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Sunday, June 18th, 2006
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8:06 pm
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It's been almost 4 weeks since we left France and nearly 2 since Jess flew back to California. I want to say that things have settled down, but that's not quite true. Since she left I've been trying to sort out everything here so that a) I know where my stuff is and can actually make use of some of it, b) look for work and c) look at a more permanent place to live. That last one's more of a slow burner since I can't imagine moving again before heading off for the Route 66 roadtrip at the end of July, but my little sister's looking to move very soon as well, so there's been plenty of browsing of rental sites & papers. Interesting to see what's out there and what prices I'll expect to pay once I do move from here.
The job search went a little better than expected. Initially I was looking for something to bide my time till R66, then look for something decent once we get back in August. What's turned out is that I start as a Helpdesk Support Analyst at the Crewe branch of The Caudwell Group. This group is locally owned and currently runs the 2nd largest mobile/cellphone company in the country. I'll be part of a small team that maintains all the systems on the site, so is pretty much exactly what I was looking for on a permanent basis. They were even happy with me taking 3 weeks off unpaid next month! The process was wonderfully quick, starting with an online application at lunchtime on Tuesday followed by a chase-up phonecall to the agency. I was told that interviews were already being held for the position but if it wasn't filled I'd get a call the following morning. I received that call and was in for an interview myself on Thursday morning. 2 hours and 2 interviews later I was waiting for them to offer me a salary package and I signed the contract on Friday afternoon! Yesterday was spent buying workclothes (yay for a 'smart working environment') and figuring out how best to combine biking into work with the need for a full 'smart' outfit. I reckon I'll take shoes etc in the first day then just take in a shirt/tie/trousers each day to change into. The place seems cool, my intervewers(?) were decent and the work sounds like it'll be a lot more hands-on than my last one. Best thing is that it's only 5 miles away so I can happily bike in each day. Huzzah!
One thing I've discovered I can't cope with is the heat in my bedroom. I'm not sure if it genuinely is that hot in here (the water heater's tucked in a cupboard in the corner) or if the year spent sleeping in a naturally cool cave in Grenoble has screwed my climitisations, but I've not slept for more than 5/6 hours a night at best since getting here. I go to bed sprawled above the sheets, usually to wake in a nice little sweat angel (yummy!) before having to get up and out of the room just to cool down. Obviously there's a fair bit of heat generated by the PC/TV/monitor etc, but every room I've slept in for 10 years has had that as well ;) Bleh, can't wait for it to cool down again.
Jess is now a fully fledged member of the Apple fraternity. Her 21st was celebtrated by getting on down to the closest reseller and purchasing a shiny new MacBook - unfortunately this has brought up an unexpected and horrific side-effect...... it's now damn difficult to video-chat! Skype has had video capabilities for months in it's windows version, but the Mac release is stuck back in the dark ages. After a little reading up on the matter it turns out that the video side of things was facilitated by code bought out from a 3rd party s/w house and thrown into the windows release in order to keep up with Aim / Messenger, both of which now offer video capabilities. There's no ETA on the Mac version being pushed out so in the meantime we've had to try alternative means. Aim flat-out refused to co-operate with iChat despite it being a 'major connectivity feature' of the latest release so we've been stuck with SightSpeed. Though this works as well as could be expected, it has a horribly clunky interface (utilising iexplore on the windows version) and allows the user no control over the bandwidth use and therefore video quality. Bugger =/
It's been a weird kind of day. In the UK it's father's day but it didn't really twig as such until my step-sisters popped round to see their dad. It got me thinking and it suddenly dawned on me that 2 weeks ago was the anniversary of Dad's death. Fair enough there was a lot going on around that time this year, but it's the first one that's gone by where I've not remembered. This realisation was quite a shock since it's not really something you'll ever forget, so it's kind of shaken me. I haven't spoken about it with anyone since I don't want to bring up memories that need not be, but as a result I've felt kind of 'off' all day. Weirdly, walking back from my job interview the other day I was calling people to let them know I'd got the role and the 2nd person I thought to call was Dad. Even then I didn't realise what I'd missed, which subsequently annoyed me even more today. It's been 6 years since he left us, I'd like to think he's proud of how we've progressed with our lives. =)
The World Cup's in full swing now, with Brazil having just defeated Australia 2-0 and France just kicking off against South Korea. The days have flown by with 3 games taking up most of the afternoon/evening. I'm yet to be convinced that England can get beyond the quarters, in fact the only team that's impressed me so far has been Argentina, though I fear they may have peaked too early. Bring on the rest of the tournament! Shame I'll now be working and missing some of the games! Instead of letting people take early finishes on days that England play, our office hooks up the projector and streams the game onto various terminals around the building =D
Updates to come describing how my first week's going \o/
current mood:  restless
current music: Embrace - Ashes
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| Monday, May 22nd, 2006
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12:11 am
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Well, we're back from Marseille all sunned up and are (kind of) ready to get to bed in preparation for our final full day in France. Tomorrow consists of cancelling the last few accounts, selling a few things too large to carry home and, of course, lots of packing. We're due to meet up with most of the gang for a farewell dinner at 6 then..... well that's it!
Tuesday lunchtime we fly out of Lyon direct to Manchester and back to reality.
I'm not ready......
current mood:  contemplative
current music: Red Hot Chili Peppers - 21st Century
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| Friday, May 5th, 2006
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6:59 pm - Random photos
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Since I've just been berated for not having my camera / phone with me when we experienced 'Old French guy in Beret with Baguette' at last, I'm posting a few photos to prove that I have been taking the odd photo every now and then!
( A few piccies )
We've booked our final flight out of France! As of Tues 23rd May we'll no longer be living the dream over here. I'll have almost 2 weeks more with Jess in England before she flies on home to the sunny clime of California not to be seen (by me) till the end of July! No bueno! A month today I'll have to wave her goodbye and return to the real world. Boy do I not want to do that! Time to buy me a webcam and sort out some internet for when I get back to Britland!
current mood: Sunny
current music: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Wet Sand
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| Saturday, April 15th, 2006
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9:54 pm - Homemade Sorbet!
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One of the American guys who's over here on the EAP scheme with Jess is working parttime in some sort of lab and came round the other day to 'show us something really cool.' Turns out that cool thing was a thermos of liquid nitrogen =D
The piccies in the cut show how a combination of fruit juice (in this case peach & apricot), sugar and serious coldness can be blended together to form the perfect sorbet.... Damn if it wasn't the tastiest thing I've tasted in a long while!
( Piccies! )
Not a lot else to tell. I've barely left the flat lately after damaging my knee somehow while out running a week ago. After a run on the Monday resulted in an odd feeling of achiness around my right knee, I took it easy for a few days and by Thursday it seemed fine. After walking a little stretch it out I started my run only for the pain to come back pretty quickly. I found a stride that minimised it and was able to continue which, in hindsight, wasn't the smartest decision I've ever made. Though the rest of the run was absolutely fine (in fact I shaved 2 minutes off my best time for that particular run) by the time I was out of the shower I could barely put weight on my right knee. The week since has been agony if I try to walk more than a few steps, though weirdly if I walk through the pain it eventually stops and everything feels fine. I'm hoping it was just jarred & bruised rather than some sort of ligament or chipped cartilege issue that would involve long-term care. Luckily it's been getting better the last few days and seems to be on it's own way to recovery. Yay knees!
In less than 2 weeks we'll be heading back to Britland to visit young Sharna. After that long weekend we've around 4/5 weeks before Jess heads back to the US..... I can't believe how quickly our time here's gone or in all honesty how little we've really done while we've been here. While others have travelled to Italy, Spain etc we've had a few days out to cities nearby and a few flights back to the UK and, while it should bother me that we've not done more, in honesty I've liked nothing more than when we just sit in and watch some TV or a film with only each other for company. I waited more than 2 years to be able to just spend time with Jess on a day-to-day basis and it's been awesome being able to do just that. Next year's going to be a bugger.....
current mood:  sore
current music: 4 o'clock planes - Europe
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| Thursday, April 6th, 2006
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1:00 pm
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Yesterday I got a call from my elder sister asking for some advice. Before I explain what she was asking I'd best describe why she was calling:
Around a month ago she discovered that since starting her teaching job in 2001 she'd been on an emergency tax code and, as a result, had been paying over the odds for her taxes. After chasing this up she filled in plenty of forms and discovered she was entitled to get a rebate. Well, last week this rebate all came back. £600 was added to her paycheque to cover this year's taxes while a separate cheque arrived in the post for £3600. On returning from the pub celebrating the end of the working week (and her newfound riches) she found a letter from the inland revenue waiting for her. Worrying that she was to be fronted with a retraction statement or something, she opened the letter cautiously, only to find another cheque for £1300 inside! Woo!
Swing the clock back round to today and she's calling me at 9am to ask 'I'm looking for a new TV and found a Sony 32" widescreen LCD for £899 in my local retailer. Can you find it cheaper anywhere else or recommend an alternative?' No fair! I then spent the next 2/3 hours researching the TVs she was finiding, explaining which were better than others and also the difference between 'HD compatible' and 'HD ready.' I found a sweetass LG (32LX2R) for £65 cheaper that reviewed better than the Sony, but it turned out to be quite deep for an LCD (20cm) and as such it was wiped from the shortlist since Josie intends to wall mount it. A cracker of a Samsung (LE-32R41BDX), which had built-in freeview, a depth of only 9.9cm and was an entire £100 cheaper was next on my list so I called Josie back to let her know only to have trouble getting through to her. After a few tries, she picked up the phone to say 'Errrr, yeah, I'm in the car on my way to pick up the Sony....'
*sigh
After all the running around and reading up, she'd gone with the 'I can pick it up today and be watching stuff on it in an hour or so' notion. She hadn't even told me she'd decided on the Sony afterall so I could've stopped looking! Bah. That said, it looks like a damn sweet TV =P
The model she's gone for is the Sony Bravia KDLS32A12 (they all have such catchy names!) and can be seen here.
It's not exactly uuurglee ;)
*drool.
current mood:  jealous
current music: Arctic Monkeys - Dancing Shoes
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1:28 am - Gassy!
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OK, so I didn't get round to updating again while Jess was skiing yesterday. I got a little caught up in wandering in the sunshine and playing WoW. Same ol', same ol' =D
By the time Jess got back to her friends' place (the girls that took her skiing) she was knackered and already aching, so I was invited to head on over with the external HDD and some food for making dinner. Now you may or may not be aware that France is currently under the grip of some serious strike / protest action because the young unemployed here don't like a new law that grants them easy access to work at the cost of possible contract termination without notice. Fair enough there are a few details of the law that are a little weird, but to cause the entire country to grind to a halt because of it is beyond stupid. Yesterday, like so many other days in the last few weeks there were fairly high tensions in Grenoble. There was a massive march at 11 when Jess passed through town to go skiing and by the time I followed at 6.30ish there was no sign of it abating. Unfortunately for me I had to pass pretty much straight through it to get to Judy's and as I crossed one of the major roads I turned to look right and saw the cloud from a tear gas grenade filling the air. Guess who was downwind of it!? I quickened my step to avoid getting onion-chopping eyes and rounded the corner to parc Victor Hugo..... to find myself face-to-face with 30/40 armed & shielded riot police who, it turns out, had just received a call for assistance from the guys behind me firing the gas grenades.
So they charged straight for me.....
Cue deer-in-headlights mode as I did my best impression of a statue as they piled past me blowing their whistles. Good fun. After that I saw plenty more police cars/vans/ambulances flying through the city centre and the police helichopper was hovering overhead most of the evening.
Good times =D
current mood:  geeky
current music: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
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| Monday, April 3rd, 2006
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8:47 pm - Unclage!
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I hadn't realised just how long it's been since I last updated.... I apologise for closing the window into my life that this textual vessel should allow. As for updating, well, where do I start?
The important thing first, we have a niece! As Jess stole my uncle-thunder on her LJ (that'll teach me to not update!) I can be the first to upload piccies of the little cutie! Sharna's now almost 2 weeks old and living life to the full. Well, as full as can be when life consists of milk, gas and poop. Ah, the good ol' days :P
As for piccies, the Frenchie postal service has, like the rest of the country's services, packed up it seems. There should be a CD of photos on it's way here but who knows where it's got to. The last one took 5 weeks to arrive.... woo! Anyhoos I got my elder sis to email me a select few, so here they are!
I'm told that this is her 'Uncle Tutu' impression. I don't see it personally =Þ
The LJ icon and that last photo were taken when she was all of 4 days old. I didn't realise babies had expressions other than slobbery at that age! We're back off to England on 27th April for a long weekend to visit the happy family. Can't wait!
Aside from being sick for the last month or so, we've not really been doing a great deal. Day trips to Annecy and Montpellier have been squeezed in when funds and health allow. I'm not used to being ill, so 4/5 weeks worth of coughing, sneezing, headaches, phloem by the bucketload and the occasional violent reaction to foodstuffs was great fun. Really. There were days when I could barely get out of the house without feeling dizzy, something which resulted in me sleeping a lot and generally moping about the place. I'm pretty much back to full health now so I've finally got started with running once more. Not exercising bugs me, so I went on a super quick 6 miler down alongside the river. Figure I'll save the mountain running for Wednesday, get my legs used to moving again first... so far so good, no aches is a good sign.
I'll update more tomorrow, Jess is off skiing and we're off to pick up some snowpants for her to be wearing! o/
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| Saturday, November 26th, 2005
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10:33 pm
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| Saturday, November 19th, 2005
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2:30 pm - Almost back to previous geekery!
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I flew home last week to pick some 'essentials' up and say hi to some mates. The idea behind this was that a) the flights were around £15 each way and b) Jess was due to have a girly weekend in Milan with her buddies. Great idea, except the girls ended up missing their train and not going..... I swear it was an elaborate plan to get me out of the country for a weekend so they could party Grenoble style! Anyways, I collected everything I needed to get and saw those I could, including Johnst & Lou (the latter of which is due to give birth to their first in around 2/3 weeks). We bought them a present all the way from France - Philippe leFrog, a seriously cute cuddly toy. She loved it and he takes pride of place in the nursery (jungle-ish themed due to them dropping on the name George for their son \o/ ).
The flight back was again no problem, though my checked luggage broke the golden Ryanair 'NOTHING OVER 15KG' rule.... Luckily there were only 50 or so people due to get on the flight (the 737-800 has a 150 or so capacity) so my 16.8kg was allowed on without even having to pay an excess fee. The girl scanning the hand-luggage had a giggle when she saw that I not only had my PS2 in there, but a cpu, 2x ram, vga card, keyboard, mouse, HDD and various vital cables as well... prolly for the best they hadn't weighed that bag too ;)
Now I'm back my new shuttle has arrived and I have myself a fully functional machine once more \o/ The last few problems are due to be cleared up today - the B&W display and net connectivity. The lack of colour is due to the S-VHS cable being used to connect to the TV (yup, my 'primary' display =D) is too long and the signal's degraded too much for the colour to carry to it. As for connecting to the net, I was hoping my wireless card could create an ad-hoc connection with Jess' and we could go from there. Seems I can't even install my card though, it just fails when trying to 'start device' on both my comp and Jess' lappy. Bugger. So I'm off to get me a crossover patch cable and sort it the old-fashioned way. woo.
So hopefully later today I should be able to surf my own waves while Jess is using her machine for 'work' =D
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| Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
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2:58 pm
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Another week, another few steps towards the new Frenchiefied Stu..... I'm trying to surround myself in familiar stuff that just happens to be in French instead of English. Currently this includes Calvin & Hobbes and a random car mag I bought yesterday. It's weird how much info I can get from a car review even without understanding the majority of the words.....
The last week's been spent wandering around the (still warm and surprisingly sunny) Grenoble, sitting in parks and reading to the sound of the nearby fountains while I wait for Jess to finish class. I'm still getting used to the food shops not giving out carrier bags with your groceries. I wandered into our local mini-supermarket yesterday with grand plans of buying us stuff for tea before remembering that I'd be carrying it all back in my arms..... bah!
Speaking of cooking, we've been having some interesting meals so far. Trying to keep a little variety going, a cupboard full of tuna / pasta / random veggies has proved a challenge. I've since discovered that week-old red potatoes make pretty tasty mash when combined with herbs, tomato, cheese and a little butter. \o/
I've not been taking as many photos as I was expecting. Partly due to not having my camera with me all the time, some of it's due to the fact I already feel like I have a 'NOT FRENCH' banner above my head so taking my camera out and looking even more like a tourist doesn't seem like such a great idea. I know I embarass Jess for the most part anyway, let alone while taking piccies....
That said, here's a few from my first wander last week. I've discovered that taking RAW shots isn't such a great idea since this poor laptop really can't cope with the processing required afterwards. Here we have:
 The most typically French car ever - the Citroen 2CV... and there are two parked up on our street! =D  This is the park at the end of our street. On the other side is a daily market, to the left a tabac / post office/ tram / takeaways and to the right the Laundrette. Woo!
I think that'll do for now, have fun folks o/
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| Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
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6:46 pm - Salut!
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Flying over here on Sunday was great fun. After setting off bright and early and ending up at the airport well over 2 hours before take-off time, I thanked my bro for the lift there (flying from London Lutons cost £17.99 direct to Grenoble, from Manchester would've been £140 to Lyon + the train to Grenoble) and set about checking in. Easyjet doesn't have specific queues for each flight, you just pick the shortest one and wait your turn. Since it was barely 9am on a Sunday, it wasn't too busy so I reached the front in no time. The guy checked my booking and chuckled as he said 'your flight should be fun...' Turns out there was only 22 of us booked for it, on a 150+ seater 737. Fun!
It seems EJ really don't care too much about the 20kg checked-luggage weight (but then, with 22/150 on the plane, it's hardly going to be too heavy) and my tightly packed bag disappeared into the machine. I wandered through the security checks and found myself a seat in the waiting lounge overlooking the runway. Shame the windows were filthy, I'd have taken a few shots of incoming / outgoing planes while I waited. Eventually our gate was designated and we headed off. The guy checking our passes laughed as he read that only 18 had checked in. I got to be first on the flight.... woo! I picked a seat in the row with the emergency exit and got me some legroom. After flying up to 15 hours at a time heading over to Cali a 1h23 hop to Grenoble was over before I knew it.
We touched down in the smallest airport I've ever seen, walked across the tarmac to the hut that made up both the departure and arrival area and collected my luggage. Before long the shuttle bus from Grenoble pulled up and my Jess leapt off and headed my way. To say I was glad to see her would be an understatement on a par with saying Bush ain't the sharpest monkey in the tree. Before long we were on our way back to Grenoble and we wandered our way from the bus station to our apartment. I was bracing myself given what I'd heard about it but truth be told it's a pretty cool little place! I love the bedroom (for more reasons than that!), the spiral staircase in the corner and the window right at the head of our bed...... but there are a couple of.... nuances let's say. The toilet cubicle is so small when you sit on it your legs are actually still in the bedroom! Even if you could close the door while you're on it the lack of light kinda dampens the fun. Another thing is the location of the shower. It's actually directly off the kitchen! Makes sense in a plumbing kinda way, but weeeeiiiiiird. Aside from that and the minor lack of cloth storage space, we're doing fine in here!
I've so far spent my time doing random jobs around the house (lots of laundry, some of it my own clothes!), reading while Jess is homeworking and cooking super meals. We had a cracker of a pasta dish the other night and quiche with a tuna salad last night. Sometimes I surprise even myself! I have Frenchie radio on as often as I can so I can get used to hearing the weird language everyone seems to speak, but I can't say I'm especially confident about heading out and talking with peeps on my own just yet. Small steps....
Sunday night was great fun. We headed over to another of the EAP kids' apartment where we met up with the group that are studying in Lyon. What ensued involved plenty of pizza, lots of vodka / godawful cheap rum / malibu / sangria / maybe even some wine, a killer drinking game and a trek around Grenoble in drag. Lots of fun, a great way to meet everyone I'll most likely spend time with over the year and some iiiinteresting photo opportunities. When in Rome......
That'll do for now I think. I've no current plans to look for work, so expect (hopefully) regular updates as to our big adventure.
\o/
current mood:  bouncy
current music: Random Frenchie Radio
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| Friday, September 30th, 2005
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6:46 pm - This is it!
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There's all of 90 minutes left of my final Datalex Support shift. Frankly I can't wait to get out of here, though I'll definitely miss quite a few peeps around here. Just not the support team for the most part..... I've pretty much run the entire office this week during one of the busiest few days I've ever witnessed here. 2 people have called in sick every day, the team leader has been too busy reading CVs for my replacement to actually do work, my boss is still recovering from an operation while my shift-partner's the most useless waste of space I've ever seen.
He actually showed up to work 1 ½ hours late today and decided to blame the traffic, despite then admitting he didn't leave his place (20 miles away) until 10 minutes before shift was due to start. I had a major bitch about all things Datalex last night, must've taken me maybe 45 minutes before Jess could even get a word in edgeways. Luckily being awesome she just sat and let me get my rant off. Which I really needed. \o/
Enough of that, today's been fun, despite being as busy as ever. We had pizza for lunch ( 10x19" delivered to our office =D ) and then at around 4pm everyone came into the support room and gave me a present and card. It was a genuinely nice moment and I actually think I might be missed around here! I got a tasty looking bottle of red wine, the Lonely Planet guide to France and 'French Phrases for dummies.' How did they know!?
Now I get to bike 10 miles in the pouring rain in the opposite direction to the house in the name of food! We're having a gathering round at a mate's place to enjoy a homemade green-thai curry. Talk about working up an appetite!
After this weekend I'll be finalising all the bits and pieces I still need to do, then pack up (again) ready to move all my stuff to mum's before I head back to stay with her for a week before I go. With any luck I might even get to see my little sis a few times as well, she's already 4 ½ months pregnant!
Time really does fly on by.
Speak to you soon peeps, as an unemployed slob! \o/
current mood: contemplative
current music: The Magic Numbers - forever lost
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| Sunday, August 21st, 2005
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9:19 pm - After 15 years of trying...
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I was woken at 10.30 this morning by a slightly manic mum. After getting her to calm down she managed to explain that she'd managed to win the Mail on Sunday's General Knowledge prize crossword. The prize was £1500... \o/
I'm gunning for a percentage since I provide the answers to any they can't get with their wall of encyclopediae... gg google =D
current mood:  shocked
current music: Supergrass - St. Petersburg
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12:23 am
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It's all over.... for now.
It's been a crazy few months,we've had everything from baby news to Jess sleeping with her supervisor at work.
( All will be revealed )
current mood: lonely
current music: White Stripes - I just don't know what to do with myself
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| Monday, June 27th, 2005
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10:43 am
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Times are good \o/
Last night I pedalled home to find a sumptious dinner of chicken a l'orange, caramelised carrots and potato slices, an apple / rocket / spinach salad and a strawberry yoghurt sat waiting for me at the table. I could definitely get used to this! Just as we finished eating Bill & Ted's excellent adventure started on TV so we sat and watched that.... totally triumphant!
Since the weather's been as glorious as can be, we've been wandering quite a lot in the last week. Firstly we took a tour of Chorlton, then we hit the city centre to explore bus routes and work-clothes-stocking shops. Yesterday, my first day back at work since Jess arrived, we met up for lunch and sat near the fountains by Manchester Cathedral chomping away on sangers. Yum!
On saturday we headed back to visit mum and to experience the wonder of the World Worm Charming Championships. Oh yes, it's as fun as it sounds and twice as bonkers. We had a great time, Jess taking in the sights while I was busy taking action photos of the competition. I'll get pics up asap.
J'ai réalisez....... j'ai oublié comment parler les français. Non..... Dans la réalité je pourrais (?) ne jamais parler les français bien.
I know. It hurts me to read it back and I can't read/write/speak/understand the language..... maybe that's my problem =D Just don't judge me! :bambi eyes: We've had a few minor sessions where Jess'll tell me a few vital words/phrases and I try to remember them for more than a few minutes. So far, so bad.... \o/
In unrelated news, it's Friday already! Since I took Fri/Sat off to head back to mum's, I'm on my last day at work already. After 8pm today I'm not in till saturday night! woohoo! It does mean that I miss the tragic rockstar-themed birthday party that's going on at the Robinson household, but Jess will be there enough for both of us.
Actually, that's a thought..... any suggestions who Jess can go as? By tragic we mean sadder than sad, Vanilla Ice style, rather than Kurt / Hutchence tragic. The dafter the better!
current mood:  giggly
current music: Kaiser Chiefs - Oh my God
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| Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
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10:10 pm - So near and yet still so very far away.
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It seems this is going to have to make do as my update for May...... created with hours to spare!
The last few weeks have consisted of days when time seems to stop moving (weirdly that always seems to happen while I'm at work) and days when it seems like I've blinked and missed them. My very good friends Chris and Kris were married last weekend in an awesome ceremony that was followed up by lots of curry, beer and possibly the worst sound system you've ever had the misfortune to hear in your life. By the time this was discovered we'd had enough beer not to care and continued to empty both keg and bottle until the place was dry. Good times were had by all. I was asked to take the photos in the absence of an actual photographer and, though I've yet to fully sift through them (I took 1.5gb / 280 photos in total) there look to be at least a few decent ones. The samples that are online can be found here. The day bounced between rainy and sunny, so the contrast on quite a few shots is all over the place. Huzzah for shooting in raw.
The weekend before that was Chris' stag do. It was pretty much just an excuse to get all the guys together and drink/dance/be merry. Same as most times we head out! We ended up in Jilly's, the rockiest rock club in alllll of Manchester (maybe) and there was far too much Jaeger involved. Aside from that, more good times!
The only thing missing lately, aside from the lottery numbers for the next £10m rollover draw, has been Jess. Now more than ever I wish she were already here to experience things like the Chris' wedding. I know that in less than 3 weeks she'll be here to begin our European odyssey, but these three weeks are going to be the most stressful for her. I hate not being able to help her with things like moving out of her Santa Cruz house, make final preparations for her trip and, most of all, provide the shoulder she physically needs to lean/cry on. As much as I can try to soothe her over the phone, nothing compares to a hug. Screw Voice over IP, Hugs over IP needs to be developed. Though unless they can get it to the market in fewer than 3 weeks it may be a little pointless.... It's finally begun to kick in that she's off for an adventure that, aside from yours truly, she'll be experiencing on her own. I know it's what she's wanted for years and that once we're in Grenoble she'll have the best time of her life, but right now the previously 'minor' things like being away from family and friends (and cutey kitty) have come to the fore. Like anyone could forget my Jess..... ;)
Now I'm sat in work, on my third pint of water already, downloading Sunday's Top Gear and getting back to grips with TEFL stuff. I've been away from it far too long. So long I've forgotten my present simples from my past perfects..... :crosseyed:
PS. Jess makes the best mix CDs everrrrrrr!
current mood: stressé moi? jamais!
current music: Air - You make it easy
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| Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
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11:20 pm
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Ho hum, back in work is me....
It's been a quiet night so far, hopefully it'll stay like that and I can get more TEFL done. \o/
Days off flew by as usual.... after finishing at 8pm on Friday I caught a train back home (the ticket should've been £8.75 but some pillock hadn't collected their change from the machine before me so I ended up only paying £2.50 =D ) and met up with my siblings for drinks and a meal. I ended up having a fantastic spicy meatballs & fusilli combo, with lashings of parmesan and a krombacher to wash it down with. Then I was 'forced' to have dessert, a v.tasty combination of strawberry, vanilla and honeycomb homemade icecreams...... After that I was full till mid-afternoon the following day. Saturday night we headed to watch Sahara at t'cinema. While entertaining as far as your typical no-brainer action flick goes, there were moments when we all sat swearing at the screen as some downright stupid things were happening. Great fun. =D After that we went for a pizza at the ol' express across the road. Chicken, onion & jalepenos went down a treat. yummeh!
Sunday was a nice relaxer day, plenty of Paper Mario was played and not a lot else. Oh, aside from a 4 mile run that I had to solo since Fred wussed out. To keep it interesting I ran the loop the other way..... yay exciting me!
On Monday I sorted a few random things about the house and then went for a run with Fred. We did 7 miles this time but my poor little (hah) legs hadn't quite recovered from the previous day's run so by the end of it I had no strength in them whatsoever. No bueno! Luckily a heapload of stretching and liberal sprayage of Deep Heat meant I was still able to walk yesterday.
After getting to bed at around 2am, I rose at 8 and set off for the studio to install the Lacie storage unit that had arrived. The initialisation, formatting, diskchecking etc all went smoothly and it was set up in it's place and files were copied over to test the setup. 1.09Tb of RAID 5'd storage at your service! However, we found an interesting issue; the machine that the Lacie drive is plugged into can't reboot with it attached. Once it's up the drive can be reconnected and everything's hunky dory but it hangs on IDE check during the post with it connected. Huzzah! We're currently waiting to hear back from Lacie about whether it could be a mobo issue or a Lacie issue. \o/
Along with a few other issues, including a bizaare networking one that involved internal IPs randomly changing one at a time, I was kept busy for a total of 10 hours. Together with the consultation visits I made before the purchase, I made a total of £550 there yesterday ($1000 for you yankee doodles). ching ching indeed!
I've just got a text from Jess telling me that her net connections gone the way of the phone line and been cut off. Not the best of timing for her since she's got a crapload of homework / presentation prep / chattage with meeeeeee to be doing. SMS conversations are not the future.... I can't even call her mobile since it'll cost her.
Damn you technology!
On a final note, Scrubs season 4 ended last night. As always it was a cracking episode, this one moreso since it ended on a good note. huzzah again I say! Then I started thinking about the circus......
current mood: lonely
current music: Kaiser Chiefs - Predict a Riot
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| Thursday, March 31st, 2005
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4:35 am
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I'm almost 3 full shifts back into boring ol' UK life again, the week seems to be flying by since I left SFO on Sunday morning. While it saddens me in the realisation that I've been away from Jess for so long already, I always end by thinking about how soon she'll be here. And once she's here we've a full 14 months or so together at least. So a few more weeks apart can't be too bad. A necessary evil if you will.
Plus, when I close my eyes, I can still smell her as she snuggles up with me. I'm sure I've mentioned this once or twice before, but snuggling really is the best thing ever. Everrrrrrrr.
It's not so great when I can hear in her voice how stressed she is about something and can't wrap my arms around her and whisper into her ear how everything'll be ok. Bah at class/work. Bah I say.
ahem.
I've been having a big urge to buy something lately, and I was close to splurging on a new VGA card 'because it was silent' (after buying those near-silent fans and the quiet PSU, the vga fan on my GF3 is the only thing I can hear now...) but have resisted thus far. Instead I've made a bargainous buy.... Since my keyboard/mouse died a year ago I took my wireless set back up from the living room, meaning the DivX box has been controlled by a crappy wired combo. This will now change since I've bought an RF controller that has full mouse control (with trackballesque thingummy) and even a laser pointer! Not that we'll use that ever. Honest.... The price is usually £30 but it was on special offer today only for £17! For a wireless controller? I think so! \o/
My consultation project continues to steadily earn me money. The photo studio has ordered a 1.6TB Lacie NAS unit, to be run in RAID 5 and store all the photos up to 12 months old. I expect to be going in to set it up either next Monday or the weekend after. At £40 an hour, plus the 3 hours of consulting I've already done on the matter, we should be pushing £500 for the work. Schweeeeeeeet.
More acts have been announced for the T in the park festival. Not only the Coral, the Doves, a heap of dance acts and Bloc party, but none other than Snoop Dogg himself! =D The S Dizzle will be gracing us with his presence not unlike 28p did at Leeds last year. Should be fun!
Aside from my first night on-shift, it's been pouring down all week. Since my car's still back at mum's I've had the choice of either bus or bike. So far I've chosen to bike in every night. Physically it's interesting since I've not biked for while, there is some definite aching in the ol' thunderthighs, but I'd forgotten how much fun it was to get drenched biking into / home from work. Stopping off at Martins for a tuna crunch / cheese ciabatta makes it all worth the effort though =D
Aaaaas for details of my time in Cali, there was lots of family meeting (I'm a keeper!), lots of sniffling/coughing/general phlegming, far too much jury duty, footie in the park, double dates and cinema visits, lots of awesome food, both restaurant-bought and home-cooked, maybe the occasional and snuggle and whatnot. And easter egg painting / hunts! We spent a couple of hours painting 14 or so eggs, then Jess' mum hid them about the house before we had to go track them down. Awesome fun, especially since there was a financial incentive to find them! We more or less split the winnings, plus we got a packed easter basket full of treats!
Times were not good. They were eggstraordinarily good. Eggcellent you might say. Or you might throw rocks at me and chase me back to work.
\o/
current mood:  hungry
current music: Queen - Fat bottomed girls
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| Tuesday, March 8th, 2005
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3:35 am
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I had such high hopes for tonight.....
Over the last week my system has become worse and worse at being able to actually run WoW. Last night it got to the point that I'd queue for 20 minutes then crash within seconds of entering the game. I've read up on possible causes at work and I thought I could sort it out.
Evidently someone didn't want that to happen.
I've swapped out every component in my system aside from the motherboard (I might be able to resurrect my old one to try it....). I've tried different RAM, different banks of ram being utilised, dual channel mode, single channel mode, different CPUs, different VGA cards, different HDDs, different sound cards, different power supplies. I've installed a clean copy of XP onto the new HDD and tried installing it with nothing installed except the essential drivers and WoW. It took me an hour to get the damn game to actually install. For some reason removing one of the ram sticks helped with that. But only if I dragged the files from the CDs to the HDD and installed from there.....
Even it was installed I still had some naive belief that it'd run. And it did!
For all of 20 seconds.
I've tried DirectX. I've tried OpenGL. I've tried removing any possible special effect or strain on the drivers/hardware. Nothing makes a difference.
So, as of 10 minutes ago, I've cancelled my account. I can play until the 13th and barring a miracle that's it. \o/
I know one little lady who'll be glad to hear that...... =Þ
It's coming up for 4am and I'm tired. o/
current mood: Defeated
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| Sunday, March 6th, 2005
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12:07 pm
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Another birthday's come and passed, plenty more alcohol was consumed and much dancing followed. I eventually lost track of how much I got through, but I think we pieced it together as 5 beers + 2 shots before we left the flat, 3 beers and 5 shots in Harry's (3 of which were aftershock.... at once.... damn bro seeking revenge for me doing that to him last year!) and then at least 5 more beers + the dirty pint in FAB.
The dirty pint started off (I think) as a beer but every time I took a swig from it, someone filled it back up with some of their own drink. I think it eventually ended up as 3/4 different beers / smirnoff ice / southern comfort / god knows what else. I was drinking it steadily for 10 minutes and it was never less than ¾ full. Due to the inebriation of my fellow drinkees, the refilling process was wrought with danger and the inevitable spillage caused my grip to relinquish. Cue slo-mo fall to the floor where, miraculously, the glass didn't break, Instead it sprayed all over Kris and splashed Ian/Aniq across the other side of the group. \o/
There was a lot of dancing going down together with plenty of singing too.... You can tell someone's been to fab the night before if they wake up sounding like Barry White. And no, I don't mean dead.... What's sub-baritone? I was one of them yesterday morning =D I got in at sometime after 3am and spent a while on the phone talking with Jess before finally passing out. I figured I'd just sleep till I was ready to wake and as such missed everyone else leaving and by the time I rose at around 2pm even Ian was heading out..... \o/
Not a hint of a hangover either! \o/
As far as birthday giftage goes, they ranged from a Will Ferrell DVD boxset (anchorman and old school contained therein - does my bebbeh know me or what?) to a gift voucher for streamload.com. Aniq brought over a cheeky monkey birthday cake (see the end of the post!) and the night was set. I can't wait to see what else Jess has in store for me..... only 10 more days till I fly over \\o \o/ o//
I'm heading back to the photography studio on Wednesday for a 2 hour consultation with the manager about how best to go about their backup systems. I'm currently looking at a stripped-down linux system running raid-1 and a few big hot-swap drives that can then be stored securely if needed. I'll be paid by the hour as usual for my time there and will then build / maintain the system once it's in. CHING CHING!
As a result I've not felt too guilty about treating myself to a new PSU and HDD for my birthday. Ian (my flatmate) finally decided to upgrade his core system but couldn't get to MD during the day so I went for him. After spending £500 in total (only £114 on my bits!) I came out with a 160Gb Samsung SATA (quiet as a mouse!) and a Akasa 400W ATX2 PSU. With only one fan, a 120mm one at that, it runs at only 18dbA and my case was instantly sooooo much quieter. Smart purchase methinks! So smart I've been looking at some quieter case / HSF fans and have discovered a small company called Silenx and in particular their 80mm thermister controlled variable fan that's rated at 11-14dbA! At the 14dbA end it pushes 28cfm which is as much as my current HSF does and I've never had heat issues.... Unfortunately their one UK supplier is completely out of stock. US sites have them though (at half the price I'd pay over here...... hmmmmmm) so I might have to get me some while I'm over there. =D
My WoW geekery is continuing at a slightly reduced rate due to the dreaded crashes returning..... Error 132 memory access violations are the bane of my gamesplaying experiences. I thought I'd sorted it out by stopping the AVG realtime monitoring process but last night it struck back with a vengeance. For a few hours I couldn't play for more than 30 seconds without it crashing out, with everything from access errors to BSoDs. Oddly though once I'd got off the phone with Jess it let me play for almost an hour with only 1 crash...... weird.
That's all for now folks.... \o/
Cheeky monkey!
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