Pile of Dross

So I think my iBook may be having hardware issues, Leopard installs dumped out at various points. After reboots its had difficulty finding the airport and the sound device from time to time, and I’m pretty sure that some of the sizes reported by files are wrong (Anyone else’s /Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/Quartz Composer Visualiser.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Quart Composer Visualizer ~150GB in size?).

My XBox 360 has been locking up on occasion.

And my hot water tank appears to have sprung a leak.

Bah.

Crikey, its been a while.

I’m sitting here waiting for my preload of Half-Life Episode 2 and Portal to complete. (BTW as I’ve been a sucker and bought the Orange box, that means I’ll shortly have HL2 and HL2 Episode 1 codes to give away, so if anyone want them let me know). I’ve managed to wangle my way onto a workshop in Edinburgh in Mid November. In other sort of work stuff, my boss has said that he doesn’t mind me getting an Apple as a work laptop, which is great except what do I do with this iBook? And do I wait for Leopard?

Damn Didcot and its town centre development – used to be that temptation was a 15 minute train journey to Oxford, after a 10 minute walk to the station. But now anyone can stroll into Argos, buy an XBox 360 and 2 games and be home setting it up 5 minutes later. My XBox has been uncermoniously dumped on top of the video recorder in my bedroom.

Related to my shiny new purchase, I’ve set up a Status page, which includes my XBox Live Gamer card.

Hmm, I’ve preordered the new Sims 2 expansion pack from GAME, to get the free doobrie and hopefully encourage them to do this in the future, I’m tempted to find an e-mail address and mail Maxis/EA saying why and asking them if they’d consider expanding such offers to Amazon UK as that’s who I normally use.

Well knock me down with a feather, Maxis and EA have apparently finally realised that people in the tiny fraction of the world that is non-North America buy computer games online too and have started offering
preorder bonus items in the UK for the upcoming Sims 2 expansion pack. Amazon UK would have good but I suppose GAME is not too bad either

Took Friday off sick. The first day I’ve been off work through illness in over 3 years – i.e. since starting there. A particularly nasty cold it was, spent Friday in bed reading and filling the contents of handkerchiefs, recovered enough on Saturday to play Quake 4 when it popped through the letterbox and was sufficently recovered to make a supply run to Sainsburys on Sunday.

Quake 4, by the by, is definately better than Doom 3, flashlights on yer weapons – need I say more. No “monster cupboards” either.

Work is work, was in a meeting last week where the outcome was that we plan to ditch months of (my) work and move to a different system, for the best of reasons, though its a very tight timescale, so the status quo may continue. Difficult to pin down how I feel about this – a weird concotion of relief at not having to run the bugbear for ever, frustration that I oculdn’t get it to a state where I could leave it and a numb feeling that if I’d twiddled my thumbs continously for the past months we’d be in some ways in a better situation.

And I note that Caity is worryingly demonstrating traits normally found only in my blood relatives, in particular the continued mocking of myself for a minor linguistic gaffe. Scary.

Also,my letting agents haven’t yet cashed the cheque I sent for the admin costs of my lease renewal, I’ll prod them tomorrow to make sure they got it.

Its strange, it seems that writing a few lines each day summarising my activites at work seems to drain my blogging energy to such an extent that I can’t be bothered writing about anything else. So what have I been up to since the last non-work, non-meta post on the 12th? Well i got older – quietly and without fuss, I’ve finished all 3 three of the books I was “reading”, been playing the new Sims 2 expansion pack and DOA 2 Ultimate, managing to get past 50 for the first time ever in Survival mode. I’ve transferred my dns and mail hosting from ProjectColo/Caladan to Dreamhost. I ‘ve (re-)watched all of Season 1 of the West Wing and I’m working my way through Season 2 and I fought my way past what seemed like half of Didcot exploring the new Woolworth’s in the town centre while attempting to find a suitably insulting card for my brother’s birthday. Really doesn’t seem much for over a fortnight.

[Edit - Bollocks, tack Scrubs 2 onto the start of the recently watched dvds list as well]

Just preordered Sims 2: Nightlife

I’m also toying with the idea of getting myself a new laptop, my current one has a fun trick of whiting out the screen at inopportune moments.

• Took delivery of :
  • A 6-channel A/V switcher hub to replace the push button one I bought when I got fed up of swapping scart leads about between Graeme’s DVD player and my PS2.
  • A USB Joy convertor(according to the invoice anyway), you see I’ve been unable to use my joy for sometime and I hoped this would let me, but sadly the joy converter only works with analogue joy not my digital joy. Bah.
  • A Logitech MX518 mouse to replace my Intellimouse Explorer
  • A Razer exactMat, though I’m not using the wrist rest as it isn’t particualrly comfortable in certain positions.
  • A Creative Audigy 4
  • A Harmony Remote 688 as my laziness is reaching new heights.
  • A Sony DVPNS30 DVD Player
• Watched the Firefly DVD boxset (twice)
• Started playing Hitman:Contracts
• Started playing Thief 3
• Completed Hitman:Contracts (with a worringly large number of levels completed with a rating of Mass Murderer)
• Gained 4 levels in World of Warcraft
• Got my Wireless AP to finally forward on DHCP requests – apparently it wouldn’t unless it had received its address via DHCP *rolls eyes*