th.

Sunday 24th: Christmas eve ended up at the farmhouse after the barraks got flooded and everything started floating. Ate rabbit and spicy chicken meatballs.

Monday 25th: Perfectly timed combination of Christmas lunches. Started with one at home (between 12.00 and 12.40) then went to the other lunch (between 1pm and 7pm). Saw 'Happy Feet' (3/5) with pals in the evening.

Tuesday 26th: Went go karting. Dinner with pals at Chinese Restaurant.

Wednesday 27th: Dentist. Old work mates visit. Camping shopping. Octopus dinner at aunties. Garage till late in the evening.

Thurdsay 28th: Venezeula discussion with travel mentor. Inception of South Africa trip. Airport to say the last goodbye. Went to farmhouse.

Friday 29th: Got called to fix a problem at my old workplace. PES 6. Detective Game. Cranium. Meat and Fish Lasagne.

Saturday 30th: More games and farmhouse fun. Went a bit rotten in the evening. Steak and Mushroom Pie and chicken Pie.

Sunday 31st: Morning family visit. Risk world domination. 1992 wine. Pictionary. Mess with the pet, her hair and general demeanour. Sicily wine. Gammon Dinner. Telephone joke. Questions drinking game till 5am.

Monday 1st: Saying goodbyes. Left back to Dublin at 5pm via Manchester.

Last weekend I went to dinner with my two elegance and sophistication coaches. As soon as I saw one of them on the other side of the road I wolf whistled turning the heads of all the people around. The coach came over blushing and scolding me for my inelegant and unsophisticated behaviour.

We arrived at the elegant Italian restaurant. After sitting down at the bar I noticed that one of the bar maids was cross eyed. Since I didn't know the English word for her condition (werca) I was gesturing at her eyes to explain what I meant. Inevitably she got a glimpse of my highly inelegant behaviour.

The rest of the dinner adhered to my coaches standards, apart from the constant slagging of my dress, which I still cannot understand.

Lessons Learnt

• Wolf Whistling is used by farmers to herd sheep dogs, not to greet people across the street
• When you're talking about a defect of somebody 1) try not to make it obvious 2) MORE IMPORTANTLY ... don't speak in a language that is understood by the other party

This week I'm so lethargic, I feel like doing nothing. Each time I start doing something I end up distracted into something else then freaking out. At least I finished Christmas shopping today. I though it was over on Saturday but yesterday I received a message that my good friend had a baby girl, so I had to hit the shops again. I got a really cute thing for her, probably one of the best presents of the year.

Yesterday I gave my first present (actually fourth, but first significant one). I hit the nail on the head after spending about 3 days looking for the thing. The present was a colourful hippy style spider which doubles as a pin holder. A funny present but just the thing I was looking for.

Tomorrow I'm working, and I bet they're going to be a very long 8 hours. I'll try and kill time with a game or two of backgammon, which is now the official game of the office.

On Friday we're going for Christmas lunch so that will be a fun day. After lunch I'm getting a lift to the airport to go back home. Can't wait to see cats, friends and family.