Fraaark

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

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

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

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

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

Update: Nope, it's flickering again.

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

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