Lazy/busy week

It's been the first week off I've had in a while so it's been fun. Alternated between lazy messing about with computers and games and doing exercise.

Did a bike ride on Tuesday on a route I'd been thinking about that goes on a circuit from the village. It went quite well until it got to a stupidly steep 1in 4 hill that I knew about but had forgotten it was so long. It took a while even to push the bike up it after I discovered I could actually cycle up it in the lowest gear, but it made it almost impossible to steer.

Badminton was good today, we had some really good games. I think the recent biking has helped my legs as I seemed to be able to get around the court a bit more and we also had a relatively sensible supper.

Nearly finished Professor Layton and the Lost Future on the DS, so should probably hunt down the next one. Not sure quite why I enjoy the games so much, but they are fun. Also picked up Wipeout 2048 for the Vita, which is fun but hard.

Rob and I have got rid of the rest of the video game stuff for £170, so in total we've made £473 once the Ebay fees were taken off. Not bad for stuff we thought most people would consider junk. One of the rare cases where we bought it when it was junk but now it's retro.

Not much else to report. One more day of freedom and then it's back to work after the weekend, boo.

Finally made the last payment on the evil credit card, which was considerably less than I thought it was going to be, so I'm 100% debt free. Now to start some serious saving!

Fun days

Wednesday was indeed interesting, as was Friday and yesterday.

Thursday badminton was good, and we had some decent games. Steve is better now so we went to his for dinner, sadly we ate a bit much again.

Saturday was a BBQ organised by Robert in work. It was really good, the rain held off just enough, and after consuming large amounts of food, including his astonishing cheesecake, we all sat down and watched Taken because a couple of us hadn't seen it.

Yesterday went for a bike ride from Rhyl to Llandudno with Andrea in work and some of her friends and husband. We intended to get to Llandudno but we got to Rhos-on-Sea and stopped for lunch and turned back. I was the only one who managed to ride over the small but steep hills on the coastal path by using the lowest gears, so I was pleased with that. The bike went fine and Nigel had advised me to pump the tyres up to 50psi for the hard surface. The path was busy but not too bad.

Today went to my Dad's and hung out, before heading over to see Rob and Em to discuss the rest of the video game Ebay stuff. We ate a large amount of unhealthy food and then watched a documentary about the Iron Maiden tour where they converted a 757 to hold the band and crew and the equipment. I'm always slightly bemused at just how massive Iron Maiden are. They were the first real band I got into, which kind of makes them automatically uncool. It's just crazy. After that we watched random bits of the Olympics closing ceremony.

And tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of my week off. Happy days.

People want things

It's been a fairly weird week. Been playing a bit of Minecraft on a multiplayer server, and watching the Ebay video game stuff.

Somewhat astonishingly the Megadrive lot went for £142! This was gobsmacking but I think the MegaCD stuff probably helped bump that one up.

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.

Seeing a load of Americans doing the Gangnam Style dance is surreal.

Wet wet and yes, more wet

Yesterday was good. Played a bit of Minecraft in the morning, and then it was off to the BBQ. It was a good long day of plenty of food and chatter. The weather was a bit grey at first but then it went really nice, so that was great.

This morning I decided on the spur of the moment to take the bike to the Alwen and try it out. All went well except for rolling it through a hidden dogshit meaning the tyre was horrible, until it started raining half way there. It rained most of the way round, and I got completely drenched. It wouldn't have been so bad except my glasses got wet and for some stupid reason kept steaming up too.

Still, on the plus side, the bike worked perfectly, even better than it did before, so that was ace. I also rode reasonably well and only had a couple of breaks, although probably motivated to get back to the car and out of the rain more than anything else.

The rest of the day was spent not doing much until I had a go on a multiplayer version of Minecraft with some updates known as Tekkit, which adds new textures and things like railways and other technology. I found a cool cave and spent quite some time turning it into a mountaintop fort with an observation room, several lower rooms and a deep mine underneath. Surprisingly really good fun. It's surprising how fun it can be to make things out of giant blocks. It reminds me very much of the 3D Construction Kit, a program I had way back on the Amstrad CPC which allowed you to create your own blocky 3D worlds, but was quite fiddly so making those worlds was quite a chore.

I don't think I could have cycled that far, but the Ride with Brad thing sounded pretty cool.

LOUD NOISES

Got yelled at for playing my bass too loud for the first time in years today. My colleague and I were testing a bass effects pedal he'd built, using my bass and amp. We didn't think it was that loud but the cardboard walls of County Hall meant that after a minute or so someone hurtled into the room and bellowed at us to shut up. Oops.

Tried Minecraft this evening after I was sent a download code by someone. I'd never quite understood the appeal of it with the big blocky landscapes, but it's surprisingly good fun. The creative mode where you can't die is great fun. I made an underground cave system, before I found a lava pit, then spent some time blowing pigs up with TNT and leaving giant craters. The survival mode is great, but scary. Not done too well at that so far.

Not much else to report. BBQ tomorrow at Em's parents. Need to get on the bike and do some exercise and have a bit of a clearout.

Payday today thank goodness.

Traumatic day

Today didn't start well. I was going through a village with a 40mph limit and there was a junction coming up on my left. A car coming towards me indicated and sneaked across, a bit cheekily, but then the car behind it followed blindly. I slammed on the brakes and fortunately missed it by inches, after leaving two giant skidmarks. The other car did stop and after I managed to stop my hands shaking enough to get the car moving again I parked in a bus stop and hurtled out of the car in a towering rage, which kind of dissipated when I saw it was a terrified girl who must have only been 20 or so, stammering that she was really sorry and didn't know what she had been thinking. It could have been worse, if I'd been going a little quicker it could have been a head on collision. The Astra hit 249,000 miles the other night - if it had been written off before hitting 250,000 that would have been a shame, quite apart from the hassle of finding another car again.

In a similar note, yesterday one of the Unix servers hit two years uptime since the last reboot. It has just been replaced by a newer one, and is due to be shut down and scrapped. I didn't expect anyone to care except me but when the news got about I suddenly found people surrounding me, watching my console session to the machine as it hit the magic number. It's been a good box that one, running under pretty much constant load since 2005 with barely any problems.

Today a couple of people from the external support for our backup system came in to find out why we were trying to ditch them. I wasn't involved at all but it didn't go well. In the end they came all the way from Oxfordshire for half an hour of stroppiness. Oh well. It was mildly awkward however when I went to the sandwich shop and realised halfway across the road they were sitting outside. However I didn't let that stop me and strode inside with my head held high. It was worth it though as I got a pork and stilton pie, absolutely delicious.

Then it was badminton, which was good fun. I ended up with Rob and Em and someone else in each game, which was great. We had some really good games, even one with The Ghastly One, who Em and I managed to defeat by clawing it back from 14-11 to them, awesome. She was so cross. Her, not Em.

I listed the first batch of video game stuff on Ebay last night, the Megadrive stuff. It's got loads of watchers and three bids already, which is a good sign.

Payday tomorrow, thank goodness. If my calculations are correct, I may be able to make the final payments on my various cards, and finally be 100% debt-free. A scary concept. 

Family

Sunday was uneventful and the last two days have been family stuff. My uncle on my Mum's side and his wife came to visit, so last night we took them out for a meal, and then today it was taking them around to places and things. I don't enjoy it when they come round, they are very religious and he's extremely eccentric, and not in a good way. Also annoying when my Mum took it upon herself to take my various faults and proclaim them out loud as hilarious anecdotes. Nothing like being made to feel like a waste of space to brighten up your day.

To make the day even better, Steve has been diagnosed with chicken pox - unfortunately I knew exactly where that came from. When I was round at Nigel's last Sunday messing with the bike, his son had chicken pox and the next day I saw Steve at D&D. Oh dear.

Back to work tomorrow. Hope the backup system hasn't died in my absence.

A Long Day

It's been a long day.

1st was off to Steve's for breakfast followed by a stroll around St Asaph setting out a geocache trail. It was good fun and it's been a long time since I walked around there, so it was good to see the place in more detail rather than just hurtling through in a car. A few things have changed since I had my flat there, which is nearly ten years ago, holy shit.

Had a bit more of a clearout of video game stuff. Rob and I are amalgamating our collections and putting them on Ebay. While sorting stuff out I found my old Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, a handheld computer from about 2001-2002 which was a 206mhz ARM based machine with 64mb RAM that ran Linux. I think the battery gave up the ghost after a couple of years so I stopped using it but it would be fun to get it running again. I seem to remember the battery is a fairly standard camera one and the charger is the same as a PSP, so it should be quite easy. By today's standards it's very primitve, but it had a slidey QWERTY keyboard and I was able to even add wifi to it.

Saw a good example of karmic revenge. There's a local guy who has a rather nice Focus RS in green and black, quite a new one and a lovely car. He always drives it like a total prick though. Today we saw it parked up in a layby on the bypass, the fancy carbon bonnet up in the air and a giant pool of oil underneath.

 In the evening it was off to Steve's again with Rob and Em, since due to the date Steve needed some compay. We had some food and then sat around chatting and watching amusing cat videos on YouTube. The original plan was to watch a movie but we all felt too tired.

hIPPY

It's been a quiet week on the whole. Not much going on.

My hip has been a bit achy off and on, but I think it gets better the more I use it, so I went on the bike last night for a while before being interrupted by the neighbouring farmer who was checking on his sheep.

Played badminton tonight. My hip did complain a bit but nothing I did made it worse, so I think it's getting better.

F*cking bikes 2

Decided I felt like a pre-work blast on the static bike, but then I actually got up, and my hip hurt. Quite badly, as though I'd been for a long walk. I don't know why but I hope it wasn't the go on the bike yesterday. I decided the saddle needed to come forward but the only allen key I had that fit it was lost a while back inside the Astra's dashboard, where it remains. So I gave it up as a bad job. My hip is still hurting now.

Work was frustrating today, I had to do several restores for people which kept interrupting what I was trying to do.

It was D&D tonight for the first time in ages, which was good fun. Took a little while for us to get back into the rhythm of things, but it was good. The classic moment was when James was playing as a character who has in the past accidentally set fire to Steve's character. Unfortunately he rolled a 2, and then used a power to reroll it. It came up as a 1, a critical miss, and then when he had to roll the damage to Steve, it came up as a 20. Ouch. But hilarious.

My hip is really painful at the moment but I tihnk it was the long drive back from D&D that's made it worse.

Awesome to see that they managed to land Curiosity on Mars and to get the first pictures back so quickly. It's things like this that make me glad we're still at least trying to do some space exploration. I saw a quote a while back which was something like we're the generation that's too late to explore the Earth and too early to explore the stars.

F*cking bikes

It's been a fairly ordinary week so far. Badminton on Thursday was good, we had some decent games except the ones with Her, which were annoying as usual. Friday didn't do much.

Yesterday was Steve's housewarming. I was supposed to make a curry to take but a series of incidents thwarted me. Ths most annoying was a full jar of mayonnaise that unexpectedly dropped out of the fridge and went EVERYWHERE, which was annoying. The stink of it when I was cleaning it up was enough to temporarily make me allergic to the wretched stuff. Then the blender didn't work and since this was a crucial step I gave up and took pizza instead.

The housewarming was great, loads of people from everywhere turned up, and it was great to see everyone. Also ludicrous amounts of food and pyromania Em running the BBQ. The weather was grey but OK, but could have been worse given the thunderstorms earlier in the day. The time was largely spent chatting, watching weird movie clips on YouTube and seeing what was going on with the Olympics. I left a bit earlier than most but it was a great evening.

Today headed over to Nigel's to sort the mountain bike out but hit more snags. First the bottom bracket was some gimpy type that needed a different type of tool, so that was a faff, then we found that the Suntour crank used a non-standard size for the chainrings, so the ones I got wouldn't fit. After a lot of cursing and adding Suntour to the shit-list, we ended up going online and ordering a nice Shimano crankset that would fit on the gimpy bottom bracket. At least the new cassette fitted on the wheel OK, so that was something.

Still, if the bike is now my bad luck vehicle instead of my car, I can live with that - it's cheaper to fix.

I realised the other day that I had only heard Led Zeppelin IV. So I listened the first album. Holy FUCK. I've listened to it a lot since, and found it works rather well to listen to on the static bike. Not quite sure how I've not heard it really but hey.

I'm really enjoying using that to exercise except I don't like the saddle as it's not very comfortable although I'm not sure if it's me or it's not set up properly.

Have lost exactly zero weight since last week. Not really a surprise though.

Free sweeties

It's  been an OK week so far. Monday was interesting with a new AIX database server going live, which I inititally built and set up nearly a year ago. It had a couple of little issues at first but has been fine since. The old server it replaced is just short of 2 years of uptime without a reboot, most of that under heavy load.

Been riding the static road bike after work, now that the rear axle is suited to a trainer. It's surprisingly hard work even in low gears, and so far only 20 minutes or so is enough to make my legs go feeble. I'll have to try the bike on the road at some point.

I've also ordered the bits to get the mountain bike working again so can resume the Alwen rides. It's having new front chainrings, chain and a rear cassette to start with which should be enough. The chainrings were the most expensive part, but the supplier included a mini bag of Haribo with them, and some stickers. So there's customer service!

Bradley Wiggins got his gold in the Olympics time trials today, cementing his place in history. What a year this has been for him and British cycling. Inspiring.

Tried a bottle of alcoholic ginger non-beer that Rob made. It was delicious. I had decided my session on the bike justified sitting down with that, a bap with ham, cheese and chorizo, and a DVD of Star Wars.

Dug out an old Tamiya Grasshopper radio controlled buggy I got at a car boot sale a few years ago and stuck it on Ebay. It did work, and it's probably one of the original 80s ones, so it might be worth something. If not, it gets it out of the house at least. Same goes for a lot of shit I've got.

Decent weekend

Thursday was good, with badminton as usual, but for the first time we went to Steve's house for dinner beforehand, which was great. Chicken korma and various treats, always a good thing. The badminton was fairly decent since more than the usual number of people were there.

Friday was a tense day in work, due to an unexpected test of the backup system. I was relieved when it completed the restore with no issues, other than it taking a while due to the volume of data. Glad it worked, although the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.

Yesterday was a quiet morning, although I did fit the new rear axle to the road bike so it clamps more securely into the trainer. I used the bike stand my Dad got me for the first time, which is epically useful, makes it so easy to get at the whole of the bike. After that it was off to meet up with the guys I used to work with, which as usual involved vast amounts of food and geekery. This time we played the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit game, which was good fun, and I was in the team that won astonishingly.

Today headed down to Rob and Em's to get some work done on the laptop they are inheriting from me. We got the OS and apps installed, but ran into a snag when we couldn't get the hard drive out of the old laptop since it required a tiny screwdriver. I'm the one who put it in there so I must have one somewhere, so we'll have to carry on with that. We watched Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie, neither of which I'd seen before, and were really funny.

Also found this rather crazy Korean pop video, which seems completely insane until you realise it's a parody of a certain culture over there. Oddly catchy however.

I picked up Lumines Electronic Symphony for the Vita after I really enjoyed the first Lumines game on the PSP. Really good.

Guilt

A fairly meh day in work, but made better by finding and fixing a corrupt volume in the backup system, which was causing lots of curious errors.

Spent a quiet evening downloading some stuff for testing and playing Gravity Rush on the Vita. It's pretty good fun but can get rather hectic at times. Not sure if it would be better on a normal console. Also played LA Noire last night but got frustrated at my inability to sneak into a coffee shop to listen to a woman on the phone. At one point I fumbled the controls and shoved a poor guy flat onto the floor, making it the least subtle entrance of all time.

Otherwise not much to report. Have ordered new skewer for the road bike so it will lock into the trainer properly. The quick release one it has now makes it a bit precarious.

Found Morrisons has some Tomato Salsa type cheddar in at the moment, it's delicious.

Finished reading Stasiland that Rob lent me. A fascinating insight into the GDR and what life was like behind the wall. So weird to think that was only slightly over 20 years ago. I want to head back to Berlin at some point, but finances and other issues are being a bit of a drag.

Feckarse industries

Mouth ached most of today which made the day slow and annoying. Not sure if it is the wisdom tooth playing up or not.

Came home, had a headache and a tantrum since the dog had shit in the garage again when I was trying to set the road bike up on the trainer. I got it done, but didn't feel up to trying it out much so came back in.

Still feeling crappy, bah. Going to curl up in bed with a book and ibuprofen.

A long day

It was a long day today. First it was off to Macclesfield to pick up the road bike. It's nothing special, a Halfords thingy called the Carrera TDF but they get good write ups and it was cheap due to being rather used. The drive down there was OK, made it without any problems although the journey back was delayed on the A55 for unknown reasons. Saw lots of people on road bikes between Knutsford and Macclesfield with numbers so there was clearly something going on.

Went back to my Dad's to watch the end of the Tour de France, which was pretty epic. The final section in Paris was bonkers and it felt like it could have gone either way, but Mark Cavendish absolutely blitzed that final sprint. Bradley Wiggins made it and became the first British person to ever win it, which is awesome. His speech was ace, I think people were expecting him to say more but he seemed rather overwhelmed. And he gets no rest, this evening he's on a plane back to the UK to train for the Olympics.

After that my Dad and I got the bike on a stand and sorted out some things. The gears and brakes needed tweaking, and we swapped out the bizarre pedals for some more sensible ones. The guy also threw in a Cateye bike computer which turned out to be rather a nice one, but since the bike is going to live on a trainer for a while no need to fit it yet. I think it could do with some new tyres before it hits the road though.

Feeling a bit tired and under the weather this evening, but not sure why. Was getting some pain in my mouth too as I think my wisdom teeth are playing up again so have downed some iboprofen and will take an early bedtime.

Terminalities

Thrusday badminton was OK, we had a couple of good interesting games, but the hag made herself known as usual, taking the joy out of it all. Bah.

Yesterday it was round to Steve's as it was his first night in the house. There were a load of people there including Craig who was visiting from down south and Robert from work, so it was a really good evening. Lots of pizza, etc, chat, general abuse, fart noises from phones and a film quiz game on the Xbox.

Not done much today really so it's been fairly quiet. I did however watch The Fellowship of the Ring. The extended edition, both disks, back to back. I think the last time I watched it was when I was living in St Asaph, which would mean nearly 10 years ago. I have the other two as well but the Return of the King hasn't actually been taken out of the shrinkwrap after I got it for Christmas many years ago.

Off to Macclefield tomorrow to pick up a road bike I won on Ebay. The reason being that I think it's worth having a bike on a trainer so I can go on that when the weather is crap. Hopefully if it works and I can get my fitness up a bit, I can also take it for decent rides. Still need to sort out the mountain bike though.

Looks like Bradley Wiggins is all set to win the Tour tomorrow, what an astonishing perfomance all round.

Good car

The week has progressed uneventfully. Any plans I had to get parts to fix the bike were on hold until today when the car had the MOT. Fortunately it passed first go with no issues at all, really good news. Also I got the cash for the old Specialized bike I got last year and listed on Ebay. It went to a guy near Chester who has an industrial unit FULL of bikes, which he fixes up and sells for decent prices. To be fair he got a bargain with that old bike but since I got it for free I'm not too bothered.

Today in work I had to take an AIX blade out of one BladeCenter and install it in another BladeCenter with totally different storage attached to it. It involved quite a lot of stuff that I knew about in theory but hadn't actually done in person, but it seems to be working OK so far. Happy days.

Otherwise it's been a fairly slow week. Rob lent me Stasiland, which is a fascinating look into life in East Germany before the wall fell.

Unlucky with bikes too?

As is well chronicled, I have little luck with cars since I tend to have the tendency to pick out cars which are either ridiculously impractical, or break often and expensively. So far my experiences with bikes have been OK until today.

Today was going to be a nice ride round the Brenig with Andy, Maz and Rob. We had made it a couple of miles which was fine, and then I noticed the cover had come off my right gear shifter. It's done this before. I went back and found it, but then when I went to set off to rejoin the others, the chain snapped dramatically. Investigation showed that the cog on the front had actually bent, which had caused the chain to go.

So I had to leave the others to carry on and trudge back to the car, although I was still able to meet them at the visitor centre for a hot chocolate. I've not really looked at the bike since I got home since I was not in the right frame of mind, but with a bent cog on the front and a rear derailleur was playing up and now has a dodgy shifter, the whole drivetrain is pretty much fucked at the moment. BAH. Oh well. It'll need fixing but I'm not going to do anything until after Wednesday when the car has it's MOT, that's more important right now.

I did clear all the crap out of the garage though, so I can put the bikes in there more sensibly. I'm thinking about putting my old bike on a turbo trainer type thing.

Not done much else really. Had a quick go on LA Noire that Rob lent me, or Grand Theft Fedora as he calls it. Seems decent enough so far. Also had a go on Gravity Rush. It's a rather odd game, but looks pretty promising.


Sabotage on the tour, people can be such pricks sometimes.

Plates and brakes

Productive day, sort of.

I got new number plates for the car and put them on, made it look surprisingly a lot better with nice fresh plates on it. I also went into Rhyl and traded in the two 3DS games I had for Gravity Rush for the Vita, since it's supposed to be amazing. Only had a quick go on it so far but it seems really good. The Vita doesn't feel like a portable system when it's running games somehow, since the games generally seem to be just as good as the real console versions, something the 3DS doesn't manage.

The fixed gear bike now has a new brake lever which has made a real difference to how well the brake works, which is good. Still need to take it out for a good test ride though.

The PowerEdge has had it's new disk installed and the RAID5 array reformed so it now has 400gb of storage across the disks. Not all that much really but plenty for what I'll be using it for. It really could use an upgrade to 16gb RAM though. I'll see if that's manageable after the Astra has had the MOT on Wednesday.

Going to clear the garage out so I can keep my bike tidy in there and perhaps put my old bike on a trainer in there so I can try and get some exercise when its raining. The dog has been using it as a toilet so it's grim in there at the moment. Need to find a way of stopping him, wretched hound.

Off to the pub in a bit to see Andy and Rob, which will be good.

Friday blues

A meh day in work, and not much to report.

Decided I need to get back to learning things on computers, so I've got a machine capable of running lots of VMs. It's a Dell PowerEdge 1950, a 1u server, with so far two quad-core Xeons, 12gb RAM and four 146gb SAS disks. It's going to be booting ESXi from a USB pendrive and should provide plenty of power. Hopefully will take it up to 16gb RAM after next payday. Not sure if I should run the SAS disks separately or in a RAID5. 1u servers are noisy because of the fans but I'm probably weird in that I quite like the sound, unless it ramps the fans up too high which most of the time it doesn't.

Nothing beats a fully populated BladeCenter starting up though, they sound like a jet engine until it settles down and once the blades are up and runinng it kicks out a ridiculous amount of heat.

The rain has been taking the piss today, so tired and bored of it now. Also feeling a little rough this evening, just overly tired and slightly headachy, but I don't know why. Bleh.

Terminator 3 is surprisingly watchable for a movie that shouldn't have been made. Not sure if I can bring myself to get through 4.

Tomorrow I need to get a new front numberplate for the car for the MOT on Wednesday. If the weather is OK I might still do the fixie test, otherwise if the weather is going to be an arse I'll sit inside and sulk with a DVD.


Bradley Wiggins on doping. Nice to see he can be eloquent when he wants to be. Just don't nearly twat him with a gigantic camera, he won't like that.

We're gonna need more paint

After all the hassle with the derailleur on my main bike, I remembered the fixed gear one that my Dad and I put together on the cheap a while back. It's basically the remains of my cousin's old bike, made into a fixed gear using a mountain bike rear wheel put on backwards with a sprocket attached to where the disk brake should go. Anyway I dragged it out and pumped up the tyres. It actually works OK, but the front brake (the only brake) is crap. I tried to adjust it but came to the conclusion the problem was with the lever rather than the brake itself. I've only ridden it up and down outside the house, so I'm thinking about taking out for a proper ride this weekend to see what it's like and perhaps get a couple of decent tyres for it since the ones on it are ancient cast offs although the front wheel is a 700c so not the same as the back.

I took a day off today for the first time since April, since things calmed down in work in a bit. Went to help Steve with his house. We got the furniture sorted out and got a good start going on the living room, so that was decent. Also it was properly sunny for the first time in a while so we were able to take a break and have pizza and tea in the garden, which was nice. I took a break to nip to Halfords and grab a brake lever for the fixed gear, but they only come in pairs obviously. If the rear wheel was the right size it could have a rear brake, but to do that I'd need a 700c disc mount wheel with a 135mm wide hub which aren't very common.

While I was at Steve's, I turned on the data access on my Galaxy S so Steve could make sure it worked before he switched over to Vodafone. I got an Edge signal that worked fine, which means that ICS must have sorted out the data side of things because it never worked before. Unfortunately the Ebay app decided to go and update which promptly ate a quids worth of credit - the perils of data access on PAYG. At least I know it works though, could be handy.

The Galaxy S has actually been pretty decent since the upgrade, especially since it was never supposed to be able to run ICS at all. It's not completely perfect, there is a very slight lag at certain points, but it's certainly livable with. I knew that the finish on one corner was cracked, but now it's finally started to come off, so it's looking a bit more lived in now. But it's still going strong, absolutely brilliant phone.

Bradley Wiggins and the Sky team are still doing well in the Tour. Promising signs, if they actually win it would be ace. Wiggins is certainly an interesting character, I like the way he just says exactly what he thinks and adds a good dose of profanity where appropriate. I'm always slightly in awe at how they can cycle so far day after day, that level of fitness is hard to comprehend.

Bloody rain

Saturday was a decent day. First thing was off to Steve's new house to have a look at it. It's really nice, and bigger than I expected for an end terrace. Should be great once the decorating is done. In the evening I went to pick Rob and a couple of other people to track down the gang for the Route 76 real ale trail thing that was going on. It was OK but like the beer festival I only really go to be sociable.

On Sunday took the bike to the fabled bike guru Nigel to see if he could make sense of the derailleur issue. He got it working better but said the hanger for the mechanism is bent, so a new one has been ordered as they're only cheap. If that doesn't fix it, a new derailleur might be needed. We'll see on that one. In the evening watched Terminator 1 & 2 back to back just because.

Not much else to report. Work is OK, with the backup system still running nicely.

I haven't been keeping up much with the Tour de France as much as I'd have liked to but I thought the rant by Bradley Wiggins after someone asked him about doping had a good point. Shame everyone focused on his swearing rather than the point he was trying to make.

Listening to Wish Upon a Blackstar by Celldweller. Interesting stuff.

AWESOME DAY

Work has been OK this week - the backup system has returned to I think something resembling normality, which is good. Last night was a charity badminton meal where instead of going out for a meal, one of the women there cooks food and we pay what we would have to a charity. It works well and she is an ace cook, but Rob, Em and I all over ate.

Was woken up this morning at 4:30am by ludicrous rain, and didn't get much extra sleep, so spent most of the day being tired. It was nasty rain too, which Andrea in work said was very wet rain. A strange statement but described it perfectly.

Tonight was the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live. I took my Dad for his birthday, and Amy, Huw, Andrea, Dave and Robert from work all went too. It was simply incredible, they took many elements from all five of the radio shows and mixed them up to make a whole new thing, that was brilliantly done. It was a little odd how they did it, there was a row of microphones at the front of the stage, which the cast used randomly, a guy in the corner making sound effects with all sorts of things (just like the original show) a live band at the back, and Christopher Timothy in an armchair in the other corner, narrating the Book. They were all reading directly from scripts much of the time too. Strange, but it worked so well, and it was really good fun.

Christopher Timothy had some trouble with his lines since the script he was reading from had too small a print so they had to find him some decent reading glasses, but fortunately he managed to make a joke out of it and so it was absolutey hilarious when he stopped. Marvin in particular was very well done with someone walking round with a life size puppet, and Stephen Moore's voice coming over the PA, but with synchronised mouth lights which made it really convincing. The rest of the cast were great, Simon Jones captured Arther Dent perfectly, Geoffrey McGivern was ace as Ford Prefect and Susan Sheridan and Mark Wing-Davey were great as well. It was just a little odd hearing those so familiar voices coming out of those aged faces. The new people they had got in to play other roles were good as well, in particular the guy who played Slartibartfast. There was also quite a poignant moment at the end when they projected an image of Douglas Adams when the cast were taking their bows.

Afterwards we hung around the stage door and we were able to get stuff signed - I had taken my original 1985 book of the radio scripts in the hope of this and got it signed by all the main cast, which is amazing. I grew up reading that book before I even heard the radio series, so it was already a pretty treasured possession but now I think I'm going to have to put it away in a sealed bag and get another one to read.

What an amazing day. I'd almost forgotten about this coming up and I went into the show knowing absolutely nothing about it, so to be so completely blown away by it was great. Fantastic.

Uneventful week so far

Not much to report. Work has been OK.

Found that there was a new version of Darky's ROM that I was running on my Galaxy S. I backed up the stuff on it and installed it. Since it was already rooted from when I installed the previous ROM, it was dead easy to install. The new version is based on Ice Cream Sandwich, which was never supposed to come to the Galaxy S, so I was a bit dubious. I remember how sluggish my old HTC Magic became when it was unexpectedly updated from Android 1.6 to 2.2. It was useable, but it just felt a little off.

Fortunately the Galaxy S seems to cope OK with ICS. It's a bit weird after being so used to 2.2 but it works OK. The only issue is flickering when playing videos which is a bit intermittent, although after a reboot it now plays them fine

New shower

Yesterday I went to my Dad's, bike in tow, to have a look it. I got some crud catchers which fitted on easily enough, but we couldn't make head nor tail of the damned derailleur. We read up on it, but we just couldn't get it to not slip between gears. Annoying. After that we watched the prologue stage of the Tour de France, which was interesting.

We couldn't due the usual Alwen trip today as there was a race on around it, so Rob and I went to the Brenig and did the trip from the rear car park to the visitor centre and back. It was not the best weather and we got rained on a fair bit, and the track was made into a kind of sheep shit slalom, making me very glad I'd put the crud catchers on, which rapidly lived up to their name. But it was nice to stop at the visitor centre and have a nice coffee and hot chocolate before heading back to the cars. The gears were a pain though, unless it was on the top or bottom rear cog it just kept randomly slipping between cogs, so it was pick a gear and hope.

The new shower is finally plumbed in and sort of working, but thanks to our low pressure water system, getting warm water out of it is a keen balancing act requiring delicate manipulation of the tap. Also had a nice bonfire of a load of crap the work on the shower has generated, which is always fun.

Penol

Another day that was much the same in work, however enlivened by it being Fat Friday. However the bacon butties were late so I consumed my bacon and sausage bap only half an hour or so to meet Rob and Steve for lunch, who were on a geocaching trip. We headed out for lunch and I thought I'd be safe with a couple of Welsh cakes. Except they came with jam and LOTS of cream so I felt rather bloated and full for the rest of the day.

Didn't do much this evening. Finished watching X-Men First Class after I didn't finish it the other day. Really like that film.

Off to my Dad's tomorrow with bike in tow to sort the gears out and give it a clean, just in time for it to get dirty around the Alwen again on Sunday, unless the weather is too grim.

I feel that I've put on weight again, confirmed by the scales. Definitely need to sort out my horrific diet and approach to food, and get some more exercise in the week.

The new shower is nearly done - looks great! Should be ready to use by the beginning of next week.

Gobbynobbin

Yesterday was not a good day. I damaged my hand by punching a wall in blind rage.

Today was better. Work was much the same, nursing the backup system through the trauma of migrating 10tb of data. Lunch was good though, three of us went and had chips in the park, somehow managing to miss the ludicrous downpour that happened only a few minutes after we got back to the office.

This evening was having a look at some old files and found loads of crazy audio samples and 'music' that I used to create. Since it was copied from a Mac, there were loads of files with no extensions but Audacity isn't phased by that. Some of the stuff is downright odd, but the backwards talking stuff we used to do is pretty funny. The tracks made from a circuit bent Speak & Spell demanding you spell DEAD and me making chicken noises are possible highlights, as well as backwards farting, Rob's insane laugh and other strange things. Very weird.

Extended cut

Sunday was a good day. We headed up to Alwen again and did a circuit. I didn't have to get off and push as much this time and was told I did it in a decent time. The bike still had derrailieur issues though, so need to get that sorted out. Otherwise I'm still really pleased with it.

In the afternoon went and hung out with Rob and took the opportunity to have a shower at theirs as ours is still being sorted out. Then played quite a bit of LA Noire, which is actually pretty good. Rob calls it Grand Theft Fedora, but it's actually quite refreshing to play a sandbox game where you're a good guy and it takes itself seriously, after the bipolar GTA IV and the lunatic Saints Row 2 and 3. After Em came back we had a curious combination of takeaway pizza and Indian kebabs for supper before watching Quantum of Solace, which was actually quite watchable - antihype in full effect for it I guess.

Yesterday was unremarkable in work and at home. Migration of 10tb of data takes time and all the stuff I need to do on it is on hold until it finishes.

Today was much the same except I got the Prelude added to my main car insurance for a day and took it to the auctions. I drove it to work, washing it on the way, and then took it to the place. It felt rather odd to be driving it again, probably not helped by it being stood for a month and a half. It reminded me of how comfortable it is though and how nicely it handles. Steve very kindly gave me a lift back from the auction place although we had to meet in the gigantic Asda, where it took some time to find each other. I'm not sure how much the Prelude will go for, if it goes at all, but I need to get rid of it now while it still has some tax and a decent chunk of MOT.

The new extended cut content for ME3 came out today. I watched the updated endings on YouTube. I'm actually reasonably OK with them now as I think it adds a lot of context to the choices and what happens. I like the new refuse option too, even if it is a giant fuck you to the people who complained. I tried to download the new content this evening but the Xbox wouldn't have it, probably too many people trying to do it as well.

Started listing stuff on Ebay again. Need to get rid of some more crap and have a damn good clearout, although at this point it would probably be easier to remove all the stuff I do want to keep and chuck the rest. Difficult to do that though.

Bah

It's been a long and curious week. Work has been OK. We had a guy come in on Monday and Tuesday to look at the backup system and we did a lot of work on it. It's currently migrating 10tb of data and then I'll need to reconfigure it some more. Happy days. Also I managed to install the backup system on a Linux machine, which isn't easy as it needs some libraries to be tweaked and stuff, but it did eventually work. It was only in a Virtualbox machine on my laptop though. What I want to do is set up a proper test system to try stuff out on. The guy who came in was quite shocked that we didn't have one.

Badminton was good on Thursday but we had to play with the dreadful woman, who was a real pain as usual. Somehow I've managed to not play with her for quite some time so it was something of a shock to realise how spiteful and nasty she is on the court. The meal beforehand was ginger themed, with a ginger curry, ginger cake and cans of ginger beer. Very nice indeed.

Rob invited everyone to the new Indian in town yesterday which everyone I know who has been says is amazing. It really is as well. I was torn between having something new and something familiar to compare but I ended up with a nice safe korma. And it was pretty damn epic, one of the best kormas I've ever had and the peshwari naan was great too. Will try something new next time.

After the old shower tried to electrocute me last week, our neighbour is installing a new one by ripping out the bath that nobody uses but the dog, and putting one there instead, so the house is a bit of a mess and I can't get out.

The car went in to get a new temperature sensor fitted so the gauge works properly, and to see why it was needing the coolant topping up a couple of times a week. They sorted the sensor OK but couldn't find a leak so they put some of that sealant stuff in and said to keep an eye on it. At least they said they didn't think it was a head gasket since the oil is OK.

ME3 extended cut next week. I'm not going to be burned again though, I'll wait until everyone else has played it and find out exactly what it is before I download 1.9gb. Also I've finally decided the multplayer is bollocks. It's mindlessly boring and repetitive and just downright tedious. I've only ever played it with Rob and Steve. I'd much rather they had never bothered with it and made the actual game better.

Megasnax

Yesterday had a lazy morning playing Rayman until it was time to head down to town for a geek fest with a couple of guys from work. In preparation for the next Dark Knight film, we watched Batman and the Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Begins and the Dark Knight. It was a really good day but we went massively overboard on snacks again. We had dicussed this but we failed to control it and it ended up just as bad as last time. An interesting event was the cat, who came and sat on my knee, which is impressive because originally he was terrified of strangers.

This morning it was off to the reservoir at a thoroughly ridiculous hour for a bike ride again, as I'd been invited by Rob P and Steve to join them on their run. On the way there it absolutely pissed it down but fortunately it held off while we were going round. I kept up with them for a while but I lost time because my legs cried out for mercy several times so I had to get off and push for a minute or so to give them a rest. And of course the horrible hill at the far end is impassable by me on bike, even in granny gears. Also the paths were wet and the bike has no mudguards so I got sprayed with muddy water quite a lot. Still, it was fun, and I didn't finish all that far behind them.

The rest of the day has been spent feeling like my legs were made out of pasta, but I had a clearout of some crap, a bonfire, and watched Paul again as I hadn't seen it in a while. I really liked it. Also finally logged the caches from the Skeg to Ness a couple of weeks ago, bring my total up to over 300.

A long day

Work went on forever today, but was relatively uneventful.

After work was Em and Vicky's birthday meal, which was in a local place called The Forum. Really good food and a good time was had by all. There were about 14 people there, the usual gang with a couple of people from work. The place was pretty good, a nice room and plenty of space for people to hang out and chat. I'd never been upstairs in there before and I can see why it gets good ratings.

Afterwards we went to a nearby pub, where we were warned/informed by the barmaid that there was a hen party present and there would be strippers. Shortly afterward loud screams and whoops announced the arrival of said strippers. However it was rather odd since there was both a female and a male, both clad rather unimaginatively in police uniforms and it escalated rather quickly to quite a surreal scene.

Otherwise not much to report. Really tired but not sure why.

Misanthropy

Yesterday and today were OK in work. Not much going on really. The backup system I think is OK but it might still be taunting me. Not sure.

D&D last night for the first time in ages, which was really good fun. First was a skills check which we won epically, followed by a friendly fight with goblins which was interesting and again we kicked arse. Really fun evening.

Today was badminton, which was the usual food at Rob and Em's and then to badminton. It was fun as usual.

Been in a really misanthropic mood the last couple of days. Not sure why, but really tetchy and quick to anger. Not at things in particular but just really reacting to strangers being twatty, especially while driving. Not a good feeling since I think it's my own insecurities lashing out at my own mind.

The new MacBook Pro is what I've been expecting from Apple for a while. A totally sealed, unrepairable, unupgradable unit with no optical drive and barely any ports. Reading the reaction to this has been interesting. Some people think that it's the right direction, others don't. Is it really worth sacrificing so much so it can be thin and pretty?  It's a step too far towards form over function for me and making the whole computer a disposable item.

I could kind of understand it with the MacBook Air, which is designed to be ultraportable but something that's supposedly a 'Pro' machine? I don't think Apple gives a fuck about that market any more, it's all about the consumer market now.

I wouldn't mind all that much, but when Apple does something, everyone else copies it so I fully expect to see PC makers doing the same thing. The pretentiously named Retina display is interesting though - that I wouldn't mind seeing in PC laptops.

Vita?

Yesterday and today the backup system seems to have got it's arse in gear and started moving tapes around properly - I hope it's going to stay this way and it's not just found another way to torment me. However, the signs are promising.

I went insane last week and bought a used PS Vita. I swore to myself I wouldn't, but I succumbed after thinking back to my old PSP and how I enjoyed a lot of the games on it. I regretted it almost immediately but now I've actually used the device, I'm quite impressed with it. Basically it's a big fat PSP with two little analogue sticks and a touch screen and a weird touch panel on the back. The system software is rather odd and things like the browser and map applications are slow and strange but the actual games are pretty good and the ergonomics of it are great.

So far I've played Rayman Origins, which is absolutely stunning, and the strangeness that is Touch my Katamari. I played the one on the PSP and it was camp and weird enough then, but this version takes the campness level up to 11. The King of All Cosmos is a rather strange person, that's all I'm saying, and drops innuendo like there's no tomorrow.

The 3DS might be doing OK after a rough start but I'm not sure about the Vita, at least not until they drop the price. The market seems to have moved on from dedicated games machines to the crappy little 99p games on the various phones. I can see why people like them, but I think touch based controls can only go so far and you end up with something like GTA III on the iPad - impressive but unplayable. I don't know if they will drop the price of the Vita though, since they can't be making any money on it as it is - it costs £220 and has the same hardware has a phone that costs three times that.

Another thing I like about the Vita that probably nobody else will ever care about is that it's nicely assembled with a modular construction and standard screws, so if they break they should be pretty easy to repair. Here's a nice detailed teardown of one on iFixit.

Bad things are of course the stupid non-standard memory cards and non-standard charging port. Typical Sony in that regard really. Sony is quite a bipolar company in some ways, making nice devices but then crippling them with proprietary standards.
 
Right now the last thing I need is another games machine after I swore to cut down on the Xbox, but at least the Vita is easier to play in small doses, and is less likely to lead to long snack consuming sessions in the armchair. At least I hope so.

Some guy played  Civilisation II for ten years to see what would happen - the answer is basically 1984. Interesting discussion about it here.

I was thinking about the triathlon we saw in Blackpool. It would be great to be able to do something like that, but I can't swim, can't run very far and would probably have trouble with the bike part. But they do a duathlon where you do a 5k run, 10k on the bike and another 5k run.

Blackpool

Went up to visit my cousin Pauline on Friday evening. We had a pretty good weekend, and it was fun hanging out. We didn't eat very well although she managed a 2.5 mile run while I was snoring the morning away.

We explored Blackpool a lot more this time and I thought it was OK. I've never thought of it as a place I'd specifically want to go before but I enjoyed it a lot. It's very British somehow. We went up the Tower and had a look down through the scary glass floor, and had a ride on one of the posh new Flexity trams, which was good. Pauline had done neither of these things, despite living in the area for quite some time. I do wonder if Blackpool was improved by the bright sunshine and ice cream, much like Skegness was last week. Interesting how I've been to two major seaside resorts on either side of the country a week apart.

While going up the Tower we saw the ballroom, which despite it being midday was in full swing with music and couples dancing around. It was somewhat strange but also interesting to watch. We also saw the Comedy Carpet on the promenade which turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant. It was great going round reading all the quotes. I was particularly fond of the Monty Python section, and even spotted some Hitch-hiker's on there. Examining it was made interesting by the Blackpool Triathlon, which was going up and down the prom and then they finished by running over the Comedy Carpet. We actually saw the winner finish with a time of 2:21 I think it was, and he looked terrifyingly fit. Then saw him later on nearly driving his car into one of the new trams, perhaps due to tiredness. Oops.

I don't know what Blackpool is like later on but I suspect the evening and nightime probably turns into alcohol fueled carnage like Cardiff does so it's probably less fun around that time. Also we were there on a Sunday and not in the height of summer, so that probably meant it was quieter than normal. But I was still surprised at how much I enjoyed visiting it. Like Skegness, it's what Rhyl wants so hard to be.

78 today

Another similar day in work, but made some progress, which is good.

Went round to my Dad's after work as it is birthday, somewhat scarily he is 78 today. Wow. It was a nice evening,

Not much to say today for some reason.

Oh well.

Arse

The backup system had many and myriad problems over the weekend again but I think I made some progress in finding out the root cause of them. I'm getting tired of it now. The damn thing takes up all my time in work and nobody seems to give a shit about it.

Otherwise an uneventful day. Not in a good mood on the whole. Tired of my current existence but can't do anything about it. Feels like I'm trapped in a ghastly prison of my own making.

Busy long weekend

It's been a busy weekend.

Saturday was off to Skegness for the first day of the Skeg to Ness geocaching run. We set off very early and made it to Skegness reasonably uneventfully except for the satnav having a moment and taking us on a random route through Spilsby. This wasn't so bad though as it was a very pretty little place.

Skegness was OK. We didn't see much of it but it reminded me of Rhyl or Blackpool done right, but it was relatively quiet, and bright sunshine and a big ice cream helps make anywhere look nice. After that it was on the road for the geocaching. Not much to say about it really except it was a lot of driving through country roads in the sunshine, stopping pretty often to find a cache. We did really well the first day. There was a distinct point though when suddenly everyone had had enough, and we headed to the Travelodge in Lincoln. We had a pretty good meal at a Fayre and Square place, where Steve and I had a cookie dough pizza, which is basically a gigantic cookie with chocolate sauce, marshmallows and chunks of chocolate brownie all over it. Absolutely delicious.

Sunday didn't start well, at least not for me. I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet, unfortunately while it was occupied, so it had to go in the bin. Then I had a massive nosebleed while I was showering but didn't notice until I smeared a massive load of blood across the towel. Also it was raining and I hadn't brought a coat, and had to borrow Andrea's Mum's coat, which is a sort of salmon pink colour.

That day didn't go so well. The weather was a definite hindrance and we were all pretty soaked through for most of the day but fortunately it wasn't all that cold. The rain did ease up every now and again but on the whole it was foggy, grey and grim. Morale was low, and a fair few unfound caches didn't help. However, we had a debate and decided to stay in the Holiday Inn at Nottingham so we could carry on the next day. We got massively lost on the way there, and somehow ended up in Derby, but we made it and after the day of being soggy, the rooms were like paradise. There's a Hungry Horse next to the canal, so we had another decent meal there, made slightly odd by them playing retro 90's chart music the whole time, accompanied by a mute TV with Gary Barlow. Odd.

The next day was much better weatherwise, so we made good progress. We started out by visiting the Games Workshop main office where they have Warhammer World and giant space marines, which was pretty cool. After that I drove us until the insurance ran out at midday, and we covered a lot of good ground until one of the GPSs lost a load of caches, causing a delay while we reprogrammed the other one. There were a few DNFs but not enough to break our spirit, but while we were on the Peak District, morale began to flag slightly. We knew we had a long way to get home and the car was low on diesel, but we had come far enough to make the remainder doable in another single day trip. We headed down to Buxton, filled up, and headed home.

We might not have done all the caches, but it was a great experience. There was plenty of beautiful English countryside to be seen and it was really good fun. Despite the horrible weather on Sunday we remained largely in good spirits.

Today I met up with my Dad and sister to go and see my brother who is over from Berlin for an international retreat in Whitchurch. It was a bit of a trek as we got lost, but we picked him up and we headed into Ellesmere because it was close. We sat around in a cafe having coffee and cake and then ended up having fish and chips because he hadn't had some in a while. It was a good day and it's always great to see him.

Work tomorrow. I wonder how the backup system held up over the long weekend.

Idiocy

A week with ups and downs. Generally the downs being in work, and the ups in the evening. I finally got my two extra tape drives, which is nice, and the IBM guy who came to install them somehow found out about my trips to Berlin, and it turned out he'd been in April and loved it, so we had a nice chat about that.

We haven't been able to do D&D for a while due to one of the party being in a Dracula play in Wrexham. We went to see it on Tuesday and it was pretty decent. The theatre was small, but they made really good use of the space, and the sets were creative. The acting was pretty good although some of the cast members were a little hammy. Also there was *gasp* nudity in it.

Thursday was badminton again, this time was a bit more sensible than last week, and we didn't quite overeat so dramatically, so our gameplay was a lot better.

Tomorrow is the ultra mega geocaching trip - the Skeg to Ness. Driving from Skegness to Neston on the wirral, taking in 202 caches along the way. This is what the Wirral trip a couple of weeks ago was a warm up for, and I think it's going to be interesting. Ah well.

Not much else to report. Fountain pens are fun, but ink is annoying if you get it on your fingers. The Vaio UX is behaving better with the wireless now so I'm not sure if the wifi is as bad as I thought. Need to sit down and test it thoroughly.

Was thinking back to how much fun Saints Row 3 was. Might do a replay of it, but to be quite honest I've barely touched the Xbox in a couple of weeks and I'd rather spend the time trying to exercise. So far I've failed pretty badly at that, but if I start on something on the Xbox again it makes it all the more unlikely. Also I want to replay BioShock and give Bioshock 2 another go at some point.

How is it June already?!

Spiraling

Yesterday was good. Rob, Em, Steve and I met up at the Alwen to go around it. Steve would be running with the rest of us on bikes. It's been a while since I have done any major exercise like that so it was quite hard in places, and there was no way I could cycle up the ghastly hill at the far end. Steve finshed before us though. It was good fun though, really enjoyed it. The rest of the day was spent mostly inside hiding from the sun as I got a little burnt.

Today was a meh day in work. My experiment in tape movements over the weekend did work, but didn't sort out as many tapes as I'd hoped, but it was a good start. Also at last went over some retention policies so hopefully some of that can be sorted out too. I also managed to go the whole day in work without going to the horrible vending machine, which is a good start.

Had a nice geeky evening fooling around with computers again. I should have done some exercise, but I didn't get around to it. I'm still thinking of better ways to incorporate exercise into my routine.

Bike bits

I pumped the tyres on the Hardrock up last night and had a bit of a ride, only to find that the front had gone utterly flat this morning. I was taking it over to my Dad's anyway, so we had a look and found the cheesy stock inner tube had ruptured on the inside, by the rim. After a visit to the bike shop, it's now had new inner tubes, bottle holders and bottles, a pump, and a little bag under the saddle to hold a spare inner tube, puncture repair kit and spanner.

The stereo finally came out of the dashboard in the Astra, but only after a LOT of swearing and levering with screwdrivers. I now regret my anger because the surrounding dash is rather marked and the clock/temperature indicator now only lights up occasionally. Oh well, will have another look when I've had time to calm down. It kept losing its settings after the ignition was turned off but then I remember that with Vauxhalls you have to swap the red and yellow wires.

The more I hear about Windows 8, the more it looks like Microsoft is getting ready to dump 30 years of experience and development to try and follow the Apple locked down approach with the new Metro interface. I've tried the consumer preview of 8 and while certain things are really good (new task manager), the schizoid interface that flips between a normal desktop and the Metro interface is really hard to use on a desktop or laptop. I think it'll be OK on a tablet, but tablets suck for anything other than casual use. Also I find it annoying that perfectly ordinary Windows software is now called 'Classic' as though it's already obsolete. I guess I'll have to stick with Windows 7 then. Apple has become beyond evil in my opinion, selling sealed and locked down disposable hardware that is impossible to repair. I used to like Linux, but it's horrible on the desktop. Great for servers though.

It's still been a warm day but now there's a breeze which helps. Off to Rob and Em's in a bit to watch the Eurovision and mock it royally, and consume snacks of course.

This brings back happy memories of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 on the PS2. I spent so much time on that game. I remember playing the first one on the PSone, and being amazed that I liked it. I wonder what the HD remake of the first game will be like. Apparently it will have updated graphics but the original code for the controls and movement - it could work.

A long and hot day

It was really warm today. The office was just about tolerable with a few fans going. We had ice cream at lunchtime as someone went out and got some as a treat for everyone, which was good.

While I was coming up the track, a disturbing noise came from the Astra dashboard and the air went colder. I think the aircon might have started working properly - if you turn the aircon on and off while the engine is idling, you can hear the revs change slightly. But when you switch the engine off, there is a disturbing sound like a drawn out last breath. I know aircon can affect fuel consumption but when the engine is a thrifty diesel to start with, I don't think it matters all that much.

Put a hard drive in the Studio 1735 and it's running an install of Ubuntu 10.04, which is before they ruined it utterly with that Unity nonsense. The hard drive caddy is missing so it's wedged in with bubblewrap for now. The machine does run well though, although the heat in the room led to both it and the Alienware M17x cycling their fans up and down in a somewhat annoying fashion. The Vaio UX needs surgery. I somehow managed to get the wifi antenna lead caught under the rear casing when I was putting the SSD in, so when it was screwed down it damaged the lead. I have spare laptop bits which include wifi antennas but not sure how much of a faff it's going to be to repair it. The wifi still works, but the range is now severely limited, so to get it online I had to use one of the other machines to create another wifi network for it to connect to.

In an attempt to improve my handwriting and make it less childlike I bought a fountain pen for the first time in years. It's nice to write with but not sure if it's having an effect yet. Will wait and see.

Watched The Thing tonight, the 2011 version. I'm a big fan of the original so I wasn't really quite sure what to expect. I quite enjoyed it in the end and I thought they did a fairly decent job with the effects. It was fairly blantant CGI but they made the effort to make it feel like the original. Probably a good thing that they managed to contain it in the end. If everyone in the world became a shapeshifting monster, it would mean the end of factory made clothing as everything would have to be bespoke tailoring.

Had an amazing dream just before I woke up this morning. It was basically Go Ape, with the harnesses and stuff, but it was being used to simulate Mario, so the gear let you do his leaps and jumps and crush enemies and (somehow) use your head to smash bricks open. It was really good fun and for a while after I woke up I kept having this nagging feeling I was supposed to be looking for stars.

Stoned Kebab Match

Not much to report except we had a very entertaining match at badminton. We had previously indulged in a BBQ at Rob and Em's so were full of burgers and kebabs, but this somehow led to a match which was pure comedy. We forgot the score at least twice had a couple of 'I AM STRONGER THAN YOU' rallies. The funniest bit was when I somehow managed to hit the shuttle straight down in front of me at incredible speed, losing the point. Rob then served to me, sarcastically saying 'Are you ready?', at which point I smashed it back at him causing him to recoil out the way. It was far funnier than I can express in words somehow, but we did name the match 'The Stoned Kebab Match', deciding that there were more than just herbs in the lamb and mint kebabs I had bought for the BBQ.

Had a meeting in Chester with an outside supplier about various Unix related stuff. The migrations I'm working on have suddenly got a lot more complicated due to big changes in how the storage will be handled, although it makes a lot of sense. I've got a lot to learn when it comes to SANs and storage technology, but like the backup system, it's not really something you can easily practice with at home.

It's still hot. The Astra has done nearly 448 miles since I filled it up with diesel and it still has over a quarter of a tank left. I really like the way it drives too. I've decided that if it breaks, I will fix it. Unless it REALLY breaks, in which case I'll get another one. Yes, I like it that much. Having had one of these and a Focus of the same age, I have to say I prefer the Astra.

Handheld fun

Work was OK today. The weather has again been amazing. After some experimentation I think the aircon in the Astra does work, just not all that well.

Have been experimenting with a Sony Vaio UX. It's one of the UMPCs that were briefly trendy a few years ago and was probably the best one of the lot. They have 1.3ghz Core Solo processors, and mine has 1gb RAM and came with a 60gb 1.8" SSD. I quickly replaced it with the 32gb SSD from the Vaio P that came back, and set it up with Windows 7. It's a surprisingly snappy little machine, with very good performance compared to the dreadful Atom in the Vaio P.

It's taken some time to get the devices set up and working fully, but I've mostly got there. The build quality and design really is top notch. I don't rate Sony laptops at all mostly, but the high-end and quirky stuff they do is usually pretty good. Given that the UX range cost something like £2000 when it was new, you'd expect it to be nicely built. Nothing depreciates like high-end unusual computers though, so you can get them for a tiny fraction of that now.

I still need to have another look at the Studio 1735, get a hard drive installed and tested, and regunk the heatsinks with a decent thermal paste. That can wait until I've sourced a hard drive caddy for it however.

It's good to be actually doing something again, even if it's not all that productive. Now, if only I can get some actual exercise going, that would be even better. Currently thinking about walking the dog before work, but not sure.

Going to give Skyrim back to Steve in work. I enjoyed what I saw of it, but after spending months with Mass Effect and other games on the Xbox, I think it's time I spent some time doing other things, even if it that is just faffing around with computers. I won't dismiss Skyrim completely, but it's not for me right now.

Was having a shave and had a slip, so the goatee is gone again. When this happens I realise I look a lot younger without it because there's now quite a lot of grey in it, but it makes shaving so much easier when it's there. Oh well.

Still haven't logged my caches from Saturday, must get to it.

Grangy

Work was much the same again, but made worse by I think hayfever. I woke up in the night with a clogged nose and spent much of the day sneezing, snotting and with itchy eyes. Hopefully it'll go away. It has been really hot today so perhaps it's just a sudden pollen rush.

The car had a bit of a temperature wobble last night so I checked the coolant this morning and it was low, so I topped it up again. Need to keep an eye on that. It was warm enough today for me to conclude that the aircon doesn't actually work unfortunately. Oh well. Started up the Prelude and took it down the track and back to make sure it was OK. It feels pretty strange after a week of the Astra though. Not sure what to do about getting rid of it - might just take it to the car auctions and be done with it.

The Studio 1735 arrived. Other than a seriously busted left hinge and a lack of hard drives, it seems to work quite happily. I've booted it up off an Ubuntu live CD and I'm actually tying this on it at the moment. The damage seems to be confined to the lid rather than the chassis so hopefully it should be easy enough to fix it up. It also has a nice design where the entire underside comes off and all the parts are easily accessible.

Supreme geekiness

Today was a good day. I was supposed to be meeting Steve and Rob P at the Alwen to go round it on my bike with them for their run, but I woke up far too late to even consider it. Also my only bike was my ancient mountan bike and I haven't had time to pump the tyres up or anything.

At lunchtime I picked up a new bike anyway, a Specialized Hardrock from a guy in work. It's a much newer one than the one I got for free a few months ago, much lighter and with disc brakes. Also because he's barely used it, it's in really good nick and everything works.

After that I headed down to hang out with Rob. First we tried out the starship simulator Artemis, using the demo. It said it supported two players, but we didn't realise we needed three machines, one to act as the server and viewscreen. Still, it gave us an idea of what it's like and with suitable equipment and people, it looks like a lot of fun. Then we had a retro fest by firing up Tony Hawk 3 on the Xbox, which neither of us had played for years. It was a really good laugh but took some getting used to again.

Then it was off to the Prosperity to meet up with Em and others who had been having a girly watch of the new Johnny Depp film. We all had banquets so it was a fat evening. Combined with the Italian on Friday, it's been a very fat an expensive weekend!

Work tomorrow.

Assault on the Wirral

So today was the Assault on the Wirral, the epic geocaching trip that Andrea in work had been planning for so long. I picked up Steve who hadn't got any caches yet, and we set off her her Mum in tow. It didn't start out too well, we couldn't find some, and we tried to do a multicache which was a dismal failure. It was through lots of wet grass so we got wet feet almost instantly, and I dropped her beloved GPS while climbing over a stile and didn't realise for ages, but fortunately we found it quite easily.

But once we started heading up the Wirral, the caches came thick and fast, and we ended up with quite a lot. There's some interesting and beautiful places on the Wirral, and we were intrigued by the Wirral Way, an old railway that's been converted to a cycle track. We also had really really good ice cream, and I had chocolate lime flavour, something I've never seem before but was delicious. Towards the end of the day we got to Wallasley and Birkenhead, which was somewhat of a shock, literally five minutes after nice country lanes it suddenly felt unsafe to leave your doors unlocked.

Still, it was a fantastic day. Steve and I got 41 in total, so that was ace, while Andrea and her Mum got 36 as they had done some of them already.

Stinky cheese

An extraordinarily tedious day in work, even though it wasn't much different. It just seemed to drag on, and on, and on. Oh well.

Birthday meal at local Italian place tonight, really good food as always. I had calamari and a gorgonzola pizza, which was delicious but enormous. Good fun. Rob and Em got me some Bacon Jam, which is interesting, can't wait to see what that is like.

The Astra is going well still. I'm rather impressed at how good it feels to drive after nearly a quarter of a million miles. I haven't found anything that doesn't work yet, and I think even the air con works. Not bad at all. So far I've done 185 miles in it since I filled it up a week ago and it's still got over three quarters of a tank left. It seems to be a more honest fuel gauge than the Prelude, which pretended everything was fine for ages and then suddenly plummeted.

Tomorrow is a giant geocaching trip on the Wirral, then I think I might have somehow been persuaded to ride around the Alwen with Rob P and Steve. Not sure about that one yet however.

The behemoth gets an excursion

Average day in work. Not much to report except continuing frustration with undocumented Unix systems and being expected to know all the ins and outs of the SAN which I've had no training on, or even have a login for. Also how am I supposed to know if 15k SAS disks will perform as well as 15k fibre disks, or even 15k SCSI disks attached directly to the machine?

Badminton evening was good. Took our laser printer and the M17x down to Rob and Em's to print out labels designed by Wes for Rob's homebrew. It worked out rather well in fact, and the labels look great on the bottles. The labels were for inkjet but we tried a sheet through the laser, at full alert, and they worked OK. It's the first time the M17x has had an excursion since I got it, as it's not the most portable machine in the world.

Badminton itself was OK but we had some curious games where we fluctuated wildly between hitting some amazing shots and rallies and fumbling around like we'd never tried to hit a shuttle before. It was weird. Good fun and tiring though.

It was an odd day with doors today. Twice I went to open a door just as someone else did, and then I opened the door of the computer room rather forcefully into a consultant who was standing just inside it talking on his mobile.

Still feeling a bit down. Every now and again it hits me that nearly everyone I know of my age is basically settled and doing the whole grown-up thing, but somewhere along the line it all went wrong for me and I don't have any clue what to do about it. Difficult not to get a bit resentful sometimes but it's my own fault.

Fundle

An average day in work. Still working on tape movement. Not sure if getting anywhere.

Found that the Astra will take a bike with the seats down and the front wheel off, which is good news. The Puch is going to Nigel in work as it's too big for me and he wants a retro project. Still stuck with the CD player at the moment which I wouldn't mind, but it seems reluctant to eject the CD I put it in it the other day, and I'm bored of the CD already.

Fired up the Xbox this evening but everything I put in I couldn't be arsed with. I did however boot up ME3 and delete my most recent playthroughs. Put in Skyrim, but I just went 'meh' and turned it off again, wasn't in the mood. I really hate the new dashboard. I resent that of the five options on each of the screens, three are set aside for advertising, even the large one in the middle. The options that are directly relevant to me are left to one side. Given that Xbox Live isn't free, I think it's quite a cheek to have adverts on there at all. Apparently it's possible to block them using router settings but that's not the point. It makes me miss the original dashboard with the flippy tabs that felt so much faster.

After dismantling a laptop in work to replace the serial port, twice as we bent a pin, I realised it's been too long since I had a proper project laptop. So I've picked up a Dell Studio 1735 with a damaged lid. Should be interesting to get it up and running again.

Minecraft is out on the Xbox. I've been aware of it for some time and saw the full scale Enterprise D that someone made in it. It was quite impressive as it made you realise the true scale of the ship. Otherwise, I don't quite get the appeal of it. I did try the Android version on my phone but it just didn't grab me.

Although this is very funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs

Weekend of variety

Friday was another half day in work. My Dad and I put some fuel in the Astra and I brought it home. It cost £70 to fill the tank, which was pretty much empty, but hopefully that will last a long while.

Saturday was a really good day. It was the Go Ape experience with a load of work colleagues and Rob. I hadn't had time to read up on it so had no idea what to expect, but it was really good fun. After a little while, being 30 feet in the air while climbing over various obstacles becomes second nature, although it was very testing of body strength. It came as something of a shock when I had to climb up a net and found it very hard because my arms were crying mercy.

After that we had lunch (very nice burgers!) and headed out onto the mountain bike trail with hired bikes. Again I had never really ridden a proper mountain bike trail, but it was amazing fun. It was only the basic track, but it still had banked curves and little jumps and things. The bike had front suspension and hydraulic disks, and was quite a revelation to ride - fantastic. The others went round again but Em and I admitted defeat due to tiredness and had some cake in the sunshine.

Sunday was spent largely lying around in an aching heap, but in the evening it was off to Llandudno with Andy and Maz to see the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. I was inititally a bit dubious if it would be my thing, but I decided to go. We had Pizza Hut first, which was surprisingly good and probably one of the best meals I've had from there, and then headed into the place. I've never actually seen any classical music live, and I was quite blown away by it. Somehow it's much better live, with all the instruments right there. It was really good, definitely would do that again.

Yesterday and today have been fairly OK with work and various things. The Astra went in for a service today and had some extra work done as it had a broken rear spring, knackered rear brake pads and a faulty handbrake cable. But it was all sorted and it's had a thorough service too, so it should be good to go. The guy at the garage was impressed at the condition of it given the high mileage.

No D&D this evening at the last minute due to an unexpected meeting for James. I was hoping we'd do something else instead but nothing was forthcoming so I watched some more of the new Walking Dead season 2 episodes. Only one episode left now, but so far it's been quite decent.

The Prelude auction ended on Saturday with no bids, annoyingly, so I relisted it. This time I had a question from a guy who seemed quite interested in it, so that's a good sign. So long as he doesn't want me to take the side skirts off and post them to Lithuania, that's fine by me.

Having one of those weeks where I consider my age and wonder if I have actually achieved anything. Bit sad to realise that I'm the only loser still stuck at home and single, which is becoming increasingly lonely as time goes by. I can't see it changing either, which is sometimes too depressing for words.

34

It's been a funny old week. Sunday was another day at my Dad's so that was good. Monday was spent finishing off Battlestar Galactica, so that was fun.

The rest of the week has been a bit meh, trying to work out what to do about cars. The auction on Tuesday was a bit of a bust. We saw some nice cars go through, including a nice diesel Focus estate, and a Bora TDi for reasonable money. We had our eyes on another diesel Focus estate of the same age as the first one, but then they changed the auctioneer for some twat who kept  making up bids to drive the price up of them all. So we left.

Anyway, today I bought a 2000 Vauxhall Astra 1.7 DTi off a guy in Llysfaen. A thoroughly sensible car, which cost only £600 because it has 245,000 miles. Yes, that's a lot, but it's had a lot of recent parts including a cambelt, alternator and four new tyres, and it drives like it's done a fraction of the mileage. Also because it was so much less than my budget of £1000, that's £400 I can put aside to sort out anything it needs. I was sure to drive it up and down steep hills on the test drive to make sure it pulled well and the clutch was OK and drove it over a thoroughly rough road to make sure the suspension was OK. It needs the handbrake adjusting as it's a bit hopeless and the airbag light is on, and the seller said it's probably due for an oil change. Minor things though and worth doing.

It was nice to phone up the insurance and get a £277 refund and see my monthly payments return to normal. Somewhat annoyingly, because the Astra was registered before March 2001, it comes under the old tax classes, so £116 for six months and £220 for a year, whereas the exact same model after March 2001 is half that. Oh well.

The Prelude has 7 people watching on Ebay which is hopeful, although I was annoyed to find it's pristine beauty spoiled this morning by a giant bird shit all down the side. Yesterday I took all my stuff out of it and swapped out my stereo for a spare JVC one I had lying around.

Other than that my birthday was nice, work was OK this morning with a rather amazing coffee cake made by Em, and some other cakes I took in.

Fatty fatty

Thursday was an average day in work, and badminton in the evening. It was delicious pork casserole and bread, which was great. Also got to see Rob and Em's remodelled living room. With the newly varnished floor and rearranged furniture, it's difficult to tell it's the same room, amazing. Getting rid of the retro 70's carpet has made such a difference. Also Steve has had an offer accepted on a house, which looks great.

Friday was another meh day in work and had a quiet evening. Annoyingly the Prelude developed a ticking sound in the engine which doesn't seem to affect it much except make the exhaust note rougher. Regardless, I'm not spending any money on it. Today, my Dad and I washed and polished it before taking pictures and listing it on Ebay. Then, on Tuesday, it'll be time to hit the car auction but I'm letting Rob, Em, Rob P and Steve pick the car for me. I've done spectactularly badly at choosing cars recently so I'm leaving it entirely in their hands - whatever they think suits me best for £1000. I won't lie - I absolutely adore the Prelude, but I now have to own up and admit it was one of my frequent jaunts into automotive insanity. I did hope it would last until next payday though.

My cousin Pauline was down today so we hung out while we weren't polishing the car and then went to the Prosperity Chinese. Pauline likes it a lot because they cater very well to vegetarians, and have a whole page of specific dishes. We had a really good meal so I now feel very fat indeed. The chocolate fudge cake was delicious but perhaps a mistake.

I have been really shit with exercise and food recently, and I'm really starting to feel it. But I just can't get motivated to get to the gym or anything. I think I'm going to cancel the gym membership and try to find some other way of exercising.

Got the 2nd part of The Walking Dead season 2 to watch, and also the rest of Battlestar Galactica, and then Skyrim. Not sure what I want to watch/play first. Probably BSG. I'm still not sure about Skyrim. I think it looks like a great game but I'm not sure if I want to start investing that much time into a new game when I should be trying to get some exercise.

So...Skyrim

Work was OK, yet more data shuffling and another guilty lunch from a place in town that simply kicks arse. It's run by a scarily energetic woman who seemingly conjures up random but incredibly tasty menus from nowhere. The worst is her milkshakes which are made with double cream, and the giant monster toffee cake. Delicious but so, so wrong.

I fired up Skyrim this evening. I'm not sure what to think yet. I'm quite impressed at the character creation though, with the variety of races. I ended up being a human, but one that is good at magic, since I always tend to go for that kind of thing. After the intro bit, it basically just goes, here's the world, explore. I chose a random side mission and just followed the indicator in the most direct way possible, perhaps not the best way though since there were a lot of hills and wolves that didn't like me. Also everyone I meet says I look awful and according to the stats I've got a disease but so far I haven't found a way to look at myself yet so I'm not sure what they mean. Oh well. After a lot of traipsing through snow I made it to a college where I can apparently learn magic. Yay. We'll see. I've heard the game is stupidly big so I don't know, it might be too big.

The world is pretty amazing though. Several times on my travels I simply stopped and looked around as some of the scenery is absolutely incredible. Also the lack of loading screens or anything like that really makes it feel like a gigantic world.

Watched the first episode of the second half off Walking Dead season 2. Interesting.

Argh

Not a particularly good day at work. Someone managed to accidentally backup an extra 800gb of data overnight, so it threw off all the processes and led to something of a nightmare. It wouldn't have been an issue except the 800gb was not actual data, it was just crap to take up space.

D&D was great fun today, a riverside encounter which involved much strategy and problems with horeses, which was finished by me riding my horse up a vertical cliff face to the astonishment of the poor guy I then decimated with one of my most powerful attacks. It was really good fun all round though and this time we were really open to trying new things - like before an attack, offering the enemy a chance to surrender, etc. It didn't work, but hey, we tried.

Downloaded the new Eisbrecher album yesterday, and picked up the E Nomine best of as well. Eisbrecher were as good as always, while E Nomine is something new. Basically it's a mix of orchestral chanting type stuff overlaid onto techno, with sometimes a hint of metal. In German. It's pretty weird stuff but very good.

Not much else to report really, it's been a quiet couple of days.

Thought I was coming down with something today but it came and went. I think initially it was because someone cleaned a whiteboard with horrible stuff that seemed to trigger a reaction, but also my wisdom teeth are playing up so I think that's affecting my ears. Bah. I don't feel too bad otherwise.

I've been lent Skyrim, which should be interesting as I've heard a lot of good stuff but ummed and aaahed about it rather a lot. So it'll be fun to try it out anyway.

In a moment of weirdness I picked up a mandolin, this time an electric one that's like a mini Telecaster. It looks and sounds OK but I think it is jinxed. My Mum managed to set the parcel on fire and only just rescue it in time so it stinks of burning and when I was setting it up, one of the strings snapped so I've already had to order a new set. Bah.

Breakthrough

Thursday was a good day due to a breakthrough with the backup system. I think now we know what's been going on and how to fix it, so that was good.

Friday night was meeting up with loads of people from work and Rob and Em for Avengers Assemble. We went to Cheshire Oaks and were all able to get food in Frankie and Benny's which was made interesting by all the staff wearing superhero costumes, some rather tight-fitting. The movie was absolutely aweome - despite seeing quite a few of the previous ones, I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but it was really good. The trip home was made eventful by being followed by a police car and eventually stopped. I think they were just bored and the Prelude was probably tempting - I think they were hoping for a drunk boy racer.

Today has been a lazy fat day. I watched some more BSG and made the discovery that I only have half the fourth season, bah. Still fun though. Then I did some more on Dragon Age. Lots more battles and fights and a rather curious plan that involved shagging one of the player's companions for some complicated and possibly dubious reason. Then the ultimate boss fight which has proven hard and I've had to ragequit several times to protect my controller. All of this was assisted by snacks which is why today has been fat.

RAAAAARGH

Worse day in work.

Went to car auction tonight with Rob, Steve, and Rob P from badminton. Not to buy but to see how it worked. Some real bargains there, with some things being remarkably cheap. A 2004 Mazda6 diesel went for not much over £800 and a 2001 Mondeo V6 Ghia X went for just £350. Really itneresting to see how it all worked and what was going through.

Rob P pointed out that finding something cheap, good and economical is probably going to be hard, so I'm keeping an open mind, especially since a couple of Rav4 and similar things went through for reasonable money, which would probably be more suitable. From what he said, even his 2002 BMW 320i (that was £1500 from the auction) is managing better fuel economy than the Prelude, so who knows.

Not much else to report really.

Rargh

Bad day in work.

Came home in no mood to do anything, so I started watching Battlestar Galactica season 4 which I've had for AGES. Before I knew it, I'd watched four episodes.

Landsmeet

A decent day despite crazy unpredictable weather ranging from warm sunshine to outright hailstorms.

I still haven't found my copy of Robots and Empire so I started reading It again. Weird book and long. After a lazy morning I headed down to Rob and Em's with lunch and snacks. I was expecting them to be in the midst of sanding the floor but due to it being a very late one last night Rob in particular was a little worse for wear. Still, a sandwich and some jaffa cakes perked him up and we hung out for a bit which was nice.

After that I came home and attempted to recreate a German style potato salad I had in Berlin while we were at the Olympic Stadium. It's not potato salad as we have it, as it is warm with different stuff in it and was really tasty. I used a recipe I found online and it came out pretty close although a bit stodgier. There was rather a lot of it though so I've put some aside for lunch in work.

Tried to reimage the M17x with mirrrored disks instead of the striped disks it has now but ran into problems since Windows backup doesn't like restoring to a smaller partition. There's a way around it but I got bored and put it back how it was for now. I was curious to see if there as any performance difference. Not that I have any complaints when it comes to the performance of the machine, except it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to come out of hibernation. I wish SSDs would drop in price - I'd put them in all my machines if I could.

Played some more Dragon Age and reached the Landsmeet which seems to be the penultimate bit before the final battle, which was interesting and fun in the way it played out. In a way I wish Mass Effect, in particular 3, had been more like Dragon Age, which seems to be a much more complicated game than ME did. It's been over a year since I started playing it, so it really does feel like an epic adventure is finally drawing to a close. I keep thinking back over the game and there's definitely been a lot of interesting stuff in it and different places to explore. So far I've logged 40 hours or so on it - about the same as my first ME playthrough, but that I did in four days. Despite preferring sci-fi settings over fantasy, I've really enjoyed Dragon Age.

Back to work tomorrow. I have a feeling it's going to be an interesting day.

Randomness

Went to my Dad's this morning, which was good. Again didn't do much except hang out and chill. We did however scour Ebay and other places for used cars since we are in agreement that no matter how nice the Prelude is, and it is, it is just not suitable for me. It's too thirsty, too low, and you can't get a bike in it. Nothing really came up except a Honda HR-V which would be suitable for the track but probably thirsty as it's a 1.6 litre petrol, or a Civic estate, again thirsty as it's a 1.6. It's frustrating because I'm very impressed with the Prelude build quality but Honda only recently started doing diesels. Oh well.

Also my Dad asked me to be the executor on his will along with my cousin. He was inspired to do this after his sister-in-law died unexpectedly recently, which was something of a shock to everyone. It was a slightly sobering moment really.

This evening it was the badminton club meal which I was invited to although I haven't been for a couple of years. It was Indian, and I had something new, a king prawn bhussi, which was really delicious. I came home a bit early though since I've been a bit tired and under the weather. Although I felt much better once I'd eaten. I know my diet is shit but I think it could be causing me more problems than I realise.

Rob from badminton heard about my car woes and suggested hitting the auctions. Before  I quite realised it, it was all arranged that him, me, Rob and and Steve are going to the auctions on Tuesday evening to take a look. Given that I seem to make dreadful choices in cars when left to my own devices, it'll be good to have more people to advise me. Also, I could take the Prelude there to be sold off.

Weirdness

It's been a fairly curious week really. Work has been a nightmare after the initial good start on Monday. The backup system became more and more truculent and needs more work. I'm not normally one for listening to music in work but I found a spare pair of headphones and have been listening to music to try and help me concentrate. Oddly, goa trance type stuff seems to be working well at the moment, like this or this.

Yesterday was a day out of work to go an event hosted by an external company who provides support to the backup system. Except we don't like them. It was in the Manchester Hilton hotel, in something called Cloud 23, which had awesome views over the city. Also the scariest urinal ever since the toilet had a floor to ceiling window right next to it. The presentation was surprisingly amateurish and not really very promising. However it was interesting meeting the technician I've been dealing with for a year face to face. I'd always imagined him being my age, but he turned out to be rather older and rather mad professorish, which was interesting.

Otherwise I've been watching South Park on DVD and playing Dragon Age. It annoyed me yesterday with a stupid protect someone mission, some guy who decides to accompany you into a haunted orphanage, even though he has damaged eyes and can barely see. Otherwise though I've been quite enjoying it. It's got plenty of varied stuff going on.

The car had the suspension sorted out on Wednesday, which is good.

Eaten like shit this week, the only good thing is that I didn't have any full fat Coke.