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.