Archive for July, 2008

I’m getting up in the morning

But it’s OK, because I’m going to be paid to do so (eventually; in the meantime I’m living on rice* so I can keep feeding the electricity meter).

Yes, tomorrow I return to the exalted ranks of the employed taxpayers (as opposed to the unemployed taxpayer, which is what I’ve been since October. It’s been a while.)

I’m not looking forward to continually walking up the Hill, mind; I reckon that’ll either be uncomfortably hot or wet and miserable, depending which season we’re in, and I’m not too great at moderating my speed; I tend to hack up the thing at pretty much ‘As fast as I can go,’ which means my calves start acheing like mad by Bronglais, but never mind.

I’m guessing I’ll get me a UWA email address again, which will be nice (although technically, I guess it will be my first ever UA email address, but that just sounds odd to me. I really ought to go to bed about now, and, indeed I’m just starting to feel tired (because I was up until 03:00 while a download finished this morning, so I’ve had something of a long day.)

I was going to get an early night, and be in bed by 22-00 this evening; that doesn’t seem to have worked out properly, I think because I’m just not used to that anymore. On the plus side, my sleeping patterns tend to iron out fairly neatly once I’ve got an actual routine to work with (the lack of a proper solid routine really got me down in the first few months after I left the Bod.) so I’m sure it’ll all be good.

Meanwhile, I think I’m just rambling, so I direct you to look at my shiny little favicon (LiveJournal users click here) which ought to be displaying in the title bar (if it isn’t, please do comment to that effect, and I shall swear at it). I downloaded it all by myself from those amazing people over at KTAB.co.uk, y’know, the ones that make the amazingly funny semi-regular news satire and parody site, although since Statto is in Japan just at the minute, we’re not writing anything until he brings me back some Ghibli DVDs :-)

Anyway, I’m going to post this, finish up going “Ohhh!” [emph. on the h’s] to Nathan Fillion’s awesome entrance as Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible, and shove off to bed.

Have fun!

*Not just rice, obviously, because then I’d die. The reason I’m living mainly on rice is because it’s cheap, so I can still buy meat, and thus get some actual Newtrition(TM) into my diet.

I like getting post!

Fabulous!

Well, I mean I know that the week before last was teh awesomeness anyway, but guys. Man, I love selling things. Rock!

I have just recieved my cheque from the fab guys over at Campus Clothing, who, you’ll recall from my endless banging on about it, were paying me money to sell toptastic Graduation memorabilia to anyone and everyone who came past the stall.

I was getting paid, as I’ve said, a really decent rate of £55/day, which was nice, although, as I mentioned in this huge post it was pretty exhausting stuff, since I was up at the Arts Centre by 07-50 and not heading back down the Hill until somewhere between 18-30 and 19-00.

Still, it wasn’t a bad way to make just shy of three week’s rent, plus bonuses for having fun selling people things.

Anyway, I cavort merrily into Tangentia. My apologies.

I have just recieved my cheque. With the cheque is a letter, which runs after this fashion:

“John,
Cheque enclosed – thanks for all your help & we have paid you £67.00, not £55.00 day rate, to compensate for long days. Regards,
[name]
P.S. Bonus payments yet to be calculated.”

I’m up the better part of a further fifty quid. I am walking on air people; I can not only pay the rent, I can actually afford food, too! I love those guys.

My apologies to Charlie in the office downstairs for playing loud and celebratory Rammstein with a subwoofer right about his head. I am cheerful.

From old men to axe accidents : I’ve been keeping busy!

First things first: there’s now (at long last) an explanation of why this is called ElectricQuaker anyway. If you’re one of the ten or so that ever wondered about that, feel free to go have a read.

Admin over, let’s get this mammoth post done, shall we?

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, if I’m honest, so it makes some sense for me to try and get everything written down, or I’ll only forget it all.

A good deed goes around the town
Way back on Monday the 14th of July I was keeping myself busy with a whole pile of things to do, most of which involved Being Domestic, which I’m still getting the hang of. Annie was due in by an afternoon train, so I was scurrying over towards Morrisons around noon, with the intention of getting some actual provisions before she turned up and got the impression I’d given up food until Lent, or something.

Anyway, I was just crossing the Taxi Rank when I realised there was an old chap in one of those odd little electric scooters struggling to get it up the pavement, and with a similarly old lady trying to give him a shove. I went over to see if they needed a hand (not, I have to say, without some reluctance, because people can be funny about you if you imply that they’re not coping with this) and it turned out the scooter was busted; the battery was full, but the power wasn’t getting to the wheels.

I ended up wheeling him down Cambrian Street, so he could leave his shopping with the woman, and then up Great Darkgate Street to his flat near the ship. I’ve never before realised how bloody steep Darkgate is. It’s uphill all the way!

The Ruins of Rhodesia
He was a really nice guy, happily, and was a policeman in Rhodesia (as it then was). He’d been out on patrol, with some of his fellow officers, looking for rebels in the jungle, I think, and he was driving the lead Land Rover and sent it over a landmine. Killed two of his friends and messed up his back so he can’t walk properly. They pensioned him off and he’s come over to Wales to retire. Fascinating chap to talk to; although he’s not at all pleased with the way the old country’s been going lately, which is understandable enough, when you consider that if he lost his legs in a bid to stop the populous getting gunned down and then some nutjob with a toothbrush ‘tash took over and is gunning ’em down without even the decency to sneak about and act ashamed of it.

Apparently back when we owned it there used to be tourist-garnering posters that read ‘Come to Rhodesia and see the ruins of Zimbabwe.’ After they got independence they changed the wording to ‘Come to Zimbabwe and see the ruins of Rhodesia,’ which, he pointed out, “Was bloody right.”

I really liked the guy; he honestly was a gentleman, and you don’t get many of them to the pound, these days. He tried to give me a fiver, and we had some little fencing of sensibilities where I was refusing to take money, and he said he’d feel better for having furnished me with a beer, but as it happened he didn’t have any cash on him, so everyone’s honour got satisfied by default, and we shook hands. Derek, I think his name may’ve been. Derek Cox? Not sure; I’m bad with names at the best of times, and it was a couple of week’s back.

It was exhausting work, if I’m honest, but it was nice to be on the giving end of some Aber Effect rather than just the bloke saying “Well that’s very nice of you, cheers!” (And I cashed in a whole bag of Karmic Points later, as we’ll come to presently). Anyway, whilst that did set me back by several hours, it all balanced out because Arrive made such a mess of the trains that Annie didn’t make it into town until the evening, anyway.

Gainful Employment
Tuesday the 15th was the first day of Graduation, which resulted in my alarm waking me up at ten to seven and chivvying me out of the airbed so I could take myself up the hill to work for Campus Clothing, which involved an exhausting ammount of standing up, and a lot of fun Selling Things (I really did like the Selling Things bit; quite appart from the fact that there are actually people out there who carry fifty pound notes in their pockets, every sale I made felt like I’d won, somehow. I don’t think I could do it full-time, because the only books involved are the nasty sort which require maths to be kept in line, but it was really good fun.

Cider and Conviviality
Limped back down the hill in the evening, and then everything goes into a blur for several days, because it’s been a couple of weeks now, and I’m not quite sure what happened when. But there were at least two days of getting rid of the mammoth beer stockpile, and on another evening Annie Soup-From-A-Stone-d me into cooking a pasta sauce (‘Can you just chop the onions?’ and ‘Some mushrooms would really help this sauce’ and ‘If you just fry the mince I’ll see if you have any stock cubes which would help the flavour…’).

Matt and Paul seemed to spend a lot of time about the place, which was nice, and helped contribute to the speedy demolition of the Beer Stockpile, and there was some good Playing Classical Music At Two In The Morning, which I’ve always meant to do, but which is easier with people shouting out requests. And I’ve finally learnt the name of Night on Bald Mountain, which ought to save me asking Ruth what it is every single time I hear the damn thing, which is almost certainly a Good Thing.

Striding to the Soundtrack
Less of a Good Thing was the habit I developed of staying up until the small hours of the morning and then forcing myself out of a nice warm sleep as soon as the alarm began to bleat at me, but it turns out I do a damn good line in Willpower when I need to, and I was actually in the Arts Centre by the appointed hour every day. Go me, huh? I confess to only making it up the hill with the help of a very loud song on loop from my Zen, and that I do remember, because it went something like

Tuesday: ‘Myzsterious Mizter Jones,’ — Slade (with clearer audio & a plain background here)
Wednesday: ‘Protect & Survive,’ — Runrig (This version has much clearer audio, but static saltire instead of the actual video).
Thursday: ‘This Darkest Winter,’ –Runrig again. (I’ve worked to it for a decade or more, I can have ’em twice! Fuzzy audio, I’m afraid, but the kickass lyrics are over here.)
Friday: ‘Hell March,’ — Red Alert (I suspect you can establish how tired I was from the extent of my need for hefty marching tunes. Hell March is the only thing to have ever got me from the Bodleian to St Aldates in under five minutes. Damn fine march.)

Anyway, I wasn’t just soundtracking myself; I was also selling things like crazy, with occasional breaks to go off and try and photocopy my expenses slip (in the process of which, I lost a tenner, because the machine ate it, and the people at the Issue Desk in Hugh Owen were not pleased when it transpired that I didn’t have (with me) my written permission from Ruth that I could use her card. Awkwardness. Also, dammnit, that was my tenner, that was!)

We sold out of all of the things we were attempting to sell, and got a lot of mail orders in, to save people from having to be dissapointed, so I’m anticipating some species of bonus from that. Mind you, the basic cheque would be nice; I think Charlie is due some more rent today and, whilst I can lay the money out, it would be nice to watch it coming straight back in again!

Commodore Cinema: Because you can only watch one screen at once, anyway.
Saw The Incredible Hulk at the Commodore, which was fun (and dear God, I loved that ending!), so thanks, again, to Paul for not only reserving us some seats, but also for showing us the projection engine and the telephone. I shall come and see that film that has a live-action arrow storm as a thank-you.

Annie didn’t leave on Friday as previously planned. I wasn’t actually there at the time, but there was something about Paul and Matt ambushing the train as the level crossing in Llanbadarn and hauling Annie off, and stealing all the US Mail, and things. Or, at least, that was what Paul’s text contrived to imply, so once we were done taking mail orders and the last of the graduates had dissapated Carrie got Rhys and I to pack away the stall, and I came back down to the Uberflat, and Paul made me a cup of tea that promptly went cold whilst I bemused every girl in every chemist in town looking for some hair dye that doesn’t exist in Wales.

There was hair dyeing, and ratatouille, and considerably more drink. And Matt somehow put a huge dent in my bottle of whisky, but I did say he was allowed, so that’s OK. The bath is not purple, either, so it is All Good.

Exodus
Come Saturday the 19th of July, however, pretty much everyone was due to be leaving, and I was up early (yet again. I swear I don’t know how I manage it) to pack, ready for the Hour of Leaving, at 09:30.

I think we actually got away at a little after 11, or possibly 12. By that point I was also carrying a vast saucepan, srtapped to the back of the rucksack, and a monitor, whose cables I forgot to untie until Dan actually turned up, leading to some infuriating last-minute banging my head against the underside of the desk, and trying to work out what went to the monitor, and what went to the old SVGA CRT that lives under my desk, and has, of course, exactly the same connector, when they’ve both been disconnected from a tower and are lolling about on the floor and getting one another in knots. Never attempt to untie technical goods in a rush; it just leads to undignified grunting and periodic curses.

I got fairly well jammed into the back of Claire’s car, which, though God knows how, actually had the power to haul everything we’d loaded into it, and then I went to sleep, which is my ususal strategy for preventing travel sickness, and which does, actually, work pretty well (although it does require a talent for sleeping pretty much anywhere, which I sometimes worry I am losing, but which seems to be sticking with me so far.)

Arrival in Cumbria
We made fairly good progress up to Cumbria, although I think Ruth would’ve preferred it if she could’ve slightly fewer hours attempting to entertain herself with the scant supply of entertainment provided by Penrith while we slogged up the M6 and dumped the contents of the car at the cottage in Mauld’s Meaburn and left Dan to work out how to turn the electricty on, and build a computer network for the code that was due to get hacked up over the week.

On the way along the A66, on one of the Dual Carriageway bits just after Temple Sowerby, we spotted a small child’s bicycle lying in the right hand lane. Slap bang in the middle of the carriageway. It was very surreal; I half expected Ogri to wheelie over it and yell “Oi!” at some deadhead in a Volvo…

Anyway, we pulled over in a convenient layby, and I got to use one of the Emergency Phones. 62B, it may’ve been. Very friendly woman on the other end, who didn’t seem cross that I wasn’t actually broken down, and she said that they’d send someone out to shift it, which can only have been a good thing.

We collected Ruth outside Penrith station, where she was standing and looking fed up with the whole damn dorp, and made our way to Morrisons to provision up (for there is, of course, no shop in Maulds Meaburn).

No, knot my thumb!
We’d all settled in fine, by Sunday morning, and had even got the Rayburn working (I, as a Hadley lad, had something in the way of an affinity with the thing, which pleased me, and it was good to be working with an actual fire again; ‘s been too long!)

By Sunday morning, however, the fire in the Rayburn was out, which I’d expected to be the case, having damped it down the night before, and so I was attempting, with the aid of a small hatchet, to create some post-kindling sticks from some seasoned offcuts of pine planking (which I’m sure you know are the kind of thing you need once you’ve got the actual wood alight, and before you start to throw in big logs and coal).

All was going well. Basically a standard “You begin chopping wood with your axe. You cut off some dry firewood” repetition. And then things went kinda wrong, viz:

“You continue chopping wood with your axe. But wait! There’s a knot in the wood! The axe bounces! The axe hits you! You drive the axe into your thumb!”

Happily, and presumably as a direct trade-off against all that positive karma I mentioned stockpiling over the previous six days (which, let’s face it, was certainly worth a thumb, and probably a limb or two) the hatchet slammed into my thumbnail which, being a tough bugger, deflected the angle of the blade such that, instead of going clean through to the bone, I cut the fleshy tip of my thumb off, and missed all the major veins.

Panicked Ruth by stumbling inside, with my thumb in my mouth, mumbling through the blood, and with a great splodge of gore on my shoe, and going upstairs to get some toilet paper whilst refusing to tell her what was wrong (which, in retrospect, is the kind of thing that would make you think things were very seriously amiss). Tom, it turns out, doesn’t really believe in first aid kits, but he did have bootlaces, so I caught hold of one of those and Claire tied a tourniquet round it, as they tend to ask you not to do, nowadays, and that reduced the pulsing spurts of blood enough to get some healing going on.

Cue the tea, svp
Once the immediate bleeding had got sorted out I came down with the shakes and, for some reason, stayed pretty whacked out of it for the next few days, which was a pain. Although the fact I kept nodding off in the middle of the afternoon could also have been because of all the Not Sleep and Not Sitting I’d put in whilst selling things to Graduates, I guess.

Anyway, Ruth gave me some sugary tea, which fixed the shock reaction by politely pointing out that the British don’t kick up a fuss over trivialities like barely-missed mutilations, and we all piled into the car and went to Appleby in search of a chemist with a bandage.

Morrisions inexplicably comes up with the Goods
Appleby, however, is a town of decent, law-abiding citizens, many of whom were playing bowls when we arrived, and the chemist was consequently closed, because it was a Sunday. So we went back to Morrisons in Penrith instead, and a lovely woman called Geraldine patched me up, and the chemist came over and, upon being told “I did it cutting firewood,” replied, brilliantly, “Ah, yes. Well, we’ve all done it,” as if it was the most common injury in the world. (And, to be fair, you can see how it could, at least, be the most common injury in Cumbria…)

They gave me a nice packet of painkillers, as well as the usual stuff like tubular bandages and melanin pads, and things and so I was able to keep out infection and still make myself useful by sorting out the fires, and things (although Ruth hid the hatchet, and, as it happened, there was a whole bag full of just the kind of wood I’d been attempting to create, hidden away in a cupboard. Hey ho.)

Everything Else
[At the time of writing, it’s close on one in the morning, and I didn’t get too much sleep last night, either, so I find I am losing the will to add to the 2,800 words I’m told I’ve already got down on paper. Not much happened for the rest of the week, anyway…]

I’ve been learning some Ruby, and can now puts things like a demon. A demon who’s got a definite feeling that there ought to be more to coding than that, sure, but a demon nonetheless. Who knows, I might get beyond the ‘Writing a sarky DOS prompt’ stage that I managed with QBasic. Shall have to see, would probably be good to do something useful!

I do think more things may’ve happened, and there was a fascinating return journey that involved mountains and cliffs and a lot of running on petrol fumes, but I think that can wait until I’m not faced with a paltry six hours sleep! This has gone on quite long enough already; I’m sure most of the Internet doesn’t have this kind of attention span, anyway!

Dan, indidentally, has photos of the injuries, and things. I suggest the rubberneckers amongst you apply to him!

Am about to attempt to tag things. Hm. Wish me luck!

Goodnight!

Praise the Lord for Mountain Dew!

A proper post with details on the last couple of weeks tomorrow, assuming I can find the time. Everything seems to have gone a bit hectic, lately, but I reckon after crashing out this evening I’ll be able to get something like a proper post done (in between running about and getting the airbed back of Dan and Claire so I can chuck it + pump at my sister when she turns up on Tuesday).

I think everything that I wanted to get working should be working, by now; looks like I’ve got WordPress v. 2.6 up and running, at long last (It all broke horribly, and I couldn’t work out what on earth I was meant to be doing with it, until I looked at my watch, cursed the fact it was midnight, and cracked open a Mountain Dew to keep me going, whereupon my brain took a massive hit of caffine and realised that I should probably try commenting out the random security key they made me splice into the wp-config thingy. I am ashamed to have spent three hours trying to fix the sudden breakage of everything, and yet never once thought to try undoing the last change I made. Pitiful. Evidently you should all fill me up with caffinated drinks on a regular basis to stop me from becoming The Stupid.)

It also looks like I’m successfully exporting new entries on this blog to my old livejournal (which being the case will make that link go interesting, over there). I am Pleased about this, because if you go down a few entries on that site you’ll find the entry prior to today was made on the 11th of September 2005, and says “No I haven’t fixed the RSS feed [to make blog posts automatically appear here] yet. At some point, I’ll get someone good with computers to do it.”

Turns out that person was me. Whadda y’ know?

O, cool. this version of wordpress appears to come with a built-in word counter and an autosave. That actually almost makes up for the Many Hours I have spent looking at FAQs and then getting dispirited and going away and messing about with silly quizes, and things.

For some reason, the upgrade has eaten all of my old categories (specifically, it deleted all the names, which made them impossible to edit without manually changing the edit URL) so I’ve had to patch them together with guesswork. The ‘memes’ tag took a direct hit in the process, when I tried to convert things to tags, and then deleted both the tags and the category, so I’m afraid the memes will have to start again.

On the plus side, they can start again right now! Woo, and yay, and (quite possibly) horrible breaking of everything. I don’t know if I’ve done these before, because all memes feel the same and, of course, I no longer have a speedy indexing system, which prevents me from checking without effort. Still, let’s see if these things confuse the cross-poster, shall we?

Meme the first:

The Gentleman

Deliberate Gentle Love Master (DGLM)

The Gentleman

Steady & mature. You are The Gentleman.

For anyone looking for an even-keeled, considerate lover, you’re their man. You’re sophisticated. You know what you want both in a relationship and outside of it. You have a substantial romantic side, and you’re experienced enough sexually to handle yourself in that arena, too. Your future relationships will be long-lasting; you’re classic “marrying material,” a prize in the eyes of many.

It’s possible that behind it all, you’re a bit of a male slut. Your best friends know that in relationships you’re fundamentally sex-driven. You’re a safe, reliable guy, who does get laid. In a lot of ways, you’re like a well-worn, comfortable pair of socks. Did you ever jack off into one of those? All the time.

Your ideal mate is NOT a nut-job. She is giving and loving, like you, but also experienced.

Your exact male opposite:

The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man on Earth

Random Brutal Sex Dreamer

Always avoid: The Battleaxe (DBLM)

Consider: The Maid of Honor (DGLM), someone just like you.

Link: The Online Dating Persona Test

— Who on Earth drew that picture? Because I’d like to know where idea for combining Grecian armour with a Norman shield and a bastard sword came from. And why the chap seems to think it a higher priority to keep the balloon safe while the drugged-up child has got a kneecap full of arrows.

On the other hand, the actual text is absurdly flattering, except for the bit about the socks, so I oughtn’t complain too much.

Meme the Second:
Wherein I copy-paste some genuinely nasty-looking HTML

Your result for The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test…

8 – the Asserter

you chose AY – your Enneagram type is EIGHT (aka “The Challenger”).

“I must be strong”

Asserters are direct, self-reliant, self-confident, and protective.

How to Get Along with Me

  • Stand up for yourself… and me.
  • Be confident, strong, and direct.
  • Don’t gossip about me or betray my trust.
  • Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender,
    vulnerable side.
  • Give me space to be alone.
  • Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don’t flatter me.
  • I often speak in an assertive way. Don’t automatically assume it’s
    a personal attack.
  • When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that’s just
    the way I am.

What I Like About Being a EIGHT

  • being independent and self-reliant
  • being able to take charge and meet challenges head on
  • being courageous, straightforward, and honest
  • getting all the enjoyment I can out of life
  • supporting, empowering, and protecting those close to me
  • upholding just causes

What’s Hard About Being a EIGHT

  • overwhelming people with my bluntness; scaring them away when I don’t intend to
  • being restless and impatient with others’ incompetence
  • sticking my neck out for people and receiving no appreciation for it
  • never forgetting injuries or injustices
  • putting too much pressure on myself
  • getting high blood pressure when people don’t obey the rules or when
    things don’t go right

EIGHTs as Children Often

  • are independent; have an inner strength and a fighting spirit
  • are sometimes loners
  • seize control so they won’t be controlled
  • fugure out others’ weaknesses
  • attack verbally or physically when provoked
  • take charge in the family because they perceive themselves as the strongest, or grow up in difficult or abusive surroundings

EIGHTs as Parents

  • are often loyal, caring, involved, and devoted
  • are sometimes overprotective
  • can be demanding, controlling, and rigid


Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy
Discover the 9 Types of People
Harper
SanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

Which is a damn fine way of saying “You’re a right bolshy sod, you are,” and which, for something that only asked me two questions, and therefore allowed me to get back to attempting to put entire new users into the mySQL thing that I don’t even begin to understand, and which, of course, was of no material use anyway, is pretty cool.

But then I’m a gullible twonk when it comes to that sort of thing. Can’t help but go pushing radio buttons, that’s my problem. Hell, if someone produced a 35-question “Which Meme User are you?” test, I’d be right out there to discover I was the Casual Meme Inflicter (You tend to only do memes for your own amusement, but you can’t resist showing off your results, either. Avoid the Skeptic Quizzilla User; consider Evangelical Personality Questioner)…

Hm. That was the end of the third can of Mountain Dew. Did I mention that I start Proper Work on Friday? Come back, sleeping patterns, all is forgiven!

I really hope this doesn’t break everything. Particular apologies to LJ people, who may well get some really ugly cross-posted stuff. And to RSS people, who’ve had no idea why I kept putting out the ‘Breakfast, breakfast, Sun, Dock, Trog’ messages while I was looking for the crossposter to notice I’d installed it.

Back?

Seem to have updated to the latest version of WP. My control panel is all bubbly, it is absolutely foul.

And the categories have all vanished.

On the other hand, it’s taken me three *hours* to get back into the admin panel at all, because I am retarded, and run off and follow complex troubleshooters instead of undoing the last change I made when attempting to fix things.

Touch wood, it’s All Good again. Bear with me.

?

breakage

or, at least, there should be breakage.

(I will explain what’s going on to RSS people, once I’ve got this all to work, I promise. Meantime just bear with me.)

Testing, testing…

Sun, dock, trog?

Sun, dock, trog?

Ah, Hell, and I really thought that was going somewhere!

Bloody stupid Master Mind Flayer.

I’d got past Vlad, and everything, best bloody game I ever had (although I have to say that vast piles of Amulets of Life Saving I kept running into didn’t half help. Tyr never gave me an artefact, though. Stingy git.)

[Incidentally, I know this is a massive long post, but, meh. I’m damn proud that there’s such a long list. And I’ve cut out most of the inventory, and the entire vast contents of the happy Bag of Holding. Deal with it.]


Farvel Brunhilde the Valkyrie…

You died in Ghennom on Dungeon level 42 with 1,179,129 points, and 22,862 pieces of gold, after 57,119 moves.

You were level 16 with a maximum of 126 hit points when you died.

Killed by Brainlessness, 2008. Hp 126 [126]

Weapons
The blessed +3 Grayswandir (weapon in hand)
An uncursed thoroughly rusty thoroughly corroded +5 longsword
A +1 dwarvish mattock


Armour

an uncursed thoroughly burnt +0 pair of speed boots (being worn)
a blessed +2 grey dragon scale mail (being worn)
An uncursed thoroughly rusty corroded +0 helmet (being worn)
An uncursed thoroughly rusty corroded +0 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn)
A blessed fireproof +0 cloak of displacement (being worn)

Rings
An uncursed ring of regeneration (on right hand)
An uncursed ring of Slow Digestion (on left hand)

Tools
The uncursed Candelabrum of Invocation (7 candles attatched)
An uncursed bag of holding
The bell of Opening (0:3)
The blessed Orb of Fate (1:2)

Gems
6 cursed Emeralds named Em
4 Uncursed rubies
3 Uncursed diamonds
3 Uncursed luckstones named luck.

Final Attributes:

You were piously aligned.
You were fire resistant.
You were cold resistant.
You were sleep resistant.
You were shock resistant.
You were poison resistant.
You were magic-protected.
You resisted hallucinations.
You saw invisible.
You were telepathic.
You were warned.
You were displaced.
You were stealthy.
You aggravated monsters.
You had slower digestion.
You regenerated.
You were protected.
You were very fast.
You were extremely lucky.
You had extra luck.
Good luck did not time out for you.
You are dead (5th time!).

Vanquished creatures:

Juiblex
Medusa
3 iron golems
5 storm giants
a glass golem
a balrog
5 purple worms
a silver dragon
a red dragon
a black dragon
2 blue dragons
4 green dragons
4 yellow dragons
11 minotaurs
3 jabberwocks
Lord Surtur
4 baluchitheria
2 demiliches
Vlad the Impaler
6 stone golems
4 Olog-hai
2 Nazguls
2 pit fiends
3 sandestins
2 titanotheres
5 trappers
a baby yellow dragon
4 disenchanters
18 vampire lords
3 skeletons
an aligned priest
5 captains
4 shades
6 liches
a clay golem
6 nurses
3 ice devils
6 lurkers above
10 frost giants
2 ettins
a golden naga
4 black puddings
14 vampires
7 lieutenants
a watch captain
24 ghosts
a cavewoman
a queen bee
5 winged gargoyles
7 mind flayers
4 giant mimics
4 zruties
30 fire giants
5 ogre kings
6 ice trolls
8 rock trolls
6 umber hulks
a flesh golem
an Elvenking
3 doppelgangers
15 hezrous
7 bone devils
4 large mimics
a wumpus
7 long worms
5 stalkers
8 air elementals
5 fire elementals
5 earth elementals
5 water elementals
a hill giant
5 giant mummies
a black naga
6 xorns
17 giant zombies
11 elf-lords
22 sergeants
2 water demons
4 barbed devils
12 vrocks
a salamander
17 wargs
2 winter wolves
3 hell hound pups
4 small mimics
2 glass piercers
3 warhorses
5 steam vortices
16 xans
8 ettin mummies
6 ogre lords
8 quantum mechanics
24 trolls
5 wood golems
2 erinyes
4 sharks
6 electric eels
4 gelatinous cubes
6 pyrolisks
7 large dogs
3 freezing spheres
8 flaming spheres
7 shocking spheres
a large cat
6 tigers
8 gargoyles
a dwarf king
a tengu
11 ochre jellies
11 leocrottas
4 energy vortices
5 mountain centaurs
5 stone giants
7 elf mummies
7 human mummies
7 red nagas
3 green slimes
3 pit vipers
5 pythons
3 cobras
32 wraiths
3 carnivorous apes
12 ettin zombies
3 leather golems
9 Grey-elves
84 soldiers
2 watchmen
4 horned devils
3 succubi
6 incubi
3 chameleons
2 crocodiles
15 giant beetles
9 quivering blobs

17 cockatrices
23 wolves
9 winter wolf cubs
3 lynxes
a panther
6 gremlins
5 spotted jellies
25 leprechauns
3 orc-captains
2 iron piercers
17 giant spiders
7 scorpions
6 horses
3 ice vortices
5 black lights
12 vampire bats
5 forest centaurs
4 gnome kings
7 orc mummies
2 dwarf mummies
4 ogres
3 brown puddings
8 rust monsters
15 owlbears
8 yetis
3 gold golems
4 werewolves
18 Green-elves
4 giant eels
17 lizards
6 chickatrices
4 dogs
7 dingos
9 housecats
7 jaguars
3 dwarf lords
7 blue jellies
3 gray unicorns
4 black unicorns
2 dust vortices
13 ravens
7 plains centaurs
6 gnome mummies
12 snakes
9 water moccasins
14 apes
18 human zombies
4 rope golems
8 Woodland-elves
24 soldier ants
87 fire ants
7 bugbears
3 imps
3 lemures
6 quasits
2 wood nymphs
7 water nymphs
7 mountain nymphs
31 Mordor orcs
9 Uruk-hai
3 orc shamans
12 rock piercers
a rock mole
3 ponies
2 fog clouds
9 yellow lights
a shrieker
2 violet fungi
20 gnome lords
11 gnomish wizards
3 kobold mummies
a red naga hatchling
3 black naga hatchlings
a golden naga hatchling
2 guardian naga hatchlings
6 gray oozes
4 barrow wights
15 elf zombies
15 ghouls
5 straw golems
5 paper golems
5 jellyfish
2 baby crocodiles
21 giant ants
4 little dogs
9 floating eyes
4 kittens
16 dwarves
a homunculus
4 kobold lords
4 kobold shamans
6 hill orcs
24 rothes
a rabid rat
2 centipedes
4 giant bats
6 monkeys
12 orc zombies
19 dwarf zombies
7 wererats
2 werejackals
9 iguanas
49 killer bees
5 acid blobs
5 coyotes
5 gas spores
9 hobbits
11 manes
2 large kobolds
7 hobgoblins
5 giant rats
6 cave spiders
5 brown molds
4 yellow molds
2 green molds
3 red molds
76 gnomes
12 garter snakes
9 gnome zombies
9 geckos
19 jackals
4 foxes
3 kobolds
3 goblins
7 sewer rats
12 grid bugs
13 bats
12 lichens
8 kobold zombies
10 newts

2024 creatures vanquished.

Voluntary challenges:

You genocided 1 type of monster.
You never polymorphed an object.
You used 5 wishes.

Wot? No extra credit?

So, aye, I had me a driving test on Wednesday. An actual proper driving test, not just a common-or-garden DSA Driving Theory Test.

All things considered, it went very well, apart from the bit where I got a Serious Fault and failed. O, and apart from stalling the bastard machine turning right at the top of Mill Street three minutes in, but that wasn’t really a big deal.

The man made me do an Emergency Stop, which, to be fair, is not a maneuver I object to. Doing it on a one-in-four gradient, mind, is something I’ve never had to do before. I think that deserves extra credit.*

*sigh*

I am booked in for YAST in about a month.

Meantime, however, I have finally been given a cheque for compensation after some crazy woman slammed into the back of my mother’s car, shortly after she’d collected me from the train station in Telford, on the 22nd of December 2006, and gave us a whole bundle of painful whiplash. (She got out of the car and said “I’m so sorry, I was thinking about the shopping.” I notice she got a poxy driving license. *sulk, sulk*)

Still, a year and a half is a pretty good response time for an accident settlement, at least, as far as I can tell. And I had to do less of the bleedin’ legwork this time round, so it is all good.

Charlie, the guy who takes care of my mother’s car, and who saved my life when a five-year-old proto-JTA stood on the drive and tried to choke to death on a softmint, has managed to find a reasonable species of car, so it looks like I can actually buy a vehicle with my getting-crashed-into money, which I like. I’ll have to register it off-road, of course, until such a time as I manage to take a test that doesn’t involve being asked to do a parallel park, but at least it’ll be there when I need it.

Other news… Not much, really. I shall presently be spending less time in Trefachan, which is good. I shall shortly be spending an awful lot of time standing up behind a desk full of awesome merchandise, though, so if any of you Class of 2008 types get to read this on Abnib (unless it’s still broken come the 19th, of course) then do check out the Campus Clothing Website and encourage such relatives as you might have coming to stump up some cash for the goods.

The reasons you ought to do so are First, because it’s a comfy keepsake, which is rare in an age of Dresden Sheperdesses.
Secondly, that all the products come with your name on them, very small, and you can see all your friend’s names, too.
And, Thirdly — which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier — because I get a bonus if we sell everything.

On the other hand, I shall be working something like proper eight-hour days, and my sleeping pattern appears to be busted, at present. I flag until I take coffee at 20:00, and then I can’t bring myself to feel tired until gone two in the morning.

Happily, I suspect that a good constitutional hammering of the “up at 07:00, out at half-past, home by 19:00” variety ought to sink any notion of not being sleepy by lighting up time and, co-incidentally, quadruple sales of Red Bull in the Union Shop.

For now, however, I need to go make myself a camomile tea, and catch up with what the World Service is doing. (Good news about Metropolis, wasn’t it? Caught that on the 02:30 news last week.)

* If that sounds familiar it’s because I’ve been banging on about it at every opportunity since Wednesday. Sorry.