Running variety

Friday evening it was down to Rob G's with the gang to watch the rugby, which was a surprising success after the dismal performance of Wales the week before. The evening was enhanced by chips from the local chip shop and also a red velvet cake, which was delicious. A great evening all round.

Saturday was a fairly unproductive day, apart from going to the gym in the morning, which was good. I went on the treadmill again but found it harder for some reason so I didn't run on it as long.

Sunday was off to Rhyl with Andy, Rob G and Chelsea so that they could do the 10 mile running race. Despite the fairly dire weather forecast it was quite warm and mostly sunny, with the only downside being the incredibly strong wind that was blowing sand all over the place. Chelsea and I saw them off and then hung around for a while until they came back. They did really well given the conditions, and we got a Subway before heading back.

The rest of Sunday was spent watching some more Breaking Bad, pretty much. Still enjoying it.

The running class on Monday evening wasn't quite as much a fail as last week. I did struggle at one point, when we went up the industrial estate. It's a long, gradual incline, and it just goes on forever. I had to slow right down for it, but once I got past the top, it was OK. Unfortunately I misjudged the kerb by the police station and took a tumble, scraping my leg and hand. I felt fine at the time and finished the run fine, but by the time I got home I was starting to feel various aches and pains, and I had to wash the road grime out of the cuts on my leg which really hurt.

Today has been reasonable, but it's been a bad day for eating, and my aches from the fall got worse, in particular my left knee, but hopefully I'll be OK for the gym tomorrow evening. I need to get as much exercise in the week as possible as this weekend is my sister's wedding so there'll be family stuff going on for most of it.

Developments on the house are suddenly proceeding. It's been valued by two separate people who nearly agreed. After saying this needed to be done for so long, it's somewhat disconcerting for it to suddenly be happening, and I'm suddenly very conscious of how much crap needs to be sorted out. My Mum's eyes are playing up again and if the treatment isn't as effective as last time then she won't be able to drive, and that's going to be a real issue.

Running fail and win

The running class on Monday was a crap for some reason. I really struggled after the first 9 minutes was done as I got a bad stitch and my legs were killing me. One of the guys ended up taking me back a different way and breaking it up a bit. It was quite demoralising but he said not to worry about it. He also recommended that I try the 30 day planking programme that went around recently to build up my core strength.

It was the first DnD for a while on Tuesday, which was good fun. Unfortunately it turned into the usual snack fest. The game was good though.

Yesterday evening I went to the gym and had a good session. I did a 5 minute walk on the treadmill to warm up, then 20 minutes on the cross trainer, then some weights, and back on the treadmill again. I'm getting more comfortable running on the treadmill now, and I did 20 minutes of mixed running and walking, which felt good.

Tonight I went out for a run with Dave from work to repeat Monday's session. After the terrible run I wasn't expecting much, but it was a lot better this time. We did the same route and the stitch began to kick in at around the same spot. However this time it didn't amount to much and almost went away again. We did a bit of extra running and even a short sprint when we were nearly back at the leisure centre.

After the giant Breaking Bad fest on Sunday I've kind of stayed away from it and have been watching South Park season 10. The last episode I watched was the brilliant Make Love, Not Warcraft, which was awesome.

Generator of trouble

It was an uneventful week until Wednesday, when there was a massive storm battering the building in work through the afternoon. The lights flickered occasionally but all was OK until the power went out at 4:50pm. The computer room was running on battery but we had to spent the evening making sure the generator was running and fuelled up. The power came back on after a while but the electricity company couldn't guarantee the supply would stay up, so we shut down a lot of stuff. There was about 10 of us who stayed until 8:45pm, and then we came back in early the next morning to power it back up again. The only casualty of the various power wobbles was a BladeCenter power supply. By the time I was heading home I was really hungry and as it was so late I got a Chinese, but I didn't feel guilty at all.

Thursday was not a productive day as I didn't sleep well and was very tired and took an early finish. I did intend to have a nap and watch some Breaking Bad, but ended up just reading and relaxing.

Friday was an awayday with our new director for the department, as there's been some shuffling around. It was the usual making people get to know each other thing, which was fairly typical. The lunch was OK though. Due to limited parking at the venue I had to leave my car on the street, and when I came back to it I found the central locking must have bounced as it had been unlocked all day - remarkably nothing happened to it.

In the evening it was my sister and her fiance's combined staghen evening, pretty much just an excuse to gather all their friends and go drinking around town. I didn't stay out for the duration, but did see a few places including a rather shady new venue called The Loft, which looks like it should be quite a nice little place but had some very weird hardcore techno going on, and some bizarre dancing which might have been explained by the little huddles of people swapping things around in a most suspicious manner.

Yesterday I headed over to my Dad's house as my cousin was over for the day, so we spent a nice morning chatting and having the traditional chips for lunch. After that it was over to Rob and Em's for Steve's birthday. The plan was to watch a movie and then get an Indian at the top of town, which worked out very well. The movie was Hot Rod, which I hadn't seen or really heard of before, but it was pretty funny, and the meal was as always in that place excellent. It was a really good evening.

Today has pretty much just been a Breaking Bad fest. I've finished Season 3 and got a good start into Season 4.

Not much else to report really. It's been a shit week for both diet and exercise and I've put on a kilo. Bit of a wake up call really, and I think the running class tomorrow is going to be very hard.

Had a really fucked up dream last night, where it was all quite disturbing, but the bit that was horrfying was at the end. I was in a sort of nightclub crossed with a haunted house, and there was a disco type thing and a bar, and various people dancing around and things. Then suddenly something happened, and everyone had to get out. But the only way out was to run down corridors and go through doors which led to rooms with horrors inside which you had to get past. I tried a door that said 'Sharks' and unsuprisingly there was a pool with sharks in it. The next door was labelled 'Psychiatrist' and then inside there were more doors with different types of therapists, and then one of them started to open and the therapist emerged but hugely deformed and mutated, and it was at that point I woke up in absolute terror.

Run for fun or pain?

The running class was tonight. I had to stay late in work to assist with the ongoing server issue, but happily it looks like the work I did on the SAN has sorted it out, which is good news. I then headed to the running class. Tonight was three 8 minute runs. The first one was OK, even though it started out up a hill, but half way through the second one I got a nasty stich like I did last year, and it didn't go away. My calves also started to hurt quite a bit, so due to those and the stich it wasn't much fun, but I still did OK.

I've come clean to myself about how shite my eating has been over the last couple of weeks. I was deluding myself and in denial about it. I'm going to try and crack down on it again as I know I felt better when I managed to before Christmas. It's not so much what I eat as how much of it, so I went shopping after the run and picked up food for the rest of the week. I was hungry, which is not a good thing when you go shopping, but also feeling motivated, so I was reasonably inclined to shop sensibly.

I was thinking today about how much I enjoyed the first Mass Effect game, and how much time I dedicated to playing it a couple of years ago. I'd quite like to replay it but between Breaking Bad, South Park and exercise I haven't really got the time. I'm not hugely fussed about replaying the sequels though. The first one had something a little special that they didn't, although it's hard for me to define exactly what.

A laptop with a tent mode

The rest of last week was fairly OK, with only a bit of an issue in work with the SAN. As my manager is in Ethiopia and he's the one who knows the most about it, it was up to me try and fix things. Not that we managed much over the weekend.

Friday evening was uneventful. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym and had a decent workout. I tried the treadmill again at a slightly slower pace and got on with it fine, although my calf muscles still hurt after I stopped. The rest of it was fine.

After that it was off to Steve's to watch the rugby with snacks aplenty. It was a good day, we watched the Wales/Ireland game which was a disappointment since Wales played appallingly, and then the following England game. After that we hung around and watched a bit of the Sochi games and headed home.

Today has been focused on one thing: starting the third season of Breaking Bad. I guess I really should have done some more tidying or something, but the weather hasn't been right for it at all this weekend.

The computer development is a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13. It's the clever folding back on itself one that can become a big tablet or can be put into 'tent mode' to view the screen and things like that. It is going to replace the M11x. I left it downloading various updates and things while I was watching Breaking Bad and by this evening it's got most of what I need on it.

The thing is pretty thin, but despite that feels very solid. It has a typically good keyboard as you'd expect on a Lenovo, although the layout is a little odd. The trackpad is fantastic, although because it's so big it can get in the way a little. The build quality is very good indeed, but not quite as good as the Thinkpad version that is being deployed in work to some users. Despite the thin design though, it's actually possible to upgrade the RAM to 8gb (not sure if more is possible) and install a second mSATA SSD, which is good to know if the 128gb one becomes a little cramped.

So far the only real downside is that the keyboard isn't backlit, which is a bit of a downer after the Alienware. It also has a strange function where the F9 key instantly switches the screen off, which led me to think it was broken or something when I hit it by accident thinking it was the trackpad disable button. Oh well.

Not much else to report on the whole.

Thwarted food cravings

Yesterday and today have been fairly busy days in work due to a system upgrade that's become rather more complex than it was supposed to. Oh well, my part of the work has gone smoothly today, although it's been a while since I upgraded a server to a new version of AIX.

I was determined to make chilli last night, and got the stuff on the way home to do so. Unfortunately I was just frying the onions when the gas ran out. The hob runs off a gas bottle since we're in the middle of nowhere, and it lasts a good long time. But it ran out just at the wrong moment. So I had to put all the stuff away and have spaghetti hoops instead. What a letdown. Fortunately watching four episodes of Breaking Bad helped distract me from it.

Tonight I managed to make the chilli and it came out pretty well. I tend to make a bit batch of it and then make myself sick of it for a few months. I then continued to watch Breaking Bad and have now finished season 2. So far I've really enjoyed it and it's certainly lived up to the hype. Can't wait to start the next season.

Not much else to report really. I was going to go for a repeat of Monday's run tonight but then I had to stay late in work to help a colleague troubleshoot a server issue, and by the time that was done, I didn't feel like it and came home to do the chilli. The plan now is to go to the gym tomorrow and do the run on Saturday morning before going to watch the rugby at Steve's. It's probably a good thing anyway because today I seem to be really aching from circuits on Tuesday.

I've put things in motion to shuffle my computers around again. This time the target is the M11x - it's a great little machine but I think I've finally outgrown it. I'm still chuffed with the Surface and the G73, no problem there, and the gutted Latitude is still running nicely.

All good fun

It's been a good week on the whole. The weather was a bit flaky last week so I went to the gym in the evenings and didn't get a chance to repeat the running session from Monday. I was brave though and ran on the treadmill for the first time in ages. However I put too much speed on I think so my legs suffered rather.

On Thursday we went to Rob and Em's to watch The World's End. I had no prior idea what it was about, which was definitely for the best, and we all really enjoyed it. I was surprised to see afterward how many people seem to dislike it when compared to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but I thought it was great. And it was fun to see what they could do with a huge budget.

The weekend was good too. It was the beginning of the Six Nations, so we all piled down to Rob and Em's again to watch it, with the usual large quantity of snacks and then Chinese in the evening when Jane was there. It was a great day, had an ace time.

On Sunday it was the christening of my friend Amy's daughter Phoebe. I'm not good in churches, but it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure if the priest sensed my lack of enthusiam for being there, because after he'd chucked water on the baby, he came out with a bowl of water and flicked it over everyone else as a sort of baptism refresher, and I'm sure he targeted me on purpose. After that there was a do at the local rugby club, which was good fun and it was also good to catch up with everyone. We also got to meet another friend's baby for the first time after she was born not long after new year.

Running was OK again on Monday, this time it was three seven minute runs. I have to admit I found it harder than last week, and there was a nasty hill. Not long, but steep and for whatever reason it winded me and I struggled to get my breath back until we walked again, and then I was OK. Tonight there was no DnD as Rob couldn't make it so we went to circuit training. It was pretty hard - despite doing other exercise, I did find it difficult.

Tonight has also been the first geeky evening I've had in ages, since most of my evenings recently have been either continuing the South Park binge or watching Breaking Bad. I'm halfway through season two of Breaking Bad and really enjoying it. I've also nearly finished season 9 of South Park.

The geekiness today was setting up one of my spare gutted Latitude E4300 laptops with the Windows Hyper-V 2012 Server, which is free. I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the other E4300 which is running the free VMware ESXi. So far it's been a bit troublesome and it took a while before I could get the Hyper-V Manager on my Windows 8 machine to even connect to it, but I think that's not helped because I don't have a domain. Anyway, I've got it to the point where I can create and run virtual machines at least, and it's nice that the management tools are built right into Windows 8. So far so good anyway.

I'm always a little surprised at how well the gutted Latitudes cope with this kind of thing. Despite being utterly not what they were intended for, they run the virtualisation stuff rather well with a second hard drive stuffed into the optical bay. They could do with some more RAM though, 4gb is rather limiting. Neither of them has batteries either - if they did it would be handy in power cuts like last week when some work was being done on our electrics and nobody told me that the power was going off.

In other news the 206 went in for it's MOT yesterday. I was fully expecting it to fail, but much to my astonishment it passed fine, with the only thing being a numberplate bulb. It also had an oil and filter change done at the same time.

Running is fun

It was a quite but productive weekend in some ways. I didn't doo all that much, but I did take a load of crap to the tip on Saturday and then had a bonfire on Sunday, so that was good. Otherwise I just ended up watching DVDs. I'm now up to season 9 of South Park and I also watched the first season of Breaking Bad, which Rob and Em lent me on DVD. I really enjoyed it.

Running was good last night. The class this time was 2.5 minutes walk, 5 minutes running, which was a bit of a step up from last week. I wasn't looking forward to it as it was cold, threatening to rain and I was feeling a bit tired. But by the second 5 minute run I was feeling fine, and I really enjoyed it.

If only I could rein back on my diet, still struggling to get into that mindset I was in before Christmas, but just need to work at it in small steps. Oh well.

The project bass I got off someone in work has had some work done on it. I've replaced the strings and sorted out the neck. As I suspected, it's got 4-string pickups, so I put some Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups I had spare in it, which have gigantic magnets and cover the 5 strings quite well. The standard wiring was pretty crappy so I've ripped it all out ready for rewiring. I tested the neck pickup briefly by wiring it directly to the output jack and it sounded good. All good fun. It's nice having a project to work on, I didn't realise how much I missed it when I was trying to find the perfect bass.

The car is booked in for an MOT next Monday. I asked the garage about the issues with the headlight stalk and the scored windscreen and the guy said they would be advisories. Oh well, just have to see how it goes. It's due an oil change as well.

Tired tonight, it's been a long day for some reason.

Granch

Not much to report this week, it's been fairly quiet. I went to the gym on Wednesday, which was annoying because I've lost my key to the machines. I've no idea where it's gone. The session was good, although it was the first time in a month that I'd done any weights and my shoulders really felt it the next day. Thursday evening was the repeat of Monday's session. That went OK but I found it a bit harder, partly because I had a bit of a headache and felt a little out of sorts, and I think we were running a bit faster.

Otherwise it's been fairly quiet. I've continued my South Park binge and have nearly finished season 7. Not as good as 6 I think, but then there's 8 to come, which I've already seen and enjoyed. Rob and Em have also lent me the first season of Breaking Bad, so I've got that to look forward to.

Spent this evening having a nice quiet one. I put the Rammstein Live Aus Berlin DVD on, and let that play in the background while I fooled around on the Surface Pro. I still remember how the DVD blew my mind when I first saw it, and it's hard to believe it was recorded in 1998. The early Rammstein stuff is really good.

I've gone against my clearout policy at the moment, and picked up a project bass from a colleague in work. The reason is that it's a Westfield which is almost identical to one I had years ago, other than it being a 5-string. It's been neglected for years and needs some TLC, but I've missed having a bass that I could tinker with and try different pickups and wiring and things. It's one of the ones where they cheated a bit and made a 5-string with narrow string spacing and used 4-string pickups. I like the narrow string spacing because I'm used to it on the Jackson now, but I'm not sure the pickups are up to it. Oh well, it'll be fun getting it up and working again. However I need to clear out some other stuff to justify keeping it...

Not sure what I'm going to do this weekend, but I do want to have a go at clearing out some crap, and go to the gym. I also need to find a replacement number plate bulb for the car, since the electrical woes the other week seem to claimed that as well.

See LL run. Run LL run.

Second session of the run for fun class, so it was three minutes walk, three minutes run, repeated five times. It went pretty well I think, I was quite pleased with how I felt during the run and afterwards. I sort of feel like I could run a lot further but at the same time it's probably sensible to build it up again slowly and not risk damaging something. Still, I'm feeling good about it. The only downside was that I fucked up the Strava recording, so I didn't get to see the results. Oh well, not the end of the world. The leader of the group I was in was talking about the speed training that he normally does with the Harriers, which was interesting. Eventually I would like to work on improving my pace.

Due to not being able to watch stuff on TV and things, I'm having a bit of a binge on South Park and working my way through Stargate SG-1 season 2 that Steve lent me in December. I'm still slightly ambivalent about SG-1 - I am enjoying it, but I'm not quite sure how it made it for 10 seasons and has such a devoted fanbase. Still, apparently it kicks into high gear by season 3, so I'm still giving it a good chance. I do find the cynical aspect of O'Neill's character somewhat wearying though.

When it comes to South Park, I've just finished season 6, and have just received seasons 7, 9 and 10 because Amazon is flogging them off pretty cheap. I already had season 8 because it was one of the last things left in the local Woolworths when they closed it a few years ago, and I got it for a few quid. It's interesting to see how South Park developed when it got beyond the time when it was stupidly popular. So I'm looking forward to getting stuck into season 7. It's easy to power through South Park though because the episodes are only 20 minutes or so.

The new keyboard cover for the Surface turned up. I have to say, despite it being so thin without much key travel, it's one of the best keyboards I have ever used, nice and clicky. It also has a backlight, which has some sort of sorcery that makes it light up if you just hold your hands over the keyboard without pressing a key - first time in a while that a piece of technology has made me go 'woah' out loud. It's made the Surface much more usable and while it is a bit thicker and heavier than the touch cover, it's definitely worth it, and I can always put the touch cover back on if I need it to be a bit lighter.

Uneasiness.

It's not been a productive day. I didn't sleep well last night due to my nose being all tickly which led to snotting and sneezing, then the dog had one of his dramatic moments and would only settle down on my bed, which didn't help. My nose has been the same for much of today as well, it feels like one of my rare bouts of hayfever but I have no idea what's triggered it.

Pretty much the only thing I've done is finally get hold of a replacement casing for the car key after the unlock button finally fell off for good. It was only a few quid off Ebay and fitted right on, although I only put the button half on as it was a replica and didn't have the Peugeot logo on the other side.

The Xbox 360 has been playing up recently. The disk drive drawer won't open, and I have to lever it out. This hasn't done it much good and the silver front has broken now. Not sure how much longer it'll last, although it still reads disks fine once they're in. I've gone off the 360 quite a bit these days, the new dashboard with all the adverts was pretty much the point where I started to dislike it. The last thing I played on it was GTA V, which I got bored of quite quickly after I finished the campaign, and GTA Online didn't grab me at all. I did buy some gold to play something with Rob and Steve but that never really happened so it's still sitting around.

Also it's dawned on me that it's a right pain not being able to keep up with what everyone is watching. I don't have access to TV and the Internet connection is too crappy for something like Netflix, so I'm resigned to waiting for the DVD or doing the naughty thing, unless it's on iPlayer which works OK if stuff is downloaded. It's annoying to hear everyone banging on about stuff like Breaking Bad and suchlike without being able to join in the conversation.

Meltdown

It's been a week of ups and downs.

The run for fun class on Monday was a definite up. I thought at first it was going to be a nightmare as it absolutely pissed it down when I left work, but fortunately it was clear when we met up for the class. I was a little late and I was rather taken aback by what seemed like a vast crowd of people in hi-vis jackets. It turned out there were 24 of us, so they split us up into groups to make it all more manageable. After my knee, cold and back I hadn't done any exercise for three weeks at that point so I was quite anxious about it, but to my surprise I did OK, as did Steve and Dave from work.

Tuesday was DnD for the first time this year, starting a new quest. Steve had made us do homework to explain what our characters had been doing for five years, which was interesting. On the way home however I started to dwell on problems and had a bit of a meltdown about the house, turning 36 this year, being perpetually single and various other things. I slept like crap that night and had a grump day in work on Wednesday, ignoring everything with headphones on all day.

I'm feeling a bit better now, having decided that having a mega strop isn't going to solve anything. Last night I went to Mold to meet up with Steve and Dave to repeat Monday's running session, which was good and helped boost our confidence.

The Alienware M17x has been sold and posted to the buyer in Northern Ireland. I'm actually surprised at myself that I managed to do it - I was very attached to the old beast. I didn't get as much for it as I hoped, but it was enough to cover the cost of the Surface Pro, which I'm still very pleased with. I've also ordered a new cover for it, the one with the physical keyboard. As much as I like the concept of the flat touch keyboard, it's not great for typing much on

Still absolutely loving the Jackson 5-string bass. I'm still not quite sure why, but it just feels so great to play. I'm even getting used to playing stuff on it that I'd normally play on a 4-string.

Running envy

The Twin Piers yesterday was good. The weather was really good, although perhaps a little chilly. There was a really good turnout and a good atmosphere. Andy did well, although found it hard.

Today wasn't hugely productive, although I did take the car to town and give it a long overdue wash. The amount of shit that came out of the wheelarches would have done a Land Rover proud, let alone a humble 206. I also got some new front sidelight bulbs for it since they seemed to have been blown by the electrical problems last week.

Not mch else to report. Spent the rest of the weekend watching DVDs and playing with computers. My back has finally returned to normal, which is good as the running class starts tomorrow. Not sure if I am looking forward to it or not as it's now been over three weeks since I did any exercise. Still, hopefully it will give me me the kick I need to get back into it again. It's also been a scary long time since I've been out on a bike.

I listed the M17x on Ebay. I did my usual 5 day listing and it's already had three bids and some interest, so that's a good sign. The money will go into my savings, although I might use some of it to get a different keyboard cover for the Surface Pro.

Also need to get hold of my eating habits again, as I was doing quite well before Christmas.

Slow return to health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surfaced

I left the Surface updating to 8.1 last night and it got there OK. my back was killing me at about 3am though, so I got it through the rest of the setup then. This evening I've put more of my usuall apps and things on there. I have to admit that I am wondering if I'm doing the right thing as I am very fond of the big old M17x, but it's crazy to just keep it out of basically vanity. Still, it's fun seeing how well things work on the Surface. iTunes is a problem without a pointing device, since Apple decided to put no borders on the window, so resizing it is impossible. The sole USB port is an issue too, meaning a hub is basically essential. Still, the Surface is getting nicely close to that ideal where a portable or handheld computer is powerful enough to do everything, and you just dock it when you want to work at a desk. Shame the 8gb RAM and 256gb models are so crazy expensive.

Touchy feely

New Year's Eve was good fun. It was once again round at Rob and Em's, and the usual crowd were in attendance. It was a really good evening, lots of food and conversation. If I hadn't been ill, I would have been tempted to have a drink, but I was still feeling a bit crappy. The most hardcore thing I drank was some Lemsip, after Em said they had some of the apple and cinnamon one, which is really nice.

There was a ridiculous amount of food, highlights being Robert and Chelsea's home made pies and and flapjacks, and Rob and Caroline's stuffing roll and epic cake. For some reason everyone brpight cheese, so there was a truly insane amount of that. There was also the mysterious Partty Cannon brought by Steve. It wasn't very clear what it did, so everyone was quite wary when he let it off. In the end it made a hell of a bang and threw tissue paper all over the place.

Didn't do much yesterday. Had a quiet philosophical day trying to think of the things that are making me unhappy at the moment and what, if anything, I can do about them. Not sure if I made any progress though.

The Surface Pro finally turned up. I've rebuilt it with a fresh install and installed some of the updates, although the 8.1 update will have to run overnight as it's a 3.5gb download. So far I quite like it. It's pretty fast and responsive and I like the way that it has enough power to do the usual PC things as well as being a tabletty thing. The battery life remains to be seen however, as it's the pre-Haswell proessor in this model. The touch cover is interesting. The flat keys work better than you'd expect, but your fingers definitely feel it after a while. It's actually pretty worn and has a US layout though, so might look into another one, or the type cover with a proper keyboard. Of course there is also the onscreen keyboard, but that obviously has even less give. I hope I don't get too used to the touchscreen and start prodding at other machines that don't have one. One thing is that it didn't come with the pen, but it's standard Wacom technology, and I found that the pen from my Galaxy Note works fine with it.

The question of whether it has enough power to becpme my primary machine remains to be answered, but I think it does. The aim is to keep the Surface and the Asus G73, which will be fitted with more RAM to become a virtualisation behemoth. That's the idea anyway. I need to get back into this sort of thing again. In fact, that could be said about many things, including interacting with people...think that is something I really need to get working on again.

Still feeling a bit crappy overall, but there is definite improvement. My back is aching, partly because I think I pulled it with all the cooughing, and the other day I had to take a server to another site, and I had to carry it up tp the first floor because the lift was broken. Hopefully I will be better by the weekend so I can start exercising again.

Lungs of despair

A slightly annoying day. I had to shut down my gutted Latitude E4300 that's been running ESXi for a few months without any issues, as I had to move it. When I turned it back on though, it failed to boot, so I had to drag a monitor over and hook it up, and it was complaining about a corrupted file.

In the afternoon I headed down to my sister's place for a small bash she'd arranged. It was a very busy house though, since her fiance's brother and sister were there with their respective children, who greeted me by surrounding me while bouncing up and down and shrieking at the tops of their voices. It was good to see them all though, and it was a nice afternoon.

I didn't sleep well last night, spent quite a lot of it alternating between feeling feverish and cold. It wasn't good. After I got up and started moving around a bit, I felt better, but this evening my chest is starting to hurt and I can feel a cough coming on. This always happens when I get a cold, which is really annoying because it will interfere with my exercise if it goes on too long.

One thing I need to work on next year is keeping in touch with people better. I feel like I seem to have managed to isolate myself a bit, which probably isn't helped by my slightly depressive mood. Being forever single doesn't seem to be helping either.

The Latitude E4300 is being a pain. I think I'm going to have to do a fresh install of ESXi onto the USB drive and then see if I can import the VMs from the datastores on the hard drives. Fun fun. What a thrilling life I do lead.

That's it for another year...

Christmas was OK. As usual I split the day between my parents, heading over to my Dad's place for lunch and the Queen's speech.

Since then it's been fairly uneventful. Steve has lent me Stargate SG-1 season 2 so I've started that and I'm also now on South Park season 5, so I'm flipping between those, which is an interesting contrast. I also did some side missions on GTA V that were leftover. I still think it had a pretty good campaign but now it's complete I'm not really too fussed about carrying on with it, or trying to get 100%. A colleague in work is going to borrow it on Monday anyway.

Rob and Em got me a book called Ready Player One. It's set in the future, but focused around the 80's. In particular video games and that sort of thing, so it's pretty much the geekiest book of all time. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it.

Also been noodling around on the bass after that band I saw last weekend inspired me to play it more often. My amp is shit though, if I wasn't trying to be financially sensible and reduce clutter I'd look into getting a new one.

I got a reply from the computer museum that I offered my old stuff for. They want a fair few things, but not all of it. They have a drop off point in Stoke-on-Trent, which isn't too far away, but they want it boxed, which is somewhat annoying. I'm going to sort the stuff out tomorrow and try and work out how many boxes it'll take and I suppose put a distress call out on Facebook for boxes or something. Not sure what to do with the rest of it that they don't want. I'll probably stick it on Ebay as a job lot for collection only - I don't care if it only goes for a tenner, the aim is to get rid of it all.

Started to feel rough last night. There's been a few colds going around and I started to hope I'd managed to avoid them this time, but apparently not. So far I don't feel all that bad, just a bit bunged up and achy.

For no apparent reason my left knee started twinging a little on Monday, and by Christmas day it was incredibly painful, making walking and driving difficult. The last time I did anything strenuous was the Friday before Christmas at the gym, and if that was the cause, I don't know why it took a few days to start aching. It's almost OK again now though, but it was really annoying because Andy suggested going up Moel Famau on Boxing Day, and the weather that day would have been perfect. My knees have been fine since I stopped playing badminton in September, so I was hoping it was the stress from badminton that was messing them up - but apparently not.

Not being able to move around much and eating my own bodyweight in chocolate and other crap has left me feeling pretty dreadful on the whole, so I went out shopping today and got some reasonably healthy food.

My face has gone all fucked up and flaky again, which I've noticed tends to happen if my diet is bad for more than a few days. Apples never tasted so good! Need to get exercising again too. Looking forward to the new Run for Fun course in January, although it's going to be quite different from the last time as it's now winter.

Back to work on Monday, but I'm hoping it'll be nice and quiet.

That time of year again...

It's that time of year again. It must be hell working in retail for Christmas, when everyone suddenly behaves as though the apocalypse has arrived and cram into the shops, fight over parking spaces and generally behave rather opposite to what the whole thing is about.

Oh well.

Not much to report really. Last week wasn't great for exercise - slept badly the night before circuits and so I didn't end up going, although I did get to the gym on the Wednesday and Friday. I weighed myself and depressingly I've put on a kilo, although that wasn't too unexpected as it was The Time of Chocolate in the Office, and my diet was suffering accordingly.

On Saturday it was the surprised birthday of an old colleague of mine from my last job, which was good. He was completely unaware of it and it was a really good evening. I beat a hasty exit just as the disco was due to start, a whole room full of caterwauling drunken females was a little offputting. I nipped into a local pub where a guy I know was playing with his band. He sings and plays bass, and is pretty good. Not really a proper thing, just playing for a few people, and they were a guitarist down, but it was good.

On Sunday I just ended up lazing around and finishing off the first season of Stargate SG-1. It was OK, a bit rubbish in places, but I reminded myself how crap TNG was at first and tried to give it a fair trial. It picked up towards the end and I've now got the 2nd season off Steve and will see how that goes.

Last night was Andy's Xmas Eve-eve bash, which was good fun. Lots of food, chatter, games and various entertainment. I also took 20 minutes to pop over to see my sister and drop off her Christmas present, which was nice.

My mood has been a bit random recently. Some days feeling OK, other days feeling like complete shit and beating myself up again for no particular reason. Now that the vast majority of people I know are married or now have partners, it can get a little depressing and on bad days, I can feel like I'm being marginalised, although I know that's a daft thing to think. Not sure what the new year will bring, but the way it's going at the moment, something is going to have to give, and I don't know what the consequences will be.

Decided to reevaluate my computers. I've come to the conclusion that having a stupidly powerful gaming laptop (Alienware M17x R2) is rather pointless if you never actually use it for games, and its not exactly portable either. Since I'm intrigued by them, I found a good deal on Ebay for a Surface Pro, so I'm going to see if that will be suitable for general use once it arrives. I thought about Android tablets, but truth be told, I've gone off Android a bit. I don't mind it on my phone, but it doesn't feel like something you can do proper work on, whereas the Surface can be a tablet, but then you can hook up a monitor and keyboard and it's suddenly a proper computer.

If the Surface Pro does work out, I'll stick the M17x on Ebay while it's still hopefully got some value. I'm going to keep the Asus G73, which admittedly also a gaming laptop, but it's not quite so OTT as the Alienware. Randomly I found out that it has four memory slots, so it can have a fuckton of RAM in it too. If the M17x does go, I'll put it's 16gb RAM and 256gb SSD into the G73. The idea with the G73 is to use it to run virtual machines - I need to try and learn more about Windows Server and Active Directory, amongst other things.

Saturday of hmm

Went to my Dad's today, and spent the day hanging out there. It's been a good day, although the weather has been horrible, stupidly windy and later on rainy as well. We hung out and I was able to head out and get my Mum's Christmas present, and after that it was a lazy day, just chatting and watching bad TV.


Halfway through Strictly Come Dancing (not my choice, my Dad's wife watches it), it struck me that I could either have been going to Belgo's with Rob and Em and the southern crown tonight, or going to see the new Hobbit movie. Belgo's didn't happen because this time there was a pricey hotel involved and I thought it would be a bit much to do that and Berlin in the same month - financially sensible but rather more depressing than I expected to be left out of it when the time actually came. The Hobbit didn't happen due to a complicated set of circumstances. However I haven't seen the first one, and after seeing the trailer for the second one, it left me cold. It just looked so ridiculously Hollywoodified and over the top and I'm still finding it faintly ridiculous that they've made it into three movies. Still, it was good to see my Dad and I'm glad I spent the day there in the end.

Yesterday while in work, one of my colleagues and I resorted to YouTube videos to listen to over headphones to avoid the Christmas dross that someone is somehow allowed to play in the office. Somehow I discovered that Sepultura covered Firestarter by the Prodigy a couple of years ago, and it's surprisingly good. Then we discovered a band called Rotting Christ. Unsurprisingly it's a black metal band, and I don't normally go for that sort of thing at all, but their latest album is somehow strangely compelling. It has the screamy vocals that I'm not too keen on, but the music is excellent. 

Decided I need to work harder on clearing the house out with the eventual aim of moving next year. It's funny how things change. A few years ago I was happy to collect vintage computers and play with them, but now I could give the ones I have left away without a second thought. I still like to play with emulators and the like, but physical hardware is just something to get in the way and be annoying now. There are a few computer museums dotted around the UK - I'm tempted to make up a list and see if any of them want the stuff I have. But there's a lot more crap as well. It seems like an impossible task sometimes.

The 206 isn't much use for this kind of stuff either. I wish I could have kept the old Honda Accord and put it on a limited mileage insurance policy or something - that was great for lugging stuff to the tip or whatever, but when I got the 206 I had nowhere to keep it. Oh well.

My state of mind has improved a bit, I was not in a good place for a while back in October and November, but I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about things. I still have my problems but they don't seem quite so insurmountable as before. At least for now anyway.

The Office of Temptation

Last weekend was OK, spent much of Sunday catching up on things that people have lent me and I've been crap at watching. I watched Once Upon a Time in America, which Andy lent me a while back. I really liked that, and was amazed at how long it turned out to be. I didn't read the running time, and just watched it all in one go. Very good.

After that I've been watching the first season of Stargate SG-1 that Steve lent me ages ago. I wasn't sure at first after the pilot, but so far it's been quite good. I'm also conscious that things can generally be a bit crappy at first so I'm trying to give it a good chance.

This week has been OK. Monday evening was Circuits again. It was a bit hard after missing it last week, and somehow I really screwed up some muscles in my thighs. I was all set to go to the gym last night, but my legs were so stiff I just couldn't do it. Not in a bad way but in a holy fuck that was hard exercise way. I had to go to the gym tonight instead, but fortunately had a really good workout, despite feeling tired and sluggish before I went.

Every day this week someone has brought a tub of Quality Street into the office, which is a bit frustrating when I'm trying to crack down on my eating again. I try to not eat any and eat apples or bananas instead, which mostly sort of works. I weighed myself on the scales at home the other day and it came back with 90kg, so I'm back where I started. Frustrating. I keep telling myself the scales are off or it's new muscle rather than fat but that doesn't really convince me.

The running club is starting a new Run for Fun course in January. I've decided I'm going to do it again and try and get back into running, and two colleagues in work have said they will do it too. I've been reading quite a bit about running, including the blog of one of the Olympic marathon runners and it's really interesting. The fitness required at that level is pretty amazing.

Despite my lack of weight loss, I at least feel a lot fitter these days, so that's good. I look back to less than a year ago when I couldn't even go up the stairs in work without feeling like I was going to die or even go on the cross trainer at the gym at a sensible level for more than a few minutes, and I know I've improved on that score. Just wish I could lose some weight.

Bit tired now, I had one of those annoying things where I woke up at 3am and my mind started racing and worrying about things. Took a while to get back to sleep again. I read for a bit and things but I think it was eventually listening to Motley Crue that lulled me to sleep again.

Berlin fun

It's been a good couple of weeks on the whole.

The time in Berlin was really good. It's an odd one because I don't feel like I did an awful lot, but at the same time I don't feel shortchanged. The journey over there was fine, had one of the easiest drives to the airport, and the airport itself was very quiet. I made it to the hotel without any problems, although I did have to instruct a large group of fellow travellers how to validate their train tickets because they were very confused.

The first day was spent mainly just taking a long walk with my brother. The most notable thing was finding some of the construction work where they are linking the U5 and U55 subway lines. They've got lots of information about it, and a little mockup of the tunnel borer that you can go inside and view various videos and things.

There is a man in there and my brother made the mistake of asking him if the project would be completed on time. The man got rather upset and said of course it would be, whyever not? Then my brother mentioned the airport fiasco, and that was it. We were treated to semi lecture/rant about how that was a completely different project, and that Germany has the best engineers on the planet. All in German of course, but even I got the gist of it through sheer force of personality!

On Saturday it was the Eisbrecher gig, which was the whole point of me going. However before that, I met up with my brother again and his girlfriend to go and see the Latin American Ballroom Dancing World Championship. Not really my thing at all but it was indoors and free, at least for the preliminary rounds. It was in the Max Schmeling Hall, which I'd never been to before, but found OK. Before it got going, I went to get a drink, and somehow one of the employees of the place got me to help a large slightly mentally handicapped woman down to the VIP area, which was awkward since she didn't speak any English, and the judges had no idea who I was.

After all that, the dancing was actually pretty good. I was sort of expecting Strictly shite, but it these were professionals and it was actually pretty interesting and fun to watch. We left after the first heats and went to get some food, finding a nice Thai place in Prenzlauer Berg, where I had some crispy tofu with peanut sauce.
That evening it was off to the Eisbrecher gig. It was in a place called Huxley's Neue Welt, which isn't huge. They had a support band called A Life Divided, who also appear to be German but sing in English. They were actually pretty good. Eisbrecher themselves were fantastic, doing a really good selection of songs. Their stage presence was excellent. I remembered the last time I went to a gig and took earplugs, which was definitely a good thing.

Sunday was spent wandering around the city again and doing a bit of shopping for people at home, before meeting up with my brother again for a look at the Christmas markets before he went to a classical piano concert. The markets are pretty good, so many foods to try and things like that. The exception is the horrific animatronic singing reindeer at Alexanderplatz.

The last day wasn't too bad. I had already decided that I wasn't paying €7.50 for the hotel breakfast, so each morning I'd head round the corner to a bakery and get a couple of croissants or something for €1.50.
That morning I put my suitcase in a locker at Alexanderplatz and got breakfast from the Christmas market. This consisted of a truly huge piece of ham in a bowl of sauerkraut, and then something called a Quarkballchen, sort of like a doughnut but nicer.

The flight back was OK, and enlivened by a truly incredible sunset from the plane, which sadly my phone camera didn't capture in the slightest.

This week has been all right otherwise. Always a bit depressing going back to work though. Not much else to say really. I watched Die Hard for the first time, after Rob found it in his car - I'd borrowed it from Steve months ago. I really enjoyed it.

This morning I went down to my sister's new house and helped her move some stuff. I vaguely knew where the house was but I was really surprised at how nice it was inside. They did well with that one I think.
Then this afternoon I watched The Pirate Planet episode of Doctor Who. I haven't seen much of the classic series, but Steve recommended this one because it was written by Douglas Adams. I really enjoyed it, and it was fun to see his influence on it. I've also been watching the fourth season of South Park, which I've never seen before. I really like South Park, some of the writing is very clever.

I went to the gym on Thursday after a rest day on Wednesday. I managed to eat relatively sensibly in Berlin, and all the walking I did should have balanced out any food mishaps. The gym was OK on Thursday and I did more on the treadmill this time, although I'm still too scared to actually run on the damn thing. I went to weigh myself after the workout though, and the scales came up with 'Error' so I got off and went home. Apparently I should have got on again and they'd have been OK.

Yesterday was a slightly fat day in work, annoyingly. Because I've been eating relatively well, I can definitely feel it if I eat too much at lunch. I feel bloated and lethargic all afternoon, which is not good.

Berlin again...

Last weekend was good. The Saturday was spent at Rob G's with a bunch of geeky friends watching a load of Doctor Who episodes in preparation for the 50th anniversary episode. We managed to watch episodes with all the Doctors right through. It was a fat day too, an astonishing amount of snacks and cake, and then when the big moment arrived we had take away chips too, amazing. The 50th anniversary episode was really good too, really well done, although it wasn't quite what I expected.

Sunday was set to be a quiet day watching movies but then Rob called me to say they were going to watch the 50th anniversary episode since they hadn't seen it yet, and so I went down there and we watched that, some rugby and the Adventures in Time and Space programme, which was interesting. Also had Chinese but Em and I split a portion between us to try and mitigate the damage. I've been eating quite sensibly for a few weeks now so suddenly pigging out unsettled it rather and it's taken a little while to recover.

The week so far has been reasonable. Today was the last working day as I'm off to Berlin tomorrow. No real objectives in mind except to see the Eisbrecher concert on Saturday. Should be fun, if cold.

Not much else to report really.

Holiday cut short

Last week was OK. Went to the gym a couple of times, and then it was time to take over the responsibility of the dog. I had to take leave on Friday until this coming Wednesday.

I was gutted that I couldn't make it to the rugby league on Saturday, especially after Rob managed to get them into the corporate box. However I was able to watch the Wales Argentina match live. I went down to see them afterwards but they couldn't get it on iPlayer, so it was a bit ironic that I saw it when they couldn't.

Then on Sunday, one of the systems in work didn't come back after I had to reboot it as part of the process to set up a replica of it on the new hardware it was due to be moved to. Due to the remote access system not being very stable, I had to go into work today to sort it and and migrate the system to the new hardware. I don't know why the system didn't come up again - it must be some sort of hardware failure as it refused to see either of the mirrored boot disks. Anyway, after a stressful few hours, it was up and running with very little issue.

I had to take the dog with me though, and although he doesn't mind being left in the car, I had to take him out for a little walk at some point, and because people in work had heard a lot about him, I took him in to meet them. He was OK for a while but wouldn't settle down because of all the new people, so I had to put him back in the car again. Poor old boy.

Circuits was quite hard tonight, partly because I woke up so early to get into work at a good time. Also because Rob G and Andy decided to turn the running station into a sprint station. I was able to keep up for a little while but had to give up. However I've been watching some Youtube videos on how to improve your running technique, which I think have helped.

Back into work on Wednesday, hopefully will have a nice quiet day tomorrow.

Got a new project machine, a used Asus G73 off Ebay. It was spares or repair because it was missing the hard drives and was therefore a fraction of the price it would have been otherwise. I was interested in it because it was the other serious contender to when I bought the big Alienware. I've put my old 128gb SSD and a 500gb hard drive into it,and so far it works fine. It's similar in spec to the big Alienware, but only has a single graphics card and fewer ports. However it does have a nicer keyboard and four memory slots, and the cooling system seems nicely implemented. Not quite sure what I'll do with it yet.

A warm winter is coming...

...because I had the car fitted with winter tyres yesterday. It had that done and the tracking, and it feels a heck of a lot better now. The tyres are strictly all season tyres rather than dedicated winter ones, but they are certainly a lot better than the shite tyres that were on it before.

The rest of yesterday was quiet as I didn't sleep well, although I did spend a bit of time troubleshooting the dead 2DS I got off Ebay for a pittance. It had been dropped and didn't turn on. It was a simple fix in the end, the shock had bent the battery connector off the board and broken the solder. It was just a case of pushing it back and sorting out the solder with a quick dab of the soldering iron. Works perfectly now, even if shaken hard while it's on. It was interesting seeing how the 2DS is put together. Despite it feeling quite sturdy, once it's apart it does feel cheaply made. I still like the ergonomics though.

Saturday was good, went to my Dad's for the start of the day and then down to Andy's to watch the rugby. After the rugby we sorted out the seats for the EasyJet flight to Berlin next year and then had a look at some of the old photos from when we went to Madrid and Berlin way back when. A thoroughly pleasant evening.

Last week was the beginning of an attempt to sort out eating and exercise with some success. I definitely felt better after a couple of days of eating less and having fruit when I'd have been scoffing chocolate or something. The Costa is a pain though, the chai lattes are so tempting.

Circuit training tonight was hard, but satisfying. I've been reading the blog of one of the marathon entrants in the Olympics last year, and it's insane what it's like at that kind of level.

Things

The weekend was good fun. Saturday was a busy day. I went to the gym in the morning after failing to go on Friday, which was a good workout. Then it was meeting up with Amy and others from Proact for a meal in Wetherspoons to hand over the present we got for Pam who is due to give birth in about 8 weeks time. It was a really nice time. We hung out at Amy's for a bit afterwards. With three cats and a baby it's a busy house! After that it was off to Rob G's for a Halloween bash, which was good fun. Not everyone dressed up, but it was fun to see those who did. Good times.

Yesterday it was off to watch Wales vs USA in the Rugby League championships. I think it's the first time I've been to a live league game since we went to see Wrexham vs Leeds, and for whatever reason the crowd seemed very rowdy and footbally, which put me off rather. However the atmosphere was pretty good yesterday but it was a shame that Wales played really badly and lost quite epically. Oh well. I find League quite easy to follow though.

On the way home however, my car died. I think this was because I'd been saying to Rob and the others about how I was pleased with it and was considering treating it to winter tyres. It turned on the engine light and ran really badly, if it would start at all. I got it to the bottom of the track this morning and a garage has had a look. I had horrible things like injectors or fuel pump going through my head, but it turned out a connector had come loose at the top of the engine. So, all being well, I get it back tomorrow.

In other news, I have to admit I got a 2DS last week. My 3DS XL is out of action while it's being painted, and I was very intrigued by the 2DS and the reports that it's easy to hold. It's absolutely fantastic. The design may look strange, but it's mega comfy to hold, and the shoulder buttons are worth it alone. The smaller screens than the XL look better because the pixel density is higher. The only downside really is the single speaker, but headphones get around that. It's interesting to see that it's a single screen under the casing. I have to admit I really like the 3DS platform. All the shovelware makers that plagued the DS have moved onto tablet and phone games, so the 3DS has a lot fewer games, but they tend to be of better quality. People keep saying that the 99p games on phones and tablets will kill off the dedicated handheld, but I'm not so sure, since the 99p games tend to be shite novelties.

I've always been intrigued by the Mazda RX-8, not so much because it's a car I'd ever want to own, but I like the styling and the four doors that make it a bit more practical. I was somewhat stunned to discover that they are readily available for peanuts with knackered engines because being a rotary, it's very high maintenance and can be easily killed. Crazy stuff. Of course, useless for me unless you stuck it on a Land Rover chassis or something. Hmm...

I can't run

Last week was OK. Work was much as usual, although we finally got the two troublesome tape drives sorted out. One had a bad fibre cable and the other just needed a good reset or two to clear the voltage error.

There wasn't any DnD on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went for a run with Andy, which was bloody hard. I've not been out for a run in a while and it really showed. I didn't get as out of breath as I expected, but what did me in was my back and calves, which were absolutely killing me. We eventually did 3.5 miles, but there were quite a few stops and breaks. After that we met up with Rob and Em to book Berlin next year for the half marathon. I wish I could do it but the run proved to me that I'm really not fit enough, and I'm not sure 13 miles will ever be in my capability.

The weather has been shite this weekend with the storms that are going on, although we are only on the edge of it, so I've done very little. I've been plugging away at Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, which I've been playing off and on for a while now. It's a fun game, really nicely put together. For fun I hooked the 3DS up to my surround sound system, as the soundtrack if excellent.

The 3DS XL has now had the shells removed. It was a little fiddly but not too bad in the end. They've been sanded down and have the primer applied, which I'll leave to dry for a few days.

Feeling a bit dispirited at the moment, not quite sure why. I suppose it's natural to assume that you're the good guy but sometimes it's a little worrying to think you might be a complete cunt and just not realise it.

Random fun

Last week was OK in work, a bit stressful, but productive. Had to try some interesting techniques to replicate an AIX machine using the SAN, which didn't quite work but now I know what to do to make it work.

DnD on Tuesday was good fun, and Robert brought his girlfriend Chelsea to have a go. I think she enjoyed it, or she's pretty good at hiding it when she thinks we're all nutters.

Wednesday was good, day off to go to Alton Towers. The weather was not good. The forecast predicted rain between 11am and 3pm, and that's pretty much what we got. No rain until we'd pulled up in the car park and then it started. It wasn't too bad at first and we got on Rita and Thirteen easily enough. I'd never been on either and both were awesome. The acceleration in Rita is truly awesome, not least because it's so smooth. Thirteen is good too, although I won't say why on here.

The rain really kicked in at about 12:30, but fortunately we'd found a fish and chip place where we could eat undercover and watch the torrential downpour. The fish and chips were pretty good too, surprisingly. After that we went around the park doing the usual favourites. Air and Nemesis were just as good as I remember, although doing them in that order makes Air much better. The real star of the day though was the new Smiler. The theme is a little questionable but the coaster itself is mental. We went on it and then some of us went and did it again immediately afterward which made me feel a little strange for a while. The only real letdown of the day was the Nemesis Sub Terra thing, which is a nasty unpleasant scary experience and left us all somewhat traumatised.

The rest of the week was OK, had tea round at Rob and Em's on Friday evening but didn't feel up to going to the gym with Em. Instead I went yesterday, and had a good session with the place nearly to myself again. I've been really bad with eating and exercise recently so I need to get that in hand.

Today was a mixed bag. I didn't do much in the morning and then decided to play around with Duolingo on the MacBook Pro. Except the screen went black and wouldn't come back to life. I decided it was dead and took the SSD out so I could list it on Ebay. But when I came to take the picture of it, the screen worked again. By that time though I'd already wiped the SSD and since the MacBook is a complete shit to take apart, I couldn't be arsed doing any more faffing with it, so it's on Ebay anyway.

The SSD is being transferred into the M11x since it's a 256gb and it only had a 128gb one. Then I decided to test the Dell Studio laptop that Rob and Em were using, and that died a month or so ago with a garbled screen. To my surprise it powered up fine a week or so ago, so I left it running diagnostics, which it passed successfully, even though it got a little warm. Oh well. I can't think of a use for it so it'll go on Ebay too.

Due to iTunes becoming absoutely hideous to use in the latest versions, I installed Winamp. Pleasingly it still looks exactly the same as it always has done, and was a pleasant blast from the past.

Another little project is that I'm going to refinish the outer shells of my 3DS XL. I picked it up cheap because it was badly scratched, and I discovered that they are easy to remove. So the idea is to respray the shell with the chameleon paint I used on the double neck bass project. At least if it goes horribly wrong getting replacements should be easy enough.

Achy hips

Work has been a bit aggravating. The restore of the backup system was fun and interesting, although frustrating when it failed because it's a 90gb database. Typically when it failed it got to 99% complete and then ran out of disk space, so I had to shuffle the partitions around. Finally though, it worked, even in only 4gb RAM. Only the lack of a compatible tape drive stopped me from testing further. Next week is going to be...interesting, but trying not to think about it.

Last night was great, we went to see the Hitch-Hiker's Radio Show Live in Rhyl. It kind of sneaked up on us all because Andrea had booked the tickets way back in March. We were right at the front, and it was really good. The scenes were completely different from last year's version, and they had Mitch Benn playing Zaphod - it was a little jarring at first to see him alongside the others but he was excellent. After that we piled back in the car and went to the Plough to meet up with Andy and Craig from down south who was up for Alison and her Craig's wedding today.

Today has been an interesting day and I'm now feeling really tired. Also a little stuffed after eating nearly all of a pizza to myself, but I hadn't eaten anything much earlier in the day and was ravenous.

Random

Didn't sleep well last night at all, so spent much of today in that sort of fugue state where it was very hard to concentrate. A can of Red Bull got me through the morning but it was a struggle after that. I took one of the old AIX machines and shoved some spare 300gb drives in it to test a restore of the backup system. Some days I wish it ran on Intel hardware as it would be so much easier to test as there's always spare servers, but not so much POWER hardware.

Just got back from the Con Amici in Denbigh where I had a meal with my Mum, her brother and his wife, who we see about once a year. The food was very good indeed.

Went for a bike ride on Sunday with Andy. It was the first one in about three weeks and exercise in general has been a bit shit, so I wasn't expecting to do very well. However we did 26.5 miles and I felt fine, although my legs did feel it for the rest of the day and most of Monday. We are going to look into starting Circuit Training soon since it's good exercise over the winter. Running and cycling may become less of a viable option over the winter.

Once I got back home from the bike ride on Sunday I finished off the main story in GTA V. I've really enjoyed it, absolutely brilliant game. It fixed everything I didn't like about IV and brought in some fantastic features. The environment is superb, it looks and feels fantastic, the cars handle well and the multiple character feature added so much to the game.

Later that evening, Rob and I tried the online, but it was less impressive. Being dumped into a public session just led to you constantly being killed by the usual dickheads, and a private session didn't really have much to do. But it's early days yet, and I suppose you'd expect GTA online to just be chaos. One thing that is a fantastic feature in the Saints Row series is that everything in the game can be played co-op.

I've now lent my copy of GTA V to Rob G in case I decided to delete the save file and start again, since I've now realised that I didn't make full use of the stock market at the right point.

Feeling mega tired now, hope I sleep properly tonight.

The Norwegian Connection

Last weekend was spent at my Dad's with his wife having various relatives over. First was her brother-in-law with his daughter and her family from Birmingham way, then there was her grandaughter with her fiance and daughter from Norway. It was a busy but good couple of days. Then yesterday I had a day off to go and meet the rest of the Norway contingent, which was interesting. One of them plays bass so I took the Jackson over and we had a play with it.

On Monday evening, went for the first run in ages. Em and I managed 2.2 miles at our slow pace, but the others did over 5 miles at a much better pace. I think Em and I have decided that it's unlikely that we'll be ready to do the half marathon in March, but we can still go and provide moral support to the others if they do it.

Talking of basses, the Squier Jazz and the Jackson are both ace. I really like them, not least because they are so different. The Squier is pure classic Jazz Bass, no fancy electronics, while the Jackson is much more modern and has that classic metal look, with active electronics and a surprisingly slim neck for a 5-string. Both need new strings though, the ones on the Jackson are worn out and the default Squier ones aren't very good.

I've booked a trip to Berlin to see Eisbrecher at the end of November. I wasn't going to bother due to the expensive flights, but in the end I found the hotel had a good deal on so I booked it anyway. I go on the 28th November and come back on the 3rd December.

Still really enjoying GTA V. I've not been playing it as much over the last week or so, but when I do pick it up I really have fun with it. Absolutely superb. I think the online is working now so need to give that a try too.

So far, so meh

It's been an OK week, frustrating in work, but otherwise not too bad. Unhealthy due to my Mum's birthday, which involved a Chinese takeaway, and lack of exercise so far.

GTA V has continued to impress. I'm still really enjoying it, except for the announced bug where cars can disappear. But that's only minor.

It has been suggested that we do the Berlin half-marathon next year. I'm in two minds about it - that I really want to do it and it would be great to do in a group, but then also I balk at the training through the winter and if I'm actually capable of doing it. Not sure, but it's certainly a thought.

Bass developments. I decided that while I liked the Ibanez BTB07LTD I picked up a few months ago, I wasn't keen on the 35" scale. I've ordered a new Squier Jazz Bass to replace it, which is the nice natural 70's model. It would have arrived today except they failed to deliver it. The idea is that I fund it by selling off the various other ones I have. I offered the Ibanez to a couple of people including someone in one of the buildings I used to support in work, and he suggested a swap with his Jackson 5-string bass. The intention was to cut down on the number of basses but a 5-string might be useful...

Not sure what's happening over the weekend or early next week as my Dad's wife has family coming over from Norway, but they seem hopelessly disorganised.

The Cookie Clicker is odd, but fun.

Return to San Andreas

Last weekend was the overtime. It was a busy couple of days. On Saturday we were in the office from 9am to 9pm. There was a LOT of ripping up floor tiles, shifting old servers and storage arrays, etc, and replacement of all the old orange fibre cables with nice new aqua ones. It was a remarkable faff. The Sunday was spent finishing it all off and trying to work out why two of my AIX machines wouldn't see their storage. Got them working in the end and finally it was all sorted.

Monday was frustrating in work and I was very glad when it came to Tuesday since it was the beginning of my three days off work. I went to the gym first thing to get some exercise in before coming home and finding a shiny copy of GTA V in the post box. The rest of the time until Thursday evening basically revolved solely around playing it.

Except for Wednesday, which was the Tour of Britain. I went to Andy's and we went down to the bottom of Vale Street in Denbigh and watched it go past, and then back to his house to watch it live. It was interesting watching them going along such familiar roads, and then the finish was awesome. I got a good video of them going past, but wish I'd taken my decent camera.

Back in work today, and it was an utterly wasted day given that it was originally going to be another day off. There were three things I went in to do. The AS/400 was to be migrated to a new Bladecenter, but this couldn't be done due to incorrect hardware again. The tape library had a faulty drive, but while the new drive had turned up, the engineer couldn't make it, and then the final shutdown of a rapidly becoming obsolete AIX box didn't happen, so I could have had another day off. Oh well.

I wasn't too sure about pre-ordering GTA V, but I'm glad I did. After the brown depressing experience with unlikable characters which was GTA IV, this one is back to the feel of San Andreas and I've really enjoyed it so far. It's got loads of stuff to do outside of the main missions. The environment is good as well, it looks amazing and there's loads of places to explore. So far I'm about 38% into it and really enjoying it. The multi-character thing is good too, works really well.

What's the point.

It's been an OK week. On Monday went running. Em and I did our own route and clocked up about 2.1 miles which was nearly all running, surprising both of us. Not bad after a few weeks of neglect.

Tuesday wasn't DnD due to Steve not being able to make it, so we played Super Munchkin instead. Like Magic the week before, it seems to bring the vindictive side out in people, although it could be said this is the whole point of the game.

Didn't do much Wednesday. Had good intentions to go to the gym but failed.

Today I took a flexi day as I had loads saved up and we're working over the weekend. I ended up taking the dog for a walk, which he enjoyed but struggled towards the end. He's happier pootling around the field now I think with his bad leg. After that I spent ages digging out a ditch and getting properly filthy, and then picked some apples from the mutant tree.

After that I read for a bit and then it was off to badminton for the first time in ages. We had some delicious thai green curry round at Steve's and then went to get new wiper blades for Rob's car before heading over. I haven't played in ages and the last time I did play I fucked up my knee, so between being out of practice and being cautious I played like shite.

Discovered that Eisbrecher are playing in Berlin on the 30th November. Quite tempted to go and see them but then it probably wouldn't be any fun going by myself and nobody else I know likes them. Flights are awkward around then as well, so there isn't much point thinking about it

Everything seems so pointless at the moment. Spending all day at work doing pointless shit with fuck all to look forward to when I come home. I've got three days of annual leave next week. Originally it was a single day to watch the Tour of Britain, but the other two are just for the sake of taking leave. I'll probably just end up sitting around playing GTA V since that comes out on the Tuesday. I'm assuming that I'll end up with shitloads of leave to use up by the end of the holiday period next year. I'd like to go away somewhere but it's pointless and depressing going by yourself.

I just have this worsening feeling that I've fucked my life up somewhere and I don't know what to do about it. Or if I can do anything about it.

Language fun

So far since the middle of the week it's been quiet. I spent Thursday evening taking a shedload of boxes over to Andrea's place after they have to move quite quickly and she sent a distress call out on Facebook asking for boxes. I managed to fill up the 206 almost completely with boxes and bubblewrap. It was good to see them and little James again, who has grown hugely.

Went for a solo bike ride yesterday. I set off from home doing a loop down to Denbigh and back up. The idea was to tackle some hills since from Denbigh to the Brenig is pretty much one giant hill. I'm a bit worried that the mountain bike isn't helping though, as the gearing is very low and it's much harder to stand up on the pedals properly, so it's easier just to pootle up them in bottom gear at walking pace.

After that I had a go on Fallout 3 which Will lent me and I haven't had a chance to try yet. I thought it was OK but found it a bit difficult to get into the storyline and some of the mechanics seemed quite complex.

Today has been a lazy day. I popped into town to get the stuff to make the Canadian comfort food, Poutine, although getting cheese curds is hard so I had to substitute mozarella. Anyway, it came out really nice although it's probably hard to fuck up chips with cheese and gravy. First time I've tried to make chips though and they came out nice.

The rest of the day I played around with language things and watched Star Trek and also cleaned up the 6-string bass, which despite regular use had gone all manky around the gold hardware. I'm still not sure if I like it or not because it's so heavy and the wide neck. I flip between wanting to get rid of it and rewiring it with new pickups, can never decide.

Duolingo is fun and was made easier by having an old Latitude E4300 laptop with a German keyboard. However it was running stupidly hot, so I took it apart to have a look at it and replace the thermal paste. Now Windows 8 refuses to boot on it, although I'm not sure if that's an issue with the machine or Windows has just borked itself. Seems to be Windows since it passed all the built in diagnstics. In the end I couldn't be bothered faffing with it so I put it aside for a rainy day. German is a fun language but a bit fiddly. Also looked up some Mandarin lessons for fun. Fascinating to listen to it but it's very hard.

Hopefully going to get back into running again next week. I've been really hesitant about it after my knee troubles a couple of weeks ago, but they seem fine again now.

Cycling and ghosts

Last weekend it was all about the cycling. Andy and I went for a 15 mile warm up ride on the Saturday, which was good. The mountain bike behaved fine, and the new tyres really do help it on the road. After that was off to Rhyl to catch the part of the airshow that had the Vulcan bomber, that was truly incredible to see. Amazing to think it's the only one left, and then the day after it was grounded due to a fuel leak.

After the air show we headed to Anglesey to register for the Tour de Mon. It was a long way to go for what amounted to literally a couple of minutes, but it was good to get it done and ready.

The ride itself on Sunday was great. It was really well organised with a fantastic atmosphere. The route was clearly marked and easy to follow, and the food stations were good. The automatic timing system worked as expected and within a minute of finishing I got a text with my time on it, which was impressive. The ride itself was quite hard in places and again I struggled with hills, especially on the last few miles which were against the wind. The bike was OK but I wonder if I'd have managed better on a road bike.

This week has been reasonable. Work has been OK. Monday evening was spent resting my legs. Last night wasn't DnD because Sarah couldn't make it so Steve busted out his Magic the Gathering cards, which neither Rob, Rob or I had played. It was interesting but I think it lacked the story and characterisation element that makes DnD compelling.

Tonight was going to be running but Em couldn't make it and I chickened out of going with Andy and Rob G due to my lack of speed, and so I went to the gym instead, which went well as it was nice and quiet.

Nintendo have announced the 2DS. It's been met with a variety of reactions. I actually quite like it in the end, it reminds me of the old Gameboys and it looks quite comfortable to hold. All the debate about it led me to dig out my 3DS XL and have another go on Luigi's Mansion 2, which I've really enjoyed picking up again. Good game. The 3D is used well in the cutscenes but I turn it off in the game itself as it gets in the way and my eyes don't like it. It's nice to play a game that's just fun and not 'RAH GUNS KILL'.

The car had another bit of work done. The suspension was knocking and the garage found the suspension arm bushes were so worn the arm was actually hitting the chassis. All fixed now and the tracking is spot on.

Insane in the mainframe

The bank holiday was a nice day. Went for a 27 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve, which went pretty well, although it was rather hot. Second ride on the mountain bike and it was still OK.

Yesterday was not a good day. A couple of systems had issues and I had to do a lot of troubleshooting on the main Unix server and eventually shut it down to run disk checks and restart it. Not good. Then the backup system decided it didn't like one of the tape drives any more, so that was all fun.

Today was a bit meh after all that. Although Andrea came into work who I've not seen for ages so it was good to see her and little James, who has grown lots since we last saw him.

After the trouble I've had with my knees over the last couple of weeks I've decided to play it safe this week as I don't want to risk messing them up again before the Tour de Mon on the weekend. After that I'm not sure about running. It's good exercise and I would like to be able to run further. Having said that though, last time I screwed my knee up it was playing badminton.

State of mind fluctuating.

Oh well. Wonder if it would be any better if I'd started exercising earlier on in life. Who knows. Who cares.

Good / bad / indifferent / ???

The 5k went OK. It was not easy. I had to walk a little bit after the first hill, and then got a really bad stich on the last stretch. At the end I wasn't sure if I was going to have a drink, puke, or pass out. Possibly all three.

To get by without the road bike, my Dad and I set up my mountain bike with some Schwalbe slick tyres, some bar ends and the SPD pedals. The bike had a proper outing a couple of weeks ago with the Denbigh Harriers on a social ride, and although the others were much fitter and on proper road bikes I didn't get all that left behind. It was actually really good fun and the bike rode a lot better than I expected.

Running hasn't been going well since. I went to the gym last Tuesday and did a workout, and then on Wednesday tried to go for a run and my knees were shagged. It's only today when I was up at Kirkham visiting my cousin that they finally settled down. I was all set to give up on running completely on Thursday since they were pretty bad. I'm not sure if I need to go quite that far, but I'm going to be a little more cautious about my knees in general since they seem a bit fragile.

Bike ride tomorrow with Andy and Steve. Need to get some miles in due to the Tour de Mon on this coming Sunday, which is starting to feel a little scary. Can't believe it came around this quickly.

Not much else to report really. In a slightly fragile state of mind. Tired of how my life is at the moment and so utterly helpless to do anything about it. Almost enough to just give up completely. Sometimes it seems that if you're single, and not with someone/getting married/dropping out a baby that you're a complete nobody, which is a stupid way to feel but can't stop myself dwelling on it sometimes. Don't like feeling this way because I tend to avoid people and sit in front of DVDs eating shite. As it is I'm wondering why I'm bothering to exercise at the moment.

One of my favourite Metallica songs, with Robert Trujillo doing the bass full justice.

5k tomorrow

It's been a good week, even if the running on Wednesday was a bit rubbish. I had a slightly dodgy tummy all day, and so when it came to running, I was really poor. Kept having to slow down to a walk. Given it's the 5k tomorrow, it's a bit worrying, but I hope I'll be OK.

Have also signed up for the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon on the 1st September. Unfortunately my road bike has had it, and I can't afford to go and drop a load of cash on a new one, so my stopgap solution is to use the mountain bike. I took it over to my Dad's today and we put some new slick tyres on it, some bar ends to get different hand positions, and put the SPD pedals on it. I've only ridden it up and down my Dad's drive so far, but the tyres really made a difference. Will have to test it out properly soon.

In other news, DnD was really good fun on Tuesday. Typical session of combat, banter and outright abuse. How the team stays a team, I don't know. It's amazing they haven't tried to kill each other yet.

Otherwise it's been a quiet week. Work hasn't been too bad, just a few things causing trouble that weren't too bad to fix.

The recent things with Lavabit closing down and other revelations are a little troubling. I remember when I first encountered the Internet that it was such an amazing resource, with so much potential, and it's depressing to see it seemingly being twisted into a tool to reduce privacy and monitor people.

Running the MacBook Pro on battery to see how long it lasts. It reckons it's got over two hours left, which isn't too bad.

Grumps

Last Thursday we went to badminton for the first time in a while. It was OK, except one of the women there got very crotchety about people getting onto the court and started to use physical violence, which was a bit crappy. We were also a bit weighed down by the food we'd eaten at Steve's, which was a BBQ in the sunshine.

Friday was a quiet one. Saturday was a good day. First thing was an eye test at Asda in Llandudno, which went well. It was a little surreal though to be sitting there having an eye test with the constant beep-beep-beep of the cash registers. They had an interesting machine there which the woman said would show me a little house. It came up, completely out of focus and then instantly went into perfect focus, and from that they got an idea of what my prescription was. Then went through the normal tests. I've ordered some glasses from there anyway.

After that, it was hanging out with my Dad. He's just bought a nice new bike, a Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc, which is a complete break from the old-school drop bar bikes he normally rides. It's really nice, and has hydraulic disc brakes, which are pretty scary in their stopping power. We also went to look around some places in case they had a bike that might suit me. I wasn't really looking, but after I looked at the drivetrain on my road bike yesterday, it's completely shot. I thought I heard it creaking on the last ride.

In the evening it was over to Rob and Em's for a BBQ, which was good. Al and Becky were up from down south, so it was a nice long evening of chat and food. It went on longer than we though, suddenly it was nearly midnight.

Sunday was a day of not much at all apart from deciding the road bike is fucked and I need a new one. Andy and I are planning on doing the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon at the start of September so I need one pretty sharpish. Not quite sure what to do though really, whether to go used or new or what. Either way it's going to eat into my savings until payday, bah. A cyclocross bike would make sense for the versatility but I don't think I can stretch that far in good conscience, since most of them seem expensive.

Today was an annoying day, and I was due to meet Andy and Rob after work for running, but on the way there I just couldn't cope with the idea of it and came home to do some tidying and list some stuff on Ebay to try and raise bike funds. But now I wish I had gone running, since the 5k is on this coming Sunday. Oh well. I need to try and get used to the treadmill at the gym too, to get ready for winter.

Latest geeky project was to install ESXi on one of the old broken Latitude E4300s I had lying around. It's got two hard drives in it for a total of about 820gb storage, although memory is tight at just 4gb, but it's enough to play around with virtualisation on it. So far it's got a Windows Server 2012 VM on it. This came about because I discovered the old Optiplex I was using for the same purpose didn't have a VT-x CPU, so it couldn't run 64-bit guests. I have a feeling I probably knew this way back when, but forgot. Oh well. It'll be interesting to see how the E4300 copes, but this time I installed ESXi on a flash drive, so if necessary I can take that and the hard drives and hook them up to a completely different machine and it should just fire up exactly the same.

Geekiness Xtreme

Work has been continuously meh this week, although something called Nessus has proved interesting, which is a vulnerability scanner.

Last night was good - we went out in a group and ran the upcoming 5k route to practice. Fortunately the weather remained OK and we got round fine. I had to walk about a minute after the first hill because I think I was a little optimistic and went too fast, but after that I got around fine. Em and I did it in about 37 minutes while the others were about 31-33. Not exactly world shaking times but a good basis for improvement.

It was supposed to be running class tonight, but it rained continuously all day long, and my legs were still feeling it from last night, so I wimped out and came home and had a nice geeky evening. I was experimenting with sharing disks from a Windows Server 2012 machine to both the Windows 8 Alienware and the MacBook Pro. I really wanted to play with iSCSI since it sounds interesting and should work well over gigabit. This worked well with Windows 8 which connected straight up to a shared disk, and performance was surprisingly good.

Annoyingly though Apple doesn't include an iSCSI initiator with Mac OS X, and while there are third party ones, they aren't free. Oh well. NFS was a pain due to Windows being a bit shit at supporting it but eventually I got the Mac talking to a standard Windows share. While this works though, it isn't as fast as iSCSI or NFS. Oh well. All good fun. I also found the rather childish way that Apple represents Windows PCs in Mac OS X - as an old fashioned CRT showing a blue screen of death. It seems fairly typical of the arrogant attitude that Apple has developed over the last decade or so though.

It's interesting to compare Mountain Lion to Windows 8 though. It basically feels the same that OS X always has done, ever since the original version, which I had running on an old iMac. Windows has changed several times since then, although Windows 8 is clearly the most different. I'm still a little ambivalent about it - it's been improved a lot underneath but the new interface is just a little odd if you aren't using a touchscreen.

So many screws...

Yesterday was another bike ride with Andy. We decided to go a different way this time, heading up through Henllan. Sounded good in theory, but it was quite a long haul up to Henllan, then there was a massive drop out of the village. This led to a truly ridiculous hill, which was horrible. We got nearly to the top and then had to turn off and make our way to St Asaph along some back roads, which was actually really nice. Once we got to St Asaph we did our usual route around back to Denbigh, but we were knackered because of the earlier hills, and we screwed up nutrition so we were really tired.

In the evening it was Rob's birthday meal, which was in the Guildhall Tavern in Denbigh. It was a well attended event with nearly 30 people, and was really good fun. The weather finally broke, and when people were leaving it was absolutely chucking it down.

Today has been a fairly lazy day so far. Fortunately the little toolkit I picked up with useful screwdriver bits turned up, so I was able to disassemble the MacBook Pro with the annoying T6 screws. It's now got a larger faster hard drive with a clean install of Mountain Lion, and fresh thermal paste on the heatsink. I had to take it apart twice though as I accidentally tightened the heatsink screws too much the first time, so when it booted back up the CPU was idling at 100 degrees...ouch! It's running much cooler now than it did originally, with the CPU idling at around 45 degrees and the GPU at 59 degrees, which seems pretty good for these machines as they apparently run hot by default. It's definitely running cooler than when I first got it. I think someone had tried to regunk the heatsink before, but not done a very good job.

The first time I took it apart, it took ages as I was meticulously following the iFixit guide and keeping track of all the screws. The second time I didn't care and had the logic board out in about 10 minutes, but I still got it back together with no leftover screws. These older MBPs are a bit of a sod to take apart, wonder what the unibody ones are like.

Ah well, so far so good. Next is to put some more RAM in it assuming I can find some suitable DIMMs. At the moment it only has 2gb, and the maximum for some weird reason is 6gb. Odd. I'd also like to put an SSD in it as putting them in my other machines has definitely made me a convert.

Forgot to mention that the car had some more work done. The whining engine was cured by a couple of new pulleys and the chugging noise was a disconnected pipe. The snapped rear seatbelt was replaced and also the seal on the top of the fuel tank. It's definitely getting there...

It's been a week of ups and downs. Work has been rather meh due to the ongoing issues from the penetration testing.

Monday evening was running, which was hard. It was stupidly hot and I went there intending to do 12 laps of the track which is nearly a 5k, but I ended up doing 7. Not great, but I lived with it.

Tuesday was DnD at Rob G's place. Em joined us for lasagne before heading off, and it was a really good evening. Had an unexpected encounter with another jelly beast, which was eventually dispatched after a fierce battle.

Wednesday was running class. This time they took us around a road course, which was two 13 minute runs with a 2 minute walk in the middle. The first 13 minutes were fine but I found the last 13 minutes a struggle, spending at least half of it convinced I was going to puke.

Yesterday and today have been uneventful.

In a somewhat rash move I picked up an elderly MacBook Pro a few days ago. It's a mid-2007 17" model with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, a 120gb hard drive and the troublesome Nvidia 8600gt graphics chip. Other than a few cosmetic dings and some minor pressure marks on the screen, it works fine. I'm intending to put a spare faster 250gb hard drive in it, and hopefully upgrade the RAM, although it has a curious limit of 6gb.

I also really want to replace the thermal paste and clean the fans out to make sure the graphics chip is kept as cool as possible. However, like the white MacBook I experimented with a couple of years ago, I find that MacBooks get their solidity from being bizarrely designed with lots of different weird screws. Also at the moment it's running Lion, which apparently is a bit rubbish, so I want to put Mountain Lion on it which is apparently better.

It's weird to use a Mac again after so much time. My reasoning for finding a MacBook was that I've been getting increasingly hacked off with Linux. It's great for servers, but on the desktop it's a clusterfuck of different GUIs, audio systems, etc. I keep reading that people really rate Mac OS X for Unixy stuff, so I thought I'd give it a go. I do like the feel of the MBP though, I always thought the original models looked a lot nicer than the unibody models that followed them.