Nearly 3 months later!

I finally get around to making another post!

Things have been somewhat busy shall we say. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Since last time, I've been hard at work trying to get Vagusnet.com back up to scratch. Having lost a lot of visitors since the turn of 2006 it's been somewhat of an uphill struggle; one which at the moment looks like it may be coming to an end. As of the 26th July (this Wednesday as I type) VN is due to be closing it's doors. I do know that discussions are being held to keep the site open, in what capacity I am unsure, but I personally will no longer be part of the contributing team due to reasons I'll explain in a moment. What I do know is that the past couple of weeks has seen some very tough decisions being made, none more so than for Vagus himself who started the place off some two and a half years ago. If any of you reading this are regular visitors of VN I would suggest you keep your browsers pointing to it as the future is not set in stone yet.

I would also like to take this chance to publicly thank all of you who have left messages of support on the VN boards since the above was announced. It has been very heart-warming to see that the site has some strong support, and we couldn't have done anything without that over the past two years.

One question I have been asked quite a bit is will there be anything after VN, new projects for example. Whilst I don't want to preempt anything that may not happen, I am currently involved in some very exciting discussions about possibilities to do something that myself and a couple of colleagues really enjoyed. Sorry to dangle the proverbial carrot, but this may never take off and I don't fancy ending up with egg on my face. Again :p

As I said, there are various reasons for me leaving VN at this time. The main one however is that a month or so ago I signed up for a new home-study course to try and change out of the shit job I'm in right now and change career totally. Well, that should be 'get' a career, as I wouldn't say I have one right now, just a job I fell into for lack of anything better to go for. It's just taken me ages to get my finger out my ass and do something about making my working life better. Sometimes I think procrastination should be my middle name!

As it's a home study course, naturally that means my spare time is cut down quite a bit (by choice) so being able to keep a site like VN up to date and complete this course isn't going to be possible. So one had to give, and seeing as the course is costing me around the £2500 mark, you get why I had to drop from VN. It's just sad that recent events coincided with this decision. (Gaz, thanks for the understanding matey!)

Outside of work and websites, the past two weekends have probably been the most stressed out for a while. Last weekend, one of our cats decided to go missing on the Saturday morning and wasn't found (in a neighbours garage) until the Monday morning. The only reason he was found was due to my wife taking one last look around the neighbourhood just in case. Next thing she knows, she hears Spike's very familiar call, and trust me when I say you couldn't mistake it! Despite the worry, he turned out ok, just hungry and thirsty thankfully, but he would pick two of the hottest days of the year round here to get stuck in a hot garage! Then to top it off, Suki, our other cat disappeared on Friday night.

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if there is somebody somewhere trying to make us suffer for past indignations!

This time however, she hadn't been stuck anywhere, or caught, not even lost looking at how she made her grand entrance into our living room almost exactly 24 hours after she first disappeared. I have a feeling she's a bit of an adventure cat so will do this again, but at least we'll know to expect it. Suppose we asked for it really, taking on a previously feral cat. Ah well, live and learn!

What else?

Oh yeah, some of you chaps may want to check out a new blog site from a good friend of mine. I'll let you lot take a look and decide for yourself, but just remember this place has only very recently begun so give him time to get more content, but he's not afraid of his opinions so I'd recommend you check it out! (Invoice for the plug is in the post ;) )

Right, I'm off to enjoy my Sunday! I'll catch you all soon!