Thwack

Been too long since I updated this. The most significant thing that happened was going down to Kent for the annual BBQ. I left my car at Rob and Em's house and we travelled to Chester to meet Rob and Vicky, leaving Em's car there. The drive down was reasonable, a few delays meant we got there at about 10:40pm, which wasn't too bad. Fortunately the airbed I bought inflated OK.

The BBQ itself was great, the weather was perfect and everyone had awesome costumes. My Van Halen one was OK but I'm a bit fat to be recognised as him so people kept thinking I was a generic rock star. Still, the customised Guitar Hero controller worked out well and it was a great evening. Remembering the disastrous Souther Comfort incident last year, I stuck to Crabbies and the occasional shot from Rob's cocktail making frenzy.

On Sunday we headed out to breakfast and then Bluewater to watch Edge of Tomorrow. I really quite enjoyed it, probably all the more because I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it. We then went back to Jane and Wes's to watch a TERRIBLE movie called White House Down while consuming large amounts of Domino's pizza, which was a great evening. Then we headed back on Monday, which was an OK drive apart from some diversionary tactics to avoid a lane closure on the A55.

Not much else to report really. I've been trying to get back into regular running and failing. My diet is also a complete catastrophe at the moment so I'm feeling bloated and hideous again. I was led astray on Friday by the service desk team who were going to the pizza place around the corner. I ended up having a chicken tikka wrap with garlic mayo - to be fair it wasn't all that big and was absolutely delicious.

The C3 is still going OK and is massively improved by an iPod to tape adapter that Rob had spare, which has saved having to rip out the stereo or anything, at least for now. It's proving to be good on fuel, and the only issue is a slight blow from the exhaust which is getting gradually louder.

The people in the Infiniti car came up again to have another look round. Their car is the M35H hybrid, a rather nice beast. Can't quite believe they brought the poor thing up the track twice!

Went to archery today with Rob and Em, and had a great time. I've really got used to the club compound bow and I'm really enjoying shooting it. I had my third round at 30 yards and managed to score 280 with three dozen arrows, which is good as you need 200. I had a go at 40 yards and I think the sights are now all set up properly for the distance but my arms were tired so I'll see how I get on next time. I've been talking to one of the guys there about what would be a suitable bow for me to get. There's basically two options, go to a shop called Custom Built Archery and get all the stuff there or find a bundle on Ebay that people are selling. The club one came like that apparently so it's worth keeping an eye there. One model that has been mentioned as being particularly suitable is a Hoyt UltraTec, just need to find one though.

The Hyundai went on Ebay but so far the only interest has been from Polish people who wanted my bank details, bah. Will have to relist it. Bloody thing.

Things looking up

Sunday was good, Rob kindly picked me up so we could head to archery. I had a good few hours shooting with the club compound again. One of the more knowledgable guys there said the draw length needed dropping a bit and showed me how to do it. Once that was done it threw me off a bit as it felt different and the sight needed changing, but after a few shots it felt great. Really liked it. As the thing is so powerful and the arrows are carbon, I've been scared of missing the target, and once I actually did it for the first time. Fortunately the arrrow was found straight away. It was good to see the other guys from the beginner's class again, and one of them has already bought his own bow.

I picked up the car today. It's a 2003 Citroen C3 1.1. It's not at all what I would normally go for,  but it's in nice condition, drives fine and will do the job. It's got a long MOT until April and should be decent on fuel. It's a bit basic - first car I've had in a while with keep-fit windows and it only has a tape deck. This is a problem as I can't find my tape adapter to hook up an iPod. It's also got a curious dashboard with a digital speedo and LED gauges for fuel and temperature. I filled it up so I now have six blobs of fuel, will be interesting to see how long it takes to get through a blob.

Not much else to report really. Bit of a curious meeting in work where one of our managers gathered us into a room and said she sensed our teamwork was breaking down and people weren't working as well together. It was a bit like having Counsellor Troi in the room saying 'He's hiding something.'

We had another house viewing this evening which was a couple who were supposed to come on Saturday. They turned up in an Infiniti something which was not at all suited to the track, but they really liked the place. The guy turned out to own a company that does wind turbine maintenance so he was interested in the wind farm across the way.

A thoroughly shitty week

Last weekend was good after the car failure. On Saturday it was my Dad's 80th birthday so my two brothers came down and my sister too. We met up at my Dad's house and had a good catch up before going out for a meal. My oldest brother and his wife had been exploring the local canals on a narrow boat, including the 'Pontyclitoris' aqueduct as he annoyingly called it. My other brother is over from Germany with his girlfriend, and they had hired a car to take a trip around the UK for a couple of weeks. The meal was good and then we headed back to the house for more chatter.

On Sunday I met up with them again at my sister's house and we went over to her husband's parent's house for a civilised cup of coffee and things, and then headed back to mine. It was a really good day.

This week has been shit since then. Work has been annoying and I've been trying to find a replacement car but since it's me I was getting all neurotic about it and was scared that whatever I get will be a disaster.

Then on Friday I was taking my Mum's car to work again and the bloody thing died in exactly the same way it did a month ago leaving me completely stranded. At least this time I was able to get it turned round. Then, later on while I was getting some shopping with my Dad who had come over, I managed to drop my S4 on the track. Of course it landed face down on a rock which shattered the screen, which led to a bit of a downer on top of everything else. The problem now is that I've moved my number to a MicroSIM which won't work in anything else I have.

Today was Vicky's birthday meal in Rhyl. Rob G and Chelsea kindly gave me a lift, which was great. It was in the usual Italian place which was pretty good except they did cock up some of the orders a bit.

I have sorted out a car but won't pick it up unti the end of the day on Monday, which is a bit of a pain. Hopefully it'll be OK though. Mum's car has been confirmed as suffering the same failure as last time, but they can't get the part until Tuesday.

I've been failing to exercise again this week due to the stress of it all and have eaten like crap again which is a bit depressing. My evenings have largely consisted of rewatching Voyager and playing Skyrim. My character in Skyrim is going OK but the quests just keep coming. It's good though and I really like the various areas of the game and all the different things you can do.

Bloody cars

It's been an OK week in work, slightly disorganised but things getting there eventually.

The most notable thing this week was the car dying. After it performed OK on the trip up to Kirkham last weekend, it started making a loud ticking sound on Wednesday evening. The garage had a look at it on Thursday after lending me a car to get home with, and decided the top end had issues, and it might go on like that for a while. Unfortunately by the time I got home it had developed some horrendous knocking noises and so the engine is toast. Typical. It's now been listed on Ebay for parts and I'll have to find something else. I'm half tempted to give Rob P a grand and get him to find me a car because I clearly suck at it.

In spectacularly bad timing I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 off someone in work. I've been setting it up but have been handicapped by it requiring a MicroSIM. My original SIM card from 1999 is too old fashioned to be cut down into the right size, so I'll have to get my number moved to a new SIM in a Vodafone shope. The S4 is really nice and much lighter than the Note. It's crazy to think that I have a computer with a quad-core CPU, 2gb RAM, 64gb storage and a 1920x1080 screen that fits in my pocket.

Not going to worry about the car until next week as it's my Dad's 80th birthday tomorrow and then hopefully archery on Sunday after missing it last week.

I shaved my head and face today after letting them get a bit shaggy, feels good and I'm always surprised at how many years it knocks off. What's left of my hair is greying rapidly and so is my beard.

Been working on the Guitar Hero controller that will be part of my costume for the Kent BBQ in a couple of weeks time. The red paint came out surprisingly well on the removable cover and when I test fitted it back onto the controller it looked great. I've finished it now and applied a couple of layers of varnish, hopefully it'll look good once it's dried.

Not much else to report really.

Good weekend

Last week was generally OK apart from a couple of fraught days in work. On Friday I headed up to Kirkham to visit my cousin. I set off from work on Friday evening and despite a couple of slow bits on the M56 and M6, got up there without any trouble. We spent Saturday exploring the sea front at Clevelys and Fleetwood on the trams before heading back down. There was a 10 mile race going on and it was interesting to catch up with the slower runners first and then the leaders. After that it was back to her house for a leisurely meal in the evening. On Sunday we had planned to go for a run but neither of us felt like it and we ended up going for a brisk run instead, which was pretry enjoyable. After that we hung out for a bit and then I drove home. It was a little busy at first as there was a lot of traffic coming out of Blackpool but was fine after that. The Hyundai likes motorways as it used noticably less fuel.

Today I had a dental appoint to rebuild the top of one of my front teeth as it was sharp and kept cutting me. It's done now but feels a little odd as I'm not used to it yet. I spent the afternoon working in Denbigh as that made more sense.

Tonight was episode 8 of GoT season 4, which was pretty enjoyable, and had quite a few memorable moments in it.

Oh dear

Last week was fairly quiet on the whole. On Monday it was the GoT watch, which was pretty good. Not long to go to the end of the season now, although it's not on tonight.

Work was meh, not much going on. On Friday evening went out to the pub with the gang and had a good time there, before heading back. I didn't do all that much on Saturday really.

Yesterday was good. I went to archery early and had a good time shooting the compound bow. I'm the only beginner who expressed an interest in it, and I really enjoy shooting it. There was the usual ribbing about training wheels and cheating, but I wasn't hugely bothered by that. It was really good fun though, the only downside is that compound stuff tends to be a bit pricey if I wanted to get my own equipment.

Today has been another quiet day, with a bit of tidying. The people who have put an offer in on the house are coming to take a look tomorrow. Typically the dog pissed on the landing. Now that he's getting a bit old and frail he can get a bit scared of the stairs so I think he got all anxious about it and ended up pissing up there. Bah.

Been playing Skyrim a bit. Still enjoying it, even if I'm being spammed by quests. I got one merely by walking past a city guard who was having a conversation with someone else entirely. Oh well. It's all good fun. Now that I've levelled up it keeps chucking dragons at me too, which is interesting. But even now I still feel like I may have only scratched the surface of the game

Ouchy skin

It's been an OK weekend so far. Yesterday morning it was off to Steve's to observe Andy and Rob help Steve shift a wardrobe. I was not required to help as I'd helped move it originally, but it was a good thing I did go because it was only me that remembered how the thing came apart. Oh well.

Today was archery in the morning. It was very quiet as there was a competition going on elsewhere. I was trying out my new tab which was a birthday present from Rob and Em, which caused some pretty crappy shooting at first until I got used to the feel of it, but I got over 200 points on 20 yards for the third time once we started scoring. I then had a go at 30 yards, but by then my arms were tired so I didn't do all that well and only did a few goes. Also I forgot sun cream and despite hiding in the shade when I wasn't shooting, I'm still a bit pink.

Not much else to report really. The Yoga 2 is now set up and working. It's currently running the original French OS with a UK language pack installed, so it can be a little schizophrenic when it comes to displaying messages. Now that it's set up properly, the 3200x1800 display is really quite something. Most things I've tried so far have been fine, the exceptions being the standard Windows command prompt, which is a bit small, and the default RDP client, which shows the destination machine at the native resolution, and is therefore tiny. Fortunately if you get something called RDP Manager it scales it up.

Not sure why leather seats are seen as desirable in cars. The dark grey ones in the Hyundai always seem to be too hot or too cold to me. Otherwise it's still going OK although it's appetite for unleaded is as voracious as ever.

Urgh

Too long since writing anything.

I had a 6-day weekend for my birthday, which was decent enough, and quite eventful. The original offer on the house was withdrawn, frustratingly, but we had a couple more viewings. A rather dedicated woman drove up from Essex on my birthday, setting off at about 7am, and arriving at midday. She looked around for two hours and then drove home. She also met the neighbours which was in a way good thing. She must have liked it because she has put an offer in anyway.

On Friday it was the funeral of Simon's Dad, who died the week before. Amy and Mark and Pam and I went to it to support Simon, even though we didn't know his Dad all that much. It was a big event as it's one of those families that seems to be half the town, and it was good to see so many people there showing their respects.

My birthday on Saturday happened to coincide with Eurovision, so the evening was spent round at Rob and Em's place for the now traditional Eurovision party. It's pretty entertaining when there's 15 people in the room taking the piss out of it.

Otherwise the weekend was OK. My Mum's car broke down yesterday which was annoying it was stuck in such a position that I had to pull it by hand out of the gate until it started to roll. I then had to roll it all the way down the track, backwards, with no power steering or brakes, scary. It's been taken away by a garage who diagnosed a minor problem with the fuel system.

Work has been OK since I went back. Had to stay last night to swap out two blower assemblies in a BladeCenter H. It has two, and will run for one minute with one removed before it shuts down, so it was a bit scary. Fortunately it went OK. Today was sorting out the AS/400 backups which had gone all out of sequence and was getting itself into a mess.

Running not so good. I was going to go on Tuesday on my last day off but the weather was so shit I went to the gym instead. Nothing wrong with that but I find the treadmill terribly difficult compared to running on the road. I was hoping to get the bike sorted out over the weekend but didn't get around to it.

Diet has been shit too, no idea why I do this to myself. I've lost two kilos, but it seems that whenever I lose any actual weight I try to start sabotaging it. Perhaps it's some kind of self-hate thing to ensure I remain forever alone, which seems to be inevitable at this point. I seemed to be always destined to be the third wheel, that one awkward single person in a room full of couples.

Done some stupid things too. I've decided the Surface Pro is nice but not really much use to me as I never use it as a tablet, so I've obtained a Yoga 2 Pro to replace it after really liking the Yoga 13. It's an interesting machine, but I didn't realise how different it was. It's got a French keyboard, which is a bit of a problem as it's not as easy to remove as the original Yoga, and the RAM is soldered. Fortunately the SSD is removable, which is a bonus over the completely sealed Surface Pro. The crazy part is the 3200x1800 display, which is a bit of an issue when things don't know how to scale to it properly. Will have to see how that goes. It also had a a French operating system, which I've now just wiped. However the new installation of Windows 8 doesn't quite get that it has to scale to the 3200x1800 display so everything is hyper tiny. I've solved the keyboard problem with stickers for now as the French layout is a bit strange. The machine is also the rather vibrant orange version, which is certainly different.

Probably stuff that I've forgotten to put on here but I don't care, and I'm tired and pissed off.

An odd week

I wasn't back in work until Thursday. Monday was a bit of a lazy day apart from another house viewing. That one seemed to go OK. On Tuesday my Mum came home. On Wednesday I tried to go for a run around town but it didn't go well. My legs just didn't want to cooperate, so after half a mile I decided to call it a nice walk in the sunshine and any running I managed was a bonus. Also the scrapyard at the top of town caught fire and for a few minutes it looked quite apocalyptic up there so I came home.

Work was OK but busy for the rest of the week, lots of things going on and upcoming scary work. Now that the whole XP end-of-life thing has been sorted out by the desktop team, it's time for the server team to worry about Windows Server 2003 going end-of-life in July 2015, and there's a depressing number of systems still running it.

Today was helping Andy empty his house, ready for the sale to complete on Friday. It took less time than I expected, since there were plenty of people there to help. Most of his stuff is going to storage so it took a few trips to take the stuff there.

The rest of the day has been fairly lazy again. It's the first visit to the archery club tomorrow following the beginner's course, which I'm looking forward to.

Not much else to report really.

Compounded

Today was the last day of the archery beginner's course. It was good fun as always, starting out by putting the bows together and doing some practice shots before doing an actual scored round. This was then followed by a kind of free for all where people could carry on with the recurves or have a go on a compound bow or a longbow. I was really looking forward to trying out the compound, and it lived up to my expectations. It's very weird to draw but that moment of sheer power when releasing it was amazing. The longbow was such a contrast, and while I liked the simplicity of it, I found it very tricky to shoot.

I was a little late coming home for the house viewing today, so as they were coming up the track I was rushing around doing last second tidying. They seemed to like it, although they wanted to have a wander around the land, and managed to time it so they set off just as a massive rain and hailstorm happened. Oh dear.

The rest of the day has been a bit lazy, just watching some old stuff and sitting around.

Running, running, people, people.

This week has been OK. Two days in work after the bank holiday and then two days off work. on Thursday I took my Mum to her writing group thing. She comes back on Tuesday.

I've been out for a run twice his week after being inspired by the 5k on Saturday. I went out on Tuesday evening with Rob, but he had to turn back almost immediately with his foot. I did three miles that day but without anyone to pace me I went too fast again and there was some walking involved. I went out again yesterday and did 4.4 miles, which was mostly OK but again some walking. Pleasingly I've managed to lose 2.5kg since I last weighed myself, which is pretty surprising given that my diet has been shite for a while now.

Yesterday afternoon, Em came up and helped me do some tidying. We tackled the utility room, which for a relatively small room, was absolutely full of shit. There were countless tins and pots of knackered paint and varnish and things like that, ancient cleaning stuff, and various tins of food that had been forgotten. There were some from 2005 but the worst horror was a jar of anchovies from 2002. The amount of stuff that went back into the room was surprisingly small.

Today I took all the rubbish that wasn't burnable to the tip. They are pretty helpful there and took all the old paint and stuff without any problems. After that it was a last minute tidy up for three viewings on the house.

The first one was a guy by himself who seemed like a decent guy and raved about the view, but he didn't stay all that long. Sensibly he walked up rather than risk his car, although I don't know what he was driving After that was a couple who came up in Audi convertible. They stayed much longer and were very interested in the house and seemed to be interested in the possibilities of modernising it rather than anything else. They left just as the next people arrived. They were a local couple who farm sheep and wanted a bigger bit of land for it. They sensibly arrived in an ex-military Land Rover. The house was interesting to them but they spent quite some time having a look at the land. They already live in a similar but smaller house, so they knew what to expect.

There's another viewing on the house tomorrow after the last archery class, and then another one on Monday. That's seven in two and a half weeks. It's encouraging but it's brought it home to me rather that I'll miss this place once we have to move from it. It's also a bit weird to have strangers coming into your house, especially when it's still somewhat untidy and cluttered, despite all the tidying I've been doing.

Not much else to report really. The Hyundai annoyingly went into limp mode yesterday when I went into town for my run. There weren't any warning lights, but it was clearly low on power and the shifts were jerky. I hooked up the engine diagnostic tool and it reported a crankshaft position sensor error. I cleared it and it started up perfectly and has been fine ever since. That thing was a good buy at £12.

It's been far too long since I shaved my head, so I did it tonight. Unfortunately my hair got long enough to stop my head tanning with the rest of my head so it looks a bit daft at the moment. Bah.

Recurved

Last week was a bit meh. Work was OK until the Thursday. Typically a server decided to have a hardware fault and needed a call logged. Fun fun.

Thursday evening was the badminton club night out in the pub, which I went along for. It was a good evening but I didn't stay out too late due to the hassle in work and generally feeling tired. Andy did however tell me about the Easter Dash 5k in Llandudno and said we should do it.

Friday was a fairly quiet day. I had been planning to go for a run but decided not to with the 5k yesterday. I didn't do very much apart from do some tidying for the house viewing on Saturday and finish South Park season 13.

The 5k on Saturday morning was an odd one. It was the first real run I'd done in nearly two weeks at that point, and I thought I'd done terribly as it felt like I'd had to walk half the bloody thing. The course was from the middle of the promenade, up to the pier, back down and then back to the middle again. The middle part was into a strong headwind, which was a nightmare. But when we got the results I was astonished to find I'd only done about 30 seconds slower than my PB at the Marsh Tracks. Andy did very well, coming in under 27 minutes.

The viewing in the afternoon was not a success. The people had been expecting the land to be much flatter, so it wasn't right for their requirements at all. Also the woman was very tall and found the low ceilings a problem. However there is another viewing on Wednesday.

Today was off to the second lesson in the Wrexham archery club beginner course. It was good fun again, but I was feeling it quite a lot from the run yesterday so my body was already aching by the time we got there. We got shown how to assemble the bows this time, which was oddly satisfying, and then did some shooting from further away and learnt how to adjust the sights. Good fun indeed.

This afternoon I wasn't in the mood to do anything useful so I just spent the remainder of the day watching the Dark Knight trilogy. I got it for my birthday last year but never quite got around to it. It's really goood but I forgot how long the second and third films are.

A few strange days

Last week was not good. I spent Wednesday and Thursday working until 9pm with system updates that were being done by a less than competent external company. They got done eventually but neither day was good. There was a repeat of the 5k I did recently on Friday evening and I had planned to do it, but by the time it came around I was not in the mood, although I wish I had done it now.

The weekend was OK. Sunday morning was the first session in a beginner's archery course run by the club that Rob and Em have joined. I thought I'd give it a try to see how it was. There are 9 people on the course and there's an interesting mix. I did enjoy it although it's surprising how many muscles it uses, and that was with a fairly low poundage bow.

Yesterday evening I didn't go to the run for fun session, which I now bitterly regret. I went to the gym instead, but wish I'd done the run as it was a nice evening. After that it was time to watch Game of Thrones, which was fucking great, and it's only the 2nd episode of season 4!

My diet has been poor again and I'm worried that my running motivation is failing me, I really need to crack down on it and do some more training.

The Hyundai is still going OK but guzzling fuel as expected. It does seem to have an annoying tendency for the fuel gauge to plummet for a bit and then drop more slowly. My old Vectra did that. On Thursday it's going to have the new ignition barrel installed, and will also be checked out because there's a recall open for it on the rear suspension.

Tonight was spent watching a couple of episodes of South Park and firing up Skyrim. I'm still enjoying it, although it's getting a little quest-overloady at the moment, and I'm not quite sure I'm doing the skills and things right yet.

One slightly interesting thing was that I found my old Amstrad NC100. It's been lying around for years since I got it in around 1995, and it's very rarely had batteries in it. What blew my mind was that when I put batteries in, it fired up with the correct date and it STILL has documents in the memory from nearly 20 years ago! It uses a coin cell battery to keep the RAM going while there's no batteries in it, so I don't think it's ever been fully reset since I got it! That's quite impressive. It's a surprisingly capable little device underneath the 'User-Friendly' branding. It's just a pain that the only way to transfer data on and off it is through the serial port.

Rim of Sky

Sunday was basically more tidying and throwing stuff. It's actually pretty liberating how much stuff I've got rid of, and the difference it has made is quite striking. There is still lots of stuff to go though, but it's definitely a start.

It was the first day back in work yesterday. I had 186 e-mails when I logged into Notes which caused a mild panic attack, but fortunately the majority of them were automatic system e-mails and things like that and it wasn't too bad in the end. It took a while to remember what the hell was supposed to be going on this week with various system updates and hardware moves, but I think I've got the grip of it now. I also had my annual appraisal today, which went well. Can't believe it's been a year already since I started the new job.

I went for a run last night with the informal group that's carried on after the class. It had been two weeks since I went for a run and I somewhat ambitiously went with the group that were going up the top of town. I did have to walk a bit once at the top of town, but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to run all that way without stopping. My body does seem to be more adapted to running now but a 10k still seems a bit of a long way.

Had a quiet lazy evening tonight. I watched some more South Park (up to season 12) and played some Skyrim. After my failed previous attempt to play it about a year ago, I'm really liking it now. It still feels quite overwhelming at times with all the ways you can build up skills and all sorts of stuff, but the quests and things like that are making more sense. I did a couple more minor quests and then went off to the frozen north to learn magic in the college of Winterhold. I managed to find the proper path this time and not end up in the middle of nowhere being eaten by wolves, which was one thing that put me off last time.

While tidying up I found the shells for my 3DS XL, which have been lying around drying for months after I painted them in that flip paint. I gave them a polish and put them back on and it looks OK. It's not as smooth as it should be, but it looks nicer than the scratched up blue paint that was on it before.

Berlin and tidying

Berlin was great. It definitely ranks as one of the best trips I've ever had out there.

The flight out on Friday was fine, no problems at all. After the food poisoning I was still a bit tired and headachy and didn't have much of an appetite, but by Saturday I was fine. We got to the apartment for about 5pm, and didn't do too much that evening apart from find something to eat. We ended up going to a place on Frankurter Allee called Reichard's that Rob and I had been to before. It was proper German food and it was really good. I had gorgonzola gnocchi, which was great but Rob had probably a third of it as I didn't feel up to eating it all. Em played menu lottery and got the biggest ham shank I think I've ever seen.

The apartment was great in some ways, weird in others. The bedrooms and kitchen were OK but the bathrooms were very weird. The main bathroom was huge and looked great, but was fundamentally flawed in that it had two sinks and no toilet, and no blinds or frosted windows, so making it difficult to not expose yourself to the neighbours. The other bathroom was built into a really narrow space and laid out very oddly. It worked OK though, and the shower was awesome.

On Saturday we headed down to the Tempelhof expo for Rob and Andy to sign up for the race and get their numbers. It was a warm day, and it was incredibly busy - far busier than any of the times I've been to it before. The throngs of people and heat in the building itself made it fairly uncomfortable so once the numbers were secure we beat a hasty retreat and went back to the apartment. Rob and Andy spent the afternoon chilling out while Em and I went out for a walk. We ended up getting the train to the Tiergarten S-bahn station and walking back to Alexanderplatz, which was a good long walk. That evening we went to the beloved Fliegender Tisch. It's pretty popular now but the manager let us have a reserved table with the understanding we'd be off it by 20:00, which was fine. We had a good meal there and then went to a slightly crazy corner shop near the hotel we stayed at last time. It has a somewhat eclectic selection of alcohol and sweets.

Sunday was of course the half marathon. Em and I escorted Andy and Rob to the start at Strausberger Platz, and then set off to watch the race elsewhere. We saw the race start and the runners go past from the S-bahn platforms at Alexanderplatz, and then got the train to the Tiergarten. We arrived there just as we saw the leaders of the race go through, which was pretty impressive. Again we saw them from the elevated platform, which was a great view. After that we hung around and saw the field go through and saw Rob and Andy, which was good. Following that we tried to get the train to the Ku'damm but everyone else was doing the same, so we changed plans and went to Checkpoint Charlie. The field was more spread out by that point but we managed to spot Andy and Rob again.

After that we headed back to Strausberger Platz to meet them after the finish. They did it in 2:44, which was mainly down to the heat and conditions. The afternoon was spent resting before heading out to find some food. We'd heard of a steak/meat place in Prenzlauer Berg called Fleischlust, and we went there mainly because of the name. Fortunately it turned out to be very good and we all had really tasty burgers. Dessert consisted of ice cream from a place called Hokey Pokey down the road. I had the pistachio, and it was magnificant, probably the best ice cream I've ever had. It was €1.60 a scoop too, not bad!

Monday was intended to be a quiet day without much walking, but Andy and Rob were feeling better than they thought. We headed up to have a look at the DDR museum, but it looked a bit shit once you actually got there, so we got on a boat instead and had a trip on that. It was something I'd never done before, and it was interesting to see the city from that perspective. We even got a student discount becuase the commentary was only in German. It was done by two people, a woman at the start and then the man. I could follow a fair bit when she was talking but he spoke a lot quicker.

Following that we headed to the Hauptbahnhof and had currywurst for lunch, before heading across the river to find a place we'd spotted from the boat that had deckchairs. It turned out to be a riverside bar and had a good range of drinks and things. The others had beers while I had a non-alcoholic mocktail thing that turned out to be really nice. We spent a pleasant hour or so there before heading back to the apartment, as Rob's foot started to play up. The afternoon was spent chilling before we went out to find some food. We had decided to try and find the bar that we failed to find in 2005, which has a stock exchange system for the beer. The more expensive a beer is, the pricier it is. We got there and had some good food, but the stock exchange took a little getting used to.

On Tuesday we did separate things for much of the day. Rob and Em went to look at art galleries in Potsdamer Platz, while Andy and I went to the Berlin Zoo. I'd never been before, despite hearing good things, so it was good to see it. It had a really good range of exhibits, and one thing I found interesting was that nearly all the enclosures had moats rather than fences, meaning it felt much more open and nice. This lead to a close encounter with an ostrich, which was tall enough to look over the side at us as we sat on a bench. In the evening after a rest, we weren't sure what to do for food. Rob fancied Chinese, so I looked on Google Maps for Chinese restaurants and found a highly rated one called Tang's Kantine. A bit of a gamble but it paid off as the food was excellent.

On Wednesday we tidied up the apartment and left our bags in a locker in Alexanderplatz. We'd booked a visit to the Reichstag dome that day, but over the weekend I got an e-mail to say it had been cancelled. We went and had a look at the TV tower to see if it was busy, and it looked OK, so we got tickets. We had to wait about an hour but got up there fine. The day was pretty nice with only a bit of haze, so the views were pretty good. The restaurant had free tables so we briefly considered going there but the prices are high so we decided to leave that for another time.

At a bit of a loss for something to do in the afternoon, we got some picnicy food and spent an hour or so enjoying the sunshine on the Tempelhofer park, before it was finally time to retrieve the bags and head down to the airport. The flight back was uneventful, although the airport was ridiculously busy which made things a bit tedious. It's about time they sorted out the new airport as Shönefeld really is showing it's age.

Since we got back I've mainly been sorting out the ignition problem on the Santa Fe and tidying the house. I got a new key made up for it after getting the code from Hyundai, but while it did get the ignition to turn eventually, it still doesn't work properly. I've had to leave the new key in the ignition permanantly and use the old key to trigger the immobilier and lock the doors. Having to hold the old key next to the new one is annoying, and took a few goes to get right the first time. This somehow triggered the Check Engine light and threw it into limp mode. Fortunately disconnecting the battery for a few minutes cleared the code and put it back to normal.

On Thursday it's going in for a new ignition barrel. It means it will have separate keys for the doors and ignition but that's not the end of the world. Otherwise it's still going OK although the fuel consumption is absolutely horrendous.

The tidying up of the house is going OK. I've burnt a load of stuff and thrown away a hell of a lot more. It does feel strange though, this house has been my home for so long and to finally be preparing to leave it (if it sells of course) is something of a strange feeling. However it's probably something I should have done a long time ago. If only I hadn't been such a financial idiot for so long. Oh well. I'm in a reasonably positive state of mind about it all though.

What a week

This week has been poor in work, several annoying things happened, such as someone not testing something they said they would, so when I hadn't heard anything, I thought it was all OK. Cue massive panicking and flailing when it didn't work. Bah.

Not feeling great at the moment. I had a bap from the sandwich shop on the corner for lunch yesterday, which didn't settle right. By the time I got home, I was conscious that my stomach was not feeling happy at all, and then finally I ended up shitting out water and puking off and on until about 3am. I never knew it was possible to lose so much water and remain conscious. At one point I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror and I was as white as a sheet. There was no way I was fit to go to work today and I've spent the day reucuperating, alternately napping and watching old Torchwood episodes for no particular reason.

The only bright side is that with any luck I'll be better tomorrow for the trip to Berlin, although I'm anxiously keeping a tally in my head of where the toilets are located in the respective airports.

Good run on Monday, sort of. We met up in a group again and did a short one, which was about 2 miles. Strava didn't record it all so I'm not sure exactly. Once we got back, I felt like I could do more and ended up doing another 2.6 miles. It wasn't all running though, I think I was a bit ambitious and the wind picked up as well, but I was still pleased that I did about 4.5 miles, albeit with a bit of a gap in the middle. I was going to go for a run last night but my stomach put an end to that one.

Not much else to report. I've had to extend the insurance on the 206 as the Santa Fe is still having trouble with the ignition. I don't think I can do anything until the V5 comes through, what a pain. Typical as well, I always have rotten luck with cars, but this is really taking the piss I think.

New PB

The 5k went OK on Friday evening. It started at 19:45 on the cycle race track in Rhyl, and consisted of four laps of the track. The weather wasn't looking good, but it was fine for the first lap. But then it really started to lash it down with plenty of wind and rain, so the three remaining laps weren't much fun. Dave from work and I were being paced for 35 minutes by one of the Harriers, although we went off a little fast. By the start of the third lap though, I was feeling more comfortable and put on a bit of speed, and even managed to put some effort into a sprint (ha) finish. Not sure of my official time yet as due to a combination of rain and steam, I couldn't see a thing through my glasses and didn't see the clock as I finished. The Harrier I was running with said it was about 33:10, which is nearly four minutes better than my last 5k.

Yesterday went to look at bikes with Andy, but the places we went weren't very helpful and didn't have much of a selection, so it wasn't a very productive day in that regard. We did pick up some bits and pieces though. I would like a new bike at some point but not sure that right now is the time to get one, with the house stuff going on and everything.

I finally finished Breaking Bad. I'm still processing it really, but what a good series it's been. One of those rare instances where it lived up to the hype.

Today I've been going through my books and clearing out those I don't want any more, which is most of them. I've got several full binbags ready to go now. I have kept a list of all those that are going though, for future reference. Found an ancient copy of the Citadel of Chaos, one of the Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy game books. I really enjoyed it back in the day, so was pissed to find that mice had eaten most of it. Balls.

Only four days in work this week and then it's off to Berlin on Friday.

Fun geekery

Running was OK on Monday - this time it was a full 30 minute run. I quite enjoyed it but felt it at the end. I'm not sure what I'll manage in the 5k on Friday.

The Santa Fe is still going OK. It does like it's fuel, but I only realised after a couple of days that it has a naughty habit of turning on the air conditioning automatically when you restart it, which probably hasn't helped. It proved it's worth tonight though when the guy came to pick up the first load of vintage computer stuff, plenty of room in the back.

Had a nice geeky evening tonight for the first time in ages. I've been watching so much Breaking Bad and South Park that I've done little else. After shuffling the computers around recently, I had a spare 240gb Crucial SSD left over. I took the 500gb hard drive out of the second bay in the Asus G73 and put the SSD in there instead. The 500gb drive was noisy and slow anyway.

The G73 now has 20gb RAM and two 240gb SSDs. Combined with a quad-core i7, it makes it something of a beast, even if it's nearly four years old. Tonight I installed Windows Server 2012, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 into VirtualBox machines and gave them 2gb RAM each. The installs ran ludicrously quickly as they went from ISOs on one SSD to the virtual hard drives on the other SSD. The machine ran all three machines perfectly at the same time as using Firefox and iTunes on the host install of Windows 8 with no trouble at all. I need to learn about AD so it's a nice little test setup. So far I've created a domain and got the two client machines joined to it, and can log into the domain from them.

All good fun. Tomorrow evening the guy will come and get the rest of the computer stuff and then on Friday it's the 5k. After that I need to work on increasing my distance to a 10k, a scary prospect.

More things

This week has been frustrating in work but OK otherwise. Friday was particularly bad in work but the afternoon was better.

Monday was the running club. This time it was two 14 minute runs with one minute of walking. I did better than last week and was quite pleased with myself. The minute walk coincided with the top of the industrial estate and our group leader challenged me to get to the top before the 35 seconds ran out. I was only three seconds over.

Tuesday was DnD again, which was good fun. It was the last session in Sarah's house in Wrexham before she moves to Colwyn Bay to move in with her boyfriend. We were in the middle of a frantic battle, which we finally won, which was good. It was an excellent evening.

On Thursday I went for another run with Dave from work, which was good. He's been struggling a bit with his practice runs so he found it quite hard, but the slower pace suited me and I had a good run. I need to practice on my own though, and get my pace improved.

I bought a new car today. The reason being is that the track is so bad that the the 206 is really struggling now, and it's knocked the tracking out again. This combined with a fresh slight knocking from the left suspension forced to conclude that even if the middle of the track is scraped out, the ruts will still be too bad for a normal car.

I had a look at a Shogun on Wednesday, and while the engine was great, the steering was all over the place and it was pretty tatty. Yesterday I went to have a look at two Honda CR-Vs in Deeside, but one had been sold and the other was uninspiring and stank of dog. A place across the road had a Mazda Tribute, which I actually drove, and that was very nice. A bit more than I wanted to spent though, and only a short MOT.

So I ended up with a Hyundai Santa Fe V6 CDX from a guy in Colwyn Bay. I wasn't sure, but a test drive convinced me. My Dad was there too and he thought it looked pretty good. It's done 97,000 miles and has a full MOT and tax until July. It drives nicely, everything that I've tested so far works, and it copes with the track fine and has plenty of room inside. I'm a bit worried about the fuel consumption with the V6, but pretty much any 4x4 in my price range was going to be shit on fuel as the economical ones are still pretty expensive. Anyway, it's not going to be forever, it'll only be until we've moved out and I can get something sensible again.

After I sorted out the car, it was off to Andy's for the final games of the 6 Nations. All of them were pretty good although I missed most of the first one as I was having fish and chips with my Dad and his wife after we had picked up the car.

The computer stuff is about to end on Ebay. Probably going to end for a pittance, but as long as that gets it out of the house I don't care.

Many things

Too long since I updated this thing.

The biggest thing that happened in the meantime was my sister's wedding on the 1st March. This was a great success all round. I remember when they told me that they wanted the reception in the local castle, I thought that's going to be a bit tricky to pull off. But they did it.

I had to get my brother from the airport on Friday evening which was a bit hellish with the traffic as his flight landed at 17:35. I then took him to my Dad's house, where he was staying. It was then that my Dad's wife asked me what I was wearing to the wedding, and only then did I realise I had no black shoes apart from my running shoes. I had to wear those and hope nobody would notice.

Yeah, right, the very first thing my sister said when she saw me when I had to pick up my brother from her house in the morning was 'You're wearing trainers to my wedding!' Oh well. The ceremony was at midday in the chapel at the bottom of town and was simple and effective. They had decided to do it half in Welsh and half in English, which was surprisingly effective. After that it was back to the cars and up to the castle for the reception. This was in a marquee in the castle grounds, which was really effective and worked very well. They had a space in it for the catering, including a bar, and then if anyone needed the loo, they could go to the ones in the visitor centre.

The meal was excellent and there were the usual speeches, and then there was a bit of a gap before the evening do, which was a lot busier. It was a great success all round. The only blot on the proceedings was my sister-in-law breaking her foot when she and my brother were investigating the castle before the wedding. So while the ceremony was going on, she was in the hospital having her foot plastered, and had to turn up to the reception on crutches. Ooops. It was good to see the family though, and my sister's new husband's sprawling family are great too.

The running has been going reasonably well. This last week was a bit of a struggle with the jump to two 13 minute runs, but I did something new on Wednesday and went for a run by myself. I found that pacing myself alone is hard so I ran too fast and had to walk a fair bit at the end, but it wasn't too bad. I think I'm being held back by my weight at this point and need to cut back on my eating. Which is being handicapped by being invited to birthday meals and things.

On Thursday I met up with Rob, Em and Andy to sort out some more details about Berlin. We booked the car park, Andy's suitcase, the Reichstag visit (which you have to now book in advance) and some other details. It's quite worrying how quickly it's come round, but Andy and Rob are a bit more worried obviously, as they have to run the half-marathon.

This weekend has been good. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym, which was nice as it was almost completely desrted. I did my usual cross-trainer and some weights and then went on the treadmill where I mixed up walking on a gradient with running, finally making it up to 11mb/h for a couple of minutes, which was good. After that in the evening it was off to Abergele for Dave B from work's birthday meal. We went to the pub and played (in my case terrible) pool and then went to an Indian. I had a new dish called a Deshi Paneer, which was like a cheesy Korma and absolutely delicious. As I wasn't drinking I didn't stay out all that late, but it was a good evening and a good chance to get to meet the helpdesk guys outside of work. They're all new and I'm still a bit out of touch with them.

Today it was down to Rob and Em's for the rugby. Sadly the game was shit, Wales were just pants and it wasn't fun at all. Even the Sevens game afterward was shit as well, but at least that was shorter so the agony wasn't prolonged. After that we ended up eating a Chinese takeaway while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Netflix.

The other thing I did today was collect up all my vintage computer stuff and put it in the porch to catalogue it and put it on Ebay. I was going to give it to a museum, but they only wanted some of it and wanted it all boxed up and taken to Stoke-on-Trent. Too much hassle so I'm just going to list it all on Ebay as a job lot for collection only. If it goes for a tenner I don't give a shit any more so long as they come and get it.

It's an odd sensation though. All this stuff was so important to me at one point and then somehow I just completely lost interest in it. Not so much vintage computers completely, but having to have the original hardware. It's hard to justify having the physical machines and the space they require when you can just fire up an emulator. There's a couple of things I'm keeping separate to list later, one being a brand new boxed IBM Model M keyboard and the old Acorn A310 which I loved dearly back in the day and can't quite bring myself to sell yet. Not least because I need to take the hard drive out first and can't figure out how.

The need to clear this stuff out though is because there is now finally movement on selling the house and moving somewhere more suitable for my Mum. I'm still feeling the indignity of having to live with an aging parent at my age but realistically at this point, I don't have much choice. Anyway, the house has now been valued and will be on the market before too long.

Oh well. It's a slightly frightening step forward into perhaps a new phase of my life, so I need to try and look forward to that instead of fearing it, although this does fluctuate from day to day.

Running variety

Friday evening it was down to Rob G's with the gang to watch the rugby, which was a surprising success after the dismal performance of Wales the week before. The evening was enhanced by chips from the local chip shop and also a red velvet cake, which was delicious. A great evening all round.

Saturday was a fairly unproductive day, apart from going to the gym in the morning, which was good. I went on the treadmill again but found it harder for some reason so I didn't run on it as long.

Sunday was off to Rhyl with Andy, Rob G and Chelsea so that they could do the 10 mile running race. Despite the fairly dire weather forecast it was quite warm and mostly sunny, with the only downside being the incredibly strong wind that was blowing sand all over the place. Chelsea and I saw them off and then hung around for a while until they came back. They did really well given the conditions, and we got a Subway before heading back.

The rest of Sunday was spent watching some more Breaking Bad, pretty much. Still enjoying it.

The running class on Monday evening wasn't quite as much a fail as last week. I did struggle at one point, when we went up the industrial estate. It's a long, gradual incline, and it just goes on forever. I had to slow right down for it, but once I got past the top, it was OK. Unfortunately I misjudged the kerb by the police station and took a tumble, scraping my leg and hand. I felt fine at the time and finished the run fine, but by the time I got home I was starting to feel various aches and pains, and I had to wash the road grime out of the cuts on my leg which really hurt.

Today has been reasonable, but it's been a bad day for eating, and my aches from the fall got worse, in particular my left knee, but hopefully I'll be OK for the gym tomorrow evening. I need to get as much exercise in the week as possible as this weekend is my sister's wedding so there'll be family stuff going on for most of it.

Developments on the house are suddenly proceeding. It's been valued by two separate people who nearly agreed. After saying this needed to be done for so long, it's somewhat disconcerting for it to suddenly be happening, and I'm suddenly very conscious of how much crap needs to be sorted out. My Mum's eyes are playing up again and if the treatment isn't as effective as last time then she won't be able to drive, and that's going to be a real issue.

Running fail and win

The running class on Monday was a crap for some reason. I really struggled after the first 9 minutes was done as I got a bad stitch and my legs were killing me. One of the guys ended up taking me back a different way and breaking it up a bit. It was quite demoralising but he said not to worry about it. He also recommended that I try the 30 day planking programme that went around recently to build up my core strength.

It was the first DnD for a while on Tuesday, which was good fun. Unfortunately it turned into the usual snack fest. The game was good though.

Yesterday evening I went to the gym and had a good session. I did a 5 minute walk on the treadmill to warm up, then 20 minutes on the cross trainer, then some weights, and back on the treadmill again. I'm getting more comfortable running on the treadmill now, and I did 20 minutes of mixed running and walking, which felt good.

Tonight I went out for a run with Dave from work to repeat Monday's session. After the terrible run I wasn't expecting much, but it was a lot better this time. We did the same route and the stitch began to kick in at around the same spot. However this time it didn't amount to much and almost went away again. We did a bit of extra running and even a short sprint when we were nearly back at the leisure centre.

After the giant Breaking Bad fest on Sunday I've kind of stayed away from it and have been watching South Park season 10. The last episode I watched was the brilliant Make Love, Not Warcraft, which was awesome.

Generator of trouble

It was an uneventful week until Wednesday, when there was a massive storm battering the building in work through the afternoon. The lights flickered occasionally but all was OK until the power went out at 4:50pm. The computer room was running on battery but we had to spent the evening making sure the generator was running and fuelled up. The power came back on after a while but the electricity company couldn't guarantee the supply would stay up, so we shut down a lot of stuff. There was about 10 of us who stayed until 8:45pm, and then we came back in early the next morning to power it back up again. The only casualty of the various power wobbles was a BladeCenter power supply. By the time I was heading home I was really hungry and as it was so late I got a Chinese, but I didn't feel guilty at all.

Thursday was not a productive day as I didn't sleep well and was very tired and took an early finish. I did intend to have a nap and watch some Breaking Bad, but ended up just reading and relaxing.

Friday was an awayday with our new director for the department, as there's been some shuffling around. It was the usual making people get to know each other thing, which was fairly typical. The lunch was OK though. Due to limited parking at the venue I had to leave my car on the street, and when I came back to it I found the central locking must have bounced as it had been unlocked all day - remarkably nothing happened to it.

In the evening it was my sister and her fiance's combined staghen evening, pretty much just an excuse to gather all their friends and go drinking around town. I didn't stay out for the duration, but did see a few places including a rather shady new venue called The Loft, which looks like it should be quite a nice little place but had some very weird hardcore techno going on, and some bizarre dancing which might have been explained by the little huddles of people swapping things around in a most suspicious manner.

Yesterday I headed over to my Dad's house as my cousin was over for the day, so we spent a nice morning chatting and having the traditional chips for lunch. After that it was over to Rob and Em's for Steve's birthday. The plan was to watch a movie and then get an Indian at the top of town, which worked out very well. The movie was Hot Rod, which I hadn't seen or really heard of before, but it was pretty funny, and the meal was as always in that place excellent. It was a really good evening.

Today has pretty much just been a Breaking Bad fest. I've finished Season 3 and got a good start into Season 4.

Not much else to report really. It's been a shit week for both diet and exercise and I've put on a kilo. Bit of a wake up call really, and I think the running class tomorrow is going to be very hard.

Had a really fucked up dream last night, where it was all quite disturbing, but the bit that was horrfying was at the end. I was in a sort of nightclub crossed with a haunted house, and there was a disco type thing and a bar, and various people dancing around and things. Then suddenly something happened, and everyone had to get out. But the only way out was to run down corridors and go through doors which led to rooms with horrors inside which you had to get past. I tried a door that said 'Sharks' and unsuprisingly there was a pool with sharks in it. The next door was labelled 'Psychiatrist' and then inside there were more doors with different types of therapists, and then one of them started to open and the therapist emerged but hugely deformed and mutated, and it was at that point I woke up in absolute terror.

Run for fun or pain?

The running class was tonight. I had to stay late in work to assist with the ongoing server issue, but happily it looks like the work I did on the SAN has sorted it out, which is good news. I then headed to the running class. Tonight was three 8 minute runs. The first one was OK, even though it started out up a hill, but half way through the second one I got a nasty stich like I did last year, and it didn't go away. My calves also started to hurt quite a bit, so due to those and the stich it wasn't much fun, but I still did OK.

I've come clean to myself about how shite my eating has been over the last couple of weeks. I was deluding myself and in denial about it. I'm going to try and crack down on it again as I know I felt better when I managed to before Christmas. It's not so much what I eat as how much of it, so I went shopping after the run and picked up food for the rest of the week. I was hungry, which is not a good thing when you go shopping, but also feeling motivated, so I was reasonably inclined to shop sensibly.

I was thinking today about how much I enjoyed the first Mass Effect game, and how much time I dedicated to playing it a couple of years ago. I'd quite like to replay it but between Breaking Bad, South Park and exercise I haven't really got the time. I'm not hugely fussed about replaying the sequels though. The first one had something a little special that they didn't, although it's hard for me to define exactly what.

A laptop with a tent mode

The rest of last week was fairly OK, with only a bit of an issue in work with the SAN. As my manager is in Ethiopia and he's the one who knows the most about it, it was up to me try and fix things. Not that we managed much over the weekend.

Friday evening was uneventful. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym and had a decent workout. I tried the treadmill again at a slightly slower pace and got on with it fine, although my calf muscles still hurt after I stopped. The rest of it was fine.

After that it was off to Steve's to watch the rugby with snacks aplenty. It was a good day, we watched the Wales/Ireland game which was a disappointment since Wales played appallingly, and then the following England game. After that we hung around and watched a bit of the Sochi games and headed home.

Today has been focused on one thing: starting the third season of Breaking Bad. I guess I really should have done some more tidying or something, but the weather hasn't been right for it at all this weekend.

The computer development is a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13. It's the clever folding back on itself one that can become a big tablet or can be put into 'tent mode' to view the screen and things like that. It is going to replace the M11x. I left it downloading various updates and things while I was watching Breaking Bad and by this evening it's got most of what I need on it.

The thing is pretty thin, but despite that feels very solid. It has a typically good keyboard as you'd expect on a Lenovo, although the layout is a little odd. The trackpad is fantastic, although because it's so big it can get in the way a little. The build quality is very good indeed, but not quite as good as the Thinkpad version that is being deployed in work to some users. Despite the thin design though, it's actually possible to upgrade the RAM to 8gb (not sure if more is possible) and install a second mSATA SSD, which is good to know if the 128gb one becomes a little cramped.

So far the only real downside is that the keyboard isn't backlit, which is a bit of a downer after the Alienware. It also has a strange function where the F9 key instantly switches the screen off, which led me to think it was broken or something when I hit it by accident thinking it was the trackpad disable button. Oh well.

Not much else to report on the whole.

Thwarted food cravings

Yesterday and today have been fairly busy days in work due to a system upgrade that's become rather more complex than it was supposed to. Oh well, my part of the work has gone smoothly today, although it's been a while since I upgraded a server to a new version of AIX.

I was determined to make chilli last night, and got the stuff on the way home to do so. Unfortunately I was just frying the onions when the gas ran out. The hob runs off a gas bottle since we're in the middle of nowhere, and it lasts a good long time. But it ran out just at the wrong moment. So I had to put all the stuff away and have spaghetti hoops instead. What a letdown. Fortunately watching four episodes of Breaking Bad helped distract me from it.

Tonight I managed to make the chilli and it came out pretty well. I tend to make a bit batch of it and then make myself sick of it for a few months. I then continued to watch Breaking Bad and have now finished season 2. So far I've really enjoyed it and it's certainly lived up to the hype. Can't wait to start the next season.

Not much else to report really. I was going to go for a repeat of Monday's run tonight but then I had to stay late in work to help a colleague troubleshoot a server issue, and by the time that was done, I didn't feel like it and came home to do the chilli. The plan now is to go to the gym tomorrow and do the run on Saturday morning before going to watch the rugby at Steve's. It's probably a good thing anyway because today I seem to be really aching from circuits on Tuesday.

I've put things in motion to shuffle my computers around again. This time the target is the M11x - it's a great little machine but I think I've finally outgrown it. I'm still chuffed with the Surface and the G73, no problem there, and the gutted Latitude is still running nicely.

All good fun

It's been a good week on the whole. The weather was a bit flaky last week so I went to the gym in the evenings and didn't get a chance to repeat the running session from Monday. I was brave though and ran on the treadmill for the first time in ages. However I put too much speed on I think so my legs suffered rather.

On Thursday we went to Rob and Em's to watch The World's End. I had no prior idea what it was about, which was definitely for the best, and we all really enjoyed it. I was surprised to see afterward how many people seem to dislike it when compared to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but I thought it was great. And it was fun to see what they could do with a huge budget.

The weekend was good too. It was the beginning of the Six Nations, so we all piled down to Rob and Em's again to watch it, with the usual large quantity of snacks and then Chinese in the evening when Jane was there. It was a great day, had an ace time.

On Sunday it was the christening of my friend Amy's daughter Phoebe. I'm not good in churches, but it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure if the priest sensed my lack of enthusiam for being there, because after he'd chucked water on the baby, he came out with a bowl of water and flicked it over everyone else as a sort of baptism refresher, and I'm sure he targeted me on purpose. After that there was a do at the local rugby club, which was good fun and it was also good to catch up with everyone. We also got to meet another friend's baby for the first time after she was born not long after new year.

Running was OK again on Monday, this time it was three seven minute runs. I have to admit I found it harder than last week, and there was a nasty hill. Not long, but steep and for whatever reason it winded me and I struggled to get my breath back until we walked again, and then I was OK. Tonight there was no DnD as Rob couldn't make it so we went to circuit training. It was pretty hard - despite doing other exercise, I did find it difficult.

Tonight has also been the first geeky evening I've had in ages, since most of my evenings recently have been either continuing the South Park binge or watching Breaking Bad. I'm halfway through season two of Breaking Bad and really enjoying it. I've also nearly finished season 9 of South Park.

The geekiness today was setting up one of my spare gutted Latitude E4300 laptops with the Windows Hyper-V 2012 Server, which is free. I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the other E4300 which is running the free VMware ESXi. So far it's been a bit troublesome and it took a while before I could get the Hyper-V Manager on my Windows 8 machine to even connect to it, but I think that's not helped because I don't have a domain. Anyway, I've got it to the point where I can create and run virtual machines at least, and it's nice that the management tools are built right into Windows 8. So far so good anyway.

I'm always a little surprised at how well the gutted Latitudes cope with this kind of thing. Despite being utterly not what they were intended for, they run the virtualisation stuff rather well with a second hard drive stuffed into the optical bay. They could do with some more RAM though, 4gb is rather limiting. Neither of them has batteries either - if they did it would be handy in power cuts like last week when some work was being done on our electrics and nobody told me that the power was going off.

In other news the 206 went in for it's MOT yesterday. I was fully expecting it to fail, but much to my astonishment it passed fine, with the only thing being a numberplate bulb. It also had an oil and filter change done at the same time.

Running is fun

It was a quite but productive weekend in some ways. I didn't doo all that much, but I did take a load of crap to the tip on Saturday and then had a bonfire on Sunday, so that was good. Otherwise I just ended up watching DVDs. I'm now up to season 9 of South Park and I also watched the first season of Breaking Bad, which Rob and Em lent me on DVD. I really enjoyed it.

Running was good last night. The class this time was 2.5 minutes walk, 5 minutes running, which was a bit of a step up from last week. I wasn't looking forward to it as it was cold, threatening to rain and I was feeling a bit tired. But by the second 5 minute run I was feeling fine, and I really enjoyed it.

If only I could rein back on my diet, still struggling to get into that mindset I was in before Christmas, but just need to work at it in small steps. Oh well.

The project bass I got off someone in work has had some work done on it. I've replaced the strings and sorted out the neck. As I suspected, it's got 4-string pickups, so I put some Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups I had spare in it, which have gigantic magnets and cover the 5 strings quite well. The standard wiring was pretty crappy so I've ripped it all out ready for rewiring. I tested the neck pickup briefly by wiring it directly to the output jack and it sounded good. All good fun. It's nice having a project to work on, I didn't realise how much I missed it when I was trying to find the perfect bass.

The car is booked in for an MOT next Monday. I asked the garage about the issues with the headlight stalk and the scored windscreen and the guy said they would be advisories. Oh well, just have to see how it goes. It's due an oil change as well.

Tired tonight, it's been a long day for some reason.

Granch

Not much to report this week, it's been fairly quiet. I went to the gym on Wednesday, which was annoying because I've lost my key to the machines. I've no idea where it's gone. The session was good, although it was the first time in a month that I'd done any weights and my shoulders really felt it the next day. Thursday evening was the repeat of Monday's session. That went OK but I found it a bit harder, partly because I had a bit of a headache and felt a little out of sorts, and I think we were running a bit faster.

Otherwise it's been fairly quiet. I've continued my South Park binge and have nearly finished season 7. Not as good as 6 I think, but then there's 8 to come, which I've already seen and enjoyed. Rob and Em have also lent me the first season of Breaking Bad, so I've got that to look forward to.

Spent this evening having a nice quiet one. I put the Rammstein Live Aus Berlin DVD on, and let that play in the background while I fooled around on the Surface Pro. I still remember how the DVD blew my mind when I first saw it, and it's hard to believe it was recorded in 1998. The early Rammstein stuff is really good.

I've gone against my clearout policy at the moment, and picked up a project bass from a colleague in work. The reason is that it's a Westfield which is almost identical to one I had years ago, other than it being a 5-string. It's been neglected for years and needs some TLC, but I've missed having a bass that I could tinker with and try different pickups and wiring and things. It's one of the ones where they cheated a bit and made a 5-string with narrow string spacing and used 4-string pickups. I like the narrow string spacing because I'm used to it on the Jackson now, but I'm not sure the pickups are up to it. Oh well, it'll be fun getting it up and working again. However I need to clear out some other stuff to justify keeping it...

Not sure what I'm going to do this weekend, but I do want to have a go at clearing out some crap, and go to the gym. I also need to find a replacement number plate bulb for the car, since the electrical woes the other week seem to claimed that as well.

See LL run. Run LL run.

Second session of the run for fun class, so it was three minutes walk, three minutes run, repeated five times. It went pretty well I think, I was quite pleased with how I felt during the run and afterwards. I sort of feel like I could run a lot further but at the same time it's probably sensible to build it up again slowly and not risk damaging something. Still, I'm feeling good about it. The only downside was that I fucked up the Strava recording, so I didn't get to see the results. Oh well, not the end of the world. The leader of the group I was in was talking about the speed training that he normally does with the Harriers, which was interesting. Eventually I would like to work on improving my pace.

Due to not being able to watch stuff on TV and things, I'm having a bit of a binge on South Park and working my way through Stargate SG-1 season 2 that Steve lent me in December. I'm still slightly ambivalent about SG-1 - I am enjoying it, but I'm not quite sure how it made it for 10 seasons and has such a devoted fanbase. Still, apparently it kicks into high gear by season 3, so I'm still giving it a good chance. I do find the cynical aspect of O'Neill's character somewhat wearying though.

When it comes to South Park, I've just finished season 6, and have just received seasons 7, 9 and 10 because Amazon is flogging them off pretty cheap. I already had season 8 because it was one of the last things left in the local Woolworths when they closed it a few years ago, and I got it for a few quid. It's interesting to see how South Park developed when it got beyond the time when it was stupidly popular. So I'm looking forward to getting stuck into season 7. It's easy to power through South Park though because the episodes are only 20 minutes or so.

The new keyboard cover for the Surface turned up. I have to say, despite it being so thin without much key travel, it's one of the best keyboards I have ever used, nice and clicky. It also has a backlight, which has some sort of sorcery that makes it light up if you just hold your hands over the keyboard without pressing a key - first time in a while that a piece of technology has made me go 'woah' out loud. It's made the Surface much more usable and while it is a bit thicker and heavier than the touch cover, it's definitely worth it, and I can always put the touch cover back on if I need it to be a bit lighter.

Uneasiness.

It's not been a productive day. I didn't sleep well last night due to my nose being all tickly which led to snotting and sneezing, then the dog had one of his dramatic moments and would only settle down on my bed, which didn't help. My nose has been the same for much of today as well, it feels like one of my rare bouts of hayfever but I have no idea what's triggered it.

Pretty much the only thing I've done is finally get hold of a replacement casing for the car key after the unlock button finally fell off for good. It was only a few quid off Ebay and fitted right on, although I only put the button half on as it was a replica and didn't have the Peugeot logo on the other side.

The Xbox 360 has been playing up recently. The disk drive drawer won't open, and I have to lever it out. This hasn't done it much good and the silver front has broken now. Not sure how much longer it'll last, although it still reads disks fine once they're in. I've gone off the 360 quite a bit these days, the new dashboard with all the adverts was pretty much the point where I started to dislike it. The last thing I played on it was GTA V, which I got bored of quite quickly after I finished the campaign, and GTA Online didn't grab me at all. I did buy some gold to play something with Rob and Steve but that never really happened so it's still sitting around.

Also it's dawned on me that it's a right pain not being able to keep up with what everyone is watching. I don't have access to TV and the Internet connection is too crappy for something like Netflix, so I'm resigned to waiting for the DVD or doing the naughty thing, unless it's on iPlayer which works OK if stuff is downloaded. It's annoying to hear everyone banging on about stuff like Breaking Bad and suchlike without being able to join in the conversation.

Meltdown

It's been a week of ups and downs.

The run for fun class on Monday was a definite up. I thought at first it was going to be a nightmare as it absolutely pissed it down when I left work, but fortunately it was clear when we met up for the class. I was a little late and I was rather taken aback by what seemed like a vast crowd of people in hi-vis jackets. It turned out there were 24 of us, so they split us up into groups to make it all more manageable. After my knee, cold and back I hadn't done any exercise for three weeks at that point so I was quite anxious about it, but to my surprise I did OK, as did Steve and Dave from work.

Tuesday was DnD for the first time this year, starting a new quest. Steve had made us do homework to explain what our characters had been doing for five years, which was interesting. On the way home however I started to dwell on problems and had a bit of a meltdown about the house, turning 36 this year, being perpetually single and various other things. I slept like crap that night and had a grump day in work on Wednesday, ignoring everything with headphones on all day.

I'm feeling a bit better now, having decided that having a mega strop isn't going to solve anything. Last night I went to Mold to meet up with Steve and Dave to repeat Monday's running session, which was good and helped boost our confidence.

The Alienware M17x has been sold and posted to the buyer in Northern Ireland. I'm actually surprised at myself that I managed to do it - I was very attached to the old beast. I didn't get as much for it as I hoped, but it was enough to cover the cost of the Surface Pro, which I'm still very pleased with. I've also ordered a new cover for it, the one with the physical keyboard. As much as I like the concept of the flat touch keyboard, it's not great for typing much on

Still absolutely loving the Jackson 5-string bass. I'm still not quite sure why, but it just feels so great to play. I'm even getting used to playing stuff on it that I'd normally play on a 4-string.

Running envy

The Twin Piers yesterday was good. The weather was really good, although perhaps a little chilly. There was a really good turnout and a good atmosphere. Andy did well, although found it hard.

Today wasn't hugely productive, although I did take the car to town and give it a long overdue wash. The amount of shit that came out of the wheelarches would have done a Land Rover proud, let alone a humble 206. I also got some new front sidelight bulbs for it since they seemed to have been blown by the electrical problems last week.

Not mch else to report. Spent the rest of the weekend watching DVDs and playing with computers. My back has finally returned to normal, which is good as the running class starts tomorrow. Not sure if I am looking forward to it or not as it's now been over three weeks since I did any exercise. Still, hopefully it will give me me the kick I need to get back into it again. It's also been a scary long time since I've been out on a bike.

I listed the M17x on Ebay. I did my usual 5 day listing and it's already had three bids and some interest, so that's a good sign. The money will go into my savings, although I might use some of it to get a different keyboard cover for the Surface Pro.

Also need to get hold of my eating habits again, as I was doing quite well before Christmas.

Slow return to health

It's been a fairly quiet week on the whole. I went down to Steve's on Tuesday evening to check out th giant slab that is the Xbox One. I enjoyed trying out the gore-fest Ryse and Forza. They did look good, I have to say. Steve has also had my spare 2DS on long-term loan.

The car played up again this week, with the battery light coming on more and more often. It reached a peak on Thursday morning and so I dropped it into a garage. They checked it over and decided it was the alternator as I had feared. They had to order one in so they kindly lent me a Fiat Punto to get home in. To be honest though, the old one must have been going for a while though since it was quite startling how much brighter the headlights are now and the wipers are much faster too. Annoyingly though the electrical issues seem to have blown some bulbs so I need to sort those out.

I've sold my project Alienware M14x for parts, couldn't be arsed with it after I found the issue with the keyboard connector - good thing I did really since it helpe pay for the work on the car. I've also finally wiped the M17x and listed it on Ebay. I will be sad to see the old beast go, definitely. The Asus G73 now has the 16gb RAM and 256gb SSD from the M17x. It has a total of 20gb RAM now, which is how I found out that Windows Home only supports 16gb. Still, I had the spare Windows 8 upgrade from the M17x, so I installed that on it. I had to phone activate it though, annoyingly, and of course it wants shedloads of updates, including the 3.5gb 8.1 update.

Still chuffed with the Suface Pro. The single USB3 port was a bit limiting so I ordered a neat little 3-port hub that includes a gigabit Ethernet port, which works perfectly. That combined with a mini-DispayPort to DVI adapter means it can now do everything the M17x did. I do need to do something about a keyboard though. The touch cover is OK and I like the idea and design, but it is not great for typing a lot on. I've also put a 64gb MicroSD in it to expand the storage. It's about OK for now, will keep me going until I can save up and get one of the 256gb models or a Surface Pro 3, hah.

Tomorrow I'm giving a lft to Andy so he can do the Twin Piers 10k. Hopefully that'll be good. Wish I was doing it too, but my fitness needs a lot of work. My back is nearly OK now though, so I'm looking forward to the new running class on Monday. It's been exactly three weeks since I did any exercise, but it feels like a hell of a lot longer.

Been playing the bass a fair bit over the last few days too and really enjoying it. The Jackson 5-string is really working for me and I'm starting to get the hang of using the 5th string for the extra notes. So pleased with it that I might look into selling the Squier Jazz.

Started rereading the Caves of Steel by Asimov. The last time I read the series I was thwarted by losing my copy of Robots and Empire, but I found a copy on Ebay for a quid.

Hmm. iTunes is randomly playing Follow the Leader by Korn, something that I've not listened to in ages since I didn't like it, but now I'm actually quite enjoying it, although I still detest the clickety-clack bass style.

Surfaced

I left the Surface updating to 8.1 last night and it got there OK. my back was killing me at about 3am though, so I got it through the rest of the setup then. This evening I've put more of my usuall apps and things on there. I have to admit that I am wondering if I'm doing the right thing as I am very fond of the big old M17x, but it's crazy to just keep it out of basically vanity. Still, it's fun seeing how well things work on the Surface. iTunes is a problem without a pointing device, since Apple decided to put no borders on the window, so resizing it is impossible. The sole USB port is an issue too, meaning a hub is basically essential. Still, the Surface is getting nicely close to that ideal where a portable or handheld computer is powerful enough to do everything, and you just dock it when you want to work at a desk. Shame the 8gb RAM and 256gb models are so crazy expensive.

Touchy feely

New Year's Eve was good fun. It was once again round at Rob and Em's, and the usual crowd were in attendance. It was a really good evening, lots of food and conversation. If I hadn't been ill, I would have been tempted to have a drink, but I was still feeling a bit crappy. The most hardcore thing I drank was some Lemsip, after Em said they had some of the apple and cinnamon one, which is really nice.

There was a ridiculous amount of food, highlights being Robert and Chelsea's home made pies and and flapjacks, and Rob and Caroline's stuffing roll and epic cake. For some reason everyone brpight cheese, so there was a truly insane amount of that. There was also the mysterious Partty Cannon brought by Steve. It wasn't very clear what it did, so everyone was quite wary when he let it off. In the end it made a hell of a bang and threw tissue paper all over the place.

Didn't do much yesterday. Had a quiet philosophical day trying to think of the things that are making me unhappy at the moment and what, if anything, I can do about them. Not sure if I made any progress though.

The Surface Pro finally turned up. I've rebuilt it with a fresh install and installed some of the updates, although the 8.1 update will have to run overnight as it's a 3.5gb download. So far I quite like it. It's pretty fast and responsive and I like the way that it has enough power to do the usual PC things as well as being a tabletty thing. The battery life remains to be seen however, as it's the pre-Haswell proessor in this model. The touch cover is interesting. The flat keys work better than you'd expect, but your fingers definitely feel it after a while. It's actually pretty worn and has a US layout though, so might look into another one, or the type cover with a proper keyboard. Of course there is also the onscreen keyboard, but that obviously has even less give. I hope I don't get too used to the touchscreen and start prodding at other machines that don't have one. One thing is that it didn't come with the pen, but it's standard Wacom technology, and I found that the pen from my Galaxy Note works fine with it.

The question of whether it has enough power to becpme my primary machine remains to be answered, but I think it does. The aim is to keep the Surface and the Asus G73, which will be fitted with more RAM to become a virtualisation behemoth. That's the idea anyway. I need to get back into this sort of thing again. In fact, that could be said about many things, including interacting with people...think that is something I really need to get working on again.

Still feeling a bit crappy overall, but there is definite improvement. My back is aching, partly because I think I pulled it with all the cooughing, and the other day I had to take a server to another site, and I had to carry it up tp the first floor because the lift was broken. Hopefully I will be better by the weekend so I can start exercising again.

Lungs of despair

A slightly annoying day. I had to shut down my gutted Latitude E4300 that's been running ESXi for a few months without any issues, as I had to move it. When I turned it back on though, it failed to boot, so I had to drag a monitor over and hook it up, and it was complaining about a corrupted file.

In the afternoon I headed down to my sister's place for a small bash she'd arranged. It was a very busy house though, since her fiance's brother and sister were there with their respective children, who greeted me by surrounding me while bouncing up and down and shrieking at the tops of their voices. It was good to see them all though, and it was a nice afternoon.

I didn't sleep well last night, spent quite a lot of it alternating between feeling feverish and cold. It wasn't good. After I got up and started moving around a bit, I felt better, but this evening my chest is starting to hurt and I can feel a cough coming on. This always happens when I get a cold, which is really annoying because it will interfere with my exercise if it goes on too long.

One thing I need to work on next year is keeping in touch with people better. I feel like I seem to have managed to isolate myself a bit, which probably isn't helped by my slightly depressive mood. Being forever single doesn't seem to be helping either.

The Latitude E4300 is being a pain. I think I'm going to have to do a fresh install of ESXi onto the USB drive and then see if I can import the VMs from the datastores on the hard drives. Fun fun. What a thrilling life I do lead.

That's it for another year...

Christmas was OK. As usual I split the day between my parents, heading over to my Dad's place for lunch and the Queen's speech.

Since then it's been fairly uneventful. Steve has lent me Stargate SG-1 season 2 so I've started that and I'm also now on South Park season 5, so I'm flipping between those, which is an interesting contrast. I also did some side missions on GTA V that were leftover. I still think it had a pretty good campaign but now it's complete I'm not really too fussed about carrying on with it, or trying to get 100%. A colleague in work is going to borrow it on Monday anyway.

Rob and Em got me a book called Ready Player One. It's set in the future, but focused around the 80's. In particular video games and that sort of thing, so it's pretty much the geekiest book of all time. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it.

Also been noodling around on the bass after that band I saw last weekend inspired me to play it more often. My amp is shit though, if I wasn't trying to be financially sensible and reduce clutter I'd look into getting a new one.

I got a reply from the computer museum that I offered my old stuff for. They want a fair few things, but not all of it. They have a drop off point in Stoke-on-Trent, which isn't too far away, but they want it boxed, which is somewhat annoying. I'm going to sort the stuff out tomorrow and try and work out how many boxes it'll take and I suppose put a distress call out on Facebook for boxes or something. Not sure what to do with the rest of it that they don't want. I'll probably stick it on Ebay as a job lot for collection only - I don't care if it only goes for a tenner, the aim is to get rid of it all.

Started to feel rough last night. There's been a few colds going around and I started to hope I'd managed to avoid them this time, but apparently not. So far I don't feel all that bad, just a bit bunged up and achy.

For no apparent reason my left knee started twinging a little on Monday, and by Christmas day it was incredibly painful, making walking and driving difficult. The last time I did anything strenuous was the Friday before Christmas at the gym, and if that was the cause, I don't know why it took a few days to start aching. It's almost OK again now though, but it was really annoying because Andy suggested going up Moel Famau on Boxing Day, and the weather that day would have been perfect. My knees have been fine since I stopped playing badminton in September, so I was hoping it was the stress from badminton that was messing them up - but apparently not.

Not being able to move around much and eating my own bodyweight in chocolate and other crap has left me feeling pretty dreadful on the whole, so I went out shopping today and got some reasonably healthy food.

My face has gone all fucked up and flaky again, which I've noticed tends to happen if my diet is bad for more than a few days. Apples never tasted so good! Need to get exercising again too. Looking forward to the new Run for Fun course in January, although it's going to be quite different from the last time as it's now winter.

Back to work on Monday, but I'm hoping it'll be nice and quiet.

That time of year again...

It's that time of year again. It must be hell working in retail for Christmas, when everyone suddenly behaves as though the apocalypse has arrived and cram into the shops, fight over parking spaces and generally behave rather opposite to what the whole thing is about.

Oh well.

Not much to report really. Last week wasn't great for exercise - slept badly the night before circuits and so I didn't end up going, although I did get to the gym on the Wednesday and Friday. I weighed myself and depressingly I've put on a kilo, although that wasn't too unexpected as it was The Time of Chocolate in the Office, and my diet was suffering accordingly.

On Saturday it was the surprised birthday of an old colleague of mine from my last job, which was good. He was completely unaware of it and it was a really good evening. I beat a hasty exit just as the disco was due to start, a whole room full of caterwauling drunken females was a little offputting. I nipped into a local pub where a guy I know was playing with his band. He sings and plays bass, and is pretty good. Not really a proper thing, just playing for a few people, and they were a guitarist down, but it was good.

On Sunday I just ended up lazing around and finishing off the first season of Stargate SG-1. It was OK, a bit rubbish in places, but I reminded myself how crap TNG was at first and tried to give it a fair trial. It picked up towards the end and I've now got the 2nd season off Steve and will see how that goes.

Last night was Andy's Xmas Eve-eve bash, which was good fun. Lots of food, chatter, games and various entertainment. I also took 20 minutes to pop over to see my sister and drop off her Christmas present, which was nice.

My mood has been a bit random recently. Some days feeling OK, other days feeling like complete shit and beating myself up again for no particular reason. Now that the vast majority of people I know are married or now have partners, it can get a little depressing and on bad days, I can feel like I'm being marginalised, although I know that's a daft thing to think. Not sure what the new year will bring, but the way it's going at the moment, something is going to have to give, and I don't know what the consequences will be.

Decided to reevaluate my computers. I've come to the conclusion that having a stupidly powerful gaming laptop (Alienware M17x R2) is rather pointless if you never actually use it for games, and its not exactly portable either. Since I'm intrigued by them, I found a good deal on Ebay for a Surface Pro, so I'm going to see if that will be suitable for general use once it arrives. I thought about Android tablets, but truth be told, I've gone off Android a bit. I don't mind it on my phone, but it doesn't feel like something you can do proper work on, whereas the Surface can be a tablet, but then you can hook up a monitor and keyboard and it's suddenly a proper computer.

If the Surface Pro does work out, I'll stick the M17x on Ebay while it's still hopefully got some value. I'm going to keep the Asus G73, which admittedly also a gaming laptop, but it's not quite so OTT as the Alienware. Randomly I found out that it has four memory slots, so it can have a fuckton of RAM in it too. If the M17x does go, I'll put it's 16gb RAM and 256gb SSD into the G73. The idea with the G73 is to use it to run virtual machines - I need to try and learn more about Windows Server and Active Directory, amongst other things.

Saturday of hmm

Went to my Dad's today, and spent the day hanging out there. It's been a good day, although the weather has been horrible, stupidly windy and later on rainy as well. We hung out and I was able to head out and get my Mum's Christmas present, and after that it was a lazy day, just chatting and watching bad TV.


Halfway through Strictly Come Dancing (not my choice, my Dad's wife watches it), it struck me that I could either have been going to Belgo's with Rob and Em and the southern crown tonight, or going to see the new Hobbit movie. Belgo's didn't happen because this time there was a pricey hotel involved and I thought it would be a bit much to do that and Berlin in the same month - financially sensible but rather more depressing than I expected to be left out of it when the time actually came. The Hobbit didn't happen due to a complicated set of circumstances. However I haven't seen the first one, and after seeing the trailer for the second one, it left me cold. It just looked so ridiculously Hollywoodified and over the top and I'm still finding it faintly ridiculous that they've made it into three movies. Still, it was good to see my Dad and I'm glad I spent the day there in the end.

Yesterday while in work, one of my colleagues and I resorted to YouTube videos to listen to over headphones to avoid the Christmas dross that someone is somehow allowed to play in the office. Somehow I discovered that Sepultura covered Firestarter by the Prodigy a couple of years ago, and it's surprisingly good. Then we discovered a band called Rotting Christ. Unsurprisingly it's a black metal band, and I don't normally go for that sort of thing at all, but their latest album is somehow strangely compelling. It has the screamy vocals that I'm not too keen on, but the music is excellent. 

Decided I need to work harder on clearing the house out with the eventual aim of moving next year. It's funny how things change. A few years ago I was happy to collect vintage computers and play with them, but now I could give the ones I have left away without a second thought. I still like to play with emulators and the like, but physical hardware is just something to get in the way and be annoying now. There are a few computer museums dotted around the UK - I'm tempted to make up a list and see if any of them want the stuff I have. But there's a lot more crap as well. It seems like an impossible task sometimes.

The 206 isn't much use for this kind of stuff either. I wish I could have kept the old Honda Accord and put it on a limited mileage insurance policy or something - that was great for lugging stuff to the tip or whatever, but when I got the 206 I had nowhere to keep it. Oh well.

My state of mind has improved a bit, I was not in a good place for a while back in October and November, but I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about things. I still have my problems but they don't seem quite so insurmountable as before. At least for now anyway.