This week has been poor in work, several annoying things happened, such as someone not testing something they said they would, so when I hadn't heard anything, I thought it was all OK. Cue massive panicking and flailing when it didn't work. Bah.
Not feeling great at the moment. I had a bap from the sandwich shop on the corner for lunch yesterday, which didn't settle right. By the time I got home, I was conscious that my stomach was not feeling happy at all, and then finally I ended up shitting out water and puking off and on until about 3am. I never knew it was possible to lose so much water and remain conscious. At one point I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror and I was as white as a sheet. There was no way I was fit to go to work today and I've spent the day reucuperating, alternately napping and watching old Torchwood episodes for no particular reason.
The only bright side is that with any luck I'll be better tomorrow for the trip to Berlin, although I'm anxiously keeping a tally in my head of where the toilets are located in the respective airports.
Good run on Monday, sort of. We met up in a group again and did a short one, which was about 2 miles. Strava didn't record it all so I'm not sure exactly. Once we got back, I felt like I could do more and ended up doing another 2.6 miles. It wasn't all running though, I think I was a bit ambitious and the wind picked up as well, but I was still pleased that I did about 4.5 miles, albeit with a bit of a gap in the middle. I was going to go for a run last night but my stomach put an end to that one.
Not much else to report. I've had to extend the insurance on the 206 as the Santa Fe is still having trouble with the ignition. I don't think I can do anything until the V5 comes through, what a pain. Typical as well, I always have rotten luck with cars, but this is really taking the piss I think.
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Sunday, 23 March 2014
New PB
The 5k went OK on Friday evening. It started at 19:45 on the cycle race track in Rhyl, and consisted of four laps of the track. The weather wasn't looking good, but it was fine for the first lap. But then it really started to lash it down with plenty of wind and rain, so the three remaining laps weren't much fun. Dave from work and I were being paced for 35 minutes by one of the Harriers, although we went off a little fast. By the start of the third lap though, I was feeling more comfortable and put on a bit of speed, and even managed to put some effort into a sprint (ha) finish. Not sure of my official time yet as due to a combination of rain and steam, I couldn't see a thing through my glasses and didn't see the clock as I finished. The Harrier I was running with said it was about 33:10, which is nearly four minutes better than my last 5k.
Yesterday went to look at bikes with Andy, but the places we went weren't very helpful and didn't have much of a selection, so it wasn't a very productive day in that regard. We did pick up some bits and pieces though. I would like a new bike at some point but not sure that right now is the time to get one, with the house stuff going on and everything.
I finally finished Breaking Bad. I'm still processing it really, but what a good series it's been. One of those rare instances where it lived up to the hype.
Today I've been going through my books and clearing out those I don't want any more, which is most of them. I've got several full binbags ready to go now. I have kept a list of all those that are going though, for future reference. Found an ancient copy of the Citadel of Chaos, one of the Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy game books. I really enjoyed it back in the day, so was pissed to find that mice had eaten most of it. Balls.
Only four days in work this week and then it's off to Berlin on Friday.
Yesterday went to look at bikes with Andy, but the places we went weren't very helpful and didn't have much of a selection, so it wasn't a very productive day in that regard. We did pick up some bits and pieces though. I would like a new bike at some point but not sure that right now is the time to get one, with the house stuff going on and everything.
I finally finished Breaking Bad. I'm still processing it really, but what a good series it's been. One of those rare instances where it lived up to the hype.
Today I've been going through my books and clearing out those I don't want any more, which is most of them. I've got several full binbags ready to go now. I have kept a list of all those that are going though, for future reference. Found an ancient copy of the Citadel of Chaos, one of the Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy game books. I really enjoyed it back in the day, so was pissed to find that mice had eaten most of it. Balls.
Only four days in work this week and then it's off to Berlin on Friday.
Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Fun geekery
Running was OK on Monday - this time it was a full 30 minute run. I quite enjoyed it but felt it at the end. I'm not sure what I'll manage in the 5k on Friday.
The Santa Fe is still going OK. It does like it's fuel, but I only realised after a couple of days that it has a naughty habit of turning on the air conditioning automatically when you restart it, which probably hasn't helped. It proved it's worth tonight though when the guy came to pick up the first load of vintage computer stuff, plenty of room in the back.
Had a nice geeky evening tonight for the first time in ages. I've been watching so much Breaking Bad and South Park that I've done little else. After shuffling the computers around recently, I had a spare 240gb Crucial SSD left over. I took the 500gb hard drive out of the second bay in the Asus G73 and put the SSD in there instead. The 500gb drive was noisy and slow anyway.
The G73 now has 20gb RAM and two 240gb SSDs. Combined with a quad-core i7, it makes it something of a beast, even if it's nearly four years old. Tonight I installed Windows Server 2012, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 into VirtualBox machines and gave them 2gb RAM each. The installs ran ludicrously quickly as they went from ISOs on one SSD to the virtual hard drives on the other SSD. The machine ran all three machines perfectly at the same time as using Firefox and iTunes on the host install of Windows 8 with no trouble at all. I need to learn about AD so it's a nice little test setup. So far I've created a domain and got the two client machines joined to it, and can log into the domain from them.
All good fun. Tomorrow evening the guy will come and get the rest of the computer stuff and then on Friday it's the 5k. After that I need to work on increasing my distance to a 10k, a scary prospect.
The Santa Fe is still going OK. It does like it's fuel, but I only realised after a couple of days that it has a naughty habit of turning on the air conditioning automatically when you restart it, which probably hasn't helped. It proved it's worth tonight though when the guy came to pick up the first load of vintage computer stuff, plenty of room in the back.
Had a nice geeky evening tonight for the first time in ages. I've been watching so much Breaking Bad and South Park that I've done little else. After shuffling the computers around recently, I had a spare 240gb Crucial SSD left over. I took the 500gb hard drive out of the second bay in the Asus G73 and put the SSD in there instead. The 500gb drive was noisy and slow anyway.
The G73 now has 20gb RAM and two 240gb SSDs. Combined with a quad-core i7, it makes it something of a beast, even if it's nearly four years old. Tonight I installed Windows Server 2012, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 into VirtualBox machines and gave them 2gb RAM each. The installs ran ludicrously quickly as they went from ISOs on one SSD to the virtual hard drives on the other SSD. The machine ran all three machines perfectly at the same time as using Firefox and iTunes on the host install of Windows 8 with no trouble at all. I need to learn about AD so it's a nice little test setup. So far I've created a domain and got the two client machines joined to it, and can log into the domain from them.
All good fun. Tomorrow evening the guy will come and get the rest of the computer stuff and then on Friday it's the 5k. After that I need to work on increasing my distance to a 10k, a scary prospect.
Saturday, 15 March 2014
More things
This week has been frustrating in work but OK otherwise. Friday was particularly bad in work but the afternoon was better.
Monday was the running club. This time it was two 14 minute runs with one minute of walking. I did better than last week and was quite pleased with myself. The minute walk coincided with the top of the industrial estate and our group leader challenged me to get to the top before the 35 seconds ran out. I was only three seconds over.
Tuesday was DnD again, which was good fun. It was the last session in Sarah's house in Wrexham before she moves to Colwyn Bay to move in with her boyfriend. We were in the middle of a frantic battle, which we finally won, which was good. It was an excellent evening.
On Thursday I went for another run with Dave from work, which was good. He's been struggling a bit with his practice runs so he found it quite hard, but the slower pace suited me and I had a good run. I need to practice on my own though, and get my pace improved.
I bought a new car today. The reason being is that the track is so bad that the the 206 is really struggling now, and it's knocked the tracking out again. This combined with a fresh slight knocking from the left suspension forced to conclude that even if the middle of the track is scraped out, the ruts will still be too bad for a normal car.
I had a look at a Shogun on Wednesday, and while the engine was great, the steering was all over the place and it was pretty tatty. Yesterday I went to have a look at two Honda CR-Vs in Deeside, but one had been sold and the other was uninspiring and stank of dog. A place across the road had a Mazda Tribute, which I actually drove, and that was very nice. A bit more than I wanted to spent though, and only a short MOT.
So I ended up with a Hyundai Santa Fe V6 CDX from a guy in Colwyn Bay. I wasn't sure, but a test drive convinced me. My Dad was there too and he thought it looked pretty good. It's done 97,000 miles and has a full MOT and tax until July. It drives nicely, everything that I've tested so far works, and it copes with the track fine and has plenty of room inside. I'm a bit worried about the fuel consumption with the V6, but pretty much any 4x4 in my price range was going to be shit on fuel as the economical ones are still pretty expensive. Anyway, it's not going to be forever, it'll only be until we've moved out and I can get something sensible again.
After I sorted out the car, it was off to Andy's for the final games of the 6 Nations. All of them were pretty good although I missed most of the first one as I was having fish and chips with my Dad and his wife after we had picked up the car.
The computer stuff is about to end on Ebay. Probably going to end for a pittance, but as long as that gets it out of the house I don't care.
Monday was the running club. This time it was two 14 minute runs with one minute of walking. I did better than last week and was quite pleased with myself. The minute walk coincided with the top of the industrial estate and our group leader challenged me to get to the top before the 35 seconds ran out. I was only three seconds over.
Tuesday was DnD again, which was good fun. It was the last session in Sarah's house in Wrexham before she moves to Colwyn Bay to move in with her boyfriend. We were in the middle of a frantic battle, which we finally won, which was good. It was an excellent evening.
On Thursday I went for another run with Dave from work, which was good. He's been struggling a bit with his practice runs so he found it quite hard, but the slower pace suited me and I had a good run. I need to practice on my own though, and get my pace improved.
I bought a new car today. The reason being is that the track is so bad that the the 206 is really struggling now, and it's knocked the tracking out again. This combined with a fresh slight knocking from the left suspension forced to conclude that even if the middle of the track is scraped out, the ruts will still be too bad for a normal car.
I had a look at a Shogun on Wednesday, and while the engine was great, the steering was all over the place and it was pretty tatty. Yesterday I went to have a look at two Honda CR-Vs in Deeside, but one had been sold and the other was uninspiring and stank of dog. A place across the road had a Mazda Tribute, which I actually drove, and that was very nice. A bit more than I wanted to spent though, and only a short MOT.
So I ended up with a Hyundai Santa Fe V6 CDX from a guy in Colwyn Bay. I wasn't sure, but a test drive convinced me. My Dad was there too and he thought it looked pretty good. It's done 97,000 miles and has a full MOT and tax until July. It drives nicely, everything that I've tested so far works, and it copes with the track fine and has plenty of room inside. I'm a bit worried about the fuel consumption with the V6, but pretty much any 4x4 in my price range was going to be shit on fuel as the economical ones are still pretty expensive. Anyway, it's not going to be forever, it'll only be until we've moved out and I can get something sensible again.
After I sorted out the car, it was off to Andy's for the final games of the 6 Nations. All of them were pretty good although I missed most of the first one as I was having fish and chips with my Dad and his wife after we had picked up the car.
The computer stuff is about to end on Ebay. Probably going to end for a pittance, but as long as that gets it out of the house I don't care.
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Many things
Too long since I updated this thing.
The biggest thing that happened in the meantime was my sister's wedding on the 1st March. This was a great success all round. I remember when they told me that they wanted the reception in the local castle, I thought that's going to be a bit tricky to pull off. But they did it.
I had to get my brother from the airport on Friday evening which was a bit hellish with the traffic as his flight landed at 17:35. I then took him to my Dad's house, where he was staying. It was then that my Dad's wife asked me what I was wearing to the wedding, and only then did I realise I had no black shoes apart from my running shoes. I had to wear those and hope nobody would notice.
Yeah, right, the very first thing my sister said when she saw me when I had to pick up my brother from her house in the morning was 'You're wearing trainers to my wedding!' Oh well. The ceremony was at midday in the chapel at the bottom of town and was simple and effective. They had decided to do it half in Welsh and half in English, which was surprisingly effective. After that it was back to the cars and up to the castle for the reception. This was in a marquee in the castle grounds, which was really effective and worked very well. They had a space in it for the catering, including a bar, and then if anyone needed the loo, they could go to the ones in the visitor centre.
The meal was excellent and there were the usual speeches, and then there was a bit of a gap before the evening do, which was a lot busier. It was a great success all round. The only blot on the proceedings was my sister-in-law breaking her foot when she and my brother were investigating the castle before the wedding. So while the ceremony was going on, she was in the hospital having her foot plastered, and had to turn up to the reception on crutches. Ooops. It was good to see the family though, and my sister's new husband's sprawling family are great too.
The running has been going reasonably well. This last week was a bit of a struggle with the jump to two 13 minute runs, but I did something new on Wednesday and went for a run by myself. I found that pacing myself alone is hard so I ran too fast and had to walk a fair bit at the end, but it wasn't too bad. I think I'm being held back by my weight at this point and need to cut back on my eating. Which is being handicapped by being invited to birthday meals and things.
On Thursday I met up with Rob, Em and Andy to sort out some more details about Berlin. We booked the car park, Andy's suitcase, the Reichstag visit (which you have to now book in advance) and some other details. It's quite worrying how quickly it's come round, but Andy and Rob are a bit more worried obviously, as they have to run the half-marathon.
This weekend has been good. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym, which was nice as it was almost completely desrted. I did my usual cross-trainer and some weights and then went on the treadmill where I mixed up walking on a gradient with running, finally making it up to 11mb/h for a couple of minutes, which was good. After that in the evening it was off to Abergele for Dave B from work's birthday meal. We went to the pub and played (in my case terrible) pool and then went to an Indian. I had a new dish called a Deshi Paneer, which was like a cheesy Korma and absolutely delicious. As I wasn't drinking I didn't stay out all that late, but it was a good evening and a good chance to get to meet the helpdesk guys outside of work. They're all new and I'm still a bit out of touch with them.
Today it was down to Rob and Em's for the rugby. Sadly the game was shit, Wales were just pants and it wasn't fun at all. Even the Sevens game afterward was shit as well, but at least that was shorter so the agony wasn't prolonged. After that we ended up eating a Chinese takeaway while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Netflix.
The other thing I did today was collect up all my vintage computer stuff and put it in the porch to catalogue it and put it on Ebay. I was going to give it to a museum, but they only wanted some of it and wanted it all boxed up and taken to Stoke-on-Trent. Too much hassle so I'm just going to list it all on Ebay as a job lot for collection only. If it goes for a tenner I don't give a shit any more so long as they come and get it.
It's an odd sensation though. All this stuff was so important to me at one point and then somehow I just completely lost interest in it. Not so much vintage computers completely, but having to have the original hardware. It's hard to justify having the physical machines and the space they require when you can just fire up an emulator. There's a couple of things I'm keeping separate to list later, one being a brand new boxed IBM Model M keyboard and the old Acorn A310 which I loved dearly back in the day and can't quite bring myself to sell yet. Not least because I need to take the hard drive out first and can't figure out how.
The need to clear this stuff out though is because there is now finally movement on selling the house and moving somewhere more suitable for my Mum. I'm still feeling the indignity of having to live with an aging parent at my age but realistically at this point, I don't have much choice. Anyway, the house has now been valued and will be on the market before too long.
Oh well. It's a slightly frightening step forward into perhaps a new phase of my life, so I need to try and look forward to that instead of fearing it, although this does fluctuate from day to day.
The biggest thing that happened in the meantime was my sister's wedding on the 1st March. This was a great success all round. I remember when they told me that they wanted the reception in the local castle, I thought that's going to be a bit tricky to pull off. But they did it.
I had to get my brother from the airport on Friday evening which was a bit hellish with the traffic as his flight landed at 17:35. I then took him to my Dad's house, where he was staying. It was then that my Dad's wife asked me what I was wearing to the wedding, and only then did I realise I had no black shoes apart from my running shoes. I had to wear those and hope nobody would notice.
Yeah, right, the very first thing my sister said when she saw me when I had to pick up my brother from her house in the morning was 'You're wearing trainers to my wedding!' Oh well. The ceremony was at midday in the chapel at the bottom of town and was simple and effective. They had decided to do it half in Welsh and half in English, which was surprisingly effective. After that it was back to the cars and up to the castle for the reception. This was in a marquee in the castle grounds, which was really effective and worked very well. They had a space in it for the catering, including a bar, and then if anyone needed the loo, they could go to the ones in the visitor centre.
The meal was excellent and there were the usual speeches, and then there was a bit of a gap before the evening do, which was a lot busier. It was a great success all round. The only blot on the proceedings was my sister-in-law breaking her foot when she and my brother were investigating the castle before the wedding. So while the ceremony was going on, she was in the hospital having her foot plastered, and had to turn up to the reception on crutches. Ooops. It was good to see the family though, and my sister's new husband's sprawling family are great too.
The running has been going reasonably well. This last week was a bit of a struggle with the jump to two 13 minute runs, but I did something new on Wednesday and went for a run by myself. I found that pacing myself alone is hard so I ran too fast and had to walk a fair bit at the end, but it wasn't too bad. I think I'm being held back by my weight at this point and need to cut back on my eating. Which is being handicapped by being invited to birthday meals and things.
On Thursday I met up with Rob, Em and Andy to sort out some more details about Berlin. We booked the car park, Andy's suitcase, the Reichstag visit (which you have to now book in advance) and some other details. It's quite worrying how quickly it's come round, but Andy and Rob are a bit more worried obviously, as they have to run the half-marathon.
This weekend has been good. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym, which was nice as it was almost completely desrted. I did my usual cross-trainer and some weights and then went on the treadmill where I mixed up walking on a gradient with running, finally making it up to 11mb/h for a couple of minutes, which was good. After that in the evening it was off to Abergele for Dave B from work's birthday meal. We went to the pub and played (in my case terrible) pool and then went to an Indian. I had a new dish called a Deshi Paneer, which was like a cheesy Korma and absolutely delicious. As I wasn't drinking I didn't stay out all that late, but it was a good evening and a good chance to get to meet the helpdesk guys outside of work. They're all new and I'm still a bit out of touch with them.
Today it was down to Rob and Em's for the rugby. Sadly the game was shit, Wales were just pants and it wasn't fun at all. Even the Sevens game afterward was shit as well, but at least that was shorter so the agony wasn't prolonged. After that we ended up eating a Chinese takeaway while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Netflix.
The other thing I did today was collect up all my vintage computer stuff and put it in the porch to catalogue it and put it on Ebay. I was going to give it to a museum, but they only wanted some of it and wanted it all boxed up and taken to Stoke-on-Trent. Too much hassle so I'm just going to list it all on Ebay as a job lot for collection only. If it goes for a tenner I don't give a shit any more so long as they come and get it.
It's an odd sensation though. All this stuff was so important to me at one point and then somehow I just completely lost interest in it. Not so much vintage computers completely, but having to have the original hardware. It's hard to justify having the physical machines and the space they require when you can just fire up an emulator. There's a couple of things I'm keeping separate to list later, one being a brand new boxed IBM Model M keyboard and the old Acorn A310 which I loved dearly back in the day and can't quite bring myself to sell yet. Not least because I need to take the hard drive out first and can't figure out how.
The need to clear this stuff out though is because there is now finally movement on selling the house and moving somewhere more suitable for my Mum. I'm still feeling the indignity of having to live with an aging parent at my age but realistically at this point, I don't have much choice. Anyway, the house has now been valued and will be on the market before too long.
Oh well. It's a slightly frightening step forward into perhaps a new phase of my life, so I need to try and look forward to that instead of fearing it, although this does fluctuate from day to day.
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