Breakthrough

Thursday was a good day due to a breakthrough with the backup system. I think now we know what's been going on and how to fix it, so that was good.

Friday night was meeting up with loads of people from work and Rob and Em for Avengers Assemble. We went to Cheshire Oaks and were all able to get food in Frankie and Benny's which was made interesting by all the staff wearing superhero costumes, some rather tight-fitting. The movie was absolutely aweome - despite seeing quite a few of the previous ones, I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but it was really good. The trip home was made eventful by being followed by a police car and eventually stopped. I think they were just bored and the Prelude was probably tempting - I think they were hoping for a drunk boy racer.

Today has been a lazy fat day. I watched some more BSG and made the discovery that I only have half the fourth season, bah. Still fun though. Then I did some more on Dragon Age. Lots more battles and fights and a rather curious plan that involved shagging one of the player's companions for some complicated and possibly dubious reason. Then the ultimate boss fight which has proven hard and I've had to ragequit several times to protect my controller. All of this was assisted by snacks which is why today has been fat.

RAAAAARGH

Worse day in work.

Went to car auction tonight with Rob, Steve, and Rob P from badminton. Not to buy but to see how it worked. Some real bargains there, with some things being remarkably cheap. A 2004 Mazda6 diesel went for not much over £800 and a 2001 Mondeo V6 Ghia X went for just £350. Really itneresting to see how it all worked and what was going through.

Rob P pointed out that finding something cheap, good and economical is probably going to be hard, so I'm keeping an open mind, especially since a couple of Rav4 and similar things went through for reasonable money, which would probably be more suitable. From what he said, even his 2002 BMW 320i (that was £1500 from the auction) is managing better fuel economy than the Prelude, so who knows.

Not much else to report really.

Rargh

Bad day in work.

Came home in no mood to do anything, so I started watching Battlestar Galactica season 4 which I've had for AGES. Before I knew it, I'd watched four episodes.

Landsmeet

A decent day despite crazy unpredictable weather ranging from warm sunshine to outright hailstorms.

I still haven't found my copy of Robots and Empire so I started reading It again. Weird book and long. After a lazy morning I headed down to Rob and Em's with lunch and snacks. I was expecting them to be in the midst of sanding the floor but due to it being a very late one last night Rob in particular was a little worse for wear. Still, a sandwich and some jaffa cakes perked him up and we hung out for a bit which was nice.

After that I came home and attempted to recreate a German style potato salad I had in Berlin while we were at the Olympic Stadium. It's not potato salad as we have it, as it is warm with different stuff in it and was really tasty. I used a recipe I found online and it came out pretty close although a bit stodgier. There was rather a lot of it though so I've put some aside for lunch in work.

Tried to reimage the M17x with mirrrored disks instead of the striped disks it has now but ran into problems since Windows backup doesn't like restoring to a smaller partition. There's a way around it but I got bored and put it back how it was for now. I was curious to see if there as any performance difference. Not that I have any complaints when it comes to the performance of the machine, except it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to come out of hibernation. I wish SSDs would drop in price - I'd put them in all my machines if I could.

Played some more Dragon Age and reached the Landsmeet which seems to be the penultimate bit before the final battle, which was interesting and fun in the way it played out. In a way I wish Mass Effect, in particular 3, had been more like Dragon Age, which seems to be a much more complicated game than ME did. It's been over a year since I started playing it, so it really does feel like an epic adventure is finally drawing to a close. I keep thinking back over the game and there's definitely been a lot of interesting stuff in it and different places to explore. So far I've logged 40 hours or so on it - about the same as my first ME playthrough, but that I did in four days. Despite preferring sci-fi settings over fantasy, I've really enjoyed Dragon Age.

Back to work tomorrow. I have a feeling it's going to be an interesting day.

Randomness

Went to my Dad's this morning, which was good. Again didn't do much except hang out and chill. We did however scour Ebay and other places for used cars since we are in agreement that no matter how nice the Prelude is, and it is, it is just not suitable for me. It's too thirsty, too low, and you can't get a bike in it. Nothing really came up except a Honda HR-V which would be suitable for the track but probably thirsty as it's a 1.6 litre petrol, or a Civic estate, again thirsty as it's a 1.6. It's frustrating because I'm very impressed with the Prelude build quality but Honda only recently started doing diesels. Oh well.

Also my Dad asked me to be the executor on his will along with my cousin. He was inspired to do this after his sister-in-law died unexpectedly recently, which was something of a shock to everyone. It was a slightly sobering moment really.

This evening it was the badminton club meal which I was invited to although I haven't been for a couple of years. It was Indian, and I had something new, a king prawn bhussi, which was really delicious. I came home a bit early though since I've been a bit tired and under the weather. Although I felt much better once I'd eaten. I know my diet is shit but I think it could be causing me more problems than I realise.

Rob from badminton heard about my car woes and suggested hitting the auctions. Before  I quite realised it, it was all arranged that him, me, Rob and and Steve are going to the auctions on Tuesday evening to take a look. Given that I seem to make dreadful choices in cars when left to my own devices, it'll be good to have more people to advise me. Also, I could take the Prelude there to be sold off.

Weirdness

It's been a fairly curious week really. Work has been a nightmare after the initial good start on Monday. The backup system became more and more truculent and needs more work. I'm not normally one for listening to music in work but I found a spare pair of headphones and have been listening to music to try and help me concentrate. Oddly, goa trance type stuff seems to be working well at the moment, like this or this.

Yesterday was a day out of work to go an event hosted by an external company who provides support to the backup system. Except we don't like them. It was in the Manchester Hilton hotel, in something called Cloud 23, which had awesome views over the city. Also the scariest urinal ever since the toilet had a floor to ceiling window right next to it. The presentation was surprisingly amateurish and not really very promising. However it was interesting meeting the technician I've been dealing with for a year face to face. I'd always imagined him being my age, but he turned out to be rather older and rather mad professorish, which was interesting.

Otherwise I've been watching South Park on DVD and playing Dragon Age. It annoyed me yesterday with a stupid protect someone mission, some guy who decides to accompany you into a haunted orphanage, even though he has damaged eyes and can barely see. Otherwise though I've been quite enjoying it. It's got plenty of varied stuff going on.

The car had the suspension sorted out on Wednesday, which is good.

Eaten like shit this week, the only good thing is that I didn't have any full fat Coke.

Holy crap, it survived

Went into work to find the backup system had survived me being away. And, even on top of that, some of the issues with it were fixed, amazing. So it was a fairly typical day of tape movement.

Quiet evening today. I was naughty and got an Indian on the way home, partly though because I was curious to see compare their korma to the overly spicy effort I made yesterday. Then gave the dog a bath because he stank for some reason. A wet greyhound is probably one of the more pathetic sights you can see.

Forgot to mention that Rob and I played Saints Row 3 for the first time in a while. After the crushing depression fest that was Mass Effect 3, it was great to dress our characters in ludicrous clothes and go on a massive rampage. It's utterly stupid, but such good fun. I remember while I was in Berlin I had a weird crossover dream where Mass Effect merged with Saints Row to create a sort of open world sci-fi game where Shepard became more cockney (Oi, you fucking Salarian cunt!) with every renegade decision. Weird, but hilarious in retrospect.

Car for sale in work, a 2002 Vectra 2.0 DTi. I liked my old Vectra so I was briefly tempted until I read that model of Vectra has problems with the suspension, which was proven by someone else in work who has a Signum (basically the same) and it has problems all the time. So not the car for me as the track is very punishing.

Reached the point where I need to read Robots and Empire, but I can't find it, argh. Hate it when that happens.

It burns...

I made another curry recipe today, which was supposed to be a chicken and pistachio nut korma. It was quite straightforward but preparing the pistachios was fiddly as anything. The bit where I went wrong was not being able to find green chillis as the recipe demanded and substituting red chillis. I thought this would be OK but I underestimated the difference in spiciness. It still turned out OK, but bloody spicy for a korma. The recipe also had cinnamon in it, so I made cinnamon toast later on, which I've not had for years, possibly decades. Delicious as I love cinnamon.

Did a lot of tidying up today, scrapped some old laptops I had lying around that were beyond repair and made some space, which is always a nice feeling. My aim is to make some room to start a workout routine I used to do in 2007, which worked out pretty well. Watched some South Park as well and listened to music.

Found out today that the Prelude was originally fitted with 14" steel wheels, which would be right given it's the base model. I compared the tyre size with the 17" tyres on it, and there's only 7mm difference in overall size, so that's good. It's still going OK. I found out the people who live nearby have named it The Farter. Harsh, but accurate.

Not much else to report. Work tomorrow, oh well.

Back to harsh reality

The trip back on Friday was OK apart from some issues at the airport. Unlike Liverpool, they were much less flexible about when you could drop bags off, but luckily we ended up being the first to drop a bag off and first through security. After that, it was basically plain sailing. It was odd to think it was the last ever time I'd fly out of that terminal as it's pretty unlikely I'd be going back before the transition to BBI on the 3rd June.

It was a really good holiday and it was really fun to explore the city with Andy and Maz. Some stuff I'd seen before, but quite a few things we did were new to me too, so that was really good. Hard to believe it had been a year since I last went really.

Not much else to report. Today has been a lazy day although I took the dog for a walk. It started out in warm sunshine and ended in freezing hail, not fun. Will repeat tomorrow since the more I walk, the better my hips feel. At the end of Monday in Berlin they were really painful, but they got better as the week went by. Then it'll be back to work on Monday, boo. Oh well.

Rewatched Super 8 today as well. I like that movie a lot, but it does lose it's way a little at the end. Good fun though.

Berlin

Updating this from Kindle due to flaky hotel wifi. In a way the Kindle browser is a pleasingly retro ecperience in these days of flashy tablets but the keyboard sucks balls when it comes to typing anything more than a quick search.

The drive to the airport was a bit slow due to rain and spry and annoying caravans ut once we got to the airport the whole pplace was worryingly quiet. We got on to plane and everyting went amoothly. the first evening we went for a meal at the legendary Fliegender Tisch which is small cosy and has exceptionally awesome food. Kind of Italian with a German twist.

Argh this keyboard. Bullet points

Tuesday

Walked up Frankfurter Allee and Karl Marx Allee to Alexanderplatz

Had lunch in the Galeria Kaufhof before continuing to Unter den Linden

Had a Currywurst in a place there then drooled over Bentleys

Looked at the Reichstag which you mow need an appointment for

Went to Hauptbahnhof and then hotel rest before lunch in the west.

Wednesday

Met up with my brother nd had lunch before goimg to the amazing Fassbender amd Rausch chocolate shop.

Looed at a part of the Wall with stuff about it

Cant type any .ore this keyboard is too awful

Holidays at last

I'm not sure why I didn't update this past week. Not much been going on really. Work was mostly the same, still making tapes come back from the safe. It's been largely successful but there's still a way to go until it's stable again. Badminton on Thursday was good, helped by some rather delicious beef stew made by Rob.

I made curry again, still determined to get it right, and this time I added some creamed coconut towards the end, which made it rather korma like. It was certainly pretty tasty anyway.

Yesterday took the time to head over to my Dad's as I hadn't been for a while. We didn't really do much, just chilled out, but it was nice to see them.

Today was great, headed down to Rob and Em's with everyone to see Jane and Wes and meet 6-week old Xander for the first time. He's a cute baby but the poor little guy was having a bit of a crochety day and some of his cuteness does go away when he's purple and screaming with rage. It was great to see him and Jane and Wes again.

Berlin on Monday with Andy and Maz. I'm a bit worried about the airport since it's Easter but hopefully it won't be too bad if we get there nice and early. It's been a year since I was last there so I'm really looking forward to it.

Still not feeling like playing Mass Effect at all. I was expecting to be well through a replay of ME3 by now, but I just don't feel like it. Bioware have announced an Extended Cut DLC to expand and clarify the ending, but probably not change it from the sound of things. We'll see, I've decided I'm a little concerned at how much of myself I put into the ME series really so distancing myself from it for a while is probably a good thing.

I did however fire up Dragon Age again the other day, but got frustrated when I had to fight my way through a dungeon and it basically went along the lines of spotting some enemies then RARGH DEAD. I tried a few times but it kept doing the RARGH DEAD thing. However this evening I tried it again with a different approach and got past it, only for my character to be double crossed by the queen he was rescuing and arrested. This led to him having to escape from a jail cell in only his underwear. This was after I had explored a huge mansion and walked into a room to find a guard getting a blowjob from a housekeeper. I always thought it was odd how Dragon Age had a fully working brothel, same-sex relationships, the ability to wander round in underpants and even an implied foursome if you play it right, while Mass Effect was downright prudish by comparison.

Oh well. One more day and then it's off to Berlin. Can't wait.

Tapes, cars and curry

Not much to report.

The dreadful noises made by the Prelude on Saturday turned out to be an antiroll bar link. It costs £12. However, it also needs a new ball joint on the upper suspension arm. This means a new arm. Total cost £181. Since the parts are a bugger to get hold of though, it's not going to be done until after Easter. As I'm going to Berlin next week with Andy and Maz, this works out nicely and it's going in to have the work done on the 18th, which happily coincides with payday. Fortunately it's drivable, even with the dreadful noises that emanate from the suspension.

Work was OK again today. Made more progress on sorting out the tape madness. I think it's coming back into line. Feeling a lot happier about it all now.

Made curry again today, the basic one that you have to get right before making the others in the book. It came out nice although I still think I'm too skimpy with the spices. But I might try another one soon.

About to embark on a read of the Robots -> Foundation stories by Asimov. It's been years since I read them, so I dug the books out so I can read them all in order. It's weird how science fiction can become old fashioned though.

Had a really weird dream last night. I was in work, and I trashed my work laptop. Then I was walking past the office in the snow, while worrying about the laptop, and noticed that there were some large plants that were flowering laptops, so that was OK as I could just pick a new one.

Force feedback

Yesterday was another Wii night with the old gang I used to work with. Calling it a Wii night is increasingly inaccurate since the Wii never gets a look in any more, it's all about the PS3. This time it was spent examining the joys of a high-end Logitech steering wheel, which was actually pretty good fun.

We also ended up playing Fifa in both Street and whatever the latest version is forms. Street was actually quite good fun, much more simplified. I can't play standard Fifa, it does my head in. Even if I didn't loathe football, I can never get the hang of what player I'm supposed to be controlling, and which button does what, so I usually end up running in random directions and falling over when the ball comes near me.

It also consisted of vast amounts of food, plenty of snacks and a really good Chinese.

After getting home today it's been a fairly quiet day. I haven't really done much at all except take it easy. Bit of a waste as it was a lovely day out there.