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More Friday Five shennanigans...

1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?

I'm not a good browser, although that depends what shop I'm in. I prefer to go into shop A for item B and then leave. Some might remember me saying I'm rubbish with favourite-type lists; if I was better at them I'd be able to go into shops and look for my favourite music/films/whatever and get them.

2. What was the last thing you purchased?

In a real shop: food, at Tescos. Online: 'Afterglow', the new CD by Sarah McLachlan.

3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?

Looking back at question 1 I'd have to say online.

4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?

Strangely, as I child I needed very little that was not provided by Christmas and birthdays.

5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?

Hard to say. I have bought a few CDs I now don't listen to anywhere near enough, so I suppose they could count.

"If men liked shopping, they'd call it research." - Cythina Nelms

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Still Bitching

So I get home, hoping to start putting my computer back in order, and I find it's screwed again. Same system file corruption problem. The hard drives are okay, so it might be the motherboard bios or the hard drive controller.

The first could possibly be fixed by a bios update. The second could mean a new motherboard and/or processor.

Bugger.

Will find out which this weekend, with any luck.

"Just gets better and better all the time, doesn't it, guys?" - John Crichton, 'Crackers Don't Matter'

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Computers Are A Bitch

Pretty much my entire weekend was dedicated to observing the slow resurrection of my PC. The older hard drive, which had all my games on it, had a bad sector fit a couple of weekends ago. So I got myself a new drive in order to drive-copy my system drive onto that and my games drive onto my then-old system drive.

Unfortunately, the games drive had corrupted a really important Windows file which then prevented my new drive from booting. So we had to reformat the new drive and reinstall Windows et al from scratch, a dull and tedious exercise. At least I had not lost all my files and documents and so forth.

Unfortunately, again, once Windows was pretty much sorted out we put the games drive back in to try and get the save files and whatnot off it... which corrupted that system file again, so we had to start from scratch, again.

This basically took all of Saturday and Sunday (between and during the Doctor Who @ 40 Weekend on UK Gold, good stuff), so barring a brief ten minutes on Sunday morning to inform my online friends where I'd been I actually have not been really online since the early afternoon of Friday.

Horrible. I've missed things. A terrible crime.

And now, of course, I have to go back down to Andover today... which means I won't be able to get my PC sorted at all until Thursday.

Bastard.

"In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it." - Unknown

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Five Five's Are Twenty Five...

1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.

Lose some weight (no chance, too lazy); win the lottery (no chance); win the heart of a good (or at least halfway decent) woman (low probability). I can't think of any more.

2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.

You know, I don't think there is anyone.

3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.

Play an instrument (piano or guitar); drive a motorcyle; sing properly; draw really well; and most of all, learn how to be a normal sociable person.

4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).

Buy a good-sized dwelling of some sort; fill it with gadgets; home cinema; a chauffer for when I can't be bothered to drive; spend time doing what I want to do. Oh, and a sneaky extra one; give a yearly donation to worthwhile charities. And seven: quit my job, of course.

5. List five things you do that help you relax.

Sleep; listen to music; read a good book; sleep. And sleep.

"Who begins too much accomplishes little." - German Proverb

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So I was texting someone to tell them the colour of my car so they can order me a new wing mirror. My car is the dynamic-sounding "panther black" but the first word my mobile came up with using predictive text was panties.

I think 'panties black' sounds a lot better, don't you? Maybe you could have 'bra blue', 'suspender silver', 'gusset grey' and 'y-front white' too. Can anyone think up one for red? And how about a colour to go with 'thong'?

"People can have the Model T in any colour--so long as it's black." - Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

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I forgot to mention this earlier...

So I bashed wing mirrors with another car on the way back to the B&B tonight, going down the very narrow road into the village. All I know is my mirror is hanging on two wires; it's too dark to see anything else. I'm going to have to wrap it up in bubble wrap or something for the interim, till I can get it fixed, as I'm not sure cutting the wires would be a good idea. I don't know what they're for; it might be for heating them as they are not electric wing mirrors.

I gave my details to the other person, and took her name and phone number. She seemed of the opinion that it was my fault, said I did not give enough room. When I called her she said a witness said I had been speeding, and that she had fixed hers already; probably just snapped it back into place.

She was not interested in giving me her insurance details, unless I wanted to bring the police into it. I said I would probably not go to through my insurance for fixing my mirror, anyway, so the matter was closed.

Shit. My car needs fixing again. It's a curse, I tell ya.

"The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it." - Dudley Moore (1935 - 2002)

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At work down here in Andover, users need a digital signature to send e-mails to the outside world. I've been waiting for mine for ages, but I never really needed it till today. I had a load of stuff, just some text, I wanted to send to myself so I could get it later but I couldn't.

So I saved it all as an unposted post on my blog and cut it out and pasted it into a text file when I got here.

A bit long-winded and probably unnecessary, but it worked.

So now I have my notes on how to make an html document print out using page breaks so it moves to a new page when you want it to. And a whole lot of strange truths. Here are some now...

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs ... but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

More to come later.

And, lastly...


G# minor - You are not totally happy, and you know it. At least you are trying to do something about it. You like to think and create to try and sort out your problems. Keep going the way you are, and you will soon be on speaking terms with your demons.
What key signature are you?
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"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction." - Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

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So yes, thankfully, I can use the phone line at the temporary B&B. My last shreds of sadly net-addicted sanity are safe for another week.

Now... Surely if 'they' were to ban using mobile phones with hands-free kits because of the dangerous distraction conversation can be, they would then also have to ban car stereos and all conversation with any passengers too? They can be just as bad, if not worse. Just how do you go about enforcing a law against conversation in cars anyway?

"Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know." - Cullen Hightower

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So, I never got round to seeing Matrix Revolutions today, as those who care might have noticed by my lack of comment on the subject. Too tired and lazy to drive the distance required to take advantage of my free cinema ticket. I had as much if not more fun watching more episodes of season three of Babylon 5 on DVD instead. Great stuff. Good to see them again too; as I might have mentioned before, I've only seen about ninety percent of it once, when it was on TV.

"I can't think of anything clever to say, nor a quote to, well, quote. I should make up some of my own, then I'd never run out." - MT Hed

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Happy Birthday to Jen!

Let's hope the coming year is better than the last, because, let's face it, much of it sucked more ass than an international felching championship.

Though not all of it was bad. I liked all the bits with you in them.

Best wishes, better hopes, take care, and have fun!



Yeah... So it looks sickeningly cute, but it's really a... er... deep and serious indictment of... ummm... something. Besides, it's funny. Isn't it?

"Personally I think birthdays and anniversaries are like menstrual cramps, a regular pain in the ass that’s somehow connected to birth." - Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, September 30, 2003

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Fifteen for Five.

1. Using one adjective, describe your current living space.

Cramped.

2. Using two adjectives, describe your current employer.

Harassing, freaky.

3. Using three adjectives, describe your favorite hobby/pasttime.

Addictive, creative, time-consuming.

4. Using four adjectives, describe your typical day.

Long, dull, tired, net-ish. That last one might not be a real word.

5. Using five adjectives, describe your ideal life.

Wealthy, hobbies, loved, net-busy, loved.



Praise be for the weekend.

"Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry." - R.Z. Sheppard, book critic

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Well, at least this new B&B place, which is basically a flat over someone's garage that's usually only for friends of the owners, has a phone line I can use. Admittedly I've pulled the cable out the back of the phone and plugged it into my laptop without asking if I can, but hey, it's either that or go completely insane.

True, I'm a lot of the way there already, but I'd rather not go that extra mile, thanks.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?" - George Price

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It's always horrible going back to work. I hate it. It's dull, I can't be bothered to think, and there are so many things I'd much rather be doing, as always. And on top of that, I've got to drive down to Andover again this afternoon, starting the new "three days a week" routine. Whoop-de-fucking-do.

[insert your own witty comment about boredom in the comments, if you give a shit]

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I just looked at an old chat log and found a time when I said a very stupid thing that embarassed me a great deal at the time. And it still does now. It's bad enough when I just remember it, but it's much worse to actually read it again, even only the start of it.

Shit.

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." - Unknown

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Right then, it's Friday, time for the Big Five...

1. What food do you like that most people hate?

Hard to say. I like most of the things that people like, and most of the things that most people don't like. Maybe... beetroot?

2. What food do you hate that most people love?

Again, hard to say. My food-related dislikes are fairly average. I could make a stab at cauliflower, I guess. With a really big knife.

3. What famous person, whom many people may find attractive, is most unappealing to you?

These aren't easy, are they? Ummm... Tell you what, to keep it short, see the next question; I'll just outline the theory there.

4. What famous person, whom many people may find unappealing, do you find attractive?

Okay then, theory time. If there's a TV show with a famously attractive main female, like Buffy or Lana Lang in Smallville for example, I seem to find the secondary attractive females more interesting. Maybe I'm trying to subconsciously go for the one least likely to be fought over so hard...

5. What popular trend baffles you?

So I've gone for the first two I could think of. Baseball caps; I mean, seriously: why? And indoors? Spitting: who first thought spitting while walking along the road was a cool and manly thing to do? Who decided just swallowing that excess spittle, like they always did, was no longer the done thing? And who actually finds it attractive?

As an aside, I thought I'd just say that I found The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen to be an entertaining film. Maybe that's a point of contention, maybe it's not. You decide.

"When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue." - Merkin's Maxim

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Looks like we've got a house to rent down in Andover now, though I haven't seen it yet. And it's in an area that gets cable, so that should make for some spiffy internet access, barring connection and service problems. Thing is, we can't get in there till the 29th of November. In the mean time, I'll be staying in another B&B or something, don't know exactly what it is and won't till I see it this Sunday. I also don't know if there is a phone line there for me to use, which could be a disaster. Bugger.

On a holiday note, my time so far has been pretty much spent entirely on watching series one of Alias on DVD and playing Homeworld 2, which looks great and plays hard. Oh, and I went to see Kill Bill, which was ace. And Matrix Revolutions is out now, too. I should go see that some time soon, see if it makes more sense than not.

"The revolution is not a tea party." - Mao Tse-tung (1893 - 1976)

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