Heh

The grace and dignity of the Pimpmobile II is somewhat ruined when the exhaust sounds like someone shaking coins in a tin can when you accelerate.

Got rid of lots of stuff and feel good about it, lots more to go yet though.

Cars and cats

So, the Pimpmobile's rattles and sounds were getting a bit much and I took it to a local garage to get it up on the ramp to see what was going on. I already knew the rear heat shield was loose and they said it wasn't needed and ripped it off. Then they gave the catalytic converters a thump and all became clear - they are ancient, and basically completely fubared. The internal components of the cats are loose and rattling, hence all the peculiar sounds and the loud clacking noise when accelerating hard. They quoted £135 for a new front pipe and cats which is actually pretty good. Going to get it done as it's really bloody annoying. Also some git has scraped the passenger side rear door and arch, which is annoying. Also got a rear light to replace the broken one.

Traingasm and stuff

Weekend was good. One of the now traditional Chinese/Wii night meetups with the people from the company I used to work for. The guy who normally hosts it has moved to Crewe so we ended up going there and staying the night. Their house is in the middle of a load of identical terraces but it's really nice inside, with nice high ceilings and big windows making the rooms feel airy.

It was a good day on Saturday, we got there early enough to go over to the Crewe Heritage Centre with lots of old trains. It was really good, and it was great to see the APT prototype, looking much better with a nice fresh coat of paint. There were lots of old trains and in a surprising move in this day and age, no signs saying keep off so we quite happily examined old steam and diesel engines. We also found a set of points that we tried out, unfortunately after setting them to the other direction, the lever suddenly stopped working and flopped pointlessly back and forth, so we beat a hasty retreat from there. Don't think they used them much though.

The evening was spent in the usual way, plenty of food, Wii action and general nonsense. The next morning everyone awoke in various states of tiredness but were soon brought awake by copious amounts of bacon, sausage, egg and crumpets.

Work wasn't good today, one of those days where everything I touched seem to turn to disaster. I had to move some data and phone points and all was going fine when until I suddenly realised I had six phone cables hanging out disconnected and had no idea which went where. Embarassing as I had to then call someone from each line so I could find out what number it was. Fortunately I hadn't unplugged anything crucial so it wasn't too bad.

Ever since Denbigh badminton started, my shoulder has been giving me pain and it's proving very irritating. I can feel the muscle in my shoulder that is the problem and if I lift my arm in a certain way it's really painful.

Got a cheapo GPS and did my first geocache on Friday. It was good fun and took me down a road not far from my house that I've very rarely been down, and it turned out there was a lot of interesting and lovely scenery, a friendly horse and some very nice views down the Vale of Clwyd.

Still loving the 6 string bass. I don't know why but it really feels easy and natural to play, something about the shape of the neck just feels right. It's wide but I can reach all the strings no problem. I have noticed that I don't use the highest string much, if at all, but it still feels more natural to play than the 5 string I had a couple of years ago.

Sold a lot of stuff. The white Flying V bass has gone, two Nokia tablets, the Precision workstation and the DSi. Only now do I look back at the last decade or so and realise how pointlessly materialistic my outlook on life was. Problem is I'm not sure how to move on, change things, before it's too late.

Poo.

This is probably my most listened track at the moment: Alkohol by Eisbrecher. They're sort of like Rammstein but with electronic stuff mixed in. One nice thing is they put translations of the lyrics on the website. I think I actually prefer Eisbrecher over Rammstein but the stuff I've heard from the forthcoming Rammstein album sounds pretty good.

Walkies

Last week was almost entirely not memorable. The weekend was good, Saturday was spent out with some work colleagues doing some geocaching which they are really into. It was a great walk, looping around the Dyserth/Meliden/Prestatyn area. We saw loads of things I had never realised were there and found loads of caches. It was really interesting.

The evening was spent watching Iron Man round at Will's with copious amounts of pizza and snacks, which was good. I really like Iron Man. I'm not familiar with the original comic but it's one of the better superhero movies out there.

Sunday was spent doing the beat the bounds in St Asaph which was OK other than the route taking in a large number of decidedly dog-unfriendly stiles so we had to lift and manhandle the poor dog over them. Fortunately he's a patient creature and simply looked resigned to his fate as he was hoisted over.

Silence

I swapped out the PSU in the Atom for an older one that draws air out of the case and out of the back and has a control to set the fan speed. As the Atom runs so cool it doesn't need any other fans and it's possible to set the speed of the PSU fans to the lowest setting. It now runs in almost blissful silence, which is nice. The chipset heatsink has a little fan attached which whines a bit but I'm not sure if disconnecting that would be a good idea. Anyway it's still better than the previous PSU, a cheapo one that was annoyingly loud.

The trailer is out for the next GTA IV pack, and if it lives up to the trailer at all, this is what I wanted GTA IV to be like in the first place.