Lungs of despair

A slightly annoying day. I had to shut down my gutted Latitude E4300 that's been running ESXi for a few months without any issues, as I had to move it. When I turned it back on though, it failed to boot, so I had to drag a monitor over and hook it up, and it was complaining about a corrupted file.

In the afternoon I headed down to my sister's place for a small bash she'd arranged. It was a very busy house though, since her fiance's brother and sister were there with their respective children, who greeted me by surrounding me while bouncing up and down and shrieking at the tops of their voices. It was good to see them all though, and it was a nice afternoon.

I didn't sleep well last night, spent quite a lot of it alternating between feeling feverish and cold. It wasn't good. After I got up and started moving around a bit, I felt better, but this evening my chest is starting to hurt and I can feel a cough coming on. This always happens when I get a cold, which is really annoying because it will interfere with my exercise if it goes on too long.

One thing I need to work on next year is keeping in touch with people better. I feel like I seem to have managed to isolate myself a bit, which probably isn't helped by my slightly depressive mood. Being forever single doesn't seem to be helping either.

The Latitude E4300 is being a pain. I think I'm going to have to do a fresh install of ESXi onto the USB drive and then see if I can import the VMs from the datastores on the hard drives. Fun fun. What a thrilling life I do lead.

That's it for another year...

Christmas was OK. As usual I split the day between my parents, heading over to my Dad's place for lunch and the Queen's speech.

Since then it's been fairly uneventful. Steve has lent me Stargate SG-1 season 2 so I've started that and I'm also now on South Park season 5, so I'm flipping between those, which is an interesting contrast. I also did some side missions on GTA V that were leftover. I still think it had a pretty good campaign but now it's complete I'm not really too fussed about carrying on with it, or trying to get 100%. A colleague in work is going to borrow it on Monday anyway.

Rob and Em got me a book called Ready Player One. It's set in the future, but focused around the 80's. In particular video games and that sort of thing, so it's pretty much the geekiest book of all time. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it.

Also been noodling around on the bass after that band I saw last weekend inspired me to play it more often. My amp is shit though, if I wasn't trying to be financially sensible and reduce clutter I'd look into getting a new one.

I got a reply from the computer museum that I offered my old stuff for. They want a fair few things, but not all of it. They have a drop off point in Stoke-on-Trent, which isn't too far away, but they want it boxed, which is somewhat annoying. I'm going to sort the stuff out tomorrow and try and work out how many boxes it'll take and I suppose put a distress call out on Facebook for boxes or something. Not sure what to do with the rest of it that they don't want. I'll probably stick it on Ebay as a job lot for collection only - I don't care if it only goes for a tenner, the aim is to get rid of it all.

Started to feel rough last night. There's been a few colds going around and I started to hope I'd managed to avoid them this time, but apparently not. So far I don't feel all that bad, just a bit bunged up and achy.

For no apparent reason my left knee started twinging a little on Monday, and by Christmas day it was incredibly painful, making walking and driving difficult. The last time I did anything strenuous was the Friday before Christmas at the gym, and if that was the cause, I don't know why it took a few days to start aching. It's almost OK again now though, but it was really annoying because Andy suggested going up Moel Famau on Boxing Day, and the weather that day would have been perfect. My knees have been fine since I stopped playing badminton in September, so I was hoping it was the stress from badminton that was messing them up - but apparently not.

Not being able to move around much and eating my own bodyweight in chocolate and other crap has left me feeling pretty dreadful on the whole, so I went out shopping today and got some reasonably healthy food.

My face has gone all fucked up and flaky again, which I've noticed tends to happen if my diet is bad for more than a few days. Apples never tasted so good! Need to get exercising again too. Looking forward to the new Run for Fun course in January, although it's going to be quite different from the last time as it's now winter.

Back to work on Monday, but I'm hoping it'll be nice and quiet.

That time of year again...

It's that time of year again. It must be hell working in retail for Christmas, when everyone suddenly behaves as though the apocalypse has arrived and cram into the shops, fight over parking spaces and generally behave rather opposite to what the whole thing is about.

Oh well.

Not much to report really. Last week wasn't great for exercise - slept badly the night before circuits and so I didn't end up going, although I did get to the gym on the Wednesday and Friday. I weighed myself and depressingly I've put on a kilo, although that wasn't too unexpected as it was The Time of Chocolate in the Office, and my diet was suffering accordingly.

On Saturday it was the surprised birthday of an old colleague of mine from my last job, which was good. He was completely unaware of it and it was a really good evening. I beat a hasty exit just as the disco was due to start, a whole room full of caterwauling drunken females was a little offputting. I nipped into a local pub where a guy I know was playing with his band. He sings and plays bass, and is pretty good. Not really a proper thing, just playing for a few people, and they were a guitarist down, but it was good.

On Sunday I just ended up lazing around and finishing off the first season of Stargate SG-1. It was OK, a bit rubbish in places, but I reminded myself how crap TNG was at first and tried to give it a fair trial. It picked up towards the end and I've now got the 2nd season off Steve and will see how that goes.

Last night was Andy's Xmas Eve-eve bash, which was good fun. Lots of food, chatter, games and various entertainment. I also took 20 minutes to pop over to see my sister and drop off her Christmas present, which was nice.

My mood has been a bit random recently. Some days feeling OK, other days feeling like complete shit and beating myself up again for no particular reason. Now that the vast majority of people I know are married or now have partners, it can get a little depressing and on bad days, I can feel like I'm being marginalised, although I know that's a daft thing to think. Not sure what the new year will bring, but the way it's going at the moment, something is going to have to give, and I don't know what the consequences will be.

Decided to reevaluate my computers. I've come to the conclusion that having a stupidly powerful gaming laptop (Alienware M17x R2) is rather pointless if you never actually use it for games, and its not exactly portable either. Since I'm intrigued by them, I found a good deal on Ebay for a Surface Pro, so I'm going to see if that will be suitable for general use once it arrives. I thought about Android tablets, but truth be told, I've gone off Android a bit. I don't mind it on my phone, but it doesn't feel like something you can do proper work on, whereas the Surface can be a tablet, but then you can hook up a monitor and keyboard and it's suddenly a proper computer.

If the Surface Pro does work out, I'll stick the M17x on Ebay while it's still hopefully got some value. I'm going to keep the Asus G73, which admittedly also a gaming laptop, but it's not quite so OTT as the Alienware. Randomly I found out that it has four memory slots, so it can have a fuckton of RAM in it too. If the M17x does go, I'll put it's 16gb RAM and 256gb SSD into the G73. The idea with the G73 is to use it to run virtual machines - I need to try and learn more about Windows Server and Active Directory, amongst other things.

Saturday of hmm

Went to my Dad's today, and spent the day hanging out there. It's been a good day, although the weather has been horrible, stupidly windy and later on rainy as well. We hung out and I was able to head out and get my Mum's Christmas present, and after that it was a lazy day, just chatting and watching bad TV.


Halfway through Strictly Come Dancing (not my choice, my Dad's wife watches it), it struck me that I could either have been going to Belgo's with Rob and Em and the southern crown tonight, or going to see the new Hobbit movie. Belgo's didn't happen because this time there was a pricey hotel involved and I thought it would be a bit much to do that and Berlin in the same month - financially sensible but rather more depressing than I expected to be left out of it when the time actually came. The Hobbit didn't happen due to a complicated set of circumstances. However I haven't seen the first one, and after seeing the trailer for the second one, it left me cold. It just looked so ridiculously Hollywoodified and over the top and I'm still finding it faintly ridiculous that they've made it into three movies. Still, it was good to see my Dad and I'm glad I spent the day there in the end.

Yesterday while in work, one of my colleagues and I resorted to YouTube videos to listen to over headphones to avoid the Christmas dross that someone is somehow allowed to play in the office. Somehow I discovered that Sepultura covered Firestarter by the Prodigy a couple of years ago, and it's surprisingly good. Then we discovered a band called Rotting Christ. Unsurprisingly it's a black metal band, and I don't normally go for that sort of thing at all, but their latest album is somehow strangely compelling. It has the screamy vocals that I'm not too keen on, but the music is excellent. 

Decided I need to work harder on clearing the house out with the eventual aim of moving next year. It's funny how things change. A few years ago I was happy to collect vintage computers and play with them, but now I could give the ones I have left away without a second thought. I still like to play with emulators and the like, but physical hardware is just something to get in the way and be annoying now. There are a few computer museums dotted around the UK - I'm tempted to make up a list and see if any of them want the stuff I have. But there's a lot more crap as well. It seems like an impossible task sometimes.

The 206 isn't much use for this kind of stuff either. I wish I could have kept the old Honda Accord and put it on a limited mileage insurance policy or something - that was great for lugging stuff to the tip or whatever, but when I got the 206 I had nowhere to keep it. Oh well.

My state of mind has improved a bit, I was not in a good place for a while back in October and November, but I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about things. I still have my problems but they don't seem quite so insurmountable as before. At least for now anyway.

The Office of Temptation

Last weekend was OK, spent much of Sunday catching up on things that people have lent me and I've been crap at watching. I watched Once Upon a Time in America, which Andy lent me a while back. I really liked that, and was amazed at how long it turned out to be. I didn't read the running time, and just watched it all in one go. Very good.

After that I've been watching the first season of Stargate SG-1 that Steve lent me ages ago. I wasn't sure at first after the pilot, but so far it's been quite good. I'm also conscious that things can generally be a bit crappy at first so I'm trying to give it a good chance.

This week has been OK. Monday evening was Circuits again. It was a bit hard after missing it last week, and somehow I really screwed up some muscles in my thighs. I was all set to go to the gym last night, but my legs were so stiff I just couldn't do it. Not in a bad way but in a holy fuck that was hard exercise way. I had to go to the gym tonight instead, but fortunately had a really good workout, despite feeling tired and sluggish before I went.

Every day this week someone has brought a tub of Quality Street into the office, which is a bit frustrating when I'm trying to crack down on my eating again. I try to not eat any and eat apples or bananas instead, which mostly sort of works. I weighed myself on the scales at home the other day and it came back with 90kg, so I'm back where I started. Frustrating. I keep telling myself the scales are off or it's new muscle rather than fat but that doesn't really convince me.

The running club is starting a new Run for Fun course in January. I've decided I'm going to do it again and try and get back into running, and two colleagues in work have said they will do it too. I've been reading quite a bit about running, including the blog of one of the Olympic marathon runners and it's really interesting. The fitness required at that level is pretty amazing.

Despite my lack of weight loss, I at least feel a lot fitter these days, so that's good. I look back to less than a year ago when I couldn't even go up the stairs in work without feeling like I was going to die or even go on the cross trainer at the gym at a sensible level for more than a few minutes, and I know I've improved on that score. Just wish I could lose some weight.

Bit tired now, I had one of those annoying things where I woke up at 3am and my mind started racing and worrying about things. Took a while to get back to sleep again. I read for a bit and things but I think it was eventually listening to Motley Crue that lulled me to sleep again.

Berlin fun

It's been a good couple of weeks on the whole.

The time in Berlin was really good. It's an odd one because I don't feel like I did an awful lot, but at the same time I don't feel shortchanged. The journey over there was fine, had one of the easiest drives to the airport, and the airport itself was very quiet. I made it to the hotel without any problems, although I did have to instruct a large group of fellow travellers how to validate their train tickets because they were very confused.

The first day was spent mainly just taking a long walk with my brother. The most notable thing was finding some of the construction work where they are linking the U5 and U55 subway lines. They've got lots of information about it, and a little mockup of the tunnel borer that you can go inside and view various videos and things.

There is a man in there and my brother made the mistake of asking him if the project would be completed on time. The man got rather upset and said of course it would be, whyever not? Then my brother mentioned the airport fiasco, and that was it. We were treated to semi lecture/rant about how that was a completely different project, and that Germany has the best engineers on the planet. All in German of course, but even I got the gist of it through sheer force of personality!

On Saturday it was the Eisbrecher gig, which was the whole point of me going. However before that, I met up with my brother again and his girlfriend to go and see the Latin American Ballroom Dancing World Championship. Not really my thing at all but it was indoors and free, at least for the preliminary rounds. It was in the Max Schmeling Hall, which I'd never been to before, but found OK. Before it got going, I went to get a drink, and somehow one of the employees of the place got me to help a large slightly mentally handicapped woman down to the VIP area, which was awkward since she didn't speak any English, and the judges had no idea who I was.

After all that, the dancing was actually pretty good. I was sort of expecting Strictly shite, but it these were professionals and it was actually pretty interesting and fun to watch. We left after the first heats and went to get some food, finding a nice Thai place in Prenzlauer Berg, where I had some crispy tofu with peanut sauce.
That evening it was off to the Eisbrecher gig. It was in a place called Huxley's Neue Welt, which isn't huge. They had a support band called A Life Divided, who also appear to be German but sing in English. They were actually pretty good. Eisbrecher themselves were fantastic, doing a really good selection of songs. Their stage presence was excellent. I remembered the last time I went to a gig and took earplugs, which was definitely a good thing.

Sunday was spent wandering around the city again and doing a bit of shopping for people at home, before meeting up with my brother again for a look at the Christmas markets before he went to a classical piano concert. The markets are pretty good, so many foods to try and things like that. The exception is the horrific animatronic singing reindeer at Alexanderplatz.

The last day wasn't too bad. I had already decided that I wasn't paying €7.50 for the hotel breakfast, so each morning I'd head round the corner to a bakery and get a couple of croissants or something for €1.50.
That morning I put my suitcase in a locker at Alexanderplatz and got breakfast from the Christmas market. This consisted of a truly huge piece of ham in a bowl of sauerkraut, and then something called a Quarkballchen, sort of like a doughnut but nicer.

The flight back was OK, and enlivened by a truly incredible sunset from the plane, which sadly my phone camera didn't capture in the slightest.

This week has been all right otherwise. Always a bit depressing going back to work though. Not much else to say really. I watched Die Hard for the first time, after Rob found it in his car - I'd borrowed it from Steve months ago. I really enjoyed it.

This morning I went down to my sister's new house and helped her move some stuff. I vaguely knew where the house was but I was really surprised at how nice it was inside. They did well with that one I think.
Then this afternoon I watched The Pirate Planet episode of Doctor Who. I haven't seen much of the classic series, but Steve recommended this one because it was written by Douglas Adams. I really enjoyed it, and it was fun to see his influence on it. I've also been watching the fourth season of South Park, which I've never seen before. I really like South Park, some of the writing is very clever.

I went to the gym on Thursday after a rest day on Wednesday. I managed to eat relatively sensibly in Berlin, and all the walking I did should have balanced out any food mishaps. The gym was OK on Thursday and I did more on the treadmill this time, although I'm still too scared to actually run on the damn thing. I went to weigh myself after the workout though, and the scales came up with 'Error' so I got off and went home. Apparently I should have got on again and they'd have been OK.

Yesterday was a slightly fat day in work, annoyingly. Because I've been eating relatively well, I can definitely feel it if I eat too much at lunch. I feel bloated and lethargic all afternoon, which is not good.

Berlin again...

Last weekend was good. The Saturday was spent at Rob G's with a bunch of geeky friends watching a load of Doctor Who episodes in preparation for the 50th anniversary episode. We managed to watch episodes with all the Doctors right through. It was a fat day too, an astonishing amount of snacks and cake, and then when the big moment arrived we had take away chips too, amazing. The 50th anniversary episode was really good too, really well done, although it wasn't quite what I expected.

Sunday was set to be a quiet day watching movies but then Rob called me to say they were going to watch the 50th anniversary episode since they hadn't seen it yet, and so I went down there and we watched that, some rugby and the Adventures in Time and Space programme, which was interesting. Also had Chinese but Em and I split a portion between us to try and mitigate the damage. I've been eating quite sensibly for a few weeks now so suddenly pigging out unsettled it rather and it's taken a little while to recover.

The week so far has been reasonable. Today was the last working day as I'm off to Berlin tomorrow. No real objectives in mind except to see the Eisbrecher concert on Saturday. Should be fun, if cold.

Not much else to report really.

Holiday cut short

Last week was OK. Went to the gym a couple of times, and then it was time to take over the responsibility of the dog. I had to take leave on Friday until this coming Wednesday.

I was gutted that I couldn't make it to the rugby league on Saturday, especially after Rob managed to get them into the corporate box. However I was able to watch the Wales Argentina match live. I went down to see them afterwards but they couldn't get it on iPlayer, so it was a bit ironic that I saw it when they couldn't.

Then on Sunday, one of the systems in work didn't come back after I had to reboot it as part of the process to set up a replica of it on the new hardware it was due to be moved to. Due to the remote access system not being very stable, I had to go into work today to sort it and and migrate the system to the new hardware. I don't know why the system didn't come up again - it must be some sort of hardware failure as it refused to see either of the mirrored boot disks. Anyway, after a stressful few hours, it was up and running with very little issue.

I had to take the dog with me though, and although he doesn't mind being left in the car, I had to take him out for a little walk at some point, and because people in work had heard a lot about him, I took him in to meet them. He was OK for a while but wouldn't settle down because of all the new people, so I had to put him back in the car again. Poor old boy.

Circuits was quite hard tonight, partly because I woke up so early to get into work at a good time. Also because Rob G and Andy decided to turn the running station into a sprint station. I was able to keep up for a little while but had to give up. However I've been watching some Youtube videos on how to improve your running technique, which I think have helped.

Back into work on Wednesday, hopefully will have a nice quiet day tomorrow.

Got a new project machine, a used Asus G73 off Ebay. It was spares or repair because it was missing the hard drives and was therefore a fraction of the price it would have been otherwise. I was interested in it because it was the other serious contender to when I bought the big Alienware. I've put my old 128gb SSD and a 500gb hard drive into it,and so far it works fine. It's similar in spec to the big Alienware, but only has a single graphics card and fewer ports. However it does have a nicer keyboard and four memory slots, and the cooling system seems nicely implemented. Not quite sure what I'll do with it yet.

A warm winter is coming...

...because I had the car fitted with winter tyres yesterday. It had that done and the tracking, and it feels a heck of a lot better now. The tyres are strictly all season tyres rather than dedicated winter ones, but they are certainly a lot better than the shite tyres that were on it before.

The rest of yesterday was quiet as I didn't sleep well, although I did spend a bit of time troubleshooting the dead 2DS I got off Ebay for a pittance. It had been dropped and didn't turn on. It was a simple fix in the end, the shock had bent the battery connector off the board and broken the solder. It was just a case of pushing it back and sorting out the solder with a quick dab of the soldering iron. Works perfectly now, even if shaken hard while it's on. It was interesting seeing how the 2DS is put together. Despite it feeling quite sturdy, once it's apart it does feel cheaply made. I still like the ergonomics though.

Saturday was good, went to my Dad's for the start of the day and then down to Andy's to watch the rugby. After the rugby we sorted out the seats for the EasyJet flight to Berlin next year and then had a look at some of the old photos from when we went to Madrid and Berlin way back when. A thoroughly pleasant evening.

Last week was the beginning of an attempt to sort out eating and exercise with some success. I definitely felt better after a couple of days of eating less and having fruit when I'd have been scoffing chocolate or something. The Costa is a pain though, the chai lattes are so tempting.

Circuit training tonight was hard, but satisfying. I've been reading the blog of one of the marathon entrants in the Olympics last year, and it's insane what it's like at that kind of level.

Things

The weekend was good fun. Saturday was a busy day. I went to the gym in the morning after failing to go on Friday, which was a good workout. Then it was meeting up with Amy and others from Proact for a meal in Wetherspoons to hand over the present we got for Pam who is due to give birth in about 8 weeks time. It was a really nice time. We hung out at Amy's for a bit afterwards. With three cats and a baby it's a busy house! After that it was off to Rob G's for a Halloween bash, which was good fun. Not everyone dressed up, but it was fun to see those who did. Good times.

Yesterday it was off to watch Wales vs USA in the Rugby League championships. I think it's the first time I've been to a live league game since we went to see Wrexham vs Leeds, and for whatever reason the crowd seemed very rowdy and footbally, which put me off rather. However the atmosphere was pretty good yesterday but it was a shame that Wales played really badly and lost quite epically. Oh well. I find League quite easy to follow though.

On the way home however, my car died. I think this was because I'd been saying to Rob and the others about how I was pleased with it and was considering treating it to winter tyres. It turned on the engine light and ran really badly, if it would start at all. I got it to the bottom of the track this morning and a garage has had a look. I had horrible things like injectors or fuel pump going through my head, but it turned out a connector had come loose at the top of the engine. So, all being well, I get it back tomorrow.

In other news, I have to admit I got a 2DS last week. My 3DS XL is out of action while it's being painted, and I was very intrigued by the 2DS and the reports that it's easy to hold. It's absolutely fantastic. The design may look strange, but it's mega comfy to hold, and the shoulder buttons are worth it alone. The smaller screens than the XL look better because the pixel density is higher. The only downside really is the single speaker, but headphones get around that. It's interesting to see that it's a single screen under the casing. I have to admit I really like the 3DS platform. All the shovelware makers that plagued the DS have moved onto tablet and phone games, so the 3DS has a lot fewer games, but they tend to be of better quality. People keep saying that the 99p games on phones and tablets will kill off the dedicated handheld, but I'm not so sure, since the 99p games tend to be shite novelties.

I've always been intrigued by the Mazda RX-8, not so much because it's a car I'd ever want to own, but I like the styling and the four doors that make it a bit more practical. I was somewhat stunned to discover that they are readily available for peanuts with knackered engines because being a rotary, it's very high maintenance and can be easily killed. Crazy stuff. Of course, useless for me unless you stuck it on a Land Rover chassis or something. Hmm...

I can't run

Last week was OK. Work was much as usual, although we finally got the two troublesome tape drives sorted out. One had a bad fibre cable and the other just needed a good reset or two to clear the voltage error.

There wasn't any DnD on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went for a run with Andy, which was bloody hard. I've not been out for a run in a while and it really showed. I didn't get as out of breath as I expected, but what did me in was my back and calves, which were absolutely killing me. We eventually did 3.5 miles, but there were quite a few stops and breaks. After that we met up with Rob and Em to book Berlin next year for the half marathon. I wish I could do it but the run proved to me that I'm really not fit enough, and I'm not sure 13 miles will ever be in my capability.

The weather has been shite this weekend with the storms that are going on, although we are only on the edge of it, so I've done very little. I've been plugging away at Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, which I've been playing off and on for a while now. It's a fun game, really nicely put together. For fun I hooked the 3DS up to my surround sound system, as the soundtrack if excellent.

The 3DS XL has now had the shells removed. It was a little fiddly but not too bad in the end. They've been sanded down and have the primer applied, which I'll leave to dry for a few days.

Feeling a bit dispirited at the moment, not quite sure why. I suppose it's natural to assume that you're the good guy but sometimes it's a little worrying to think you might be a complete cunt and just not realise it.

Random fun

Last week was OK in work, a bit stressful, but productive. Had to try some interesting techniques to replicate an AIX machine using the SAN, which didn't quite work but now I know what to do to make it work.

DnD on Tuesday was good fun, and Robert brought his girlfriend Chelsea to have a go. I think she enjoyed it, or she's pretty good at hiding it when she thinks we're all nutters.

Wednesday was good, day off to go to Alton Towers. The weather was not good. The forecast predicted rain between 11am and 3pm, and that's pretty much what we got. No rain until we'd pulled up in the car park and then it started. It wasn't too bad at first and we got on Rita and Thirteen easily enough. I'd never been on either and both were awesome. The acceleration in Rita is truly awesome, not least because it's so smooth. Thirteen is good too, although I won't say why on here.

The rain really kicked in at about 12:30, but fortunately we'd found a fish and chip place where we could eat undercover and watch the torrential downpour. The fish and chips were pretty good too, surprisingly. After that we went around the park doing the usual favourites. Air and Nemesis were just as good as I remember, although doing them in that order makes Air much better. The real star of the day though was the new Smiler. The theme is a little questionable but the coaster itself is mental. We went on it and then some of us went and did it again immediately afterward which made me feel a little strange for a while. The only real letdown of the day was the Nemesis Sub Terra thing, which is a nasty unpleasant scary experience and left us all somewhat traumatised.

The rest of the week was OK, had tea round at Rob and Em's on Friday evening but didn't feel up to going to the gym with Em. Instead I went yesterday, and had a good session with the place nearly to myself again. I've been really bad with eating and exercise recently so I need to get that in hand.

Today was a mixed bag. I didn't do much in the morning and then decided to play around with Duolingo on the MacBook Pro. Except the screen went black and wouldn't come back to life. I decided it was dead and took the SSD out so I could list it on Ebay. But when I came to take the picture of it, the screen worked again. By that time though I'd already wiped the SSD and since the MacBook is a complete shit to take apart, I couldn't be arsed doing any more faffing with it, so it's on Ebay anyway.

The SSD is being transferred into the M11x since it's a 256gb and it only had a 128gb one. Then I decided to test the Dell Studio laptop that Rob and Em were using, and that died a month or so ago with a garbled screen. To my surprise it powered up fine a week or so ago, so I left it running diagnostics, which it passed successfully, even though it got a little warm. Oh well. I can't think of a use for it so it'll go on Ebay too.

Due to iTunes becoming absoutely hideous to use in the latest versions, I installed Winamp. Pleasingly it still looks exactly the same as it always has done, and was a pleasant blast from the past.

Another little project is that I'm going to refinish the outer shells of my 3DS XL. I picked it up cheap because it was badly scratched, and I discovered that they are easy to remove. So the idea is to respray the shell with the chameleon paint I used on the double neck bass project. At least if it goes horribly wrong getting replacements should be easy enough.

Achy hips

Work has been a bit aggravating. The restore of the backup system was fun and interesting, although frustrating when it failed because it's a 90gb database. Typically when it failed it got to 99% complete and then ran out of disk space, so I had to shuffle the partitions around. Finally though, it worked, even in only 4gb RAM. Only the lack of a compatible tape drive stopped me from testing further. Next week is going to be...interesting, but trying not to think about it.

Last night was great, we went to see the Hitch-Hiker's Radio Show Live in Rhyl. It kind of sneaked up on us all because Andrea had booked the tickets way back in March. We were right at the front, and it was really good. The scenes were completely different from last year's version, and they had Mitch Benn playing Zaphod - it was a little jarring at first to see him alongside the others but he was excellent. After that we piled back in the car and went to the Plough to meet up with Andy and Craig from down south who was up for Alison and her Craig's wedding today.

Today has been an interesting day and I'm now feeling really tired. Also a little stuffed after eating nearly all of a pizza to myself, but I hadn't eaten anything much earlier in the day and was ravenous.

Random

Didn't sleep well last night at all, so spent much of today in that sort of fugue state where it was very hard to concentrate. A can of Red Bull got me through the morning but it was a struggle after that. I took one of the old AIX machines and shoved some spare 300gb drives in it to test a restore of the backup system. Some days I wish it ran on Intel hardware as it would be so much easier to test as there's always spare servers, but not so much POWER hardware.

Just got back from the Con Amici in Denbigh where I had a meal with my Mum, her brother and his wife, who we see about once a year. The food was very good indeed.

Went for a bike ride on Sunday with Andy. It was the first one in about three weeks and exercise in general has been a bit shit, so I wasn't expecting to do very well. However we did 26.5 miles and I felt fine, although my legs did feel it for the rest of the day and most of Monday. We are going to look into starting Circuit Training soon since it's good exercise over the winter. Running and cycling may become less of a viable option over the winter.

Once I got back home from the bike ride on Sunday I finished off the main story in GTA V. I've really enjoyed it, absolutely brilliant game. It fixed everything I didn't like about IV and brought in some fantastic features. The environment is superb, it looks and feels fantastic, the cars handle well and the multiple character feature added so much to the game.

Later that evening, Rob and I tried the online, but it was less impressive. Being dumped into a public session just led to you constantly being killed by the usual dickheads, and a private session didn't really have much to do. But it's early days yet, and I suppose you'd expect GTA online to just be chaos. One thing that is a fantastic feature in the Saints Row series is that everything in the game can be played co-op.

I've now lent my copy of GTA V to Rob G in case I decided to delete the save file and start again, since I've now realised that I didn't make full use of the stock market at the right point.

Feeling mega tired now, hope I sleep properly tonight.

The Norwegian Connection

Last weekend was spent at my Dad's with his wife having various relatives over. First was her brother-in-law with his daughter and her family from Birmingham way, then there was her grandaughter with her fiance and daughter from Norway. It was a busy but good couple of days. Then yesterday I had a day off to go and meet the rest of the Norway contingent, which was interesting. One of them plays bass so I took the Jackson over and we had a play with it.

On Monday evening, went for the first run in ages. Em and I managed 2.2 miles at our slow pace, but the others did over 5 miles at a much better pace. I think Em and I have decided that it's unlikely that we'll be ready to do the half marathon in March, but we can still go and provide moral support to the others if they do it.

Talking of basses, the Squier Jazz and the Jackson are both ace. I really like them, not least because they are so different. The Squier is pure classic Jazz Bass, no fancy electronics, while the Jackson is much more modern and has that classic metal look, with active electronics and a surprisingly slim neck for a 5-string. Both need new strings though, the ones on the Jackson are worn out and the default Squier ones aren't very good.

I've booked a trip to Berlin to see Eisbrecher at the end of November. I wasn't going to bother due to the expensive flights, but in the end I found the hotel had a good deal on so I booked it anyway. I go on the 28th November and come back on the 3rd December.

Still really enjoying GTA V. I've not been playing it as much over the last week or so, but when I do pick it up I really have fun with it. Absolutely superb. I think the online is working now so need to give that a try too.

So far, so meh

It's been an OK week, frustrating in work, but otherwise not too bad. Unhealthy due to my Mum's birthday, which involved a Chinese takeaway, and lack of exercise so far.

GTA V has continued to impress. I'm still really enjoying it, except for the announced bug where cars can disappear. But that's only minor.

It has been suggested that we do the Berlin half-marathon next year. I'm in two minds about it - that I really want to do it and it would be great to do in a group, but then also I balk at the training through the winter and if I'm actually capable of doing it. Not sure, but it's certainly a thought.

Bass developments. I decided that while I liked the Ibanez BTB07LTD I picked up a few months ago, I wasn't keen on the 35" scale. I've ordered a new Squier Jazz Bass to replace it, which is the nice natural 70's model. It would have arrived today except they failed to deliver it. The idea is that I fund it by selling off the various other ones I have. I offered the Ibanez to a couple of people including someone in one of the buildings I used to support in work, and he suggested a swap with his Jackson 5-string bass. The intention was to cut down on the number of basses but a 5-string might be useful...

Not sure what's happening over the weekend or early next week as my Dad's wife has family coming over from Norway, but they seem hopelessly disorganised.

The Cookie Clicker is odd, but fun.

Return to San Andreas

Last weekend was the overtime. It was a busy couple of days. On Saturday we were in the office from 9am to 9pm. There was a LOT of ripping up floor tiles, shifting old servers and storage arrays, etc, and replacement of all the old orange fibre cables with nice new aqua ones. It was a remarkable faff. The Sunday was spent finishing it all off and trying to work out why two of my AIX machines wouldn't see their storage. Got them working in the end and finally it was all sorted.

Monday was frustrating in work and I was very glad when it came to Tuesday since it was the beginning of my three days off work. I went to the gym first thing to get some exercise in before coming home and finding a shiny copy of GTA V in the post box. The rest of the time until Thursday evening basically revolved solely around playing it.

Except for Wednesday, which was the Tour of Britain. I went to Andy's and we went down to the bottom of Vale Street in Denbigh and watched it go past, and then back to his house to watch it live. It was interesting watching them going along such familiar roads, and then the finish was awesome. I got a good video of them going past, but wish I'd taken my decent camera.

Back in work today, and it was an utterly wasted day given that it was originally going to be another day off. There were three things I went in to do. The AS/400 was to be migrated to a new Bladecenter, but this couldn't be done due to incorrect hardware again. The tape library had a faulty drive, but while the new drive had turned up, the engineer couldn't make it, and then the final shutdown of a rapidly becoming obsolete AIX box didn't happen, so I could have had another day off. Oh well.

I wasn't too sure about pre-ordering GTA V, but I'm glad I did. After the brown depressing experience with unlikable characters which was GTA IV, this one is back to the feel of San Andreas and I've really enjoyed it so far. It's got loads of stuff to do outside of the main missions. The environment is good as well, it looks amazing and there's loads of places to explore. So far I'm about 38% into it and really enjoying it. The multi-character thing is good too, works really well.

What's the point.

It's been an OK week. On Monday went running. Em and I did our own route and clocked up about 2.1 miles which was nearly all running, surprising both of us. Not bad after a few weeks of neglect.

Tuesday wasn't DnD due to Steve not being able to make it, so we played Super Munchkin instead. Like Magic the week before, it seems to bring the vindictive side out in people, although it could be said this is the whole point of the game.

Didn't do much Wednesday. Had good intentions to go to the gym but failed.

Today I took a flexi day as I had loads saved up and we're working over the weekend. I ended up taking the dog for a walk, which he enjoyed but struggled towards the end. He's happier pootling around the field now I think with his bad leg. After that I spent ages digging out a ditch and getting properly filthy, and then picked some apples from the mutant tree.

After that I read for a bit and then it was off to badminton for the first time in ages. We had some delicious thai green curry round at Steve's and then went to get new wiper blades for Rob's car before heading over. I haven't played in ages and the last time I did play I fucked up my knee, so between being out of practice and being cautious I played like shite.

Discovered that Eisbrecher are playing in Berlin on the 30th November. Quite tempted to go and see them but then it probably wouldn't be any fun going by myself and nobody else I know likes them. Flights are awkward around then as well, so there isn't much point thinking about it

Everything seems so pointless at the moment. Spending all day at work doing pointless shit with fuck all to look forward to when I come home. I've got three days of annual leave next week. Originally it was a single day to watch the Tour of Britain, but the other two are just for the sake of taking leave. I'll probably just end up sitting around playing GTA V since that comes out on the Tuesday. I'm assuming that I'll end up with shitloads of leave to use up by the end of the holiday period next year. I'd like to go away somewhere but it's pointless and depressing going by yourself.

I just have this worsening feeling that I've fucked my life up somewhere and I don't know what to do about it. Or if I can do anything about it.

Language fun

So far since the middle of the week it's been quiet. I spent Thursday evening taking a shedload of boxes over to Andrea's place after they have to move quite quickly and she sent a distress call out on Facebook asking for boxes. I managed to fill up the 206 almost completely with boxes and bubblewrap. It was good to see them and little James again, who has grown hugely.

Went for a solo bike ride yesterday. I set off from home doing a loop down to Denbigh and back up. The idea was to tackle some hills since from Denbigh to the Brenig is pretty much one giant hill. I'm a bit worried that the mountain bike isn't helping though, as the gearing is very low and it's much harder to stand up on the pedals properly, so it's easier just to pootle up them in bottom gear at walking pace.

After that I had a go on Fallout 3 which Will lent me and I haven't had a chance to try yet. I thought it was OK but found it a bit difficult to get into the storyline and some of the mechanics seemed quite complex.

Today has been a lazy day. I popped into town to get the stuff to make the Canadian comfort food, Poutine, although getting cheese curds is hard so I had to substitute mozarella. Anyway, it came out really nice although it's probably hard to fuck up chips with cheese and gravy. First time I've tried to make chips though and they came out nice.

The rest of the day I played around with language things and watched Star Trek and also cleaned up the 6-string bass, which despite regular use had gone all manky around the gold hardware. I'm still not sure if I like it or not because it's so heavy and the wide neck. I flip between wanting to get rid of it and rewiring it with new pickups, can never decide.

Duolingo is fun and was made easier by having an old Latitude E4300 laptop with a German keyboard. However it was running stupidly hot, so I took it apart to have a look at it and replace the thermal paste. Now Windows 8 refuses to boot on it, although I'm not sure if that's an issue with the machine or Windows has just borked itself. Seems to be Windows since it passed all the built in diagnstics. In the end I couldn't be bothered faffing with it so I put it aside for a rainy day. German is a fun language but a bit fiddly. Also looked up some Mandarin lessons for fun. Fascinating to listen to it but it's very hard.

Hopefully going to get back into running again next week. I've been really hesitant about it after my knee troubles a couple of weeks ago, but they seem fine again now.

Cycling and ghosts

Last weekend it was all about the cycling. Andy and I went for a 15 mile warm up ride on the Saturday, which was good. The mountain bike behaved fine, and the new tyres really do help it on the road. After that was off to Rhyl to catch the part of the airshow that had the Vulcan bomber, that was truly incredible to see. Amazing to think it's the only one left, and then the day after it was grounded due to a fuel leak.

After the air show we headed to Anglesey to register for the Tour de Mon. It was a long way to go for what amounted to literally a couple of minutes, but it was good to get it done and ready.

The ride itself on Sunday was great. It was really well organised with a fantastic atmosphere. The route was clearly marked and easy to follow, and the food stations were good. The automatic timing system worked as expected and within a minute of finishing I got a text with my time on it, which was impressive. The ride itself was quite hard in places and again I struggled with hills, especially on the last few miles which were against the wind. The bike was OK but I wonder if I'd have managed better on a road bike.

This week has been reasonable. Work has been OK. Monday evening was spent resting my legs. Last night wasn't DnD because Sarah couldn't make it so Steve busted out his Magic the Gathering cards, which neither Rob, Rob or I had played. It was interesting but I think it lacked the story and characterisation element that makes DnD compelling.

Tonight was going to be running but Em couldn't make it and I chickened out of going with Andy and Rob G due to my lack of speed, and so I went to the gym instead, which went well as it was nice and quiet.

Nintendo have announced the 2DS. It's been met with a variety of reactions. I actually quite like it in the end, it reminds me of the old Gameboys and it looks quite comfortable to hold. All the debate about it led me to dig out my 3DS XL and have another go on Luigi's Mansion 2, which I've really enjoyed picking up again. Good game. The 3D is used well in the cutscenes but I turn it off in the game itself as it gets in the way and my eyes don't like it. It's nice to play a game that's just fun and not 'RAH GUNS KILL'.

The car had another bit of work done. The suspension was knocking and the garage found the suspension arm bushes were so worn the arm was actually hitting the chassis. All fixed now and the tracking is spot on.

Insane in the mainframe

The bank holiday was a nice day. Went for a 27 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve, which went pretty well, although it was rather hot. Second ride on the mountain bike and it was still OK.

Yesterday was not a good day. A couple of systems had issues and I had to do a lot of troubleshooting on the main Unix server and eventually shut it down to run disk checks and restart it. Not good. Then the backup system decided it didn't like one of the tape drives any more, so that was all fun.

Today was a bit meh after all that. Although Andrea came into work who I've not seen for ages so it was good to see her and little James, who has grown lots since we last saw him.

After the trouble I've had with my knees over the last couple of weeks I've decided to play it safe this week as I don't want to risk messing them up again before the Tour de Mon on the weekend. After that I'm not sure about running. It's good exercise and I would like to be able to run further. Having said that though, last time I screwed my knee up it was playing badminton.

State of mind fluctuating.

Oh well. Wonder if it would be any better if I'd started exercising earlier on in life. Who knows. Who cares.

Good / bad / indifferent / ???

The 5k went OK. It was not easy. I had to walk a little bit after the first hill, and then got a really bad stich on the last stretch. At the end I wasn't sure if I was going to have a drink, puke, or pass out. Possibly all three.

To get by without the road bike, my Dad and I set up my mountain bike with some Schwalbe slick tyres, some bar ends and the SPD pedals. The bike had a proper outing a couple of weeks ago with the Denbigh Harriers on a social ride, and although the others were much fitter and on proper road bikes I didn't get all that left behind. It was actually really good fun and the bike rode a lot better than I expected.

Running hasn't been going well since. I went to the gym last Tuesday and did a workout, and then on Wednesday tried to go for a run and my knees were shagged. It's only today when I was up at Kirkham visiting my cousin that they finally settled down. I was all set to give up on running completely on Thursday since they were pretty bad. I'm not sure if I need to go quite that far, but I'm going to be a little more cautious about my knees in general since they seem a bit fragile.

Bike ride tomorrow with Andy and Steve. Need to get some miles in due to the Tour de Mon on this coming Sunday, which is starting to feel a little scary. Can't believe it came around this quickly.

Not much else to report really. In a slightly fragile state of mind. Tired of how my life is at the moment and so utterly helpless to do anything about it. Almost enough to just give up completely. Sometimes it seems that if you're single, and not with someone/getting married/dropping out a baby that you're a complete nobody, which is a stupid way to feel but can't stop myself dwelling on it sometimes. Don't like feeling this way because I tend to avoid people and sit in front of DVDs eating shite. As it is I'm wondering why I'm bothering to exercise at the moment.

One of my favourite Metallica songs, with Robert Trujillo doing the bass full justice.

5k tomorrow

It's been a good week, even if the running on Wednesday was a bit rubbish. I had a slightly dodgy tummy all day, and so when it came to running, I was really poor. Kept having to slow down to a walk. Given it's the 5k tomorrow, it's a bit worrying, but I hope I'll be OK.

Have also signed up for the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon on the 1st September. Unfortunately my road bike has had it, and I can't afford to go and drop a load of cash on a new one, so my stopgap solution is to use the mountain bike. I took it over to my Dad's today and we put some new slick tyres on it, some bar ends to get different hand positions, and put the SPD pedals on it. I've only ridden it up and down my Dad's drive so far, but the tyres really made a difference. Will have to test it out properly soon.

In other news, DnD was really good fun on Tuesday. Typical session of combat, banter and outright abuse. How the team stays a team, I don't know. It's amazing they haven't tried to kill each other yet.

Otherwise it's been a quiet week. Work hasn't been too bad, just a few things causing trouble that weren't too bad to fix.

The recent things with Lavabit closing down and other revelations are a little troubling. I remember when I first encountered the Internet that it was such an amazing resource, with so much potential, and it's depressing to see it seemingly being twisted into a tool to reduce privacy and monitor people.

Running the MacBook Pro on battery to see how long it lasts. It reckons it's got over two hours left, which isn't too bad.

Grumps

Last Thursday we went to badminton for the first time in a while. It was OK, except one of the women there got very crotchety about people getting onto the court and started to use physical violence, which was a bit crappy. We were also a bit weighed down by the food we'd eaten at Steve's, which was a BBQ in the sunshine.

Friday was a quiet one. Saturday was a good day. First thing was an eye test at Asda in Llandudno, which went well. It was a little surreal though to be sitting there having an eye test with the constant beep-beep-beep of the cash registers. They had an interesting machine there which the woman said would show me a little house. It came up, completely out of focus and then instantly went into perfect focus, and from that they got an idea of what my prescription was. Then went through the normal tests. I've ordered some glasses from there anyway.

After that, it was hanging out with my Dad. He's just bought a nice new bike, a Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc, which is a complete break from the old-school drop bar bikes he normally rides. It's really nice, and has hydraulic disc brakes, which are pretty scary in their stopping power. We also went to look around some places in case they had a bike that might suit me. I wasn't really looking, but after I looked at the drivetrain on my road bike yesterday, it's completely shot. I thought I heard it creaking on the last ride.

In the evening it was over to Rob and Em's for a BBQ, which was good. Al and Becky were up from down south, so it was a nice long evening of chat and food. It went on longer than we though, suddenly it was nearly midnight.

Sunday was a day of not much at all apart from deciding the road bike is fucked and I need a new one. Andy and I are planning on doing the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon at the start of September so I need one pretty sharpish. Not quite sure what to do though really, whether to go used or new or what. Either way it's going to eat into my savings until payday, bah. A cyclocross bike would make sense for the versatility but I don't think I can stretch that far in good conscience, since most of them seem expensive.

Today was an annoying day, and I was due to meet Andy and Rob after work for running, but on the way there I just couldn't cope with the idea of it and came home to do some tidying and list some stuff on Ebay to try and raise bike funds. But now I wish I had gone running, since the 5k is on this coming Sunday. Oh well. I need to try and get used to the treadmill at the gym too, to get ready for winter.

Latest geeky project was to install ESXi on one of the old broken Latitude E4300s I had lying around. It's got two hard drives in it for a total of about 820gb storage, although memory is tight at just 4gb, but it's enough to play around with virtualisation on it. So far it's got a Windows Server 2012 VM on it. This came about because I discovered the old Optiplex I was using for the same purpose didn't have a VT-x CPU, so it couldn't run 64-bit guests. I have a feeling I probably knew this way back when, but forgot. Oh well. It'll be interesting to see how the E4300 copes, but this time I installed ESXi on a flash drive, so if necessary I can take that and the hard drives and hook them up to a completely different machine and it should just fire up exactly the same.

Geekiness Xtreme

Work has been continuously meh this week, although something called Nessus has proved interesting, which is a vulnerability scanner.

Last night was good - we went out in a group and ran the upcoming 5k route to practice. Fortunately the weather remained OK and we got round fine. I had to walk about a minute after the first hill because I think I was a little optimistic and went too fast, but after that I got around fine. Em and I did it in about 37 minutes while the others were about 31-33. Not exactly world shaking times but a good basis for improvement.

It was supposed to be running class tonight, but it rained continuously all day long, and my legs were still feeling it from last night, so I wimped out and came home and had a nice geeky evening. I was experimenting with sharing disks from a Windows Server 2012 machine to both the Windows 8 Alienware and the MacBook Pro. I really wanted to play with iSCSI since it sounds interesting and should work well over gigabit. This worked well with Windows 8 which connected straight up to a shared disk, and performance was surprisingly good.

Annoyingly though Apple doesn't include an iSCSI initiator with Mac OS X, and while there are third party ones, they aren't free. Oh well. NFS was a pain due to Windows being a bit shit at supporting it but eventually I got the Mac talking to a standard Windows share. While this works though, it isn't as fast as iSCSI or NFS. Oh well. All good fun. I also found the rather childish way that Apple represents Windows PCs in Mac OS X - as an old fashioned CRT showing a blue screen of death. It seems fairly typical of the arrogant attitude that Apple has developed over the last decade or so though.

It's interesting to compare Mountain Lion to Windows 8 though. It basically feels the same that OS X always has done, ever since the original version, which I had running on an old iMac. Windows has changed several times since then, although Windows 8 is clearly the most different. I'm still a little ambivalent about it - it's been improved a lot underneath but the new interface is just a little odd if you aren't using a touchscreen.

So many screws...

Yesterday was another bike ride with Andy. We decided to go a different way this time, heading up through Henllan. Sounded good in theory, but it was quite a long haul up to Henllan, then there was a massive drop out of the village. This led to a truly ridiculous hill, which was horrible. We got nearly to the top and then had to turn off and make our way to St Asaph along some back roads, which was actually really nice. Once we got to St Asaph we did our usual route around back to Denbigh, but we were knackered because of the earlier hills, and we screwed up nutrition so we were really tired.

In the evening it was Rob's birthday meal, which was in the Guildhall Tavern in Denbigh. It was a well attended event with nearly 30 people, and was really good fun. The weather finally broke, and when people were leaving it was absolutely chucking it down.

Today has been a fairly lazy day so far. Fortunately the little toolkit I picked up with useful screwdriver bits turned up, so I was able to disassemble the MacBook Pro with the annoying T6 screws. It's now got a larger faster hard drive with a clean install of Mountain Lion, and fresh thermal paste on the heatsink. I had to take it apart twice though as I accidentally tightened the heatsink screws too much the first time, so when it booted back up the CPU was idling at 100 degrees...ouch! It's running much cooler now than it did originally, with the CPU idling at around 45 degrees and the GPU at 59 degrees, which seems pretty good for these machines as they apparently run hot by default. It's definitely running cooler than when I first got it. I think someone had tried to regunk the heatsink before, but not done a very good job.

The first time I took it apart, it took ages as I was meticulously following the iFixit guide and keeping track of all the screws. The second time I didn't care and had the logic board out in about 10 minutes, but I still got it back together with no leftover screws. These older MBPs are a bit of a sod to take apart, wonder what the unibody ones are like.

Ah well, so far so good. Next is to put some more RAM in it assuming I can find some suitable DIMMs. At the moment it only has 2gb, and the maximum for some weird reason is 6gb. Odd. I'd also like to put an SSD in it as putting them in my other machines has definitely made me a convert.

Forgot to mention that the car had some more work done. The whining engine was cured by a couple of new pulleys and the chugging noise was a disconnected pipe. The snapped rear seatbelt was replaced and also the seal on the top of the fuel tank. It's definitely getting there...

It's been a week of ups and downs. Work has been rather meh due to the ongoing issues from the penetration testing.

Monday evening was running, which was hard. It was stupidly hot and I went there intending to do 12 laps of the track which is nearly a 5k, but I ended up doing 7. Not great, but I lived with it.

Tuesday was DnD at Rob G's place. Em joined us for lasagne before heading off, and it was a really good evening. Had an unexpected encounter with another jelly beast, which was eventually dispatched after a fierce battle.

Wednesday was running class. This time they took us around a road course, which was two 13 minute runs with a 2 minute walk in the middle. The first 13 minutes were fine but I found the last 13 minutes a struggle, spending at least half of it convinced I was going to puke.

Yesterday and today have been uneventful.

In a somewhat rash move I picked up an elderly MacBook Pro a few days ago. It's a mid-2007 17" model with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, a 120gb hard drive and the troublesome Nvidia 8600gt graphics chip. Other than a few cosmetic dings and some minor pressure marks on the screen, it works fine. I'm intending to put a spare faster 250gb hard drive in it, and hopefully upgrade the RAM, although it has a curious limit of 6gb.

I also really want to replace the thermal paste and clean the fans out to make sure the graphics chip is kept as cool as possible. However, like the white MacBook I experimented with a couple of years ago, I find that MacBooks get their solidity from being bizarrely designed with lots of different weird screws. Also at the moment it's running Lion, which apparently is a bit rubbish, so I want to put Mountain Lion on it which is apparently better.

It's weird to use a Mac again after so much time. My reasoning for finding a MacBook was that I've been getting increasingly hacked off with Linux. It's great for servers, but on the desktop it's a clusterfuck of different GUIs, audio systems, etc. I keep reading that people really rate Mac OS X for Unixy stuff, so I thought I'd give it a go. I do like the feel of the MBP though, I always thought the original models looked a lot nicer than the unibody models that followed them.

Fun weekends

Last weekend in Kent was really good fun, had a great time. The party was really good fun and carried on into the night. We eventually ended up walking back up to Jane and Wes's house at midnight. My bloody cricket bat as part of my Shaun outfit did get some attention...oh well. Sunday was good, we hung out, watched Wes open his presents and then sat down with crazy amounts of pizza and a rather terrible movie called The Last Stand with Arnie trying to pretend he isn't past it. The journey back on Monday was fine, and we got back in good time.

Wednesday running was not good after two weeks. It was cross country as well, and I found it far too difficult, not least because I had a mild cold that initially I thought was hayfever. But afterward I felt better enough to do some more laps of the track. We went again on Friday, which was very hard because it was so hot.

Yesterday went for a bike ride with Andy and Steve. This turned out to be the longest one yet, clocking in at between 36.2 and 37 miles, depending on whose phone you believe (the 37 mile one obviously). Again I found it quite hard but fortunately there were some clouds in the sky for a change, which made it a lot more manageable. My chain came off at one point, which also slowed me down. I was struggling somewhat at the end, but I felt OK once I'd come home and had a shower and a lie down.

In the evening it was off to Ed's for his birthday BBQ, the first one for a while. It was really good fun, a good mix of people, and various shenanigans. The highlight was making everyone wear Andy's Harry Hill mask, then taking pictures of everyone from below in groups and then trying on Vicky's blonde wig. Really good night all round.

Today it was off to Wrexham with Rob and Em. Rob had his archery club session, so while he was doing that, Em and I went to Sports Direct to get me some lighter exercise gear, although we were too early for the shops so we had breakfast at Frankie and Benny's before heading to the shop. After that we exploited PC World's iPads to get a map back to where Rob was, and then headed over to see what was going on. The archery club was actually quite fascinating, with people using all sorts of different bows from longbows to one of those massively complicated ones with cams and cogs and all sorts. After Rob was done we got back on the road, stopping off at the OK Diner for food, which was pretty good. I've been past that place loads of times and never been in there.

This afternoon has been less fun, doing some stuff for work - updating some servers and stuff. Oh well. It was helped by Joe Satriani doing his thing, so there we are.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow and then running in the evening.

Kent

It wasn't a great week this week in work, and it's shaping up to be truly pants until the end of July.

No running on Monday evening due to the mad heat. Tuesday evening I went round to Steve's and we had BBQ burgers and sausages before playing some split-screen Alien Marines or something on the Xbox. It wasn't the greatest of games, but it was nice to play split screen for a change.

I had to stay late in work on Wednesday due to work on one of the storage arrays, so I missed the running class, which was frustrating. Thursday was not badminton as usual, instead it was a BBQ at one of the member's house, which was stunning as always, and made even better with the weather being nice enough to sit outside.

Yesterday it was time to pile into the car with Rob and Em and head down to Kent for Wes's 30th birthday bash, which is today. It's shaping up to be a great bash, and is of course fancy dress. I decided to be Shaun of the Dead because it's relatively easy to do and I was able to borrow Steve's cricket bat. The weather is ridiculously good too.

Fecking electrics

Thursday was OK, badminton was annoying though, due to a presence of someone who has come a few times. She seems to have issues remembering the rules, despite being told several times a game. We weren't sure what was going on, but she seems to have genuine mental issues, and last week at least, doesn't seem to actually enjoy playing. It's the Evil One who brings her, and I think she's not helping.

Friday evening was a walk up Moel Famau in the evening with a load of people from work to highlight Steve P's birthday. We set off at 8pm and got back to the cars for about 9:30pm. It was really good fun, but I'm always surprised at how far it is, and the last section is always tough. I think the running and cycling has really helped though as I definitely coped better up there than the last time I went up there a couple of years ago. Afterwards we drove down to the Druid in Llanferres and had a few drinks, and as it was Dave L's local he persuaded them to make us some chilli, even though they had stopped serving food. It was really good too.

Saturday Morning was the Lions game, which was good as they won, definitively. Then after that, Andy and I headed out for a bike ride, only a short 12 miles. It was bloody hot though. After that I came home and watched some Doctor Who, the first of the rebooted series after I picked up the boxset a couple of weeks ago. It's been a while since I've seen them, so I was a little surprised at how ropy the early episodes are in places, especially the CGI effects in places.

Today I headed out to get some supplies and then came home and had a bonfire of some stuff that needed burning, which was nice. The youngish cows we have on our fields at the moment were a pain as they are very nosy things and thought I was putting something out for them. They certainly got a shock when I lit it though. Then I watched more Doctor Who.

The car is still going OK and today it hit 285 miles since I filled it up. This is the point that the Accord would have been running on fumes, but the 206 still has well over half a tank left. This is good. What's bad is the typically French electrics - the indicator stalks and the driver's door both need attention. But due to having bought the thing and having it serviced, I'll have to wait a bit to get those sorted out. There are workarounds though, so it is liveable with.

There must be some car out there which has this kind of economy and decent build quality too. I wonder what it is, but I bet it's not French.

Long time

Keep forgetting to update this thing.

Notable events - Friday was an Italian meal in Rhyl and going to see Man of Steel for Rob G's birthday. The meal was good. Man of Steel had bits where it was good, but the last third was bad. As Wes said, when it's good, it's great, but when it's bad, it's Transformers.

Running is progressing OK. We did a bike ride on Sunday which wasn't too bad, and then did some more running on Monday evening. For whatever reason though, I really struggled. Tonight's session was a lot better though - up to 8 minute runs. At first I didn't feel like it, but towards the end I felt fine and could have carried on. My calves still complained and I got a mild stitch again, but on the whole I think my body is getting more used to it.

The 206 has had it's service. It cost more than I expected, but still within what I budgeted. It needed a tyre  and a wheel bearing, amongst other things. It definitely runs better now. It still has a whine which they said is the power steering pump and can wait. There are also a few bushes and things that will need checking out at some point. On the plus side, my road bike fits in the back of it perfectly with the front wheel off, so that's a relief.

The Accord has gone - my Dad and I took it to the auction on Monday, and hopefully it will have sold last night. The journey there reminded me forcefully of what a nice car it was, but it had several issues and the fuel economy was so terrible. I discovered it used oil quite badly as well. On the plus side, the ABS light stayed off that whole day, after being on for at least a month.

Watched 8 episodes of Game of Thrones season 3 - not going to say anything about it but I've really enjoyed it. I was going to start the books, but I chickened out and have started a reread of the Hunger Games books.

After a couple of months about being dubious about the Ibanez BTB07LTD bass I bought, I've decided I rather like it. The shape is big, but it looks great and is very ergonomic and it has a nice slim neck. The 35" scale was a little odd, but I've got used to it now. The finish with the matt green and the so-called 'Wild X' across the front is a bit dubious though. I've noticed that where that finish is chipped off, it's red, so I reckon they had a load of spare bodies and necks and made a limited edition to get rid of them. I'm not too keen on the electrics though, so I have vague plans to rip it all out and put a pair of passive EMG pickups in and rewire it. I even thought about stripping the finish off and repainting it in the same flip paint I did the double neck in, since it would probably work quite well on the shape.

But any projects like that will have to wait some time as I'm now skint after getting the 206, and I need to sort out my savings and things for a few months.

The Germans have adopted the word 'shitstorm'. Awesome.

70mpg eh? Let's see...

The weather was crap over the weekend. I spent Saturday doing absolutely nothing but sit on my bed and read books. Although, unusually for me, I was aware of my lack of physical activity and ate accordingly.

Sunday wasn't much better although I did make it to the gym. However when I went to Morrisons to get supplies, a box of donuts for 80p unaccountably appeared in my basket, goodness knows how. I also weighed myself as I kept forgetting - 13 stone 7. Last time I weighed myself I was about 14 stone 2, which was about two months ago. Not bad. Hope I can keep it up.

Went running after work. Did some laps of the track with 6 minute runs. Felt a bit better this time, although my left calf was playing up - think I didn't stretch it as much as my right one. It was also nice and cool, much prefer it to the sun where you get too hot.

Picked up the 206 as well. I was quite worried about how it would feel to drive after the Accord, but it's fine. The ride is a bit bouncy in comparison, but not too bad. The engine is pretty torquey though, and it feels surprisingly nippy for a little 1.4 diesel. Fortunately I adapted back to a manual gearbox straight away, which is good.

I know it needs a service though, so I'm going to get that booked in ASAP. It does have a couple of quirks - it has automatic headlights, but the sensor seems to be a little flaky, so they come on pretty much all the time, but it can be overridden. Good thing it doesn't have the automatic wipers.

The stereo is the standard Peugeot one - a CD player. I'd actually have preferred a tape deck so I could use the iPod adapter from the Accord. I found a blank CD and made up a new compilation - it actually felt quite nice to go through my music and have 20 or so carefully selected tracks instead of having a full iPods worth. The speakers are pretty good too, pleasantly surprised by that. I haven't worked out how to fold the seats down though to try out the bike, need to figure that out. It might be a case of both wheels off, but we'll see.

Infinite

I had booked half a day flexi leave today to look at cars, which became pointless after I saw the 206 last night, but I decided I might as well use up some flexi anyway.

Stopped off at Morrisons and picked up some food and came home. I watched a bit of a DVD and then sat down and had another go at finishing BioShock Infinite. I got it done after a couple of goes and got to see the ending. It left me rather stunned and with that feeling you get after finishing a really good book, kind of sad that you can't read any more of it. Very good game. Somehow I managed to get to play it without knowing anything at all about it - I barely even realised it had been released, so I think that really helped with the experience. I want to go back and play the first BioShock now and then perhaps give BioShock 2 another go, as I never really got into it.

Not picking up the 206 tomorrow after all, as they have found it needs a new shock absorber and they can't get one for tomorrow, so should be getting it on Monday. I was hoping to do a bike ride with Andy this evening but the Accord's boot seems to be permanently locked now, and my usual fix of spraying WD40 into the handle hasn't worked. Oh well. The weather looks to be shit this weekend anyway so I'm planning on going to the gym.

Week of fun

Last weekend was good. Went for a bike ride with Andy, which was his first outing on a loaned road bike. He pretty much left me behind the whole time, since it is so much easier to ride than his mountain bike. I was having an off day and really struggled, and had to walk up some hills because my knee was playing up. By the end of it though, my knee was OK. After the ride though, no time to relax as we had to go to Vicky's birthday meal in Rhyl, which was in a really good Italian place. It was a nice evening.

Sunday consisted of playing BioShock Infinite. I thought I was near the end, but there was a whole lot more do to, and then there was a massive fight that I couldn't get past. So I had to turn it off and do something else before I smashed the controller.

Monday was down to Denbigh for a running session, however we all got roped into joining the intermediate group for games, which was a little surreal and like being back in school. Only Andy managed to avoid it. Afterward Em and I did a couple of laps and did fine.

Tuesday was DnD, which was entertaining. Sarah couldn't make it but we had a massive battle anyway, and once again my character threw himself into the fight, taking shitloads of damage but coming out of it with a smile (grimace) on his face.

Wednesday was the running class again. It was hard this time - run for five minutes, walk for two and a half. It was quite hard, but rather than feeling tired, my calves were killing me for some reason. I did start to get a little bit of a stitch, but it didn't last, which was good.

Tonight was badminton. We went to Steve's for a BBQ, but Rob and Em couldn't make it so there was an excess of food. Despite this, Steve and I both played quite well at badminton and had some good games.

In the last week I've been looking at cars, as the Accord is ridiculous on fuel, and I made the discovery that it's using quite a lot of oil. I don't think it's leaking it so it must be burning it off, although I haven't noticed any excessive smoke. Anyway, I saw a 2000 Astra 1.8 CDX at a local garage on Ebay, so I left work a bit early to take a look. The engine was a bit big but it was top of the range with lots of equipment. However when I came look at it, it didn't grab me, even though it was in nice condition. Also I'd read that the tax was £270 a year because of the date it was registered.

However, next to it was a 2002 Peugeot 206 1.4 HDi, which looked OK and I know someone in work who has one and loves it. I had a go in it and it was fine, so I've put a deposit down and will pick it up on Saturday. The 1.4 diesel is good for 60mpg and tax is £30 a year. The only thing is getting my bike in it, but I reckon it'll go in with the front wheel off and the passenger seat forward.

I'll have to get the insurance to overlap so I can take the Accord to the auction. I will miss the Accord though. It's a nice big car that wafts along and is really comfortable, but while I can afford to run it, I'd rather not be spending quite so much on petrol each week.

Not much else to report.

State of mind

Last week wasn't too bad. My knee remained troublesome until Saturday.

On Friday I worked from home in the morning and then went to my Dad's in the afternoon for his birthday. We went out for a meal at the Pen y Bryn in Colwyn Bay, which was good, and then hung out for the afternoon.

On Sunday my knee felt better enough to go for a bike ride with Andy, although we went on a flat route. It was the first time I rode properly with the SPDs and it was pretty good. I only forgot to unclip right at the end of the ride and I remembered just in time.

On Monday I did the initial session of the beginner's running course with Andy, which was very hard. I sort of assumed that because I was doing OK with the bike and at the gym, that I would be OK with running, but I wasn't. I got a really bad stich and my calves hurt. Last night it was the next session, which was again hard, but the instructor gave me some tips on reducing the stitch and said that people who cycle a lot quite often have calf problems when they start running because the foot is much more stationary on a bike. Anyway it looks like I'm doing the 5k in August, which is a scary prospect.

Today was the first badminton in quite some time, with the new floor. It was fun, but I couldn't get around the court anywhere near as fast as I could before. I think the different exercise hasn't helped, but hopefully should get back into it soon.

On the weekend it's a bike ride with Andy and then a meal for Vicky's birthday. Not sure about Sunday yet. Hopefully going to go to the gym after work tomorrow.

Not much else to report. Played most of BioShock Infinite over last weekend while I was resting my knee, and it was very good. Not much left to go so I'm looking forward to seeing how it winds up.  I also forgot to mention that recently I picked up a battered but working 3DS XL. The original 3DS was too small - it makes so much more sense as the XL. I've been playing Luigi's Mansion 2 off and on, which is good fun. Still ploughing through A Clash of Kings, which is a good read. I want to reread some of the Culture books though, sadly Iain Banks has died.

The Xbox One looks to be a giant fiasco already - when the time comes I think everyone I know is going to look at the PS4 instead. Given what Microsoft has done to turn the 360 into an advertising box I was already dubious about it's successor.

Feel like I need a holiday. Work is getting me down. I'd love to book a trip to Berlin in the summer to see the city in the sunshine, but I need to sort out a new car come next payday so I can't really afford it. I suppose I could look into going somewhere in the UK, but these days there doesn't seem to be any point in suggesting a group holiday unless it's all couples, and going by myself is a depressing prospect.

Mega ouchy

No DnD last night due to Rob being busy with the ongoing family visit.

Tonight was the first session of a running class that builds up to the Vale of Clwyd 5k in August. I was quite looking forward to it and really hoping that my knee would be up to. It felt quite painful last night but not too bad today - more stiff than painful. Anyway, I got home and decided to jog from the car to the front door to see how that felt.

This backfired dramatically and led to an hour and a half of intense pain and barely being able to walk. It's settled down again now but is still far from being right. It was that bad I even decided I coudln't drive into town to use the arm bike in the gym and do some upper body work, which would have been better than nothing.

It's just mega frustrating not being able to exercise properly when I've just got into it sort of properly. Bah. Ironically I googled my symptoms and it came back with Runner's Knee. Ha.

Oh well. I've been trying to take my inability to exercise properly into account when eating, with varying success.

I decided to take the custom double neck bass apart and put it on Ebay as I don't use it and I'd rather have the memories and photos. So far the body has got 40 watchers and a bid already, although I think the necks will fetch more. I'm also in two minds about my 6-string bass. It needs new strings and the wiring is fucked. I'm tempted to pick up an EMG 45HZ pickup for it and rewire it with passive electronics and then put new strings on it. Or I could just flog it for parts. I don't know...

Still ouchy

Knee was better today but I went to the gym again after work. I didn't do anything that involved leg work, did quite a lot on the arm bike thing and then some weights but when I got home I had to go and sort the water pump out again so I don't think that helped. I think it is on the mend though.

Work was meh, shuffling data round on tapes again and had to stay a bit late to help with the AS/400.

Yesterday I spent the day at my Dad's. I took my road bike over and we fitted the SPD pedals to it and then I had a gentle pootle along the prom to see how they were. It took a while to get the hang of clipping in, but once they are, it feels quite nice. The shoes have the nice silver cleats that detach in multiple ways but I'm sure I'll forget at some point. Oh well.

Had another go at the crispy honey chilli chicken recipe I tried a couple of weeks ago. It came out very well except this time I managed to make the sauce rather too solid. Still tasted good though.

Ouchy knee

DnD was good fun on Tuesday. The weather was horrible though, so Sarah decided to stay at home in Wrexham and not risk the journey to Denbigh, and joined us via Skype. It's not the first time we've played DnD via Skype and it worked really well.

On Wednesday and Thursday went to the gym. Wednesday was OK but Thursday was a mistake as I'd had some warning twinges from my right knee, and by Friday evening it was really painful. It would have been helpful if I could have stayed in and rested it but it was the leaving meal with people from work for the guy who I replaced. It was a good meal in the Denbigh Radhuni. The others went out for drinks afterward but I came home.

No bike ride today, which I was gutted about since I was looking forward to it, and it would have helped work off the meal last night. Andy and Rob G went out though and went on a variation of the route we did last week with more hills, however it was very steep and they found it a complete killer. I stayed in and rested my knee which has been feeling a bit better after being very painful this morning. It was a pretty nice day too, which made it worse.

Not much else to report. I've been playing a couple of games on the 3DS. The original 3DS wasn't great in my opinion, too small and awkward, but I spotted a cheap 3DS XL and decided to give it a go. The graphics are a bit more pixelly because of the larger screens, but it makes so much more sense as a bigger machine. I started out playing Monster Hunter Ultimate, which was OK but not really my kind of game, and so I've been playing Luigi's Mansion 2, which is really good fun. I vaguely remember playing the original on the GameCube, which was a long time ago.

Exercise

It's been a fairly eventful week.

Tuesday last week was DnD,which was at Sarah's place in Wrexham. It was a good session with a few funny moments, especially when we came up with the concept of a 'mentor with benefits', which was simultanously disturbing and hilarious.

I was all set to go to the gym on Wednesday evening, but Rob and Em were going to see the new Star Trek with Ed and Sian, and there was a spare seat, so I tagged along. We grabbed a hasty KFC and then headed in to see it. It was really good, thoroughly enjoyed it.

On Thursday I went to the gym instead of Wednesday as badminton is still cancelled, and had a really good session. The best exercise was the cross-trainer. I got on it and spent 30 minutes alternating between effort 8 and 10 every few minutes. I only got off because you aren't supposed to be more than 20 minutes and someone needed it. The machine reckoned I burnt 270 calories and my heart rate stayed at a sensible level the whole time, which was good.

Saturday was a repeat of last week's 31 mile bike ride, which we did quite a bit quicker than before - not the actual riding time, but the overall time was less as we didn't stop as often. It was a really nice day for it, very sunny. After that it was over to Steve's in the evening for movie night he had arranged. Attendance was lower than expected but it was still a fun evening, albeit with ridiculous amounts of food.

Yesterday I went to visit my Dad. We hung out for most of the day. I took my mountain bike over to give it a bit of attention after the nasty ride on it a couple of weeks ago, gave it a good clean up and oiled it where necessary. It was a lovely day and the Accord was covered in mud and looking sorry for itself so we gave it a good clean as well.I hadn't realised how much brake dust was on the wheels, and they cleaned up really nicely. Also topped up the oil as it was a little low.

My Dad also persuaded me to have a look at SPDs on the road bike. He's got a spare pair of shoes with cleats that fit me, and the pedals themselves are only cheap. I like the idea of them but will take some getting used to I'd imagine.

In the evening went to the pub with Andy, Rob T and Rob G, which was nice. We went to a couple of pubs which were either quite busy or completely dead as people seemed to be going around the town in clumps. It was nice to simply hang out and chat though. Also made the curious discovery that Iron Maiden have made a beer called Trooper, which Rob said was quite nice. As much as I like the band, my dislike of beer is probably going to mean I won't end up tasting it.

Today was typical bank holiday weather - rain all day, scuppering any plans for another bike ride. Spent much of the day finishing Motley Crue: The Dirt. Not a band I was hugely familiar with, although I did hear the Dr Feelgood album when I was quite young, and was vaguely aware of the antics of the band members in the 90s. But it goes way beyond what I ever imagined - how any of them are still alive is beyond me. It's completely bonkers, but somehow it's a very compelling read, perhaps because it seems so upfront and honest.

Need to catch up with Doctor Who, I lost interest a bit after the uninspiring submarine one, but I've been assured that it got better after that. I've got hold of the last episode but not any of the others, might just have to skip to the end.

Good weekend

It's been a good weekend.

On Friday evening we went for a short bike ride, but it still ended up being 15 miles. When I came home to get my bike, I found it had a flat rear tyre, so I had to take the mountain bike. It's been some time since I last rode it and unfortunately the neglect hasn't done it much good and it really needed some TLC. Perhaps because of this, I rather struggled on this ride. However it was a good chance for Steve to break in the mountain bike that I got for him from someone in work, a lot better than the old Raleigh he was using before.

Saturday morning was expensive. I spent £90 on new running shoes, which are supremely comfortable,  and then got a new rear tyre for the road bike and the headlight and brake bulbs that the Accord needed. I got those fitted OK and then had an epic geeky session of trying out the Comms Link for the Organiser II. Ever since I got my first one when I was 14 I wanted to hook it up to the PC, so it was nice to finally do so. I initially was going to set it up on an old laptop but gave up on that. I installed the software on an XP virtual machine on the M17x and used a USB-Serial adapter with a 25-pin to 9-pin adapter. Amazingly it worked, and I was able to get some programs off the Internet and transfer them across.

On Saturday evening it was Eurovision, which has now become traditional to watch at Rob and Em's with snacks, drinks and incredible amounts of pisstaking. It was a really good night. One of the highlights was Rob G's attempt at a pudding I can't remember the name of, which was a tower of profiteroles stuck together with caramel.

Yesterday, Andy, Steve and I headed out for a bike ride. It was mostly the same route as last time, but this time we went up some hills to Cwm, which was not easy. We had to take a couple of breaks, but we got there, and were rewarded with a pretty awesome view. After that we headed down to Rhuddlan and carried on as normal. It was a really good ride.

Otherwise not much to report. Circuits tonight was hard, but mainly due to my muscles protesting after the bike ride yesterday rather than being tired. On the plus side, the new shoes were brilliant, and when I came home I weighed myself to find I was dead on 90kg, which is definitely less than when I last weighed myself.

Gym

So far an OK week, still lots of tape movements in work.

On Tuesday evening I was in the kind of mood to get a takeaway, but I decided to try and make something instead. I ended up making crispy honey chilli chicken, which was really nice. The only thing I got wrong was not putting any flour in the sauce because I thought it needed cornflour, but otherwise it came out great. I was that impressed I made it again last night with the proper ingredients, and it was even better. To be honest I never realised you could actually make fried chicken at home, and tonight I ended up trying it again with some leftover chicken, but this time just making it fried with cinnamon in the coating instead which was OK but not strong enough. Still went nicely with some chilli sauce though.

Went to the gym last night, which was OK. I used some of the weights machines for the first time in ages, which unsurprisingly was pretty hard.

Badminton on Thursdays is still on hold due to floor woes, and tonight we said we'd skip it. I decided to have a geek night, which involved once again playing with an old Organiser II. I finally found the right adapter to hook it the old 25-pin serial cable to a PC. I was able to send characters between them but finding a machine that could actually run the software and have a serial port was a bit hard.

Not much else to report. I'm really tired of the Accord's thirst for fuel, so tomorrow being payday I might have a look around for something else. I'd like something small and economical but that might not be ideal with my need to get bikes in it and move shit out of the house. Not sure really.

Exercise and food

Went for a 26 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve yesterday, which was good. It was very hard at first - it's been a little while since I did any significant exercise, and it felt like my chest couldn't get the idea of properly deep breaths for a while. But after a couple of miles it settled down. We made the decision to go around Bodelwyddan towards the end of the ride - I didn't want to but was outvoted, and then we got rained on all the way back to St Asaph. I was suffering a bit by that point, but made it to the end OK. I did intend to record it on Strava but hadn't realised it wasn't recording until half way through the ride, but the rest of it worked. I like Strava but I wish it had more offline functionality. Not being able to view the map without an Internet connection is a pain. I also realised just how big the Accord is when I was able to get the bike in without taking the front wheel off.

Then in the evening it was off to the Prosperity in Rhuddlan with my parents. I ate enough to render the bike ride irrelevant, but it was good. I had Chicken in Szechuan sauce with crispy noodles, which was tasty and quite spicy, but in a subtle way.

An OK day in work today. I had some fun shifting some data round onto the new tapes and made the frustrating discovery that one of the tape drives had gone offline with a microcode error on Saturday, and then I found one of the new tapes had a corrupted file that I now need to recover from the offsite copy. There were apparently power issues in the computer room on Saturday though, so I'm assuming that was the cause.

Circuit training tonight. I was expecting it to be hard after a couple of weeks, and it certainly was, but it was managable hard. I particularly despise the sideways plank and the cross thumb pushup. Also I think running exercise classes would be a good career choice if you are a sadist.

I wasn't sure what else I could sell on Ebay - after a prolonged bout of selling and taking stuff to the tip I seem to have run a little low on things to get rid of. Then I remembered my collection of Rupert annuals - for some reason my parents kept getting me one every Christmas until I was 21. Some of the older ones are worth a bit, so I dug them out and cleaned them up. Fortunately they are in reasonable condition despite not having been touched for years. I have fond memories of reading Rupert - some of the stories are pretty fucked up and I always liked the stories which had crazy machines in them, perhaps one of the reasons I tend to like sciencey things.

Halfway to 70...

Thursday and Friday were good days in work. The LTO5 upgrade has been a success and I'm now making it migrate data from the LTO3 tapes onto the new ones. Can be a bit of a chore but it'll get there. Friday was also a giant cake fest as there was an ICT bake off for charity, which was great. Em's coffee cupcakes were the highlight for me - just the right ratio of cake and cream, delicious.

At present badminton has been banned on Thursday due to the condition of the floor - we can't play on it any more. Last week we just went to Steve's for food and hung out and chatted.

Yesterday was my 35th birthday. I'm a bit concerned about this - time seems to be slipping away and I'm not really sure how to feel about it. Oh well. I wish I'd reached the state of mind I'm now ten years ago - I think I'd have achieved a and experienced a lot more, but who knows, perhaps it wouldn't have worked out well.

Today I took some more crap to the tip - yet more old computers and some other stuff. I think they tolerate me there, but they must think it's a bit odd. Fortunately they haven't questioned it yet, but the honest truth is that I'm a geek with a slight hoarding tendency. I wasn't sure what do do with a curious machine called an IBM Power Series 600, but in the end I kept it. It's a smallish but very heavy PowerPC based workstation, designed to run AIX or Windows NT. The thing is, there is no information at all on the Internet about it. The only reference I can find is some guy who was trying to run Debian on it, and a very brief mention in a 1994 copy of Infoworld. I'm wondering if it might be a prototype or something. The other one I didn't chuck was an IBM Thinkpad 860. Again, this is a PowerPC based machine that ran AIX. They are rare because they were incredibly expensive when new. I'm still going to get rid of these machines but perhaps see if a museum would want them or something.

In the evening it was off to the Radhuni in Denbigh for food, a wonderful Indian place. There were 10 of us there, which was good, and about the right number of peopel. I had the Tava with Pania, as recommended by Em, so it's basically a cheese curry. The cheese is in cubes like tofu, and has an incredibly delicious sauce. After that we went to the pub for a bit.

I'm not sure what to do about cars. Due to the need to move things, I'm definitely after something not much smaller than the Accord, but more economical. The obvious solution was a diesel Mondeo or Vectra, and some of the nice common rail diesels are getting quite affordable now. But having read up on the nightmare these engines can be, I'm not so sure. The Mondeo TDCI can suffer injector failure, and they are £250 a pop, and the Vectra can suffer fuel-pump failures. I think the solution would be an older Vectra with the DTI engine which is simpler and more reliable.

The Accord is still going OK in the meantime though, and unless I'm reading the gauge wrong, I think the fuel economy might be a bit better since the exhaust was fixed. The ABS light still comes and goes though, and when I turned on the headlights to come home tonight, the right bulb went. It's simultaneously a lovely and infuriating car.