Fratington

An OK day in work. Nothing major happened while I was off yesterday and my script that captured data about a storage pool in the backup system is working nicely.

DnD this evening. It was the continuation of a furious battle started last week, combined with some fairly average sniping amongst the group. My character is a bit of a wanker, and so is Rob's, and so things get a bit heated sometimes. It's quite entertaining.

The car had the exhaust fitted, which means it's a lot quieter, but I'll have to get them to look at it again since now there's a high pitched whistle when it revs above 3000 revs.

My left lower eyelid has been twitching all day, it's REALLY fucking annoying. No idea why. Also feeling a bit weird, can feel myself heading into a depressive mood again and I don't want to. Argh.

Chucking it all away

It's been a good weekend. I've had to look after the dog for most of it, so I took Friday as a working from home day, which was nice. Saturday was spent sorting out a load of shit to go to the tip in town. I took a load of old computers that were useless and a vast box of cables and power supplies that have accumulated over time. I had to leave the dog alone but he is OK left for short periods.

The Honda may be shit on fuel, but it does have an impressive amount of room inside with the seats down, and it's high enough off the ground and powerful enough to cope with being heavily loaded, so it might just earn it's keep.

Yesterday was the Wales Comic-Con, which was a great day. I had already arranged with a neighbour that he would mind the dog, and so it was off to Wrexham. The day started with breakfast at Frankie and Benny's and was the first time I've ever had Eggs Benedict, which was nice. There were a few of us there, me, Steve, Rob G, Rob and Em, Jane, Wes, baby Xander and Jake and Andy C from down south. We'd ordered early bird tickets, which was definitely worth it. When we got there, the main queue was completely bonkers, and we were able to bypass it and go in straight away.

The main hall was pretty good with loads of people there and the usual stalls of things. One stall had a rather impressive steampunk bass for £140, which looked really cool, but fortunately I was able to resist. There were plenty of interesting people there too, from various shows. One interesting one was Carolyn Seymour, who played a Romulan commander in TNG and was also the voice of the doctor in Mass Effect, which I hadn't realised. There were a great number of people from Game of Thrones, and the artists who did the old Transformers comics. Also the usual amount of people in great costumes, the absolute best of which was a guy dressed up as a Borg, which looked incredible. There was someone going around in an Alien costume, who Xander decided to hold hands with, to the delight of the room.

After that I came home to get the dog back and make a big batch of chilli, which came out very nicely.

Today has been another day of clearing out as I took the day as leave to continue looking after the dog. This time I loaded up the car with four old TVs and monitors and shedloads of old VHS tapes. They were rank - not been touched in years and they were covered in mouse shit and piss. Awful. The only ones I really cared about I've got on DVD anyway. Once again the Honda proved it's worth with the space. It's a good thing it's getting the exhaust sorted tomorrow though as it's getting louder by the day, to the point of embarrassment.

Two things I was going to chuck but couldn't bring myself to do it were a couple of vintage SGI and Sun Unix workstations that I picked up about ten years ago. The SGI is an Iris Indigo and is a beautifully designed machine, completely modular and with old full-height SCSI hard drives. I pulled the motherboard out and it had a graphic on it saying it was 'The Song and Dance Machine', with a list of the people who designed it, and of course it has the lovely indigo case. The Sun is a SparcStation IPX, not as pretty as the SGI, but is very cute with a small boxy case and little feet to stand on. I've also got an SGI Indy somewhere, which is quite a funky looking pizza box machine. SGI were making computers pretty way before it was cool. Throwing these into the tip seemed like sacrilege, so I'll see if I can put them on Ebay or donate them to a museum or something.

I was hoping to do circuits this evening as usual, but the TVs I was lugging around had made my arms achy and also I think I pulled a muscle in my upper back, so I decided to err on the side of caution, but I did take the dog for a walk instead. After that I ate some more chilli while watching Iron Maiden: Rock in Rio, which is amazing.

IT Crowd

It's been a fairly ordinary week, but with more exercise than usual. After circuits on Monday it was DnD on Tuesday, then on Wednesday we all went to the gym, which was pretty good. I find it easier to not use the programme they supply and just get a machine for as long as I can handle it.

However no badminton on Thursday as I had to take my Mum to one of her writing things, which means I have to look after the dog over the weekend. I worked from home today which was nice, and then I'm on leave on Monday. Hoping to have a bit of a tidy up and take some crap away tomorrow and Monday, and it's the Wales Comic Con on Sunday, which should be great.

The Accord was looked at yesterday and was diagnosed as needing a new anti rollbar link and a flexible bit of exhaust - pretty much what I expected. Pleasingly the cost was somewhat less than I had anticipated so it's going in on Tuesday to get those sorted out. I wasn't going to spent any money on it but it'll make it easier to get rid of if it doesn't sound so farty.

Been playing around again with the Organiser IIs. I found a way to program the UDGs with random data, which is a way of making your own graphics on it, which led to some interesting screen effects. With it only being a 4x20 grid of 8x5 matrices it's a bit limited in terms of graphics though, and the older ones are even worse as they only have a 2x16 grid. It's still fun though. I just like the way you can pick it up and quickly write a program to do whatever. Something that modern computers lack. I know the Raspberry Pi is supposed to bring that old feeling back but it still seems a bit bloated and awkward. I've also been on a bit of an accumulation thing with the Psions....somehow I've ended up with eight of the things, but at least they are small.

I've been watching the IT Crowd after my brother introduced it to me. It passed me by a bit when it was on the TV and I grew to dislike it because I was on the helpdesk at the time, and people used to laugh at us about it, especially the turn it off and on thing. I've watched it twice now. The first time I wasn't impressed and didn't like it but after a repeat viewing it has grown on me, although I still think some of it is annoying. I still need to watch the fourth season though, since I didn't know there was one until today, doh.

Pain

I had quite a few ideas for Sunday but the only one I ended up doing was having a bit of a clearout and a bonfire. Oh well.

Work was OK and productive today. Managed to avoid the temptations of the evil vending machine and ended up eating bananas instead. Went to circuit training as usual, and it was much better this week than last week. I even managed to do the hideous running outside the building bit without too much trouble. Still feel knackered afterwards though and I'm sure I'll be achy tomorrow.

Did some work on my phone. It is going to be The Book for my Arthur Dent costume in May for Wes's birthday BBQ. I'm going to put it in a Don't Panic cover and put some videos of the book entries from the old TV series on it. It should be big enough to get the point across I hope.

Feeling better

Yesterday was an OK day in work, and I started to feel more myself. In the evening it was off to Mold for a work curry. Four of us that weren't planning on staying out late went in the same car. The venue was the Saffron, which I've been to once before but appears to have been refurbished. The food was very good indeed and the company was good.

When we got back to Denbigh we found that a large part of the town had been cordoned off in relation to the home made bombs that some dickhead has been making. This meant that Robert couldn't get home and my car was trapped on his driveway. He kindly gave me a lift to the bottom of the track and I walked up. They evacuated a load of people in the area as they were searching a property in relation to the bombs, and I've just heard it is happening again! Apparently a 46 year old man has been arrested.

Much to my astonishment, the Astra had been sold when I got home - £165, and the buyer wanted to pick it up at 9am this morning. This led to some panic as I'd convinced myself it wasn't going to sell so hadn't emptied my crap out of it. I managed to get it done and the guy picked it up without any problems, although he was a bit late. It was a stunning morning, the sun was out and the sky was clear. A jet went over high up and it was so clear I could see the plane perfectly, which was awesome.

After that I got a lift into town to get the car back, and to meet Andy for a run. We went to St Asaph where there is a standard 400m running track and we did a few laps. I found it rather hard, not because I couldn't get my breath but my calves felt tight and painful, and I got a stitch at one point. It was OK other than that though, and definitely good exercise.

I came home and had a shower and then headed to Rhyl to order new glasses, but was foiled because the people in Boots Opticians couldn't read the handwriting on the prescription, so I need to get it checked and go back, ridiculously. It could be 8.00 or 8.50...argh. I was all set to get some of those nice frames that are all bendy and indestructible but they were expensive and I might get something a little more sensible, but I do insist on hinges that can bend back a bit.

Then came home again and sat down to watch Game of Thrones. I only meant to watch one episode but ended up watching all the way to the end of season 2. The episodes are long but they certainly fly by. I suppose the next step is to read the second book but I've just started the third Science of Discworld book.

Not sure why I felt so weird the last few days, just really down in the dumps. Everything seemed wrong somehow and I would wake up in the night and worry about the car and things. Now that the Astra has gone I feel better about it though. It goes OK and while it is thirsty, I can cope with it for a little while.

Planning on having a bit of a clearout tomorrow and take some things to the tip. The Honda might be thirsty but it is a big hatchback after all and has plenty of room in it with the seats down.

Out of sorts

The week has progressed OK. Work has been interesting. Part of the new role involves learning about the storage systems, so spent a couple of days doing things with that. Had to move all the data off one of the storage systems so the controllers could have new cache batteries fitted. Shut down one controller, take it out, put the battery in, and then swap them over.

Spent yesterday sneezing all day, which I think was one of my infrequent hayfever attacks and then today played terribly at badminton due to feeling like I couldn't quite catch my breath and my legs felt stiff. Not good. Also was full of awesome cottage pie that we had eaten at Rob and Em's with Andy, which was a nice change.

As I feared, the Accord is shit on fuel. According to my spreadsheet it only managed 27 mpg, so I think it's time with me will be limited. Bit of a shame because it's a nice car and everything on it works, even things like the cruise control. It even has good ground clearance. Another more economical Honda might be nice but they only started making diesels in 2005. Someone in work did suggest finding a turbo for the Astra and fixing it, but with the mileage being so high, I don't think it's the way to go as everything on it is going to be tired.

Not feeling right this evening, all out of sorts. Pissed off with cars, pissed off with living situation and generally feeling a bit lonely and miserable. Bah.

People are twats

Was just about to type a new entry when I saw the news that some evil cunts have bombed the end of the Boston Marathon. 2 dear and 23 injured so far, and the injuries seem pretty severe. Why?

The weekend was good. Friday evening I went to the gym for the first time in a while as I hadn't put my name down for the badminton end of season tournament. It was actually quite good though, I did quite a bit of exercise.

Saturday was spent at my Dad's for most of the day and then we all headed to Steve's for a movie night. Due to low attendance we put on Space Camp, which Steve, Andy and I had fond memories of. Fortunately, so long as you accept it isn't very realistic and is firmly rooted in the 80s, it held up reasonably well.

Sunday was spent watching six episodes of Game of Thrones season 2. I had no intention originally of watching that many, but it kind of sucked me in. All I will say is that there is one character who is the very definition of a backpfeifengesicht, a German word meaning a face badly in need of a fist and has entered our daily vocabulary.

Today was work, which was OK, and then circuit training tonight. I haven't been for quite some time so it was ghastly, very punishing, but felt better for doing it.

The Astra is on Ebay. Not sure how much attention it will get, being what it is. The Accord is going OK, the ABS light is currently off, and it is still guzzling fuel. I think it'll probably manage about 300 miles to a tank. Oh well. 

Back to work again

Work was OK today, if rather full on with stuff and meetings. But hey. I had the contract details and things for the new job which I duly signed and took down to HR, so that's finally all official. Yay.

Badminton after work was good fun, had a nice meal at Steve's after we dropped the last two disks of Game of Thrones to Andy so he could carry on. I need to watch season 2 now, which will be uncharted territory as I haven't read the second book yet.

The Accord is going OK. It is going to be thirsty, no question. I was used to travelling around 70 miles before the fuel gauge would even move in the Astra. I'm thinking the Accord could probably use a service as I think it hasn't been used much in the last few months, and it has a blow in the front of the exhaust, which might be messing up a sensor somewhere and making it use more fuel like my old Vectra had a habit of doing. The Vectra also had a trick of the fuel gauge dropping really quickly to start with and then slowing down, so hopefully the Accord will be similar. I'm getting more used to the autobox. I quite like it now, apart from the tendency to hang onto gears on hills when I'd have shifted up ages ago. The tiptronic mode works quite nicely in situations like that though. Ideally I'd like a automatic diesel, but they aren't cheap. Vauxhall even made an auto version of the Astra 1.7dti, but only for about a year so they are very uncommon.

Back home again

Got home last night at stupid o'clock. The flight left from Berlin at 21:35, so it was definitely a late one. It was even weirder than when I was going, feeling that I should be somewhere else. The hotel booted me out at 11am, so I went and put my bag into a storage locker in the station and went and did things.

It was a good trip overall, spent lots of time hanging out with my brother and seeing the sights. The fleamarkets were a highlight this time as they are always interesting, and it's the first time in a while I've been there over the weekend. I also managed to make it up to the top of the Seigesaule, which has just been renovated. It's a climb up a narrow spiral staircase of 285 steps, but once at the top the views are pretty good. One random thing that I found out was that the new klein-profil trains on the U2 allow you to see through a tinted window into the driver's compartment. Not much use in the tunnels but outside you can see everything.

My brother did well in the half marathon and beat his time again, as well as the two friends he was running with. We celebrated by going to a new Asian bar near where his girlfriend lives, which was pretty special. It had a nice mixture of all the traditional Asian dishes..

The journey home from the airport wasn't uneventful last night unfortunately. I was driving along quite happily on the nearly empty roads, and saw that the Astra was just about to hit 246,000 miles. A mile after it did so, I heard the turbo being noisy, and before I could react, it made a VERY loud noise. Then there was much less power, and the car was making huge clouds of smoke. I carried on home and it made it but it was reluctant to rev and had no power at all, and continued to smoke. This combined with the existing work on the brakes that it needs and things mean it simply isn't worth fixing.

So I ended up using my last day off to go car shopping. To be honest the choice around here is limited for cheap cars and so I ended up with a Honda Accord. It's a biggish hatchback and is a proper old man's car, even automatic. Judging by the glowing reviews these cars get, not only should it never break down, it should also be able to cure cancer and smallpox, but knowing my luck with cars, we'll see. I hope it will be OK, if only for a short while. My main concern is fuel consumption though. It must have cost the original owner a fair bit though. It has leather, climate control, cruise control, electric seats, a full Bose sound system, electric windows all round, etc. So far, all of it seems to work too.

Back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting.

Berlin, woo

Tuesday was the last day in work before the holiday I had booked. It was a busy day but I got everything done that I needed to do and was able to go with a clear conscience.

The flight to Berlin yesterday was much later than usual. It was a weird feeling to be sat around in the morning waiting. I packed everything and watched the last episode of Game of Thrones before going and then it was still too early. Very impressed with Game of Thrones though, it is a fantastic program. Having read the first book (twice), they have missed out quite a lot, but for once in a good way, just concentrating on the basics.

Anyway, I finally headed to the airport, which was one of the most pain free drives there I have ever had, since it was early afternoon. Spent the time there being bored and listening to music until finally the flight was called. Easyjet have changed it now so they have an allocated seat policy, and soon will only allow online checkin. Since the flight was so full, they asked for volunteers for people to drop their bags into the cargo hold in return for jumping to the front of the queue. I did this and it worked out quite well because the bags that go in this way are the first out onto the baggage conveyor. It was interesting coming down in the dark, seeing all the lights of the city below, although I didn't get a window seat so my view was limited.

Once landed, met up with my brother and we got the train into the city. Weather much the same as home really, although it seems quite sunny this morning. I realised on the way in that the only thing I forgot to bring was a rucksack, damn it. Staying with my brother until Friday when I go into a hotel, which works out nicely as the room in the apartment that I'm staying is only free until then.

One day

Went round to my Dad's on Sunday with my Mum in tow so we could have a shower, due to the water pump having broken during the cold weather. Spent much of the day chatting and watching cycling and the boat race on TV. I wish they wouldn't hype sports so much these days. There was at least an hour of ridiculous build up with animations, shots from previous races, profiles of all the rowers and then the race itself only lasts 15 minutes.

Also had a look at my Dad's new car, the new Skoda Rapid. Rather nice, and with the curious 1.2 turbo engine. It goes all right though and has a 6-speed gearbox.

Yesterday went out for a bike ride with Andy, which was a big loop that started out from St Asaph, took in the Waen, Rhuddlan, Meliden, Prestatyn, Rhyl, a loop around the Marine Lake, before heading back to Rhuddlan and then to St Asaph again. It worked out at about 19.4 miles, and wasn't completely flat, which made a change from the cycle path route.

I also managed to put the number plate light back in place on the car. Fortunately it just needed to be clipped back into place. The reversing lights weren't as easy though. The bulbs seem OK, and they share a fuse with the cigarette lighter, which works. That left only the switch that turns them on, but unfortunately rather than being somewhere obvious like the gear lever, the switch is actually mounted to the gearbox, and I didn't know where to start looking. Oh well.

In the evening went down to Rob and Em's to see Jane who was up. A nice evening of geeky chatter, Chinese food and Blackadder on DVD. Excellent.

Today is going to be a busy day. But it's the only day in work before Berlin tomorrow, yay.

Bah cars

Yesterday met up with a group of people I used to work with at my last company. We went to a new place in Ewloe called the Running Hare, typical pub food place, but it was very good. Spent a good couple of hours gossiping and eating.

Today went to Andy's to watch the two rugby games. Good fun, and quite entertaining, and then watched the new Doctor Who episode, which was decidedly peculiar.

The car is troubling me. The gearbox has become rather notchy and occasionally it's hard to select a gear and then tonight when I was turning round at home, the reverse lights didn't come on, and the number plate light is unhelpfully shining out behind the rear wheel instead of up through the bumper as it should. Argh! Also I think the suspension and brakes are starting to feel tired. It has an MOT until July so I'm not sure if I should ditch it now while it has some remaining, or spend a load of money on it and hope I can get it through the MOT.

If we are going to move house like I think we need to, something with more space in it might be useful. Not sure what to do.

Back to reality

Finally ventured forth today. The track was something of a bugger to get down due to the snow being quite deep, but the car made it down fine. It was nice to get back to work and see people again.

Badminton after work, which was good fun. Usual food at Steve's and then off to badminton. Had a few good games, which was nice.

I had a really odd dream about going to Russia on holiday last night. It was very vivid and real but I can't remember all of it. I do remember going to a cinema where each screen was basically an ordinary living room with a large plasma TV and beanbags, before getting on a tram that went between two stations ten feet apart. I think what caused this was finding the menu of a Russian restaurant in Berlin and reading it all.

Not much else to report really. I forgot it was a four-day bank holiday until Wednesday, so that was a nice surprise. Tomorrow I have a meetup with old work colleagues, then Saturday going to watch the rugby at Andy's, then going to my Dad's on Sunday, so it'll be pack.

Rob has given me Game of Thrones season 1 and 2 on DVD to watch - can't wait to get going on that. I've also picked up South Park seasons 4,5 and 6.

The M11x was rebuilt with the SSD the other day. Had a little bit of a faff getting all the drivers on again but now it's all good. It boots and runs nicely but the main reason I wanted the SSD is because it gets moved around a lot, so that's one thing I don't need to worry about too much.

Had a go on Duolingo, a free website for learning languages. I've started the German course and I quite like the way it handles it. Only really done the first module so far, but it's fun.

Been playing with the old Organiser IIs again. For some reason I prefer the older 2-line models over the later 4-line models, perhaps because the characters are so much bigger. I just like the way you can pick it up and instantly program it to do what you want. What I'd like to do is get an eraser for the datapaks they use, since they are EPROMs and can only be erased with UV light. That way I can consolidate data across machines and things.

Marooned

Not much to report due to being trapped in the house since Friday. Well, trapped is perhaps a strong word, but there was plenty of snow on Friday and Saturday and despite some sunshine yesterday it hasn't shown any sign of melting. Due to the wind, it formed some pretty large drifts, which means if I want to get my car out it will take a lot of digging. The water pumped up OK on Saturday, but hasn't since then.

Fortunately I can now work from home, which is what I've been doing as supplies are OK for at least a couple more days after our neighbour did a bit of shopping for us. Carrying 8 litres of water up the track wasn't much fun though.

The people who own the field finally came and picked up their annoying ponies yesterday. They kept whinnying and galloping at random across the fields, and one of them would chase the dog as well.

Booked everything now for the Berlin trip next week. Looking forward to it now, just hoping the weather behaves itself.

Bored of the white stuff

Monday was payday, which was nice. I was able to put some cash into savings, which are looking healthier now. There wasn't any DnD on Tuesday due to commitments, so I lazed about at home not doing much.

Last night went to see Welcome to the Punch with James McAvoy and Mark Strong. It was a fairly decent  film although somewhat predictable, but still fun anyway. Went with Steve, Andy and Robert from work to the cinema in Rhyl. I hadn't been there for years, not even since it was refurbed. It still has mostly flat seating but it was actually pretty decent. The film was listed at starting at 8:40pm but didn't start until 9:10pm at least due to trailers and shit. Oh well. It's been quite some time since I did something like that on a work night and it was rather odd considering we did it pretty often a few years ago.

Badminton tonight. Rob had to go and play a match in Mold, although autocorrect struck again so he told use he had to 'play snatch in Mold',causing much confusion. It was a good evening, and we took the time to head over to see Andrea from work and give her the money for the Hitch-Hiker's show in October. It was good to see her again, as she's now working in Rhyl.

Ebay success, my old server went for a frankly astronishing £325, and I got about £90 for two old bass necks. This combined with some other bits and bobs led to there being £476 in my Paypal account, so most of it went into savings. I have however bought an SSD for the M11x, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while now.

I've booked a trip to Berlin in April to see my brother again. It's the weekend of the half-marathon. I'm flying over and spending a couple of nights staying with him, and then shifting to a hotel. Looking forward to it now. Today there was a nasty accident near the Olympic Stadium - two police helicopters were taking part in a training exercise and collided.

There has been warnings of mad snow tonight, and sadly they were true. By the time we hit Denbigh on the way back home, there was sleet falling. When I got home there was a lot of snow falling and it was sticking, so I got home just in time. Management in work asked us to make sure we took our laptops home.

Herf

Last week went as expected. No real surprises in work.

D&D on Tuesday was good. Despite constant petty bickering, the group are starting to find their feet. Except when the cleric rolls less religion than the pissed off dwarf. I also scared the crap out of Rob by accidentially doing my war cry too loud while he was reading.

Yesterday was off to Andy's for most of the day rugby. The middle game was the highlight, Wales v England, and much to our surprise Wales absolutely battered them. It was an awesome match. The day went as planned with snacks and drinks and then some really good chilli in the evening. Curious snacks invluded Guiness crisps which I thought were nice but nobody else did.

Today we met up again for breakfast in the biker cafe in Denbigh and then I met up with Andy for another walk around Denbigh which ended up at 5.4 miles, which was good.

Sold my old Squier bass neck on Ebay and one off a broken Cort Curbow. Also after I finally found a scrap box in work that would fit the PowerEdge 1950 I listed that. Somewhat alarmingly it's up to £195, which is a lot more than I expected.

Both of my main pairs of glasses fell apart this weekend, leaving me with my old old pair. Fortunately the prescritpion is pretty much the same but they feel different and don't sit the same on my face so they are taking some getting used to. I need to arrange an eye test and new glasses I think.

Car tax due, bah.

Walkies

Andy and I had thought about going up Moel Famau yesterday but when we saw that it was cold and snowing we decided not to. Instead we took a long walk around Denbigh, which turned out to be a sort of figure of 8. Andy was tracking it on his phone and we were surprised when we discovered we had covered 4.9 miles.

Annoyingly my left hip started to play up though, something that hasn't happened in a while. It stayed quite painful for the rest of the day, although it's OK again today.

Work was OK today. I used an old redundant AIX server to test the viability of the backups of one of the live ones, which led to me spending much of the afternoon sitting cross legged in front of the laptop on a box that was acting as the serial console. Combined with the white noise from all the servers, it felt very zen, since the bloody thing took so long to boot.

It's been a bloody cold day and came home to find the water had stopped pumping. Not good.

I posted my old Squier bass body today and the Atari Portfolio, which was going off to Israel for some reason. Oh well. I have also now got the long boxes I needed to post the various guitar necks I am going to sell. It's just easier to sell guitars in bits if possible I find.

Mega week

Monday was not a good day. After the day of fail I slept like crap so spent Monday feeling really tired and couldn't focus on anything. I came home and was in no fit state to do circuits so I had a lazy one. Fortunately I slept fine again that night and so I was OK for work and DnD on Tuesday. That was good fun again, and I managed to not be quite so crap in battle now that my character has some sensible armour.

Wednesday was a fairly quiet day. I didn't do much in the evening except to play with the beheaded Latittude E4300. I think I mentioned it before. It came with a damaged screen and case damage, so it's been stripped down to just the bottom half and had a spare hard drive put in where the optical drive should go, and is now running Server 2012. It's quite nice actually, quiet and effective. Had some bad news about a woman in work - she fell over playing badmimton and broke her hip, breaking the ball part off. She went in the next morning for an emergency half-hip replacement, very nasty stuff.

Tuesday and Wednesday in work were spent doing AS/400 training. I knew a little bit about them and it was quite helpful. In fact I actually quite like the interface and how it works now.

Thursday was work and then badminton, wihch was great. The troublesome woman has damaged her shoulder due to some incident with a pony, sad for her but at least we get at least several weeks worth of happy badminton. The atmosphere is so completely different when she's not around.

Friday was a decent day in work, spent the day with a consultant again on the backup system. It was a productive day. In the evening it was off to Denbigh badminton, where I haven't been for some time. I nearly didn't go but I'm glad I did as I had some really fun knackering games. All was good until one of the better players, in his last match of the night managed to do his ankle in going for a shot. He somehow dislocated his ankle as he landed, and then as he fell, put it back in again. It was incredibly painful and they had to get an ambulance.

So badminton is not as safe as I thought...

Today I went to my Dad's in the morning, where we had breakfast and lunch and chatted a lot, and then it was off to Steve's. We set out to watch the Wales game, which was OK, and then set out on a giant Android upgrade fest. Steve and I were both tired of the stock Samsung ROMs on our Galaxy SII and Note respectively, and Rob's origina Galaxy S (my old one) was doing very random things. After some time trying to remember how to isntall the Clockworkmod boot loader, we got some ROMs installed. I've got Cyanogenmod 10.1 nightly on mine at the moment - seems OK. I was thinking about trying to get the proper Samsung Jelly Bean ROM, but I'm not really all that keen on what Samsung does to Android. Binx the cat is also now fascinated by my phone because I showed a video of giraffes on it.

Tired now, it's been a long day. It's also gone cold again - was hoping to go for a walk with Andy tomorrow but not sure if the weather will be OK.

Day of fail

Anticipated bike ride didn't happen because Andy was still not well and Rob and Em couldn't make it. Suppose I could have gone by myself but by the time I got out of bed I couldn't be bothered. As the day went on I felt less and less inclined to do any exercise, so I didn't.

Attempted to make brownies again, epic fail, totally unsalvageable.

Attempted to install my own version of the backup system in work on a broken old laptop that I've repurposed as a server and the installation failed for no logical reason that I could see.

Supper was a bowl of Heinz alphabetti spaghetti with cheese on it, depression personified in food form.

Shaved, cut myself on a stupid bump that I have above my mouth, happens too often and I hate it. Hate shaving in general, why can't they invent those force-field based ones or whatever it was in Star Trek.

Stupid cunt on Ebay keeps asking me to accept his offer of £15 for an old IBM Model M keyboard I put on there. I said I was going to let it run but he still keeps sending messages. It's got 18 watchers at the moment.

So now in a pretty shit mood. Can't be arsed with anything, life is miserable and lonely, feel completely helpless as to what to do about it and that nobody gives a shit.

Urgh, hope I feel better tomorrow. Hate feeling like this.

Forgetful

Keep forgetting to update this thing.

Tuesday was DnD night, which was at Robert's place this time. It was really good fun and Robert's home-made cottage pie and brownies were a taste sensation.

Wednesday was a quiet evening in after a day of work on the backup system with a consultant. It was a productive day however.

Thursday was badminton, which wasn't too bad except Em and I were left to our own devices for food, which led to a visit to the chippy and subsequently feeling like we were weighed down on the court. Even though we had split a normal single portion between us.

Last night was a semi-leaving bash for Em and her boss Kelly, who aren't really leaving, just being transferred to another department. We went to Wetherspoons and then separated. Em and I made our way to Wrexham where we were a bit early, so we had a look in the startlingly large Tesco there, which had interesting sights such as 50" plasma TVs for just £387, and more importantly toilets. After enjoying the sight of someone manhandling one of the aforesaid TVs into a normal trolley, we headed to the Sleepy Panda. I have to admit that it was bloody spectacular - one of the best Chineses I have ever had. Exceptional.

Today has been a fairly OK day, spent some time playing around on the computer and trying to complete a game on the CPC that I never managed when I was younger - Knight Tyme. Sort of a graphical adventure type thing that has a clever menu system that works very well. In the evening it was off to my sister's place for her engagement party. It was a nice event but not really my scene so I left a bit early.

Having now decided what instruments I want to keep, I dismantled some of the old basses and things to sell them. The Squier Jazz body I've been using for a few years now has been listed on Ebay. I have a few necks to sell but are tricky to find boxes for, but golf club boxes might do the trick.

Hopefully going for a bike ride tomorrow, if the weather is good.

Whammy bar

OK day in work, much of a muchness.

Circuit training after work. It was hard this evening and my legs complained bitterly, especially the front of my shins for some things. Very knackering. Also went for a brisk 2 mile walk at lunchtime with Steve P in work, which was good. It's odd walking down a road that I've driven down so many times and noticing so many details I hadn't seen before.

Came home and decided to try and tune the Razorback to something sensible since I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be set up for as both E and D tunings weren't in reach of the fine tuners. I've never tried to set up a Floyd Rose style tremolo before so it was a bit of a learning curve. It's a right faff as it has to be level with the body which then means adjusting the strings in the back to match the string tension, but then as you tune it, it goes off whack again and it's a bit of a balancing act. After a bit though I got it set up in standard E tuning, and happily once the strings were locked down it only needed a very little tweaking on the fine tuners and it was all good. Sounds better now anyway.

Still no Vodafone signal at home. Faults have been logged on the website for our postcode but no update yet. I hope it's not something permanent like they've moved a mast or something.

Zoos are fun

The rest of last week was OK. Rob was still not well on Thursday so there was no badminton. I went over to Steve's where we ate pizza, fixed up an old laptop and played around on the Xbox. Also teased little Binx with the laser pointer - she absolutely loves it, which is hilarious to see.

After work on Friday I got in the car and headed up to Kirkham as I was visiting my cousin Pauline. The drive up was pretty OK given the time of day, only a couple of slowdowns, the worst being where the M56 joins the M6.

On Saturday we went to Blackpool Zoo, which was fun. The weather wasn't great though, and for the first couple of hours there, we were walking round in quite heavy snow. It certainly made things interesting, seeing animals in snow. It's not a huge zoo but exhibits it has are pretty well done. The definite highlight was seeing the four giraffes they have there, as they have a special place where you can see them from ground level or from above, which is great. I always find giraffes fascinating to watch, especially when they walk and run.

Other highlights were the elephants having their feet cleaned and manicured, lots of tiny monkeys and strangely, the rhea. They were in an enclosure where you could get right up to the fence and see them up close. They seem a lot nicer than ostriches, which are scary as fuck. The rhea seem to be more intelligent and quite inquisitive although I don't know if they actually are.

We saw a couple of the talks about the animals when they were being fed, which were interesting. After the last one we just headed back home for a quiet evening where we watched a bit of TV and played around on laptops.

Today it was off to a garden centre for breakfast where we met up with two of my cousin's friends who are shortly having their civil partnership. We spent some time there before we came home again and after a slightly unhealthy snacky lunch I came home. The drive back was fine, no traffic problems at all and it seemed to go by surprisingly quickly.

Was bored after I got back and unpacked, and on a whim I put the Dragon Age Origins disk back in to the 360. I created a new character with a different origin and played through it until it came to the main game. It was quite interesting.

Tired now. It's been a long but fun weekend.

Fundles

Uneventful week so far, not much going on. Circuits was OK on Monday again, different exercises again. I think my body is getting used to it though since this time I didn't ache much.

Last night I randomly tried to make brownies with Rob G's recipe. They came out OK, but the top was a little burnt since we don't have a proper oven, just one of those microwave combi things. Also I didn't have a way to exactly measure the ingredients so that probably didn't help. Still, they were edible.

There wasn't any DnD due to Rob being really ill with a suspected chest infection.

Badminton tomorrow, then on Friday I'm heading up to Kirkham to visit my cousin Pauline, which should be fun. Hope the weather is OK.

Been reading a forum about the old Amstrad CPC for some reason. Quite amazing what people can get that old hardware to do, linking it up to hard drives, SD cards, USB mice, etc. Also had a go on the 3D Construction Kit that took up a lot of my time on the old thing and was amazed at how clunky it is.

Deadspot Wobblenums

It's been a funny old week really. Work has been OK with the consultant in for three days and making some changes to the backup system which have mainly been OK but a couple of glitches. Still not sure what is happening regarding the guy who has now left.

Monday evening was circuit training. It felt pretty hard again, but I didnt' feel quite so devastated like I did after the previous session. The exercises were different and there were less people there though.

No DnD on Tuesday.

Wednesday we went to Rob and Em's and watched an episode of something called Black Mirror that I hadn't heard of before, by Charlie Brooker. It was somewhat strange but interesting.

No badminton on Thursday due to illness of various people, so it was a quiet evening in, which came as something of a relief after a day with the consultant.

In theory it was badminton on Friday but that was the day of the backup system glitches and I came home with my head babbled so I just completely forgot.

Yesterday was good. Went for a bike ride with Andy and Robert. We made it from St Asaph to Prestatyn and back, which Andy's phone reckoned was 21 miles about. It was a nice day and unlike last time there was barely any wind.

In the evening it was Steve's birthday meal so we all went to a new Indian in St Asaph. It was OK, but they didn't seem to have it running smoothly yet - no beer on draught, no card payments and two waitresses who nearly came to blows over a couple of plates, which was actually quite entertaining. After the meal we headed back to Steve's for a drink and then headed back.

My car played up - while turning round on Robert's steep driveway it suddenly lost all it's coolant. After the meal we had a look and tried putting some water in but it came straight back out again and was too dark to see why, so Robert kindly gave me a lift home and I said I'd come back today to have a look.

Unfortunately my Mum's car is broken too and I didn't want to drive it down so I ended up going on my bike. Actually riding on the road was a bit of a change from the flat and smooth cycle tracks with potholes, hills and occasional cars to contend with. I made down fine though. Investigation showed that the a pipe had come off the radiator, which was easy enough to fix.

The rest of the day has been productive, once I got home I unloaded the bike, had a big bonfire of crap, let the dog have a run and then dug out two ditches, before finally sitting down in front of a Star Trek DVD with a pizza.

I dug out some old vintage ADB Mac keyboards earlier in the week and listed them on Ebay. Didn't expect to get much for them but they went for £74. Yet when I listed two old LC class Macs they got no bids at all - might relist them.

Bitchy tantrum

In a hacked off ranty mood.

The latest version of iTunes is complete total shite. The new layout is completely senseless and makes things unnecessarily difficult to find, the new search is useless, finding anything in it is a complete ballache, and what stupid cunt decided it would be a good idea to have no border at all on the window? Total cobblers. Hate it. It's about time that Apple fucked off and died again so we can get back to software and hardware that isn't just designed to look pretty above all else, including usability. It would be nice to go into a shop and not see rows and rows of laptops that nearly all attempt to imitate the look of Apple machines.

Also decided to have a go on GTA IV again. It's been years since I played it and I'd almost forgotten about it after the much superior Saints Row 2 and the not quite so superior Saints Row 3. But I thought that perhaps I'd been too harsh, and GTA IV deserved another chance. Nope, I was wrong. What a pile of shit. Idiotic, hypocritical unlikeable characters, awkward controls, tedious and repetitive missions, and just generally pointless and boring gameplay. Ironically, the one thing I liked about it - the car physics, is the feature that everyone else hated.

Otherwise all I've done today is make a batch of chilli and consume it in front of Star Trek and that's about it. The chilli came out really nice though, so that was good. Also listed a couple of old Macs I found downstairs on Ebay. One of them was dead but the other one powered up all right and I spent a few minutes reliving the old days of System 7.5. Curious times.

I think I might be coming down with something, if so it could be the cause of my crappy mood today.

Then again I just found the new EP by Jason Newsted, ex-bassist of Metallica. It's pretty fucking good and has cheered me up a bit.

A long week...

Not updated this week much. It's been a week of ups and quite significant downs to be honest.

Work was meh, until Friday, when the news came that the guy I've been covering for over the last couple of years has finally had his contract terminated. It has been on the cards for some time but to be told it had actually happened was still something of a shock, and then I had to log onto the servers and disabled his access. I feel so bad for him, it's not his fault of any of it happened and it must be such a shitty situation to be in. Also on Friday we had a guy in to help with the backup system, which I always find a bit intimidating but fortunately is nice and tolerates my what must be to him rather stupid questions.

Thursday was the Rhuddlan badminton club Christmas meal, which was really good. Put off for some time because of the St Asaph floods, we had it at the recently reopened Trefnant pub. It was typical pub food but pretty good all round. Really good.

Last night went to Rob and Em's to hang out with them and Andy. We sat down and watched some TB and a movie called Looper, which was a really interesting concept, and pretty good. I think it could have been shorter in the middle, but otherwise it was pretty enjoyable.

Today was good. In the morning I posted another Atari ST off, this time an STE that only went for £10 - hardly worth it! I'm still surprised at how little interest they had. In the afternoon we all went round to Steve's to watch the rugby, consume vast amounts of food, engage in fatuous banter and watch people try to act in the Kinect film karaoke game. We also found the time to play with little Binx the cat, who is a tiny dainty thing who knows she is is a cute as she is. It was fun to load up a cat game on my phone and watch her try to get her head around a virtual mouse walking around the screen. Later on we got to gawp in awe at Rob P's new vehicle, a full size Range Rover Vogue 3.0TD. It's a few years old but in nice condition. It's the kind of thing I'd secretly love to be able to drive but I'd feel guilty about how much fuel it would drink, even if I could afford to run one.

I had a slight relapse in money over the last week or so. My plan to get a decent guitar and bass went hugely awry, due to lethargy at work and an itchy mouse finger. Unfortunately this led to a bit of reckless spending and the result that I've ended up with a few extra that I didn't need or want, and which I now need to get rid of. I started to feel really down at my lapse but decided that what's done is done and instead of beating myself up about it, come up with a plan to rectify it.

Fortunately I have found a nice bass to complement the Ibanez RG. It's an Ibanez BTB07LTD, which is a limited edition 'Wild X' model of a BTB200. It's pretty much a perfectly ordinary bass with dark green military paint job and a big X daubed on the front. There's a chip on the edge of the body and there's red paint underneath, so I reckon they had a bunch of BTB series basses lying around and made the special edition with a new paint job to get rid. It's got a pretty hefty body and a longer 35" scale neck than I'm used to, but I rather like it. It did sound rather dull when I got it but a new set of strings really boosted the sound.

Bleh

Today was not a productive day - haven't achieved much at all, which is annoying. The weather was meh, my motivation was meh, and so forth.

I did however watch a DVD that Rob lent me, called A Touch of Cloth. I didn't know anything about it but I really enjoyed it. The humour reminded me quite a lot of Airplane, thought it was completely ridiculous and very funny.

Otherwise, that was pretty much it.

Random fun

Thursday and Friday were OK in work, not much to report there. Thursday badminton was OK, had some good games and I had unsiezed enough to play well. Friday evening was supposed to badminton again but I came home with a babbled head and decided to cabbage in front of a DVD with snacks.

Today has been a good day except for car woes. I got up early and went to my Dad's to hang out for a bit. Once there I took the chance to look at my front tyres when they were dry and not covered in mud. I didn't like what I saw - they had taken some punishment in the snow and the left one in particular was dodgy as fuck. So we headed down and left it with a tyre place while we had lunch. So it now has two nice new front tyres and had the tracking done which came to a fair bit of money. Had the usual comments about the mileage.

After lunch it was off to Rob and Em's for rugby and general 'drink what was left after Christmas' random party. It was good fun and a fair few people turned up. Both games of rugby were pretty meh, but it was fun afterwards. A guy called Iain was there who I haven't seen in a long time, which was good. Rob invented a game where people hooked up their iPod or Phone or music playing device up to his amp and put it into shuffle for three tracks. It was good fun, and some surprising songs came up. Mine played two Eisbrecher songs and a Pantera song - much to my astonishment, people actually quite liked the Eisbrecher stuff.

Decided I'm bored with my current guitars and have a cunning plan to swap them out. The 6-string is going to go because I never use the top string and when it comes to the low B I'd rather detune a 4-string to drop-D. The 8-string sounds good and is unusual but hard to play and again I don't need it. The Squier Jazz is OK but the list of things I'd like to do to it is too long. The Vintage SG copy is nice but doesn't have a whammy bar. I've already replaced the Vintage with an Ibanez RG, which is an amazing instrument, sounds so much better and has the Ibanez version of a fully locking trem, which is going to be interesting. It seems like witchcraft when you can bend the strings so low that they are literally flapping on the neck and then they all come right back up to pitch again. Now that I have suitable packaging, I can list the Vintage on Ebay, but not sure what to do with the 8-string and 6-string except make them collection only. The Squier I'll sell in bits because I think it's worth more that way.

I have two things listed on Ebay at the moment - a bunch of old Amstrad 3" floppies, which already have a couple of bids and an Atari 520STE which has no bids. I'm really surprised at how little interest there is in STs, after the boxed one I sold only went for £15 after I relisted it. The STE isn't in as good condition so I'll be lucky if it goes for a tenner. Odd - I thought they were more collectible due to the MIDI ports and music use.

It's been a long day. Tired.

Still ouchy

It was the second DnD session last night, after the snow forced the cancellation of it last week. It went really well, great fun all round. However Rob's character and my character so far do not see eye to eye, so they could end up killing each other. Also discovered I'd forgotten to equip my angry headstrong dwarf with any armour to go with his gigantic club, which was a bit of a problem when dealing with some undead zombie bastard.

Today was not in a good mood for some reason, and my face has flared up again. During the morning I went to the loo and discovered what seemed like half my face was peeling off and I have pustules developing on my nose and upper lip. Not good, especially the lip one because it's really painful.

So I spent most of the day glaring at my screen with headphones on to drown out some of the inane chatter that was going on at the tops of people's voices. One thing I did discover is a bonus 'track' on one of the Iron Maiden singles, which is basically Steve Harris, Nicko McBrain and Bruce Dickinson having a furious argument. Due to the sheer amount of fucks, fuckings and cunts involved, it's pretty funny.

Quiet evening really apart from discovering the dog had a cut on his back leg, goodness knows how, and was bleeding everywhere. I managed to distract him with food to get a bandage on it but he wasn't very happy about it. It's frustrating how you can't explain to them that you're actually helping.

Tired and still a bit achy so going to bed early to read on the Kindle.

Ouchy

Yesterday went out with Andy and Maz for a bike ride, which was pretty good, but VERY windy. The track between Rhuddlan and Rhyl was very exposed so you had to lean into the wind. Enough was enough of this so we turned off, went back round to Rhuddlan and then across the dual-carriageway to St Asaph business park and back down again. My front tyre went flat just as we reached the town, but we weren't that far from the cars at that point. I took the opportunity to pick up a new tyre and inner tube as the tyre was a bit crap, and got it fitted in the evening. It was a bit of a pain to get the new tyre on, but it was done. Investigation showed the old tube had gone on the inside, so it wasn't a puncture, it had just given way.

Work today was OK. I did some more work on the virtualised NT machine, getting the network drivers working. I'd forgotten how unfriendly NT 4 was when it came to hardware and drivers.

This evening went to circuit training with Robert from work. I'd heard about it but never done it before so I didn't know what to expect. It was bloody hard work though and certain muscles that I didn't know I even had in my lower back were complaining bitterly by the end. Felt good for it though.

Normality restored

Friday was an OK day in work, and I had already decided in the morning that I wanted chips for lunch. I casually mentioned this to Emma, and somehow this snowballed into getting chips for 13 people. To keep track of it I created a spreadsheet to calculate what people owed, what they had paid and what change. Despite the large and complicated order, the chippy handled it well and everyone got what they wanted, although I did get a combined pitying and annoyed look from a guy who had to wait for his chips while they sorted out our one with me ticking them off against a printout of the spreadsheet. Someone asked me to create a proper template of the spreadsheet for future use, although I hope it doesn't become a regular thing.

Succeeded in getting an image of the whining hard drive, and after a bit of tweaking I actually got it to boot up in VirtualBox. I was surprised by this as NT 4 was picky about hardware and it had gone from a PII to a virtualised Core i3. Curiously I had to set VirtualBox to give it an IDE hard drive, despite the real server having a SCSI controller that was a model that VirtualBox was able to emulate. The next step is to see if we can get it transferred into the VMware environment.

Also got a Raspberry Pi, after a guy in work bought one and got bored of it. Not entirely sure what for yet, but it's a fun little thing. Fortunately I had a HDMI to DVI cable so I could use it with a monitor. So far I've booted up the Debian port Rasbian, and RISC OS, which was pretty freaky. I tried powering it from the USB port of another computer since I didn't have a spare socket handy, and that seems to work fine, so that's good.

It snowed again last night but it was warm enough that it just turned into slush, and then it rained like anything. The compressed snow outside the house was lethally slippy this morning. I took a trip into town to drop an Ebay parcel off, then came home and got the water running again which was a big relief after a week of flushing the toilet with a bucket and no shower or washing machine.

Then I went into lazy mode and watched some Star Trek TNG and had a go on Lego Lord of the Rings that Steve lent me. The last time I played a Lego game was probably the original Star Wars on the PS2, but it felt instantly familiar, except they actually have the voice acting in this one. My OCD about collecting all the studs possible kicked in as well so it might take a while. It does seem rather odd though because there's this nicely sculpted organic looking landscape with Lego fixtures dotted all over it and the characters themselves - just seems a bit odd. I can't remember if the Star Wars game was the same but because it was in a sci-fi environment it was probably a lot less jarring. The 360 is still running OK after the thermal paste adventures the other day, so that's good.

I didn't intend to start a rewatch of TNG until I could do it while exercising, but I remembered how crappy the first season was so thought I might as well get it out of the way. I suppose I could just watch the good episodes but I don't like not watching the whole thing.

Then had a shower for the first time in days, which was great, and then made macaroni cheese. I substituted stinky blue cheese for the cheddar, which came out OK but could have been stronger I think. Certainly very edible though.

Keep fluctuating between bouts of crappy eating and laziness and being motivated to clear out the house of all my shit, eat well and exercise. I think now that the weather has settled down I can hopefully get back into the healthy eating I was starting out on a couple of weeks ago. Also looking into things like circuit training and going back to the gym and trying to get a routine going. Yes, yes, tried and failed before, but in an attempt to help the motivation I have decided that I want to lose at least a stone before my 35th birthday in May. I'm not sure what my current weight is but probably hovering around 15 stone which seems to have been fairly steady for a couple of years now.

Whining

The week has been OK. I went into work on Tuesday but haven't been able to get the car back up the track until today when it had cleared enough to manage it. Yesterday wasn't good as it snowed in the night and I had to reverse back down and it was so slippy it ended up in the hedge twice and lost the wing mirror cover on the left and the tray thing under the engine is now hanging off. Also managed to take probably a lot of tread off the tyres and overheat the clutch. Poor old thing.

Work has been a bit stressful, especially today since there were issues with Windows machines talking to the AIX boxes using NFS - since the AIX boxes are quite critical and I don't know all that much about them I was very reluctant to make unnecessary changes.

Today had to retrieve data from an ancient Compaq server running NT4 which had suffered a dead power supply and was too old to be backed up. I got the old 18gb SCSI drive out and hooked it up to a PC with a spare SCSI PCI card. The drive powered up and worked, but clearly the bearings were past it as it took 10 seconds to spin up and did so with a piercing whine. It was so loud and shrill I had to find some spare cardboard packaging and fashion a kind of audio muffling device to stop people complaining. Then had to find some way of capturing the data on the drive so the machine could be virtualised. All good fun.

Badminton tonight was good - had a really fun time despite not playing for a while. I did throw myself into getting a shot a little too much at one point towards the end though and my knee gave me a little tap on the shoulder and said 'Now, now, careful, matey'.

The Atari ST has sold but only for £15. Don't care though, that's more than I paid for it. The Vita and vintage laptops have also got bids, so yay on those.

Vicious motherboards

Work was OK today - because I did it from home again. More snow in the night and morning meant I wasn't going to chance it. It was nice being able to fully concentrate and have my own choice of music on in the background. In this case it was the early Pantera stuff that they did before Cowboys from Hell. I was always vaguely aware that they'd had a sort of Glam Metal existence before, but never really heard it. It's not bad though, the early albums are a little dodgy but it gets a lot better.

At lunchtime I tried to get the water working again but there must still be ice in the pipe as the pump gets so far and then stops.

In the evening I realised that my Xbox 360 hadn't moved in probably four years or so and it was probably full of dust. Since the warranty is long gone, I decided to take it apart a bit and clean it out. This ended up turning into a complete stripdown to the bare motherboard, removing the heatsinks and replacing the thermal paste with Arctic Silver 5. I managed to cut my finger quite badly on a solder joint as I was trying to get the ridiculous X clamps off. But it finally went back together, and by this time I was convinced I'd killed it, so when it powered up I was quite surprised. It's been running Saints Row 3 quite happily for an hour or so now so I think all is good. I was kind of hoping that the fans might quieten down now it's all clean with new paste but apparently not.

Snow or not, I do have to go into the office tomorrow to meet with an external person. So long as it doesn't go crazy in the night it should be OK, but I'm not sure if I'll get back. We'll see.

Still white

The snow hasn't gone anywhere, frustratingly, and today it snowed more. It did start to melt a bit, but not enough. The water has finally given up as well, so that's a pain. Having to flush the bog with a bucket of water from the spring outside. The gas bottle has also been troublesome meaning the hob hasn't been working.

So it's been a couple of lazy days really. I've been avoiding going out unless it was absolutely necessary because I don't think I'll get back, so other than the essentials just been messing around on the computer. Today I found out about a thing called glitch art which is loading up an image or video file and intentionally corrupting it. The most interesting way is to load a bitmap image as raw data into Audacity and run audio effects on it. Some of the effects can be quite striking. It's also quite fun to load JPEG and PNG files into a hex editor and change stuff to see what happens.

 Other than that, sat down and watched Torchwood: Children of Earth which I still think is pretty good. I think they lost it with the last series of Torchwood. The first and second series are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, it's stupid and silly but I like it.

I've taken the bold step of listing the PS Vita on Ebay. While it's a really really good machine, I'm not using it enough so I might as well flog it now while it's still hopefully worth something. In terms of hardware you can't fault it. I don't think it's going to fail entirely but like the PSP, it'll be in the shadow of the 3DS. I quite liked the 3DS when I had one but it was too small and the 3D was wasted on me.

I can't see it melting much overnight so I'll probably have to work from home tomorrow, but by the time Tuesday comes round we'll need supplies regardless, so I'll have to go to work.

The White Stuff

As expected, it snowed. It was the powdery kind of snow however, so it didn't really stick all that much, but blew around in the wind a lot. It was a really bitter wind too. So I worked from home today. I never have before, although I did do on-call at my last job. It was quite nice really, being able to listen to music and things.

In the evening I was at a bit of a loss and then remembered that I'd fancied playing Sim City again. So I got Sim City 4 from Steam. After a disasterous start where I built a city and ran out money almost immediately, I blew it up with volcanos and started again. This one was going quite nicely, but then it crashed and I hadn't hit save. ARGH. So I started again and made a big weird flat city that has lots of unhappy people. It made me think of Magnasanti, which is quite honestly fucking terrifying.

Lance Armstrong is a bastard, and I think the worst part is that he doens't seem at all actually sorry, unless you could being sorry he got caught, which I don't.

Coldness

Last weekend was good, my brother was over from Germany so we all met up. My cousin came down from Blackpool too so we had a good couple of days. I went down to my sister's and spent the evening with her, her fiance and my brother. We had a meal and then played Pass the Pigs, which was new to my brother. Good fun.

The next day we went down to my sister's again, and my Dad came over with my cousin. Spent the day hanging out and exploring the town, including the castle where my sister intends to get married. Should be great. In the evening we couldn't decide on chips or Chinese, so we had both. Fat.

On Sunday we all went to my Dad's for lunch, and then left a bit early as the weather was threatening. My brother was originally going to stay over at my Dad's and then go on Monday but we all decided that it would be best to get him a hotel room near the airport so my cousin could drop him off on the way back. My brother is also doing the Berlin half marathon again on the 7th April, so I'm hoping to go over for that weekend and watch. I've done it a couple of times before and it's always good fun with a really good atmosphere.

The rest of the week has been quiet in work. Tuesday evening was the first DnD of the year, with Steve as DM and a whole new campaign with all new characters. I wanted to be a half-elf, half-dwarf, but that didn't seem possible, so I'm just a dwarf. Last time I was a long-distance magic user, so this time I thought I'd be a tank. I'm pissed off dwarf who hits things a lot. It took less time than expected to sort out the character sheets as Steve had a spreadsheet that did it for you, so we started out quite early on. It was pretty good fun and there was an almost instant dislike and rivalry between my grumpy dwarf and Rob's character of The Great Danton. One thing that really worked was that we all came up with our characters completely independently, so it does feel like a proper random collection of people thrown together unexpectedly into an adventure.

All week they've been threatening snow on Friday, which is a pain. I even picked up extra emergency pizzas yesterday, just in case. It's been grim and cold all day today and then this evening it started snowing and sticking, so I errred on the side of caution and didn't go out for badminton unfortunately. I've been bringing my laptop home from work most days just in case, since the work I'm doing now can be done from home quite easily.

I gave up on the Precision M65 as it kept running hot and not quite right, so I've put it on Ebay for spares. Also listed a boxed Atari STFM I got from a car boot sale years ago and never did anything with. Not sure if it works, but it seems to power up OK. There's also an Atari ST-E somewhere.

If the forecasts are correct, I should wake up to a foot of snow tomorrow. Oh joy.

Random random

Not much to report this week. Have tried to modify diet with reasonable success, but it's more from point of view of taking note when I am actually full and not just gobbling on past that. So far so good. I did have a packet of Maltesers but after I'd eaten them, I wasn't sure I'd enjoyed them. It was odd. I'm just tired of being greedy and fat. I'm thinking I'll start some proper exercise next week when I feel properly better, which will also help.

Felt better from the cold throughout the week but still had occasional bouts of snot production which was a bit gross.

Badminton was OK this evening, but during the last game I suddenly ran out of energy. It felt like an actual switch had been flipped and I just couldn't get round the court any more. Before badminton we went to Steve's and had a very nice chicken casserole.

Spent one evening working on my sister's laptop, an Asus one I got her a couple of years ago. Needed some malware clearing off, but the main thing was the trackpad not working. I've tried everything I can think of to make it work with no success. I can only imagine it's a hardware issue, but the only thing I haven't tried is to boot it up off a CD to see if it works then. Also I've got the old Precision M65 back off Rob since he had the new laptop off me a few months ago. I was going to put it back on Ebay but I have a bit of a soft spot for it after bringing it back from the dead so I have a plan for it. The only real downer with it is the 32-bit chipset so it's limited to less than 4gb of addressible RAM and no 64-bit OS.

The car went in today to have the turbo looked at. As it turns out there was a split in a pipe. The pipe is enormous and right in front of the engine, but the split was underneath which is why I hadnt 'noticed it. I think it's also up to it's old trick of losing coolant, so they are going to check that out tomorrow as well when they replace the pipe.

A couple of years ago I got four Italia bass necks off Ebay with the intention of using them in projects - perhaps new doublenecks. However I never did, and when I realised I had a box they would fit in, I put them on Ebay again. They went for £80, so I made quite a profit on them.

Semi-human

Bit of a weird day in work, varied between feeling reasonably OK and not OK, but got through it. Still feel a bit bunged up. When I went to blow my nose yesterday it seemed like I was manifesting ectoplasm because it seemed there was no way it was all coming from my head. Disgusting. Still happening a bit today but nowhere near as bad.

Not much to report. Made the interesting discovery that Green Giant do creamed sweetcorn, something I didn't think you could get over here. Very nice anyway, I made a salady chickeny thing for supper and it made it much nicer.

Finally in the mood to look forward to the new year, with varying optimism.

Fuck it, I'm tired, got a headache, going to bed.

Human again...

Woke up today feeling a bit bunged up still but otherwise back to normal. Didn't do much except have a bit more of a tidy up and listed four Italia bass necks on Ebay that I've had for a couple of years but never did anything with. There's 8 people watching the auction after only a couple of hours so that's a good sign. I'm considering selling off my basses too and putting the cash towards getting a really decent one.

After finishing the three Hunger Games books I watched the movie today. It was actually pretty good at capturing the imagery and things from the books, but it felt like a LOT of stuff was missed out. But I think that was inevitable given how the books are written but I think it's still a good movie by itself.

I picked up a double-DVD which was two movies from the 80s that I remember fondly, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Three Amigos. I watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and was pleasantly surprised at how well it still came across.

Was feeling a bit despondent before and dwelling too much on things that happened in 2012 but never mind. Lots of things to look forward to this year, new D&D sessions, etc. So it can't all be bad. Also need to stop dwelling on the past and look to the future more.

Cascading droplets

I didn't go into work today, which turned out to be a good decision as I spent much of the day sneezing loudly, not fun.

Did however finish the Hunger Games trilogy. It's been a while since a series of books drew me in like that, and I powered through the third one like anything having no idea what was coming. Very good indeed.

Despite the day of snot and sneezing, do feel somewhat better today, so hopefully will be OK again for Monday. Coughing a bit but not as badly as I'd expected at this point. I hope this is one of those rare colds where I don't get my usual month-long cough afterwards.

2013 can only get better from now

New Year's Eve was really good fun at Rob and Em's. The usual gang was there along with some visitors from down south, Jake and Laura and of course Jane, Wes and little Xander. Although the word 'little' is used advisedly as he looks much older than his 10 months. The evening was really good, lots of excellent company and conversation and typical food and then Jools Hollands Hootenany. Although was rather shocked to find out it was filmed in November, but I suppose it makes sense. Bit weird if you were there when they filmed it and then watched it on the actual night so you could count down with yourself.

The only slight downer for me on that evening was a general feeling of being unwell which had been building up since the afternoon, and so I didn't drink, although I was offered the couch to stay over.

This led to feeling bloody awful on the 1st January, so I've spent the first three days of 2013 in bed feeling sorry for myself, kept going only by dwindling supplies of chocolate, pizza and the Hunger Games books on my Kindle. I've finished the first book and well into the second one now. I'm really enjoying them and can see how they get the praise they do. Rob is right when he says they are epically better than Twilight and fucking 50 Shades.

Also found this blog by a guy who is watching and reviewing the whole of Star Trek TNG, which is quite interesting. It's odd to find that episodes I once regarded as good when I first saw them years ago turn out to be rather shit. Once he points out that Geordi LaForge is a downright creepy fucker at times, you can't help but notice. Also I still think without Patrick Stewart, TNG wouldn't have lasted more than a couple of seasons.

Due to feeling like utter shit, I've failed to do anything regarding my unwritten resolutions, which are sell more crap on Ebay, tidy up the house, eat more sensibly and get more exercise. I've felt progressively better today but I'm not sure if I should go into work tomorrow as I think I'm still snotting a bit and my throat is tickling, which implies a cough is on the way.

Bleh.

Whooosh

Yesterday it was off to Liverpool with Andy, Maz and Rob. Em was supposed to come too but sadly wasn't well. We drove to Hooton and got the train, which turns out to be a very quick and cheap way to get into the city.

We did some shopping, visited numerous pubs, encountered several accordion playing twats, and ended the day in an all you can eat Chines buffet just outside Lime Street station. I was quite good and only bought a set of bass strings from Dawsons, after drooling over an £1800 Rickenbacker bass and being somewhat astonished that a rather ordinary Fender Jazz Bass should be up for £3995. We also saw the nice Asus S200E in PC World, which is a nice affordable laptop with a touch screen. The Chinese buffet was pretty good but lacked any form of duck pancakes, a curious omission. Despite applying my usual strategy of many plates with small portions, I didn't gobble as much as I normally do at them. I think I've come to realise that my attitude to food is really unhealthy.

On the way home the Astra started to make a curious loud whooshing noise when the turbo came in, and at the same time the temperature gauge started to creep up. I checked it out today and the coolant level had dropped quite low, so I think the two things aren't related. From what Google tells me, it's probably just a split pipe somewhere, although it doesn't seem to affect the actual power of the engine at all.

The M17x is pretty much now fully set up on Windows 8 without any issues. It's running pretty nicely with most things I need. The only thing that was lost in the transition was my saved game for Minecraft which had been coming along quite well. Oh well, probably a good thing anyway.

Today has been OK. Rob P came over and hunted rabbits for a bit. As soon as he turned up there was a huge cheeky one that had been hiding under one of the cars, that got taken out at pretty much point blank range.

Can't believe it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. 2012 has been a curious year, good in some ways, utter shit in others.

Whoa...speeeeeeeeeed

Work today was even more quiet than yesterday. A long slow day. I was led astray and had chips for lunch with a couple of the others.

The SSD turned up today, so I backed up the M17x and popped it in. It's now running a nice fresh install of Windows 8, which is turning out to be rather interesting. So far, running on the SSD, it is ridiculously quick, although the 16gb RAM probably helps. Nearly all the hardware worked straight away with only little things like the freefall sensor that needed updating. I think it does need better graphics drivers though - while it recognises that there are two cards in there, it doesn't seem to understand the Crossfire link.

Annoyingly our broadband is being crap at the moment and slows to a crawl in the evenings, so getting hold of certain things has been tedious since it struggles even to download a 22mb file. In particular I need to enable the .net framework v3.5 for a couple of things, but it won't download. Same goes for the graphics drivers since they are about 134mb. Someone in work has had fibre installed and has something mad like a 33mb connection, galling when ours can't even manage 1mb in the evenings. I've left it copying the data back on which will take a while and then set it downloading stuff in the morning when the broadband should work again.

But so far things look quite promising. I find it interesting that they've introduced the new Metro interface which is somewhat dumbed down and easy to use, but have made a lot of changes that are nice for the more techy users, like the new file copy dialogue and task manager, and massively optimised it under the bonnet too. Also because it's Windows 8 Pro it has things that the old Windows 7 didn't have on this machine. Intrigued by Hyper-V, that sounds like it could be worth a play.

While the machine was backing up and things, had a go on Need for Speed: Most Wanted on the Vita. Only got it because it was cheap and had reasonable reviews. It's OK, but a bit annoying since there doesn't seem to be an option to have analogue acceleration, so you're driving balls-out all the time. Oh well. Apparently the old PS2 finally went out of production today, which seems quite bonkers really. I really enjoyed my old PS2. If the PS3 had had proper backwards compatibility I might have got one. The 360 is OK but I really don't like the way they've gone with it now, especially the new advert laden dashboard. The Wii U seems to have passed my radar completely, I know it's out and I've even watched the Ashens review of it, but it doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Also watched the Rammstein Live in Berlin DVD in the background, which is always awesome. I got it years ago before I really knew anything about the band and it was a bit of an eye opener. Due to my dislike of crowds I don't generally enjoy seeing bands live, but there are two that I would make an exception for - Iron Maiden and Rammstein.

Worth the wait (hopefully)

Work was very quiet today. ICT seemed quite busy but it turned out there were more people in our office than the entire rest of the building. I spent much of the day trying to set up a backup client that was being exceptionally awkward.

Came home and watched Short Circuit because we ended up talking about it in work somehow. What a great movie. I still love the introduction, makes me think of the 80s and all the potential that computers and robotics seemed to have at the time. Then I grew up and discovered that robotics is hard and computers aren't as exciting. Same with sci-fi, it's disappointing to read science fiction from the likes of Arthur C Clarke who assumed we'd be exploring space like anything by now. I read a quote once recently that said something along the lines of we're the generation where there isn't much left to explore on Earth, but haven't yet started exploring space properly.

Made the irritating discovery that mice attacked my water bottles for the bike, which I had brought in but forgotten to wash. Annoying. Have set up traps. The dog is still slightly traumatised from the fly incident and won't stay downstairs so I let him sleep on my bed for a bit. Serves the dual purpose of calming him down and warming my bed up.

I've had my eye on a Crucial SSD for my main laptop, the M17x, but kept off buying it in the hope of a price drop. My patience was rewarded as I checked today and it's come down by £50, so I've ordered one. The idea is to break the RAID0 setup it is using now and have the SSD as the primary drive and reformat the secondary drive for backups and things. It's going to have a fresh build as well since it's probably due for one, although I don't have any complaints about the performance. I'm dithering between just putting Windows 7 back on or making the jump to Windows 8. The Modern UI interface and other changes are rather offputting, especially without a touch screen, but I really like the sound of the way Windows 8 has been optimised under the hood.

I dithered about ordering one for the M11x too, but I'm not sure about that one yet.

Bit shocked about the Lostprophets singer being arrested. If the charges against him are true, then he's one sick bastard.

Feeling exceptionally tired at the moment, not really sure why.

Christmas

Well, Christmas is over and done with. The weekend was good, it was round to Andy and Maz's for the Christmas Eve Eve bash, which took place a day earlier this year. It was really good, lots of food, party games and random gossip, and a curiously hard quiz.

Yesterday was a good day. Went to my Dad's as usual for Christmas lunch and hung out for a bit before I came home again. I had got the stuff to make a Christmas pizza but I ended up having that today as I was too full. Basically a turkey and stuffing pizza. It turned out I'd accidentally picked up tikka flavoured turkey, which made it more interesting.

Spent today starting to clear out the room downstairs which is full of crap going back years. I found all sorts of things, such as my membership card and badges for the Dennis the Menace fan club and lots of invoices for repairs to my old Fiat Cinquecento which seems to have broken a lot more than I remember it doing. Also some random stuff from college and a couple of letters from my brother from when he'd just moved to Berlin.

There was also loads of tapes for the old Amstrad CPC, which I really didn't want to keep so I made a list of them. There's also a fair bit of old hardware that can go on Ebay, for examples a couple of Atari STs that I'd forgotten about, a couple of old Macs and things like that.

So basically at the moment there's a big pile of stuff to be burnt, a pile to be chucked, and so-on.

The dog hasn't had a good Christmas. He's scared of flies for some reason, which is ridiculous for a large greyhound. Somehow there's been an outbreak of big bluebottles, and so he's spent much of the last 48 hours as a shivering drooling wreck and trying to hide in the most peculiar places. I managed to squish at least six of the damn things this evening but there are still a couple more. I don't know where they're coming from.

In the time before Christmas, spent some time fooling around with the CPC emulator, playing some old games. I always seem to do this around this time of year, not really sure why. Some games are still fun, but some are truly terrible. I think the best game I ever played on the CPC was Stunt Car Racer, which was a 3D racing game that despite the track being barely there, still managed to have actual physics and was really good fun. Unlike Hard Drivin, which also had 3D graphics but had impossible steering and was monumentally unfair as other cars could just drive through you and cause a crash.

Work tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be nice and quiet.

Events

The rest of last week was OK. Thursday night was the Rhuddlan badminton club Christmas meal. Since the place it was going to be in St Asaph was flooded, we had it at one of the member's house, and since she is an epic cook, it was amazing. Really good fun.

On Friday it was off down to Kent to see Rob's sister and family, and then go to Belgos on the Saturday with that big group. The trip down wasn't fun since there was terrible weather until the M6 and we got there at about 11pm. The next day was spent hanging out and trying to get used to how gigantic the baby had grown, and then getting ready to get the train into Victoria from Whitstable. Totally random coincidence, while we were getting the Tube from Green Park to Covent Garden, the train pulled in and we saw some of the people we were meeting right outside the doors. Not only the same train and carriage, but the same set of doors!

The meal at Belgos was great as usual. The place is amazing, despite it being generally huge, chaotic and noisy, there's such a good atmosphere. I had the meat platter to start, followed by a giant steak and a chocolate orange cake. Last year I was brave and had lobster, but I decided it's a lot of work. It didn't stop Vicky who utterly demolished her lobster, leaving only fragments behind, which was quite impressive.

The Sunday was spent watching movies and generally being slobby. We had a snack/drinks run to Tesco and then we studiously ignored the welcoming sunshine outside and watched several movies mingled with Red Dwarf VI and then late night pizza. It was awesome. Movies:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: I wasn't expecting much from this, but it was surprisingly enjoyable, and despite his scientology weirdness, Tom Cruise has still got it. Jeremy Renner was pretty good too.

The Cabin in the Woods: Heard good things about this and I really liked it. The concept was nicely different and it didn't chicken out.

Brave: It looked amazing but I wasn't quite sure about this one. generally rather strange, but at least it didn't end with the princess marrying a handsome prince as that would be predictable.

The Escapist: Odd and random one, and dark in places, but very good.

On Monday I had to dial in to work and run a script on a Linux server that nobody else could remember their password to, and then it was time to drive back, which was fine until we got back to Wales when it started to rain again, in an annoyingly stereotypical way.

Yesterday and today have been OK in work. Today I managed to overdose on liquorice allsorts and sweets and make myself ill so I came home early, and then scoffed half a giant Toblerone, which didn't really help things. Oh well.

Geeky time

Work was OK except for another slightly perturbing meeting in the afternoon.

Yesterday evening was bored and flung a machine together out of spare parts. It used the old Atom motherboard, 1gb RAM, a 160gb laptop SATA drive and a 120gb IDE drive. Onto this mixture of parts I installed Windows Server 2012, because I could. It took forever to install and set itself up but once done it runs OK. Not sure what it'll do, if anything, but it was fun.

Really cold this morning. The car was frozen up and it was saying it was -4 on the way to work.

Another geeky evening. Someone in work said they had a laptop with a busted power connector, and they asked if I could install the new board that has the connector on it. It was a Dell Inspiron 1545, and it wasn't until I got home and looked at the service manual that I realised the charger board, as it's called, is literally underneath every other part. So it had to come completely apart, which also meant the CPU had to be regunked and everything. Fortunately the part went in OK and it fired up again without any issues. The Inspirons are definitely not in the same class as the Latitudes, not as easy to work on at all. Still, at least it wan't a Mac.

After that I looked at the Series 3mx I picked up recently. It was the pinnacle of the Psion Series 3 range, the last model with the faster CPU. Unfortunately both hinges were smashed. I did have a spare Series 3c that had good hinges, so I took them apart and put the mainboard from the 3mx into the 3c. So now it's a true frankenstein. The outside of it is branded as an Xemplar PocketBook III (for education), the screen half says it's a Series 3c and the keyboard is labeled as a 3mx. To confuse things even more the underside now has the shiny grey SSD doors and battery cover from the 3mx casing.

Watched a couple more episodes of The Walking Dead season 3, which is already massively better than the dull whinge-fest that was season 2, which felt like it could have been done in a couple of episodes.

I'm a hapless geek and I don't care.

Shopping

Yesterday was a curious day. Rob had to go to Manchester to do a tedious payroll module for his course, and came up with a cunning plan that Em and I would go with him and do some Christmas shopping. So we got up at stupid o'clock and got the train. The journey was uneventful and after we left Rob to go and find the hotel, Em and I went to a Costa Coffee and contemplated the relatively empty pavements outside and thought that perhaps the day would be productive and perhaps even fun.

First we went to some small and interesting places in the back streets by Picadilly Gardens. Em was particularly taken with Pop Boutique and if the logistics had allowed, would have transformed their house into a 70's paradise.

After this we went to the Arndale Centre. By now the city was predictably busier and the giant monument to consumerism was crammed with people. After a couple of hours it was getting somewhat wearying and we needed food. The food court was packed, but we got lucky because the only place without a queue was Taco Bell. I went up and ordered a burrito, quesadilla and two portions of churros without queueing at all, while KFC next door had a queue about 20 people deep. I think I started a new trend since as I was waiting for our food, the queue for Taco Bell suddenly grew hugely. The food from there isn't great, it's basically semi-Mexican fast food, but it's a nice change from McDonalds or KFC.

We saw a nice laptop in Currys, an Asus Vivobook with a touch screen and Windows 8. It worked surprisingly well, with the touch screen being a complimentary input device to the mouse and keyboard. The only thing it needed was a more substantial hinge to stop the screen wobbling when you touched it. I think that's the way it needs to go - instead of touch screens becoming the only input device, an additional one to the usual mouse and keyboard, at least for desktops and laptops. Dockable tablets are probably the way to go.

Finally we met up with Rob, went to Forbidden Planet and got the train back. We got a sack of takeaway food from Sainsbury's and ate it in front of Michael Portillo riding astonishing railways in Switzerland and making a prat of himself trying to talk to locals.

Today has been a fairly unproductive day, but I did spend an hour or so sorting out some Christmas shopping online when I wasn't sitting around watching DVDs. I also had a go at making macaroni cheese, which came out rather nice and there was enough for tomorrow lunchtime too.

Patrick Moore has died. Shame as he was a real character.

Meh

Badminton tonight was OK. More than the usual amount of people there so only had two games. We're rapidly developing a dislike for someone who comes with the Hateful One. She is rather large and other than being able to hit the shuttle quite well, seems to never understand how badminton is played. She'll serve to people on the same side as her all the time, never know whether she is serving, or even if people are just passing the shuttle to her. She'll be told several times a game but it doesn't stick. My theory is that she does it to appear ditzy, but it's just annoying.

Not much else to report. Tried to get some Christmas shopping out of the way since it's worryingly close now, but not all that easy.

Found the entirety of 'Live After Death' by Iron Maiden on Youtube in work today, that kept me isolated from the usual office gibbering that is so distracting for some time. Absolutely amazing live album. Also found a track by them I'd never heard before, a cover of 'Doctor Doctor' by UFO. Really good, even though it's when they had Blaze Bayley singing.

NCC-1701

Busy days in work. A lot going on with the backup system. Was tasked today with documenting how the backup system handles data retention in a 'See Spot Run' fashion, because every time I try to explain it, it gets out of hand and nobody understands it. I thought this would be quite easy but when I actually came to put it down, it ran away with me and I was left with a page of incomprehensible gibberish.

Made pasta this evening with a cheese sauce, sweetcorn and peas. Bit of an odd combination and I used caramelised onion cheese for the sauce and put some jalfrezi curry powder in it too, so while it was nice, it was something of a unique taste. Also made far too much so I think I've got lunch for two days now too.

I watched the 2009 Star Trek movie tonight, almost by accident. I didn't actually plan to watch the whole thing, but it sucked me in. Once again I really enjoyed it. It's a pretty radical development over the old series, but with it being an alternate reality, it doesn't invalidate any of the old stuff either. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with for the next one. Zachary Quinto is amazing as Spock too, absolutely spot on performance.

Radiator

Went into work in much the same mood as yesterday, but it gradually improved. I dropped the car off at the garage and they found it had a punctured radiator, which cost £150 to sort out.

The buyer of the M15x received it and left me the most glowing feedback I've ever had on Ebay, so I'm guessing he's happy with it. Good news.

Had another evening of fail. But never mind. It's early but I think I'm going to go to bed with the Kindle or the PS Vita. Tired and unable to process basic information at the moment.

Crudity

Yesterday was a busy day. Went to my Dad's in the morning as I hadn't been for a while. We didn't do all that much, just chilled and looked at my Berlin pictures and had the traditional Saturday fish and chips.

After that it was Steve's random Christmas bash, which was really fun. Ridiculous amounts of food, lots of conversation and general abuse. I met up with Rob and Andy beforehand to watch the dreadful rugby game between Wales and Australia, which was lost in the last seconds, and then we headed off. We were a bit tired which I think helped the conversation reache previously untold levels of crudity. I think the zenith was reached when Maz said she had a swirly chocolate brioche and I said it was because she didn't wipe front to back. This was followed by probably an hour or so of telling each other to fuck off and me farting loudly. It was all in fun but I look back and think it's one of those moments when you realise that it's you that's the arsehole if all you can bring to the conversation is stupid genital humour, farts and burps.

Spent today in a grumpy and bitter mood, consuming snacks in front of DVDs and loathing myself for it at the same time. I ran into someone from college in Morrisons, who I haven't seen in some time and I wish I hadn't while I was stood there with a basket full of crisps and several days worth of stubble because there's a pimple on my jaw that I didn't want to shave over. It didn't really help my mood.

And of course now it's December, which is a month I generally loathe because all the Christmas shit starts happening. It came as something of a shock to realise that I think I hate Christmas so much because everyone else has people to properly enjoy it with. That sounds terrible.

Work tomorrow and taking the car in to have the cooling checked out. Hope it's nothing serious but at least if it is, I've got the cash from the Alienware sale, so I'll keep that on standby.

The next thing I want to get rid of is the PowerEdge 1950. It comes to something when you want to get rid of a machine with 8 CPU cores and 16gb of RAM because you just can't think of anything to do with it. The problem is shipping the damn thing because it's such an awkward shape.