I can't run

Last week was OK. Work was much as usual, although we finally got the two troublesome tape drives sorted out. One had a bad fibre cable and the other just needed a good reset or two to clear the voltage error.

There wasn't any DnD on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went for a run with Andy, which was bloody hard. I've not been out for a run in a while and it really showed. I didn't get as out of breath as I expected, but what did me in was my back and calves, which were absolutely killing me. We eventually did 3.5 miles, but there were quite a few stops and breaks. After that we met up with Rob and Em to book Berlin next year for the half marathon. I wish I could do it but the run proved to me that I'm really not fit enough, and I'm not sure 13 miles will ever be in my capability.

The weather has been shite this weekend with the storms that are going on, although we are only on the edge of it, so I've done very little. I've been plugging away at Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, which I've been playing off and on for a while now. It's a fun game, really nicely put together. For fun I hooked the 3DS up to my surround sound system, as the soundtrack if excellent.

The 3DS XL has now had the shells removed. It was a little fiddly but not too bad in the end. They've been sanded down and have the primer applied, which I'll leave to dry for a few days.

Feeling a bit dispirited at the moment, not quite sure why. I suppose it's natural to assume that you're the good guy but sometimes it's a little worrying to think you might be a complete cunt and just not realise it.

Random fun

Last week was OK in work, a bit stressful, but productive. Had to try some interesting techniques to replicate an AIX machine using the SAN, which didn't quite work but now I know what to do to make it work.

DnD on Tuesday was good fun, and Robert brought his girlfriend Chelsea to have a go. I think she enjoyed it, or she's pretty good at hiding it when she thinks we're all nutters.

Wednesday was good, day off to go to Alton Towers. The weather was not good. The forecast predicted rain between 11am and 3pm, and that's pretty much what we got. No rain until we'd pulled up in the car park and then it started. It wasn't too bad at first and we got on Rita and Thirteen easily enough. I'd never been on either and both were awesome. The acceleration in Rita is truly awesome, not least because it's so smooth. Thirteen is good too, although I won't say why on here.

The rain really kicked in at about 12:30, but fortunately we'd found a fish and chip place where we could eat undercover and watch the torrential downpour. The fish and chips were pretty good too, surprisingly. After that we went around the park doing the usual favourites. Air and Nemesis were just as good as I remember, although doing them in that order makes Air much better. The real star of the day though was the new Smiler. The theme is a little questionable but the coaster itself is mental. We went on it and then some of us went and did it again immediately afterward which made me feel a little strange for a while. The only real letdown of the day was the Nemesis Sub Terra thing, which is a nasty unpleasant scary experience and left us all somewhat traumatised.

The rest of the week was OK, had tea round at Rob and Em's on Friday evening but didn't feel up to going to the gym with Em. Instead I went yesterday, and had a good session with the place nearly to myself again. I've been really bad with eating and exercise recently so I need to get that in hand.

Today was a mixed bag. I didn't do much in the morning and then decided to play around with Duolingo on the MacBook Pro. Except the screen went black and wouldn't come back to life. I decided it was dead and took the SSD out so I could list it on Ebay. But when I came to take the picture of it, the screen worked again. By that time though I'd already wiped the SSD and since the MacBook is a complete shit to take apart, I couldn't be arsed doing any more faffing with it, so it's on Ebay anyway.

The SSD is being transferred into the M11x since it's a 256gb and it only had a 128gb one. Then I decided to test the Dell Studio laptop that Rob and Em were using, and that died a month or so ago with a garbled screen. To my surprise it powered up fine a week or so ago, so I left it running diagnostics, which it passed successfully, even though it got a little warm. Oh well. I can't think of a use for it so it'll go on Ebay too.

Due to iTunes becoming absoutely hideous to use in the latest versions, I installed Winamp. Pleasingly it still looks exactly the same as it always has done, and was a pleasant blast from the past.

Another little project is that I'm going to refinish the outer shells of my 3DS XL. I picked it up cheap because it was badly scratched, and I discovered that they are easy to remove. So the idea is to respray the shell with the chameleon paint I used on the double neck bass project. At least if it goes horribly wrong getting replacements should be easy enough.

Achy hips

Work has been a bit aggravating. The restore of the backup system was fun and interesting, although frustrating when it failed because it's a 90gb database. Typically when it failed it got to 99% complete and then ran out of disk space, so I had to shuffle the partitions around. Finally though, it worked, even in only 4gb RAM. Only the lack of a compatible tape drive stopped me from testing further. Next week is going to be...interesting, but trying not to think about it.

Last night was great, we went to see the Hitch-Hiker's Radio Show Live in Rhyl. It kind of sneaked up on us all because Andrea had booked the tickets way back in March. We were right at the front, and it was really good. The scenes were completely different from last year's version, and they had Mitch Benn playing Zaphod - it was a little jarring at first to see him alongside the others but he was excellent. After that we piled back in the car and went to the Plough to meet up with Andy and Craig from down south who was up for Alison and her Craig's wedding today.

Today has been an interesting day and I'm now feeling really tired. Also a little stuffed after eating nearly all of a pizza to myself, but I hadn't eaten anything much earlier in the day and was ravenous.

Random

Didn't sleep well last night at all, so spent much of today in that sort of fugue state where it was very hard to concentrate. A can of Red Bull got me through the morning but it was a struggle after that. I took one of the old AIX machines and shoved some spare 300gb drives in it to test a restore of the backup system. Some days I wish it ran on Intel hardware as it would be so much easier to test as there's always spare servers, but not so much POWER hardware.

Just got back from the Con Amici in Denbigh where I had a meal with my Mum, her brother and his wife, who we see about once a year. The food was very good indeed.

Went for a bike ride on Sunday with Andy. It was the first one in about three weeks and exercise in general has been a bit shit, so I wasn't expecting to do very well. However we did 26.5 miles and I felt fine, although my legs did feel it for the rest of the day and most of Monday. We are going to look into starting Circuit Training soon since it's good exercise over the winter. Running and cycling may become less of a viable option over the winter.

Once I got back home from the bike ride on Sunday I finished off the main story in GTA V. I've really enjoyed it, absolutely brilliant game. It fixed everything I didn't like about IV and brought in some fantastic features. The environment is superb, it looks and feels fantastic, the cars handle well and the multiple character feature added so much to the game.

Later that evening, Rob and I tried the online, but it was less impressive. Being dumped into a public session just led to you constantly being killed by the usual dickheads, and a private session didn't really have much to do. But it's early days yet, and I suppose you'd expect GTA online to just be chaos. One thing that is a fantastic feature in the Saints Row series is that everything in the game can be played co-op.

I've now lent my copy of GTA V to Rob G in case I decided to delete the save file and start again, since I've now realised that I didn't make full use of the stock market at the right point.

Feeling mega tired now, hope I sleep properly tonight.

The Norwegian Connection

Last weekend was spent at my Dad's with his wife having various relatives over. First was her brother-in-law with his daughter and her family from Birmingham way, then there was her grandaughter with her fiance and daughter from Norway. It was a busy but good couple of days. Then yesterday I had a day off to go and meet the rest of the Norway contingent, which was interesting. One of them plays bass so I took the Jackson over and we had a play with it.

On Monday evening, went for the first run in ages. Em and I managed 2.2 miles at our slow pace, but the others did over 5 miles at a much better pace. I think Em and I have decided that it's unlikely that we'll be ready to do the half marathon in March, but we can still go and provide moral support to the others if they do it.

Talking of basses, the Squier Jazz and the Jackson are both ace. I really like them, not least because they are so different. The Squier is pure classic Jazz Bass, no fancy electronics, while the Jackson is much more modern and has that classic metal look, with active electronics and a surprisingly slim neck for a 5-string. Both need new strings though, the ones on the Jackson are worn out and the default Squier ones aren't very good.

I've booked a trip to Berlin to see Eisbrecher at the end of November. I wasn't going to bother due to the expensive flights, but in the end I found the hotel had a good deal on so I booked it anyway. I go on the 28th November and come back on the 3rd December.

Still really enjoying GTA V. I've not been playing it as much over the last week or so, but when I do pick it up I really have fun with it. Absolutely superb. I think the online is working now so need to give that a try too.

So far, so meh

It's been an OK week, frustrating in work, but otherwise not too bad. Unhealthy due to my Mum's birthday, which involved a Chinese takeaway, and lack of exercise so far.

GTA V has continued to impress. I'm still really enjoying it, except for the announced bug where cars can disappear. But that's only minor.

It has been suggested that we do the Berlin half-marathon next year. I'm in two minds about it - that I really want to do it and it would be great to do in a group, but then also I balk at the training through the winter and if I'm actually capable of doing it. Not sure, but it's certainly a thought.

Bass developments. I decided that while I liked the Ibanez BTB07LTD I picked up a few months ago, I wasn't keen on the 35" scale. I've ordered a new Squier Jazz Bass to replace it, which is the nice natural 70's model. It would have arrived today except they failed to deliver it. The idea is that I fund it by selling off the various other ones I have. I offered the Ibanez to a couple of people including someone in one of the buildings I used to support in work, and he suggested a swap with his Jackson 5-string bass. The intention was to cut down on the number of basses but a 5-string might be useful...

Not sure what's happening over the weekend or early next week as my Dad's wife has family coming over from Norway, but they seem hopelessly disorganised.

The Cookie Clicker is odd, but fun.

Return to San Andreas

Last weekend was the overtime. It was a busy couple of days. On Saturday we were in the office from 9am to 9pm. There was a LOT of ripping up floor tiles, shifting old servers and storage arrays, etc, and replacement of all the old orange fibre cables with nice new aqua ones. It was a remarkable faff. The Sunday was spent finishing it all off and trying to work out why two of my AIX machines wouldn't see their storage. Got them working in the end and finally it was all sorted.

Monday was frustrating in work and I was very glad when it came to Tuesday since it was the beginning of my three days off work. I went to the gym first thing to get some exercise in before coming home and finding a shiny copy of GTA V in the post box. The rest of the time until Thursday evening basically revolved solely around playing it.

Except for Wednesday, which was the Tour of Britain. I went to Andy's and we went down to the bottom of Vale Street in Denbigh and watched it go past, and then back to his house to watch it live. It was interesting watching them going along such familiar roads, and then the finish was awesome. I got a good video of them going past, but wish I'd taken my decent camera.

Back in work today, and it was an utterly wasted day given that it was originally going to be another day off. There were three things I went in to do. The AS/400 was to be migrated to a new Bladecenter, but this couldn't be done due to incorrect hardware again. The tape library had a faulty drive, but while the new drive had turned up, the engineer couldn't make it, and then the final shutdown of a rapidly becoming obsolete AIX box didn't happen, so I could have had another day off. Oh well.

I wasn't too sure about pre-ordering GTA V, but I'm glad I did. After the brown depressing experience with unlikable characters which was GTA IV, this one is back to the feel of San Andreas and I've really enjoyed it so far. It's got loads of stuff to do outside of the main missions. The environment is good as well, it looks amazing and there's loads of places to explore. So far I'm about 38% into it and really enjoying it. The multi-character thing is good too, works really well.

What's the point.

It's been an OK week. On Monday went running. Em and I did our own route and clocked up about 2.1 miles which was nearly all running, surprising both of us. Not bad after a few weeks of neglect.

Tuesday wasn't DnD due to Steve not being able to make it, so we played Super Munchkin instead. Like Magic the week before, it seems to bring the vindictive side out in people, although it could be said this is the whole point of the game.

Didn't do much Wednesday. Had good intentions to go to the gym but failed.

Today I took a flexi day as I had loads saved up and we're working over the weekend. I ended up taking the dog for a walk, which he enjoyed but struggled towards the end. He's happier pootling around the field now I think with his bad leg. After that I spent ages digging out a ditch and getting properly filthy, and then picked some apples from the mutant tree.

After that I read for a bit and then it was off to badminton for the first time in ages. We had some delicious thai green curry round at Steve's and then went to get new wiper blades for Rob's car before heading over. I haven't played in ages and the last time I did play I fucked up my knee, so between being out of practice and being cautious I played like shite.

Discovered that Eisbrecher are playing in Berlin on the 30th November. Quite tempted to go and see them but then it probably wouldn't be any fun going by myself and nobody else I know likes them. Flights are awkward around then as well, so there isn't much point thinking about it

Everything seems so pointless at the moment. Spending all day at work doing pointless shit with fuck all to look forward to when I come home. I've got three days of annual leave next week. Originally it was a single day to watch the Tour of Britain, but the other two are just for the sake of taking leave. I'll probably just end up sitting around playing GTA V since that comes out on the Tuesday. I'm assuming that I'll end up with shitloads of leave to use up by the end of the holiday period next year. I'd like to go away somewhere but it's pointless and depressing going by yourself.

I just have this worsening feeling that I've fucked my life up somewhere and I don't know what to do about it. Or if I can do anything about it.

Language fun

So far since the middle of the week it's been quiet. I spent Thursday evening taking a shedload of boxes over to Andrea's place after they have to move quite quickly and she sent a distress call out on Facebook asking for boxes. I managed to fill up the 206 almost completely with boxes and bubblewrap. It was good to see them and little James again, who has grown hugely.

Went for a solo bike ride yesterday. I set off from home doing a loop down to Denbigh and back up. The idea was to tackle some hills since from Denbigh to the Brenig is pretty much one giant hill. I'm a bit worried that the mountain bike isn't helping though, as the gearing is very low and it's much harder to stand up on the pedals properly, so it's easier just to pootle up them in bottom gear at walking pace.

After that I had a go on Fallout 3 which Will lent me and I haven't had a chance to try yet. I thought it was OK but found it a bit difficult to get into the storyline and some of the mechanics seemed quite complex.

Today has been a lazy day. I popped into town to get the stuff to make the Canadian comfort food, Poutine, although getting cheese curds is hard so I had to substitute mozarella. Anyway, it came out really nice although it's probably hard to fuck up chips with cheese and gravy. First time I've tried to make chips though and they came out nice.

The rest of the day I played around with language things and watched Star Trek and also cleaned up the 6-string bass, which despite regular use had gone all manky around the gold hardware. I'm still not sure if I like it or not because it's so heavy and the wide neck. I flip between wanting to get rid of it and rewiring it with new pickups, can never decide.

Duolingo is fun and was made easier by having an old Latitude E4300 laptop with a German keyboard. However it was running stupidly hot, so I took it apart to have a look at it and replace the thermal paste. Now Windows 8 refuses to boot on it, although I'm not sure if that's an issue with the machine or Windows has just borked itself. Seems to be Windows since it passed all the built in diagnstics. In the end I couldn't be bothered faffing with it so I put it aside for a rainy day. German is a fun language but a bit fiddly. Also looked up some Mandarin lessons for fun. Fascinating to listen to it but it's very hard.

Hopefully going to get back into running again next week. I've been really hesitant about it after my knee troubles a couple of weeks ago, but they seem fine again now.

Cycling and ghosts

Last weekend it was all about the cycling. Andy and I went for a 15 mile warm up ride on the Saturday, which was good. The mountain bike behaved fine, and the new tyres really do help it on the road. After that was off to Rhyl to catch the part of the airshow that had the Vulcan bomber, that was truly incredible to see. Amazing to think it's the only one left, and then the day after it was grounded due to a fuel leak.

After the air show we headed to Anglesey to register for the Tour de Mon. It was a long way to go for what amounted to literally a couple of minutes, but it was good to get it done and ready.

The ride itself on Sunday was great. It was really well organised with a fantastic atmosphere. The route was clearly marked and easy to follow, and the food stations were good. The automatic timing system worked as expected and within a minute of finishing I got a text with my time on it, which was impressive. The ride itself was quite hard in places and again I struggled with hills, especially on the last few miles which were against the wind. The bike was OK but I wonder if I'd have managed better on a road bike.

This week has been reasonable. Work has been OK. Monday evening was spent resting my legs. Last night wasn't DnD because Sarah couldn't make it so Steve busted out his Magic the Gathering cards, which neither Rob, Rob or I had played. It was interesting but I think it lacked the story and characterisation element that makes DnD compelling.

Tonight was going to be running but Em couldn't make it and I chickened out of going with Andy and Rob G due to my lack of speed, and so I went to the gym instead, which went well as it was nice and quiet.

Nintendo have announced the 2DS. It's been met with a variety of reactions. I actually quite like it in the end, it reminds me of the old Gameboys and it looks quite comfortable to hold. All the debate about it led me to dig out my 3DS XL and have another go on Luigi's Mansion 2, which I've really enjoyed picking up again. Good game. The 3D is used well in the cutscenes but I turn it off in the game itself as it gets in the way and my eyes don't like it. It's nice to play a game that's just fun and not 'RAH GUNS KILL'.

The car had another bit of work done. The suspension was knocking and the garage found the suspension arm bushes were so worn the arm was actually hitting the chassis. All fixed now and the tracking is spot on.

Insane in the mainframe

The bank holiday was a nice day. Went for a 27 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve, which went pretty well, although it was rather hot. Second ride on the mountain bike and it was still OK.

Yesterday was not a good day. A couple of systems had issues and I had to do a lot of troubleshooting on the main Unix server and eventually shut it down to run disk checks and restart it. Not good. Then the backup system decided it didn't like one of the tape drives any more, so that was all fun.

Today was a bit meh after all that. Although Andrea came into work who I've not seen for ages so it was good to see her and little James, who has grown lots since we last saw him.

After the trouble I've had with my knees over the last couple of weeks I've decided to play it safe this week as I don't want to risk messing them up again before the Tour de Mon on the weekend. After that I'm not sure about running. It's good exercise and I would like to be able to run further. Having said that though, last time I screwed my knee up it was playing badminton.

State of mind fluctuating.

Oh well. Wonder if it would be any better if I'd started exercising earlier on in life. Who knows. Who cares.

Good / bad / indifferent / ???

The 5k went OK. It was not easy. I had to walk a little bit after the first hill, and then got a really bad stich on the last stretch. At the end I wasn't sure if I was going to have a drink, puke, or pass out. Possibly all three.

To get by without the road bike, my Dad and I set up my mountain bike with some Schwalbe slick tyres, some bar ends and the SPD pedals. The bike had a proper outing a couple of weeks ago with the Denbigh Harriers on a social ride, and although the others were much fitter and on proper road bikes I didn't get all that left behind. It was actually really good fun and the bike rode a lot better than I expected.

Running hasn't been going well since. I went to the gym last Tuesday and did a workout, and then on Wednesday tried to go for a run and my knees were shagged. It's only today when I was up at Kirkham visiting my cousin that they finally settled down. I was all set to give up on running completely on Thursday since they were pretty bad. I'm not sure if I need to go quite that far, but I'm going to be a little more cautious about my knees in general since they seem a bit fragile.

Bike ride tomorrow with Andy and Steve. Need to get some miles in due to the Tour de Mon on this coming Sunday, which is starting to feel a little scary. Can't believe it came around this quickly.

Not much else to report really. In a slightly fragile state of mind. Tired of how my life is at the moment and so utterly helpless to do anything about it. Almost enough to just give up completely. Sometimes it seems that if you're single, and not with someone/getting married/dropping out a baby that you're a complete nobody, which is a stupid way to feel but can't stop myself dwelling on it sometimes. Don't like feeling this way because I tend to avoid people and sit in front of DVDs eating shite. As it is I'm wondering why I'm bothering to exercise at the moment.

One of my favourite Metallica songs, with Robert Trujillo doing the bass full justice.

5k tomorrow

It's been a good week, even if the running on Wednesday was a bit rubbish. I had a slightly dodgy tummy all day, and so when it came to running, I was really poor. Kept having to slow down to a walk. Given it's the 5k tomorrow, it's a bit worrying, but I hope I'll be OK.

Have also signed up for the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon on the 1st September. Unfortunately my road bike has had it, and I can't afford to go and drop a load of cash on a new one, so my stopgap solution is to use the mountain bike. I took it over to my Dad's today and we put some new slick tyres on it, some bar ends to get different hand positions, and put the SPD pedals on it. I've only ridden it up and down my Dad's drive so far, but the tyres really made a difference. Will have to test it out properly soon.

In other news, DnD was really good fun on Tuesday. Typical session of combat, banter and outright abuse. How the team stays a team, I don't know. It's amazing they haven't tried to kill each other yet.

Otherwise it's been a quiet week. Work hasn't been too bad, just a few things causing trouble that weren't too bad to fix.

The recent things with Lavabit closing down and other revelations are a little troubling. I remember when I first encountered the Internet that it was such an amazing resource, with so much potential, and it's depressing to see it seemingly being twisted into a tool to reduce privacy and monitor people.

Running the MacBook Pro on battery to see how long it lasts. It reckons it's got over two hours left, which isn't too bad.

Grumps

Last Thursday we went to badminton for the first time in a while. It was OK, except one of the women there got very crotchety about people getting onto the court and started to use physical violence, which was a bit crappy. We were also a bit weighed down by the food we'd eaten at Steve's, which was a BBQ in the sunshine.

Friday was a quiet one. Saturday was a good day. First thing was an eye test at Asda in Llandudno, which went well. It was a little surreal though to be sitting there having an eye test with the constant beep-beep-beep of the cash registers. They had an interesting machine there which the woman said would show me a little house. It came up, completely out of focus and then instantly went into perfect focus, and from that they got an idea of what my prescription was. Then went through the normal tests. I've ordered some glasses from there anyway.

After that, it was hanging out with my Dad. He's just bought a nice new bike, a Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc, which is a complete break from the old-school drop bar bikes he normally rides. It's really nice, and has hydraulic disc brakes, which are pretty scary in their stopping power. We also went to look around some places in case they had a bike that might suit me. I wasn't really looking, but after I looked at the drivetrain on my road bike yesterday, it's completely shot. I thought I heard it creaking on the last ride.

In the evening it was over to Rob and Em's for a BBQ, which was good. Al and Becky were up from down south, so it was a nice long evening of chat and food. It went on longer than we though, suddenly it was nearly midnight.

Sunday was a day of not much at all apart from deciding the road bike is fucked and I need a new one. Andy and I are planning on doing the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon at the start of September so I need one pretty sharpish. Not quite sure what to do though really, whether to go used or new or what. Either way it's going to eat into my savings until payday, bah. A cyclocross bike would make sense for the versatility but I don't think I can stretch that far in good conscience, since most of them seem expensive.

Today was an annoying day, and I was due to meet Andy and Rob after work for running, but on the way there I just couldn't cope with the idea of it and came home to do some tidying and list some stuff on Ebay to try and raise bike funds. But now I wish I had gone running, since the 5k is on this coming Sunday. Oh well. I need to try and get used to the treadmill at the gym too, to get ready for winter.

Latest geeky project was to install ESXi on one of the old broken Latitude E4300s I had lying around. It's got two hard drives in it for a total of about 820gb storage, although memory is tight at just 4gb, but it's enough to play around with virtualisation on it. So far it's got a Windows Server 2012 VM on it. This came about because I discovered the old Optiplex I was using for the same purpose didn't have a VT-x CPU, so it couldn't run 64-bit guests. I have a feeling I probably knew this way back when, but forgot. Oh well. It'll be interesting to see how the E4300 copes, but this time I installed ESXi on a flash drive, so if necessary I can take that and the hard drives and hook them up to a completely different machine and it should just fire up exactly the same.

Geekiness Xtreme

Work has been continuously meh this week, although something called Nessus has proved interesting, which is a vulnerability scanner.

Last night was good - we went out in a group and ran the upcoming 5k route to practice. Fortunately the weather remained OK and we got round fine. I had to walk about a minute after the first hill because I think I was a little optimistic and went too fast, but after that I got around fine. Em and I did it in about 37 minutes while the others were about 31-33. Not exactly world shaking times but a good basis for improvement.

It was supposed to be running class tonight, but it rained continuously all day long, and my legs were still feeling it from last night, so I wimped out and came home and had a nice geeky evening. I was experimenting with sharing disks from a Windows Server 2012 machine to both the Windows 8 Alienware and the MacBook Pro. I really wanted to play with iSCSI since it sounds interesting and should work well over gigabit. This worked well with Windows 8 which connected straight up to a shared disk, and performance was surprisingly good.

Annoyingly though Apple doesn't include an iSCSI initiator with Mac OS X, and while there are third party ones, they aren't free. Oh well. NFS was a pain due to Windows being a bit shit at supporting it but eventually I got the Mac talking to a standard Windows share. While this works though, it isn't as fast as iSCSI or NFS. Oh well. All good fun. I also found the rather childish way that Apple represents Windows PCs in Mac OS X - as an old fashioned CRT showing a blue screen of death. It seems fairly typical of the arrogant attitude that Apple has developed over the last decade or so though.

It's interesting to compare Mountain Lion to Windows 8 though. It basically feels the same that OS X always has done, ever since the original version, which I had running on an old iMac. Windows has changed several times since then, although Windows 8 is clearly the most different. I'm still a little ambivalent about it - it's been improved a lot underneath but the new interface is just a little odd if you aren't using a touchscreen.

So many screws...

Yesterday was another bike ride with Andy. We decided to go a different way this time, heading up through Henllan. Sounded good in theory, but it was quite a long haul up to Henllan, then there was a massive drop out of the village. This led to a truly ridiculous hill, which was horrible. We got nearly to the top and then had to turn off and make our way to St Asaph along some back roads, which was actually really nice. Once we got to St Asaph we did our usual route around back to Denbigh, but we were knackered because of the earlier hills, and we screwed up nutrition so we were really tired.

In the evening it was Rob's birthday meal, which was in the Guildhall Tavern in Denbigh. It was a well attended event with nearly 30 people, and was really good fun. The weather finally broke, and when people were leaving it was absolutely chucking it down.

Today has been a fairly lazy day so far. Fortunately the little toolkit I picked up with useful screwdriver bits turned up, so I was able to disassemble the MacBook Pro with the annoying T6 screws. It's now got a larger faster hard drive with a clean install of Mountain Lion, and fresh thermal paste on the heatsink. I had to take it apart twice though as I accidentally tightened the heatsink screws too much the first time, so when it booted back up the CPU was idling at 100 degrees...ouch! It's running much cooler now than it did originally, with the CPU idling at around 45 degrees and the GPU at 59 degrees, which seems pretty good for these machines as they apparently run hot by default. It's definitely running cooler than when I first got it. I think someone had tried to regunk the heatsink before, but not done a very good job.

The first time I took it apart, it took ages as I was meticulously following the iFixit guide and keeping track of all the screws. The second time I didn't care and had the logic board out in about 10 minutes, but I still got it back together with no leftover screws. These older MBPs are a bit of a sod to take apart, wonder what the unibody ones are like.

Ah well, so far so good. Next is to put some more RAM in it assuming I can find some suitable DIMMs. At the moment it only has 2gb, and the maximum for some weird reason is 6gb. Odd. I'd also like to put an SSD in it as putting them in my other machines has definitely made me a convert.

Forgot to mention that the car had some more work done. The whining engine was cured by a couple of new pulleys and the chugging noise was a disconnected pipe. The snapped rear seatbelt was replaced and also the seal on the top of the fuel tank. It's definitely getting there...

It's been a week of ups and downs. Work has been rather meh due to the ongoing issues from the penetration testing.

Monday evening was running, which was hard. It was stupidly hot and I went there intending to do 12 laps of the track which is nearly a 5k, but I ended up doing 7. Not great, but I lived with it.

Tuesday was DnD at Rob G's place. Em joined us for lasagne before heading off, and it was a really good evening. Had an unexpected encounter with another jelly beast, which was eventually dispatched after a fierce battle.

Wednesday was running class. This time they took us around a road course, which was two 13 minute runs with a 2 minute walk in the middle. The first 13 minutes were fine but I found the last 13 minutes a struggle, spending at least half of it convinced I was going to puke.

Yesterday and today have been uneventful.

In a somewhat rash move I picked up an elderly MacBook Pro a few days ago. It's a mid-2007 17" model with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, a 120gb hard drive and the troublesome Nvidia 8600gt graphics chip. Other than a few cosmetic dings and some minor pressure marks on the screen, it works fine. I'm intending to put a spare faster 250gb hard drive in it, and hopefully upgrade the RAM, although it has a curious limit of 6gb.

I also really want to replace the thermal paste and clean the fans out to make sure the graphics chip is kept as cool as possible. However, like the white MacBook I experimented with a couple of years ago, I find that MacBooks get their solidity from being bizarrely designed with lots of different weird screws. Also at the moment it's running Lion, which apparently is a bit rubbish, so I want to put Mountain Lion on it which is apparently better.

It's weird to use a Mac again after so much time. My reasoning for finding a MacBook was that I've been getting increasingly hacked off with Linux. It's great for servers, but on the desktop it's a clusterfuck of different GUIs, audio systems, etc. I keep reading that people really rate Mac OS X for Unixy stuff, so I thought I'd give it a go. I do like the feel of the MBP though, I always thought the original models looked a lot nicer than the unibody models that followed them.

Fun weekends

Last weekend in Kent was really good fun, had a great time. The party was really good fun and carried on into the night. We eventually ended up walking back up to Jane and Wes's house at midnight. My bloody cricket bat as part of my Shaun outfit did get some attention...oh well. Sunday was good, we hung out, watched Wes open his presents and then sat down with crazy amounts of pizza and a rather terrible movie called The Last Stand with Arnie trying to pretend he isn't past it. The journey back on Monday was fine, and we got back in good time.

Wednesday running was not good after two weeks. It was cross country as well, and I found it far too difficult, not least because I had a mild cold that initially I thought was hayfever. But afterward I felt better enough to do some more laps of the track. We went again on Friday, which was very hard because it was so hot.

Yesterday went for a bike ride with Andy and Steve. This turned out to be the longest one yet, clocking in at between 36.2 and 37 miles, depending on whose phone you believe (the 37 mile one obviously). Again I found it quite hard but fortunately there were some clouds in the sky for a change, which made it a lot more manageable. My chain came off at one point, which also slowed me down. I was struggling somewhat at the end, but I felt OK once I'd come home and had a shower and a lie down.

In the evening it was off to Ed's for his birthday BBQ, the first one for a while. It was really good fun, a good mix of people, and various shenanigans. The highlight was making everyone wear Andy's Harry Hill mask, then taking pictures of everyone from below in groups and then trying on Vicky's blonde wig. Really good night all round.

Today it was off to Wrexham with Rob and Em. Rob had his archery club session, so while he was doing that, Em and I went to Sports Direct to get me some lighter exercise gear, although we were too early for the shops so we had breakfast at Frankie and Benny's before heading to the shop. After that we exploited PC World's iPads to get a map back to where Rob was, and then headed over to see what was going on. The archery club was actually quite fascinating, with people using all sorts of different bows from longbows to one of those massively complicated ones with cams and cogs and all sorts. After Rob was done we got back on the road, stopping off at the OK Diner for food, which was pretty good. I've been past that place loads of times and never been in there.

This afternoon has been less fun, doing some stuff for work - updating some servers and stuff. Oh well. It was helped by Joe Satriani doing his thing, so there we are.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow and then running in the evening.

Kent

It wasn't a great week this week in work, and it's shaping up to be truly pants until the end of July.

No running on Monday evening due to the mad heat. Tuesday evening I went round to Steve's and we had BBQ burgers and sausages before playing some split-screen Alien Marines or something on the Xbox. It wasn't the greatest of games, but it was nice to play split screen for a change.

I had to stay late in work on Wednesday due to work on one of the storage arrays, so I missed the running class, which was frustrating. Thursday was not badminton as usual, instead it was a BBQ at one of the member's house, which was stunning as always, and made even better with the weather being nice enough to sit outside.

Yesterday it was time to pile into the car with Rob and Em and head down to Kent for Wes's 30th birthday bash, which is today. It's shaping up to be a great bash, and is of course fancy dress. I decided to be Shaun of the Dead because it's relatively easy to do and I was able to borrow Steve's cricket bat. The weather is ridiculously good too.

Fecking electrics

Thursday was OK, badminton was annoying though, due to a presence of someone who has come a few times. She seems to have issues remembering the rules, despite being told several times a game. We weren't sure what was going on, but she seems to have genuine mental issues, and last week at least, doesn't seem to actually enjoy playing. It's the Evil One who brings her, and I think she's not helping.

Friday evening was a walk up Moel Famau in the evening with a load of people from work to highlight Steve P's birthday. We set off at 8pm and got back to the cars for about 9:30pm. It was really good fun, but I'm always surprised at how far it is, and the last section is always tough. I think the running and cycling has really helped though as I definitely coped better up there than the last time I went up there a couple of years ago. Afterwards we drove down to the Druid in Llanferres and had a few drinks, and as it was Dave L's local he persuaded them to make us some chilli, even though they had stopped serving food. It was really good too.

Saturday Morning was the Lions game, which was good as they won, definitively. Then after that, Andy and I headed out for a bike ride, only a short 12 miles. It was bloody hot though. After that I came home and watched some Doctor Who, the first of the rebooted series after I picked up the boxset a couple of weeks ago. It's been a while since I've seen them, so I was a little surprised at how ropy the early episodes are in places, especially the CGI effects in places.

Today I headed out to get some supplies and then came home and had a bonfire of some stuff that needed burning, which was nice. The youngish cows we have on our fields at the moment were a pain as they are very nosy things and thought I was putting something out for them. They certainly got a shock when I lit it though. Then I watched more Doctor Who.

The car is still going OK and today it hit 285 miles since I filled it up. This is the point that the Accord would have been running on fumes, but the 206 still has well over half a tank left. This is good. What's bad is the typically French electrics - the indicator stalks and the driver's door both need attention. But due to having bought the thing and having it serviced, I'll have to wait a bit to get those sorted out. There are workarounds though, so it is liveable with.

There must be some car out there which has this kind of economy and decent build quality too. I wonder what it is, but I bet it's not French.

Long time

Keep forgetting to update this thing.

Notable events - Friday was an Italian meal in Rhyl and going to see Man of Steel for Rob G's birthday. The meal was good. Man of Steel had bits where it was good, but the last third was bad. As Wes said, when it's good, it's great, but when it's bad, it's Transformers.

Running is progressing OK. We did a bike ride on Sunday which wasn't too bad, and then did some more running on Monday evening. For whatever reason though, I really struggled. Tonight's session was a lot better though - up to 8 minute runs. At first I didn't feel like it, but towards the end I felt fine and could have carried on. My calves still complained and I got a mild stitch again, but on the whole I think my body is getting more used to it.

The 206 has had it's service. It cost more than I expected, but still within what I budgeted. It needed a tyre  and a wheel bearing, amongst other things. It definitely runs better now. It still has a whine which they said is the power steering pump and can wait. There are also a few bushes and things that will need checking out at some point. On the plus side, my road bike fits in the back of it perfectly with the front wheel off, so that's a relief.

The Accord has gone - my Dad and I took it to the auction on Monday, and hopefully it will have sold last night. The journey there reminded me forcefully of what a nice car it was, but it had several issues and the fuel economy was so terrible. I discovered it used oil quite badly as well. On the plus side, the ABS light stayed off that whole day, after being on for at least a month.

Watched 8 episodes of Game of Thrones season 3 - not going to say anything about it but I've really enjoyed it. I was going to start the books, but I chickened out and have started a reread of the Hunger Games books.

After a couple of months about being dubious about the Ibanez BTB07LTD bass I bought, I've decided I rather like it. The shape is big, but it looks great and is very ergonomic and it has a nice slim neck. The 35" scale was a little odd, but I've got used to it now. The finish with the matt green and the so-called 'Wild X' across the front is a bit dubious though. I've noticed that where that finish is chipped off, it's red, so I reckon they had a load of spare bodies and necks and made a limited edition to get rid of them. I'm not too keen on the electrics though, so I have vague plans to rip it all out and put a pair of passive EMG pickups in and rewire it. I even thought about stripping the finish off and repainting it in the same flip paint I did the double neck in, since it would probably work quite well on the shape.

But any projects like that will have to wait some time as I'm now skint after getting the 206, and I need to sort out my savings and things for a few months.

The Germans have adopted the word 'shitstorm'. Awesome.

70mpg eh? Let's see...

The weather was crap over the weekend. I spent Saturday doing absolutely nothing but sit on my bed and read books. Although, unusually for me, I was aware of my lack of physical activity and ate accordingly.

Sunday wasn't much better although I did make it to the gym. However when I went to Morrisons to get supplies, a box of donuts for 80p unaccountably appeared in my basket, goodness knows how. I also weighed myself as I kept forgetting - 13 stone 7. Last time I weighed myself I was about 14 stone 2, which was about two months ago. Not bad. Hope I can keep it up.

Went running after work. Did some laps of the track with 6 minute runs. Felt a bit better this time, although my left calf was playing up - think I didn't stretch it as much as my right one. It was also nice and cool, much prefer it to the sun where you get too hot.

Picked up the 206 as well. I was quite worried about how it would feel to drive after the Accord, but it's fine. The ride is a bit bouncy in comparison, but not too bad. The engine is pretty torquey though, and it feels surprisingly nippy for a little 1.4 diesel. Fortunately I adapted back to a manual gearbox straight away, which is good.

I know it needs a service though, so I'm going to get that booked in ASAP. It does have a couple of quirks - it has automatic headlights, but the sensor seems to be a little flaky, so they come on pretty much all the time, but it can be overridden. Good thing it doesn't have the automatic wipers.

The stereo is the standard Peugeot one - a CD player. I'd actually have preferred a tape deck so I could use the iPod adapter from the Accord. I found a blank CD and made up a new compilation - it actually felt quite nice to go through my music and have 20 or so carefully selected tracks instead of having a full iPods worth. The speakers are pretty good too, pleasantly surprised by that. I haven't worked out how to fold the seats down though to try out the bike, need to figure that out. It might be a case of both wheels off, but we'll see.

Infinite

I had booked half a day flexi leave today to look at cars, which became pointless after I saw the 206 last night, but I decided I might as well use up some flexi anyway.

Stopped off at Morrisons and picked up some food and came home. I watched a bit of a DVD and then sat down and had another go at finishing BioShock Infinite. I got it done after a couple of goes and got to see the ending. It left me rather stunned and with that feeling you get after finishing a really good book, kind of sad that you can't read any more of it. Very good game. Somehow I managed to get to play it without knowing anything at all about it - I barely even realised it had been released, so I think that really helped with the experience. I want to go back and play the first BioShock now and then perhaps give BioShock 2 another go, as I never really got into it.

Not picking up the 206 tomorrow after all, as they have found it needs a new shock absorber and they can't get one for tomorrow, so should be getting it on Monday. I was hoping to do a bike ride with Andy this evening but the Accord's boot seems to be permanently locked now, and my usual fix of spraying WD40 into the handle hasn't worked. Oh well. The weather looks to be shit this weekend anyway so I'm planning on going to the gym.

Week of fun

Last weekend was good. Went for a bike ride with Andy, which was his first outing on a loaned road bike. He pretty much left me behind the whole time, since it is so much easier to ride than his mountain bike. I was having an off day and really struggled, and had to walk up some hills because my knee was playing up. By the end of it though, my knee was OK. After the ride though, no time to relax as we had to go to Vicky's birthday meal in Rhyl, which was in a really good Italian place. It was a nice evening.

Sunday consisted of playing BioShock Infinite. I thought I was near the end, but there was a whole lot more do to, and then there was a massive fight that I couldn't get past. So I had to turn it off and do something else before I smashed the controller.

Monday was down to Denbigh for a running session, however we all got roped into joining the intermediate group for games, which was a little surreal and like being back in school. Only Andy managed to avoid it. Afterward Em and I did a couple of laps and did fine.

Tuesday was DnD, which was entertaining. Sarah couldn't make it but we had a massive battle anyway, and once again my character threw himself into the fight, taking shitloads of damage but coming out of it with a smile (grimace) on his face.

Wednesday was the running class again. It was hard this time - run for five minutes, walk for two and a half. It was quite hard, but rather than feeling tired, my calves were killing me for some reason. I did start to get a little bit of a stitch, but it didn't last, which was good.

Tonight was badminton. We went to Steve's for a BBQ, but Rob and Em couldn't make it so there was an excess of food. Despite this, Steve and I both played quite well at badminton and had some good games.

In the last week I've been looking at cars, as the Accord is ridiculous on fuel, and I made the discovery that it's using quite a lot of oil. I don't think it's leaking it so it must be burning it off, although I haven't noticed any excessive smoke. Anyway, I saw a 2000 Astra 1.8 CDX at a local garage on Ebay, so I left work a bit early to take a look. The engine was a bit big but it was top of the range with lots of equipment. However when I came look at it, it didn't grab me, even though it was in nice condition. Also I'd read that the tax was £270 a year because of the date it was registered.

However, next to it was a 2002 Peugeot 206 1.4 HDi, which looked OK and I know someone in work who has one and loves it. I had a go in it and it was fine, so I've put a deposit down and will pick it up on Saturday. The 1.4 diesel is good for 60mpg and tax is £30 a year. The only thing is getting my bike in it, but I reckon it'll go in with the front wheel off and the passenger seat forward.

I'll have to get the insurance to overlap so I can take the Accord to the auction. I will miss the Accord though. It's a nice big car that wafts along and is really comfortable, but while I can afford to run it, I'd rather not be spending quite so much on petrol each week.

Not much else to report.

State of mind

Last week wasn't too bad. My knee remained troublesome until Saturday.

On Friday I worked from home in the morning and then went to my Dad's in the afternoon for his birthday. We went out for a meal at the Pen y Bryn in Colwyn Bay, which was good, and then hung out for the afternoon.

On Sunday my knee felt better enough to go for a bike ride with Andy, although we went on a flat route. It was the first time I rode properly with the SPDs and it was pretty good. I only forgot to unclip right at the end of the ride and I remembered just in time.

On Monday I did the initial session of the beginner's running course with Andy, which was very hard. I sort of assumed that because I was doing OK with the bike and at the gym, that I would be OK with running, but I wasn't. I got a really bad stich and my calves hurt. Last night it was the next session, which was again hard, but the instructor gave me some tips on reducing the stitch and said that people who cycle a lot quite often have calf problems when they start running because the foot is much more stationary on a bike. Anyway it looks like I'm doing the 5k in August, which is a scary prospect.

Today was the first badminton in quite some time, with the new floor. It was fun, but I couldn't get around the court anywhere near as fast as I could before. I think the different exercise hasn't helped, but hopefully should get back into it soon.

On the weekend it's a bike ride with Andy and then a meal for Vicky's birthday. Not sure about Sunday yet. Hopefully going to go to the gym after work tomorrow.

Not much else to report. Played most of BioShock Infinite over last weekend while I was resting my knee, and it was very good. Not much left to go so I'm looking forward to seeing how it winds up.  I also forgot to mention that recently I picked up a battered but working 3DS XL. The original 3DS was too small - it makes so much more sense as the XL. I've been playing Luigi's Mansion 2 off and on, which is good fun. Still ploughing through A Clash of Kings, which is a good read. I want to reread some of the Culture books though, sadly Iain Banks has died.

The Xbox One looks to be a giant fiasco already - when the time comes I think everyone I know is going to look at the PS4 instead. Given what Microsoft has done to turn the 360 into an advertising box I was already dubious about it's successor.

Feel like I need a holiday. Work is getting me down. I'd love to book a trip to Berlin in the summer to see the city in the sunshine, but I need to sort out a new car come next payday so I can't really afford it. I suppose I could look into going somewhere in the UK, but these days there doesn't seem to be any point in suggesting a group holiday unless it's all couples, and going by myself is a depressing prospect.

Mega ouchy

No DnD last night due to Rob being busy with the ongoing family visit.

Tonight was the first session of a running class that builds up to the Vale of Clwyd 5k in August. I was quite looking forward to it and really hoping that my knee would be up to. It felt quite painful last night but not too bad today - more stiff than painful. Anyway, I got home and decided to jog from the car to the front door to see how that felt.

This backfired dramatically and led to an hour and a half of intense pain and barely being able to walk. It's settled down again now but is still far from being right. It was that bad I even decided I coudln't drive into town to use the arm bike in the gym and do some upper body work, which would have been better than nothing.

It's just mega frustrating not being able to exercise properly when I've just got into it sort of properly. Bah. Ironically I googled my symptoms and it came back with Runner's Knee. Ha.

Oh well. I've been trying to take my inability to exercise properly into account when eating, with varying success.

I decided to take the custom double neck bass apart and put it on Ebay as I don't use it and I'd rather have the memories and photos. So far the body has got 40 watchers and a bid already, although I think the necks will fetch more. I'm also in two minds about my 6-string bass. It needs new strings and the wiring is fucked. I'm tempted to pick up an EMG 45HZ pickup for it and rewire it with passive electronics and then put new strings on it. Or I could just flog it for parts. I don't know...

Still ouchy

Knee was better today but I went to the gym again after work. I didn't do anything that involved leg work, did quite a lot on the arm bike thing and then some weights but when I got home I had to go and sort the water pump out again so I don't think that helped. I think it is on the mend though.

Work was meh, shuffling data round on tapes again and had to stay a bit late to help with the AS/400.

Yesterday I spent the day at my Dad's. I took my road bike over and we fitted the SPD pedals to it and then I had a gentle pootle along the prom to see how they were. It took a while to get the hang of clipping in, but once they are, it feels quite nice. The shoes have the nice silver cleats that detach in multiple ways but I'm sure I'll forget at some point. Oh well.

Had another go at the crispy honey chilli chicken recipe I tried a couple of weeks ago. It came out very well except this time I managed to make the sauce rather too solid. Still tasted good though.

Ouchy knee

DnD was good fun on Tuesday. The weather was horrible though, so Sarah decided to stay at home in Wrexham and not risk the journey to Denbigh, and joined us via Skype. It's not the first time we've played DnD via Skype and it worked really well.

On Wednesday and Thursday went to the gym. Wednesday was OK but Thursday was a mistake as I'd had some warning twinges from my right knee, and by Friday evening it was really painful. It would have been helpful if I could have stayed in and rested it but it was the leaving meal with people from work for the guy who I replaced. It was a good meal in the Denbigh Radhuni. The others went out for drinks afterward but I came home.

No bike ride today, which I was gutted about since I was looking forward to it, and it would have helped work off the meal last night. Andy and Rob G went out though and went on a variation of the route we did last week with more hills, however it was very steep and they found it a complete killer. I stayed in and rested my knee which has been feeling a bit better after being very painful this morning. It was a pretty nice day too, which made it worse.

Not much else to report. I've been playing a couple of games on the 3DS. The original 3DS wasn't great in my opinion, too small and awkward, but I spotted a cheap 3DS XL and decided to give it a go. The graphics are a bit more pixelly because of the larger screens, but it makes so much more sense as a bigger machine. I started out playing Monster Hunter Ultimate, which was OK but not really my kind of game, and so I've been playing Luigi's Mansion 2, which is really good fun. I vaguely remember playing the original on the GameCube, which was a long time ago.

Exercise

It's been a fairly eventful week.

Tuesday last week was DnD,which was at Sarah's place in Wrexham. It was a good session with a few funny moments, especially when we came up with the concept of a 'mentor with benefits', which was simultanously disturbing and hilarious.

I was all set to go to the gym on Wednesday evening, but Rob and Em were going to see the new Star Trek with Ed and Sian, and there was a spare seat, so I tagged along. We grabbed a hasty KFC and then headed in to see it. It was really good, thoroughly enjoyed it.

On Thursday I went to the gym instead of Wednesday as badminton is still cancelled, and had a really good session. The best exercise was the cross-trainer. I got on it and spent 30 minutes alternating between effort 8 and 10 every few minutes. I only got off because you aren't supposed to be more than 20 minutes and someone needed it. The machine reckoned I burnt 270 calories and my heart rate stayed at a sensible level the whole time, which was good.

Saturday was a repeat of last week's 31 mile bike ride, which we did quite a bit quicker than before - not the actual riding time, but the overall time was less as we didn't stop as often. It was a really nice day for it, very sunny. After that it was over to Steve's in the evening for movie night he had arranged. Attendance was lower than expected but it was still a fun evening, albeit with ridiculous amounts of food.

Yesterday I went to visit my Dad. We hung out for most of the day. I took my mountain bike over to give it a bit of attention after the nasty ride on it a couple of weeks ago, gave it a good clean up and oiled it where necessary. It was a lovely day and the Accord was covered in mud and looking sorry for itself so we gave it a good clean as well.I hadn't realised how much brake dust was on the wheels, and they cleaned up really nicely. Also topped up the oil as it was a little low.

My Dad also persuaded me to have a look at SPDs on the road bike. He's got a spare pair of shoes with cleats that fit me, and the pedals themselves are only cheap. I like the idea of them but will take some getting used to I'd imagine.

In the evening went to the pub with Andy, Rob T and Rob G, which was nice. We went to a couple of pubs which were either quite busy or completely dead as people seemed to be going around the town in clumps. It was nice to simply hang out and chat though. Also made the curious discovery that Iron Maiden have made a beer called Trooper, which Rob said was quite nice. As much as I like the band, my dislike of beer is probably going to mean I won't end up tasting it.

Today was typical bank holiday weather - rain all day, scuppering any plans for another bike ride. Spent much of the day finishing Motley Crue: The Dirt. Not a band I was hugely familiar with, although I did hear the Dr Feelgood album when I was quite young, and was vaguely aware of the antics of the band members in the 90s. But it goes way beyond what I ever imagined - how any of them are still alive is beyond me. It's completely bonkers, but somehow it's a very compelling read, perhaps because it seems so upfront and honest.

Need to catch up with Doctor Who, I lost interest a bit after the uninspiring submarine one, but I've been assured that it got better after that. I've got hold of the last episode but not any of the others, might just have to skip to the end.

Good weekend

It's been a good weekend.

On Friday evening we went for a short bike ride, but it still ended up being 15 miles. When I came home to get my bike, I found it had a flat rear tyre, so I had to take the mountain bike. It's been some time since I last rode it and unfortunately the neglect hasn't done it much good and it really needed some TLC. Perhaps because of this, I rather struggled on this ride. However it was a good chance for Steve to break in the mountain bike that I got for him from someone in work, a lot better than the old Raleigh he was using before.

Saturday morning was expensive. I spent £90 on new running shoes, which are supremely comfortable,  and then got a new rear tyre for the road bike and the headlight and brake bulbs that the Accord needed. I got those fitted OK and then had an epic geeky session of trying out the Comms Link for the Organiser II. Ever since I got my first one when I was 14 I wanted to hook it up to the PC, so it was nice to finally do so. I initially was going to set it up on an old laptop but gave up on that. I installed the software on an XP virtual machine on the M17x and used a USB-Serial adapter with a 25-pin to 9-pin adapter. Amazingly it worked, and I was able to get some programs off the Internet and transfer them across.

On Saturday evening it was Eurovision, which has now become traditional to watch at Rob and Em's with snacks, drinks and incredible amounts of pisstaking. It was a really good night. One of the highlights was Rob G's attempt at a pudding I can't remember the name of, which was a tower of profiteroles stuck together with caramel.

Yesterday, Andy, Steve and I headed out for a bike ride. It was mostly the same route as last time, but this time we went up some hills to Cwm, which was not easy. We had to take a couple of breaks, but we got there, and were rewarded with a pretty awesome view. After that we headed down to Rhuddlan and carried on as normal. It was a really good ride.

Otherwise not much to report. Circuits tonight was hard, but mainly due to my muscles protesting after the bike ride yesterday rather than being tired. On the plus side, the new shoes were brilliant, and when I came home I weighed myself to find I was dead on 90kg, which is definitely less than when I last weighed myself.

Gym

So far an OK week, still lots of tape movements in work.

On Tuesday evening I was in the kind of mood to get a takeaway, but I decided to try and make something instead. I ended up making crispy honey chilli chicken, which was really nice. The only thing I got wrong was not putting any flour in the sauce because I thought it needed cornflour, but otherwise it came out great. I was that impressed I made it again last night with the proper ingredients, and it was even better. To be honest I never realised you could actually make fried chicken at home, and tonight I ended up trying it again with some leftover chicken, but this time just making it fried with cinnamon in the coating instead which was OK but not strong enough. Still went nicely with some chilli sauce though.

Went to the gym last night, which was OK. I used some of the weights machines for the first time in ages, which unsurprisingly was pretty hard.

Badminton on Thursdays is still on hold due to floor woes, and tonight we said we'd skip it. I decided to have a geek night, which involved once again playing with an old Organiser II. I finally found the right adapter to hook it the old 25-pin serial cable to a PC. I was able to send characters between them but finding a machine that could actually run the software and have a serial port was a bit hard.

Not much else to report. I'm really tired of the Accord's thirst for fuel, so tomorrow being payday I might have a look around for something else. I'd like something small and economical but that might not be ideal with my need to get bikes in it and move shit out of the house. Not sure really.

Exercise and food

Went for a 26 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve yesterday, which was good. It was very hard at first - it's been a little while since I did any significant exercise, and it felt like my chest couldn't get the idea of properly deep breaths for a while. But after a couple of miles it settled down. We made the decision to go around Bodelwyddan towards the end of the ride - I didn't want to but was outvoted, and then we got rained on all the way back to St Asaph. I was suffering a bit by that point, but made it to the end OK. I did intend to record it on Strava but hadn't realised it wasn't recording until half way through the ride, but the rest of it worked. I like Strava but I wish it had more offline functionality. Not being able to view the map without an Internet connection is a pain. I also realised just how big the Accord is when I was able to get the bike in without taking the front wheel off.

Then in the evening it was off to the Prosperity in Rhuddlan with my parents. I ate enough to render the bike ride irrelevant, but it was good. I had Chicken in Szechuan sauce with crispy noodles, which was tasty and quite spicy, but in a subtle way.

An OK day in work today. I had some fun shifting some data round onto the new tapes and made the frustrating discovery that one of the tape drives had gone offline with a microcode error on Saturday, and then I found one of the new tapes had a corrupted file that I now need to recover from the offsite copy. There were apparently power issues in the computer room on Saturday though, so I'm assuming that was the cause.

Circuit training tonight. I was expecting it to be hard after a couple of weeks, and it certainly was, but it was managable hard. I particularly despise the sideways plank and the cross thumb pushup. Also I think running exercise classes would be a good career choice if you are a sadist.

I wasn't sure what else I could sell on Ebay - after a prolonged bout of selling and taking stuff to the tip I seem to have run a little low on things to get rid of. Then I remembered my collection of Rupert annuals - for some reason my parents kept getting me one every Christmas until I was 21. Some of the older ones are worth a bit, so I dug them out and cleaned them up. Fortunately they are in reasonable condition despite not having been touched for years. I have fond memories of reading Rupert - some of the stories are pretty fucked up and I always liked the stories which had crazy machines in them, perhaps one of the reasons I tend to like sciencey things.

Halfway to 70...

Thursday and Friday were good days in work. The LTO5 upgrade has been a success and I'm now making it migrate data from the LTO3 tapes onto the new ones. Can be a bit of a chore but it'll get there. Friday was also a giant cake fest as there was an ICT bake off for charity, which was great. Em's coffee cupcakes were the highlight for me - just the right ratio of cake and cream, delicious.

At present badminton has been banned on Thursday due to the condition of the floor - we can't play on it any more. Last week we just went to Steve's for food and hung out and chatted.

Yesterday was my 35th birthday. I'm a bit concerned about this - time seems to be slipping away and I'm not really sure how to feel about it. Oh well. I wish I'd reached the state of mind I'm now ten years ago - I think I'd have achieved a and experienced a lot more, but who knows, perhaps it wouldn't have worked out well.

Today I took some more crap to the tip - yet more old computers and some other stuff. I think they tolerate me there, but they must think it's a bit odd. Fortunately they haven't questioned it yet, but the honest truth is that I'm a geek with a slight hoarding tendency. I wasn't sure what do do with a curious machine called an IBM Power Series 600, but in the end I kept it. It's a smallish but very heavy PowerPC based workstation, designed to run AIX or Windows NT. The thing is, there is no information at all on the Internet about it. The only reference I can find is some guy who was trying to run Debian on it, and a very brief mention in a 1994 copy of Infoworld. I'm wondering if it might be a prototype or something. The other one I didn't chuck was an IBM Thinkpad 860. Again, this is a PowerPC based machine that ran AIX. They are rare because they were incredibly expensive when new. I'm still going to get rid of these machines but perhaps see if a museum would want them or something.

In the evening it was off to the Radhuni in Denbigh for food, a wonderful Indian place. There were 10 of us there, which was good, and about the right number of peopel. I had the Tava with Pania, as recommended by Em, so it's basically a cheese curry. The cheese is in cubes like tofu, and has an incredibly delicious sauce. After that we went to the pub for a bit.

I'm not sure what to do about cars. Due to the need to move things, I'm definitely after something not much smaller than the Accord, but more economical. The obvious solution was a diesel Mondeo or Vectra, and some of the nice common rail diesels are getting quite affordable now. But having read up on the nightmare these engines can be, I'm not so sure. The Mondeo TDCI can suffer injector failure, and they are £250 a pop, and the Vectra can suffer fuel-pump failures. I think the solution would be an older Vectra with the DTI engine which is simpler and more reliable.

The Accord is still going OK in the meantime though, and unless I'm reading the gauge wrong, I think the fuel economy might be a bit better since the exhaust was fixed. The ABS light still comes and goes though, and when I turned on the headlights to come home tonight, the right bulb went. It's simultaneously a lovely and infuriating car.

Outrageous geekery!

Today was a day that I had been sort of looking forward to. The backup system in work was being treated to new tape drives, upgrading it from LTO3 to LTO5, tripling the capacity of each tape. It was not a straightforward upgrade. Due to a misunderstanding, the library had all the new drives fitted alongside the new ones, then it required a huge firmware update, and then the damn thing decided it was NOT going to read the old LTO3 tapes in the new drives, despite them being fully capable of it. The solution turned out to be to set ALL the old tapes to read only, goodness knows why. It's going to take some time to move all the existing data from the old tapes to the new ones, but I had a plan to get it all done.

The stress of the day meant that I had a fat day for the first time in a while at work. The thing was that after I had done it, I felt bloated and unhealthy, which I think is because I've been cutting down on what I eat in work, so perhaps that's a good sign.

Then I came home and had a geeky evening with my Galaxy Note. After wiping it and installing Cyanogenmod on it a couple of months ago, I wasn't too happy with it. It was largely OK, but the graphics were never quite smooth enough, and after a couple of recent updates it started to have artifacts while scrolling and things. I don't think the graphics chip in the Note is fully supported. So I found an image of the official Jelly Bean update and set to work installing it.

It was not simple - took a while to get Odin working again, as the M11x had been rebuilt after having an SSD installed, and then it would simply not write the image. It would fail after a few seconds, leaving the Note in a state where it woudln't even boot, just complaining about the failed update. I was at a loss, until I moved the cable slightly and the phone lost connection. I tried it with another cable and the flash worked fine. Then it got stuck in a boot loop, and had to wipe some more data, but finally, at last it booted.

The Samsung ROM feels instantly better. It has all the gumph that I find a bit annoying, but it's so much more responsive that it's worth it. Also has the multiwindow mode and things, but I haven't had a play with that yet. Just spent some time putting all my usual apps on it.

Ironically, I think if I'd waited a little longer I could have just upgraded it directly to the new ROM without faffing about. It's a bit of a conflict really - I like tinkering, but at the same thing I just want it to work. Perhaps I need a second sacrificial device to satisfy the tinkering urge.

The other thing I was going to do this evening was find a working laptop with a serial port and see if I could get it talking to an old Orgainser II using the Comms link cable, but I ran out of time.

Hapless geek.

Awesome weekend

It was down to Kent for the annual BBQ with Jane and Wes and Jake and Laura, but it was the first time I've been. We set off on Friday at about 10am and made it down to Whitstable in good time with little drama other than some congestion on the M1. As before, we went in Rob and Em's car. With the bank holiday traffic we quickly developed a hatred for caravans, which led to much hissing and claw motions, which became entertainment for the journey. I started reading A Clash of Kings on the Kindle. I made it to about 20% by the time we got past the M25, and it seemed an easier read than the first book, probably because the TV series meant I knew mostly what was going on. Food on Friday night was a load of pizza ordered from Domino's, which was really good. Ordering on the website is great as you get a constant update of the status of the order.

Saturday was spent chilling out and reading books to little Xander, who isn't all that little any more, and then heading over to Jake's place in Northfleet for the BBQ. The plan was to leave the cars there and get a minibus back. The BBQ went really well and was really good fun. The first thought that came to mind for a costume was Stephen Hawking but this was quickly dismissed as being inappropriate, so I settled for Arthur Dent from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This basically consisted of pyjamas, dressing gown and a plastic goldfish stuck to my glasses to be the Babel Fish.

There were some amazing costumes there, from someone in a custom made Ninja Turtle outfit, Optimus Prime, Indiana Jones, Hulk Hogan, a definitely too soon Jimmy Saville, to Wes's Captain Planet and Jane's David Bowie. Em's Colombo outfit was scary and Rob was Robin Hood. It was great. Also someone else turned up with the same idea as me so there were two Arthur Dents.

Unfortunately I drank rather a lot of Southern Comfort rather quickly, which led to me falling over a lot and then being cradled by Em and Vicky while being violently sick into a Halloween bucket. I don't know how long this bit went on for but I remember being startled that it was suddenly dark. It was around then that I told Vicky that I had shit myself, just to see her face, which was funny but she was less amused. After a while though, I was able to get up and carry on talking to people, although I did have to carry the bucket around with me as I kept being sick for pretty much the rest of the evening, which led to conversations being a little embarrassing. To my surprise though, this led to me being regarded as somewhat of a hero.

By the time we got the minibus home though, my stomach had settled down, but my stomach muscles and throat were crying out for mercy. Fortunately though I was able to sleep OK.

First on Sunday was off to a good breakfast at a nearby pub, which was good. At first I wasn't sure about eating much, but after a croissant I felt better and was able to tidy it away. We hung out for a bit and then took the minibus back to Jake's place to get the cars and head to Bluewater to see Iron Man 3. We split into two parties, those who wanted to look at shoes and the others who were hungry. We ended up going to a place called Ed's Diner, an American style place where we had huge milkshakes, which were incredible. Mine was a peanut butter one which was stunning. The sheer size of the milkshake meant that I was able to sit through the movie without any sustenance at all.

After that we went to a random place on the food court that was OK. The food was decent enough and it had room for all the people who were there as it was quite a sizable group. I had duck spring rolls and a falafel wrap, which were both good, although I didn't quite do justice to the wrap as the effects from the giant milkshake were still lingering.

Finally it was time to return to Jane and Wes's for a movie and general hanging out. The movie was the recent version of The Three Musketeers. By this time I was really tired so I couldn't keep track of what was going on, and then not long after Rob said it was being pretty true to the book, only for him to be proved massively wrong when a giant airship appeared, I couldn't cope with how shit it was any more and went to bed.

The journey back today was fine, despite it being bank holiday. The traffic was mostly going the other way so we saw plenty of blockages on the M56 and other places, but we were OK. I read some more Clash of Kings and got nearly halfway through the book. Despite knowing what was largely going on, I'm really enjoying the extra detail.

It's been a great weekend, with the only downside being some incriminating photos of my incompetence with alcohol and the mere thought of Southern Comfort making me feel sick. It's a completely different scene down there with a great bunch of people, so it's always good. My stomach muscles are still feeling the effects though, probably the best ab workout I've ever had.

The Accord did it's best to piss me off again on Friday - after I put my suitcase into the boot it wouldn't open again when I got to Rob and Em's, and the ABS light came on again. On the way home today though, the ABS light went off again and copious amounts of WD40 got the boot opening again. I think the locking mechanism is a little finicky, but there is no way to override it. Bah. Oh well.

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.