Monday, 26 May 2014

Oh dear

Last week was fairly quiet on the whole. On Monday it was the GoT watch, which was pretty good. Not long to go to the end of the season now, although it's not on tonight.

Work was meh, not much going on. On Friday evening went out to the pub with the gang and had a good time there, before heading back. I didn't do all that much on Saturday really.

Yesterday was good. I went to archery early and had a good time shooting the compound bow. I'm the only beginner who expressed an interest in it, and I really enjoy shooting it. There was the usual ribbing about training wheels and cheating, but I wasn't hugely bothered by that. It was really good fun though, the only downside is that compound stuff tends to be a bit pricey if I wanted to get my own equipment.

Today has been another quiet day, with a bit of tidying. The people who have put an offer in on the house are coming to take a look tomorrow. Typically the dog pissed on the landing. Now that he's getting a bit old and frail he can get a bit scared of the stairs so I think he got all anxious about it and ended up pissing up there. Bah.

Been playing Skyrim a bit. Still enjoying it, even if I'm being spammed by quests. I got one merely by walking past a city guard who was having a conversation with someone else entirely. Oh well. It's all good fun. Now that I've levelled up it keeps chucking dragons at me too, which is interesting. But even now I still feel like I may have only scratched the surface of the game

Sunday, 18 May 2014

Ouchy skin

It's been an OK weekend so far. Yesterday morning it was off to Steve's to observe Andy and Rob help Steve shift a wardrobe. I was not required to help as I'd helped move it originally, but it was a good thing I did go because it was only me that remembered how the thing came apart. Oh well.

Today was archery in the morning. It was very quiet as there was a competition going on elsewhere. I was trying out my new tab which was a birthday present from Rob and Em, which caused some pretty crappy shooting at first until I got used to the feel of it, but I got over 200 points on 20 yards for the third time once we started scoring. I then had a go at 30 yards, but by then my arms were tired so I didn't do all that well and only did a few goes. Also I forgot sun cream and despite hiding in the shade when I wasn't shooting, I'm still a bit pink.

Not much else to report really. The Yoga 2 is now set up and working. It's currently running the original French OS with a UK language pack installed, so it can be a little schizophrenic when it comes to displaying messages. Now that it's set up properly, the 3200x1800 display is really quite something. Most things I've tried so far have been fine, the exceptions being the standard Windows command prompt, which is a bit small, and the default RDP client, which shows the destination machine at the native resolution, and is therefore tiny. Fortunately if you get something called RDP Manager it scales it up.

Not sure why leather seats are seen as desirable in cars. The dark grey ones in the Hyundai always seem to be too hot or too cold to me. Otherwise it's still going OK although it's appetite for unleaded is as voracious as ever.

Thursday, 15 May 2014

Urgh

Too long since writing anything.

I had a 6-day weekend for my birthday, which was decent enough, and quite eventful. The original offer on the house was withdrawn, frustratingly, but we had a couple more viewings. A rather dedicated woman drove up from Essex on my birthday, setting off at about 7am, and arriving at midday. She looked around for two hours and then drove home. She also met the neighbours which was in a way good thing. She must have liked it because she has put an offer in anyway.

On Friday it was the funeral of Simon's Dad, who died the week before. Amy and Mark and Pam and I went to it to support Simon, even though we didn't know his Dad all that much. It was a big event as it's one of those families that seems to be half the town, and it was good to see so many people there showing their respects.

My birthday on Saturday happened to coincide with Eurovision, so the evening was spent round at Rob and Em's place for the now traditional Eurovision party. It's pretty entertaining when there's 15 people in the room taking the piss out of it.

Otherwise the weekend was OK. My Mum's car broke down yesterday which was annoying it was stuck in such a position that I had to pull it by hand out of the gate until it started to roll. I then had to roll it all the way down the track, backwards, with no power steering or brakes, scary. It's been taken away by a garage who diagnosed a minor problem with the fuel system.

Work has been OK since I went back. Had to stay last night to swap out two blower assemblies in a BladeCenter H. It has two, and will run for one minute with one removed before it shuts down, so it was a bit scary. Fortunately it went OK. Today was sorting out the AS/400 backups which had gone all out of sequence and was getting itself into a mess.

Running not so good. I was going to go on Tuesday on my last day off but the weather was so shit I went to the gym instead. Nothing wrong with that but I find the treadmill terribly difficult compared to running on the road. I was hoping to get the bike sorted out over the weekend but didn't get around to it.

Diet has been shit too, no idea why I do this to myself. I've lost two kilos, but it seems that whenever I lose any actual weight I try to start sabotaging it. Perhaps it's some kind of self-hate thing to ensure I remain forever alone, which seems to be inevitable at this point. I seemed to be always destined to be the third wheel, that one awkward single person in a room full of couples.

Done some stupid things too. I've decided the Surface Pro is nice but not really much use to me as I never use it as a tablet, so I've obtained a Yoga 2 Pro to replace it after really liking the Yoga 13. It's an interesting machine, but I didn't realise how different it was. It's got a French keyboard, which is a bit of a problem as it's not as easy to remove as the original Yoga, and the RAM is soldered. Fortunately the SSD is removable, which is a bonus over the completely sealed Surface Pro. The crazy part is the 3200x1800 display, which is a bit of an issue when things don't know how to scale to it properly. Will have to see how that goes. It also had a a French operating system, which I've now just wiped. However the new installation of Windows 8 doesn't quite get that it has to scale to the 3200x1800 display so everything is hyper tiny. I've solved the keyboard problem with stickers for now as the French layout is a bit strange. The machine is also the rather vibrant orange version, which is certainly different.

Probably stuff that I've forgotten to put on here but I don't care, and I'm tired and pissed off.

Saturday, 3 May 2014

An odd week

I wasn't back in work until Thursday. Monday was a bit of a lazy day apart from another house viewing. That one seemed to go OK. On Tuesday my Mum came home. On Wednesday I tried to go for a run around town but it didn't go well. My legs just didn't want to cooperate, so after half a mile I decided to call it a nice walk in the sunshine and any running I managed was a bonus. Also the scrapyard at the top of town caught fire and for a few minutes it looked quite apocalyptic up there so I came home.

Work was OK but busy for the rest of the week, lots of things going on and upcoming scary work. Now that the whole XP end-of-life thing has been sorted out by the desktop team, it's time for the server team to worry about Windows Server 2003 going end-of-life in July 2015, and there's a depressing number of systems still running it.

Today was helping Andy empty his house, ready for the sale to complete on Friday. It took less time than I expected, since there were plenty of people there to help. Most of his stuff is going to storage so it took a few trips to take the stuff there.

The rest of the day has been fairly lazy again. It's the first visit to the archery club tomorrow following the beginner's course, which I'm looking forward to.

Not much else to report really.