D&D is fun

Work = productive but still not nice.

D&D was absolutely fucking hilarious this evening. After the battle with the dragon we found ourselves stranded in its cavern with no way out except an apparently bottomless pit. This wasn't such an issue as there was a magic table that made food and a magic cask that made ale. So the suggestion was mooted that we simply stay in the cave and eat, drink, and shit down the bottomless pit for the reset of eternity.

But sadly this idea was not to be, and after some intense, fruitless discussion, we sold all our story points to persuade the DM to allow the most sensible idea we had to go ahead. This was to fashion the dead dragon's skin into parachutes to get down the bottomless pit. It wasn't actually bottomless and after a long trip down a river which involved much swimming, cursing and wishing we'd brought the magic table as a kind of food producing raft, we finally reached the outside world.

Naturally we set up camp, and of course people had to keep watch. First watch was Rob, who noticed some crows in a tree that were staring at the camp. Some arcana from Ed and I showed that they were enchanted, so we decided to attack them. Ed, somehow, managed to use a shock staff he has that never works, and rolled a 20 on his attack that instantly decimated the crows and caused a gigantic lightning storm and fire.

Second watch was Ed, who saw two evil guys coming to find out what the fuck was going on. We managed to capture them and intimidate them for information. The first one, cunningly named A by us, was a hapless 17 year old, who promptly shat himself and blabbed everything in fear of Ed's terrifying intimidation dice roll. The other, B, was 27 and a bit more tough to break but he talked as well after being threatened with a dagger. After a prolonged discussion as to what we were going to do with them afterwards, we decided to knock them out. B was knocked out quite easily but Ed managed somehow to smash the poor crying 17 year old's head in, splattering his brains everywhere.

Somewhat dumbfounded by this, our initial guilt was quickly forgotten as we tried to work out what to do with the body. Cannibalism was quickly dismissed, then we wondered about the possiblity of using the body as a kind of puppet to scare the other guy more once he woke up, or fashioning his internal organs into some sort of message saying sorry he was dead and leave us alone. Eventually we just left in the dead of night, and found a farm where the next adventure begins, hopefully next week.

It's impossible to explain just how fucking funny this all was, and we reduced the poor DM to confusion and dumfoundedness several times as he tried desperately to incorporate our bizarre ideas into his story.

Fuck all that shit in London. However it all started, now they're just being a bunch of cunts.

Not feeling good and it's not all down to work. Just feeling a bit like the odd-one out at the moment, the odd number that makes things a little awkward. It's my own fault but I can't think what the fuck to do about it.

Crippled, nearly

It's been a funny old week. My damned foot has been playing up a lot and prevented me from playing badminton on Thursday, and I was really hoping to take the Puch out for another ride.

Work has been shit. It was implied the other day that I was prioritising the wrong things. I wasn't happy about that at all, since it was beyond my control. And if anyone asks me yet again about the fucking AS/400s...well, I'll probably just say again that I know nothing about them, but in my head I'll be screaming obscenities.

Yesterday evening was brilliant, went out with the gang for a meal in the Brookhouse Mill, which was typically excellent, and had lots of entertanining conversation. Most memorable was me mishearing something that Rob P said which led to a long and convoluted discussion about the role of fluffers in pr0n movies, sounds weird but it was bloody funny and wildly inappropriate for the setting.

Last night my foot felt perfectly fine, or very nearly, and then this morning it was so bad I couldn't put it on the ground. Spent the day not doing much and taking ibuprofen, and again now it feels OK again. I wish I knew what was wrong with it.

Tired now, bed beckons.

I have an idea building in my head about something I could do with the remains of my cousin's old bike after it donated it's wheels to the Puch, but not sure if it would work.

Game over boys

Mind is blank, nothing worth saying at all.

Epic meh.

Rotund

A slow day.

Really liking the DSi XL. The big screens and general chunkiness make it worthwhile. The giant pixels take some getting used to though.

Realised I have reaches the age where not being married and having kids is not usual. If I have that instinct I haven't found it yet. I worry that I'm missing out ob something but then again I'm told quite often that I should be grateful to be single.

Dentist this morning to repair chipped tooth. Painless but weird to not have that sharp edge against my tongue any more.

Why does the bloody dog come upstairs and onsist on sleeping on my bed and then get all fretful and growly when I move around. Stupid dog.

Typos vecause of iPod touch.

Give it a Puch

This morning I took the Puch up to a quiet road to test it out. It goes very well. I had to tweak the rear wheel, the front derailleur and lift the saddle slightly but it feels really stable and fast. The gearing is going to take a little getting used to with only 10 gears which are higher than the mountain bike, but it has a fairly usable range. I only realised today that by putting the smaller 700c wheels on it the gearing would have changed. The brakes are pretty awful but my Dad reckons a set of double pull calipers would make them much better and I think the new brake blocks need to bed in properly. It's probably the most uncool bike of all time but I like it so far.

Haven't done much else really, made a nice batch of chilli and put some aside for work, watched the latest Torchwood episode and played some Dragon Age. Just got to a huge new area so I stopped as I didn't want to start things and then turn it off.

I woke up with a pain in my foot which has been getting steadily worse, very annoying. It's done this before but not in the same spot. It's so bad now I've retired early to bed with the DS.

A fun day

Today went to my Dad's and my cousin Pauline was down. We basically spent the day pulling the Puch to bits and making it work again, aided by Pauline's commentary.

First we decided there was no point keeping the 27" wheels due to there being hardly any tyres available. Fortunately my Dad had an old Raleigh with 700c wheels that also had 5 gears on the back and the wheels fitted onto it OK and the brakes were adjustable to reach the rims. Disaster loomed when the gears wouldn't select properly though, until I worked out how to adjust the derailleur. The problem then was that the rather fat tyres didn't fit through the brakes so it was a pain to get the wheels on and off. So we went out and got some new tyres and inner tubes and some fresh brake blocks. Once they were all fitted and the brakes and the gearing lubricated, it all worked OK. So it all came together. The only thing I really think it needs now is a quick-release front wheel really, otherwise it's fine. It feels quite different from a mountain bike but in a good way.

Other than that we chilled, ate scones for breakfast and chips for lunch. All good.

Found the talk radio stations from GTA III and San Andreas with Lazlo, which I always really enjoyed. Pretty fun to listen to.

Weird dreams

Well, I've had some fucked-up dreams recently. Two nights in a row I distinctly remembering smashing up my phone, once intentionally, once by accident. Hope it's not an omen - I really like the Galaxy S. I need to treat it to an updated ROM though, the one on it isn't factory and has a couple of bugs.

Then I had a dream where someone was coming at me to attack me. I had my camera in my hand and holding it by the lense, I smacked him across the face. He went down, but the camera broke apart and inside it was all flesh and blood. Disturbing. You could probably read a lot into that, but let's not. I mean I love the Nikon but not like that, haha.

Today wasn't bad, job count sensible, backups running, and it was generally OK.

In the evening had a proper look at the Puch (Pook? Poosh?). It's actually purple and gold, very classy and retro. I think it looks fantastic as I've always liked the look of racers even if I've never really owned one, just something about the shape of the frame and the skinny tyres.

It's only got 10 gears but has Shimano Positron shifters which is apparently one of the first attempts to make indexed ones, so that's interesting. Perhaps most intriguingly, the brakes appear to have plenty of adjustment, meaning I could perhaps replace the nearly obsolete 27" wheels with the slightly smaller modern 700c wheels to allow a much wider range of tyres to fit. It also it looks like there's enough clearance to put some slightly more chunky tyres to make it a bit more versatile - cyclocross ones would be ideal. Anyway, taking it to my Dad's tomorrow to check it out properly and hopefully get it rideable again.

Then went to the pub and had a nice long chat with Andy, Rob and Em although Em went a bit early due to tiredness, but it was nice to hang out. It's good that it's become a regular thing as it's so nice to hang out as a group and brings the work week to a nice close.

Picked up a couple more games for the DSi. The first Trauma Center as I thought it would be easier on the bigger XL screens and the second Professor Layton game since I enjoyed the first one so much. Just need to find the time to play them though since I've still got Dragon Age to get through.

Tired now. It's been a long but good day overall.

The day just got better

Today wasn't great in work, quite a bit going on and I felt quite down through most of it.

Then just before the end, Andy texted me to say to go to his for an inpromptu BBQ in St Asaph, so that was great fun. It was nice to sit out in the sunshine eating stuff. Then I remembered Rob's Mum had offered me an old bike that was in her garage so I headed over and picked that up. It's a Puch Maxima in a very retro brown and gold colour scheme. It's in pretty good nick considering it hasn't been used in over 15 years and probably only needs tyres and even they might be salvageable.

When putting the seats down to put the Puch in the 306 I found astonishing amounts of rubbish from sweet wrappers to pistachio shells, and also £1.50! Hurrah. It is a mess though, will have to moan at the previous owner tomorrow.

Got a weird game for the DS called The World Ends With You. It's fun but it's got complex fights where you have to control two characters at the same time, one on each screen. Weird, but fun. One of the best games on the DS apparently so we'll see on that one.

Bye Focus

Well, the Focus went today, for a pittance really but hey. The people came from Wrexham to buy it and again I had to go and get them after they got lost. In this case they were in a slammed Audi A3 with huge wheels so it would never have got up the track anyway. But it's gone, and now I can relax.

Pong by Eisenfunk. I find this oddly fascinating, not quite sure why.

Not much else. Tired now.

Epic Struggle

So, in D&D tonight we encountered a dragon. At first it went really well and we absolutely kicked it's arse for a couple of rounds and then it came back and did some damage, but finally it died. Not before it kicked one of the party into a bottomless canyon.

Fun.

Work = meh. Had a tiredy headache most of the day and still feel a bit rough and also full of the snacks and pizza that seem to be a D&D prerequisite.

Mega update

Last week it was over to Gibraltar to hang out with Simon. Getting up at 3am was quite grim as the weather was horrible. It was bad enough trying to manage a torch, the umbrella and a bag with my shoes in it, let along coping with the wind turning the umbrella inside out. The drive there was pretty ghastly too, but once there, everything went OK.

Gibraltar airport is pretty minimal, and since I didn't have any bags, I was out of the airport in about five minutes. I had to get a bus into the town but the bus had to wait to cross the runway and it was bloody hot. But finally I found Simon and we went to a Spanish themed place to eat. This was large because Simon miscalculated the size of the tapas portions, but it was delicious. After that we went on a dolphin spotting trip, which was ace. It was run to be on a boat and we saw loads of dolphins. In the evening everything caught up with me and I got really tired.

Tuesday morning we got the cable car up to the top of the Rock which had astonishing views over the town and across to Spain. We also encountered the apes, which are kind of cute and interesting and have a interesting history. We made our way back down the Rock and saw various things including St Michael's cave, and the World War II tunnels. After that we chilled out before going to a really good steak place called Gaucho's.

On Wednesday we went shopping along Main Street and then had a rest while watching some TV, and then headed over to have a look at Spain. This involved crossing the runway which was pretty cool and happened to take place just when the traffic chaos begins - every evening the roads clog up and policemen have to direct traffic around. It was pretty cool to see La Linea and after we had a nice food in a Spanish restaurant we went to see a fair that was set up right next to the border. This was pretty cool because there weren't any other British people there.

On Thursday it was time to go back so I walked over to the airport and managed to ignore the huge massive queue for check-in because I only had hand luggage. The flight back was pretty uneventful but I saw a big city with a distinctive airport and wondered if it was Madrid. When I went and have a looked at Google Maps at home, it was indeed Madrid, which was pretty cool. Gibraltar is an interesting place and I'm glad I've seen it. A weird little British outpost that feels like the UK in many ways except it's hot and they drive on the other side of the road.

The rest of Thursday was spent relaxing. Friday was back into work which was a little worrying and a bit of a culture shock but not bad really. Friday evening was spent at the Prosperity in Rhuddlan for Rob's birthday, which was ace. Good food, good conversation and general banter.
Saturday was spent in Crewe for another meetup with my old workmates, which was good fun and this time we actually managed to moderate the amount of food there so that was good. Back this morning and all I've done very little except watch the second episode of the new Torchwood series and the Fifth Element.

I'm gigantically fat as it's basically been a solid week of pigging out. Ifeel absolutely horrible at the moment.

Lazy weekend

It's been a bloody lazy weekend. Have achieved absolutely fuck all except for watching some movies (if that counts). Also failed to either watch the new Torchwood episode or play Dragon Age, both of which I'd intended to. Bit of a lonely weekend really. It rained massively all day today.

Played bass properly for the first time in a while after being distracted by the Telecaster. The 6-string is such a monster but I love playing it even though the pickups are crap, the selector pot is broken and the strings are dead. I wish 6-string pickups were cheaper and more readily available.

Dentist the other day. Nothing up except I've chipped a bit off one of my lower front teeth which they say needs to be repaired so have to go back for that. Also my usual biannual bollocking about flossing.

Need to be up at 3am to get to Manchester for Gibraltar flight, but can't sleep, argh.

Payday tomorrow. It looks like the buyer of the Focus on Ebay has had the account suspended due to irregularities, so guessing that won't go ahead now. Fuck's sake, I REALLY needed that cash.

X-Fusion. I like it. Although again, can't quite work out why. Normally that style of vocal pisses me off.

End of a long week

It's been a long week. Today was OK, got some stuff done, and was able to leave work with a clear conscience for next week.

Spent yesterday evening watching the Terminator and this evening started Terminator 2. I love those films. Also have an urge to watch Flight of the Navigator for some reason.

Set iPlayer to download the new Torchwood series, should be interesting. I think the first two series were OK but it could be so bad on occasional. Third series was really good.

Put a new bridge on the Telecaster with compensated saddles to try and make it intonate better, still needs tweaking.

Tired of being the shape I am and feeling so unfit. Hate it.

A few lines

Work was OK. The AIX server has proven to be reliable and powerful although perhaps 8gb RAM might not be enough when it goes live but it can take 64gb so that's OK.

Got the strimmer running tonight with a piece of a pair of tights taking place of the lost air filter. Did a bit so I could trim down a bush that was getting out of hand. Damn that sounds bad.

I then spent a bit of time playing Mercenary, a game that I absolutely adored on my old Amstrad CPC because it present a fully explorable city in 3D. The graphics are bare minimalist wireframe but the game is brilliantly put together with several ways to complete it. There's a modern replica of the game and the sequels called MDDClone which is excellent. I still like playing it today and I'm still amazed at how they got the game to run so fluidly on that old Amstrad. Very cool.

Tired now. Been fat this evening. I think my mind is fundamentally broken when it comes to being healthy.

This is terrible really but I find it oddly compelling. I know it is metal techno because the scary voice says so.

I just remembered how I told a friend in primary school when I was probably 10 or so that one day I would build a robot and he said I never would. So far he's been right but it's a shame I've got no idea how to prove him wrong. Oh well.

Take that worm

Work was OK. My build of am AIX blade was successful as the Oracle guy was able to do his thimg with only a little tweaking.

After that it was over to Degazio for DnD whivh was ace and really funny. my character was finally released and instantly let loose with his flatulent powers and saved the day. Would write more but doing it on the Kindle so it is taking forever.

A Soggy Quest for Doritos

Went out this morning to the car boots as I hadn't been for a while. The only thing that was at all interesting was a Peugeot racing bike but it looked quite knackered and would have been an arse to get home as it didn't have quick release wheels and I don't really need another bike. Would have been nice to have a matching Peugeot bike and car though.

After that got the ingredients for chilli and came home. Except I realised I'd forgotten to get nachos and to me, chilli is meaningless without nachos. So I went back to town to get some. I timed this badly. By the time I hit the outskirts, it was raining. When I got into town itself, the rain was insane. At one point I stopped at a junction and had a moment of panic because the whole road was covered in flowing water which made me think the car hadn't actually stopped. It took three shops to find some Doritos. On the way home it stopped raining again, like it never had. How weird.

Made chilli, consumed it and put some into pots for work. It was really nice. Spent the rest of the afternoon faffing around on bass, doing some more stuff in Dragon Age and reading. My Telecaster copy is in trouble and needs a new bridge which is frustrating. I've found myself using it rather more than I used to. Also had a look at the strings on the Ashbory and the G-string snapped all over the place, having gone all hard and weird. Fortunately had spares. Strings are easy to put on, just tie a knot in each end but then getting it tuned is a pain in the arse. I must look into some of the Pahoehoe strings for it as they are apparently much better than the silicone ones that come it as standard.

Reading a book by Stephen King called Under the Dome which seems to be a rip off of the Simpsons movie to some degree but I'm not sure which came first.

So far have done about 280 miles in the 306 and it's still got well over half a tank, which is great. Less great is the acceleration. It's not too bad but after the rev-happy Focus, the diesel is a bit of a culture shock. Shifting down a gear and booting it in the Focus would cause the car to leap forward, in the 306 it just makes a lot of noise and doesn't achieve much.

Oh well. I'm quite enjoying the more relaxed driving style and once it's actually up to speed it does cruise nicely. Airbag light still off, yay. Found the splash guard in the driver's side front arch is misaligned so there's a big gap - need to sort that before the track gets muddy again.

Fringe

Friday wasn't too bad but not very productive.

Today has been nice so far. Spent the day at my Dad's. We had scones with home-made strawberry jam from someone in work and then chilled for the rest of the day. I did some stuff on the 306. The bonnet was really badly faded orange so I got some T-cut on it and that made it shiny and look better but it still doesn't quite match the rest of it, and it's still rusted out at the front - not sure what can be done about the except replacing it. Also fixed the flashing airbag light by disconnecting and reconnecting the sensor under the driver's seat, which was nice. It's still going OK and I'm adapting back to how the diesel drives. Also noticed a light on the right side of the instruments that lit up when the ignition is turned on. I wasn't sure what it meant so I looked in the manual and it looks like it has ABS, hurrah.

Found that there's only 9 geocaches in Gibraltar, would be nice to get as many of those as I can when I go. Would be cool to say that I've got all the caches possible in a country.

It's been warm today. Had Magnums earlier, very welcome. I looked into D&D sets of dice because it would be nice to have my own set but found there's a bewildering amount of varieties out there.

There is some utter garbage on TV these days, don't see the point of it.

I found a USB controller than can run FORTY-EIGHT servos. Again, insanely cool but no idea what I could do with it.

Argh

Yesterday = unremarkable.

Not a good day today in a couple of ways. Work was meh, spent far too long on a laptop fix this morning but the afternoon was OK.

Found that my sister is splitting up from her husband and moving to near me if she can find a house, and a friend and his wife had to have their dog put down. Sad.

Focus sold for not much but it did sell. Buyer is in Oxfordshire which seems a long way to come for a banger, but hey.

Tired. It was a long session of badminton but good fun.

I nearly, very nearly, sent an e-mail with a horrible typo in it. Instead of 'County Hall' I'd accidentally typed 'Cunty Hall.'

Flustered day

This morning had a hospital appointment for my eyes after my eye test last October. The new optician I went to was concerned about my binocular vision issues and a touch of cateract. The people I saw at the hospital agreed that I am catastrophically short sighted and my eyes do have trouble working together, but because I've been dealing with it my whole life, it's not an issue. They also told me not to buy a 3DS and were astonished that I was able to see Avatar in 3D, but thinking about it, I did have to concentrate to see the effect. So, fuck 3D in all it's forms. The cataract has been there all my life and isn't an issue either unless it gets bigger and blocks my vision. So all in all a bit pointless.

Since they didn't end up giving me eye drops I was able to head back into work and get some more stuff done.

I took the dog for a walk in the evening which almost looked like we were going to get very wet but fortunately the rain held off. Then had a nasty incident - I was driving up the track and saw two things in one of the ruts, but realised too late they were baby birds. One was crushed utterly by the car, but the other was still fluttering around. This was bad enough, but I was shocked to see yet another one that had been squashed but had been there a while, probably since this morning.

Not sure what to do, I put the one that was still alive in a box and took it up to the house and then Google told me that's the last thing you should do. It seemed OK and lively so after it had shat twice in the box I put it back where I found it, and it seemed happy enough and started tweeting loudly and I could hear other birds tweeting like it. Then on the way back up to the house another slightly bigger one fluttered out in front of the car, causing an emergency stop. I chased it off the track and it fluttered into a tree.

Feel really guilty about the squashed ones, it's so rare to encounter anything on the track I tend to drive it in autopilot.

Good weekend and car

Saturday was fairly quiet but in the evening went out with everyone for a meal to celebrate Andy basically getting the best mark possible in his degree, a huge achievement. We went to a place called the Groes outside Conwy which I hadn't been to before. It was really good, very nice place with good food.

Sunday morning, Rob, Em and I went for a bike ride along a public footpath type thing which was really good. It was odd because it gave me a new view of the valley and it was so peaceful and quiet. The bike held up well although I need to tweak the handlebars a little. It's heavy to lift over stiles too.

Work was OK today. Well, no, it wasn't, but I'm trying not to let things to to me or I'll just make myself miserable. It was supposed to be D&D tonight but it was cancelled, boo.

Got new car. Peugeot 306 1.9 normally aspirated diesel from a guy in work. I was expecting to hate it after the relative luxury of the Focus but it's actually really nice to drive. The brakes are probably the weirdest thing but otherwise it's fine. The Focus is on Ebay with 6 people watching it. I like diesels, I've always preferred the way they drive, but I can never quite define why.

I booked a flight to Gibralter to hang out with Simon on the 18th July. It's the only chance I'll get before he comes back so to hell with it. My Dad has said he'll run me to the airport, which is really nice of him. Flight was only £86, not bad at all given it's only two weeks off as well.

Servos are really cool and I've discovered now you can get a USB controller that will run 6-8 of them at once from a PC. Amazing but I haven't a clue what I could do with such a thing.

You fat fuck

After I was late into work, breakfast consisted of chocolate and Coke from the vending machine, lunch was chips and chicken curry from the chippy and supper was shredded chicken in honey and garlic sauce from the Chinese. Not counting about 2.5 litres of Coke.

Critical mass has been reached after someone pointed out my stomach. Enough.

Work not helping. Dreaming about it, stress and poor diet has made my face erupt.

Argh.

Bleh

Work = exhausting.

Didn't do anything this evening.

Noinch

Spent the last two days in work building a new AIX server to run Oracle. Rather a challenge as it was on blade hardware which I'd never had to deal with before and added a whole lot more to consider. Got there on the end though and it wqs very educational. There's a couple of P510 machines on Ebay, tempting as it would be nice to have a machine that could run AIX well so I could practice at home. My old one is OK but limiting and can't run the new version.

Have walked the dog and did a bit of running yesterday and today. Spoilt it yesterday as I got an Indian on a whim (ooer) but it was very nice. Got caught in the rain yesterday but it was warm enough that I didn't really mind.

Not much else to report. Had a little go on DA:O but didn't achieve much. Last time I played it, I had just finished a prettu epic quest, so not sure what to do now.

Fun but lazy

Yesterday morning was spent watching a couple of episodes of the Walking Dead before heading to Rob and Caroline's for the swingball tournament and BBQ. Sadly there wasn't actually a swingball set available so we ate some food, chatted a lot, admired a cute mini horse and then everyone played Trivial Pursuit, which was actually really good fun.

Today haven't done much really, watched some more Walking Dead, only one episode of the first season to go now. So far really enjoyed it. I was hoping to get a bit more Dragon Age done today but didn't get around to it.

Work tomorrow, argh.

Fucking Friday

After the week of shite in work which I know is not going to improve next week, I came home, ate some chilli and watched Transformers, something I could go 'Oooh, shiny' at but otherwise ignore.

Reading an odd book on the Kindle that Steve gave me about vampires.

This might possibly rank as one of the best things I have ever heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqlMtNV-b5A&

Stressed

Work not fun. Loads of shit come in and I have to cope with that and nursemaid the backup system through its tantrums. Not had a good day. My face has erupted in loads of pimples, usually a sure sign of stress in my case.

This evening no badminton as we all felt poo. However, we put Em's plan of potato wedges and Nutella into full effect. Oh yeah, that works. It works so well.

I came home and watched the first episode of The Walking Dead - pretty good. Should be interesting to see how that carries on. I've heard good things about it.

Repainted the bits of the car I had tried to strip so at least it's now all black again. Not looking good, but who cares. Developments on that front, will update on that later.

Tired.

Focused

The car passed the MOT with nothing required but an indicator lense. I was so surprised when the garage phoned and told me that I actually said 'Are you sure?'

The paint however is a total, utter catastrophe and must come off. Sadly it's so thick it hasn't dried fully so attempts to sand it off failed. I've come up with two options.

1) Get a hardcore paint stripper, clean it off and try to make it acceptable.
2) Get a new car.

I'm actually leaning towards option 2 because with 12 months MOT, even in the state it's in, I could probably get something for the Focus and put that towards something else that doesn't have the stupid shaking above 40mph that seems to be a complete mystery. Ideally I'd like another Focus but a diesel estate, which having looked around a little, might actually be doable. There's a 51 reg one in mid-Wales for just £499, although it does have 336,000 miles on it, hah. Oh well. The benefit of getting another Focus, particularly an LX, means I'd be able to transfer things like the stereo and brand new tyres from the existing one.

Not much else to report. Feeling better this week after not feeling 100% all last week.

Good day

I woke up this morning with a massive craving for chilli with nachos for some reason. I couldn't stop thinking about it so after a bit of a lie in, I went into town and got the stuff. I made a big batch of it using an adapted recipe I found on the BBC website. I left out the kidney beans because I think they're unnecessary and added a big slab of dark chocolate. I had it on top of some Doritos and covered in cheese and sour cream.

In the evening with to see Senna with Andy and Maz. We were hoping to go to Nando's as neither Andy or I have ever been but there was queue out of the door. So we went to the Fuxion all you can eat place. The food is good there, but it got a bit busy and noisy and it's always seemed a little industrial to me, a bit like a the kitchens in the Cities of the Asmov books that feed thousands of people at a time.

The film was good. Formula 1 isn't something I'm hugely interested in but it was a really well done insight into Senna's life and career. It was weird seeing all the races and rivalries and all that stuff when you know the film is heading towards the inevitable conclusion.

Car MOT tomorrow. The paint still looks shite but I think I can live with it, and Maz suggested that the worst of the runs could be polished down a bit.

Bollocks

I painted the car. It looks OK.

If you're standing half a mile away, looking in the other direction.

I think I'm going to have to put a Rat Look sticker on it and pretend the streaks, runs, bubbles and stuck insects were on purpose.

Or scrap it.

Oh well.

Busy week

Wednesday last week was getting the driveshaft put on the car. Still no change. Going to leave it now until it has had the MOT done which is due soon.

Thursday was usual badminton fun. Fairly interesting evening due to loads of people for a change.

Over the weekend I was at my cousin Pauline's place. I drove up on Friday then on Saturday we spent the day in Blackpool which was interesting as I'd never been there before. Sunday we had pizza for lunch and lazed about until I came home in torrential rain and heavy traffic, not good.

Last night it was supposed to be the biweekly D&D but Rob forgot the character sheets so we played Munchkin and Zombies!!! instead. The first game of Munchkin was great but the second less so, but Zombies was great fun. So it was a good evening anyway, and as usual vast quantities of snacks.

Tonight it was setting up a laptop for someone and then having a lazy evening at long last. Watched a bit of Futurama movies and made some odd bass noises before playing a little Dragon age and sleep.

Fat, oh so fat

Not a good day for food. Lunch wasn't too great, a bacon and cheese turnover thing, and then some chocolate. Then went to my Dad's this evening as it's his birthday to drop off presents. He and his wife had already had a big lunch so I went out and got a chinese to eat at theirs, plus there was more chocolate.

Interesting article:

http://www.cringely.com/2011/06/iclouds-real-purpose-is-to-kill-windows/

I feel quite alarmed by all this shit going on. The idea that computers become locked down terminals accessing a cloud service instead of a general purpose tool has been a worrying one for some time, and since everyone follows Apples lead for some reason, this could be the thing that finally makes it happen. Not sure I agree with the idea that consumers have been leading IT for the last decade - maybe at home, but not in the business market.

I can't see it happening quickly in the business market - there's always so much legacy stuff to support and businesses like to know (or should do) exactly where their data is, but for home users, maybe. It's a scary thought to think that the traditional general purpose computer might become a niche market, like it was when they first came out.

Fucking Apple. Back when Steve Jobs came back and saved the company with the iMac, I was happy that the Mac survived. Now that he's turned Apple into something more evil than Microsoft could ever hope to be. I wish he'd never bothered and left it to die. I mean the Mac was always non-standard and locked down to a degree but now it's much worse with the iOS platform.

That bloody cloud. You'd think that people would think twice about sending their data into the great unknown with all the Sony shit that went on recently.

But at the same time I can see the other side of it. A lot of people don't know or want to know about operating systems, data security, or any of that. They'd quite happily put their data on Apple's servers if it meant they didn't have to worry about updates, backups or whatever. So I don't know. Perhaps the cloud and normal computers can co-exist.

Hectic day

Hectic day in work, rushed around all day doing stuff.

Tried to get a Nokia C3-01 to connect to a PC again. Fail. It's a piece of shit. Connects fine to my Windows 7 laptop but not to anything running XP, which is a bit of a sod when the user wants to download site photos from the thing. I haven't felt good about Nokia since the masterpiece that was the E90, and now...I don't know what it is but I can't stand them any more. Just using the dismal C3-01 makes me feel sick. I think it's because the diabolical N97 ruined Nokia for ever for me and then when it sold out to Microsoft...well.

After trying to get used to the Unity interface, I've sadly decided that Ubuntu has jumped the shark. Unity is slow, confusing, inconsistent and unfriendly. So I'm trying out Mint, which is one of the many forks of Ubuntu but is sticking to a more traditional Gnome interface. I'm currently installing it on the Acer 7741g which I was supposed to be selling but haven't got around to yet.

Feeling catastrophically tired this evening, not sure why. I did some more sanding of the car which left me aching like I'd done an upper body workout, which in a way I suppose it is.

Busy week. Tomorrow it's my Dad's birthday so I'm heading over there after work. Wednesday the car is finally having the driveshaft fitted, Thursday is badminton and then Friday I'm driving up to Kirkham to spend the weekend with my cousin.

Just had a good blast on Dragon Age. I keep sitting down to play it for a few minutes but then get drawn in and suddenly it's two hours later.

A random day

First thing went out to the car boot which was a bit meh, didn't see anything interesting although it was quite large for the overcast weather. Then went to a large geocache I know to drop off the remaining travelbugs.

Came home and went mad with sandpaper on the car. The paint is now largely flatted except for a couple of bits but I ran out of sandpaper. I left the roof alone though as it's the only bit of the car which wasn't scratched, dented or the wrong colour. I did nearly all of it by hand except the left doors and the tailgate but then I borrowed a neighbour's sander and that was much easier. Tired and achy now as it took bloody ages. Got a big tin of Hammerite ready, just need a half decent day to get the paint on. Could be a while though. Oh well. I find it fascinating that as soon as the car gets wet it looks perfectly normal again. This could all go horribly wrong of course.

Haven't done much else today except watch Blade Runner all the way through for the first time ever. Pretty good I thought, ending wasn't what I expected it to be. Good though.

Fun days

Thursday was a fairly meh day in work and then I had to take my Mum to her writing thing over the weekend.

Friday was OK in work, did some more work on the backup system and discovered one of the onsite tapes was corrupted so will need to be restored from the offsite copy. Bah. Had an unfortunate encounter with a Golf on a single track road, had to go into the hedge to avoid a collision with broke the glass in the left mirror and scratched up that side of the car. Also noticed that the dented arch was rusting where the paint had flaked off so wire-wooled it and slapped some Hammerite on there, but the only Hammerite I had was white. After that met up with the gang for a couple of drinks, which was nice.

Today walked the dog in the morning but it was VERY hot. Then went to Rob and Em's for some BBQ food and snacks and rugby but had to leave after a couple of hours as the dog was at home alone. After that, went out and did a couple of geocaches as I had some travelbugs to move on but the ones I found were too small. Will have to do that tomorrow instead. Hope the weather keeps nice.

After the fuss about the so-called sex scene in Mass Effect, Bioware seems to have gone quite insane in Dragon Age. I found a brothel in it that allows your character to select someone of either gender and several species to have sex with. No nudity (but only barely) but well, it's quite suggestive. Still enjoying it as a game, think it's going to be a long haul through it though.

Meh

OK day in work but once again the server 'lost' some files that I had to restore, this time nearly a gigs worth. I wish people would just admit it when they fuck up and delete stuff by accident.

Did more unicycle. I can get about 10 feet now (three rotations) reasonably consistently, so getting a little better. While looking them up found it is possible to buy a unicycle with a 36" wheel and a disk brake for £615, or with a titanium frame for £999. Impressive.

Played some more Dragon Age. Completed the bit I was stuck on which was great, but then some stuff didn't quite work out but never mind. Picked up a rather interesting new party member.

Not much else to report. For the first time I think I've got a non paying bidder on Ebay, annoying. Especially as I could use the cash...

I've had a message from a geocacher about a travelbug I've had too long, guess I'll have to do some caching this weekend to move it on...ooops.

Nearly finished Lost in a Good Book. I really like the Thursday Next books. I think I read the first three or four of them when they first came out, and I really enjoyed them at the time so I don't know how I came to ignore them ever since. Strange.

Megafun

Yesterday was spent initially at my Dad's. I took the unicycle over and we took it apart, changed the shit stock tyre for a nice BMX one and attacked it with wire wool to clean it up and get rid of some of the surface rust on it. After that we just chilled until I headed over to meet Rob to play D&D in Wrexham. It was really good fun. Although I didn't get a chance to use my character, I got to play Kat's and rolled a natural 20 at a critical point which killed two monsters at once and saved the day. Ace. Also their stories of the unfortunate mule that was eaten by a panther which was then killed by setting their tent on fire was absolutely hilarious, never mind the current unfortunate situation in the mines. Too long to go into here but damn it was funny.

Work was busy today but productive. Did a very early start to get some stuff done which was nice as I got some flexi built up. This evening took the dog for a walk, fell off the unicycle some more (but can get several feet reasonably often now) and watched the first part of the recent two-parter Doctor Who. Hadn't heard good things about it but it was quite fun. Then I played some more Dragon Age. I'd got to a bit on Sunday where I was a bit lost and not sure what I was supposed to be doing, then suddenly it clicked and then I was kicking arse and taking names. Great fun.

Damn you, weather

The plans for a bike ride this morning were thwarted by dreadful wind and rain. Frustratingly by the afternoon it had calmed down rather a lot but at least I was able to take the dog for a walk.

Didn't do much else today except continue with Dragon Age. I had to switch it to Casual mode as playing it in Normal requires micromanagement of your entire team to a frustrating degree or they die pretty quickly and my screams of rage were making my throat hurt. Really starting to enjoy it now, especially as I'm starting to get the hang of how the plot is hanging together and how to handle the equipment and stuff. I wasn't sure if it would be my thing as I prefer sci-fi settings over fantasy but it's got me hooked at the moment.

It keeps reminding me of Fable II but in comparison, Fable II seems childish and dumbed down, let alone the abomination that was Fable III. I heard that there were complaints that Dragon Age II was dumbed down in comparison but I'll wait and see on that one.

Wood Fest!

Went to the wood fest with Rob and Em and Rob and Caroline. I'd never been before and it was great, really enjoyed it. Apart from all the wood stuff there was loads of craft things and food fair type things going on so it was great. We saw loads of cool stuff.

Got some nice pickle and some cheese that only I liked called Sticky Toffee Heaven, basically a combination of cheese and sticky toffee pudding. It was gorgeous. Lunch consisted of a rather good burger from a burger stand, but it was proper burger with really nice buns.

Not done much else today except play Dragon Age again. Getting into it now and getting the hang of it. Found you can remove the entire team's clothing and make them run around in underwear which makes cutscenes hilarious but not so practical when they get ambushed. So far my character is being nice to people although I'm not sure if it keeps track like Mass Effect.

Also got some new strings for my guitar. I've been playing it a fair bit recently even though it only had four strings and they were knackered. Think it needs a good setup though as some of the strings are buzzing. Also I made the mistake of putting a classic type bridge on it with the three saddles so it makes intonating it more difficult.

Whimsical error messages annoy me sometimes, for example:

'Hold your clicks a moment please, Flickr has the hiccups.'

Oh fuck off, if it's broken, say it's broken. Grr.

Dragon Age: Underpants

A fairly OK day in work.

Came home to find the driveshaft for the Focus had turned up, bloody heavy thing.

Got two 250gb hard drives for the M17x which are now installed and running in RAID0 to give a combined drive of about 485gb. I did think about larger ones but I don't need that much space. These are 7200rpm drives. SSDs or hybrid drives would have been nice too but considerably more expensive.

I thought I'd have to use a Linux CD or something to clone the original drive onto the new volume but investigation showed the best way to do it was with Windows itself. It has an option to create a system image onto an external hard drive and then create a bootable DVD which you can use to restore the image back onto the new drive. Then use Disk Management to expand the partition to fill the space and done. Rather impressed as it was easy and reasonably quick given there was 50gb of data to transfer.

Played some more DA. It's taking a while to adapt to it as it's quite a complex game. There was a memorable incident when I was exploring a dungeon with two companions and picked up an item of armour. I then accidentally unequipped everything else, which left my character standing in his underpants which was hilarious. The way the dialogue works is taking some time to get used to. Unlike Mass Effect, your character doesn't speak, which is odd when everyone else does. So far though, quite enjoying it. Looking forward to seeing how it develops as I think it's a big game and I've only done a little bit of it.

Not much

Work was OK. Had my PA which went fine and we installed an update to the backup system.

Badminton tonight was OK. Had salad again and played OK. Shame the hag was there and the numbers meant we had to play with her twice.

Got Dragon Age Origins. So far it's a little like Mass Effect but more complicated. I was able to create a reasonable replica of my original Shepard in it but only had time for a little play on it.

Three wheels

Got a takeaway on the way home and ate it in front of Futurama. Then felt fat and disgusting so decided to take the bike out for a very quick ride to test it. It worked fine although the handlebars shifted in the stem so I had to sort that. I think I've done it but not quite sure if it's right. Also fell off the unicycle a few times. I think it needs a new tyre and/or inner tube as it loses air pretty quickly and the tyre on it looks cheap and crappy.

Still feel crappy and fat. Damned bad food. I remember when Rob made that salad a couple of weeks ago, felt great after that.

Went mad last night and shaved my whole head except eyebrows. Felt really strange and the double-takes from everyone in work got tiring quite quickly. Oh well.

Even more meh

Two fairly average days in work. Did get annoyed over something this afternoon but after I took the dog for a walk I felt better.

Really not much to report this evening. Didn't achieve much.

Ultra bleh

What a pointless day. The weather was crap for most of it with high winds and spurious rain. Didn't feel particularly inclined to do anything, so I didn't. All I did was wash the car, get shit food and eat it in front of Futurama again. Always feel shit and worthless after doing that.

Wish I could get motivated to exercise properly and stop being a wimp about the weather stopping me doing it too. Annoying.

Sold the first of the laptops I got to fix up, made a fairly decent profit on it, hurrah.

Tired now. Not looking forward to work.

Installed Ubuntu 11.04 in a VM. I always thought the interface had got pretty good so why they had to change it for that stupid Unity interface, I don't know. It's rubbish and makes no sense.

I love this, but not sure why:

Miranda - Gnocchi.

Argh, no updates

Forgot to update this week for some reason. Beginning of the week was fairly unspectacular.

Thursday was badminton. Despite the successful salad experiment of the previous week we had more Currywurst, which was a mistake.

Friday was the funeral of my grandfather-in-law. He died a little while back. He was 96 with very severe Alzheimers so it was a bit of a relief in the end. I only met him a few times and he never remembered me after the first couple of times. He seemed like a really nice guy though and I wish I'd had a chance to know him before the dementia got so bad. In the evening met up for a few drinks with Rob, Em, Andy and Maz, which was great even if it was a fairly early night.

Today was spent at my Dad's. We did loads of work on the bike. Got the tyres seated on the rims properly at last and rebuilt the handlebars with a new adjustable stem, a new bar, and new ergonomic handgrips. Also replaced the brake blocks with nicer ones. I never realised before just how fiddly it is to get the blocks angled correctly though. The new brake blocks allow you to change the pads without removing the whole lot though, so once it's set up, that's it. We were going to put the newer side-pull brakes on it but that would have meant all new levers and cables too so it got too expensive. Anyway, it feels great to ride now and if the weather isn't completely horrible tomorrow I'll take it out and try it out properly.

Saw a Boardman CX Team bike in Halfords which is meant for cyclocross. It is my perfect bike. Built like a road bike but with bigger tyres and has drop bars with four brake levers with shifters built into them. Absolutely stunning in every way. Shame it's £899. Here:

http://www.boardmanbikes.com/cx/cx_team.html

It's fun tinkering with bikes. I can see how people spend time building them up from parts and tweaking them.

Took the car to have the rear tyre looked at. As I suspected it did have a puncture. Sadly they also told me that my left front tyre was nearing the limit and the right one also had a gash in it. As much as I like the Toyo tyres it seems that they are too soft and fragile for what my car has to put up with. So they had to be replaced. They did the tracking too and found the back end was totally out of alignment, presumably due to the crash on the 29th. So that's all sorted and it does drive better. Still needs a driveshaft to stop the shaking at 45mph+ though. Damned thing.

In one of those moods where I can't get motivated to do anything except listen to music and piss about on the Internet.

Eurovision apathy

Rob came up with the idea of watching the Eurovision in a big group a couple of weeks ago. The idea was that everyone would select a country and then dress appropriately and bring food and stuff.

It was a really good evening. The actual contest itself was fairly underwhelming but it was really good fun watching it and commenting on the daft voting. There was loads of good food and drink and general banter.

I had already bagsied Germany (surprise) and decided I would bring Currywurst. I assumed the sausage would be easy enough but I wasn't sure about the sauce. It's one of those things where there isn't a definitive recipe as the point of Currywurst is to make it with whatever's handy. I tried one of the recipes and it came out really well, tasted pretty authentic, even if I had to miss out two of the ingredients as I didn't have them.

Today has been a fairly uninteresting day. I did however go to the car boot in Rhyl for the first time in ages but it was fairly tedious and crap as it was raining. I went to Halfords to get a new saddle for my bike as they had a huge retro leather one with actual springs on the bottom, which is ace and really comfortable. Still need to sort out the handlebars though.

After that I drove around aimlessly for a bit so the odometer and trip counter on the car would read 1234567890 so I could take a photo. Then went home and completed my renegade Shepard in ME2 before playing a bit of Portal 2 and watching some more Futurama. Slightly alarmed by Mass Effect 3 spoilers being around already when it's not due for release until next year so I need to be careful about those.

Running the M17x on battery. Fairly pointless, I don't know why they bothered putting a battery in it. It might be laptop shaped but it really isn't a laptop. It lasts about an hour on battery doing not much at all, so if you actually used the quad-core or the dual graphics cards it would probably last about 10 minutes. They might as well have put a third hard drive bay in instead so you could have RAID 5.

So far really happy with the machine though, the only thing I would like to do when funds allow is take out the single 160gb drive and replace it with two larger ones and run it in RAID0. God knows why it only has the one tiny drive, can only imagine it was refurbed because there was some issue with the original drive(s).

Rocket powered badminton

Thursday night badminton was great. We decided last week that we keep eating the wrong food which makes us play badly, so this time Rob and Em made a nice light salad. It made a massive difference and also due to the numbers, we didn't have to play with the Hideous One at all.

Friday was a fairly average day. Work wasn't too bad and had a nice lazy evening sorting out the M17x and playing a bit more renegade ME2.

The Galaxy S has proven worthy. The battery life is really good, tons better than the HTC Magic. I'd imagine it would suffer if lots of games and things were run on it but it survived three days with 30% of the battery left, and was used for more than the normal amount of voice calls and usual texting and fiddling. Also it even came with a spare battery, nice.

Picked up a new handlebar for the bike on Thursday evening, just waiting for new stem to arrive now.

Headache and squits

Not a bad day in work. Not much had gone on while I was off. We've all had upgraded BlackBerrys in work. Not too soon either, the trackball in mine has already failed twice, even though I've tried to keep it clean. The new one has a trackpad instead so no moving parts.

The Galaxy S got a lot of use today as I was talking to the insurance people and the garage and my Dad. It held up pretty well, although it seemed to struggle more in areas of low signal than the old HTC did.

Car is being picked up by insurance preferred garage next Wednesday. Liability is still being worked out. They have asked the other insurance company to get Enterprise to call me but I don't know if I want to risk arranging a hire car until the liability issue is decided. If I still had the motorbike it wouldn't be an issue, bloody typical.

Had a headache most of the day and felt a bit crappy and now this evening I've had major squits. Not good, and not sure why.

Played a bit more of my renegade Shepard in ME2 who is nearly at the end. I like renegade Shepard, he might be a complete arse to basically everyone but at least he's consistent and is usually being a bastard for a reason. ME3 has been delayed. Oh well.

10 years since Douglas Adams died. I always remember it because it's the day after my birthday.

33 today

Birthday today. Since I did so much over the weekend I had no plans today except to do nothing at all useful.

So far all I've pretty much done today is sit around eating chocolate and watching Futurama, so I consider it a job well done.

My Dad got me a new wallet to replace my ancient FCUK one which I've had since about 2001. This led me to clear it out of all the crap that was in it. However some of it had memories so I put it all into a scanner to have a record of it. I suppose I don't need several Berlin public transport tickets, or tickets for the New York, Washington or Boston Metros and there were loads of receipts and tickets for places in many places on holiday.

Also set up the phone I got to replace the HTC which arrived today. I ended up getting a Samsung Galaxy S as it got really good reviews and supposedly has better battery life than the HTC Desire which was the other one I was considering. So far it's really good. It was used but looks pretty much like new.

Finished watching Band of Brothers, which is a hugely impressive series, really good.

Fattest weekend of all time

It's been a very, very fat weekend. Yesterday was one of the meetups with the people I used to work with which happens on a fairly regular basis and takes place in either Ruthin or Crewe. Last night it was Crewe so we headed over and stayed the night. It was a great evening, the usual vast amounts of snacks, followed by takeaway. There was the usual video games, with me being forced to play Fifa, and then we all played Lego Rock Band while watching night fall on The Rock in Gibraltar courtesy of a Skype link to our friend who is working there at the moment.

This morning we emerged and had a nice breakfast of croissants before heading back. I was a little tired so I had a lazy rest in bed finishing off The Eyre Affair. Then it was down into town to meet up with Rob and Em before heading off to meet up with the gang at the Semaphore for fat birthday food. Sunday night is the all you can eat buffet so it was another fat evening. Good food though, really, really enjoy it. The highlight is the satay sauce, it really is incredible.

Not much else to report except I went insane. The Alienware M11x impressed me so much I went out and got a refurb M17x to replace the Acer 7741g. It's a fucking beast. My old Inspiron 9400 was a big machine but the M17x is something else. It is absolutely enormous with a massive aluminium shell that weighs a ton. Part of the reason it's so big is to provide space for the insane cooling. I didn't really take much notice of the graphics setup in it when I ordered it as I was more interested in the CPU and screen, so I didn't realise it had dual 1gb ATI graphics cards running in Crossfire X. To try those out I installed the Mass Effect 2 demo. It looked very very nice, but was weird to play it on a keyboard and mouse (well, trackball) after playing it so much on the 360. But the M17x handled it perfectly at 1920x1200. I'm probably not going to use it for games so much, but it's nice to have the option. It's nice too how the M17x and the M11x have the same basic design, just scaled up and down. As an experiment I put the Mass Effect 2 demo on the M11x and that too coped pretty well, although it locked up at one point, not sure why.

After the accident last Friday I got a letter from the insurance company of the guy who hit me so I've told my own insurance about it. I'll see what they want to do about my car. I'm sure that it'll be a write-off but I'll see how much they want to give me for it. If I hadn't just had it serviced it wouldn't be such an issue...

Weird day

Quite a strange day. Everyone seemed a little weary for some reason. The weather did change rather and it rained so perhaps that was why.

Got some really interesting sausages for the pre-badminton feast. Pork, Honey and Five Spice. They were really nice. However we've decided to try something lighter next week as we think the porking out before the game is affecting our play, hah.

New phone on the way, hopefully here soon. Getting tired of the Nokia I'm using at the moment. After using a touch screen for six months it feels so clunky, something I never expected to happen to me as I was resistant to touch screens for a while, and I still am to a degree.

Jugular

Work wasn't too bad after the breaks. The main Unix guy was back in so with a sense of relief I was able to hand it all back to him and start trying to get back on top of my normal workload. Wasn't too bad today but the leisure centre and library both had big problems, neither of which I usually support.

Lazy evening. Watched the ninth episode of Band of Brothers - holy shit. Then watched some of Eastern Promises while rebuilding a HP ProBook with Ubuntu for something like the fourth time. It's not a bad machine but it seems to have slightly quirky hardware.

Stilton. It smells like feet but tastes divine. How can it taste so different from the smell? The dog stole a great chunk of it, hope it doesn't make him ill.

Burn it all!

Today, Rob, Em and Caroline came up to help clear out the shed that had years worth of shite in it, mainly because there was an old chaise-longue and butter churn that I had offered to Caroline but they were behind loads of stuff.

We had loads of fun chucking all the wood stuff into a big pile for Em to go all pyromaniac on and the metal into a separate pile to go to the scrap. Found a few fun things like a collection of motorcycle magazines from the late 70's and early 80's and my old Transformers duvet cover which had survived in amazing condition. The ancient harmonium was beyond saving and while it still made a few groaning sounds if it was pedalled vigorously, it was smashed up and burnt.

After that I was planning to go on a bike ride but Rob and Em didn't feel like it and I decided I didn't either. So I took out the bike and checked it all out and rode it up and down the front a bit. Also in the spirit of the work I've done on the bike recently, I dug out the unicycle. I cleaned it up and pumped the tyre up but any ability I might have had to ride it seems to have disappeared.

I took the car out and it still drives OK so I gave it a wash. The door seal doesn't seem to be affected by the crumpled arch so I don't think it's going to leak. The plan now is to just drive it and see how it does in the next MOT, or until something goes bang.

Haven't done much else. Watched The Core for the sole reason of enjoying the utterly ludicrous physics and shit that goes on in it.

The BlackBerry I use as my backup phone has developed a sticky trackball, and I don't have anything else I can use. Bah. I'm still trying to work out if it's worth getting another smartphone or if I should just get a dumbphone. The HTC was nice but coping with the generally poor battery life was a bit of a pain. Can't afford anything right now anyway so will have to find something shit to keep me going until payday or so.

Things come in threes? Fuck...

Took the car's wheel off and found the spare one I had lying around and got the tyre moved onto that. Got home and decided to take the dog for a walk in the sunshine. While walking the dog, I called my Dad but then a car came. As I was trying to move into the side of the road and control the dog, the phone slipped from my hand. It landed on the wrong corner and exploded everywhere. I had to dig around in the leaves for the battery and the Micro SD card, but when I put it all together I powered it on to a cracked screen.

Gutted. I liked that phone and due to various shit going on this month (*cough* Alienware *cough*) the last thing I need now is to drop more cash on a new one. So I've dug out the old BlackBerry I was using before I picked up the HTC and will have to live with that again for a while.

If things come in threes, what's next?

Argh

I use Adblock on my computers and hardly ever watch TV, so when I encounter adverts I absolutely detest them. Not quite to the point of actually having an allergic reaction like Cayce Pollard in Pattern Recognition, but nearly...

I hate cars and driving

Yesterday on the way into town to Rob and Em's for their housewarming, I had a bump in the car. I was turning right into Morrisons, perhaps a little sharply and a guy pulled out too far and slammed into my rear wheelarch and wheel. The wheel took the brunt of it and needs to be replaced but while the arch is a bit caved in, it's not too bad. His bumper was badly scuffed and some panels came off it. We exchanged details but since I already have a spare wheel I don't really need to worry about it.

The housewarming at Rob and Em's was a great success. All the room in their garden meant everyone they invited could hang out with the greatest of ease and there was loads of food and drink. Kat had suggested clubbing together to get them a barbecue which was much appreciated and worked really well. So it was a great evening, lots of fun and stuff and in my case accidentally swearing at Rob's Mum and farting in people's general direction. There's a reason I don't drink very often. I had the D50 with me so we got LOADS of pictures, although when I can to look at them before I had to delete quite a lot of them. Still got some good ones though.

This morning helped them to clean up and had some sausages and stuff before I came home. I had to drive gently as the tyre was bulging suspiciously on the damaged wheel. I've now removed it and found the spare wheel, ready to get that sorted out tomorrow. Did some strimming outside but got tired.

At last the weekend

It's been a long week, annoyingly so for a week of only three days. As Andy pointed out, we probably assumed the three days would fly past but that wasn't the case.

Yesterday was one of those days where I wanted to bang my head against the wall, then I rationalised this and decided I wanted to bang someone else's head against the wall. After work though, things got better as I went to Rob and Em's to meet up with them and Jane and Wes, and we had epic home made toad in the hole, before we all piled into Rob's car to go and watch Thor in the cinema. I knew nothing about it, hadn't even heard of the graphic novels before the film was announced, so I didn't know what to expect at all. It was good though, really quite enjoyed it.

Today was more of the same in work, not very productive because nobody was in. I dropped the Alienware at Rob's so they could watch movies on it, then went to drop the car off at the garage before walking up to the office. Picked up the car to find the service wasn't too bad, but they'd had to replace the lower suspension arms on both sides. Joy. Then it was off to Rob and Em's again and we pigged out on chips from the good fish and chip shop. Not sure what is going on later on this evening but there might be pub and stuff. I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment though so who knows.

Tomorrow it is of course the anti-royal wedding day at Rob and Em's. Basically loads of people bringing stuff to fling on a barbecue and deliberately ignore the TV.

Happy days. I've been listening to Labyrinth der Sinne by Tanzwut solidly since it arrived the other day and it's bloody great. Definitely my favourite album by them. There's a new one out in September.

Update: decided to come home because it was like someone had flipped a switch, I just suddenly felt catastrophically tired and I thought I'd be better off saving my energy for tomorrow.

Giant day of meh

The only highlight of today was taking a very large pyrex jug and making the biggest cup of tea I have ever had. It was nice. And took some nice pictures of the Alienware using the camera settings to show the lighting. Other than that...well, meh.

Also I hate having to do processes on the backup system manually that should be done automatically. Not fun.

Bikes are fun

Went to my Dad's today. After the usual coffee and scones in the morning, we headed over to Halfords to get some new bits for my bike. We got some nice new squashy grips for the handlebars, and some bars to mount at the ends because I thought it might be nice to be able to change the position of my wrists from time to time as they were aching after the ride yesterday.

Once we started to pull it apart though we got ambitious and decided to change the handlebars entirely for the ones from my cousin's old bike, which are the sort of retro ones where they curve up. This went OK but we had to to put the gear shifters in a less than ideal place so, while it feels much better, not sure how long it will stay like that. What I might do is get a longer stem and put a new flat bar on it.

We adjusted the front derailleur so it now goes into top gear better, and sorted out the brakes which were all over the place yesterday.

Also the front tyre was being crap and not sitting on the rim properly even though it was supposedly the right size for the wheel, so we changed it for one that my Dad had spare. It's a touring tyre so quite skinny compared to the one that was on it. The rear was OK so we left that one alone. Due to all these new somewhat mismatched parts it looks a bit of a mongrel now, but it works OK.

Once I got home I took it for a little mile long jaunt and it went really well. The raised handlebars are brilliant, making it much more comfortable. The 8 miles yesterday were relatively flat so again I struggled a bit on the hills but it wasn't too bad really. Felt good after it though.

Exercise is fun until later on

Yesterday was a good day all round. I spent the morning playing more of Portal 2 until the 'possibly something stupid' turned up, which took me most of the afternoon to set up and configure.

After that it was back to Portal 2 and then down to Rob and Em's for a Chinese fat fest, which was delicious, and then a trip to the pub with Rob, Andy and Maz. We went to a nice pub that was pleasantly quiet, and played dreadful pool, took negative pictures of each other and chatted until...well, not very late, but it was a good evening.

Today Rob, Em and I took the bikes up to the Brenig. It was fun to see the contrast between their shiny new bikes and my ancient and battered Diamond Back. We cycled from the rear car park to the visitor centre, where we had ice creams and a curious thing by Ginster that I'd bought called a Cornish Bara, and then we headed back. It was really good fun, all of us really enjoyed it. The bikes all behaved, even my old heap managed to engage top gear a couple of times, and at one point Rob and I had a granny gears race which was absolutely hiliarious as the low gearing on mine meant I had to pedal at the speed of light. The weather was bright and sunny with a healthy breeze so it all worked out well. The distance was about 8 miles in the end, which isn't bad.

Got home and obviously the exercise took a toll on me as a couple of hours ago I came over crushingly tired and had to take a nap, which is very unlike me and I had a strange dream about playing GTA but then it wasn't GTA but real and I had a fight with a woman who reversed her Range Rover into the Focus.

Ah well. Anyway, the 'something stupid' is an Alienware M11x laptop. I bought it to replace both the Acer Ferrari and the Acer 5535, as it is more powerful and more solidly built than both, but still a reasonable size. With the glowing keyboard, grills and logos, I guess the Alienware could be seen as even more ostentatious than the bright red Acer Ferrari, but at least the lights can be switched off and it becomes rather more discrete except for the alien heads. I like the way the eyes of the power button alien head are the hard drive activity though, that's nice.

It's a great machine. It has the same reassuringly sturdy feel as a Mac laptop. It's the original version with a Core 2 Duo CPU which runs at 1.3ghz normally but can be overclocked in the BIOS to 1.7ghz. It's the graphics cards that are the interesting part. In normal use it has standard Intel integrated graphics to save power, but if you need to, you can switch to a Nvidia graphics card with 1gb dedicated memory. I'm that impressed with the M11x that I'm quite seriously thinking about an M15x or the behemoth M17x to replace the Acer 7741g but they are both considerably more expensive than the 'budget' M11x.

The Acers the Alienware is replacing have just been listed on Ebay but I've realised the end time is on the 29th. Oh well, hopefully it won't matter.

Portal 2 and a HUGE chair

After burning my old armchair that I had discovered was hideous, I was in a quandary this morning. With a shiny new copy of Portal 2 in my possession since yesterday evening, I wanted to spend today playing it. But I didn't have a chair, so I set off early to find one. And so I did. However, my spatial awareness failed me. The chair that looked quite a reasonable size in the shop turned out to be of epic proportions. The first inkling of doubt arose when it took up pretty much the entire rear of the Focus with the seats down. Getting it up the narrow stairs and around the corners and doors at home was an absolute nightmare and now it's actually in the room, it pretty much dominates it. Oh well, at least it's really comfy.

Anyway, armed with new chair, snacks, Coke (diet, cherry) and a freshly charged controller, I set off into Portal 2. I played it for quite some time until I got to a part I couldn't figure out, but then I heard a crash of thunder and scampered around whimpering and unplugging things. By the time the thunder went away I didn't feel like carrying on. It's good though...really good.

Yesterday I booked the car in for a service next Thursday as I can't remember how many thousands of miles it's overdue for one, and the suspension has started knocking. It's making exactly the same sound as it did last year but from the other side and that time it was the anti-roll bar link. I don't remember it being that expensive so hopefully it's the same thing.

Wait, what, four days off?

The backup system upgrade was completed successfully today. It was up and running by the end of yesterday and it was left to do the usual overnight processes to see how it would get on. I woke up early this morning and fretted about it for a little while until I couldn't stand it any more and went in to office much earlier than usual to see if it was all right. Fortunately, everything was fine, only a few little niggles to sort out. Unsurprisingly, given the huge boost in spec over the old server, it powered through the daily admin tasks, and everything is so much faster.

Still, it was quite a relief when the consultant left. I didn't realise until it was all done how tense I was during the process and I just felt a great weight lift from me. I did have to modify the schedules to take into account nobody will be taking tapes out tomorrow and Monday so I guess that's something else I can worry about, but hey.

Because of all that, it was only today that it really dawned on me that there's two four day weekends coming up. Nice.

Badminton was great this evening. The Hagg had gone on holiday and as always when she isn't there, it was a really good evening. I got some black spaghetti from the deli and Rob got some crayfish tails, which combined into a rather tasty pre-badminton meal.

I think I've done something stupid, but will have to wait until Saturday to find out.

Insertion

So today was spent with an external consultant doing the upgrade to the backup system in work. I had to be present as the normal guy has been signed off sick for two weeks, great timing as always. It was fairly interesting but because I've been so busy with my normal workload it was quite difficult to keep up with all the stuff that's been going on with the upgrade. Also management haven't seen fit to send us on any training on this new version, despite there being many changes including a totally different database. Oh well.

Not much else. Really tired this evening again, no idea why. Walked the dog, did some more work on the laptops. Got three up and running with hard drives and installed Ubuntu on them with reasonable success. Have ordered a load of sticky feet to put on the ones that are missing them.

Played with the HTC Magic phone tonight. Enabled data on it which was a mistake as it promptly blew a quid trying to sync over it, ouch. However at least it's there if I need it now. Vodafone actually have a PAYG plan with free data and texts if you top up a certain amount each month, might look into that.

Arrival

Ended up taking the dog for a walk which was nice in the sunshine.

My armchair ate an SD card I dropped and while I was trying to find the card I realised how collapsed and manky the armchair was so I tore it apart to retrieve the card and then burnt what was left.

Then played through the new Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2. It was a bit of an odd one. While playing it through I quite enjoyed it but then looking back it didn't really feel like the traditional Mass Effect experience. I guess that could have been the point though. But that's it now until Mass Effect 3. I've made a pact with myself to avoid future trailers for ME3 though, as I read that the ones for ME2 contained loads of spoilers.

I also completed my third playthrough of ME1 and imported the same into ME2. It's interesting playing it as a different class as it changes how it plays quite a bit.

Just realised Saints Row The Third (as it's called now) will probably come out at around the same time as ME3, so that means this winter should be quite busy.

Portal 2 out soon, can't wait for that.

Geektactular

Yesterday was a fairly lazy but good day. Woke up and didn't realy feel like doing much so fooled around in Mass Effect for a bit. In the afternoon went down to Andy's for a chat and to look at Olympic tickets. After a look at it we decided on our original plan and have put that on, which is quite weird to think it's actually booked now.

After that we met up with Rob and Em and Rob and Caroline for a meal in the Asia place in Denbigh. Really good, thoroughly enjoyed it. After that we went to a pub that had been recently done up and had a few drinks and the usual bizarre chats. Good fun all round.

Today is looking nice outside so I'm determined to get outside and do some exercise.

Have intermittently been playing with the laptops I bought. Nearly all of them work, only two or three have any serious faults. I just need to find a good source of hard drives and replace the optical drives on a couple of them.

Fecking tiredness

It's been a fairly weird week. Work has been reasonably OK.

Badminton last night was good, more people than there's been for quite some time which was good as it meant a good variety and we had some really good games. Somehow, I managed to really pull the bicep in my left arm even though I play right handed. Weird. It's still hurting now. Also Rob made epic gorgonzola gnocchi.

I took the bike out on Wednesday which was a rather humiliating reminder of my fitness level. I think it's going to take some practise before I can ride the six miles to work and back. Glad the bike works OK, although I need to adjust the front chainset still and I think it could do with higher handlebars.

I've been feeling tired all week, not sure why. Just shattered in the evenings.

Got a power supply for one of the project laptops, a Thinkpad T30. I really like IBM laptops, the build quality is top notch and they just feel good. The only thing I really dislike is that they put the 'fn' key in the bottom left corner instead of 'Ctrl' which is just wrong. Naughty. The T30 works OK but needs a hard drive and one of the memory slots is bad - a known fault. I haven't encountered many Thinkpads since Lenovo took over production of them but they seem nice.

Rob and Em gave me their old TV which died. After popping the back off I saw what I expected - faulty capacitors. Two had burst and one was bulging. Capacitors are stupid cheap so I've ordered some of the right type and will have a go at fixing it. If not, then a power supply board is relatively cheap on Ebay.

It's been a lazy evening. Fired up Soul Calibur IV for the first time in probably two years and had fun creating a crazy monacled purple guy but when it came to actually playing the game, got angry and turned it off. Did a bit of my latest Mass Effect character but got a little bored. Did however download the new DLC for Mass Effect 2, so will do that over the weekend at some point.

Decided I wanted to get the two Tanzwut albums I haven't got but they aren't available for download so I've ordered the CDs. Not sure quite why I like Tanzwut so much. I was trying to explain them to a guy in work and the best I could come up with was 'Think Rammstein with bagpipes and a hint of electronica.' Good stuff though. This is the current track I really like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T82H82e3js

Rargh

A fairly typical day in work.

Went around to a colleague's sister's house to have a look at her PC and sort it out. Needed some more RAM and new AV, easy enough but the machine was pretty old and not a great one to start with.

Got home and a couple of bits had turned up for the laptops so I've got two of them up and running, a HP with lots of blue LEDs and a rather dull RM. Installing Ubuntu on them as a test as it runs well on slightly older hardware like this. The main thing that's annoying is that half the machines are missing the feet underneath, which is bad because it means the vents could be blocked. I don't get why this happens so much.

Feeling really tired this evening, like I did last night. Not sure why. Possible lack of exercise maybe? Not sure.

Flanger

Sunday was good. Sorted out the car a bit in the morning and dragged my bike out of the shed. I was able to extract it from the embrace of the turbo trainer, cleaned the crap off it, pumped up the tyres, oiled the chain and then took it up and down the front. Amazingly it still works fine. I think if I'm going to try riding a bike properly I'll use this one for now even though I've had it since I was 15. The only thing I think it could do with is higher handlebars as they feel a bit low and they've gone rusty.

Then went to Rob and Em's to do more proofreading of one of Rob's writings. This time he sent me the raw text, I printed it out and scrawled on it in red pen, and then we sat down together and went through it. This approach works really well although it is slow. We had rewards for completing pages such as Pringles and teacakes. After this eventually palled, I went home followed by Rob and Em and we took Sandy for a walk in the sunshine.

Today was OK in work, a fairly productive day but I got depressed and pissed off round about lunchtime for no reason that I could discern. Oh well.

The second batch of laptops turned up today. Another couple of Toshibas including a rather pretty little Portege M100 and a whopping huge fat Pentium 4 Satellite, an equally fat Tiny, a sleek Thinkpad and a rather boring Dell. All of them power up to some degree and a couple have issues, for example the M100 has a bad LCD cable and the Thinkpad a bad RAM slot. But so far it looks fairly promising. So I spent some time playing with them before taking Sandy for a walk in the wind and occasional rain.

Watched Taken this evening after being lent it by Rob weeks ago and putting it underneath something. Weird film. Not sure if I enjoyed it or not, but I think on whole I did.

Quiet day

Nice quiet day mostly spent at my Dad's. We went through the pictures and videos from Berlin and chilled out. I went out and got a new stereo for the car, one which includes both aux and USB inputs, with iPod support. The stupid Ripspeed piece of shite I had before worked but had a gimpy aux input arrangement and idiotic controls.

Had a look at bikes. If it's going to be lugged in and out of my carI need one that is going to be lighter and more manageable but at the same time I haven't got much cash to drop on one. There's a few options that I'm keeping an eye on. While in Halfords my Dad and I saw some quite nice ones but he said going second hand would save quite a bit and he's got the tools and expertise to strip them down and fix any issues. I did look at some bare frames as he's got all the bits to build one up but that could be fraught with problems. Did see a rather nice road bike with carbon frame that was very light though, shame it was £999. Now that I'm mianly based in a single office that is 6 miles from home, I could conceivably ride a bike to work quite regularly, especially since the office has a shower.

Darren told me of someone he knows who is looking for a bass player and gave me his number but I've chickened out of calling so far because it's been so long since I had to play in that kind of setting, or indeed in front of anyone. I can make cheerful noises with a drum machine but that's not really the same.

Berlin overview

Day 1

Flights from Liverpool were fine. Once again Pauline and I managed to arrive in the car park at exactly the same time, astonishing! It was great as we were able to park next to each other. The trip through the new security area was pleasant as the airport was pretty quiet, so it was all good. The outward flight was fine and we got to Berlin without any problems. We took the double-decker airport express as usual to Alexanderplatz and the usual U5 trip to the hotel Once checked in, we met up with Amogharatna and Claudia at the Flying Table for a meal. It's hard to explain how much we were looking forward to this, especially Pauline who was supposed to be doing the half marathon last year but couldn't go due to her cancer treatment. We didn't linger long and retired to bed relatively early after the travelling.

Day 2

We woke up and left the hotel in search of food. At first we were at a bit of a loss and sat by a fountain in Alexanderplatz. It was quite funny to have spent so long looking forward to the trip and then end up sat there not sure what to do first. After a while we decided to head to the Hauptbahnhof, get some food and wander past the Reichstag to the Tiergarten. This we did, and we got delicious wraps from there and ate them in the park. We had intended to aim for Potsdamer Platz, but took a completely bizarre route that took us through the embassies in totally the wrong direction, then we took a random road to avoid a demonstation and eventually figured out we had emerged by the Zoologischer Garten station.

By this time we were hungry again so we went to a highly recommended pizza place not far from the hotel which was excellent and then had a rest. After that we headed out to the Stadtmitte U-bahn stop to go to Fassbender & Rausch to get presents for people and wandered up to the end of Friedrichstrasse to meet Amogharatna at DaDa, possibly the best purveyors of falafel in the city - and it fucking rocks. It was stunning. After that we went for a wander and saw the curious underground shopping place that links Friedrichstrasse to another place and back to Stadtmitte.

Day Three

We went in search of breakfast and took a nice long walk down a random road. We took a long and circuitous route across the mainline railways and eventually ended up at the Warshauer Strasse U-bahn station. Handily this is also the location of the East Side Gallery and the Oberbaumbrucke, so we had a good look at those before getting a U1 train. Due to maintenance work it terminated only a few stops later at Kotbusser Tor which was fine for us. The train had two drivers as it shuttled back and forth, we saw it pulling back out with the driver reading a paper in the back end, which was amusing.

Went to the Turkish market which was interesting. Saw a lot of cool things and got some rather nice crispy thin pastry snacks, very good but a bit greasy. Was hoping to find wasabi and chilli peanuts and wasabi cheese but no luck this time.

At this point we needed a rest again so we headed to the Hermanstrasse S-bahn station and got on a Ringbahn train - a trip round the ring takes exactly an hour and you can see a fair bit from there, so it was nice. After that we went into Tempelhof park and lay around on the grass for a bit, although it was quite cold, and then walked up and down the runways before meeting Amogharatna at the half-marathon show in the terminal buildings. There was a lot to see and Pauline got new running shoes, but sadly no cheap finisher shirts from previous marathons this time, which was a shame. Amogharatna signed up for the Potsdam half marathon while there, nutter that he is!

We went back to the hotel for a rest and then went out to a new Vietnamese place called Tonkin that Claudia had had a flyer about. It was really, really nice although I ordered at random since there was no english. The only word I knew was Ente, duck, but fortunately it was delicious.

Day Four

After not liking Potsdam a couple of years ago, we decided to give it another go. We got the train there and stopped off at the Wannsee on the way there. We saw the Wannsee Conference house on the map and walked there but it was rather longer than it looked. It was not good in there. It's a beautiful building but going inside is weird and creepy. We were able to get a bus back to the S-bahn and then headed into Potsdam.

Well, epic fail at this point. We thought we got a tram that took us to a big nice park but instead it sodded off to the suburbs and we got off and got the other one back. Then found the Brandenburg Gate (small one) and sat around there before heading back into Berlin. So no, we still don't like Potsdam. We got a regional train back to the city which was loads faster and one of the lovely double deckers.

Day Five

The day of the marathon. It was hot. Very hot. We started out at the beginning of the race and watched the various events kick off, which was great to watch. The inline skaters were amazing as they set off, incredible to watch, then there was the wheelchairs and the runners themselves. We went and got the train and watched them go past the Tiergarten station, the Ku'damm and the corner of Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. This time we spotted Amogharatna and I was able to use the paparazzi mode on the camera to get some good pics of him going past, which was great.

Back to the hotel for a rest and then we met up again with Amogharatna and Claudia, heading to a nearby Indian place we went to originally. Very good food and we had curious bread that was all swelled up like a balloon, but delicious. Then along the road for ice creams in a curious square that was ludicrously peaceful given it was only a block from the six lane madness that is Frankfurter Allee. By this time everyone was feeling tired, especially Amogharatna understandably so we headed back to our respective homes.

That evening I went out and had a look at the nightlife, which was really entertaining and had a great time, won't go into details but really enjoyed myself.

Day Six

We headed out in an entirely new direction to have a look at the Olympic Stadium, which is well worth looking at as it's a good example of 40's architecture, and then took the S-bahn to Spandau. It was interesting to be somewhere that was so far out of the city and it had it's own feel that was really nice. We wandered around there for a bit until we got onto a train and headed back to the city to meet up with Amogharatna for evening meal. We went to a place that specialised in vegetarian burgers and I had a Mexican style one. Vegetarian it might have been, but it was one of the best burgers I have ever had. Really good. After that went to an ice cream place and went our separate ways.

That's basically it for Berlin. It was fucking great. One thing I did was try out a 3DS. Didn't like it. I could see the 3D OK but it made my eyes just feel...wrong. Now though I've read that turning the 3D down helps but I still don't think I'll like it. Shame as it looked pretty good otherwise. The AR game Face Raiders was surprisingly good fun too.

I've decided to try and put the stuff I've learnt about laptop repair to good use and have bought a load of untested laptops off Ebay. The first batch has arrived and out of five, four of them power up with no problem and should work fine once I've sourced some more RAM and hard drives for them, and then I'll put them back on Ebay. All are a few years old from the Pentium M era but they are still servicable machines. Two Toshibas, one HP, one Compaq and an RM, all of which run happily from the same PSU - looks like they standardised laptop power connectors when I wasn't looking! The best one, typically, is the one that doesn't power up, but it does show some signs of life so perhaps all is not lost, and it's a good source of parts if nothing else.

Glad it's the weekend. Off to Rob and Em's in a bit for a meal with them and Andy and Maz and to once again coo over Carter, the lovely white cat Rob and Em adopted unexpectedly while I was away.

Badminton was ace yesterday. There's a new guy who is really good. The last game of the match saw The Hagg team up with him against Rob and Em, obviously expecting to win but she played like a donkey with three arses. She got so frustrated she actually dropped the F-bomb which was absolutely hilarious.

Argh

Back to work - although it wasn't too bad it still made the trip and everything that happened seem almost like a dream.

Ran out of time today to write up full account of Berlin trip.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers.

Back

Back from Berlin today. It was a fucking brilliant trip, gutted to have to come back to be honest. Full update coming soon.

Stuff

Went out and got some stuff this morning including euros for Berlin, then had a bonfire with a load of crap that had accumulated, good fun.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers, did some admin work on the computers including making sure the backups were up to date and did some more of my renegade Shepard. He's got to the point where he has glowing eyes and looks like a fucking Terminator, which made it all the more jarring when he had a tender conversation with an alien who he is falling in love with. You'd have thought people would comment on the glowing rents in his skin and the glowing eyes but nope, nobody even seems to notice.

Holidays

Not a bad day in work before my holiday, got my jobs to the lowest level they've been this year, and got loads done so was able to leave a little early with a clear conscience.

Lazy evening today although had a tantrum and a tidy up.

Finished ME1 with my alternate Shepard. Somehow completed it in ten hours less than the first time round, but at a higher level, which seems odd.

Tired now.

Fat bastard badminton

Fairly uneventful week. Today was good though. Spent the morning doing Unix which was good, and then had a *long* lunch break having a really nice meal at Annie's in Ruthin in the sunshine before heading out to do some geocaching. It was fairly successful although as usual I got scratched and we found several small bogs, not good in work shoes.

This evening Rob, Em and I went to Pizza Hut before badminton to consume approximately our own body weight in pizza because Rob had a voucher to get a free pizza. It was delicious but did compromise our ability to play badminton. Even so it was a fun evening.

Really tired now, it's been a good but long day.

A good weekend

Yesterday was a good day. The morning and early afternoon were spent hanging out with my Dad. After that, made my way over to Andy's where we watched rugby and had Chinese before heading over to Rob and Em's for the last game, Wales vs France, which didn't go very well. Fun evening though.

Today went on an epic geocaching hunt with Andrea from work and another cacher. They got the ones in the village that I already had and we got some new ones. Then there was a new series that went live on Tuesday, which was great. 10 caches in a great circle around a hill, with a secret 11th cache that could only be found by retrieving the coordinates in bits from three of the previous 10. Really good series though, very well thought out.

The mysterious entry yesterday was because I had finally caved in and bought a Kindle, and I was playing with the web browser. It's pretty decent and the clarity of the e-ink screen is really nice. I'd love a laptop with an e-ink display just for typing stuff out on. It'll be interesting to see if they can eventually sort out the refresh rate issue and make it colour. I guess at this point it's at the same state as early LCD technology, like those old laptops with mono screens that lost the pointer if it moved too fast.

My new renegade game in ME2 is going well. I'm actually quite enjoying the experience. It's not so much about just being a twat, rather being very ruthless to get the mission going at any cost although there is plenty of opportunity to rude and inconsiderate for no real reason. The renegade scars are pretty cool too. So far they are all sunken in and there's red points of light glowing in his irises but it should get a lot worse as the game progresses.

test

This is very strange.

Fibre fun or not

A slightly frustrating Unix day today because the backup system is being moved to a new server which involves all sorts of shenanigans with the database and all sorts. It's a real nightmare and rather above my level of knowledge, particularly as nobody thinks it might be an idea to go on a course with IBM to cover the details of the migration and the differences between the old and new versions. Annoying as the new version uses a completely different database structure.

Plus a lot of today was getting the new server to talk to the SAN so I got to feed a few orange fibre cables under the floor but didn't really have a clue why as I've never had much to do with it. Oh well. SAN technology is one thing I'd really like to learn more about but not really something I could get equipment at home to play with.

Had a 'rest' day from exercise, due to chips for lunch to comfort Em after it looks like they're going to fuck her over regarding her secondment, and cake for someone's birthday. Cabbaged out with my renegade Shepard in ME2. It's actually quite good fun choosing the renegade options. They're not as twatty as I expected, just rather more forceful and inconsiderate in some cases. It's made amusing by him prancing around in pink armour.