End of the year

Well, this is it for 2011. It's been an eventful year, that's for sure.

Personally it's been fairly quiet really due to the pressure in work, not much time for holidays. Of course the big event was Steve coming back. The circumstances were sad but it's been great to have him here. I missed visiting Berlin again after April due to putting money into sorting out finances, but there have been other trips that made up for it, especially the one to Kent the other weekend.

Entering 2012 with some optimism though - by March I should be well on the way to being debt-free, so I can start some serious saving and getting things sorted out. I'm 34 in May, which makes me feel old, but at the same time, not that old. Strange feeling really.

Today has been lazy but have made some currywurst sauce for the bash at Rob and Em's tonight, which should be OK. I don't think it's come out as well as the last time I made it but I'm sure it'll be OK once dumped on good hearty German sausage.

Ever since seeing the film Hackers many years ago in college, I've wanted a camo laptop. It's not that it was a good film, but it had a certain style to it which was appealing at the time and now still is, looking back with nostalgia.

So this was the inspiration for repainting the Precision M90 I've been working on. It was working but was very battered and scratched. I had some red and blue spray paint left over from years back which still worked, so I pulled it apart and gave it a new paint job. It's not really camo since I didn't use anything to block the paint so it's more blended but it looks OK, a lot better than it did before. Once the paint was dry, I put it back together today.

It still works although I'm missing one screw for the display bezel and have one long one left over, probably mixed up somewhere. And I lost the rubber bumpers that go around the screen and hide the screws. It's only got 1gb RAM and a 60gb hard drive, those being the spare parts I had lying around but it's enough to get it going. With a 512mb Quadro graphics card and a 1920x1200 screen, it could be a pretty killer machine with some upgrades, but since I don't have the funds to spare at the moment, it'll have to wait. Also it still needs a PSU and a battery. After I got it running I was going to sell it but I guess now it's got the paint job it's probably not all that saleable any more. Oh well.

Going to eat pizza in a minute and then it'll be time to head off to Denbigh for the festivities, can't wait.

Flimps

Today was slightly more eventful than yesterday since a system went down in the morning so we had quite a few calls about it, but it was still deathly quiet. Nobody was in the office.

I got the car fixed - fortunately there was a garage open and the guy there was able to weld up the exhaust. Apparently he says it's not been blowing since I had it - the back box is shot so it is noisier than it should be. The exhaust as a whole is 'not pretty' but doesn't actually have any leaks. Yet. So that was good news and cheaper than I feared it would be. Not pretty but functional is a good description of the car as a whole really.

Once at home I started watching the second season of The Office after watching the first season a while back and enjoying it. Not sure about the second season yet, there's something not right about it but I can't figure out what. It's missing something of the first season, that's for sure. Played a bit more of 3D Mario. Really good game. Also tried an original DS game in the 3DS...lesss impressive. It scales the graphics up because of the higher resolution screens, and it looks rather fuzzy. You can make it run in 1:1 pixel mode but then the screens are tiny. Still, I can always fall back on the DS Lite from the 2009 USA trip for original DS games.

The next dimension...?

Today was the slowest, dullest day in work ever. Barely any calls came in to the helpdesk, the calls that were outstanding couldn't be done because nobody was in and the new wake-on-LAN system that's supposed to let us boot up PCs remotely doesn't work, and it was really quite tedious. The backup system had a few wobbles but they were largely due to external support trying to fix things. We did have a bacon butty in the morning. I think I've actually managed to make myself sick of crappy food and drink in the last few weeks, which is quite an achievement.

The car is making a lot of noise from the exhaust and it's clunking under accleration, like the exhaust is now loose. From what I can see it's got a split by the middle silencer. I'll have to get it looked at tomorrow since it looks like it might be actually hanging down. Shame it didn't make it to next payday but I can't begrudge the car anything, after six months of being hammered up and down the track, I can't complain that it hasn't required anything but diesel and tax.

In a move that many might regard as totally insane I've traded up from my DSi XL to the 3DS. I've not really been keen on the 3DS before but now it's picking up some momentum after the price drop and some decent games are coming out - namely Super Mario 3D Land. It's like a weird mixture of New Super Mario Bros and Mario 64, and playing it with the circle pad on the 3DS is absolutely brilliant. The DSi XL is good but I found the massive pixels really irritating.

As to the 3D, my prior experiences with it earlier this year in Berlin shops weren't great and in theory I shouldn't see the 3D at all due to my problems with binocular vision. But when the device isn't strapped to a display cabinet and you can hold it in the right place and calibrate it, it's actually fine. If it does become a bit much, the 3D can be switched off and the game looks pretty much just as good.

Epic update

Well, it's been a good few days.

Christmas Eve at Andy and Maz's was absolutely awesome, really really good fun. It was great to just hang out with everyone and chat and play party games. Also the food, exceptional, mention must be made of the exceptional small quiches and the ice cream / swiss roll hybrid cake.

Christmas day was spent as usual - Christmas lunch and hanging out with my Dad and then back home in the evening to eat my home made lasagna, which was really really tasty.

Boxing day was spent not really doing very much and I actually spent much of the day playing through Portal 2 again which is such a perfect experience it's great every time. Yesterday I finished it off and then had a bonfire and spent quite some time digging out a stream that's been clogged for ages now. Not so difficult really but I had to hack down two trees to get at it. Then it was off to St Asaph with everyone to meet up with Craig who we haven't seen for a while.

Today was very quiet in work, although the backup system didn't appreciate being left to it's own devices and had many problems, requiring two restarts. Andy, Maz and Rob joined Em and I for lunch as we had arranged and I had made chilli so we could have it with some chips from the chippy. This was a great success.

I'm hoping like anything the car can hold out until next payday, but the exhaust is really starting to get loud, argh. Also need to start listing stuff on Ebay again now that Christmas is over and done with for another year. But the list of stuff it needs is growing...not sure if it's viable to get all the work done. As well as the exhaust I'm sure the suspension needs attention, and that's before all the electrical issues. It comes down to either spending some cash on it or get another £500 banger that could well have a whole new set of problems. Since the 306 is comfortable and pretty economical, I'm inclined to keep it. Not sure yet, will see what the situation is come payday, assuming it survives that long.

Chrismas, woo.

It's been a fairly OK week with work gradually winding down and the offices becoming more empty as the week progressed.

As predicted, I found it somewhat hard to adjust not having SR3 and DS9 to keep me occupied. I would probably have kept playing SR3 but I lent it to Rob to prevent that happening. Not much else to say about it, except thinking back, it has a moment where a song plays during a mission and it's likely to be the best musical choice in any video game ever.

It was badminton on Thursday which was as much fun as usual, enhanced by home made mince pies from someone and some rather delicious Belgian chocolatey things from Steve.

Yesterday was the worst day I've had in a while, everything I did seemed to cause disaster, and I got more and more tense until I got home. The climactic event was standing in a giant shit that the idiot hound had thoughtfully left by where I'd parked my car. This provoked a tantrum where I screamed wildly and jumped up and down in a deep muddy puddle. This left me completely drenched, covered in mud and has probably ruined my work shoes, but after I'd had a shower and changed, I felt more relaxed than I had all week. Things that had led to this rage were:

1) The backlight for the odometer failing in the car, meaning it can only be seen with a torch pointed directly at it. Not a huge problem though.
2) Dropping a touch screen I was supposed to be taking to another site for testing in the car park and watching it crash to the ground, bounce three times and end up in a deep puddle.
3) Being harrassed by some stupid cow in a new BMW 4x4 who didn't seem to understand that an elderly 306 might not be able to cope with a wet road as well as her vehicle.
4) The backup system having a wobbly just as I was about to leave work, and then failing to come back up after I tried to restart it, necessitating a reboot of the server that takes ages as it has to find and reconnect all the storage.
5) The aforementioned dog shit.

Spent the afternoon today lazing about and making lasagna for tomorrow. The traditional Chrismas fare leaves me cold so I much prefer a home made lasagna.

Off to Andy and Maz's in a bit for the now traditional Christmas Eve bash, can't wait.

Suddenly...nothing

This evening I completed Saints Row 3. So the two things that have kept me occupied for quite some time now have both finished, that and DS9. Not sure what I'm going to do with myself now, hah.

The correct answer is to sort out a sensible diet, sell some shit on Ebay and exercise. We'll see.

I have to admit that for a while I wasn't quite convinced about SR3 but once it got going I ended up really enjoying it, especially some of the more random stuff you wouldn't expect in a 'gangsta' game. Partly I think it was having to adjust to the new city too. But it continues in the totally ridiculous and over the top way of the old games, and if it actually tried to take itself seriously then it would be embarrassing. Happily though, this doesn't happen and it ends up just being stupid juvenile fun.

One thing that I really miss though is the ability to back and and replay any mission or cutscene in the game - that was one thing that was great in SR2, especially if you put your character into a ridiculous outfit. They have actually said why this wasn't included, it's due to the new engine and various issues with the missions but it does seem a shame.

Feel much better today but had to leave work a bit early due to feeling pretty rough by the end of the day, hopefully back to full strength tomorrow.

A rough few days

Not been well the last few days. Really didn't feel well on Thursday but went into work anyway. The morning was spent doing some stuff with the backup system and then seeing the Unix guy who is still off sick in the afternoon. Still not sure when he's coming back. Also got my honorarium backpay in my last paycheck, which will be a big help to sorting out my finances.

Thursday night was the work Christmas do. I really shouldn't have gone as I felt quite ill but I missed it last year because of the snow and I wasn't going to chuck another bunch of cash away by not going. I didn't stay past the meal really but the food was excellent, so that was good.

On Friday I didn't go into work, and that day and yesterday and today have basically been laying around not doing much really and looking at the snow and hail we've had. Yesterday I did go out to get some bits for Christmas as I felt OK but I quickly realised it was a bad mistake and came home again. It's very unpleasant out there at the moment. I kept myself snug and warm and occupied with the Xbox and the DS.

There was a brief power cut last night but I think there was a surge when it came back on and it's killed the 8-port gigabit switch that links the Alienware machines and the Xbox to the router downstairs and to the Atom VMware server. Given that everything was up and running and I was on the Xbox at the time, it could have been worse. I was playing Saints Row 3 and had literally saved the game only 30 seconds before the power cut - if the save had been corrupted I'd have probably cried. Well, more likely I'd have sworn a lot.

Today marked the end of DS9, which I've been watching continually since August. It came as somewhat of a shock that I had just one disk left with the final two-parter episode, which played through as one long one. TNG is of course a classic, but I think overall DS9 is better with the long reached story arcs and the Dominion war and less of a reliance on the reset button between episodes.

The DS9 finale was pretty good but not quite as good as the end of TNG I think. It was certainly a lot darker though, much like the last few seasons of DS9. I don't really think much of Voyager, it was far too twee and soap opera like most of the time, and I never saw Enterprise beyond the first or second seasons.

I think I've reached the coughy stage of my cold now and it's making my throat hurt. Probably OK for work tomorrow.

Interesting demonstation of how much processor technology has advanced. I've got two machines which have Celerons at pretty much the same clock speed, 1.6ghz. One is an old P4 based one from probably 2003 or so, the other is a much more recent Core based one. The old one takes 15 hours to process a Seti@home work unit, while the newer one does it in 2.5 hours, even though it actually has less RAM than the older machine. Both are running Ubuntu and will probably end up on Ebay before too long.

The broadband is playing silly buggers at the moment. It's really annoying.

Flimbles

Not much to report over the last couple of days. Randomly we have ponies, a nearby farmer needed somewhere to put his ponies so they're on our land at the moment. They're big shaggy things, not really domesticated. They took an interest in my car last night for some reason so it was covered with nose prints this morning.

Last night I went round in Saints Row 3 finding all the collectibles which was entertaining due to the vehicle I was using. Up to 84% complete now. The 360 has had the new dashboard from Microsoft. I don't like it as it moves all the important options to the sides and adverts are present. I think if you're paying for Gold you shouldn't see any adverts. Otherwise the interface looks like Windows 8 and the phone interface. Oh well, we'll see. The apps could useful though, like the YouTube one.

Took Steve to pick up his new car this evening, a very tidy looking Citroen C3 in that pale blue that they all seem to be. It's a nice looking car, but always reminds me of an armadillo for some reason.

Think I've got a cold coming on, don't feel right and nose is all drippy. Bah. I knew something was up at lunchtime because I wanted nothing more than a Pot Noodle. The work bash is tomorrow evening, typical.

Sat here watching the work backup system doing its thing, partly to make sure my remote access is working OK and partly because I was bored and couldn't think of anything better to do. Is that sad?

I don't know any more.

Taco Bell

The trip back from Kent was OK, and we took a slight detour to the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex which is one of only two places in the UK to have a Taco Bell, the other being a military base. We all pigged out on replica Mexican food although it was decent enough. The best thing was the churros, which was very good, I have to say. After that it was back in the car and back to the harsh reality of Wales, which welcomed us with dismal clouds, gust of winds and horizonal rain.

Not much else to report really. Quiet evening not doing much really. Unpacked and watched a DS9 episode, had a much needed shave and contemplated how different it is up here from London. I always enjoy visiting London but I'm sure I couldn't cope with living there. Still, bit of an insight into how different life can be and once again left me wondering what the fuck happened and why I ended up how I am now. Oh well.

Work tomorrow. Not on the phones this week and my week has been planned out already by my supervisors, almost to the minute. God knows how that'll work out, but we'll see.

BELGO CENTRAAL

The rest of the week carried on uneventfully. The new helpdesk system worked out OK and was actually quite enjoyable. It was interesting being on the front lines and the backup system behaved itself for once.

Thursday was the badminton meal after work, which was pretty good. It was in the Boderw which has supposedly been closing for the last few years but this year the food was even better.
Friday was work as usual and then Em and I piled into my car with Vicky to head down to Kent to stay with Jane and Wes for the Belgo meal on Saturday. Rob couldn't get the day off so we had to leave in the evening. We set off at about 5pm from Wrexham and got to Kent for not long after 10pm. The journey wasn't too bad, only delayed briefly on the A5 where there appeared to be a many car pile being cleared up and some roadworks on the M1. We were kept entertained by discussions of Jelly Baby ethicity, two gay Ford Transits that were chasing each other down the M1 and Vicky's disastorous raspberry Ribena which was disgusting and was quickly dubbed arseberry.

Saturday was spent chilling out and resting. We tried to watch a film called The Dilemma which was horrifically bad. We managed about 30 minutes of before giving up and putting it onto fast forward which was much more entertaining as we provided our own commentary. After that it was time to get dressed up and get the astonishing 140mph train into St Pancras.

Belgos was awesome as always but it was very busy and noisy. It's fascinating watching the waiters and staff hurtling around managing it all as it's complete bedlam most of the time. The food was amazing as always and the beer drinkers of the party partook of the amazing beer. I did try a couple of them and a cherry one which was initially nice but became too beer like for my taste. Teh first course I had was the assorted meat platter which was beautiful. The main course was steak and lobster which I agonised about for a while but since I had never had lobster before, my reasoning was that if I was going to try it then I should try it where it would be good. The steak was awesome and the lobster was...interesting. Bits of it were really nice and some bits tasted like the sea. Also being confronted with a whole half lobster was a bit of a culture shock. But I'm glad I tried it. Pudding was the mandatory waffle, which was ace.

After that we made it back to the last high speed train and got back without any issues.
Today everyone got up with very little problems and we went out and got KFC for lunch which hit the spot perfectly and got everyone settled. The rest of the day is going to consist of chilling, DVDs and hopefully a Chinese in the evening. Superb.

Flatulence

Yesterday and today have been fairly average. After work yesterday was more inevitable SR3 and DS9, although I did drag out the bass for a bit and tried to juggle again. Still can't quite get there but progressing each time I try which isn't very often really.

Today was OK in work, the last day of freedom before the new helpdesk approach is started. Means I'll be on first line support for the first time in ages. Should be interesting. After work today headed over to Andy and Maz's where we prepared and consumed gorgeous Mexican food, and then took a look at my finances since at last I've pulled my head out of the sand and have finally decided to try and sort it out once and for all. Andy very kindly offered some advice and we've put the first steps in motion. Feeling quite optimistic now, before I couldn't even think about it without getting all scared and going away to do something else.

The car has an issue - the windscreen washer pump appears to have failed, which is a real pain with so much salt on the roads. Need to get it sorted ASAP.

Weekend of fun

Yesterday was a great day. Went out to watch the rugby with the gang in Denbigh, which was quite interesting since it was Shane Williams's last match. It was a good game, Wales lost, but it ended with a spectacular try by Shane in the 81st minute, which was bonkersly good. Andy and Maz made Shane masks for everyone which provided much entertainment. After that we all piled into my car and headed (slowly) up to the top of town to chill in the pub before the Denbigh Badminton Club meal which we all went to in the Asia restaurant. It was rather quiet for a Saturday night, but the food was decent.

Today consisted of making soup for the upcoming week in work and not really doing much else except inevitably DS9 and SR3. I'm a few episodes into the last season of DS9 and SR3 is at about 76% completion, so goodness knows what I'm going to do with myself once I finish them. I'm definitely enjoying SR3 but I think I would have to say 2 is the better game, although I'm not quite sure why.

Random

Not much going on today and yesterday although putting up decorations in an office is logistically more challenging than I thought. Not that I got involved other than grumbling bitterly about people climbing around me and nearly having a stilleto heel through my docked laptop.

I randomly found the video for the Steps cover of Tragedy by the Bee Gees. What an abomination. Oddly I had no idea it was a cover until today, but it's an atrocity and the video is disturbing. The way they sing is ghastly, all huge mouths gaping wide with puffed up lips and frightening teeth as they over enunciate wildly. It's like they're in the uncanny valley...but they're real. The original Bee Gees song is actually quite tolerable although that falsetto is something else, and the lyrics are dark for such a poppy song. This cover is probably even more of a travesty than the Steps one but it suits my musical taste so I quite like it: Celldweller.

Glad it's the weekend. Work has been OK, the backup system has been manageable. Rugby and food tomorrow, then a relaxing Sunday I hope. Need to get going on Saints Row 3 again, haven't touched it since Sunday or so.

Strike? Really?

I went into work, and expected it to be quiet and empty. Not a bit of it. The building was packed, it was just like a normal working day. There were five people picketing at the entrance to the car park who were largely ignored and they seemed to get bored and go away before lunchtime. Mind you I don't know what it was like in the other council buildings. It seemed rather strange after seeing all the stuff going on in the news.

Didn't sleep well last night, woke up at 3am and didn't get back to sleep so I left work a bit early and came home and had a nap, something I very rarely do.

Had a retro computer chat with a guy in work, reminiscing of the old PC days and the old Acorn machines. Inspired me to fire up the emulator I've got of my old Archimedes. I'm always amazed at the letters I wrote to my brother in the mid 90's, great long things with rambling details of whatever computers or basses were interesting me at the time, almost autistic in nature. Very weird to look back at them.

Also found my attempts at making raytraced drawings using the Acorn port of POVRay. It was so frustrating as rendering even tiny images was horrendously slow and waiting an hour for an image the size of a playing card to render and then find there was something wrong with it was so annoying. I had some prerendered images and there was one of a geodesic dome which I was always amazed by. I just googled it and found the original creator and an ultra high resolution version of it. It's weird how now I've got machines lying around as scrap that have more computing power that I could even dream of back then, but today somehow I lack the drive to try things out that I had back then. Hmm, that's given me something to think about actually.

Defeat the bitch-queen from hell

After a week off I was worried about work. I went in, opened a login prompt to the backup system and logged in. Surprisingly it responded, and it turned out to have behaved tolerably well while I was away.

D&D was fun this evening, the final battle of this campaign, marking the end of James's tenure as DM for the time being. I went on a diplomatic rampage to avoid having to fight the castle guards. Having earned 600,000 gold pieces all of a sudden, I bought them out by waving their leader's decapitated head at them and paying them what they were owed. I then took advantage of our new mini army and asked them to help us defeat the evil priest who had occupied the chapel. They agreed to do it, for a price. But they all died so when we took over and killed the evil priest, I was able to loot their dead bodies and get all the money back. Success!

It was a dark rainy drive home and two miles from home the wipers on the 306 failed. Both front and rear and the washers stopped working so I think it's a fuse. Fortunately I was on a deserted single track road at that point so I was able to get home OK by peering through the water on the windscreen and taking it slowly. Still, I've had the car for five months and that's the first thing to break on it and that's got to be a record for me!

Holiday fail or win, depends

My week off consisted of doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever. The days have been filled with little more than Saints Row 3 and Deep Space 9 in varying quantities. I failed dismally in my promise to myself that if I was going to spent the days in front of the Xbox then exercise would be a requirement. Today marks the end of DS9 season 6, which has been fairly decent but unfortunately contains the worst episode so far in my opinion - the one where Quark has a sex change. Absolute cabbage.

Saints Row 3 has been fun. Despite reports of it being really buggy, it's behaved fine for me. It is structured quite differently from 2 so that took some getting used to, but it's good fun and is even more OTT. The plot is as silly as before but it does have some really funny moments although some of the 'novelty' missions were a bit annoying. Still not sure why I like Saints Row though.

Last night came down with a sore throat which meant I didn't sleep very well and so feel tired and rough today. Throat isn't too bad though.

Work tomorrow. Oh well.

Yesterday my Dad and I finished putting the flip paint bike back together. The plan to use a mountain bike rear wheel the wrong way round with a cog attached to the disk mount works fine. The only spare front wheel that would fit was the original 27" wheel from the Puch, which worked but made it look quite ridiculous. Unfortunately the headset bearings are completely shot so that will need to be sorted before it's properly rideable.

Fired up the rebuilt M9o to see if it still works, and it does although the spare hard drive I put in it appears to have bad sectors, annoyingly. Since I don't really need it, I'll probably end up chucking it back on Ebay as a power supply and battery would be quite pricy to source.

Achievement Unlocked: Lazy Day

Went to town to pick up some more hardcore stuff for the track from Rob and Em and did a bit at the gym before coming home. I settled down in front of the Xbox and mingled DS9 season 6 and Saints Row 3 with pleasing results.

Saints Row 3 is a litle weird but I think that's just because I'm so used to 2. I think I confused it because I went around buying properties and making money before the actual tutorial missions that tell you how to do it. I've barely touched the missions really, just building up the cash and levelling up the character which is now a bit RPG like. And there's still a cockney voice option, although with a different voice actor that sounds really familiar.

Trying to print out the postage label for the bass body I sold on Ebay but Paypal appears to be broken, bah.

HOLIDAY

The rest of the week was unremarkable. No badminton on Thursday due to people not feeling well. Then on Friday I was on leave for the first time in months. Fantastic. Except the backup system crashed hard literally as I was about to take an early finish on Thursday night.

Yesterday and today have been spent chilling with my cousin who was down from Preston way. We didn't do much yesterday but went out for a Chinese in the evening which was fantastic. Today we hung out and my Dad and I put some bits back on the flip paint bike. The bottom bracket was an absolute sod to do though. We've also got a solution for the rear wheel. It's going to have a mountain bike wheel, mounted the wrong way round with a cog where the disk brake would go. Otherwise it's going to be a pain getting a 135mm 700c wheel with a fixed gear. This means no brake on the bike but that's OK.

Not much else to report. Saints Row 3 turned up on Thursday night. I haven't done much in it yet except charge around trying to build up respect and cash, but it looks good so far. And they kept the cockney bastard voice, although it's a different voice actor. Saints Row is worthless without cockney. It's even more ridiculous than before to be honest, so we'll see.

Lost cause?

Work was OK today. The backup system was still shit but behaved itself more than it has done. Had training for the shift around we're having so I can handle being on the front line of the helpdesk. Should be interesting, not been in that role since my last job that I got made redundant from almost exactly seven years ago.

Went to the gym after work. Had a really good session. Got really into it and threw myself into all the exercises so I felt great afterwards.

I sourced a working motherboard for the project Precision M90. Given that the motherboard was utterly destroyed with actual burn marks where it had shorted out from liquid, I was sceptical that the CPU and graphics card would have survived. But much to my astonishment, once it was rebuilt with the new board, it fired up fine. It complained about the power supply since it needs a 130w one but after I hooked up the 240w PSU from the M17x it was happy. It booted up from a Linux live CD perfectly. So now it just needs a hard drive caddy, battery and power supply and it's good to go. The graphics card is a 512mb Quadro 2500M that costs about £150-200 to buy used so it's great that it works.

Meh

Last week didn't really get any better. Badminton on Thursday was OK.

Saturday was a Wii night with the old work gang, which was fun as always. We didn't actually play any video games, instead we chatted and caught up with Simon who is back from Gibraltar.

Sunday was lazy and I started the sixth season of DS9, which I barely remember, so that's good. It's entertaining.

Today has been work and D&D. D&D was interesting as it one of the ones without a board and instead it was a skill test and then some stealthy stealthy. We failed the skill test almost instantly which was my fault since it depended on me being diplomatic - it didn't work. So then we had to fight our way out of a cell. It was fun and James had made the most delicious curry ever.

The weekend was also the War of Mice. I hate killing them but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that humane traps suck balls and when you release them into the wild they die anyway. So I got some traps. I've already caught four in my room alone and one downstairs, but I know there is more. Need more traps.

In a fit of madness picked up a project laptop. A Dell Precision M90 which is largely in good shape but needs a motherboard and possibly other parts. Need to strip it down and evaluate it. It has the same chassis as the old Inspiron 9400 that I was so fond of but with a more professional colour scheme.

Not much else to report.

Not a good day

Too traumatised to write more. Nothing serious, just work.

Fat. No gym. Fail.

Tired.

I hate mice.

Took out rage from today by playing Iron Maiden on the 6-string bass. Hard but fun.

Not looking forward to tomorrow.

I like fish, under certain conditions

I went in today to find the backup system in a complete shambles, having broken in an entirely new and unexpected way. Also the office was bloody freezing so everyone was sat around in hats and coats. The computer room was actually warmer, and I spent a couple of minutes warming myself from the output vents of an IBM BladeCenter.

This evening it was down to the Plough in St Asaph to have a meal with Steve's friend Jeremy from the US. It was really good, and nice to be back in the Plough when it's not full of prats. It's a really nice place when it's quiet. The food was absolutely amazing and I took a risk and had fish & chips, but it was really good. I've decided I like fish if it's not strongly flavoured, which this wasn't and the batter was really nicely done. We had a good evening chatting about stuff and it was great to meet Jeremy who was coping well despite not having slept in over a day or so.

Noticed how much better my face is these days. Not drinking Coke except for the occasional treat has really made a difference, and also using the old style double edged razor seems to be helping, now that I've got used to it. It wasn't that I'd cut myself, more that I'd put too much pressure and cause razor burn. I still use the Fusion for the tricky bits and my head when I do that though.

But...it's purple.

Yesterday went to my Dad's. I took the painted bike frame over now that it has had a chance to dry and we had a look at putting it back together. We got a couple of bits for it but it needs a pair of wheels and a crank and a chain. But it can wait. It does look OK although I think the colour coat is a little bit patchy. Didn't do any fireworks, was too chilled at my Dad's.

Today made some vegatable soup for work after I realised how easy it was. The first batch had a load of things in it and turned out really nice, but the second batch is a bit weird because I thought it would be interesting to put beetroot in it and as a result it turned out purple. It was all good however.

Lazy days

Thursday and Friday were unmemorable. The backup system in work frustrated me because I had been asked to get a low level trace file to see exactly why one of the processes was failing. But did it fail on either Thursday or Friday? No. Bah.

Spent today at my Dad's. We got some bits for the flip paint bike so it can start being put back together. West End Cycles in Colwyn Bay has a big new showroom in Llandudno Junction that used to be the Mercedes dealer. Some seriously tasty bikes in there including several Specialized cyclocross bikes that were exactly what I'd like. Shame they're £750 upwards.

Soup

Work was frustrating but got most of the issues sorted by the end of the day.

I had the desire to make soup so I got stuff to make the stilton and broccoli soup after the gym. They didn't have stilton so I got some Italian blue cheese instead, which was actually nicer I think, and it came out very well. Nice. There was some left over which I'll take into work tomorrow and get some bread or something to eat with it.

I had a dodgy chair in work that kept gradually sinking to the lowest level, but so subtly that I didn't realise it was doing it until I couldn't reach my laptop. So I changed it. One of my colleagues asked me why I'd changed chairs, and I replied 'because it kept going down on me'. We looked at each other for a moment and then had hysterics for a good ten minutes.

Forgot about my stalling incident the other week. I'd had to park my 306 on the street and wanted to move into the spare car park behind the town hall. I'd just reversed it about 3o metres up the road then went to drive into the car park. Except the engine was cold and I stalled it. But what an epic stall, the car lurched wildly and because I was totally unprepared for it, I was thrown violently forward and up and smacked my head on the sun visor. It was hideously embarrassing because this was right in front of a packed bus stop and they'd all watched me reversing up the street.

A great weekend

Saturday was a quiet day until the evening when I headed down to Andy and Maz's to indulge in a Chinese. Steve was there too, so we had a nice evening of food and chat. It rained like anything when Andy and I went to get the Chinese though, and we got pretty wet. Also I accidentally drenched someone when I didn't realise where the water was on the road, oops.

Sunday was the D&D marathon, which was really good fun. We had a skill test to start with and then three encounters. The first one went really well, the second one...not so much. We all suffered severe damage and I spent several rounds dying in a field. Rob made epic 3-cheese lasagna and it was a fantastic day all round. Also my attempt at making a time-lapse movie of the day turned out really well, although a bit small and blurry due to the webcam.

Yesterday and today have been OK. Went to the gym after work with Andy and Rob, but it was heaving from people presumably avoiding the gangs of trick or treaters. But it was good to go.

The trailer for GTA V is out. It looks like a return to San Andreas, which would be good if they do it right. Back to the proper GTA formula with fun and colourful graphics, not the dismal brown fest that was GTA IV.

Mr Blobby

Well, this week has been catastrophic, return of shit food, Coke, and no exercise. Not good.

I didn't go to badminton last night as I took my Mum to see Reginald D Hunter in Venue Cymru. I'd never heard of him before and was slightly bewildered as to why my Mum wanted to see him. He was supported by an astonishingly crude Australian guy who would have been funny for about five minutes, but after thirty minutes his constant use of the word 'fuck' as near punctuation did get a bit wearing. The main act was OK, he has some funny material, even if he did have some curious reverse racism going on, and rather a lot of toilet humour. At the end though, he went off into some sort of rant about how the government and corporations are using the media to keep men and women scared and desperate to control them. I could see his point but it was presented in a strange way that was really offputting. I've seen this kind of attitude before and it was similarly disturbing.

No real progress in work. Tired of the backup system. I like it but hate the stupid issues with it.

Was hoping to do the gym this evening but failed, utterly. I felt tired due to the late night last night, which I suppose is fair enough but it was embarrassing as I went to Morrisons and was caught by both Andy and someone from work with mini pork pies, peanuts and a can of Jack Daniels Coke. I only get the JD stuff because the taste reminds me instantly of Berlin, usually regret it after though.

The guitar stuff I listed on Ebay nearly all sold, which is good.

Lazy and fat

So far it has been a curious week. D&D on Monday was good fun although we made the unfortunate discovery that Ed's character had been reduced to a charred skeleton and we had pissed off a huge, evil black dragon by killing it's young and forming the skin into parachutes. Yeah. This somehow also prompted a discussion of an undead skeletal hamster, which I argued would be useless as it would try to store food in the cheeks it didn't have any more. The chilli I made turned out well and was enjoyed by all which was nice. Even Em had some for lunch yesterday as there was plenty left over.

Work has been frustrating. The backup system had several issues yesterday which required three restarts, and I found today that one of the LEDs in my work laptop screen has failed, so it has a big dark patch in one corner. I'll have to log a warranty call tomorrow. I was trying to work out a way of getting them to put a 1600x900 display in there intead of the crappy 1366x768 one but I don't think I can. There's a nasty cold going round, hope it's the one I've already had, really don't want to catch one now.

Played Dragon Age again yesterday evening and really enjoyed it. It's a curious game as I find it hard to sit down and fire it up but when I do, I really do like it. Also Steve in work has lent me the new Deus Ex game for the 360, so looking forward to trying that out.
Started DS9 series 5, which is shaping up well.

The week has not been good for exercise or eating well so far. Boo.

Epic meat

Today has been quiet. Lazy morning before heading into town to get ingredients to make chilli for D&D tomorrow, which took some time as I had to do it in two batches because of a relatively small pan. And I think there might be rather a lot. Oh well.

Not done much the rest of the day except nurse my wrist after the water butt incident yesterday (that sounds bad) and finish off season 4 of DS9, which was pretty decent. I remembered how it ended but not all the details, so it was really good.

Listed a bunch of stuff on Ebay to pay for the Vintage SG which I am still really happy with. The setup needs tweaking though as there's some fret buzz.

Last week was a bit of a fail in terms of exercise and food so unsurprisingly my weight is exactly the same as last Sunday.

Didn't start well.

Today did not start well. I stood in a giant dog turd in my slippers, and accidentally knocked the water butt over when I was trying to clean them. Unfortunately, since it's about the same age as me it split and water went EVERYWHERE.

I went out to Mold to look at guitars as I'd already seen the one I thought would be nice, a Vintage VS6 which is a copy of a Gibson SG. Much cheaper but gets really good reviews. Unfortunately the shop in Mold had one and after I played it, it came home with me, even though it's black and I think SGs should only be cherry red. Still, at least it's a bit less of an Angus Young wannabe. It's so much better than the frankensteined things I've been faffing with for years. Also it sounds great standard so I'm not going to start pulling to bits.

I'll put the bits of my old ones on Ebay to try and get some cash back, and I think I need to rationalise the basses a bit too. The Ashbory can go, while it's fun, the silicone strings are such a pain in the arse I just can't be bothered.

On the way home, stopped off at Rob and Em's to pick up some more of their spare hardcore for the track. Rob came back with me and we did some work on the track, filling in some holes and unclogging a water channel. It made quite a difference and stood up to being driven over a few times, which was good.

Grrr

Did some more stuff in Dragon Age. Got straight back into it, goodness knows why I haven't played since about July. I really like it, although really I prefer the sci-fi setting of Mass Effect.

The poor old dog seems to have been traumatised by an evil fly or something since he won't settle down unless I let him crash on my bed. Silly boy. It was his 9th birthday yesterday, unreal.

Think I've reverted back to a materialistic state of mind, keep having silly ideas, like replacing my home built guitars with a decent one and starting a new bass project. Not good. If anything I need to get more stuff listed on Ebay.

The 306 knocking could be caused by worn shock absorber bushes but that means replacing the shocks. I hope it isn't too much. Given the punishment it takes on the track, I think it is worth doing, and getting the suspension checked out in general.

Slow...down...

For some reason today was the slowest Friday of all time. The morning started well with the now traditional bacon baps, but then it was really slow. The unhealthiness didn't improve with chcolate either. Then, after all that I decided I couldn't be arsed with the gym.

I am going to sit down this evening with chilli and cheese and a DS9 episode and then play Dragon Age for the first time in months. Then I can start on Alan Wake that I got cheap from Steve in work. I've not had time off work for some time and I really just want to take a week off to play games but due to the situation in work it's not easy. I want to replay Bioshock, perhaps restart Bioshock 2 and then of course Saint's Row 3 is out any minute now.

I realised on the way home that I've had the 306 three months and haven't spent any money on it other than diesel. I think it's going to need some attention to the rear suspension as I think it's got some worn bushes back there causing knocking, and the exhaust has been blowing ever since I got it. And the electrical woes. But it's probably not worth dropping loads of cash on it due to the rather shed-like appearance.

No real plans for the weekend really.

Healthy fail

Yesterday evening was Steve's leaving do at the Chinese. He must have made quite an impression to get a leaving do after two and a half weeks. The venue was the Prosperity in Rhuddlan, which was excellent as always. The seven of us had the banquet, which worked out really well.

Today was a bit frustrating as I went into work to find that the update to the backup system failed to do anything at all to help with the problems.

Badminton was OK this evening, after playing so well last week I was quite shit tonight but it was still fun. In one game however I was playing with Rob and accidentally came up behind him while he was taking a shot and very nearly took a nasty smack to my gentleman's area, as it was it twinged for a bit.

Still enjoying the Vaio P. It's a great little thing. The performance is a little slow compared to the machines I am used to but that's OK. Disabling a few of the background services and switching to the classic Windows theme helped hugely though.

The screen resolution is really rather too high, but I've got used to it. For such a tiny machine though, the keyboard is great with my only complaint being the tiny right shift key. Even that isn't too much of a problem and is actually helping me to learn not to depend on the right shift key so much.

A nice touch is that since I put the SSD in, it's completely silent, as there's no fan. This bothered me a little at first, but it stays reasonably cool even under load. Also it's the first laptop I've seen in a long time that wasn't made in China, actually made in Japan.

Solid state

I wasn't really in the mood for faffing about but I got the SSD into the P fine. It worked first go but I botched the trackpoint connections so I had to get the keyboard off again. For a machine that Sony said isn't user servicable it comes apart surprisingly easily. The worst part is getting the keyboard and trackpoint connections in becuase there is so little room. I've reinstalled Windows 7 and it's updating itself. Not sure if the SSD will give much improvement over the old hard drive due to the PATA interface, but the lack of moving parts will make up for that. The SSD was thinner than the hard drive so I resorted to a pad of folded tissue to stop it moving about. With soldered CPU and RAM, the hard drive is the only thing that can be changed on the P, although the CPU can be slightly overclocked. The Atom is so wimpy though it's not going to make that much difference.

Perhaps I should have been a watchmaker or something. Taking fiddly laptops apart doesn't phase me in the slightest, in fact I quite enjoy it. Unless it's a MacBook. The worst repair I've ever done was to swap a keyboard on a MacBook. It seemed specially designed to be awkward and fiddly. It was one of the first generation ones so I don't know if the new ones are any better, but I wouldn't have thought so.

Chilli

Today was a somewhat frustrating day in work, not so much because of the stuff I was doing, but the general atmosphere. I left early to go to the gym only to realise I had forgotten my stuff. So I went and got the stuff to make chilli and came home.

The Vaio P has finished the many updates it needed and appears to be working OK. However, I now have a 32gb SSD I can put in it, so I'm going to do that and rebuild it again. Removing the small, fragile and slow 1.8" hard drive will make it a much more suitable machine for moving around and things.

Not much else going on. Still been eating reasonably well so that's a bonus.

Tiny tiny tiny

Well, today was a good day. The backup system didn't do anything too terrible, and I managed to avoid the vending machine and not drink Coke, so I felt good all day long. Cereal for breakfast, a salad filled bap for lunch and squash. I think it definitely helped my state of mind.

D&D this evening. It was a ghastly battle, and then suddenly everyone except me was hurled into a deep pit, and I was left to fight two skeletons, a skeleton mage, a giant spider that could teleport all by myself. It was difficult. But we managed to get it back until it got too late to continue.

Financial slipup is a Sony Vaio P. I don't normally rate Sony laptops, but what they do well is the slightly crazy experimental stuff like the handheld UX range and the tiny P series. It's bloody small and has a ludicrous 8" 1600x768 display. Not the most powerful of machines with a 1.3ghz Atom, 2gb RAM and a 60gb 1.8" hard drive, but it'll be fun to play with and if I get bored of it I could probably flip it for what I paid for it, which was a fraction of the original retail price.

Bah France

Yesterday was an OK day. It was Steve's last day and also Fat Friday with giant bacon baps, which is always good. Steve bravely went for the full house, basically a full breakfast in a bap, while I stuck to my normal sausage and egg. After work, went to the gym where I ment my sister and her boyfriend, and also saw Andy. I forgot my gym trousers so had to work out in my work trousers, embarrassing. Good workout though. Then I went to see the Unix guy who I've been covering as he needed a couple of things he'd left in the office. He's still suffering with his back and due to what appears to be staggering incompetence by the NHS doesn't have a clue what's going to happen.

Then it was down to Andy's for one of the most tense and astonishing matches of rugby I have ever seen. I'm not a massive fan and mainly go just to be sociable and hang out with friends, but even I was inclined to gloom around and mutter 'we was robbed' afterwards.

The weather has been astonishing today. I've not seen a sky so clear since the volcano that grounded all the aircraft, and I took Sandy for a walk to enjoy it. Did some work on the track and also brought the bike frame out to see what it looked like in the sunshine - nice! It looks pretty good except for the occasional hair stuck in the clear coat but that can be sorted out. It seems pretty dry but I'll leave it a while yet before trying to build it up again. Also watched a rather ghastly DS9 episode with Bashir pretending to be James Bond. Also watched the last two episodes of this series of Doctor Who, only to realise I missed the first episode of this group of them. Argh.

Back to Denbigh in a bit for Andy's birthday meal at the Italian, can't wait.

I need to sit down and actually have a look at what I eat because I think I've been in denial for quite some time. Also need some scales because I have no idea what I actually weigh at the moment. I don't really want to know but I need to so I've got some idea what I'm doing.

A few days

The week has been fairly standard. D&D on Monday which was fun but we didn't have Ed there which was a shame. Steve is settling in well though.

There really isn't much else to report. Work has been meh, the backup system is still the bane of my existence since the consultant came in yesterday and said he'd never seen it do what ours is doing. So he's taking low-level trace and will consult with IBM. The day wasn't helped by my cutting out Coke after a week of 3 cans a day binging, leading to a massive caffeine crash and a pounding headache.

This month was going well financially until I fucked up today but I might be able to turn it around and profit from it. Not sure yet.

Up to season 4 of Deep Space 9. Sisko has shaved his head so this is where it starts to get good. Really enjoyed it so far.

Finished Game of Thrones over the weekend. A very long and complicated read but good as it kept you guessing. I expected more to get sorted out by the end of the book though. I've heard good things about the TV series.

The creator of the original Unix has died. Shame. I have a bit of an affinity with Linux, having used it since about 1995, and more recently AIX on the IBM RS/6000.

Badminton tonight was really good. I actually feel justified in saying that I played pretty damn well, surprising myself and others. I think it's the first signs of the gym helping - I don't think I've actually lost any weight yet, but my legs seem to be stronger, helping me to get around the court and manuever better.

My racket is starting to show signs of its age. I bought it as consolation to myself for being made redundant in November 2004, so it's done really well. The frame is chipped and worn and the strings are starting to fray, and the extra layer of grip tape to make the handle fatter is held on with duct tape, but it still feels good. I think I'd rather get it restrung if the strings do go as it just feels nice.

While out at badminton I left my iPod touch being updated to iOS 5 which seems to have gone smoothly despite the many reports of it failing or people having trouble with it.

Wales kicking bottom

Off to Rob's again for more rugby at 8:30am this morning. Really good fun since it was a great match and Wales kicked bottom. Very nice, and then bacon baps, scorio. After bacon baps we started to catch up on the England/France game but I had to go to the post office and post the ebay stuff and then head to my Dad's.

Spent some time working on Jean's laptop only to find the hard drive was dying. She'd already decided she wanted a smaller laptop however so I started working on that instead. The old one is going to have a new hard drive anyway. Went to PC World in Llandudno and spotted a curious object I hadn't seen before. It was from Samsung and like a giant version of my phone. It turns out it's the Galaxy S Wifi 5.0 and is basically the same but with no phone hardware and a 5" screen. Interesting.

Didn't really do much else. Here's a Tour de France cyclist colliding with a dog. The dog seems unfazed.

Weekend hurrah

The week progressed much as expected. Work was meh, and the backup system broke even more incomprehensibly. It's so frustrating.

Badminton with Rob, Em and Steve was good last night, except for her turning up again after another holiday. Argh.

The old Nokia 9000 went for £50, the Sharp pocket computer for £40. Not bad, I paid a tenner for each.

More clear

Been on edge today, really touchy and quick to anger, not sure why. Still coughing.

The bike frame had some more coats of clear, looks good.

Apparently iOS 5 can function without the use of a Mac or a PC out of the box. Well, that's nice. It just means then that everything on an iOS device used this way MUST come from Apple, no more ripped CDs or DVDs, and obviously the apps already have to. Total control. The new version of OS X has an iOS style interface option, and full-screen applications. Full-screen applications? What the fuck? The last time I used a full-screen application on a full-sized computer was when I was using DOS! Nice to see that iOS 5 rips off the notification area from Android too.

A while back I was quite evangelical about the Mac and to a degree, Linux, as alternatives to Windows. But back in those days, Apple was different. It was downtrodden, a humble company which made genuinely better machines that had only a small group of followers. Looking back though, it was a bit cult-like, looking down on others and feeling superior to them and I wonder why it was so important to me...

Now though, I don't recognise that company any more. I dislike the iOS platform intensely due to the total control Apple has over it. They want it so they control absolutely everything on the device, and iOS 5 and iCloud is a step towards that. I don't think the Mac has long left, it'll just become a glorified iOS device with perhaps the Mac Pro remaining for people to develop apps on. It's not a coincidence that Apple killed the old MacBook and made the cheapest Mac laptop the £850 MacBook Air. They want people to buy iPads instead.

The thing that is so bloody frustrating is that what Apple does, everyone else copies. So if the idea of totally locked down computing is made acceptable by Apple because their stuff is so pwetty, then it will become the norm. I'm still highly dubious that business and enterprise computing will be affected much, but at home, very possibly.

I can see the point that the devices will probably be reliable, less prone to malware and won't be so easy to destroy by people clicking on the wrong thing or going to the wrong sites, etc. But there's no choice, if iOS had a basic and advanced mode, then I wouldn't mind so much. And don't mention jailbreaking.

It seems that before too long, you'll have the Eloi with their iPads, playing their touchy feely games and watching cats falling into bathtubs, not giving a thought to the Morlocks slaving away in the vast datacentres, keeping the back-end servers and network infrastructure running.

I think this is what it feels like to become old. I've been interested in computers for so long that I might have lost my ability to keep up with the changes that are coming and I'm adopting the 'Get off my lawn you kids!' mentality. But since my main computers are 'immature' and 'childish' Alienwares, perhaps not. Hah.

Oh, and Linux? After years of experimentation with it, I've come to the reluctant conclusion that I don't think it'll ever make it to the desktop. It absolutely rocks on servers, and as the basis of Android, but on a regular PC? No. Too many distributions that aren't compatible with each other, with different interfaces and too many hardware niggles. Ubuntu nearly got it right, until they fucked it up with the Unity interface. Unless they put Android on PCs and do it right...

Developed a bit of a taste for Nachtmahr, not sure why.

Weather collapse

The weather finally deteriorated after a very hot week.

It was down to Rob's at 9am to watch the Wales - Fiji match with him, Andy, Jane and Em after she woke up, which was great since Wales did really well. Afterwards it was bacon baps, delicious.

Following that, I went to the gym. Sunday lunchtime is a good time to go as it's practically deserted. I think I need to extend my programme a bit since it has become almost easy. I really need to get some scales as at the moment I have no idea what I weigh.

The rest of the day was spent catching up on Doctor Who in iPlayer and listing some things on Ebay that I've had lying around for ages, the Sharp PC-1350, a Nokia 9000 Communicator and a weird Chinese-English translator that someone gave me a couple of years ago.

After having shaving trouble for years with Gillette stuff, I invested in a Merkur razor a little while back, a big old fashioned heavy thing that takes old-school razor blades. It's a lot harder to use but the results are better since I can get a half-decent shave without having to go against the grain like I did with the Fusion, which messed my skin up. That combined with remembering to put moisturiser on and cleaning my glasses more often seems to have made my face better than it has been in ages, yay.

Why, George?

Spent the day with a couple of guys from work watching the new Bluray release of the real Star Wars trilogy. I am not going to go on a huge upset rant about the changes, except to say that most of them don't make any difference and are completely pointless. Especially the terrifying, demonic Ewok, which in itself seems stupid because they went to the effort of making the one that Leia meets have eyelids, and terrifying eyes, but not any of the others.

Gimpy.

A fun week

It's been an OK week in work. It was certainly made interesting by Steve being there. It was fun to hang out and chat but weird with it being in my very familiar workplace. Good though.

Yesterday evening it was burgers at Rob and Em's with Steve before we all headed to badminton. Thankfully the She-Hag was on holiday so it was really nice and relaxed.

Nice quiet evening today watching DS9 and chilling with an old Sharp PC-1350 I found the other day, one of those wide pocket computers of the early 80s that looks like a calculator on steroids. It needed new batteries so I picked some up and had a play. It can be used as a calculator or can be programmed in Basic, which is nice. These things tend to be a little collectible so it might be worth chucking it on the bay.

Tomorrow, epic Star Wars Bluray marathon (III, IV, V and VI) with guys from work then rugby on Sunday morning.

Put more clear coat on the bike frame, looks good, but needs more.

Turfed

Monday was a good day, welcoming Steve back from the USA to the UK with rugby first thing in the morning, and then introducing him to James for D&D in the evening. It was great fun.

In the afternoon, Rob and I played the Portal 2 co-op missions, although there was quite a lot more than we expected so we didn't finish them all. It was really good fun though. After our brains cried for mercy, we fired up Saints Row 2 and had some fun with the crazy cheats.

Other than that this week has been uneventful except for Steve starting work in my office today, a slightly surreal but welcome experience. Em and I took him on a mini tour around Ruthin at lunchtime to show him the places to get lunch and things.

Went to the gym yesterday evening and tonight, felt good for doing so as I was able to do the exercises normally at last. I think I'm finally getting over the cold although I still have a slight cough. I always do after a cold though. I sometimes wonder if that should worry me.

Gusty

Not much to report last week. Went to the gym on Friday evening after work for the first time in a while, although I had to turn down the effort level on the machines.

Yesterday was my Mum's birthday so did a few things and took her out for an Indian meal, which was good. King Prawn Passanda with peshwari naan, absolutely stunning.

Today walked up Moel Famau with Steve from work. Originally it was going to be a few but only us two could make it. It was a nice clear day although a bit overcast, and astonishingly windy. Once at the Jubilee tower the wind was ridiculous. Poor Sandy had his ears and lips fluttering in the wind. We met a woman with an adopted greyhound which was a brindle but with opposite colours to Sandy, which was nice. We took some pictures and admired the view before heading back down, encountering some nutter who was running up.

After that I watched some more DS9 and indulged myself in Hackers. I know why people hate it but it's a nice slice of the 90s and I always find it fun to try identify the various machines they use and laugh at attempts at referencing the technology of the era. But it's entertaining and has a stonking soundtrack, so why the hell not. I've always wanted a camouflage laptop thanks to this movie.

Day off tomorrow. Rugby, Portal 2 and D&D, what more could you ask for?

Managed to flog the Acer 7741g and the HP DV7 on Ebay, which is good. I think my triad of Alienware machines should satisfy my computing needs for a while now.

Still snot

Felt OK yesterday morning but by the evening felt pretty crappy again, which was frustrating as I'd been hoping to go to the gym as D&D wasn't on. Better today but still a bit snotted up.

Started Game of Thrones that Rob lent me on the weekend, think it's going to be quite a read.

Fox News can fuck off and so can all the ignorant bigoted fucks who think it's actual news.

Just found out today about the Silent Hill HD Collection that's coming out. I really enjoyed the first two games but this only has 2 and 3 and some other thing. Might be worth a look though.

Stupid virus

Yesterday was the beer festival in Denbigh, which I always go to to be sociable. It was a decent sized crowd this year with Jane and Wez up from Kent and their friends. I tasted several foul things that claimed to be drinks but did enjoy the curry and chilli that the cafe had. I found that chicken curry goes suprisingly well with nachoes instead of rice although the woman did give me an odd look. Afterwards had a Chinese with Andy and Maz and we had a look at some photos. By the end of the day it had taken it's toll and I was feeling pretty rough again.

Today has been quiet and unproductive, done little more than finish DS9 season 2 and start season 3. Still feeling fairly crappy but should be OK for work tomorrow, although not perhaps for the gym as I had hoped since there isn't any D&D.

Was thinking back to the days of analogue satellite TV in the very early 90s, when we had Sky but also a load of German channels including RTL. Two shows really stick out in my mind. Bitte Lachen which was basically You've Been Framed, and Tutti Frutti. That was a weird game show that involved lots of scantily dressed women who got their tits out for no apparent reason at certain points and two contestants that had to strip at the end if they lost. I still have no idea what the hell was going on even after reading the Wikipedia article. Very odd indeed.

Bleh again

Tuesday was the day of feeling rough witha dry cough. Wednesday was the day of fever and gritty eyeballs. Thursday was the day of snot. Friday was the day of coughing.

I felt much better this morning but was coughing nearly continuously so I didn't think that would be appreciated in work.

Bah. No idea where this came from. I've barely left my bed in three days, let alone the house.

Nearly finished the second season of DS9. Steadily improving, still a couple of stinkers in there but also some really good ones.

Urgh

Had two days of feeling like utter shite, snotting, sneezing and sweating. Wasn't able to do go into work, and did little else but read and consume bad comfort food.

D&D was fun on Monday, wasn't much of a combat go this time, but it did lead to Ed having some hilarious interactions with a barman.

A curious day

This morning it was off to Rob's armed with snacks to watch the rugby. It was frustrating, Wales really should have won. Bacon baps for half-time and I made the pleasing discovery that mango chutney goes well with bacon. Then it was several episodes of the latest Futurama series with snacks before I came home. The new episodes are kind of weird actually, funny, but they are going to some disturbing places...

Had a look at the back wheel on the Puch to make sure it was aligned properly but was put off taking it for an actual ride due to wind and rain.

I watched the latest episode of Torchwood on iPlayer but haven't done much else really, just chilled.

Was tempted to reinstall the Sims 3, which I haven't played since I sold the Acer laptop I used to run it on, but couldn't be arsed, even though it's fun to torture then. My favourite was to have one man having a happy and successful life, with a room containing some other people and a fridge, linked to the main house but sealed off with windows. They had nothing to do but eat and piss and shit themselves and watch the one having a good life. Or the house with a hydrophobic guy who had every room in his house linked by swimming pools, that was hilarious.

Just found my MP3 of the Monty on the Run theme tune on the C64. Rob Hubbard was a bloody genius when it came to getting sounds out of the SID chip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93nIljXpqUY

The Glider Rider one isn't bad either:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSO6OapnO2I

Can't believe 9/11 was 10 years ago.

DNF

I downloaded the Duke Nukem Forever demo through Steam on the M17x and played it for about ten minutes before deciding it was shit and uninstalling it. It was good to give the machine a workout though. The fans spin up quite fast when it's under load but it's quite tolerable.

I put the first can of clearcoat on the bike. It looks OK but needs more, but there's another can in the post.

Went to the gym at lunchtime, which was ace as it was completely deserted.

Flumpd

A slow but not totally unproductive day. Went to the gym after work which went OK and I felt great afterwards. Still having trouble sorting my diet out but I think the gym is starting to have an effect. I wish that

a) I wasn't scared of treadmills
b) I could run

because there are more of them than any other machine. There was a guy running on one this evening and he made barely any noise at all, whereas if I try and run on one it's like an elephant clumping along. It's probably my weight but I don't know how some people run so lightly.

Finished DS9 season one this evening which came as a bit of a surprise as I didn't realise I was that close to the end. It was a lot better than I remembered it being. Yes there were some crap episodes but it picked up towards the end, and the last few were pretty good. It had a better start than TNG I reckon.

Fender are releasing a Kurt Cobain signature Jaguar. It looks quite cool I suppose if you like Jaguars (I'm not a fan) but it seems rather against the idealogy of Nirvana given how they destroyed guitars all the time and Kurt hated the being famous part of it all. What I'm more worried about is that it's being release in time for the 20th anniversary of Nevermind. WTF!!!!!

Not much else to report. The bike frame still looks good. I'm going to put the clearcoat on tomorrow and then it's a case of letting it dry for a good month or so, preferably longer. Still, that gives me the time to get a list of parts I need to make it into a fixed gear, basically a pair of wheels, crankset and chain really.

Noticed the Galaxy S had hit about 40% battery so checked how long it had been since it was charged and was slightly gobsmacked to see that it had been nearly five days. Amazing. The new battery usage page is great as it shows when things like the screen and wifi have been used and what the phone signal has been like.

Had a go on the 8-string bass. I absolutely love it. The doubled strings make such a nice sound, except perhaps the unwound octave G-string which is a little harsh. I've got quite adept at playing just the bass strings which means it can also sound like a normal bass. If I had lots of spare cash, I'd strip it down, give it a new finish, replace the pickups and electronics and put the spare Schaller 8-string bridge on it. I still have fond memories of seeing a Dean Rhapsody 12-string bass in Chester, same idea but two octave strings. It sounded astonishing and wasn't too hard to play. Sadly it was £475, no way could I justify that.

A slow day

Today was very slow and tedious. Went to the gym after work, which was good. I felt decent for going although food today wasn't bad. I noticed my heart rate seems to have lowered rather since I started going again although it's still high enough to be good.

The S/PDIF adapter came for the M15x. It's made by someone called Fanmusic which doesn't bode well. But it's got a sturdy metal case and has a USB B port on one end and an RCA connector on the other. Since the 360 is already using the optical input on my amp, it would have been a bit of a faff for the M15x to use optical too so this device is perfect. I can now finally retire the HP DV7 and stick it on Ebay although goodness knows what it's worth. The beefy graphics card in the M15x means that iPlayer and full-screen video plays smoothly. The HP wasn't bad but it struggled slightly if a lot happened at once.

Got shat on

Work was unremarkable but productive.

After work I felt like doing some exercise so went to the gym. The weather was so horrible I knew I wouldn't do any at home. Was nearly killed by a lunatic in a Renault Laguna on a narrow road on the way home and then got up the track to find some lost idiot in a van had been up and ruined it at the top. Annoying.

Today is the first day in quite some time I've not had a fizzy sugar laden drink.

Went and checked the bike frame and found the swallows haven't gone yet. Fortunately my protection for the frame has worked, but one of them managed to shit on me as I went inside, little fucker.

Fired up GTAIV for the first time in a while since I had deleted anything to do with it a while back and thought I'd see how it was from the beginning. The answer: shit.

It's frustrating - the city and setting are good, and the car driving is great, but the characters and the attempt to make it gritty and realistic are such a dismal fail when there's still the funny radio stations and adverts. And the characters are shit. I hate Nico and his hypocritical angst over the people he killed in the past yet all the people who die in the missions don't matter, I hate his fucking cousin and the way he phones every 30 seconds to go and look at big American titties, I hate Brucie the steroid fucktard, and it's just. Not. Fun.

The Lost and Damned was even worse, taking part in the activities of a bunch of evil fucktard bikers with no redeeming features, bunch of wank. The Ballad of Gay Tony was a step towards GTA of old but wasn't enough to redeem itself.

Let's just say I can't wait for the next Saints Row game. I got far more enjoyment out of Saints Row 2 than I ever did out of GTAIV. It's stupid, crude, obnoxious and childish, and it is quite, quite brilliant.

Ignoble failure

Work wasn't too bad except for an incredibly frustrating afternoon doing crap. I have come to realise how much more I prefer to work with back-end systems rather than the desktop side. After nearly seven years I'm finding it a bit wearying.

It was my turn to be crap in D&D. I didn't kill anyone and I managed to roll a 20 and get a good look at a door. I saw that it was a good tough door, made of solid oak, nice and thick, with strong iron hinges, etc, and totally failed to notice the poison trap built into the door handle that crippled me for a round. Shortly after that I watched Rob the minotaur dive heroically into a building that was engulfed in flames to rescue some kids and take horrible damage and pain, only for me to realise too late that I was carrying a Robe of Defying Flames. Embarrassing. I was able to magically throw it over him, but even so...

I got my 10 metre DVI cable to hook the M15x up to the screen on the other end of the room, and it works fine. Digital signalling is nice, it either works or it doesn't, and if it works there is no loss of quality. Also the graphics card in the M15x handles iPlayer better so there's no juddering and things that could happen on the old HP. I just need the SPDIF audio adapter and cable and then it's good to go.

Today is the first day in ages I've eaten reasonably well except for some crisps in D&D, and I feel a LOT better for it. Hurrah.

So...many...colours

Went to the gym this morning. It wasn't a good session for some reason, felt like I was struggling the whole time, but did everything except the rower. Something wasn't right,not sure why. Hope I'm back to normal next time.

Finally put the colour coat on the bike frame. There was enough in the can to do three complete coats. I had a bad moment where I thought it had gone all patchy but that was only while it was starting to dry. After an hour or so it looked fine. Just need to let this coat dry for a while and then time for the clearcoat, which is when it should start to look really good. After that it'll need to dry for at least a month. I know flip paint is regarded as a bit chavvy, but I really like it.

"I'm the Doctor. Who are you?" "Bond. James Bond."

I was woken up at about 4am this morning by a weird dream that ended like a nightmare. It was a curious and interesting combination of Doctor Who, James Bond and Silent Hill. I don't remember much about it but Amy Pond, the Doctor and Bond (in Daniel Craig form) were working together to stop some evil plot by some Silent Hill-esque monstrosites. They looked like corpses wrapped in mouldy blankets, staying perfectly upright under the surface of the sea. I remember they were plotting world domination but not why or how. What woke me up was following Bond into the sea and experiencing the full horror of them. At one point there was a cow-sized sentient toad that used sign language to communicate, but I can't remember if it was evil or not. Fucking weird dream but really, really vivid. It took me ages to get back to sleep after it.

First thing this morning Amy and Huw came up to get apples and damsons. We found there were four trees that I'd forgotten about that were absolutely covered in damsons so we ended up with a ludicrous amount of them. The mutant apple tree also provided the usual bonkers amount of them. We managed to get this done before the rain hit.

After that I stripped down the M15x to install the Bluray drive. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but there were a lot of screws and layers. It's a much more complicated design than normal Dell laptops, but quite a sensible one and very solid. The drive is a sod to get to because it's a slot-loader and is hidden deep inside the chassis. I got it done eventually, and it works fine. Despite only having a lowly Core i3, the machine runs pretty well. I suppose I could pop an i5 or an i7 in there, but not much point really.

I was going to do the colour coat on the bike frame but I realised I hadn't put quite enough black on the rear part of the frame. Fortunately I had enough black left in the can to finish it off but need that to dry now.

After that, didn't really do much. Set up some more stuff on the M15x and watched some more DS9 and the latest Torchwood episode on iPlayer. It's got more interesting now but we'll see...

Bamps

Yesterday was unremarkable except for badminton where me, Rob and Em had two fantastic games and managed to ignore the hag except for her incessant babbling.

Today was not good. Despite sleeping well I felt very strangely tired and then I had to help shift three rack servers, eight astonishingly heavy drive trays and two full-size AS/400 units and their accompanying drive towers. Afterward I felt completely shattered and it only got worse during the afternoon. The plan to go to the gym went out of the window and I had a big lie down before heading to Rob and Em's to meet up with them and Rob and Caroline to go to the pub. However, with the realisation that it was a football night, we just ended up sitting around chatting which was very nice indeed.

Glad it's the weekend. I have no plans except to pick the apples tomorrow morning with Amy and then put the colour coat on the bike frame. Beyond that, no plans other than to get some work done on the M15x, get the necessary software on there and if I can summon up the patience, strip it down to get the Bluray drive in there.

Addicted

Work was OK today, had a slight catastrophe in the morning with a mail server after a test backup accidently chewed up all the bandwidth and caused some problems.

Was supposed to go to the gym but felt rough after work so I didn't, but did go and see my sister and niece as I had planned. We had a nice evening and ended up having a Chinese.

Not much else to report except the computer shuffle I mentioned means replacing the Acer 7741g and the HP DV7 with a second hand Alienware M15x. So yeah. It arrived today, just finished building it and getting it ready. Very nice. It's basically the same as the other two, just medium sized.

I h8 fuking swalowz

Work was OK, did some more on the backup system. AIX might have it's issues but the Logical Volume Manager is fucking ace, being able to add and remove disks, expand and mirror filesystems all while the system is running is so handy. I know Linux has an implementation of LVM but I've never really played with it. Should do at some point although I gather it's a bit different from the AIX version. And AGAIN I got asked about the bloody AS/400s! I don't know where the idea came from that I know all about the AS/400s but I don't! It's like a nightmare.

Bad day for food, I did well in work until I got home when I consumed Pot Noodle and wagon wheels. Watched some more DS9. So far it's been OK, not as bad as I remember the 1st season being.

Finished Feersum Endjinn. It's a bloody hard read to be honest, it gets very complicated and the dyslexic sections require a kind of mental gearchange when you encounter them. It's so worth it though at the end when it all comes together. I think this is the third or fourth time I've read it and I always nearly give up half way through.

I sprayed the bike frame with the black coat after smoothing down the primer and cleaning off the shit that the fucking swallows had thoughtfully deposited on it. Bloody things, surely they're old enough now to sod off out of the shed, but no, they have to flutter round and squawk at me like they own the place. Tossers. I had to make a sort of tent roof thing to stop them perching above where the frame is suspended.

The black paint wasn't as easy to apply as the primer for some reason so it was a bit of a faff, but it looks OK. Once it's dried for a few days I'll put the colour coat on. I hope it's going to be OK. Disposing of the frame, pretending it never happened and denying all knowledge of it and then having to edit out any reference to it from the blog would be a real pain.

Phone reborn

Spent the day at my Dad's just hanging out and watching the Tour of Spain cycling which was quite interesting as it was a time trial stage.

Finally got sick of the stupid non-standard firmware on the Galaxy S that had some really stupid quirks. I wiped it in favour of Darky's ROM 10.2, which is also non-standard but a lot better. It's based on Gingerbread. It definitely feels faster and the Gingerbread keyboard is a LOT better than the Samsung one. I was able to use an app to dump my text messages to an XML file on the SD card and then restore them when the upgrade was complete.

The bike frame seems to have dried nicely. Will perhaps put the black coat on tomorrow. I just hope the four swallows that are still living in there don't crap on it. The stupid things get all hysterical and flutter about when I go in there to check.

I for one welcome our robot unicorn overlords. The singularity approaches.

Work tomorrow, boo.

Primed

It's been a funny day really, one of achieving not much.

I did clean down the bike frame, strung it up and sprayed it in primer. Bloody hell bike frames are awkward to paint, all angles and tubes and things behind other things, but I got it done. It actually looks pretty decent, although I think there's some bits that will need smoothing out before I start putting the colour coats on.

Watched some more DS9, and then the latest available episode of Torchwood off iPlayer, which bizarrely had Nana Visitor in it who plays Major Kira in DS9, how odd. It was actually pretty good I thought. However, I'm fairly open minded but I thought the soft-porn scenes were a bit drawn out although I'm sure the outcry would have been less if he'd been shagging a woman.

I've got a nice big shiny head again (ahem) after my monthly head shave. It's always a nice sensation when it's freshly done although the increasing grey in the hair that comes off is a little depressing.

Listed my Acer 7741g on Ebay since I don't use or need it any more, and it's a bit of a waste having it sat around not doing anything. The HP I use to play music, Blurays and other media might go too, since I could probably run the display and amp from my normal machine, just need long cables.

Just realised the new WTC building has made quite a bit of progress, interesting to see.

A curious day

The weather today was stupid, bright sunshine and torrential rain in 10 minute intervals, basically all day. Went to the gym with Andy which was good. After that basically fooled around with computers and watched some more DS9.

Made chilli which came out really well this time. Mmmm.

Not much else to report. Having another shuffle around with computers, tired of so many machines lying around doing different things. Listed some more stuff on Ebay.

Ronan Goldacre

Using Saints Row 2 to visualise what my character for The Call of Cthulhu looks like.

Circulation...dropping

The Alienware M17x R2 isn't the most practical 'laptop' to use in bed. The battery life is rather crap and it's so heavy that you risk cutting the blood supply to your legs. It's an epic machine though. I have no complaints at all. It has the best screen I have ever seen on anything.

I should have just got one of these instead of faffing about with Acers and suchlike for so long that were never quite right. The M11x is brilliant too, and it's nice that the two share the same design. Perhaps I should find the medium sized M15x to round out the set, or perhaps not given the cost of these things. I can only imagine what the new M18x must be like, absolutely monstrous since in photos it makes the M17x look small.

Mind you I can see why people call Alienwares obnoxious and tasteless but I think with the lights switched off they look pretty decent, although a backlit keyboard is surprisingly useful.

I forgot it was a bank holiday weekend until yesterday afternoon which was nice.

Gym this morning, then I need to find some primer for the bike frame and clean it up ready for painting. No idea for the rest of the weekend.

Started watching DS9 from the beginning since I haven't seen it in YEARS and the DVDs are so cheap now. I know the first couple of seasons were a bit shaky but it got a lot better later on.

Crisis point

Work reached crisis point and I have been instructed to work solely on the backup system to sort out the troubles with it. At least now I can concentrate on one thing and not go mad trying to do both that and desktop support.

Watched Unknown this evening. It's a pretty decent movie, long, but interesting. Also the added bonus of it being set in Berlin meant lots of fun seeing places I knew, and even a pretty cool car chase. I always said W124 Mercs were tough...

Haven't done much else.

Conflict

Went to the gym, then ate shit, so cancelled it out. Went to visit my sister afterward. Strange but nice having her living so much closer.

After that came home and thought about the character for the alternate game we are setting up for Monday evenings, Call of Cthulhu. I chose to be a parapyschologist as it sounded cool, and named him Ronan Goldacre after picking random names from book covers.

I always enjoy the process of building a character in video games that let you do it, like Saints Row 2, Mass Effect, etc, so this feels quite similar. Probably some form of escapism it would be wise not to look into too much.

Rediscovered Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden in the car today, what a fucking EPIC album.

A fun evening

Work was meh.

I was planning on going to the gym after work, but instead I finished sanding the bike except for a few little bits, set up the washer jets on the 306 properly, finally set up a new playlist in iTunes for my iPods, having got bored of all the stuff on them, listened to and played bass along to the Offspring for the first time in ages, and did some long exposure stuff with the camera when it got dark.

It's the first time in AGES where an evening where nothing was going on has flown past and didn't feel like it had been wasted.

These two songs by the Offspring are two of my favourites by them:

Amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVTlH3NOdaM
Gone Away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO5cEta01Dw&feature=related

Depressing moment of the day: Finding my belt and being unable to remember the last time I actually needed it.

Tired for no reason

Tired but I did fuck all today. Watched a couple of movies and listened to some of the commentary in Portal 2, which is really interesting.

Work tomorrow. Not looking forward to it. I need a holiday, but can't take one without causing hassle and confusion due to covering the backup system and Unix servers and high workload in general. Anyway, holidays seem to be pretty lonely these days, it appears that being single and not fascinated by pubs and alcohol are a definite handicap.

It came as a rather depressing realisation that the reason I get such good battery life from my Galaxy S is because it sits idle for the vast majority of the time. Same goes for my annual leave in work, I have so little reason to use it these days.

Realised from pictures at the BBQ yesterday just how much of a fat fuck I am at the moment. Hate it but hate my lack of motivation more.

Full of meat

Haha.

Today was Em's parents BBQ that happens about this time of year, but this time it was special since they have both just retired. It was the usual excellent food and stuff but this time the extended family were there so there was a bewildering amount of relatives and kids running around. A great day though.

Overtime yesterday was OK. Weird to be in the office so late. I got in just before 7pm. My side of things, the AIX and backup servers behaved fine, the others, not so much. It was 1:20am before I got home. I was so tired.

Otherwise it's been quiet. I started sanding the bike down and managed to get a huge blister on my thumb when sanding over the glue from one of the stickers generated an unexpectedly large amount of heat. I've done the forks and half the rest of it.

Trains are fun

It was a half day in work today. The morning wasn't good.

In the afternoon, me and a woman from work took in a great big circle of geocaches around Llangollen and Corwen, which was brilliant. We got 15 in total and chased the steam train from Llangollen to Carrog. Really good fun.

Feeling really drained at the moment, no energy or motivation, just feeling under the weather and hating every damn minute I spend in the office right now. I'm sure work is mostly why I'm feeling so shit and it probably doesn't help that I've got fuck all to come home to.

D&D is still fun

Work was OK today, although one of those days where everything I did seemed to be tinged with failure. What should have been a simple fix on a laptop turned into two hours of agony.

D&D was good fun again today. This time we were approaching a farm and there was a woman being chased by evil soldiers. Naturally we attempted a rescue.

The word 'rescue' is used advisedly because while trying to knock out the first group of soldiers, Ed managed to launch a pretty solid attack at the woman we were trying to rescue, throwing her through the air and leaving her in a twitching bleeding heap. Rob managed to heal her from the point of death, just in time for a wolf to grab her by the throat and throw her around a bit, once again leaving her at the point of death requiring yet more healing.

Then another, larger, group of soldiers appeared, and this time Ed managed to launch a cloud of daggers at the poor woman, leaving her again nearly dead. Fortunately nothing else happened to her and once the rest of the soldiers had been despatched, we were able to heal her and talk to her. It took some persuading and many apologies from Ed and nearly accidentally paying her for sexual favours before she trusted us enough, and then she went and hid in a neighbours house.

Again it was all good fun.

ANR0379W A server database deadlock situation has been encountered: Lock request will be denied to resolve this deadlock.

Today was fairly decent. This morning I lazed around until heading into Denbigh to go to the gym with Andy. Sunday midday is definitely the time to go, we had the whole place to ourselves for most of it. It was hard though and according to the machine there my last workout was March. I honestly didn't think it had been that long. I felt good afterwards though. Need to get back into the habit of going.

After that I watched some movies and played with the bikes a bit. I oiled the chain and things on the Puch and the mountain bike and tweaked the saddle and handlebar heights on both. I hadn't ridden the mountain bike in ages and it felt quite strange after the Puch, and I hadn't quite realised how much smaller the wheels were. I want to build the strength up in my legs as at the moment I think any hill would bring me to an embarrassing halt on the bike, especially the Puch with the higher gearing.

Other than that it's been fairly peaceful today. Still awaiting payment on Ebay item, frustrating.

ANR0195W: Attempting to remove extraneous database entries for volume [volume name]

A better day. Spent the morning with my Dad consuming home made scones for breakfast and chips for lunch and in the meantime dismantling my cousin's old bike down to the frame. It had already donated the wheels to the Puch. While pulling it apart we found the bearings in the fork and the bottom bracket were absolutely fucked so it'll need some of those and other parts. I have a cunning plan but don't want to say much yet in case it goes horribly wrong.

I wish I could weld.

After that it was off to the pub to watch rugby. It was quite enjoyable and Wales won, which was nice.

The rest of the day was spent not doing much, completed Portal 2 for the second time and played around on the 360 a bit more.

I went to the shed to get something out of the freezer and heard a noise like something out of a horror film. My blood froze for a couple of seconds before I remembered the swallows that were nesting in there. The babies had hatched and were sticking their heads up out of the nest for food.

ANS0326E: This node has exceeded its maximum number of mount points

If I see that error message again, I might actually cry. I've spent two weeks trying to stop it with no success because I just haven't got the time to delve into it properly.

I would normally say thank fuck it's Friday but all that means is another evening contemplating my mind state. I got some strings for the Westfield Strat but wasn't able to summon up the energy to put them on it.

It occurred to me while having a Yorkie for breakfast that my inability to stick to exercise and relapse into eating shit food is perhaps some form of subsconscious self punishment. There must be some reason why I can't do it. Perhaps that's why I always drive shit cars too, because deep down I don't feel I deserve anything better and why I manage to fuck up my finances all the time. It's a curious feeling to realise your mental state might not be as normal or as stable as you thought.

Put a bunch of old Game Boy stuff on Ebay and got £26 for it. Oh well, gets it out of the house at least. Plenty more to go on there when I can get the energy to do it. I think I need an impartial observer to come up and go through all the shite I've got and make me get rid of it all. That bit in Fight Club where Tyler Durden says that the the things you own, own you, keeps cropping up in my head. I think it's got to the point where it would actually be easier to take the stuff I need out of the house and trash anything left behind and then put it back.

Fooled around in Saints Row 2 for lack of anything better to do and found that while making your character into a big fat transvestite or drag queen makes the cut-scenes amusing, somehow a respectable businessman in a suit is much funnier for some reason. Especially with the pimp cane shotgun.

Rob lent me a Kasabian album which I hadn't heard. Very good stuff.

Feeling catastrophically tired, but at the same time I don't think I'm going to sleep easily.

Meh

I've given up worrying about work, it's not doing me any good. Just going to do what I can.

Went to see my sister after work, who has recently moved to the town after splitting up from her husband. She's got a really nice cottage in the middle of town, which is freshly done up and is pretty sizable and the rent is good. We had a nice evening watching shit TV and went and got chips from the good fish& chip shop. My neice gave me a guitar she's had under her bed since she was 14 or so. Turned out to be a Westfield Strat copy, which is actually pretty good although needs new strings. Timing couldn't be more perfect since I've decided that the Telecaster copy I built doesn't work as the parts never really gelled together. That was really nice of her.

Not much else. Been waking up too early and not getting back to sleep so feeling qutie tired in the evenigns.

Eye improving, hopefully it should be back to normal tomorrow.

Such fun

Today was OK. Foot back to normal but my right eye is playing up, watering all the time. It doesn't hurt, just keeps making me look weepy which was embarrassing when I was complaining to a user about my workload delaying the job I had to do for him and it looked like I was getting over-emotional about it. Not sure he believed me when I tried to explain my eye was playing up.

This evening was fun. Went to Andy and Maz's and had FISH PIE which was actually really nice. I fixed the Enter key back onto their laptop and lent the first two Discworld books to Andy. After that we played with phones - Maz has the new Galaxy S II and we found that it was possible to make the talking dog and cat apps talk to each other, which while fun, led to a horrendous feedback loop of screeching despair that sounded like something from a horror movie overlaid with our hysterical laughter. It was funny but rather disturbing.

Not much else to report except fuck the riots, it's utter bullshit.