Okay, I decided to walk in, despite the ‘orrible drizzle, which it’s returned to now. But as I neared the 1/3rd of the way mark, it started peeing down like a good’un; by the time I got to duchess park I was sodden, and by the time I got halfway down the hill in Duchess park, my feet we slooshing about in cold, dirty water.
I turned around and came back.
Now, I need a shower and I need to wash my clothes… and I missed my meeting and my lecture. Bollocks :-/
Yesterday, second day of university, I decided to walk.
I went swimming in the morning, got home, ran around the house, cursed an awful lot because I couldn’t find my headphones, and finally ended up leaving 10 minutes later than I intended to, making the 3.3 mile walk to uni somewhat quicker than desired.
Not helped by my stop in Sainsbury’s to see if they had headphones (they didn’t) – which meant that I listened to my selected podcast via a process of holding the camera/videocamera/mp3 recorder/player with speaker very close to my ear. This meant I got some very odd looks. Also, I’d forgotten how hopeless it is, in that at random points it would stop and you can’t fast forward tracks.
(more…)
Go on… Help me save this trabbie
Although it’s lacking some bits and pieces, for 1 euro the car’d be mine, all I’d need then is trailer rental; a tow hook and some ferry tickets….
Oh, and to be very, very nice to Lauren and Trey for several months following….
If it is what it says then it’s from the very first year that they made Trabant 601s; it does appear to have the wrong grille – although I’m not sure if they really had that grille (see: this early publicity image)…
But… it wants saving. Most of the early ones were recycled by Trabant into ‘new’ cars, later on… so an early, early one… Pleeeeeaaassseee. Look, my backdrop automated switchery thing has just flicked randomly to Trabant advertising brochures… It’s a sign!
Go on.. someone… help me!
I’m still waiting for SP2 to finish installing. Which is a seriously long time to wait for any software to install really; about 3 hours, I think, it’s been going (including download time).
I had a shower at 15:45, at which point it had just switched from downloading to installing…
Anyway, since I can’t really use the machine, at least I can use it as an excuse for not working, I’ve been looking on ebay for things to satisfy my 2 stroke fetish… and really painfully I found this.
Anyone who knows me well, knows I have a love of Trabants and Tatras (in addition to MZs and Morris Minors); and I’ve wanted a Trabant since about 1994, around when I saw one in the Design Museum in London.
But not just any Trabant; I want an early 601 Kombi (or ‘Universal’). And this is the oldest I’ve seen, it’s a runner, okay it’s battered and missing lots of bits, but it’s 1 frickin’ Euro.
For a car.
An almost complete car!
And I’ll need another car in a bit over a year when I take Rebecca off the road to properly sort out her engine and transmission. I wish I could justify it. I wish I could. It’s a 1964 Universal from the first year of trabant manufacture. I don’t have the time to fix it, the money to go and get it, or… well, anything. Which is frustrating. Meh.
Okay, now this is ridiculous.
Yesterday I realised that I couldn’t find my hairbrush. Now, me being me, and having looong hair I don’t only have the one hair brush.
So, I fished my ‘at work’ hairbrush out of my bag and used it while I dried my hair.
Then today I looked around the house and… yes, you’ve guessed it. That hair brush has now disappeared. Oookay. Right.
Go out to car and get ‘was other good but got left in car and is now emergency going somewhere need to look neat’ hairbrush from car.
Only, yes, you can see it coming. That has gone too.
What the hell is going on?! Is there some hairbrush thief sneaking in to the house and extracting all the hair brushes?!
I’m now down to my “well, my mum said it’s really good, but I think my hair’s too thick for this one” hair brush, which really doesn’t worik very well. Meh!
*sigh*
It’s not like I don’t care. It’s not like I’ve not got energy. It’s just… it’s hot. And I really don’t feel in the mood for university work at the moment. I don’t need compassionate leave, I need I’m fucked off with this place leave.
Adult learning my arse.
I admit it though, I don’t really feel like doing anything very much. Maybe chilling out listening to some music (e.g. the Kaiser Chiefs album, oh, hey, I’m doing that) and reading a book I know far too well…
Or wandering up a mountain?
But sitting here doing university work. I know I need to. I’m going to Alaska in… 10 weeks. In 10 weeks time I’ll be in Alaska. Roughly. Or en-route. Hang on… Oh, I can’t be bothered to work it out right now.
But the general point is true.
So I’ve got a vast amount of work to get done. And I suppose I should attempt to make some kind of progress on it. In other news, I’ve found the MatroxG200 card, or G100 or whatever it is (seems less than forthcoming) which goes with the PCI Matrox+Rainbow runner card.
Having looked, the Rainbow Runner definately doesn’t fit onto the G200 card; which means… well… I think maybe the idea was that they both go in together – thus giving a decent AGP card for the normal use, and a second monitor displaying the output of the PCI card. Unfortunately, this desk is ‘not big enough’ for two monitors. So I’m left pondering.
Ponder, ponder, ponder.
I think the install is now done. The machine is quicker and… nicer. So much nicer. Oooh, it’s yummy.
I’ve set it up so everyone’s got their own little user space. Everyone does have to put up with my screen res though, because my monitor / XP isn’t clever enough to do separate resolutions for different people – at least not as far as I can tell.
Yesterday Trey and I went halvesies on a dual layer DVD-Writer, which means that some stuff can get cleared off (not a huge amount); some backed up (at last) and I can make a DVD of my stuff to send to my mum.
So I finally got around to upgrading to XP. The disks been sat around in the filing cabinet long enough, but I thought, since I was doing a semi-nuke and reinstall… well, anyway, I set to.
And about 1030 last night I set it installing, having prepared my little ‘list’ of software to reinstall afterwards. I’m currently about half way though the list, but I put flyakite on this time, and oooh, it’s so mac-ey. Mmm.
I could almost pretend it’s a mac.
Heh.
Where, oh where, oh where have they gone.
I’ve looked in our bedroom, in the filing cabinet (Windows 95, 98 (versions 1 and 2), NT4, 2000 all there. BeOS5, PC-DOS 7, no problem.
XP? My shiny XP disk? No idea. Gone walkies.
Grr. Is the world trying to tell me something?
Stuff the world!
Where’s my disk?!
Gahh.
I did try to sort out travel insurance, which I think I get free with my bank account, but it was somewhat like drilling teeth.
Eventually I got through to a human (4? 5? something like that, layers of automated menus with either speech ‘I heard “other services”, is that correct?’ ‘no!’ ‘I’m sorry, let’s try that again’ Gaaah! Or, alternatively a selection of inappropriate options… “Press 1 to Destroy…all…humans, Press 2 to make a policy claim, Press 3 to get down on your knees and beg to speak to a real human, Press 4 to suffer electrocution via phone”), she told me I needed to go to a branch. *sighs*
Anyway, time to make my way to the supermarket where, I believe, they have… a photo booth. Thus enabling me to get a passport. We hope.
I also went for a swim this morning, after digging my mum’s allotment, swimming yesterday, and a goodly night of fucking good sex, this morning’s swim was a bit much, and after just half an hour I was wrecked. I also swallowed a good proportion of the swimming pool. Oh, and I’ve got no bloody clothes, so I need to put ‘t laundry on. Feh.
In other news, I suddenly feel much better about the 126 quid tv licence fee: The BBC Fucking Rock. At least, they do sometimes.
My tax bill came yesterday, guess what, I didn’t earn enough to add any more to my 107ukp debt from last year. So I better get off my arse and pay that.
Uh. Yeah. I think that’s me. I was going to wear my CCCP teeshirt for the passport photo (knowing that you can’t quite make out what it says, because the CCCP bit is *just* below the line of sight, but I think I’ll wear something neat.
I’m tempted to just throw the neat top on over my grotty cammos, but I can’t quite bring myself to be that lazy.
I’ve also been hunting for a photo album. I’m the worlds pickyest person when it comes to things like this. It takes me days to find the one I like. I think I might be becoming a bit of a pedant. Anyway, black plain leaves with a plain red or black cover, ideally black, although it may have the word “Photographs” or even “Photos” on the front. Or, I saw some really nice Auzzie ones, but they have slip in photo thingies.
Do I look like the kind of person who uses slip in photo thingies?!
I came so close to buying it without realising…
The most frustrating thing is, despite their utter simplicty, I mean what’s easier than binding some black card in some nice covers? They’re still way more expensive than the other types… Bah.
Ah well.
Also, food shopping. Although I have the world’s largest quanitity of Lettuice, potatoes, and neonatal carrots (baby’s really a rather over generous term for these ones which were the ones my mum planted very late just to see how late they’d grow. Not this late, apparently), oh and a squash, and some crab-apples, yes. Ignoring them we’ve actually got, I believe the term is ‘fuck all’ in the fridge.
Although the curry, wine and tequila went quite well; incidentally, vodka with summer fruits squash concentrate is really very nice. Very nice. Shockingly drinkable. Mmm. ponders: dandelion and burdock vodka….
And finally, in other other other news, I’m considering reinstalling my main PC. I know this isn’t very exciting for all of you, but for me, it’s quite an undertaking. This install is the one I used to move across from Linux and it’s always been a bit, well, slow. So now I’m thinking “hey, I could cut the crap, and have a nice shiny install to play with… Mmmm.”. Similar thoughts are gracing my mind regarding my website too. We’ll see.
