As many of you lot know, I'm a fan of cricket and all things involving dressing up in white, in the middle of summer and running round on a pitch, chasing after a small, red leather ball while trying to get as dirty as possible.

Practice has been going well this year - I've only had 1 bruise so far in 4 training sessions (that's probably tempting providence though :P) And the 2-hours a week is certainly leaving me with good expectations for the coming year.

I have hit a small problem though - the main tool of my batting arsenal has finally given up the ghost. I was feeling quite good in the nets, batting reasonably well, by my standards, and I was given a chance to really hit one on a pull to my left. The general sound of a good shot is a solid wooden 'thwack', usually accompanied by the bulging of the net and my ego. The net bulged, but me ego didn't, as I heard a decidedly wooden splintering noise... I retrieved the ball and tossed it back, only then consulting my obviously wounded weapon. See the pictures below for the damage.

The split from the front to the back also took with it the armour tape, which probably had kept it together for some time. While I'm quite impressed to be able to break a bat, just by hitting a ball, I'm also dismayed, because the bill for a new bat is going to be quite high. This last one cost me £30 over 3 years previously. For a quality bat, I'm talking somewhere in the region of £50, so that's a $110 bill if you'd like to factor that in across the pond.

How much do quality wooden baseball bats cost these days? I suppose that they should be cheaper, as they don't take so much to make, being all one piece, with maybe a cloth or tape grip. Cricket bats have at least 3 pieces, in the handle, body and grip, with an optional protective coating over the face, which got split on mine.

It had served me well over the past 3 years, though I wish I had served it better, by scoring more runs. In the end, the runs scored was 147 from this fine piece of willow in three years. I know that might not sound like much, but I'm intending to put behind me the problems that were caused by the number of ducks (0s) scored with that bat, when the new one arrives.

So I missed about 24 hours of internet connection yesterday and today. I left the office at 5pm and there was joy and good progress with my stats. I felt quite good and looked nicely into a well structured gym session.

I returned home to find that the internet connection had died at home. Not good. So as a result, most of the evening was spent trying to find other ways to entertain myself. Thankfully, The Science of Discworld came to the rescue and my sanity remained in tact.

This morning, I awoke and tried in vain to restore the connection, for my morning stats and emails. NOTHING!

Not to worry, I'll go to the office slightly earlier and use their connection, to satisfy my craving. Traffic has been unuaually bad, due to the river being 5 metres higher than normal and the main bridge into the town where I work is operating a traffic light system, only allowing 1 direction of traffic across at any one time.

Got into the office and turned on the computer, to find that the internet at work is down. Coincidence? No - I'm supplied by a different ISP at work to at home, both of whom are experiencing problems. By lunch, when the connection was still down, I fled the office, to try and get access via home, which had come back (I told work I would print their emails, because mine was working)

The connection was finally restored at about 1530, meaning I've gone a whole 22.5 hours without a connection. It's worse than the redesign, because I couldn't use anything on the internet at all.

How the fuck did we cope without internets?

Well last night was the works Xmas party for the masses at Haywood Developments Ltd. We left our base in Worcestershire at about 1130am to make the trip down various motorways and Welsh country lanes.

With the New Developments manager acting as chauffer and myself as co-driver / DJ, we set off. The Admin assistant, Matt played his face about how long the journey was - about 4 hours by car wasn't that bad, so long as you could keep yourself occupied.

Anyway, we arrived at our destination and had a couple of hours to kill - over drinks number 1-3 of the evening, while getting ready. Aside from the drinking, getting ready consisted of applying a little gel and after shave. Job's a good un!

A minibus trip later, we arrived at a place called 'Tafern Beca', which would be my base for the next few hours at the very least. Cue the introductions to bussiness associates, who I haven't met in over 2 years with the company. The plesant conversation is mainly an aside, as we slowly become drunk.

The meal itself was the traditional Xmas 3-course spectacular - soup, turkey dinner, then a choice of dessert - I had a Mint Cheesecake, since I'll be eating all too much Xmas pudding and Mince pies over the next week :P This was washed down with another 4 Southern Comfort & Coke combos. Very tasty.

With all of the meal finished, we were herded into the bar, where a few more drinks were poured and I was overjoyed to see a pool table. Feeling a little of the effects of the alcohol, knowing that I'd passed my normal limit of about 6 drinks, I tried to take my mind off things with a few games. I proceeded to beat Kevin, the Regional Manager, followed by myself and Matt beating Sarah from Sales and Dylan the site forman in a doubles match.

Desperate for revenge, Kevin placed a drink on the table and 50p in the table. He was paired with Alan the Architect. I didn't have a partner at that point, but didn't care, as I broke and potted a red... follwed by 6 more and then the black. There was an almighty cheer, as I'd truly found my place within the company, by achieving my first 7-ball victory ever.

A few decent battles followed on the pool table and I moved onto a respectable 12th drink. I was losing control of my legs and speech and was getting pissed off about it. The crowd appeared to have lost interest in the Pool table as well, which was depressing. One of the guys who I had managed to beat off the pool table earlier said to me that the best thing for me to do was to be sick and give me some control back. A poor choice of words, as it made me feel sick, so off I went to the Gents.

I'm not pissed off about being sick, more by the fact that I couldn't test if I would suffer a hangover in the morning from the drink which I purged from my system. Whatever was left didn't affect me and I'm now free for Xmas, which is an amazing feeling. The drive back was fun and I'm not feeling any effects of the drink either. Time to go down the Gym!

Happy Xmas everyone, I'll see you in 2008!

So for the first time in about 12 years, I've been ice skating. The first of the list of bad ideas I had was to wear my Colorado Avalanche top, because that only made me look more of a prat when I inevitably fell flat on my arse during my first three laps.

Still, the number of falls was considerably less than I was predicting, with only a few bruises this morning causing minor niggles. By the end of the night, I was turning laps of about 45 seconds which, considering the number of times I've visited the ice rink (2), isn't bad at all.

Of course, my best mate had to show off by turning fast laps and making it look relatively easy. I was spending some time causing a nice pile up in turn one, as a guy and his girlfriend moved from the inside to the outside, just as I was trying to make the turn. I turned sharper and just about made the pass. Sadly, I didn't quite avoid blade-to blade contact, with the guy, so we both ended up on the ice, and his girlfriend fell on top of him. A shame, but I think he enjoyed it :P

To compound it all, when I took my right boot off, there was a massive blister on my biog toe, so I can't walk properly this morning. Oh deep joy.

Still, the Avs won last night, although it was only over the Oilers :P

Thanks to the Newgrounds Admins for finally sorting out the problems with the View Reviews buttons. The only problem is that it suddenly created a load of work for me :P

As you might have noticed, I've taken over the Top 50 Protectors List, which is now on Page 58. If you should be on the list, let me know and I'll add you to the list for the next update.

The Top 100 Responses List is in my capable hands and is due its first major update since the redesign (not before time either) Since I'm down in London this weekend, watching the Ice Hockey, I can't guarantee that it will be updated before I go, but I might be able to sneak some stuff online from the hotel, so who knows. The latest update is here and I am taking into account of seven new peoples who I'd not spotted before. If you feel that you're due on there, comments please and I'll check you're on the list for the update.

It's a shame it's not the Avs playing tomorrow in London, but I can bask in the glory of the Stanley Cup, which will apparently also be in attendance.

I'll try to get some stats pulled tonight, the update could surface at any time, I will advise people in here and of course on the list itself :)

Coop

Ok, so this is getting me more than slightly narked. I've been here for a while (almost 3.5 years now) and I used to be into Blamming so much, because a lot of stuff that came through the portal was garbage. I know that the system changed well before the site was updated, as my saves started to close in on, and eventually pass, my Blams total.

Now I wouldn't say that anything unusual was going on until we reached Clock Day. The day of mass protection. Now usually, this fad stops quite soon after and normal service is resumed, with Blam levels per day returning to normal. I've noticed that there is a trend of my Blams per day dropping down towards 5 per day (I know, I'm a stat-whore) when it used to hover somewhere around 10-12.

Upon checking the portal, I'd notice that there is just another bunch of shit on the portal, most of which got the obligatory 0 from me. I probably won't get any points for this, but I would propose 2 solutions to this:

1) All users who see crap like this on the portal respond to it, by issuing the 0 or 1 vote. Don't be afraid, Blam points are your friends - they are also beneficial to the size of your e-penis as well.

2) Tom, please raise the threshold for Flash to pass judgement. I know that if you looked at this case, it shows an alarming trend of mass voting, by certain groups who wish to get crap through the portal. Even if you raised it to 1.8, it would make such a big difference - Flash which score that low should be treated as "learning experiences" for the users who are submitting proper flash.

I'd love to hear what people think of it, because as one of the top 100 B/Pers (Probably the top 50 active B/Pers) I think that it's people like me who really can make a difference, if only other people felt the same way and acted on it!

So yesterday, I finally took delivery of my new Seat Ibiza. Man is it the bollocks!

I would have posted about this yesterday, but with me driving about the place and then my girlfriend's computer went on the blink, not allowing me to log in to NG >:(

Still, I've got to sell the old car now, so if anyone wants to buy it (Seat Ibiza, 1996, 1.4l Unleaded Petrol, 66,000 Miles, Stereo System, ideal first car £900 o.n.o.) then let me know

I've got to sort out the stereo system in my new car, because I can't drive around listening to my one and only cassette - I need to get my old minidisc player put back in or get a CD multi changer installed.

Time to see if I can learn how to drive this thing off the traffic lights efficiently :)

TFI Friday? Maybe.

I've been back at work for almost a week now and it's gone really quickly - I had a butt load of paperwork to plough through on Monday, which went over into Tuesday and gradually the whole week has left me feeling that it's only Thursday, which is nice, considering it is a bank holiday weekend and I've got 3 days off from 1700 tonight :) Only 3 1/2 hours to go :)

Aside from using the new workout techniques I've learned over the past week tonight, I'll be making a renewed assault on Supreme Commander. There's 101 of them and here's me ranked at 102 -.- If I can manage to get myself into a position to be promoted by a week on Saturday, I'll be happy.

Soon after that, the 10k posts party will kick off and I'll get completely fucked out of my mind. w00t!

I went bowling last night with my girlfriend, my best friend and his fiancee. That was a blast, we really need to do that more often. I finished second, first and second in the three games we played, but the best part of the night was when I cleaned up on the pool table (Although it cost £7 for one hour on the table.)

Well, here we are again. I'm so glad that I took the day off work - I'd get absolutely nothing done today!

I've been online for just over an hour now and I'm raking in the points - I think it's around 30 now, but they're constantly rolling in, which is great news. 29,000 B/P and 15,000 Saves are both calling me today if I'm lucky. (75 Saves isn't going to be a problem and judging by the pace so far, neither is 300 B/P)

I'll be back tomorrow with a small showcase of the best movies I spotted during my watch today.

Also, rest in peace Phil 'Scooter' Rizzutto. The former New York Yankees Shortstop passed away yesterday aged 89. If you've never heard his amazing commentary manner, listen to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", by Meat Loaf, he commentates on baseball / foreplay. Not bad for a guy who was in his 50s at the time.

Ok, so it's only Sunday morning, but already I've had a pretty good weekend of sport:

First off, my own sport, rather than stuff I've been watching. I played for my Saturday 2nd XI at cricket against Amblecote & Wolleston at a ground which was flooded some two weeks ago. We fielded first and restricted them to 154-8. Not too bad, considering that the pitch was small and they were attempting to use the home field to their advantage. Brian Davies owes us a jug, because he took five wickets. We went out to bat and knocked off the reqired 155 in about 35 overs. I'm now nursing a little sunburn and a smashed up left pinkie, after mis-fielding the ball yesterday. I've got another game today, that should be interesting, considering my bruised state.

Onto the stuff you people might have heard about. Alex Rodriguez hit his 500th Career Home Run yesterday. Did you see it? It wasn't the prettiest of his career, but it sure drew in the biggest cheer from the Yankees faithful (myself included, when I watched it about an hour later).

Lewis Hamilton claimed the Pole Position for today's Hungarian Grand Prix, after his teammate, Fernando Alonso was penalised 5 positions, due to his 'gamesmanship' of waiting for an extra 10 seconds, stopping Lewis from making his final flying lap, which possibly would have given him outright pole.

England thrashed Wales 62-5 today at Twickenham. That'll teach the Welsh for putting up a second string squad for the World Cup warm up match. I fully expect no responses from the Welsh Boys I work with :P

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Recorded the pole position time for the Pensylvania 500. Woot, I completely forgot there was a race this weekend.

Aston Villa won 3-0 against Inter Milan in a pre-season friendly. Neat, lets see the boys do that when it matters :P

Oh and something didn't go my way - my team, Lancashire Lightning lost in the Twenty20 cup semi final against Gloucester Gladiators. They even went on to lose the final as well -.-