Slow return to health

It's been a fairly quiet week on the whole. I went down to Steve's on Tuesday evening to check out th giant slab that is the Xbox One. I enjoyed trying out the gore-fest Ryse and Forza. They did look good, I have to say. Steve has also had my spare 2DS on long-term loan.

The car played up again this week, with the battery light coming on more and more often. It reached a peak on Thursday morning and so I dropped it into a garage. They checked it over and decided it was the alternator as I had feared. They had to order one in so they kindly lent me a Fiat Punto to get home in. To be honest though, the old one must have been going for a while though since it was quite startling how much brighter the headlights are now and the wipers are much faster too. Annoyingly though the electrical issues seem to have blown some bulbs so I need to sort those out.

I've sold my project Alienware M14x for parts, couldn't be arsed with it after I found the issue with the keyboard connector - good thing I did really since it helpe pay for the work on the car. I've also finally wiped the M17x and listed it on Ebay. I will be sad to see the old beast go, definitely. The Asus G73 now has the 16gb RAM and 256gb SSD from the M17x. It has a total of 20gb RAM now, which is how I found out that Windows Home only supports 16gb. Still, I had the spare Windows 8 upgrade from the M17x, so I installed that on it. I had to phone activate it though, annoyingly, and of course it wants shedloads of updates, including the 3.5gb 8.1 update.

Still chuffed with the Suface Pro. The single USB3 port was a bit limiting so I ordered a neat little 3-port hub that includes a gigabit Ethernet port, which works perfectly. That combined with a mini-DispayPort to DVI adapter means it can now do everything the M17x did. I do need to do something about a keyboard though. The touch cover is OK and I like the idea and design, but it is not great for typing a lot on. I've also put a 64gb MicroSD in it to expand the storage. It's about OK for now, will keep me going until I can save up and get one of the 256gb models or a Surface Pro 3, hah.

Tomorrow I'm giving a lft to Andy so he can do the Twin Piers 10k. Hopefully that'll be good. Wish I was doing it too, but my fitness needs a lot of work. My back is nearly OK now though, so I'm looking forward to the new running class on Monday. It's been exactly three weeks since I did any exercise, but it feels like a hell of a lot longer.

Been playing the bass a fair bit over the last few days too and really enjoying it. The Jackson 5-string is really working for me and I'm starting to get the hang of using the 5th string for the extra notes. So pleased with it that I might look into selling the Squier Jazz.

Started rereading the Caves of Steel by Asimov. The last time I read the series I was thwarted by losing my copy of Robots and Empire, but I found a copy on Ebay for a quid.

Hmm. iTunes is randomly playing Follow the Leader by Korn, something that I've not listened to in ages since I didn't like it, but now I'm actually quite enjoying it, although I still detest the clickety-clack bass style.