It's the weekend!

But I'm working tomorrow...boo. Fecking office moves.

Car serviced yesterday, went OK. The handbrake was sorted quite easily - the cable hadn't snapped, it had just come off the handle, so it didn't cost much to sort. However, the front tyres were utterly screwed so had new ones fitted today by Etyres.

After the N97 incident, been looking for suitable replacement. Android has been intriguing for a while but took a while to find an affordable device. Found one eventually in the form of a HTC Magic, a slightly older device. So far it seems pretty decent although finding the onscreen keyboard a little difficult. Tried out a few apps and things, seems quite good. Can't believe there's actually an Amiga emulator for Android, that just seems wrong.

Fling

Didn't sleep well last night, but felt suprisingly good most of the day, and had a productive day in work, got a lot of jobs out of the way and it's all looking a little better than it was. Also made peace with the person who sent the e-mail that caused the bin kicking incident on Friday. Still wish I wasn't doing overtime on Saturday though. Set myself a little project to do when I have quiet moments, which is to set up a little copy of the backup system on a Linux machine by following the original documentation for the live one. It works to a degree but there is a time limit as without a valid license file, it only runs for 30 days.

The Focus goes in for it's service tomorrow, but I had to phone them up and add the handbrake as the cable snapped while I was parking it today. Also it looks a complete shed because I was tired of the paint flaking off the non original front bumper so I put Nitromors on it to strip off the old paint. It worked to a degree but it currently looks dreadful. Oh well.

Not a good week for cars, both Rob and Steve had bumps, and a guy in work has issues with his car cutting out and he's going to Devon with his family next week.

Think it's catching up with me now, urgently need sleep.

Computer hot-rod

It's fun to hack around with older computers and make them run better.

Just worked out at last how to replace the BIOS on the Latitude D800 with the one from the Precision M60. The two machines are pretty much the same but the D800 for some gimpy reason only runs the RAM at 266mhz, while the M60 runs it at 333mhz. The RAM I've installed in the D800 is capable of that speed so I have been meaning to swap the BIOS for ages, but 0nly just now worked out how it's actually done.

The D800 now thinks it's a Precision M60 and is noticeably quicker. I don't know why Dell did that, the Inspiron 8600, Latitude D800 and Precision M60 all use the same basic chassis and motherboard, but only the D800 has the slower RAM.

There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.

Not much went on the rest of the week on Friday when I had a disctinctly upsetting e-mail in work, that caused me to scream obscenities at the top of my voice and savagely kick a bin across the office. Not sure if it was because I used my left foot or what but it really damaged my foot to the point where it still hurts now. Oh well.

Picked up BioShock 2 from Morrisons for £14 so have been playing it off and on. It is pretty much more of the same except that this time you play as a Big Daddy. The plot is interesting and the environment as great as ever.

Didn't play badminton on Thursday due to Rob being ill and then Friday I didn't go because I wasn't in the mood and my foot was still hurting.

Yesterday was a fairly idle day with mostly BioShock and a couple of movies. I dug out some old movies that I hadn't seen for ages on VHS, The Living Daylights and The Craft. Then went to Llandudno with Andy and Maz to go to Pizza Hut and watch Back to the Future in the cinema. Both were OK although there were a group of tattooed bodybuilding gorillas who thought they were really funny and loud in Pizza Hut and then to our dismay went into the same screen as us. Fortunately we were far away from them and the sound was turned up so their constant talking was a faint murmer in the background. BTTF was a blast on the big screen, looked great on digital projection and it's just such a fun film to watch.

Today it was supposed to be rugby in Wrexham but it was cancelled due to heavy rain, but by the time it was announced, I had just arrived at Andy's. So we went to the Denbigh Chocolate Shop, which is really cool. It has a little cafe area, but then if you go upstairs there's a sweet shop, a gallery and a meeting room. Very nice.

Trying to rationalise the computers I use, so after the failed Acer behemoth experiment, I ended up buying a brand new Acer 17" 7741g with a Core i3, 4gb RAM, 500gb hard drive and ATI 5470 graphics. To fund it I'm selling off the older machines. Sold the MacBook on Ebay and made a small profit on it, even with the replacement keyboard. I also listed the Latitude D800 but that didn't sell, which came as a bit of a relief as I have a soft spot for it. Decided to keep it and treat it to some more RAM and a new hard drive to speed it up, but there's still a few others to list.

The car really needs attention now, it's definitely down on power and using more fuel than it should. The exhaust is getting steadily worse. Tired of exhausts now, wish I could just get one that stuck up out of the bonnet like a tractor.

Title of this entry is one of the stranger messages encountered written on a wall in Silent Hill 2.

So tired...

It's been a long, strange week. Work has just been impossible to keep up with. Get one job out of the way and in the meantime two more come in and just constantly being hassled to get things done.

Not many people were able to make it to the drumming workshop tonight so we went back to Darren's for a bit. Nice to sit down and catch up with him. We ended up playing drums for a while as his housemate played piano which was fun and interesting. Tired now though.

A fun packed weekend

Yesterday was OK. Amy and Huw came up to pick apples again, which was fairly entertaining and there were plenty of them on the tree. Also we had a look at the damson tree which I've ignored for some time, and found that it was covered in them. After that I took a trip into Denbigh to get a new tax disk holder for the bike as the original was all rusty and knackered. In the evening went for an Indian with Andy, Maz, Rob, Em and Vicky. A bit fat after going out on Friday night too, but wasn't going to turn that down. Had a chicken tikka masala which was slightly embarrassing to order, but was really really nice.

Today did some digging in the garden to clear out blocked water channels and fitted the tax disk to the bike. It was a bit of a pain as the old one really didn't want to come off, but got there in the end. Then took it out for a nice ride, although it was a bit cold. Had an interesting moment where I stopped on the side of the road near Cerrigydrudion to have a look at the view and some bikers slowed down to ask if I was OK. Dug out Fable II again after ages and progressed my evil character a bit more. Got to a new town with the normal routine of a rampant massacre of half the people there before buying out the place. Hehe.

Mmmm

Mum's birthday today so went to the Prosperity in Rhuddlan, a really good Chinese restaurant. Very good food there. Only been there once before with work, and it was good then.

Friday at last

Hurrah, finally, at last, it's Friday.

Mum's birthday today so going out for a meal this evening, woohoo.

Stupid Acer behemoth graphics card died, stripped it for parts and scrapped it, arse.

Bleh

Watched Hackers, a film which is shit in many ways but still has a bizarre appeal for some reason, even though anyone who knows anything about computers will go 'What?!' several times. It's good stupid fun though. Every time I watch it I still want to paint a computer in camo.

Also watched Total Recall while doing some hardware tweaking on an Acer 7520 17" laptop with serious overheating issues, CPU running at 70-80 degrees and graphics chip hitting nearly 100 degrees. Put some Actic Silver 5 on the heatsinks and removed a thick pad of dust from the fan and it's down to 40-50 degrees for the CPU and 60-65 degrees for the graphics chip, much improved although I think the graphics chip should be cooler still. It's away from the danger zone at least. Think it's because of the shit thermal pad between the chip and the heatsink, might see if I can get a copper shim for it like the Dell I had similar issues with as the heat transfer would be a lot better. Nice feature of this laptop is two hard drive slots, ideal for dual-booting or virtualisation. Just needs some more RAM now and perhaps a faster CPU if I can find a compatible one (AMD Socket S1).

The skin on the back of my neck is killing me, got a massive outbreak of painful pustules on it and it's really hurting because of the pressure my shirt collar puts on it. Probably caused by stress, I usually break out in spots if I'm worried about something or under pressure.

Unremarkable day

Not much going on today.

Had payment for another Ebay item, a HP 71B palmtop that is off to France. It's going to a place not far from Lyon, and just recently my lost lovespoon geocoin got moved to France to a cache in the same general area. How odd.

Stupid weather

This morning went to the biker cafe in Denbigh for breakfast with Andy, Maz and Vicky. It's actually called Sam's Cafe but I call it the biker cafe as it's right outside the motorbike dealer (in fact it used to be the dealer) and usually has plenty motorbikes parked outside. They do a pretty good all day breakfast to be fair and the lunchtime specials are usually good too.

This afternoon, Will and I were going to go up to the moors and take photos but the weather today has been grey and pissing it down with no let up so we gave up on that. Instead we had a go on Fable II multiplayer, which was quite good although I had to download the expansion packs as Will had them already. While they were downloading I played a few levels of Duke Nukem 3D, which was good fun.

Not done much else today really. Tidied up a bit and packaged up a couple of the Ebay sales for postage tomorrow after having the payment for them.

Having one of those weird introspective moments where I'm questioning quite a lot of things.

Beer, beer, beer, I hate beer

Today was the annual beer festival in Denbigh. I detest beer and cider in all forms, so I don't really get much from it really, but it's nice to meet up with everyone and hang out. I didn't go last year, but I did this year and had a good time. I tasted quite a few beers, all horrible, and some ciders which weren't great either. Fortunately this year they had a cafe which did food and drinks. I had two bowls of a really nice chilli and then Caroline bought cakes and chocolates. Also, I only just realised that I had two cans of Coke, breaking my no-Coke rule. I hadn't had any since Sunday. Oh well, it won't matter so long as I don't lapse into the old habits.

All four of the last things I put on Ebay sold, including a batch of Speak & Spells that went for £51, yay.

As it was payday yesterday, I did the tax for the car and bike. £205 for the Focus and £15 for the bike. Also the Focus is having a service next Saturday.

Came home from the beer festival at about 6pm as the noisy and annoying folk band had started up.

Felt tired today for some reason and at a bit of a loss what to do with myself. Oh well.

Need to have a tidy up tomorrow, living in a pigsty at the moment. Also can look at what else I can put on Ebay at the same time.

Flim

900th post.

A fairly ordinary week. Not much really to report. Found there are more caches gone live near home and a colleague and I went for one that had gone live yesterday, hoping to get first to find. Somehow we managed to time it so we arrived at the cache just as it poured down with rain, and got wet, and then found someone had got it an hour before - ARGH!

No drumming this week as the hall was booked out previously, boo.

Other than that not really done much. the inverter for the MacBook arrived today and I got it installed and the screen still flickers, although not as badly. Getting at the inverter was, surprise, a royal pain in the arse. Removing the screen bezel is easy but the cover over the hinges and the inverter is a rotten design. Officially you're supposed to remove the whole display assembly before taking it apart but that involves removing the fucking keyboard section and I'm not doing that again after last time. Wretched bloody thing. At least the screen should be swappable without too much hassle if I do buy a new one for it.

I haven't had a single drop of Coke since Sunday and I think I feel a lot better for it. I have been drinking Robinson's squash in work, which to be fair has it's own share of crap in it, but it's nowhere near as bad as Coke. I actually have a spare bottle of Diet Cherry Coke in my work laptop bag left over from last Friday, which I've been treating as a sort of test as I haven't opened it yet. The food hasn't been good this week mind you but the lack of Coke must help. Also been walking the dog a lot this week, which was fairly OK except the weather sucks rather a lot. Met a pair of friendly horses today poking their heads over a gate and demanding attention. Horses are alarming things really.

Great weekend

Saturday consisted of the gang going into Denbigh for a heritage festival. It was hyped up a bit and had things going on but after going around the underwhelming thing in the town hall which consisted of a fairly crappy market we sort of gave up on it. We did partake in the rather delicious hog roast though and then spent the rest of the day in a pub and having ice cream. So while the heritage thing wasn't great, we did have a good time.

Sunday was spent walking the dog and taking the bike out. Had a really good run on the bike, went further than usual and ended up seeing quite a lot of other bikes. At one point got stuck in the middle of a convoy of huge leather guys on big Harley Davidson type bikes, all loud farty things and then on the moors ended up in front of some sports bikes. Wasn't too bad though, quite good fun really. The evening consisted of a meal at the Brookhouse Mill, which was really good, lots of good food and conversation with friends.

Today wasn't too bad in work. After a protracted scream, managed to make my job list a bit more likable, and left a little early as it was quite a productive day. Got home to find the tasteless Ferrari laptop had arrived back from repair, which is good. It's back to normal now, so hopefully it'll behave now. It's a nice little machine. Debating now whether to take the dog out - it's rather windy but that I don't mind, but it's trying to rain as well. Hmm.

Update: Did take the dog out and it didn't do more than drizzle. It's actually better in poor weather though because you put more effort in rather than just pootling along enjoying the scenery.

Further update: Just listed a few more retro computing things on Ebay. One nice thing is that now I can put good quality images on there as the D50 works very well for that.

A shit day with highlights

Some days, I really hate my job. Again, not the work itself, just the way it suddenly piles up from people with no consideration that you might actually have other work for other people that, shock horror, might be more important, and then get all stroppy about it. And BlackBerrys are NOT important, I don't care how much you want your shiny toy but it doesn't take precedence over someone who can't work because their machine has died.

It was someone's 21st birthday today and so there was a vast, beautiful chocolate cake, and we all had chips for lunch. This was mildly cheering until I felt sick all evening, so much so that I didn't go to badminton. Throwing up on the court might not have been liked. Did take the bike out for a little jaunt and it went really well. Oh, except the headlight seems to have stopped working. Bah!

Really tired and dispirited this evening. Can't be arsed doing anything. Tried to play bass, failed, tried to play Xbox, failed, so just listening to music.

Bike sorted

Yesterday was fairly dull until the evening, another African drumming workshop. Slightly less people this time but it was still really good fun with more complex stuff going on and different people doing different parts of the rhythm. Really enjoying it.

Today I had a flexi day to take the bike in for the work. They did the faulty lights, the chain, spark plug, handlebar bearings and the exhaust. It's amazing, it rides and sounds like new, which is great and it only cost £51. The only thing they couldn't do was fit a long mudflap to the front mudguard as they didn't have one but will let me know when they've got one in.

The tasteless Ferrari laptop has been repaired and is on it's way back, which is good news.

Fraaark

Work has been frustrating. My Latitude D520 laptop had been pretty reliable until three weeks ago. First it had an intermittent line appear across the screen, then started to have issues with the hard drive clicking, and then three times yesterday it crashed hard. Unfortunately I was told I couldn't have a new one, instead have someone else's old one. It's a D620 which isn't much younger than mine, which had just suffered a graphics chip failure. Fortunately Dell extended the warranty on that part as it was a known fault (Nvidia made a few million shit chips) so it had a new motherboard two weeks ago. Finally got hold of it today and started building it so that was a relief. It's got a nice screen, a 14" 1440x900 panel which is so much nicer than the 15" 1024x768 panel in the D520. It seems to be in good nick and the new motherboard should hopefully mean it will be reliable. Would have been nice to put Windows 7 on it but we're not quite at that stage yet.

Just washed the motorbike in preparation for taking it in on Thursday as I won't get a chance to do it tomorrow night. Doesn't take long but is fiddly. It could really do with a longer mudguard on the front wheel to stop more of the mud being flung back.

Bought a Nikon D50 which is a slightly elderly DSLR after decided I'd relied on phone cameras long enough. Kind of overkill I guess but it does take lovely photos despite being five years old and 6.3mp. All the settings are rather bewildering though - taking some time to get used to it.

Haven't been using the MacBook much since I repaired the keyboard because the screen flicker pisses me off. I've just read though that this is more commonly caused by an inverter problem rather than the screen itself, so I've ordered one as they are pretty cheap compared to a new LCD. If it works, great, if not then I'll get a screen when I can afford one. I really like the keyboard on the MacBook but not the sharp edges on the front. When it makes typing on the machine actively painful, it makes you wonder what they were thinking when they designed the thing.

Hah, that's ironic, just yanked the screen bezel off the MacBook to see how hard it is to get to the inverter and I think I did something to the cables. Now the screen looks brighter and it doesn't seem to be flickering. Shit, wish I'd tried that before I ordered the inverter. Mind you, compared to the Dell laptop to it, the screen does have a yellow tinge, but that might just be the gimpy colour calibration in OS X. Oh well. We'll see.

Update: Nope, it's flickering again.

Tired and unmotivated this evening. Again. Not sure why.

New work shoes I bought on Saturday are working out well. My feet feel much better.

Unproductive

Well, that was probably the least productive Sunday ever. I literally did nothing but sit and watch the Top Gear challenges on Youtube all day, except to package up the Acorn A4 laptops (Went for £127) and the tasteless Ferrari laptop so they can go to the purchaser and warranty repair centre respectively.

Up to the 3rd James Herriot book. I've read them so often before that I nearly know them off by heart but they are great books.

Back to work tomorrow. Bleh. I am going to have a lie in though because I need to call DHL to arrange collection of the broken laptop and they don't open their call centre until 8am.

Windows 7 aplenty

Spent much of the day at my Dad's. Went and got some packing stuff and things and a new pair of work shoes. Hopefully this will help my feet get back to normal.

After that went to the new PC World and Currys shop in Llandudno, which is pretty cool. We picked up a couple of copies of Windows 7 for my Dad and Jean's laptops, which were unfortunately inflicted with Vista. Spent the rest of the afternoon backing up the machines and rebuilding them.

Exercise fail

It took four days, loads of parts, and a whole load of aggro, but finally the tape library works. It's not been a good week because of that, having to neglect my normal work and concentrate solely on the backup system was a real pain. On the plus side, I'm much more confident with the system and the various processes, due to having to shift tapes around manually and keep on top what the system usually does automatically. When the main guy is in, it's all to easy to let him do the hard stuff when it breaks. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. I'm not saying it's perfect, there are still issues, but the backups themselves ran each night and the offsite tapes are where they should be.

Booked the bike in to the garage on this coming Thursday. I'm taking it as a flexi day - because of coming in early for the last five days I've got loads of time to take. Basically I've given them a list of what it needs and asked them to check it over to see if it will be OK on the upcoming MOT.

Now on South Park season 2. This seems much more familiar than season 1 as I think I had it on tape. Enjoying it though.

Started reading the James Herriot books. I've always really liked them and it's been a while. I've always liked the way they are written, especially the vivid characters.

Need to have a tidy up, the house is a disgrace at the moment.

Went to Friday night badminton today for the first time this season. However, my feet haven't been right since Monday after the walk, and so I only lasted two games. Also made it rather clear how unfit I am right now. My trainers are OK but it's my work shoes that are the problem. Going to try and pick some up tomorrow. Also need to get a box and bubblewrap to send the Ferrari laptop back to Acer as they have agreed the fan is faulty and it needs to be repaired. They say to send it with at least 5cm of bubblewrap around it, which is mad because the original box doesn't give it anything like as much protection. Oh well. It needs doing and otherwise it's a damn fine machine.

Tax forms came through for both the bike and the car, in the same envelope which seems unusually efficient of the DVLA. Bike tax is £15 for a year, car tax is £205 for a year. Ouch.

Not much else going on. Going to my Dad's tomorrow as I haven't been for a while.

Today is the first day I didn't go mad for Coke. Feel better for it I think.

Grah

Yet more parts needed for the library. Argh. Given up hope now, but only one more day and I can hand the whole blessed system back to the guy who normally looks after it.

Didn't go to badminton tonight as my feet have been complaining all week - I think the walk on Monday followed by a day in my shit work shoes ruined them. I've been wearing my trainers all week and they do feel better. Should be OK for badminton tomorrow however.

Went out on the bike for a little spin and it went OK. Slightly alarming moment when I went round a bend on a relatively narrow road to encounter a green 08 reg left hand drive Aston Martin. The bike does need attention, the occasional hesitation it had before is getting worse and it generally just needs some bits doing. Hoping to take a day of work next week to have a garage look at it and evaluate its condition and what needs doing, bearing in mind the MOT in October. If it comes to a lot, it might be more sensible to sell it for parts and put the money towards another 125 which is easier to get parts for - either that or put it towards the DAS scheme to get a full license.

Other than that it's been a quiet evening.

I like hitting things

Tape library still broken, needs more parts and that's all that needs to be said about that.

An old friend of mine from school announced drumming workshops nearby and I thought I've give it a go. There were about 10 people there of various ages and it was really good. It's been a while since I've seen him but it was probably 9 years ago that he was starting out. He's really good on the drums now. Found it very relaxing after the nightmare day in work. It's a weekly thing for a little while now so will probably go again.

Apple has redesigned the iPod shuffle yet again. Someone must have realised the buttonless design was incredibly stupid.

Flibble

Went into work to general chaos with the backup system. Again took all day to sort it out and I found that removing tapes manually from the library is a very tedious operation indeed since there doesn't seem to be any logical order in which it stores them. And it still isn't fixed, awaiting engineer from IBM to come in and repair the actual hardware.

Other than that, quiet day. Listed the two Acorn A4 laptops on Ebay. After years in storage, one of them powered up after a bit of fiddling but the other didn't, so I've put them on as a job lot. Both hard drives appear to have failed however. Quite gutted to be getting rid of them as I remember them coming out in the early 90s and being outrageously expensive and then being thrilled to get them cheap a few years later. Oh well.

Not much else going on, tired now after going into work very early. I woke up and I couldn't think of anything but the backup system so I got up and went straight in to see what had happened.

Awesome walk

Went for a walk around the Abergele area with Rob, Will and Sarah. It was really good as the weather was superb and we went around the Gwylch Castle area which I had never seen before. It's pretty impressive, even if it's not that old, and we saw some amazing views down the coast. I looked up some geocaches beforehand and we found five in the end, which was good. Also picked up two travelbugs, which is always nice. One of the caches had already been found twice today by the time we got to it, but it was on the sea front next to the cycle track so it would be in a prime location to be picked up.

So overall it's been a fairly decent weekend other than the strange mood I was in yesterday. I've successfully managed to avoid thinking about work too, which is good. It's kind of getting a bit a close now, I'm really hoping the backup system hasn't died over the weekend though, it was bad enough on Friday.

Need to get stuff on Ebay due to financial issues mentioned previously. I watched an old Acorn A4 go for £132 recently - the rare RISC OS laptop. I've got two of them, which both worked several years ago although I think one had a dodgy hard drive. Not so much of an issue with Acorn machines though as the operating system is in ROM. Once I've tested them I'm going to put them on as a job lot because I've lost the power supply for one of them. Still loads more crap I can list though.

Tired now after the walk, need to get to bed.

Superhero name generator. This has been around for ages, I remember playing with it in college in what must be around 1997 or so.

Examples:

The puerile Ice Woman
Power(s): Telekinesis, Image projection
Source of powers: Mutant mutagen
Weapon: Ice Pistol
Transportation: Woman Pig

The naughty Tomorrow Thing
Power(s): Shrinking, Clairvoyance, Telescopic vision
Source of powers: Mutant spinach
Weapon: Thing Pistol
Transportation: Tomorrow Sleigh

The brazen Wolf Hitmen
Power(s): Gadget creation, Speed reading, Deus ex machina
Source of powers: Magic mutant
Weapon(s): Hitmen Amplifier(s)
Transportation: Astrosubmarine(s)

A less than productive day

Didn't really do much today, didn't feel quite right. I thought at first I was coming down with something but then it just seemed to be tiredness with a bit of a headache.

Watched some South Park season 1, which I haven't seen since it originally aired in the UK which I guess would be about 1997. Funny stuff. Discovered it had a German audio track, that was slightly weird to say the least.

Not been a good month for finances or health, real willpower issues at the moment, but today was not a day to worry about it as I really didn't feel up to doing much at all.

Acer fan is getting louder but tech support lines only open Monday to Friday, 9-5 which is less than helpful.

A bad day with a happy ending

Typically, it being a Bank Holiday Friday, the backup system broke. It always does this without fail when I am left in charge of it. This time it was a hardware failure in the tape library. The door where you insert tapes had a sensor problem and if the system tried to do anything with tapes in the door the whole thing would lock up. So spent much of the day trying to sort it out and worrying about the backups over the weekend. I think it's going to be OK though, but the engineer is coming back first thing on Tuesday to repair it so we can get the tapes out again. This also caused a debate amongst the helpdesk team who were thrilled by the robot in the tape library and decided to try and name it. So far the candidates are 'Bertie', 'Jeffrey' and 'Bender'.

After all that was in a very tired and stressed mood, but went for an Indian in the Village Masala with Andy, Maz and Vicky, which was great as usual. The food was excellent although rather filling and they have puddings where you keep the container. Andy had a Punky Penguin which was a plastic penguin filled with ice cream and I had a pistachio kulfi that came in a nice little pot which you could keep too. That was nice.

Looking forward to the weekend now. The replacement speedo for the bike has turned up and hopefully should fit OK, but it reads up to 160mph which is perhaps a little excessive. Mind you my old Vectra had a speedo that did the same.

Strange day

An confusing and unproductive day in work. I did have my interim PA in the morning though, which went OK.

Evening consisted of a meetup with a few people from work to bid farewell to a Canadian woman who is returning to Canada with her husband. I've known her in work for a couple of years now and she lived down the road from me. It was a good evening and a good turnout, which was nice.

In a weird mood this evening.

The fan in the new Acer laptop has developed a slight buzz. It's not very loud but is noticable. Think I'll give them a call about it as it didn't do it to start with. Bah. Otherwise it's really good, very happy with the performance and usability of it. It runs Windows 7 very well.

Bank holiday weekend coming up and already I think it's going to be a fat one. Oh well.

Random

A fairly hectic day in work after the day off yesterday. One of the test Unix partitions had gone down and only I could get it up and running, although it didn't really take much. But there were loads of e-mails waiting for me about it.

Took the bike out when I got home, went. Definitely needs attention to the exhaust now though, and the rear light has gone, although the brake light is still OK. The list is getting longer. I have however ordered a universal speedo for £30 after discovering the original item is about £130 and is notoriously unreliable, presumably why it was replaced by the cycle computer in the first place.

Gave the poor dog a bath this evening as he needed one. He doesn't like it, but at least he doesn't struggle or fight. The worst part is when he shakes himself afterwards, although I did accidentally get water in his ears which caused a shake in the tub which wasn't good.

Attempt to make lunch to take into work failed, as I forgot it. Oh well, I had it this evening and it was nice, and fairly filling as it was pasta. Will try again tomorrow.

Fairly quiet otherwise.

Clean-cut or mate

A fairly decent day. Played around with the Acer a bit more, getting it how I like it. It definitely runs better than the average netbook. The Atom server seems stable, which is good.

Got another key for the bike, so I've got two again now. Hopefully the other one will turn up at some point. Dropped into a place in Kinmel Bay where I've been a few times to ask their advice. This time it was about the speedo and chain tension. They were really helpful and said to just bring it in whenever, which is good. It's good when they are really approachable like that. Also I think the exhaust will need looking at.

I dug out an old plywood bass body that has been the basis for several previous experiments and attacked it with a hole cutter. It's now got about 20 holes in it, removing a large amount of wood and making the body much lighter. I've got a neck that will fit on it and the rest of the hardware, so just need to put it together. I don't know if the holes will affect the strength of the body but we'll see.

Chips for supper, from the really good one in Denbigh, and once again it was really good. A battered sausage is a pretty vulgar item of food really, but from there it's a work of art, and the curry sauce from there is sublime.

Back to work tomorrow. I always worry about going back after a holiday, even if it's just a day off.

Iron Maiden got to number 1 with their latest album. Who would have thought it!

It lives!

Got a replacement power supply for the Atom machine and it powered right up, which is very good news. Also the new power supply is quieter, so that's nice too.

Wedding trip

It was my nephew's wedding on Saturday, which was taking place in a Llanegryn on the west coast of Wales near Barmouth. I travelled down on Friday evening right after work and met up with the family for an Indian.

The B&B my sister had booked us into was in a place called Llwyngwril. It is on top of a hill and has incredible views over the village and the sea. You can see right across the bay to the peninsula and it's amazing how it reaches right across the skyline. Simply stunning. The B&B was great too, very quiet and peaceful and the hosts were very nice and friendly.

The wedding went OK with a good turnout. The church was very nice, clearly very old and nicely decorated. The vicar is Dutch, oddly, and can speak fluent Welsh, which leads to quite a peculiar accent. After that it was back to Llwyngwril for the reception, which was held in a pub. It was a really good day overall. At one point Amogharatna and I took a break and had a look at the beach, and it was a pretty amazing view. The whole area had a really nice atmosphere, and was very beautiful. Living in Wales can make it easy to forget how lovely the countryside can be.

Amogharatna wanted to run a half marathon while in the UK so we headed off early on Sunday to go to Leek where one was being held. It was a three hour drive but traffic was fine and we made it in good time. While he was running, I went over Blackshaw Moor to Buxton, and was treated to some amazing views over the countryside. Buxton seemed very nice and was very pretty. After that we headed off to the East Midlands Airport so Amogharatna could catch his flight home to Berlin, after which I drove home. It wasn't too bad, the M6 was a little busy but otherwise it was fairly painless. I did feel quite zoned out when I got home because of all the driving. I used a whole tank of petrol in three days.

Decided I needed a more portable machine and due to some fairly mediocre experiences with Atom based netbooks, picked up an Acer Ferrari One. The reason being that it is only a bit bigger than a netbook but has a much better spec, with a dual-core AMD CPU, full-size hard drive, discrete graphics, decent 11" screen and a decently sized keyboard. The downside is the Ferrari styling with a bright red lid and red highlights around the machine. I've seen much worse however. The default OS install was as I expected, loaded with crapware and an embarrassing F1 engine startup sound. Blew that away immediately with a fresh install of Windows 7 and I'm happy with the performance so far.

There was a thunderstorm on Friday morning so I shut everything down and left it all unplugged. When I got back last night I powered up the Atom based server. It came on OK but after about thirty seconds, the power supply expired with several loud flashes and bangs, which was a little startling to say the least. I just hope it hasn't taken out any of the other components with it.

Carnal Octet Emu

Screw the Microsoft dictation stuff.

A fairly decent day in work. It was my Unix day, so I spent the morning going over the backup system as I'm going to have to be solely responsible for it for the next two weeks. It's getting rather near capacity now and so the daily admin needs to be kept on top of, especially the bank holiday weekend where it usually throws a tantrum because nobody has taken the tapes out of the I/O door. The afternoon was spent struggling with the slightly bonkers way that Unix keeps time, which was causing issues with scripting.

Pleasantly surprised by Dell today. We had a Latitude D620 with screwed up graphics. It has an Nvidia Quadro NVS 110 that was one of the many that Nvidia had problems with a couple of years ago. The standard warranty on the laptop expired in April, but I read on the Internet that Dell had extended the warranty on affected machines. I logged a call with them, expecting a battle to get the laptop repaired but nope, they said cheerfully it had a 5 year warranty on the graphics chip and after I did a couple of tests over the phone, they said an engineer would be out tomorrow to replace the motherboard and screen. Result!

Came home and packed up for the weekend, off to my nephew's wedding on Saturday. I leave tomorrow evening directly after work, as all the family are staying in a B&B, which should be good. On Sunday, I'm taking Amogharatna to Leek so he can do a half marathon there, and then to the airport I think. I've got Monday off as I think I'll need it after all that.

It's been a hugely fat day. First I was persuaded to have chips for lunch, which was actually good as they really hit the spot, the weather was OK, and it was nice to get out of the office. On the way home I thought sod it and got a Chinese. I don't know how to get out of this cycle I'm in right now, it's pissing me off.

A local cash for local people Will have a key spotted a menu andq bark U

It was an okay day in work today. Finally got a few jobs out of the way that had been there for quite some time which was a relief.

Found out today that somebody has put a geocache in the local village. I have often thought that it would be a good place to put some caches as it is a nice village with quite a lot of history. It is on the footpath which I haven't been a long for many years, if ever. I was the first person to find it, which is nice.

Also, by go for a ride backspace backspace backspace backspace backspace. Microsoft dictation in Windows 7 is a little bit patchy as you may have gathered from the previous sentence. This also explains the title. Anyway, took the bike out for ride which was good fun. Otherwise it has been a fairly uneventful day, and haven't really done much else.

Mmm...smooth...

A not too bad day at work. Got quite a bit done and finally getting rid of some older jobs that have sat around for a while, which is a relief.

Took the bike out when I got home with the new key. took it up to the road near the Brenig which has just been resurfaced. It was great to ride on such a perfect surface, so great in fact that I went back and forth along it several times. After a trip down towards the lake itself I came back along that road to see people making some sort of film. At least, there was a Focus ST parked up and then some other car following an estate with a guy sat in the boot with a camera. I guess I ruined their shot as I came up behind and they pulled in to let me get past. The bike went fine although the handlebars still squeak a bit and sometimes it hesitates while accelerating and occasionally backfires on the overrun. Oh well.

Finally sorting out the photos on the MacBook. iPhoto is currently importing the library from the old iPhoto setup on the iBook, all 5,156 photos of it. It's a bit weird as it seems to be doing it quite randomly. Pictures keep flashing up and triggering memories - Rob's wedding, Ed's wedding, holidays to Berlin, New York, Madrid, America, etc, plus many random ones from barbeques, pictures of Sandy, etc. Odd but fun. Just need to sort out all the other pictures from since the iBook was retired.

I really want to visit Steve and Kara again, but when I looked into flights, they are quite expensive, over £400. That is a lot, although I haven't written off the idea completely.

Flamps

An odd day. Frustratingly, sunny and clear right until I left to go home, but took the dog for a walk and it was nice enough.

Got into Tanzwut recently, a band which combines medieval rocky type stuff with industrial metal. I've downloaded the first and third albums but the other two aren't available yet. Really interesting stuff. Some tracks combine the metal with electronic sounds and the medieval stuff, which is a strange mixture but I like it. In fact the album I just downloaded, Ihr Wolltet Spaß, has got some fucking stunning tracks.

Fun weekend

A good weekend.

Yesterday it was Rob and Caroline's housewarming BBQ, which was good fun. Plenty of food and gossip, and the discovery that nothing is more important than 'It's mealworm time!' Their new house is pretty cool, an old farm house that has been extended and done up. Lots of land with a field that has a very good view over the vale. We went up there to watch the sunset. What should have been a solemn, thoughtful moment was marred by donkey impressions, farting and for some reason Airplane quotes. Still, it was nice to watch the sun go down.

Had a go on Dead Space yesterday and today. It's a game that I've been playing for some time. I like the atmosphere, in particular the way it has no HUD, instead integrating health and other status indicators into your character's suit, and the menus and things are holographic projections. It also has a fairly interesting storyline, but it is a very intense gaming experience so I find it a bit of a struggle. It's frustrating because I'm enjoying exploring the ship and building up the storyline, but the game mechanic demands that you dismember the mutant enemies by shooting off their limbs, rather than just blast away until they stop moving. I'm fairly desensitised to hideous creatures in games (Silent Hill has a lot to answer for) but the dismemberment thing lost its novelty some time ago. So I tend to only play it in short bursts every few months. Completed the fourth chapter today so I think that means I'm about half way through.

Took the bike out which went OK. A couple more issues now - the handlebars seem to have developed a squeak, and I found that the rear numberplate light appears to have fallen apart and lost its bulb somehow. Also, I've now lost the second of the two keys I had made when the original snapped. Not sure how, I think it was between doing some work on it and taking the dog for a walk. Fortunately I still have the snapped one so I can get some more made, but why I'm so crap with these keys I don't know. Oh well. It's not surprising that the bike is having issues since I have to take it up and down the track and even at low speeds it probably puts it through more stress than it was designed for. Oh, and the odometer should have rolled over to 13,000 miles the other day. It rolled over all right but the 2 didn't change - so it's back to 12,000. It's time to look into a complete replacement speedo I think, even if that means faffing about with the DVLA as the mileage will revert to 00000 again.

Other than that it's been a lazy day. Had a play with a Toshiba laptop that Rob and Caroline found in their house when they moved in. It's a 486DX 75mhz with 16mb RAM and a 500mb hard drive. It must have been quite a high end model when new as it has a TFT screen and most unusually, a SCSI port. The only laptops I've ever seen with SCSI are Apple PowerBooks and the rare Tadpole Unix laptops. Unfortunately the Toshiba has a faulty hard drive but I'm sure I have one that will fit, or could possibly use a Compact Flash card instead with an adapter.

Big update

Thursday morning I set off to Bernauser Strasse, one of the parts where the wall is still preserved along with teh deathstrip. This was the scene of several escapes when people jumped out of apartment windows. After that got on the train at Nordbahnhof, which itself has some interesting displays about the history of the divided city.

After that went down to Yorckstrasse station and had a little look around there and from there back to the Charlottenburg station to have a look at the hotel where we stayed in 2005, nearly five years ago.

That evening went for a meal with Amogharatna at an Indian restaurant which was pretty good but so busy that they had to put more tables out in the street. It was a warm evening though, so it was fine. It was right next to the elevated section of the U1. The drivers of the trains that went past had their doors open, which seemed quite strange. After the meal, took the train to the end of the U1 where it goes over the Oberbaumbrucke and where the East Side Gallery is. Both were pretty cool to see but it was dark then.

Friday morning was spent at a museum where there was an installation Amogharatna wanted to see. It had quite a few interactive exhibits made up with lights, and a weird room where there were mirrors all the way up to a skylight. The room was only a few metres large but it looked huge. The final room was the best though. Basically they sealed off a few rooms and filled them with fog. Then there were lights in the ceiling that made different areas of the fog glow with colour. It was a strange experience as when you moved from one area of colour to another, it was so intense.

After that we spent some time finding an MP3 player for Amogharatna and had a coffee in the Kaufhof Galleria, a big department store in Alexanderplatz. It was nice and had a great view over the station,

On Saturday I moved into the hotel. In between Amogharatna's apartment and the hotel I took in the musical instrument museum near the Philharmonie. It was pretty interesting with many unusual and rare instruments.

The was originally going to be the Agon Aldea by the Bulowstrasse U-bahn, but they had screwed it up and overbooked. Fortunately as the Agon is a chain, it just meant they had to put me in another one. This turned out to be the Agon Franke, which somewhat frustratingly was not in an area I was familiar with. But after a rather scary taxi ride I found the hotel was pretty close to a station on the U7, so that was fine. Spent the rest of the day having a look at the Berlin nightlife, which is interesting.

Sunday morning was spent having a look at the flea market in the Mauerpark near Bernauer Strasse. Unfortunately I fell ill around midday due to the rather stupid calamari breakfast I had from a place in Alexanderplatz. Fortunately I had started to feel headachy and tired so when the throwing up and diarrhoea started, I was back at the hotel. The rest of the day was spent recovering with the aid of a giant bottle of Coke.

Monday I felt much better although I didn't really do much before going to meet Amogharatna again. We wandered around a bit and had some really good falafel from a place called DaDa, which I've had it from before. Really tasty. After that he had to go back to the Buddhist centre. I wasn't feeling great so I picked up a DVD and watched it on my laptop back at the hotel.

The last morning was spent with Amogharatna again. We went down to the nearby Turkish market, which was really interesting, loads of unusual food and things there. We got some bread things for lunch with sheeps's cheese and spinach that were really nice. All too soon though I had to get the train to Alexanderplatz to get the airport express.

The flight back was not good, was surrounded by unruly children so it wasn't peaceful at all. Saw some pretty amazing views on the way down though.

The rest of this week hasn't been too bad. Work is interesting as usual, and depressingly it feels like I was never gone.

Took the bike out this evening but was out longer than I meant to be as I saw Andy and Maz and chatted. I got caught in a rainstorm on the way home. Worrying as I hadn't ridden in proper rain before, and I'd read that the Gilera can have issues with the electrics in the wet. Fortunately it coped OK and I managed fine except my lower half got utterly soaked through. Fun fun.

Airports rule

First full day in Berlin. Amogharatna had to teach English in the morning and then had meetings so I spent the day exploring. First headed out to the Westend S-bahn station and took a stroll down through Charlottenburg and found an U-bahn station. From there I went to the Olympic Stadium to have a look at that, which looks impressive from the outside. Hungry by this point so went to the Hauptbahnhof and had some fast food currywurst, which was pretty good.

After that, had a wander round the Tiergarten before going back to the apartment for a break. Amogharatna went for a run and then we went and had a look at what is now the new Tempelhofer Park. It's simply amazing, the whole thing is basically as it was except for a few maps and things dotted about and some extra marking on the runways. It's just great though - there were people playing ball games, flying kites, skating, riding around, etc. It took a while to get from one end of the runway to another though.

Supper was found in Kreuzberg - had a veggie burger for the first time ever probably and it was actually really nice.

Arrived

Flight was OK yesterday, quite uneventful. Liverpool airport was interesting, it's being remodeled so the paths through security and everything was quite different. It was very busy but they seemed quite efficient.

Got to Berlin and Amogharatna wasn't at the airport, so I assumed he wasn't able to make it to the airport to meet me, so I got the train and headed to his apartment. Turned out he had gone there but my flight had actually landed early and he had been slightly late and forgotten his mobile, so while I was waiting on the platform for the train, he was arriving on a bus. It took a while due to my phone playing up, but we eventually got in contact and met up. Went for a nice meal at an Italian round the corner.

The weather seems much better this morning, yesterday was cloudy and rainy.

Finally!

Finally, at last, it's time for holidays. First the weekend with an ex Proact meetup, which will be at mine, weather permitting. The idea is that we'll have a go at the garden and clear out the shed and then retire to Amy's for food and stuff. Although if the weather is crap (likely) then the gardening bit might be skipped.

Then a flexi day on Monday, followed by Berlin. Because work has been so busy lately and I've had a lot on my mind, it's really crept up on me, although I'm quite excited about it now. Found out today that the Tempelhof airport was opened as a park in May, so I definitely want to check that out after seeing it in March.

Finding it difficult to unwind even though I'm not in work now for over a week.

Need to get some more stuff listed on Ebay. Haven't sold anything for a while.

Got an idea for another bass project but not sure if it's worth the time and funds to do it as it's a bit silly. However, I still got the body going spare that was the first test of the chameleon paint - hmm, could perhaps use that body, and it wouldn't actually take that many parts to do it - got a neck that would most likely fit, and a pickup. Just need some wiring and screws and things...

Hmm. iTunes just picked 'Hey Boy Hey Girl' by the Chemical Brothers - not heard this one in a LONG time. In fact it's been too long since I listened to any Chemical Brothers in general. I've been listening to a lot of Rammstein, Oomph, Eisbrecher, etc recently, and I realised that I'm understanding more of the German lyrics, which is good.

Lockpicking

Work = double argh. Frustrating moment of the day, moving a giant server from one site to another only to realise the front panel was locked, making it impossible to turn it on. We had to break into it and remove the lock mechanism. Annoying.

This evening was another badminton fail - went to Rob and Em's and had food but none of us felt particularly like going. So we watched Sherlock instead. I actually really liked it, even though I'm not normally a fan of the smarmy superior detective explaining to his lowly underling just how he worked it out. Poirot and Miss Marple fall into that category too, especially Poirot with that stupid moustache - what a twat.

Otherwise looking forward to one more day in work before holidays, can't wait.

Hit a pothole near Denbigh, enough to make quite a thud even with the 14@ wheels and balloon tyres on the Focus - wouldn't want to hit it with alloys. Just one reason to prefer steels in my opinion.

Listened to The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera in the car. It's an album that I'm quite ambivalent about because I love the guitar on it but hate the vocals. But it's hard to imagine what other kind of vocals would fit on top of that guitar style. Dimebag Darrell was an amazing guitarist, hard to believe it's six years since he got shot on stage.

Eeek

Work = argh.

Attached the Explorist GPS to the bike with a load of elastic bands and took it out to compare the GPS speed to the cycle computer. The GPS read about 3-5mph below the cycle computer, but both that GPS and the TomTom read about that below the Focus speedo too, which is a little odd. So from that I'm assuming it is OK.

Noticed one of the shocks on the back was looking rather dodgy. Once I get back from Berlin I'm going to have to take it in somewhere and that and the exhaust checked out, and perhaps advise on getting a real speedo somehow.

Early start today, early start tomorrow, boo and hiss.

Rargh...splutter...churn...churn...churn...

A mildly improved day at work today, although there are things going on. One fun thing - I needed a new keyboard for my docking station and was given an old PS/2 HP keyboard that had never been used. During a dull luncthime I found a similar keyboard in white and swapped some of the keys over to create a replica of how PC keyboards used to look. It looks pretty cool I think. The keyboard the white keys came off was disgusting so I binned it or I'd have put the black keys on to make a negative version, although I have kept them in case I find another white one.

Got home and decided to take the bike out. For some reason I haven't quite got the hang of starting it from cold with the choke, although usually it'll run OK after a few goes. Tonight though, it was really stroppy and wouldn't run consistently, which was annoying. Eventually the battery went flat, but I was able to get it running with a bump start - a somewhat awkward procedure but at least it's easier than a car. Once I took it out though, it went really well. The whole thing is feeling more natural now, which is great. Really enjoyed the ride, even though it was only a lap around the block.

Looking forward to holidays...

Today was a very frustrating day in work for a few reasons. Some days you really do just want to hurl things around and scream. Lunch was nice though, a Chinese chicken bap with cheese and mayo, a rather strange combination recommended by one of the service desk staff that actually works surprisingly well.

Didn't do much this evening, took the dog for a walk and had another look at the bike speedo. I really would like to put a proper one on, just not sure how. There are some nice aftermarket ones but there's a lot to think about when fitting it. Not least because it would have a new odometer.

I've given away the bits that were going to make up the quilted maple Telecaster, but I've found that guitar is much more fun when you remove the top two strings. I never like sounds in that range and if I do play guitar it's mostly powerchords so the top two strings just get in the way. Hey, it worked for Max Cavalera. Just makes it a bit ironic that I like playing bass with six strings and guitar with four...

Just realised how little time actually remains to Berlin - need to sort out currency and things. My Dad has offered me a lift to the airport this time, which is nice.

The dog is on my bed again, need to shift him. Seems a shame though, he was wagging his tail in his sleep earlier, quite a surreal sight.

You WILL eat meat!

A great weekend all in all. Yesterday was Rob's birthday bash, which took place in Chester. Mainly it was at place called the Brewery Tap, which was a really nice bar, where somehow we managed to get a table for 17. Twice. Impressive. It was good to catch up with people too. The main reason for going to Chester though was a visit to the Tropeiro, a Brazilian steakhouse. Basically you pay a set fee, put some salad on your plate and then they come round continuously with various kinds of meat on skewers. It was pretty good although perhaps a little too much like being force fed. At the end I was thinking longingly of chocolate and vegetables.

Today has been a fairly quiet one. Gave the bike a clean as it got quite muddy when I came up the track on it last. Also read Fatherland, which I started at Rob's this morning. I remember reading about it not so long ago and found the idea quite interesting. It turned out to be really good, thoroughly enjoyed it. Also watched Inglourious Basterds, which is a rather demented film. It has many reasons to dislike it but it has quite a lot to offer underneath and it does have some really good characters and dialogue. It's like Fatherland in that it's pretty much an alternate history type thing.

Tired now. Written this on the Alphasmart, still think it's one of the best keyboards I have ever used. I have improved it by sticking some rubber feet on the bottom - before it would slide around rather a lot if you weren't careful.

Stuff

Geocaching is one of those activities that I sometimes wonder why it appeals. I went to a meetup in Rhuallt last night which was good, and then went to find a couple of caches with a woman from work and a couple of other people. Most were OK including one suspended above the A55, but then there was one we didn't get. It was dark, there were trees, pointy things, scratchy things, and nettles. One of those moments where you do wonder just why you do something. Still, it was fun and got me out of the house.

Alphasmarts are interesting devices. The Neo is exactly what I've been looking for, something with a great keyboard, decent display and no distractions. Then you just hook it up to the PC and it spews the text into whatever program is running at the time.

Rob's birthday bash in Chester today, can't wait. It's going to be good. Heading into town first to get a few things. Need a footpump for the bike, and some other stuff.

Argh

Work today was frustrating and difficult, not least because I left all my stuff in one site and had to work from another. Fortunately I was able to remote control my laptop.

Badminton tonight. Rob's birthday demanded Chinese food, so we all felt a bit bloated by the time it came to throwing ourselves aroudn the court. Had a good time, except the last game was us three against The Poison One. I found myself nearly having hysterics at one point which was embarrassing.

Doppelganger?

After a slightly frustrating day at work (old Macs and Active Directory cannot be friends) I came home and took the bike out for a run. Had a good ride. There's a long straight road near home that then goes uphill and down a long steep hill, which is totally deserted most of the time. I used that to go back and forth to practice clutch control and hill starts. However, I went down the hill and back up, and while going back up, someone went past on a black cruiser style bike with L plates and they were wearing a black jacket and a white helmet, very surreal.

Had a slightly odd experience where I stopped by a gate to look at the rather nice view over the Vale of Clwyd. For some reason a flock of sheep decided I was interesting and the whole lot came to investigate, perhaps they were checking out the bike. Had a look at possible alternate speedometers while on lunch. There are various aftermarket speedos available that might fit but I'm not sure about calibrating them. It'll hit 13,000 miles soon too, not too bad.

A guy in work has just got a J-reg Toyota MR2 turbo. It's a nice looking car in black but has quite a long list of issues, not least a slipping clutch which means the boost has to be turned down. He took me out for a quick spin and it's bloody fast, even with low boost and a slipping clutch. It's been a while since I was in a genuinely fast car and it was a little worrying.

Pantsdown

So Crackdown 2 came out. The first game was the first I had on the 360 and I played it a LOT. Admittedly there wasn't much story or plot but the compulsion to explore the city and find all the agility orbs was very strong, and it was just good fun. I got the demo for the second one and I didn't like it. It seems like they've mixed it with Carmageddon and other things and it didn't seem right. Also the reviews aren't great.

Given up on Red Dead Redemption. It's a great game and I can appreciate that, but at the end of the day, I don't like westerns, and I just can't make myself interested in anything that goes on in it. So I'm giving it to Rob.

Not much else going on. Feeling overly pleased with myself that I remembered what 'manchmal' means in English.

It's rained a lot today, preventing bike or dog walk action, frustratingly. So more geeky action. Also put the new set of strings on the 6-string, which is good. It sounds OK although I'm still determined to replace the pickups and rewire it at some point.

After finishing another run through of Red Dwarf, including an evening of drunkenly pasting quotes into Facebook, I've lent the whole lot to a guy in work and started reading the books. If you're very familiar with the series, the books are a little odd, becuase quite often you'll see familiar quotes and things, but in the wrong place or with a word different.

Looked into phones at lunchtime. I know people with HTC Android devices and they look pretty nice but still quite expensive. If BlackBerry did more models with good cameras I might be tempted by a newer one but the only ones with half decent cameras are the newer ones. So sod it, I'll keep using the 8310. So far it hasn't crashed, it's good for texting, phone calls are clear and it has good signal strength, and the battery holds a half decent charge.

Hey hey, do the zombie stomp.

Complicated

Spent the day at my Dad's yesterday hanging out and sorting out some blown bulbs on the car. After that headed to Cheshire Oaks with some guys from work to see Inception, which was quite good. Bit slow in places while they tried to explain some of what was going on but it built up to a complex and well done finale.

The plan to back up the storage VM to the second ESXi server works, except it's taking a very long time to do the initial copy. Both the ESXi boxes have gigabit network cards but I only have a 10/100 switch - might look into a switch with some gigabit ports as the laptops that used the wired network do have gigabit ports.

Bit tired today so probably going to chill and not do much. The film was on quite late and was also long so didn't get in until late.

Energy drink fuelled geekiness

Payday, so filled the car up with petrol. While doing so, picked up a can of Relentless. I don't know why, I always regret it.

I got home and having drank the can and caught up with my e-mails, descended into a sort of rage, grabbed the PC I built last year but never really used (triple-core AMD with 4gb RAM) and decided I would use it for something. I stuffed three laptop hard drives in it, crammed in a network card and installed ESXi. Having done that, needed to find a purpose for it. The way my machines work at the moment is they all back up to a virtual machine on the first ESXi machine called Storage1. So the idea is to have another VM on the new ESXi box called Storage2 and use a spare VM on the first ESXi box to synchronise the two. However, since this machine uses considerably more power than the Atom based one, I don't want to leave it on all the time, so it would be nice to somehow automate all this, perhaps using wake-on-LAN to power it up, synchronise the data and then shut it down again. Not sure if that is possible.

So there we have it, my exciting and fun filled Friday night.

Tired of this now, I've been a lazy fat bastard fuck for the last couple of months, eating like shit, drinking too much Coke again and not really achieving anything. Just not sure why I lack the motivation and willpower to do anything about it.

Much to my surprise the little BlackBerry 8310 is working out rather well. As I've used one in work for so long it feels very familiar, and I like the way it handles texts. It works so well that the only thing that makes me think about something else is the rather rubbish 2mp camera, but perhaps it's about time I got a proper camera again instead of relying on phones.

FUCK

Should have remembered not to try and play bass when I'm miserable. £30 of new strings on order.

Fun with plums.

Not much to report. Weather crap when I got home, didn't feel too motivated.

Decided that now I've just finished Ringworld, I'm going to read Strata by Terrz Pratchett, which he says is a pisstake/homage/satire of it.

Did some more German stuff this evening, using the Berlitz software, which is actuallz quite good. Hence why there's a few typos in this post as I'm using the D800 with it's German keyboard.

Tried 4gb RAM in the MacBook with two matched 2gb DIMMs. It utterly failed to start, so it looks like Apple wasn't lying when they said it will take 2gb RAM max. What a pain though, every other Core Duo machine I've seen with a 32-bit motherboard will run happilz with 4gb RAM and just ignore the bit it can't address. With one 2gb DIMM in either socket, it boots up fine.

Payday soon. Must be restrained though, need to work on that fecking credit card and savings. Bit bothered about that right now...

Decided I'm never going to use the left handed neck on the quilted maple Telecaster body and am going to donate it to a left-handed guy in work who wants to build a guitar. Not sure what to do with the body though. It could be modified to take a bass neck but it would need to be a short scale one and thez are hard to find.

Hmmmmmm

I finished rebuilding an old 500mhz iBook today and outfitted it with a 512mb DIMM and an Airport card, so pretty much maxed out. Works fine but feels quite slow running OS X 10.3.9. Just spent an hour or so checking out the Mac formatted backup CDs I used to create when I was using my original bondi-blue iMac.

Something that I didn't quite appreciate until I did that was just how much more I used the computer to actually create stuff back then. When I could only go on the Internet for about an hour a day on a 56k dialup, such time was precious, and the rest of the time I would use the machine to write stuff and create pictures in graphics programs. Yeah, probably should have been going out and socialising, but back then, that was my idea of hell.

These days, with the Internet available all the time with much faster speeds, not so much. Also, when I had just one decent working machine available, it made it much easier to have a central document store.

I don't like the thought that now I'm just an avid consumer of stuff from the Internet, and don't create anything any more. Also I'm still shit at socialising.

Hmm, something to think about.

Meh

Took the dog for a nice walk, despite the gloomy clouds which made me worry about the rain. Fairly uneventful other than some other silly dogs aggravating him. Also some horses, which he doesn't like, and a shitload of flies.

Found that the N97 had rather a lot of contacts which didn't exist on the SIM card so now I'm having to chase people for their numbers...oops.

Oh well.

In a weird pensive mood tonight.

Flange

Cleared out the crap that had accumulated around the Panda in the garage. Quite a few random things in there, including a set of badges from the Saab 96 that is now basically a few bits of rusted metal and a V4 engine sat in the field. Took the bike out for a spin too, although I'll need to get some advice on the exhaust soon as it is wobbling rather, and blowing at the engine end.

Finally got around to dumping the vast collection of unsorted images from the various machines onto the MacBook. Most of it is the exported collection from when I used to use iPhoto on the iBook, but that ends abruptly in December 2008 when it was retired. Since then I never really bothered to keep photographs in any particular place, so it's a bit of a mess. After the Pentax camera broke in about May 2009, I've just been using phones, so it's not too bad. There is still a gap from September 2009 to February 2009 when the memory card failed in the E90.

Weird looking back at the pictures, things really do change a lot. In particular the September 2005 visit to Berlin was interesting, looking back at things which are rather more familiar to me. One thing that I really noticed is the Palast der Republik in some of the pictures, which we took no notice of back then. Since then it's been demolished and is now a big grass square. The Madrid photos were good too, that was a fun visit.

Having completed the great Discworld re-read fest, I'm reading Ringworld again, which is a great book. Might look into picking up the sequels.

Ooops...

How does a Nokia N97 cope with being hurled out of a car window at 60mph, and then driven over repeatly? See above for the answer.

I have never developed a hatred for a phone quite like this before. The hardware was good, the hinge mechanism worked well, and the touch screen and keyboard worked well. I could cope with the scratches and dents, but what ruined it was the ghastly firmware. There were numberous and random glitches, and it had ludicrously poor reception. It would sometimes beep to say it was charging when there was no power supply plugged in and crash for no reason. Some menus would scroll smoothly, others would judder arthritically down the screen, and then randomly select something. The camera would activate randomly, and it was just a miserable experience using the thing.

I had hoped all the stuff I had read about the N97 being crap was wrong, but sadly it wasn't. As it was so battered already I thought there would be no point trying to sell it on and finally I'd had enough, hence the scene of carnage. I thought about making up a story about it falling out of my pocket while out on the motorbike but sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit you've made a mistake. Should have kept the E90.

Now I see why people are saying that the Nokia high end line has gone to shit. I've seen a few Android devices in work, and they are pretty decent. Of course there's the iPhone if you can cope with Apple's walled garden.

The only spare phones I had were car boot fodder, the tasteless gold D&G Motorola RAZR and a BlackBerry 8310, identical to my work one. I've now put my SIM into the BlackBerry and got it set up reasonably. It works OK, and will do for now.

In other news it was my Mum's graduation for her MA today in Bangor, which went fine. Fairly typical ceremony really, except for the initial music. Some woman played a piece on a clarinet, which was the worst piece of music I have ever heard. It sounded like someone just starting out, random peeps and tootles with the occasional scale, and loads of high pitched squeals like when you blow really hard into a wind instrument when you're a child to see what happens. This was, for some reason, combined with lots of foot stamping, prancing about, and a mask. It was horrendous. It made the harp music in the middle seem brilliant, and I'm not a huge fan of harps.

A long slow Friday

Today seemed like the slowest Friday ever. Not sure why, felt really lethargic and hopeless. Not just me that commented on that though.

Took the bike into work, went OK. I had a look at the exhaust and it seems that the bolt that is not there is missing completely and not snapped off in the engine, which is good news. Need to sort out the cover over the cycle computer, I tried to glue the plastic in place better and it went all cloudy.

Being fat tonight and having a Chinese.

Thought I'd play with Time Machine on the MacBook but it doesn't seem to like using a Windows shared folder as a backup volume, and I'm not sure how to make FreeNAS run AFP. Oh well.

The Panda Moves

Amy's Dad came up today with his rather lovely custom built Land Rover 90 called Bertie, which was used to drag the old Panda from the garage. It moved quite easily surprisingly and then it was barged into a spot in the field where it should be easy to move it down the track. The poor old thing took a bit of a battering when Bertie barged it backwards. Since it's been under cover all the time it's been stood, it actually looks fairly decent under the dust. Just need to get someone to scrap it now.

Not much else to report really. MacBook still working OK, quite happy with the performance although need to try some more things on it. A guy in work has ditched his iPhone for a HTC Android device after becoming thoroughly disenchanted with Apple and its business practices.

Did some geocaching today with some colleagues, some new ones had gone live in Ruthin which we got first to find on. I had to shimmy up a stop sign to get one of them, glad nobody was around to see.

Dell 1, Apple 0

Idiotic moment of the day - realising the exhaust on the motorbike was loose while I was going on along and pulling over to have a look, and grabbing it. Lucky I had gloves on or I'd be quite burnt I think as it hurt enough as it was.

Replacing the keyboard unit on the MacBook was the most traumatic laptop repair I have yet done. Simply removing the top case involved removing at least twenty screws of varying sizes, and then spudgering the edges away from the case. Having finally done this, I was greeted with a motherboard coated in gunk and dog hairs, which I tried to clean up as much as possible. I'm rather bothered now about my plans to replace the screen.

I can strip the Dell Latitude D-series laptops we use in work to bare parts in about five minutes, and at the end will have about twenty screws in total, of two sizes. The same screws are used to hold the case together, the motherboard in, and the display in place. The only screws of a different size are the slightly smaller ones that hold in the keyboard. The Precision M65 and Latitude D630 I use at home are very similar and I've them each apart at least twice with no problems at all.

On the plus side I did get the MacBook back together fine and it looks hugely better with the new clean palmrest even though it does have a little piece missing. I took the opportunity to swipe a 2gb DIMM from the M65 for it. It didn't like mismatched DIMMs though, with a 2gb and a 512mb in, it failed to power up. With the single 2gb DIMM it worked fine. Odd. Snow Leopard seems to appreciate the extra RAM though.

Wasted day

Not a very productive day today. Took some crap to the tip though, and took my Mum's car as she was worried it was making bad noises. It had new front springs recently and I think it might be something to do with that as it's making a creaking sort of noise.

Other than that, didn't do much except watch DVDs and take the dog out for a run in the field a few times. Just one of those days. Unfortunately those sort of days seem to be what I do most at the moment, and I can't work out why I'm so demotivated. Annoying and slightly depressing. I haven't been to the gym in ages now although I really need to. Might try to go tomorrow evening.

Argh...hurl...*SMASH* *TINKLE*

So today we did overtime. There's a site closing which used to house the offices for the schools ICT section, and we had to clear out all the crap that was there. And there was a LOT of it. Tons and tons of old machines, monitors, software, accessories, and quite a lot of new stuff that just hadn't been used. We found several shrinkwrapped copies of MS-DOS 6, ludicrous amounts of Windows 95 copies, absolute shitloads of old floppies (AutoCAD on floppy!), and a load of old PCs and servers and stuff. Spare parts for ancient Macintosh machines, ROM cartridges for BBC Masters? All there. The PCs and monitors had to be put aside to be disposed of properly, but other than genuinely useful stuff, it all went in the huge skip, which was very satisfying. Hurling it all in there was very therapeutic.

Afterwards, I picked up a ver cheap external DVD burner to get the MacBook up and running. It allowed me to install Snow Leopard and wipe the hard drive. Since I hardly ever use CD drives these days I thought I might as well get an external one rather than replace the internal drive as I can use the USB one on other machines. If I see an affordable screen after next payday I'll pick it up as when it flickers, it's annoying, although it doesn't do it all the time.

It's quite worrying how natural the Mac feels to use after so long of using other operating systems. It seems to perform well despite it being one of the earliest first generation MacBooks although I'm sure it could use some more RAM.

Broooom!

Work was fairly uninteresting, had to rebuild two relatively old CAD workstations. They were originally specced up with SCSI interfaces and hard drives but I couldn't get the drivers to work properly for them, so ripped them out and put spare SATA drives. For what they're used for the SCSI doesn't make much difference. Otherwise quiet.

The MacBook didn't arrive today so I went for a ride on the bike. Headed into Denbigh to fill it up and practice more on junctions and for the first time, roundabouts. Did OK, getting more confident. Things like changing through the gears, cancelling the indicators, and stuff like that is becoming second nature, which is good. People keep saying I'll get tired of the 125 but for now it's plenty powerful, and it's a four stroke. The more powerful two stroke 125s must be great fun, like the Aprilia RS125.

I popped in to see Andy and Maz and had a nice long chat with them, before heading back home. By that time it was getting towards dusk which gave me an idea what the headlight is like. There was one moment where I went round a bend near the village and heard a pattering sound. It was almost like rain, but it was in fact a swarm of mayflies splatting on the visor. Fortunately I had it fully closed but one still made it through the vents and went up my nose, but I was able to huff it out without having to stop.

I'm having no luck with the key for the damn thing. In Morrisons when I got petrol, I dropped it under the bike and spent minutes hunting through my pockets, and then when I went to the Spar, I left it on the counter and some guy came hurrying out with it as again I was going through my pockets. At least this one hasn't snapped yet!

I reckon I've done 110-120 miles since I last filled it up, and it cost £7.20 to fill it to the brim again, so that's not bad at all. Also today at lunchtime I picked up some chain cleaner and lubricant as it looks like it needs doing.

Back to the Mac?

Not really. Well, slightly.

Last weekend I went up to Kirkham to visit my cousin Pauline who is going through chemotherapy after surgery for breast cancer. Just one more chemo session to go, which is good news as she's been through rather a lot with it. We didn't really do much apart from go to a dog show on Saturday which was good fun. Other than that it was pretty much a lot of sitting around and chatting and enjoying the nice weather. I admire the way she is coping more than I can say, maintaining a positive outlook and looking forward can't be easy when going through that.

Not much else to report. The bike is still going OK. I thought that it would only run with the choke full on, but turns out I had the lever positions backwards - nothing wrong at all. I took it out last night in the nearly rain and also dusk, which was quite an interesting experience. Also went around Denbigh a little to make myself go through junctions and traffic lights on it, to get used to doing that. Also practiced low speed maneuvering with the clutch. Scary stuff but gettting used to it.

The Mac thing, well, Apple originally lost me when they went to Intel. I've written before that now the hardware is basically the same as a PC, it's difficult to justify the extra cost even with the nice build quality and Mac OS X. I did look into creating a Hackintosh but getting OS X running on a PC is pretty painful. But after rebuilding six MacBooks in work for a school and digging out my old iBook I found a cheap MacBook on Fleabay. Cheap because it was used by an artist who didn't really clean it very often so it'll eventually need a new keyboard and top case but it works fine. So I'm looking forward to getting my hands on an Intel Mac for the first time. It's one of the early MacBooks but that's fairly similar to the PC machines I'm using now, so it'll be interesting to compare.

I've been using Windows XP in work and at home for several years now, and Windows 7 more recently. As a result I'm pretty happy with how they work, the quirks of the platform and how to make it run well. As I've not used a Mac properly for so long, it'll be nice to get myself more familiar with it again.

Not very happy with Apple though, the company is becoming increasingly arrogant and I don't like the iPhone platform. I think it's too closed off and censored, and it bothers me that this closed down walled garden approach seems to be such a success. Also the hype for the iPad is bonkers. 'A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.' Magical? Really?

I sold the E90. I had to do it, but it was a shame to get rid of it. What a great phone it was. The N97 is still going OK although I really need to get a new lense for the camera and install the new keyguard switch.

Downloaded the latest Eisbrecher album which came out in April. Definitely one of my favourite bands.

Tired

Tired today, had a disturbed nights sleep. I was watching Red Dwarf last night and so I had a weird dream where Red Dwarf was happening, I was in it, and the whole thing was set on a canal boat. Very weird, but in the way of dreams like that, it made perfect sense at the time.

Booked the hotel for Berlin in August, so the deal is that I'll stay with my brother for half of the visit, and then move into the hotel on the weekend when he and his girlfriend go to their garden in Luckenwalde. Should be fun.

Not much else to report. Watched the James May Toy Stories series on DVD as I hadn't seen it before. Pretty good. The best one was definitely the Scalextric one though, that was really good.

The E90 has bids on Ebay. I'll be glad for the money but sad to see it go, a really good phone that lived up to all my expectations.

Nearly finished Unseen Academicals, the latest Discworld book. Given the way Terry Pratchett is deteriorating though, it's also probably the last one other than a Tiffany Aching book out in September, and those don't really count as 'proper' Discworld books.

Boo

Back to work tomorrow after a long weekend, boo.

It's been relatively quiet other than the bike, which I didn't take out today due to tiredness and just general grumpiness. Next step is to see how it is for commuting to work sometime.

The Mac Portable sold for £45 in the end, not bad as I think I only paid £10 for it originally. Good though as I need the cash, the bike was cheap but still enough to throw my finances a little this month. Still plenty more old stuff like that to go too.

Decided I'm going to keep the N97 as my main phone. It definitely needs some work, namely the rear cover and the keylock switch at the least, but I really like it. As much as I like the good old E90 though, I'm listing it on Ebay. It might be battered to hell but it's still probably worth £100 or so, and that would be really useful right now.

Had a kind of weird dream last night, one of those annoying ones that really sticks in your head all day.

Easy Rider?

In a move that will probably surprise a few people, I've bought a motorbike. I did my CBT in May to see what it would be like and and really enjoyed it. This combined with the cheap running costs of a 125cc motorbike led me to keep an eye out for a reasonably affordable one, ideally a Honda CG125 like we did the CBT on. They are supposedly indestructible, reliable, fun to ride and capable of 100mpg+. However, because of these qualities, they are hard to get hold of.

So I ended up with a Gilera Coguar 125 which I picked up on Friday. Yes, that is the correct spelling for some reason. It was owned by a guy who was doing it up as a project and so it isn't perfect. The most obvious issue is that the speedo broke a while back and now it has a cycle computer fitted instead, which actually works pretty well. It does have a working odometer though. It's had new tyres, new chain and sprockets and been serviced though, so that's handy.

Typically, given my luck with vehicles, the cover for the battery on the right side fell off on the way home from picking it up and smashed to pieces, and when I went to put petrol in it on Saturday, the one key I had for it snapped off in the petrol cap. The cover is impossible to get hold of so not sure what to do about that, but fortunately there is a skilled key cutter in Denbigh who was able to make two new keys from the snapped off bit.

It goes OK. It is apparently the same engine as a Honda CG125 and will hit 60mph on the flat even with my lardy arse on board. It feels more comfy than the CG125 on the CBT due to the bigger seat and fatter tyres. I took it for a long ride yesterday and it went fine, the only slightly alarming bit was meeting a bellowing Ferrari on a narrow road in the back of Ruthin.

Anyway, it's a fun thing, something different. It costs £10 to fill the tank, £15 to tax for a year and £11 a month for insurance so it's not too expensive to run.

Red Dead Hilarity

So Will and I just spent ages playing Red Dead Redemption multiplayer. It was a public game with a few people who seemed to be quite happy doing the actual missions and things.

Will and I however, first spent some time throwing dynamite at bears and each other with hilarious results, then had a fist fight in the middle of a curious lake that was shallow all the way across, before pushing horses off a tall railway bridge. Then I got shot in the head by some player called Snoop Doggy Puppy Plops or something and we spent 20 minutes tracking him down and mercilessly shooting him every time he respawned. The best bit was when the guys horse got mauled by a bear, and he managed to kill the bear only to get shot in the back of the head by Will. It's easy to imagine some guy sat screaming at his TV somewhere out there and as when we play Halo online, it's me doing that, it was nice to be on the other side.

Fun fun. Listed my old Mac Portable for sale. Quite a rare machine and one I rather liked, but this one never worked and is in pretty crappy condition.

Mood slightly better

Sunday = the last day of sloth and greed. After Em's birthday meal in the Semaphore all you can eat buffet (which was excellent), that was it. Since then I've been eating better and walking the dog properly so I don't feel too bad.

Not much else to report. The N97 is working out OK, although I really need to sort out the keyguard switch and the camera lense as they are quite annoying. Parts are cheap enough although I need to find the tiny Torx bit to undo the screws. The scratches on the front are also a bit of a pain, although they are only really annoying when outside.

Got a stack of MacBooks on my desk in work from a school. They need rebuilding but the disks have been lost and so I called up Apple about it. After giving them the serial number they said they'll send the appropriate disks to me, which is nice. Feeling slightly nostalgic about Macs again, but still can't make myself spend much to get one.

Enough

Tired of being lazy and fat but just can't get motivated, which is really annoying me now.

After seeing Andy's 5800 and being quite impressed by it, I was idly looking up how much they were going for on Ebay recently when I spotted a battered N97 going for very cheap. So I picked it up. It's not that different from the 5800, just has more features and storage, and a flip out QWERTY keyboard. It was supposed to be the absolute flagship of Nokias range.

Unfortunately the general consensus is that they fucked it up by skimping on the CPU and RAM even though the rest of the hardware was pretty good. The result is that it sometimes struggles if you try to run too many applications at the same time. This one was cheap due to a hell of a lot of wear including some noticable scratches on the front and on the camera lense (a design fault with the cover that slides over it). However both these parts are easily obtainable and so the plan is to fix it up as and when funds permit. The other part that is broken is the keylock switch, which is annoying as the only way to unlock it is to open up the keyboard. Given the abuse this phone has had, the rather complex hinge is actually completely solid. It reminds me of the old Psion PDAs except they broke a lot.

I've wiped it and upgraded the firmware, although the Nokia software only updated it to the v20 version and not the v21 for some reason, but it's still a big improvement. So far I rather like it, although I think it's because I'm so familiar with the Series 60 platform. Compared to the iPhone or the newer Android handsets, it is quite complicated and can be sluggish. One thing I do like is that it has 32gb storage onboard, and a MicroSD slot, so in theory you could add another 32gb and have 64gb total. Which is quite frankly bonkers. It uses the same battery as the E90 which is a bonus. Despite the rumours of sluggishness, it does feel snappier than the E90.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines

I don't know what it is about Airplane!, but it never gets old.

Lazy fucktard

I don't know why I can't get motivated to do any exercise at the moment, it's infuriating.

Bah

Having major problems motivating myself to do any exercise at the moment, which is stupid given that the weather (until today) has been perfect for going out and doing it. It's really pissing me off.

Just finished Wintersmith, quite good.

Headache.

A patchy day

Ebay still has the capacity to surprise. A big batch of Psion SSDs went for £71, considerably more than I expected, which was nice.

Went for a meal with my Dad, his wife and my Mum for his birthday tomorrow, which was good.

Didn't do much else the rest of the day, mainly fooled about in the Sims 3 and watched a couple of DVDs.

Arse

Folding at home can fuck off.

The build quality of the official Xbox 360 headsets is absolutely appalling.

Holidays

Not yet, but I have booked flights to Berlin in August, hurrah! Can afford it, just, but needed to do it now as the prices had already gone up from when I last looked. Finances a bit shaky now, bring on payday...

Took my wrath about the car incident out on the garden with the strimmer, felt much better after that. It's still going strong after I pulled it to bits and repaired it a few months ago which is quite amazing.

Today was possibly the slowest Friday ever, every time you looked at a clock thinking 15 minutes must have passed, it was about 5. Frustrating and annoying, given the weather outside was nice too. Oh well. Bet the weekend will simply fly by - where's the justice in that?

Sold two more Psions. Still a few left to go though. Not getting much for these ones as they aren't particularly rare or interesting. I don't really feel like I've got rid of much yet though, although I really have. Paypal shut down my account for a few hours the other day because I had received more than £1700 into it and they needed to check it in case I was doing anything illegal.

The Folding@Home virtual machine has completed 29 work units and my username is now ranked 345295 of 1420669. Not too bad. At least it's doing something useful. I used to have it running SETI@Home but while it's the biggest (or it used to be) distributing computing project, F@H just seemed more sensible.

Tired now.

Argh!

People suck. Just got run off the road by some idiot bitch who came charging up the middle of the relatively narrow road, not looking because she was lighting a cigarette. Fucking stupid cow. Then I took a couple of thousand miles off my front tyres by wheelspinning in anger. Bah.

Water

We have water again, woohoo! Not flowing as well as before but enough to wash and everything.

Fairly dull week but badminton today was fun. Had a couple of entertaining matches again and then had another one with the Poison Woman after Rob and Em left. We did quite well against her until about half way through, but I did manage to hit her with the shuttle at least twice and once return one of her smashes which she thought I wouldn't.

My thumb burst today. Flexed it and it suddenly went pop and spurted horrible fluid. It was messy and painful but now feels much better.

Not much else to report. Families are complicated.

Cars and thumbs

The Focus now has a nice shiny MOT due for 13 months. It needed a front exhaust section, back box and antiroll bar link to pass the MOT, plus a few bits and bobs. Amazing how quiet it is now, when things gradually get worse you can miss how bad they are getting.

They took it out for a drive and experienced the mysterious vibration under acceleration and the knocking when turning right at low speeds but have no clue as to the cause. That's the second time a mechanic has told me they have no idea and that it will have to get worse before it can be truly diagnosed. Annoying. The whole lot cost £354. Ouch. So that ruled out any idea of getting the service done before next payday.

My thumb is really hurting. At some point recently I knocked a chunk of skin off the inside where it flexes, and after I had a shower the other day the scab fell off and I think it might now be infected. It's really quite painful.

Eeew

Over the last few days I've become aware of a growing smell in the car that was a bit unpleasant, and couldn't think why. Then I found a chicken and stuffing sandwich on the floor which I vaguely remember buying but can't remember when. Anyway, it put up quite a fight but I did eventually manage to restrain it and throw it away. Minging. Washed the car too as it's going into the garage tomorrow. Found a bit of surface rust by the rear end of the left sill, will need to sort that out before it gets any worse.

The E90 battery has deteriorated, not holding a good charge any more, and it did cross my mind that it might be an excuse to possibly look at a new phone. The Nokia X6 looks quite interesting, or the N97, but not convinced about how solid they are, as the E90 is pretty solid. So I just got a new battery for the E90.