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.