#55: Just go away

I am fed up with everyone wanting everything yesterday. Just back the fuck off and get some perspective, would you? It won’t kill you to wait five extra minutes for something, especialy not if it means that the job is done better.

I am going to see Babyshambles this evening. Perhaps I’ll ask Pete to throw me some crack to calm me down.

#54: “You feel deprived…”

I think it was Robbie Williams who wrote “All the best women are married/all the handsome men are gay”.

It’s pretty true, you know. The girls I like when I look at them are always in relationships or generally “with” other people - what’s the deal with this?

I’ve heard it said before that you are instantly more attractive to the opposite sex when you are in a relationship yourself (either that, or getting regular sex from somewhere) so maybe that’s just what’s getting me here - perhaps I am just doomed to only fancy girls I can’t have? :P

(And yes, I know I’m not the first person to have had this thought, and I also know I won’t be the last. It just needed to be said)

#53: Harpenden

My friend James is the bar manager at the excellent Billy’s Wine Bar in Harpenden, and last night they were celebrating their 14th birthday. Matt, Jo and I duly headed over there (braving the snow, I might add - what the hell is snow in November all about?!) for a fun night out.

They had a Spanish/Mexican theme going on (we’re not quite clear why, as the place usually shows no affliation) and so lots of Corona was being served, the bar staff were all in sombreros and there was a Spanish band playing at the back. Their percussionist was handing out his spare instruments while he wasn’t using them - I was on the maracas and Matt was on the tambourine - we got well into it and had some brilliant fun.

It was a really great evening, I drank quite a number of margaritas and bottles of Corona and got nicely merry. The best part of it all was that I didn’t feel bad at all this morning! We were invited to go to Chicago’s in Luton with all the bar staff and a few other people that we knew but it was getting late and I didn’t fancy staying out until mid-morning when I had to be up for work. Next time, though…

#52: Fruition

http://www.asda-travel.co.uk/

This is what has been consuming my time at work for the last few months. Myself and a couple of colleagues have written the entire booking engine from scratch, and we’re pretty proud of it.

If you’ve got any comments, I’d be interested to hear them :)

#51: The Day The Routers Died

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_y36fG2Oba0

I found that absolutely hilarious. Kudos to SIR-Millar and the_angry_angel for bringing it to my attention :-)

#50: Brand new second hand

I’m trying a new layout, just to make the site look nicer for anyone who doesn’t read this via RSS. I also updated to Wordpress 2.3.1 today, realised that I hadn’t actually upgraded to fix the security holes in the old versions for a while.

I took delivery of a new hard drive for my home PC last night. It’s a 500gb SATAII Seagate job, cost about £60 on ebuyer - I was running very low on space, and I really can’t fault prices like that. I also wanted a drive that I could install Linux on - the only other candidate was my RAID 0 array, which Ubuntu won’t detect by default (thanks Nvidia) and I can’t be bothered to set up dmraid for.

I also got a new DVD writer, an 48x CD/20x DVD LG one with a black front to match my case. My brother needed one for his PC and it was only £16 - I couldn’t resist. I gave him my old cream-coloured one and installed this - looks good. I also removed the horrible cream floppy drive.

One of the gripes with my case (the generally awesome Antec Nine Hundred) was that the blue LEDs in all the fans light up my room like Blackpool Illuminations at night - there are nine of them and they really don’t hold back. I never have a problem sleeping, but it was an annoyance - so yesterday I took the opportunity to remove them forever. I wasn’t quite sure if it’d work but the end result was very good. I did take 12 volts through my fingers on numerous occasions however, thanks to not taping the ends of the wires up properly. Needless to say, I sorted that out with some blu-tack and I’m now enjoying the benefits of a properly darkened room when I go to sleep.

I bought a pair of red cold cathodes for the case to replace my old UV one - most of my bedroom is red so I thought it’d go with it quite well… I was wrong. These cold cathodes are not red, they’re bright fucking pink. I left them on for two hours to see if they would become more red and less pink, but I was unfortunately out of luck.

Never mind, they only cost £3.08. I’ve turned them off to save my masculinity, and will probably buy a different coloured set the next time someone puts an ebuyer order in.