The NaNoWriMo Wars…

…Weirdness. I have to say I’m still a little confused by Statto‘s anti NaNoWriMo arguments on Dan’s blog

Personally, I’m in it partly for the seeing-if-I-actually-can-do-it element (if I can lash up 50,000 words in a month, there’s a chance I could try getting proper books published, thus avoiding the need to try and do anything with the rest of my life) and for the challenge, (and to support the other guys that are doing it where necessary) and because I think it’ll be interesting.

What’s more I’ve a vague hope it’ll re-spark my capacity to actually write things, which seems to have totally rusted up lately – I think I lost faith in writing things when I did the largely pointless modules in Creative writing, which did a good deal to batter my self confidence by encouraging me to rate my own work (with the result I always said “that’s shit, that is”)… It’s partly because I’ve lost the capacity to invent things to write about that I’ve stopped doing much other than blog posts and essays, I suspect, and I actually used to do loads… JTA the Movie is fairly desperate for an update, I imagine, but I’ve not been able to think of anything to put into it for the last two years…

(as an aside which might appeal slightly more to Statto than my just saying “and I’m doing NaNoWriMo” – I’m using a plot which is a slightly more sophisticated version of that idea I got in what I think was Year 9 [I’d just been to BYM, so that was early 2000] with yonder man who crashes trains…)

I’m pretty certain that there’s nothing I can say that will cause this to make any sense to Statto at all, which is a shame, but I’m happy to take you up on the suggestion that I write a hundred or so decent World Factbook entries in November as well (Hell, I’ve only got a bunch of essays and Civ IV to take care of this month, I can take on a whole other bunch of stuff no problem!)

So yeah – current challenges for JTA appear to be learn bloody “simian OS,” as it’s apparently called, because the 6680 will want a bit of getting used to, do NaNoWriMo, write 100 things for the Factbook (yes), do some essays, do the Real Ale Ramble (bugger, I still need to book time off work for that) and a whole heap of other stuff that still wants sorting. O, and I want to give blood, at some point. Woop.

O well. Lagging a little over here:

1631/50000
Words written: 1631 / target: 50000

Roll on curry…

O for God’s sake…

…Still no Internet in my room, which is frankly irritating – I had thought I’d been booted off the netwoek for the slightly implausible reason that I’d got a worm from my mother’s HDD when I plugged it in to back up data before swapping her old PC for my old PC (so her old one can go to Robin, once we’ve actually made it, er, good.)

The Operators, however, say there’s no problem with my connection, and, last I heard, had to “run some tests” to see if they could work out the problem. They tried to ping my block of the network and got nothing, apparently. Now horribly behind on Green Dragon, because it’s a real faff having to go and play turns over sluggish Citrix boxes. Bastards.

Still, had a good weekend, and hopefully won’t have too bad a week, although I really need to write me some essays before Civ IV turns up on the 5th-ish of November. I wasn’t going to get it, but Dan’s won me round, so more on that when it’s here, and I’ve had a chance to get a look at it…

…Hm. My mobile contract expired yesterday, and I’d been hoping to upgrade to a 7610, which I was told I couldn’t. Apparently Orange can’t sell them anymore, which is a pain in the arse, because Vodafone still do, and all the other phones Orange were offering me as upgrades were either crap, or, Nokias that were stupidly expensive, or flimsy looking.

So I spoke to TGB about it, and he suggested I got put through to retentions, who were remarkably helpful, and said I could spend £79.99 to upgrade to a 6680, which “was really quite similar”.

Hm.

“But Vodaphone will give me a 7610 for free…” I pointed out. And Lo! Suddenly I was a “highly valued customer,” which was nice, and they said they could waive the fee. It’s still not exactly what I wanted, in all fairness, but it does seem to be a relatively close second, and should arrive later in the week. Most importantly, they’ll let me keep my number, which saves no end of bother letting everyone know what the new one is.

O, and now I’ve finally had a chance to get onto Abnib, and see what the latest meme is; here’s my results (athough I’ve a deep suspicion that the basis on which the calculate these things is horribly, horribly flawed – I ought, by all accounts, to rate much higher on the “friends” category, and probably lower on “health”.) Still, for the sake of comparison:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life: 8.7
Mind: 8.4
Body: 6.9
Spirit: 8.3
Friends/Family: 5.6
Love: 10
Finance: 7.9
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Anyway… Now I need to check all the damn e-mails that’ll’ve built up since Thursday. Bugger. More when I get my own connection back, I suspect…

I am so tired…

…But still, Dan, what’s the name of that work-to-death-in-November thing you said I should sign up for? Might give me something more productive to do than loll about trying to sleep, and then failing…

Going to my seminar now, again. The reason being, I keep thinking it’s two hours (like both my other seminars) and although I don’t know when it starts, I do know it finishes at one. Therefore, it must start at 11.

Does it heck as like. It’s 50 minutes and starts at 12, as RMT kindly explained to me when I showed up at his office at 11. Ah well. Can’t miss it now; he know’s I’m about!

Have fun!

That was a quick £30…

…Good old trips to the dentist. I was there about 7 minutes altogether, I think, and had an X-ray done of me achey root-canalled tooth, which is why it cost an extra tenner (Easton, great though he is, does have that aggraviating habit of private dentists known as “Charging you twenty quid for turning up”…)

Apparently, he’s not too happy with said canal – thinks he could’ve done it deeper on one side, so I’m going back in December to have it re-done. Currently feeling very well-disposed towards the bloke, because he’s quoted me a cost of £35 for the next visit. That’s the 20 for arriving, and 15 for a filling.

A root canal with Easton is priced at £85/tooth, so I think he must be giving me the cheery discount because he feels he could’ve done a better job of it first time round. I like that guy. I like him especially because, even though he isn’t an NHS dentist, he’s very friendly, and doesn’t keep giving me extractions. OK, I feel guilty every time I turn up because I ought to have more faith in the NHS, but doing that with Lala would’ve left me with more false teeth than the average OAP, so I’m still thinking I did the right thing…

Still feeling pretty grotty, however, suspect I’ve finally come down with Fresher’s Flu (three years and two weeks after everyone else, but never mind…)

Hey ho. Bed now, I reckon.

General Developments

I have a pounding headache. Not great.

The Council offices on Portland road aren’t bad, but are fairly warrenish, with three buildings to be done in three hours (It’s soon to be down to two, but they need more cleaners – dunno if Andy‘s tried the council yet?) and so I’m there for three hours a night, which is just a little too long for it to bolt neatly into any part of my schedule. On the other hand, I’m getting paid for it, and it’s not Spar (who still haven’t had their stupid air conditioning fixed) so it could be worse.

I’ve shoved the stupid Asus motherboard back into the box with the manual, CD, quickstart guide and SATA cables, but not the IDE, because I can’t find it. They should have it by tomorrow morning. Ireason that gives them all of tomorrow to work out what it is, Wednesday for them to post the new one, Thursday for the courier to actually get hold of the new one, and Friday for it to be dropped off here. Anything much longer than that and I’m going to be a grumbling person.

Assuming the motherboard does turn up, however (and I’m guessing the new HDDs will be here in a day or two, as well) anyone fancy a Computer Build Party at some point before Troma on Saturday? (I say “party,” but of course what I actually mean is “people turn up and help, and later I possibly buy them a beer, maybe”…)

Ugh, head. Going to lie down again, now.

Weird.

Had a lecture at 10am today (Urgh), which was actually fairly interesting – one for the C19th module, looking at the relationship between some chap called John Thelwall, who’s been unjustly denied a page on Wikipedia, and the interaction between his poems and the Lyrical Ballads, which was actually really fascinating stuff…

…He’d got into rather a lot of trouble after lobbying hard for social freedoms, which in the context of the French Revolution, wasn’t a great plan (because, as usual, the politicians had gone “Agh, this new thing scares us! Let’s strip civil liberties to the bone!” and a bunch of reactionary old bastards went along with it, as per.)

Anyway, Thelwell got had up for treason, and spent a few years in gaol, which wasn’t great, especially since it was 1794, and the system was happily corrupt. They let him off, in the end, and he slogged up the Cumbria to root out Wordsworth, his dippy sister [I’m sorry, but she wrote a poem about how great it was that William had gone off somewhere, but had left behind an apple with his tooth-marks in it] and Coleridge.

Whereupon Coleridge gave him the push, because he wanted a break with his own radical past, and anyway, Wordsworth was just at that “creating an artificial rustic language” stage which the Romantics seem to have been so keen on (what? I’m paraphrasing the lecture here), so Thelwell was forced off to exile in the ruddy Wye valley, where Pitt’s people persisted in spying on him, his farm went belly up, and his six-year-old daugter died.

Meanwhile, Wordsworth & Coleridge had just printed off the 1798 Ed. of Lyrical Ballads, and all was going swimmingly, with Thelwell stuck in Wales, with sarky pitchfork weilding locals, roughs working for the government still out to off him to collect the bounty and some serious “If Coleridge hadn’t forced me to live in this stupid valley, my daughter probably wouldn’t have died” issues to deal with.

By the looks of it he wrote large quantities of poems mimicing the Lyrical Ballads and turning them very dark, and they’re pretty good. Not great in their own right, I wouldn’t say, but not too bad in the (“Yeah, Nature is really sodding great. Can it make me feel better? Can it bollocks.”) context in which they were written.

So that was fun. And then I wandered towards the Arts Centre to try and actually buy a copy of L.B. (I didn’t, I remembered I’ve spent all of this week’s budget on a couple of SATA HDDs from Overclockers, the people who ship fast, ship what you wanted, and don’t appear to sell any mid-low end rubbish (I’m still vaguely pissed off that Scan assumed that an Asus motherboard was somehow the same as the poxy Abit job I asked for…)).

Anyway, I was heading up from C22 round the corner where Hugh Owen creates and underpass out of D-floor, and wandered up past the library and out onto the plaza, whereupon a bloke ran up behind me and said “Excuse me, are you a lecturer?”

‘O, it’s a poor lost Fresher,’ I thought. “No, I’m a student,” I told him. And then he told me how great my back looked (uh-oh…) and how I really stood out amongst everyone else (this is going to involve my helping with something, isn’t it?)…

…”We’re doing Theatre Film & TV,” he said (Yep, there we go) “Can we film you walking up those steps again, it’ll only take a couple of minutes…?”

So they filmed me going up the steps, down the steps, and standing at the top of the steps pretending to have forgotten something, and were very pleased with me for being able to look “dark and menacing” and “walking purposefully,” which was probably nice of them, although I wasn’t actually trying to look dark or menacing at all.

And, of course, when they said “two minutes,” they meant “it’ll be two minutes of film,” with the result I was there about half an hour. Still, it was vaguely amusing, I suppose, and I ran into no end of people I’d otherwise have missed (although off the top of my head I can only recall Coff & Ben Michael – apparently they’d both been to the lecture, which is a new one on me…), Sundeep, and Twenty-Three-Hour Hannah.)

And now I’m going to, uh, either sleep, have breakfast, or play RA2… Hm…

Probably not eat, actually; I woke up with a toothache this morning. Usually a bad sign, especially since it’s one of the ones where fully closing my jaw hurts because of the pressure on said tooth. Alarmingly (although it’s statistically very likely, I guess) the tooth in question is one of the root canal-ed ones, which, I’d taken to believing, were fairly indestructible, unless the entire huge lump of filling clumps out and chokes me to death.

O well. Yet more troubles. Think I’ve an appointment at some point next week anyway, to be honest.

O, and I get shown how the clean the DSS place on Portland Road at 1700 today, so I’ll be able to follow the “clean it anytime between 1700 and 0900, weekdays” policy and have some free time in the early evenings from tomorrow onwards.

Have fun!

Good God Almighty…

…On the back of Ruth’s recent post about humans being stupid, in the context of AI…

This story on the Beeb is about a woman who set off a Chlorine bomb in her own kitchen. Whilst trying to clean a swimming pool.

My favourite part is the bit where, with her eyes watering, and things exploding in the kitchen sink, we’re told how she called her son, a soldier trained in chemical warfare, and he told her to leave the house immediately. She didn’t. Why? Because “I’ve got two chinchillas and two husky dogs. I didn’t want to desert them.”

I can’t help but feel that’s a case where the capacity to act logically, without the clutter of emotions, could’ve been fairly sensible…

Hm. Not sure about this one; I liked being a .ogg better!


YOU ARE CATNIP

What herb are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

< .../implodes>

Hooray! Am having a good day. Already I have killed the fat bastardy dragon, and I still have many turns left!

Heh. I like having special powers. Skeleton crew is especially good, because of the way a whole bunch of people suddenly materialise and fight for you. And regeneration helps, too,..

O. Sweet!

Which File Extension are You?

< ...implodes>

Living With The Postgrads

New housemates are all doing Masters courses. Hence calling them “postgrads” to distinguish between the “flatmates” (in Caerleon over the summer) and the “housemates” from last year.

I have to say, things looked pretty ominous when they first turned up, because unwarranted posters suddenly turned up, which put Paul on edge (but that’s going to be fine, because I’ve got a 2×3 foot print of The Garden of Earthly Delights by dear old Ronnie Bosch, which I think will look nice in the kitchen.

The real warning came when they moved all our spices onto the edge of one of the shelves above the worktop, where they were a) impossible to tell apart and b) in grave danger of falling off. So we moved them back down again.

And they moved them up. So we moved them down, and they moved them up. Last night, it happened again, so we moved them down, and left a note reading Guys, if you put our spices on the shelf then [points given above]. Please leave our stuff alone!, because we were well sick of it.

Today, on returning from Booker, I discovered the following: Sorry we moved things but we only did it as there is no worktop space. Can you please put all recycling neatly in bags & tidy up washing up! This is only fair as we need space to do things. Also can the bin bags please be returned to on top f the fridge! Thank you.

Which, if nothing else, suggests they are at least aware of the less vague social niceties. Indeed, it’d be a cracking good note, if there wasn’t a good four foot of spare worksurface down one side of the kitchen, but never mind. It does, at least, look as if they may not be quite the arrogant brainless twerps I’d begun to suspect them to be, which is good, because I’m not really in the mood for pitched battles on the domestic front…

Also, I remain very tired, have to register at some point tomorrow, and the chair they’ve given me in PJM is terrible, and relies on a screw thread to hold the back steady, meaning that it tilts back as soon as you put any real weight on it, in a not-good-for-your-backish way.

Hey ho.

And so it begins…

This is going to be a tiring week, I suspect; especially since I woke up this morning and had to really strain to keep my eyes open. *sigh* O well.

Room C, the big huge one, is now taken by some girl doing a postgraduate course in fish, according to her chum. In some ways, this is good – we’ve three housemates, and they’re all postgraduates, which suggests they’re not too loud and crass, because at some point they’re going to have to do some work this year. First years, on the other hand, would’ve been a nightmare. Still, I’m a bit cheesed off by the way PJM said they’d look into letting me swap rooms, and then fobbed me off with sappy excuses each time I pestered them until they gave the room to a girl with so fewer boxes than me it looks like she’s never even seen Amazon, and wouldn’t know an impuse buy if the bank manager hit her in the face…

Today I bought new shoes, hooray! New shoes! At long bloody last… Entertainingly, the woman in Clerks spotted the state of my current shoes (really, absolutely, falling apart at the seams, and where there aren’t seams, they’ve fallen apart anyway, plus the soles are wearing through…) and watched me try on a new pair of, uh, exactly the same design, but with something called “Active Air,” which seems to be a sole full of gaps, at a cost of £20. When I started pulling my old shoes back on…

Assitant: Are those new ones OK, sir?
JTA: Er, yes, I think so. Very comfy.
Assistant: I’ll just take them to the checkout for you, shall I?
JTA: Er… Yeah, OK, then.

I feel a little offended that they assumed I needed another pair, though – I could have had lots of other pairs of shoes, some of which with marginally fewer holes in. Still, I’ve got a new pair, now, so I’ll slap some polish on ’em over the next day or so, and start wearing them when I’ve got a minute to sit down and change pairs without falling asleep!

Christ, I think I’m supposed to register at some point. Somewhere I have forms I need to take. O dear…

Wotcha all.

On behalf of some girl who was in the year below me (and actually, now I come to think of it, in Clive, but never mind) back at AGS, I figured I ought to put word out in Aber (that’s you, then, Dan), to see if anyone can answer her search for a good download-limit-free broadband provider.

Anyone? (Er, you can comment on here, but I guess it makes more sense to go to her blog post and say it there. Ta)

O dear…

…Just been emptying the stuff in the bathroom to take it back and pack.

There’s a little netted ball thing for the shower made by Nivea. And I saw the name out of the corner of my eye and thought “nVidea make shower kits?”

*sigh*

I hate packing, I’ve got a headache, and I need to sleep. Up at 0900 on Monday, of course…

Still, only another nine months, and I’m no-longer a student! Expect I’ll get a minute to sleep, then…

You arrogant menopausal *bitch*…

…God’s teeth the people in reception down here pissed me off just now. We haven’t, you see, been given the e-mail giving us 48-hours notice of our need to move out and transfer up to PJM. And Ruth, it turned out last night when I went down to find out why there wasn’t a transfer notice on my door, found out that whilst I was due to transfer on Sunday, Ruth wasn’t.

So today we went down there and asked if this was true, and could Ruth be put on the transfer list and the bitch at the back there – Mary, I think she was – said “no, you have to move out by 10 o’ clock this morning.” Said this, mark you, at a quarter past nine, without our having had any notice of moving! Christ, we’d only started packing because we thought it was probably this weekend; nobody had actually told us anything.

And then the jumped up little fuckbitch tried to suggest it was all our fault, and we couldn’t have Ruth stay another night because “who’s going to pay for it”!

Frankly, I’m up to here with being shitted about anyway, and I’m not standing for that bollocks from anyone too incompetent to extend a transfer like the ones they do at least twice every year, just because they can’t find a name on the list…

…Contrast this with the dude I just spoke to in PJM about transferring, a dude who knew all about what was going on, and add to it the poor ruddy porter they just sent round with a chitty telling him that I was due to move out today (despite the fact that I was told only last night I didn’t have to leave until the 20th at the latest, and my place in PJM wouldn’t be availiable until the 18th), and we suddenly find ourself deep in Speaking To Elaine Watkin territory with a Complaint.

Because, frankly, I’m paying money I still don’t really have for putting up with being crapped over by these dicks, and I had to get up before 9am to boot, despite not getting to bed until 3am because of trying to tidy the fucking flat. And a ruddy complaint, frankly, is too good for the arrogant cretinous bitch.

*sigh*

Weeeellll… I just rang Spar and told ’em I’m leaving. (yon manager warn’t in on Sunday) Boy was he disappointed.

O dear.

Also, he said could I still do this weekend. I said I’d see what I could do, but it might be hard because of probably moving house.

So I’ll ring up tomorrow, I imagine, and say I can’t. I’m not ruddy well going back to work in that heat with people sighing at me and looking let down the whole time; it gives me a headache as it is.

In cheerier news, I appear to have lashed together a fairly solid list of PC components, and only gone over my £750 budget by eight quid (and that’s for a fan) so I’m feeling fairly cheerful. When I get more money, I shall buy me some new HDDs, and give one or two of my old ones to Robin. And to my mother, I suppose. But I don’t have to worry about that until October anyway.

And in secondary cheerier news, Everything Australian, the cheerful [Ashes-less, woo, go us! Still can’t believe that…] family-run Internet sales firm who sold me my Driza-bone have dispatched it, and it should be here in 3-4 days, I’m told. This is pretty cool, not least because I’ve paid for the most expensive, fasted, international shipping possible, and bought a woolen liner for the coat, and bought the hood as well, and it’s still a fiver cheaper than buying it from the cheapest website in the UK. International currency variations are weird.

Also, they sound like nice people, who upgraded to doing Internet sales alongside the market stall they’d run for twenty-odd years. Bryn, if still interested in getting a Driza-bone, is welcome to have a dekko at mine, once it turns up at The Flat.

*sigh*
And they shouldn’t have been such crappy employers, if they don’t want me to jack it in after three weekends of repetitive heatstroke. Still, ringing tomorrow isn’t going to be fun.

Now this is really clever…

Last Friday (Geek Night) Dan made mention of something called Pandora. It’s fantastic stuff, although it does need broadband, so sorry if you’ve not got that…

The people who developed it did so on the back of the Music Genome Project, a project where a group of people got together, listened to music, and categoried it based on a whole heap of different categories (major/minor key tonality, importance of vocals, and a whole heap of things I never paid attention to before dropping music in the third year).

You get a ten-hour free trial of it (and you can get a years membership for 36USD, which is just under 20 pounds sterling, at the current rate). So Go visit it and set yourself up a “station;” a radio channel based on an artist or song you tell them you like. Assuming they’ve heard of it (they’ve not done the Oyster Band, yet, which was my first choice) they’ll scan the artist or song through their files and pick out a few key elements.

They then find other songs with similar elements, and play those. So I started off giving them Warren Zevon as an artist, and they played me his track ‘Excitable Boy’ to begin with, presumably to check that it was a song of his that I did like. Then they started sifting through the files and pulling out other things they expected me to like (and I got to say whether or not I did).

Five tracks later they were playing Richard Thompson, which was fascinating, because I do like Thompson very much, but I’ve always seen him as being Folk Rock, because he started off in Fairport. In retrospect, of course, there’s a lot of Thompson’s stuff which sounds like Zevon, which is the whole point of Pandora: it doesn’t actually matter what genre an artist’s been pigeonholed in, because all songs are different, which means songs by two totally different artists are capable of sharing several similar elements. My version of “Warren Zevon Radio” (you can, by the way, re-name them) just played a nice track from Fleetwood Mac, and now it’s doing an equally dinky one by someone called James Kochalka, of whom I’d never heard until two minutes ago.

It’s fascinating me, because it’s drawing in things I’d never be likely to run into, and which most people I know probably know even less of (the bulk of the people I know probably wouldn’t know Zevon to begin with, but I imgaine they’re even less likely to go “Cool, Richard Thompson!” – It took me ages to get over the fact Ruth wandered into my room one day back in the first year [at a time now mentally bracketed as the “confused bit”] and said “Is that Fairport Convention?!” thus becoming the first person under forty-odd I’d ever met who recognised them…).

It’s fascinating, too, because you give it tips on how it’s doing, and it chalks it up to experience without doing a full write-off. So if it plays me something from, uh, the Divine Comedy, and I say “no, I don’t like this,” it’ll skip right to the next song, and not play that one again. But it might play another Divine Comedy track at some point, to see if I like that more. And if I say “Yes, this is good,” then it’ll contrast that with all the other opinions I’ve given it, and add it to the list, so the stuff it plays gets closer and closer to the type of thing I really like, but keeps giving me new artists. You can ask it why it’s playing a certain track, and it’ll give you a vague idea – it turns out, for example, that I’m fairly keen on “a busy horn section,” which I never knew, but which keeps coming up on some really good tracks. And it took less than twenty songs before it played me a track because, amongst other things, it featured “political lyrics.”

It’s a bloody clever thing, frankly, amd I’m grateful to Dan for pushing me in the right direction. If you’ve got Broadband, do go and give it a whirl, and see what comes out of it; you’ll probably run into a few new things somewhere along the way.


In other news, I’m working 15:30-23:00 at Spar today, and plan to go and say “Er, by the way, I’m leaving you” shortly after getting there. I imagine they’ll make me stick out the shift anyway, but it’s not really something I can sustain. Especially not with the air conditioning broken and keeping the heat in there at a constant 30-plus centigrade, but I’m not really cut out for doing nine-hour shifts standing up the whole time, either. Christ, at least Halo gave you seats and regular breaks.

I suspect they’re going to be bloody livid with me, but they’re really not paying me enough to make the dehydsration headaches I keep getting anything like worthwhile, and they probably couldn’t afford to, even if they wanted to.

‘s all yours Andy. Get in there with a CV, I should.

Er…

…Which one of you buggers is this, then?

Rockmonkeyorguk on LoTGD

Hooray!

California becomes the first American state to make suitably tolerant noises! Another fifty or so and they might start to pull level with, uh, the 20th Century. MMM.

In fairness to America, however, it’s not entirely their fault they’ve got a society on a par with the more intolerant bits of C. 14th Europe, because they’re only new. The trouble is they will go coupling that with a conviction that they’ve got God’s blessing on this one *cough, Carder, cough, cough*…

Still, I’m pretty impressed by that… Now they just have to, uh, actually put it into law. But with any luck…

Does you good to remember that American’s aren’t actually the bastards Bush keeps trying to make ’em out to be. Incidentally, uh, Annie seems to have gone quiet. Hope things are looking up a bit. If not, I’d recommend against killing US Embassy workers in the current climate; it’ll only make Bush look popular again. Good luck with it. (And you can probably come to Aber again, if you need to escape!)

C’mon, c’mon… Bloody well pay me already!

*sigh*

OK, now I’m definitely upgrading this bloody box. Graphics card first, I reckon, and then the case and what-not. At the moment, the graphics card’s most important because it needs to be about twice as powerful to even meet the minimum spec for Battlefield 2 (although you could just about get by on a 64mb job back when I threw this thing together…)

I’m hoping to run some rolling upgrade system throughout the year anyway, though; if I buy a new motherboard and a new CPU, plus a DVD writer at some point before I graduate (and, actually, maybe a couple of 512 RAM sticks to boot) I reckon I’ll have something that’ll last me from graduation to getting a decentish job in a few year’s time.

*sigh* Tates have given me a paltry 50 quid for working there the weekend before last, so I’m now a mere £35 over my overdraft limit… Presently, some daffy sod will give me some more, and then I’ll get a loan! Hooray! I really, really do need cash, just at the moment; I still need:

1. A new graphics card.
2. A Drizabone before the weather turns.
3. A new case for the PC, probably with a couple of fans thrown in.
4. New shoes, because they continue to fall apart (the toe’s now open by a good three inches, and the die of the other is splitting away from the sole all the way along). Happily, the new shoes can wait until I’ve bought the other things.

O, and I need £133 for bloody Income Services, before Friday. Or they’ll cut off my library access. (O, how terrible, woe is me, for there are no other libraries in Aber. Huh.) Unfortunately, they’ll also cut off my e-mail, and I do need that, just at the moment. O, and I owe Orange another 54 quid, as well.

I want my money from the council!

MMM…

…Actually an interesting quiz, in the way it makes you think, rather than randomly click based on gut reactions. I’m interested by the main mix I seem to have dug out, though; given the general lack of a “Quaker” option on the test I reckon a Christianity/Buddhism mix… The Paganism, I reckon, comes from my innate tendancy to believe there’s a quid-pro-quo that ought to be inherent in pretty much any form of worship.

Ah well. Kudos to Jon for bringing this one to my notice.

You scored as Christianity. Your views are most similar to those of Christianity. Do more research on Christianity and possibly consider being baptized and accepting Jesus, if you aren’t already Christian.

Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths; it follows Judaism and is followed by Islam. It differs in its belief of Jesus, as not a prophet nor historical figure, but as God in human form. The Holy Trinity is the concept that God takes three forms: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost (sometimes called Holy Spirit). Jesus taught the idea of instead of seeking revenge, one should love his or her neighbors and enemies. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to save humankind and forgive people’s sins.

Christianity

67%

Buddhism

63%

Paganism

50%

Islam

46%

Hinduism

46%

agnosticism

38%

Judaism

38%

atheism

33%

Satanism

29%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

Wheee!

It’s the middle of the night, and I remain pretty damn wakeful. Ah well… As far as I know, I don’t have to be up tomorrow until a) 16:55, when I need to get dressed, go downstairs, and walk 100 yards to clean for the Council, or b) 09:38, when someone’s going to ring me up and be angry at me.

I’ve already foiled that plan, however, by being booked up with a full morning of Not Getting Chewed Out right up until lunchtime. Even so, I’d ask you to forgive me if I suddenly start bashing out a heapload of ire under the good old “tolerance” tags.

FRAG rocks. That was probablky the best game of CTF I’ve ever had, so many thanks to everyone for that; we’ll have to get some more rounds in presently!

Food, soon, or so I’m told, and then Scrubs (which, it turns out, I do like after all; I’d always assumed I didn’t like it in the least, because the only episode I’d seen was actually an episode of “The Green Room,” and was pants.) and then, at some point, sleep. Hah, that’ll be the day…

G’night.

O Jesus..

It’s 0730! And I’m about to go and spend 9 hours standing up… O dear. I think when term starts, Spar might have to go, jobs-wise. Never mind.

Happily, I slept like a log, on the back of the bottle-and-a-bit or so of wine I drank last night (there were eight of us. We drank nine bottles. Hooray!). Was a very enjoyable evening, from where I was sitting, so many thanks to everyone for getting so into things, and especially to Paul (for researching the part) to Not-Gay Gareth (for the voice) and everyone else for showing up. And, of course, to Ruthie, without whom there would’ve been no food, and precious little anything else.

It was all good, really, and there’s some corking photos (Bryn… :p) which I’ll upload at some point, when I get round to it. See you later, I imagine.

I wonder if I’ve got time for breakfast…

When “Push” becomes “Shove,” how do you react?

It’s an interesting question, and one which has been vaguely floating in my head for the last day or so (and by God, that was a fantastic episode of Evangelion…) mostly because the interesting part, from where I’m sitting, is not how you react, but why.

For most people, of course, I can’t answer, and I’m not especially good at answering for myself either, but I’m getting better. The reason I can’t always answer for myself is firstly because I’m not sure anyone can ever give an honest answer to a personal question, and secondly because I know very well that there’s a large gap between who I was at one time, and who I am now. It’s not a chronological gap, of course, but it is a little unnerving when I wind up in an introspective mood.

Those of you who kept track of my LiveJournal posts a few weeks back might recall this vaguely unpleasant mope, which unnerved me at the time because it’s a nasty flashbacky sort of post, and unnerves me still more now, for pretty much the same reason. But that’s not my normal “push=shove” reaction, all things considered… It’s occasionally a reaction I get when a shove turns nasty, and I feel I’m getting driven backwards into a pit, but it’s not my normal response, because that’s generally more bloodthirsty.

In retrospect, this makes a reasonable ammount of sense. It can take very little for me to start shoving back; back at school once I was coming out of the VIth form corridor, when Major T [head of the CCF] tried to barge past me. I can distinctly recall thinking “I’m not taking any shit from someone who’s trying to force me back through the door,” and I jammed both my arms accross the gap at pretty much the same time, with the result I forced the old sod back out, with him swearing every inch. That’s generally my reaction, although I’ve had it on a greater or lesser level as a result of everything from people pushing into queues ahead of me, right up to gut-wrenchingly awkward situations.

Sometimes it’s not quite so awkward, of course; during the trip to Edinburgh I ran into some large American tourists who demanded I walk back down the Walter Scott monument “because we’re Americans, and we want to get back to the hotel for lunch,” which was actually fairly entertaining (partly because the people behind them looked horrified, and partly because, when I explained I was on a trip from a school older than America by about 150 years, and should therefore have priority, they, er, crashed, frankly. It was an interesing example of cultureshock in action, and a little sad for ’em, but they shouldn’t have been such arrogant sods, all things considered.)

I imagine this bloody-mindedness was something I always had tucked into my character somewhere, to an extent. But it’s nothing like a reaction from my mother’s side of the family, unless it’s about something big, and I can’t see any traces of it on the other side, either… Presumably, therefore, it’s something I’ve developed under my own steam.

The first time I clearly recall finding myself in a situation where there were two choices, and neither was a good one, and I would not accept the choice people were trying to force on me will’ve been at some point in 1998, at Shrewsbury Magistrate’s Court. My mother & I were there because Nigel Hughes, a man who, seven months before, killed my father with a lorry, was appealing against a sentence for something called ‘driving without due care and attention.’ Apparently, he didn’t mind the £400 fine, but he’d also lost his driving liscence for twelve months, and that put his job (driving lorries) at risk.

Oddly enough, the judge didn’t actually think dear old Nige was especially good as a professional lorry driver, and kept things pretty much as they were. And so my mother & I filed out of the spectator’s gallery, followed by those members of the Hughes family that didn’t have to exit via the cells. Or, at least, we would have been, but the sods went and hung about and tried to avoid us, with me stood there holding the door open for ’em. Bear in mind, please, it was a heavy door, and I was only just thirteen, and fairly weedy, and I could’ve done without hanging about waiting for them.

After I’d coughed, in a pointedish way for a couple of times, and they’d taken notes for their PhDs in Carpeting of Municipal Buildings Studies, it dawned on me that they were, in fact, pretending I wasn’t there, presumably because they were too embarrased to look at me. Impolite little shits. And I rapidly went from very hurt, to specifically much more hurt, and then to rather more angry than I could ever remember being. About that time I gave the door what I thought would be a fairly gentle push, and it jumped back six inches, hit the stop with a smash, and then slapped back into my hand, where it bounced.

They looked up at that. And then away again! Jesus… I don’t actually remember my exact words, but I think I said something like “Get through the fucking door, please, I need to go and comfort my mother.” So they did, although I noticed they were still fascinated by the pattern on the carpet.

I’ve had pretty much the same reaction to similar situations ever since, which is fair enough, but it does worry me sometimes. I’ve long since got over the worst of it, where I could find myself a stray insult away from bloody murder (anyone remember the dark old days, when my blazer was full of drawing pins?), but there’s still a fairly solid core of steel somewhere in me, and it tends to find its way to the front when people start to push…

…But I can fairly confidently defy anyone to attempt to wander vaguely adolescentwards surrounded by the chaos I went through (I had my grandmother, grandfather and father die within eleven months of one another, and then the battle to keep the life insurance [it was in trust, but try telling that to the fucking Reciever] and then the battle to get compensation [which got settled about eight days before I came to Aber, six years later]) and not develop an innate distaste for people trying to fuck you over.

Unusually, for one of my long rambling posts, there isn’t very much of a point to this (although if you’ve got a different reaction [or, indeed, middle or lower -gear reactions!], I’d be very interested to hear it…) but I vaguely needed to let off steam. And, all things considered, I think it’s a fairly useful reaction, because it does tend to get people if not listening, then at least bloody worried that they ought to have been paying more attention when I stopped shouting at them and suddenly got calm…

Going to play something called “Wesnoth,” now, and trust the package manager installed it properly.

No doubt I’ll see many of you tomorrow. Have fun!

Only In Aber Moments: Number Eight

So… En route from the Flat to Carleon last night, I wander down Terrace Road, and find myself, as you do, walking past Y Popty, at the corner of Portland Road. There is standing yonder waiter from the All Spice (the taller one). Whereupon, he stops me, and we have a chat about how his week’s been, and how mine has been, and how he hasn’t seen any of us in there for a while (which, it turns out, is because he wasn’t working on Sunday, when we were last there).

And then I wandered off again, having promised we’ll be back at some time in the nearish future.

I can’t help but feel that’s an Only In Aber job, simply because anywhere else, an off-duty waiter’s almost certain to ignore people he vaguely recognises as turning up evrery now and then. Was fun, that was.

I’m sleepy…

…Which is silly, because I got at least six hours sleep last night, and probably rather a lot more. Hm.

I got a reply from Driza-Bone, which was pretty toptastic of them, so it looks like I’ll be getting myself a Riding Coat, which is what they suggested. Or, at least, I’ll be getting one when my loan comes through.

Everway was interesting, all things considered, and I apologise to Paul & Claire for spending so long thrashing out a political backstory (it did get to be a very interesting backstory, however, which I hope excuses it…) and, anyway, as long as I don’t get minced, I won’t have to do that again for a little while yet.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to go and visit the Midland, and get a savings account set up. And I just called them “Midland” again, even though they’ve been HSBC for years. Never mind.

Yay! Blue Dragon‘s about to roll over! More turns!

Hahah! It’s a Bank Holiday and I’m not at work!

Knackering stuff, is working in Spar. The council’s pretty decent, to be quite honest, because it’s an evening thing, and fairly gentle stuff. Spar, however has some major failings, the first of which is most certainly the lack of any bloody chairs for me to sit on, with the result that I’m standing for 7 1/2 hours on a Sunday, and 9 on Saturdays.

Add to that the fact the till is dimwittedly placed about 6″ below a decent height, forcing me to stoop for most of the time I’m serving people, and I get a mix of aching knees, an aching back, and heels that’re killing me (not least because my shoes are now totally devoid of any real lining – there’s an eighth of an inch of synthetic foam between my foot and the hard rubber on the sole, and you have no idea how that starts to cut upwards after the first five hours…

Still, soon I will be paid, and there will be new shoes! Huzzah! Also, I’ve just e-mailed Drizabone in the hope they’ll be able to suggest another coat for me (the green shabby thing I picked up in Aberaeron last year is now very dead indeed, after an impressive year-or-so of use) which’d be super… I’ve been angling for a Drizabone for about eight years now (yes, I was a very strange twelve year old. Get over it) and this is probably my last chance to get one until several years after I graduate, and finally start making money, so I may as well blow the Student Loan on something with a whocking great guarantee on it, especially with the wear my coats take…

…So yeah, hoping they’ll e-mail me back with a suggestion of something shiny, and I can grab that. Some of them have leg straps to stop the coat blowing away from you in the wind. How clever is that? It’s like Linux in a coat. Except it’s expensive, so it’s probably more like UNIX, now I come to think of it. Heh. But it isn’t windows, because they don’t develop a bunch of holes that need patching every…

…I’m going to shut up, now, else some bugger’ll go and call me a geek again.
Have fun!

Whee…

… I have to leave soon. Mostly because I’m due at Spar at 1pm (for further training) and I have to find somewhere to buy food first, and give Income Services £287.84 by 5pm, by which time they’ll be shut, and I have to be at the cleaning job at the Council Offices.

I’m working at Spar until 5pm. O dear. No, really, when I said “Weekends are much better for me,” I meant it… Still, it’s only this one time, as far as I can tell, and then everything will continue to tesselate properly, which’ll be good. And hey, I’ll be five minutes late, but nobody will mind, I hope.

In fact, I doubt they’d mind unless I was more than 20 minutes late, because I always have that much time left in which to go back and polish the desks for a second time anyway. It’s therefore a shame that today is Friday, meaning (I was told last night) we’re due into work at 16:30 & knock off half an hour early, at 19:00. But it should all be OK, I reckon…

Tom “Gendo” Varley is coming down today, along with Judith, to say hello to Ruth and have a bonfire on North Beach at 19:30. Bring food. Bring beer quietly, so the police don’t confiscate it, see you there.

Ruth’ll sulk when she sees I’ve been calling Tom Gendo Ikari again, but please consider:
In something like Episode 12 of Neon Genesis, Shinji calls his father Gendo to tell him about a partents evening Gendo’s supposed to go to. And Gendo says:
“I’ve delegated all such matters to Commander Fuyutski. Do not bother me with such childish trivialites.”

Yesterday, Ruth suggested to Tom that he might want to call Robin, to find out Robin’s GCSE results from him. And Tom said:
Calling him is irrelevant. Why don’t you just tell me?”
and suggested Ruth was being childish when she said it would be better for Tom to call Robin himself…

…And yet I don’t believe that Tom has ever seen Evangelion. Still, you’ve got to like someone who can do Gendo impressions, and I’ve rather got over being afraid of him, because, having been going out with Ruth for rather longer than the three weeks I’d managed last time I actually met Tom, I’m rather more confident that her family doesn’t work in such a way as to allow him to say “get rid of yonder useless hanger-on” and Ruth actually do it. Hey, I might even exchange more than ten sentences with him!

O. And Commander Fuyutski has the same birthday as me, apparently. And Gendo has the same birthday as my father.

Anyway, some of us have got to get going *sigh* so I’ll hopefully see you later for a bonfire & BBQ.
Have fun!

Of Bonfires & Borth…

OK ladies & gents: Ruth’s father’s coming to Aber this Friday, with a van, and has been promised a bonfire. So what say we use the van to load up a huge pile of wood (there’s still loads on the breakwater at the far end of South Beach, for example) and do a bonfire/BBQ job in the usual place about 7.30 on Friday? Sound good?

He’s also been promised a Walk To Borth on the Saturday, but Ruth & I are both working ’till about 1pm, so how about we meet up somewhere about 13:40 and set off? By my reckoning, we’d get to Borth sometime between 3 & 4, which allows for a nice afternoon drink and, er, whatever else people fancy, before we head back.

Hoping people’ll be up for that lot. Especially the fire, because fires are fun. And I’ve not been to Borth on foot since last year…