Bad day helped by ludicrous burger

Not a great day in work. Forced to move desks pointlessly. All I'm going to say is there's lies, damn lies and statistics. Fuck's sake it's hard sometimes. Also root access to Unix servers tends to be restricted to a limited group of people for a fucking reason.

Went to Wetherspoons for lunch with a colleague. I'd intended to get a waffle, but we both ended up getting large burgers. Mine consisted of lower bun, cheese, bacon, burger, burger, fried egg, onion rings, upper bun. Plus a few more onion rings and chips. It was good but not really good for afternoon productivity due to being bloated and sleepy. Got to stop doing things like that, I've been eating far too much recently.

Came home in a fairly crappy mood, but sat down and watched the DVD of Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, which I haven't seen in years. It cheered me right up, absolute classic comedy. I'd forgotten about how much John Cleese swears in the Albatross bit - 'Course you don't get fucking wafers with it you cunt!' Also reminded me of that thing that is coming out round about now, the animated version of Graham Chapman's autobiography, which should be quite interesting as the book is completely bonkers. Graham Chapman is definitely my favourite Python, for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately I missed the radio show that Rob was on tonight, since I completely forgot about it. Balls. Looks like it'll be put on the website at some point though, so that's good.

Tired but edgy now, like I might not sleep when I go to bed. Hate that feeling because it usually ends up true. Argh.

Fat (again)

Thursday badminton was OK, had some good games, including a late one with just Rob, Em and Steve. This was unexpectedly fun as we could swear to our hearts content.

Friday was Andrea in work's Halloween party. I'd been persuaded to go as Mario with Robert, who was going as Luigi. The costumes were actually pretty good and it was a great evening. Really good fun.

Saturday was a bike ride with Rob from St Asaph to Prestatyn. It was a bright day but cold and windy. Still, it was fun and we weren't the only nutters out on bikes. We met an old couple on a tandem and several guys on expensive carbon bikes and lycra. There was also a short but very steep hill towards the end of the ride which I managed to get up without stopping to my own and Rob's astonishment. The only thing that went wrong was me wrecking the Presta valve on Rob's back wheel with an incorrectly set up pump so we had to change the inner tube.

In the evening it was time to meet up for an Indian for Rob P's birthday, which was really good. There was a curious delay before the main course, but the food was spectacular. I was boring and went for a butter chicken, but it was absolutely delicious.

Sunday was a quiet day except for a trip to set up the laptop I'd got for Vicky. It took a little while since her music and photos were on an iMac which was a right faff since Mac OS X would't write to my NTFS formatted external hard drive and copying over wireless would have taken forever. In the end I had to reformat the drive and do it that way.

Sometimes I hate my fucking life, today is not a good day and I don't see the week getting any better. to be honest and it becomes quite difficult to maintain the facade of cheerfulness and professionalism. Fortunately though I have booked a trip to Berlin next week to see my brother, so that will hopefully lift my spirits.

Absolute total cobblers

Not much to report today except spending much of the day in a bleh mood.

The Galaxy Note has been treated to a silicone case and a 32gb memory card, because both were startlingly cheap. I don't normally like cases but since the Note is big and a bit slippery I thought one would be an idea. It does make the thing a little bigger but grippier, and also means the camera lense isn't flush with the case.

The Astra went in today for an oil change and to get the creaking suspension and handbrake checked out. They said the suspension bushes seem to be rubbing but there isn't anything actually amiss. The handbrake has been adjusted and cleaned so it hopefully won't stick on when it gets cold like my old Focus used to, which was infuriating. I realised on the way home that I miscalculated so it had the oil change 500 miles early but it can't hurt. 10w40 semi-synthetic.

Against everything I've ever been told, I watched Red Dwarf Back to Earth. What a total load of cobblers. I honestly went into it thinking that after all the anti-hype it might have at least some OK moments but no. The whole concept was utterly ridiculous and it just wasn't funny in the slightest. The only redeeming thing was the nice CGI shots that showed the scale of Red Dwarf itself, but even that isn't really in keeping with the show.

Fortunately the two episodes I've seen of Red Dwarf X are infinitely better. Looking forward to when the DVD is available.

I think I like Skrillex's music, which bothers me. I somehow feel at a fundamental level that it's too young for me.

Headspace not quite right at the moment.

Diagrams

A fairly meh day in work. I was working on updating some documentation and had to use Office to create some new diagrams and things. For the first time I appreciated what the new interface that 2007 introduced is trying to do, and it does kind of make sense.

After work it was the final D&D session with James before he moves home to Boston in the USA and then eventually to his new job in Malaysia. We didn't actually play D&D though since his house was upside down so we played Super Munchkin. For such a simple concept it is surprisingly complex and can be almost Mario Kart like in the ability to completely fuck over other players. James also asked us if we wanted anything from the stuff he had left over, so we all took a couple of trophies, in my case a Star Trek mug and a rather beautiful crystal candle holder.

After using the Galaxy Note for a few days, I am getting used to it. The size is fine when it's in my pocket but it can be a bit of a problem when using it in one hand. I've ordered a silicone case for it so hopefully that will make it grippier, which will help.

Not much else to report really. I've booked the Astra in on Wednesday to have the oil changed and the handbrake adjusted and greased up for the winter so it doesn't seize on. Also the suspension creaks loudly when going over speedbumps. Another issue is that when first started from cold it won't rev above 2000rpm without misfires, which a quick Google indicates might be the injectors. But that goes away as soon as it starts to warm up and isn't a major problem at the moment, so I'm going to leave that.

Splash bars

Ridiculously nice weather today and I was invited on a bike ride by Andy and Maz, unfortunately I'd already arranged to head over to my Dad's to do some work on the road bike.

We put some new tape on the handlebars since the original black tape was worn out. It went on OK and fortunately the yellow and black splash pattern quite suits the bike although the yellow isn't quite the same as the paint on on the bike. The problematic rear dearailleur was sorted out so it now selects all gear and the rear tyre was replaced with a spare one that my Dad had lying around. I hadn't realised how worn the rear tyre was. The new one is slightly larger but not enough to matter. We managed to clean up the chain too, but it looks like the sprockets on the front and rear are pretty worn so they'll need replacing at some point. But that can be a winter project since it's not that bad yet.

Otherwise it's been a fairly dull day. I got a Chinese on the way home and unexpectedly encountered the CEO from work who surprised me by saying hello and then sitting opposite me in an awkward silence until he got his food. I didn't think he had any idea who I was.

Expensive coaster

Yesterday was OK but fat. We had a bacon breakfast with the somewhat strange revelation that you could have the bacon butties in a box without the bread. So I had bacon, egg and mushrooms in a box with BBQ sauce, and it was delicious. Then we went to the same place for lunch.

Badminton in the evening was OK. I had a couple of good games but was still not quite up to running around properly although I did get some decent shots in. Still getting used to the raquet with the new strings. It even sounds different. It was absolutely heaving with people - probably the busiest I've ever seen it, which is good as it meant lots of variety and will keep the club going.

Today it was off to see the Indiana Jones trilogy on the recently released bluray edition. It was really good,we watched the first three films quite happily but the Crystal Skull disk was relegated to use as a coaster. There was a crazy amount of food as per usual and it was a fantastic day.

Off to my Dad's tomorrow with the road bike to put new handlebar tape on it and hopefully replace the chain too.

Kies = poo

It was a day off today, not really as a holiday but because my Mum had a hospital appointment. I took the morning to go and see my sister, which was nice but also because the trackpad on her laptop had stopped working. I couldn't figure out why and despite me telling her to use Firefox with Adblock, it had spyware on it and toolbars and crap, so I brought it home with me to sort it out.

I finally got a new phone. I had intended to get a Galaxy S2 as the natural progression from the Galaxy S, but discovered that the Galaxy Note was about the same price. It's rather big with a 5.3" screen but it is a much higher resolution. So I've ended up with one of those. It arrived today but was on the old Gingerbread version so there was no point setting it up until it was on Ice Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately it didn't want to update over the air so I had to use the Samsung Kies application to do it. It did NOT want to cooperate on my Windows 7 machine and was reluctant to do it even on the old Precision M90 with XP. Eventually I just left it to do it's thing while I was out at badminton and when I came home it had finally worked. They are supposed to be releasing Jelly Bean for it at some point so I'll have to go through it all again at some point, arse.

It remains to be seen if the Note will be as good as the Galaxy S was. The size is...well, yes, a concern. It's big. I have a feeling that I'll be mocked when I use it, much like I was when I had the old Nokia N-gage. Despite the size, it feels OK to use and the screen is downright beautiful. The Galaxy S has been running various ROMs with normal Android since I had it so it's odd to see the Samsung Touchwiz interface again. The Note doesn't seem to have quite the same level of support in custom ROMs so I'll probably just stick with that for the time being.

My badminton racquet has returned with a new handle and strings. The handle is rather weird as the new tape is almost sticky and it feels different. The new strings are amazingly tight which meant it was difficult to control my shots and also since I've not exercised in a while after I was ill it wasn't a particularly good evening for me. Also the new strings stink, which is odd.

Friday tomorrow, thank goodness.

Slow week then noise

It's been a fairly uneventful week. Work has been OK. Today I helped deal with a hapless Latitude E5410 that had been subjected to an entire mug of tea emptied into it. It was thoroughly soaked inside, right through to the underside cover. We took it apart, cleaned it out as best we could and pointed a heater at it for an hour or so and somewhat amazingly it booted up quite happily except the trackpad doesn't work and the keyboard is a little sticky.

Tonight went with the gang to see the Mugenkyo Taiko drummers in Wrexham, which was a performance of Japanese drumming. It was really good, and very loud, and it was interesting how they combined martial arts and drumming. The first half was kind of serious but they really lightened up in the second half. Very good fun to watch. It made me think of the Djembe drumming workshops that an old friend of mine started up briefly and how much fun they were.

Really tired now, it's been a long day and I was woken up at 4am by monsoon rain and then found it really hard to get back to sleep again.

The Aztecs built Notre Dame in Birmingham

It's been a good weekend. Yesterday was Andy's birthday meal which was at Romeo's in Llandudno. I think I'd been there a long time ago but it's a very good Italian restaurant. There quite quite a few of us there and we all had an awesome time and the food was great.

I gave Civilisation V a go when I wasn't well the other week and it was too much for my ill brain to cope with, especially since it has the least helpful tutorials I've seen. Today was good though, had a nice long game with some random elements introduced. I ended up playing as the Aztecs and named all their cities after English ones, and then it came to the time when you could add wonders to the cities, so I ended up with the curious situation of the Aztecs building Notre Dame in Birmingham. Having never played Civilisation before it took some time to adapt to it but I think it's really good fun.

Also carried on with Halo ODST with Rob on Live this morning. It's a bit repetitive and I'm not very clear on what's actually going on half the time but it's good fun. Same old Halo really, just in a city.

The Galaxy S has been reflashed again. I decided I wasn't hugely keen on the version of Darky's ROM on it so I've switched it to the stable release of Cyanogenmod 9, which Darky is based on. So far it seems pretty good - it feels smoother and faster anyway. I'm at the point where I'm tempted to pick up a Galaxy S2 since they have come down a lot in price and I coild probably still get a decent amount for the Galaxy S, despite it's rather worn appearance. An interesting option is the Galaxy Note but it woudl just be too big I think, although I do like the idea of the stylus. I'd still love one with a physical QWERTY but there aren't that many options, and the Android phones that do have them tend to be low-end and a bit cheesy.

WARRRGH

Last night was badminton. It wasn't too bad but I really started to cough and suffer towards the end. Still, it was great to hang out at Steve's and play with Binx who is becoming very brave and sociable. She's such a dainty little cat though.

Today in work was bad this morning - I just felt awful, my ears ached and I felt tired and unable to focus. It was really bad. I think something nutritional was out of kilter becuase I was drawn to the vending machine and had something like six packets of crisps after which I started to feel more normal. I really wasn't up to badminton this evening.

I experimented with pizza making earlier in the week. First was a fairly ordinary cheese and pepperoni one that came out nicely, but then I tried something a bit different. I made another one with tomato puree, sweetcorn, crumbled blue cheese, mozarrella and pepperoni. It was bloody delicious, and instead of dominating the flavour the blue cheese was a subtle background taste. Really nice.

The road bike is going to be treated to some new black and yellow handlebar tape to match the paint and I think it needs a new chain as the one on it seems rather floppy. I think the previous owner did rather a a lot of miles on it though. I think the cogs might be worn too, not sure really.

Lance Armstrong is pretty much confirmed to be a doping cheat. I read the report about it all that was released and it's hard to deny it any more. I was kind of hoping it wasn't true despite reports that he was a bit of a twat anyway but oh well. Let's hope this year marks the start of a clean TDF so they can restore the image of cycling.

I just watched Prometheus. It was beautifully made but I think pretty much all of the crew needed a damn good slap for being complete and utter morons. Michael Fassbender was good as usual though.

Filthy dirty

Yesterday and today were unremarkable. Had to go into work really early today to reconfigure and test some services on one of the Unix boxes, since I'd have to restart them and kick everyone off. Fortunately it worked fine after a bit of fiddling about.

Still coughing well, had a gigantic coughing fit just before I went to work, not good.

Watched a movie that Dave in work lent me, called The Raid. It's set in Jarkarta and is subtitled, and is pretty much unceasingly and loudly violent. But oddly watchable in a disengaged brain kind of way.

Also cleaned up the bikes, which I've been meaning to do for a while. The road bike wasn't too bad but the salt on the coastal trip has made the chain go rusty. I cleaned it up a bit and oiled it. Closer examination showed there's quite a lot of wear to the chain and front and rear cogs, so it might be time to replace them. I've also ordered some new handlebar tape for it, since the stuff on it is very worn. The mountain bike was absolutely filthy and horrible, covered in grainy nasty mud that was a complete sod to clean off. It took some time.

Been eating too much, feel really crappy about it now. I thought I was doing OK but not this week. Bah.

Cough

The weekend was OK. The badminton club meal was on Saturday and was decent enough, although the Indian didn't seem to be able to cope with a group of 20 or so, unusually. Food was OK though.

Went for a bike ride around the Brenig on Sunday with a guy I work with and someone that used to work with us. It went OK but two of us took the off-road route that I didn't know existed and ended up getting very tired and muddy. I felt quite crappy for the rest of the day.

Tired today and still coughing rather. Work was frustrating due to issues with Samba on one of the AIX boxes, and I despise Samba utterly.

Not much to report otherwise. I sometimes think I miss the old days of computing. I look back at something like the Psion Organiser II and think it was amazing what people managed to do with an 8-bit 0.3mhz CPU, 64k of RAM and a 4x20 character display. It seems odd that such a humble machine could be perceived as more powerful than a modern smartphone because you can pick it up and program it directly.

About to re-read the Hobbit since people were talking about it in work today and I haven't read it in years.

Better

Spent much of last night coughing instead of sleeping, and it didn't stop in the morning so I decided to err on the side of caution and stay away from work again, as I was also completely shattered. The coughing has got less over the day though and I finally feel more human, so I'm sure I'll be in work tomorrow.

Not much to report due to being ill. I did finally however manage to identify a remix of a Fluke song called Bullet. I'd heard it on a compilation CD decades ago and loved it but couldn't find out which one of the many remixes it is. The original song is good but I love the remix. Anyway it's this one, although the version on the CD was much shorter.

Still not well

Not been well today at all. Spent pretty much the whole day shivering and sweating in my bed, watching vintage Top Gear on my laptop and random YouTube videos.

Also randomly used the free car check websites to see if there were any details on my old cars. The Prelude has been taxed for a whole year so hopefully is in the hands of someone who can give it the attention it needed. The Focus, somewhat astonishingly, is also taxed but now listed as white. Perhaps someone removed my dreadful black paintjob and did it right, who knows? Sadly the old Vectra hasn't been taxed in over two years. My old Cinquecento that I sold in 2003 hasn't been taxed for four years, shame. That was a fun little thing.

The guilt-free computer parts were installed on Saturday. The M17x is quite happily running with 16gb RAM and has a test virtual machine with 8gb assigned memory running quite nicely. The M15x CPU upgrade was a bit more involved since some of the casing had to come off to get the heatsink out, but otherwise that one's working fine too. The i7 I put into it is actually slower than the i3 in terms of clock speed but I think the extra physical cores and turbo-boost will help. Not sure really.

Ill

Friday was a long dull day in work. Not sure why.

Went on bike ride with Andy and Maz yesterday. We went from St Asaph to Prestatyn and back, which was a good long ride. There was a coastal wind which made things rather hard in some places and easier in others. We also took great delight in cycling past the epic tailbacks caused by the roadworks by Rhuddlan.

Not well today at all. I felt something wasn't right yesterday but today I feel properly bunged up and achy, more like flu than a cold. Spent the day in bed with laptop watching the rest of Firefly, which I really liked. Just need to watch Serenity now. Also caught up with Doctor Who. Quite liked the last couple of episodes with a fair few twists and turns in there.

Functional

It was a curious day in work, slow, dull and it made me want to listen to Limp Bizkit. I have no idea why since I've not listened to them since that curious period about ten years ago when I was obsessed with them, Korn and Linkin Park. The frustrating thing about Limp Bizkit is that behind the horrible vocals and childish lyrics is some half decent music. I keep meaning to check out the stuff that Wes Borland did when he left. I have to admit a guilty liking of the song 'Hot Dog' because I like the guitar in it and the line 'If I say fuck two more times that's 46 fucks in this fucked up rhyme.' because it's true.

Badminton tonight was OK, managed a couple of reasonable games though I had to spare my right leg a bit. Also before we got to meet Steve's new cat Binx, who is a lovely little cat, all different colours and with the most amazing bluey-green eyes.

The bits for the computers have arrived, funded by the sale of the 3DS and Virtual Boy. The M17x is having an upgrade to 16gb RAM, and the M15x is going to get the 8gb RAM from the M17x and a quad-core CPU. The reason being is that I want to run virtual machines on them. The only other thing I'd like is an SSD for the M11x since it's getting moved around a lot more recently.

Still not much to report

Not much to report except had a minor strop when someone complained about the filesystems on a new AIX box not being the right size, but I think that was understandable when the instructions I received basically consisted of 'Double the size of a couple of them.' Rah.

Also feeling full since it was my Mum's birthday meal at the Prosperity, so full of Chinese food. I had the honey and lemon chicken on crispy noodles, which I've always been tempted to try. It was great, battered chicken in a sauce that almost but not quite tastes like you should be washing the dishes with it. It didn't quite go with the crispy noodles though as they work better with lots of sauce but it was still pretty tasty.

Leg still painful on occasion, but it is getting better. The bruise is nice and purple at the moment. Not sure about badminton. The generally quite sedate badminton tomorrow will probably be OK but not sure about Friday which can be very energetic.

Slow wet week

Not much to report. No D&D last night due to the horrendous weather, stupid amounts of rain and stuff. Bruise on leg progressing nicely with a huge patch of bruise but only a small area of actual pain now.

That's about it really.

Comic Con

Yesterday was the North Wales Comic Con, which I'd never been to before. It was actually really good, and amazingly busy. I think a lot more people turned up than they had anticipated. I didn't really bother with autographs or anything but it was interesting to see who was there. The Q&As by Ed were good, at least the two I saw, the Torchwood and Red Dwarf ones. I actually feel a bit more optimistic about Red Dwarf X after hearing what Chris Barrie and Robert Llewelyn had to say about it. I did end up buying a Cyberdyne Systems t-shirt though.

Today was a really miserable rainy day, very depressing all round with what I described a bit strangely as proper wet rain. Not helped by my leg still hurting. I didn't think the bruise was that big at first but it has grown. Bah. Posted off the 3DS and the Virtual Boy, both of which sold on Ebay, which was nice.

Little Big Planet on the Vita is really good, a whole lot of fun. I wasn't too sure at first but I think it's a great game. I've done the tutorial levels so now the level creator mode is unlocked, but I haven't tried it yet - looking forward to that. It makes interesting use of the touch screen and the rear touch panel, with blocks that can be knocked back and forth.

A day of ups and downs

Down: Being chased by a lunatic farmer in a pickup truck after I mouthed to myself 'Wanker' after he nearly pulled out in front of me. When I realised he was chasing me with intent, I headed across town to the police station, oddly enough he stopped following shortly before I reached it. The sad bit was a young kid in the passenger seat who was clearly asking what the hell was going on.

Up: A bike ride from Kinmel Bay to Rhos-on-Sea with Andy, Maz, Rob and Em. The weather was good, and it was a great opportunity to try out the road bike on a decent surface. The bike worked really well and is really comfortable.

Down: Somehow managing to lose sight of a metal post in the middle of the cycle path while turning to check on the bikes behind and slamming into it at top speed. My right leg impacted on the post, flinging me off in a kind of spiral motion. I was convinced the bike would be totally fucked but fortunately rather than the front wheel taking the impact, the quick release lever did. After realigning the handlebars, we carried on and made it there and back fine. Other than a few extra scrapes and a bent front axle, the bike appears to be fine, astonishingly. This evening though I have the beginnings of a tremendous bruise on my thigh and stomach and walking is somewhat painful.

Up: Heading out to watch Avengers Assemble on DVD with Rob, Em, cats and snacks. What a brilliant movie it is. It really stood up to another viewing, especially since it wasn't in gimpy 3D this time. Superb all round.

Down: Was driving home through town and some drunken idiot thought it would be fun to run out in front of me while I was doing 30mph. God knows what he thought he was doing but I had to slam on and skid to a halt while his female companions screamed at the top of their voices. Didn't hit him (un) fortunately.

Other stuff was badminton on Thursday and Friday, which were both fun. Friday badminton is proving to be really good fun because there's a big and varied crowd this time, which will hopefully continue. It's the Comic Con in Wrexham tomorrow, which should be interesting. I've never been before so I'm quite interested to see what it's like.

It was payday the other day and I treated myself to a pre-order of Little Big Planet for the Vita. I've heard lots of good things about it on the PS3 so I thought I'd give it a go, but frustratingly haven't had a chance to try it yet. Looking forward to it.

Weird days

Sunday was good - did a circuit of the Brenig in 1h 9m, which wasn't too bad. It was windy again and a bit wet too. My time would have been better if I hadn't had to keep stopping and dry my glasses.

The rest of the week has been mainly work, which is being interesting due to the massive reconfiguration of the backup system. I had to have an unsociable morning today, I loaded up my iPod with the entire Offspring back catalogue and sat listening to that on headphones while doing a gigantic spreadsheet of how it will all work.

Otherwise it's been quiet. I dug out the Nintendo Virtual Boy that's been sat around for a while and got the 6 AA batteries it needs to run. It still works but the right screen is dodgy, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Apparently it's a common issue with a few fixes, but due to it's rarity I don't want to take it apart so I've listed it on Ebay as-is. They were never imported to the UK so there aren't many around, so hopefully it will sell.

My skin is playing up for the first time in ages, my face has gone a bit flaky and I've got a massive spot on my back which is really, really annoying. Bah.

One functioning limb

It was the proper badminton club last night, the first time I've been in a couple of years. It was quite a shock after the rather sedate Thursday badminton. It was really good fun though and a good variety of people. I'm really feeling it today though, my left arm is the only limb which isn't aching at some place or another.

Today was the annual beer festival. Not much point in me going really since I just generally take a sip of the beers and cringe because it all tastes the same to me - horrible. I only go to be sociable and eat chilli. It was good though.

The rest of the day was spent fooling around on the computer and bass, which was nice.

Babbled

It's been a curious few days in work. I had to connect an AIX blade to a different SAN but it didn't quite work - instead of the six drives it should have seen, it saw 25. This led to a monumentally complicated problem with devices drivers, not helped by the incomprehensible IBM documentation. Fortunately today a consultant was in and he had a look and saw what was up and got it working.

The backup system has also had a lot done to it. Another consultant was in yesterday and today and it's going to be completely reconfigured. The basic stuff has been done, but I will now have to go through the 200 or so servers it backs up and reconfigure them all. Fortunately, it's now going to be able to backup VMs by going directly via the hypervisor, which is much more efficient.It's been a very educational couple of days but I hit a point today when I just couldn't absorb any more information.

Not much else to report really. The car hit 250,000 miles the other day and I was able to get a picture of the odometer. However I've booked it into the garage tomorrow to get the brakes checked out as I'm sure they've got a bit crappy recently, and when it was very cold the other day one of them seemed to be rubbing. Hope it's not expensive as the tax is due this month and the insurance next month - argh.

Long time no post

It's been a while since I last posted, rather busy with stuff.

Thursday badminton last week was good, but I felt crappy on Friday so had to miss the first night of Denbigh badminton club, which I've decided to give another go. My raquet is also really starting to show it's age - the frame is battered and the strings are fraying, but I do like it so I might get it restrung as it would be a lot cheaper than buying a new one.

Saturday was the first movie night at Steve's, which was great. We watched The Guard, a very funny movie but wow it had some questionable dialogue. I only think they got away with it by being Irish somehow. Good though. After that we watched two episodes of Father Ted as Em has never seen it, which were great.

Yesterday went for a bike ride round the Brenig with Andy and Maz, which was really good. The weather was overcast and VERY windy, which made things challenging. I surprised and impressed myself by managing to cycle up the steep rutted gravelly path bit towards the end, only stopping once when the back wheel slid into a rut, nearly pitching me off. I made it OK but my legs really felt it afterwards, and today.

Work has been interesting, the backup system is running nicely now, but there's been a lot of work with the Unix boxes. One of them was just decommisioned and shut down after 755 days of uptime. It's fate was uncertain and due to the nature of the data that it had held, I hooked it up to a serial console and spent some time working out how to fully wipe the disks. Unfortunately it has sixteen of them (four internal, twelve external) and it takes quite a while to wipe each one.

Today though, it was decided not to scrap or sell it but to use it at least temporarily as a testbed for DR so now I have to rebuild it again, argh! It's also not exactly in an ideal spot either as the machine and disk drawer are taking up quite a bit of space on the hotdesk area. Still, it's nice to have actual honest to goodness POWER hardware that I can mess with without worrying about breaking it. I even took the processor card out to see what RAM it took. Unfortunately, while the specs say it's fairly ordinary DDR2 server RAM, the DIMMs have a notch in a different place, meaning it's IBM proprietary, damn them. And all the slots were full. Oh well.

Last Monday we played Settlers of Catan instead of DnD, which took some time to get the hang of. But the way it invites discussion and bartering is pretty good. Today we played Cthulu Gloom, a somewhat morbid game where the aim is to make your family very miserable and then kill them, while at the same time making everyone else's families happier. It uses a clever system of clear cards that stack to show what is happening to each hapless member of your family and has a lot of random stuff that can happen. Good fun. Wasn't a good drive back home though, it absolutely pisssed it down the whole way making the roads rather treacherous.

Waterslide of Peril

Been a bit of a lazy day today.

The morning was spent watching the first disk of Firefly which Steve lent me on Bluray. Now, I watched the pilot a few years ago and didn't like it, and have spent the last few years feeling like an outcast from pretty much the entire universe.

This time however, I did like it, even the pilot. I think what happened last time was that someone told me it was a western in space, and since I don't like westerns I went in expecting to hate it, so I did. I like it this time though, very good fun.

Spent most of the afternoon listening to music, and then playing some multiplayer Minecraft, or Tekkit. After seeing someone else's extremely tall tower, I tried to build my own but decided it was hideous and pointless so knocked it down and started again. This time it's basically a buildng supported on an unlikely single column of blocks about half a mile high with transparent viewing platforms, which is slightly alarming. At several points I actually felt vertigo while working on it.

While building it I fell off several times to my death, causing one of the other plays to remark 'It has now been TEN MINUTES since the last fatal accident' each time it happened. Fortunately I was building it near my default spawn point.

My final project was something called the Waterslide of Peril which starts at the top of the tower. You throw yourself into a stream of water and the current takes you down a couple of rooms before dumping you out the bottom, sending you plummeting half a mile into a safe pool of water. This took a LOT of time to perfect and was the cause of quite a few of my deaths. For some reason it greatly amused me once it was finished and I spent probably half an hour playing with it while cackling madly to myself.

Back to work tomorrow, boo. It's been a good week off though, I've barely even thought of work, which I suppose is the idea.

D&D tomorrow, although I think we're going to play another kind of game that Rob found.

This will probably mark me as a hapless geek but I love watching these videos of S-bahn trains going along, especially this one of a complete Ringbahn circuit. The sound of the trains starting off and slowing down is a big factor, always reminds me of travelling round the city.

Bah wind

Went out for a bike ride today on the road bike, which is the first time I've ridden it properly. There's a road nearby that's been recently resurfaced so I thought it would be idea. It was nearly a good ride, but the road is not that flat, and is uphill the way I was going. Despite the road gearing I could probably have coped except it was ridiculously windy against me so it made it very hard. I did a couple of miles and then turned around and came back down the hill, which was great fun. The road bike feels great, very different from the mountain bike and I like the drop bars and brake lever shifters.

I think I may have lost a bit of weight, which is a nice feeling. I've been 15 stone for a long time, which I suppose in a way isn't bad since it stayed consistent.

Watched the pilot of Firefly again - I've been pestered by so many people to give it another go, and Steve lent me the Bluray version. I watched the pilot years ago and hated it, but I think I must have been in a funny mood or something since I liked it this time, and apparently the pilot is crap and it gets a lot better. So looking forward to the rest of it now.

I also watched In Bruges which Steve had also lent me. I didn't know what to expect, but really enjoyed it. A really good black comedy. Kind of makes me want to visit Belgium too, would be somewhere new to see. Also waffles.

The payments on the credit cards have definitely gone out. It's a curious feeling to be finally debt-free for the first time in years, although I should have managed it ages ago if I hadn't been so crap.

Not much else to report. Gangnam Style by PSY is going completely mental, which is quite odd. My Mum has finally trashed my original launch week DS by breaking the hinge, but since she's already worn most of the paint off and ruined the touch screen by using a knitting needle as a stylus, it was already due for replacement. I'll put it to one side though, I'm sure with a bit of TLC and some parts it can be repaired.

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?!