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.
Sunday 27 October 2013
Sunday 20 October 2013
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.
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.
Saturday 12 October 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday 9 October 2013
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.
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.
Thursday 3 October 2013
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.
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.
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