Mostly lemon based

Blog

  • Screaming silently at the wind

    It’s been a tiring few days – what with the Starter Motor on the car failing at the least opportune moment (I’d just finished a shift and was about to head home having parked in a ‘quite dodgy area’ when it decided that it’s raison d’être was to be a giant power consuming magnet instead of a motor. This was just before the police arrived to have a chat with a lovely group of people screaming at each other in the 5th / 6th floor flat – which you could hear quite clearly down inside my car). Still, that’s in Warranty.

    Which is good.

    So is the fact that the clutch *finally* arrived for Cherry, who is *finally* back on the road – and being lovely to ride. I must, however, go buy more two stroke oil as I’m fearing the stuff that I poured out may have bits of shite in it, and therefore is only suitable for premix.

    Unfortunately, the goodness ends there. My mum – who I argued the case with about her continuing to pay me… and said she shouldn’t. Well, it seems that the bank saved her the hastle – because my dad presumably set up the direct debit / transfer to stop in July. So I didn’t get any money in August. So the fact I’m still in credit is… shocking. Of course, the fact I’m only notionally in credit – the money I owe to Lauren for rent, and for council tax, is yet to come out. The money I owe to the credit cards is also yet to come out – astoundingly my bank loan has come out. Oh, and because it took them so long to process my timesheet I’m now not getting paid for work I did on the 17th until… wait for it… the 7th.

    *sighs*

    And my PC is still defunked. I am starting to run out of ideas – James suggested that maybe it needs the Inno graphics card drivers; because it’s an Inno card (rather than the nVidia generic drivers). So I’m trying that now (but I’m downloading them on the laptop because I don’t trust the desktop to stay running that long). Or the processor could be sick. Or… well, that’s it really. Graphics card and processor are all that remain that haven’t been eliminated as the cause of the problem. If it *is* the processor I’m going to cry, because having bought a new motherboard… well… I’d rather have bought a step-up board rather than the same S754 thing, and if it’s the graphics card I’m also going to cry because it’s new-but-off-ebay. So the word guarantee doesn’t apply. But hey. I can’t really afford any of this now anyway. Right at this moment I’m feeling a little bit fed up, really, to say the least.

  • Plot == Lost

    Argh! I’ve replaced now:

    – Motherboard
    – Diskdrives
    – Powersupply
    – Graphics Card
    – Processor fan (old one was noisy, anyhow).

    And y’know what, it’s *still* randomly crashing and rebooting. The problem got *worse* after I changed the graphics card (way back when), I’ve got a brand new unpatched, unmolested version of XP on there – running on only one disk – nothing else is connected. The only thing left is the Firewire card. Sadly, I have to go to work now, but I guess that’s the last thing to pull out. After I get home I may have more of a play. I still want to go *ARGH* though.

  • Piddle

    It appears that my finger waving at the Abit motherboard was somewhat wrong. Well, possibly. Now we’ve got “spontaneous reboot syndrome”. I’m wondering if the powersupply is toast (again); it does smell faintly of old over hot component but I’m not 100% convinced it’s the cause of the problem. However, if I apply load to it, the system does appear to reboot. It is, however, frustrating. I don’t know if it’s the cause or not.

    Hopefully I can find the recipt, but probably not. I shall try and take it back today though. Also frustratingly I wanted to put OS X on the machine, but have the wrong install disk.

  • More Pink Bike Shots

    Real progress today, she’s starting to resemble something that might become a motorbike

    (more…)

  • Good old Auntie

    So, years and years ago I taped Planes, Trains and Automobiles when it was shown on my beloved BBC. tonight, for the first time I’m watching it on Sky, in Widescreen – and without it being the BBC’s re-edited and dubbed for early evening showing version.

    I must ad mist I was quite suprised when Steve Martin is shouting at the Rental woman (“I want a fucking car fucking NOW!”) – I’d never even realised that it was that edited and that dubbed. Now despite the fact I should have gone to bed ages ago I’m forced to watch the rest of it to find out what else was edited…

  • Wallwart, circa 1960.

    So, I could have been hugely rich, it turns out. My dad invented the wallwart, to power his dansette. Or Frankensette as it should perhaps be called. For there is much that contradicts nature which occurs within the dansette of doom.

    No, but seriously, if my dad had patented that idea… well, we’d be responsible for the hideousness that’s a wallwart – but rich at the same time ;-)

    Clicky for pointless photos, and for progress on ‘t bikes.

    (more…)

  • A battle with no winners.

    It appears razors are up to 5 blades. 5. When will the madness end?!

  • Okay, I’m a moron

    Today is not the 31st of August.

    I realised this some of the way to university. I decided to check anyway, but no, it not being the 31st the results weren’t back.

  • Thinking aloud and stressing quietly

    So:

    – House lease runs out on the 8th October
    – I’m on holiday from 24th October
    – I have no written job offer as yet (although a conditional one by e-mail); they won’t send me a ‘full’ offer until they’ve got my occupational health clearance and my references back
    – One of my references hasn’t replied yet
    – Because of my complex health history (I suspect) and latex allergy they want more stuff to do occupation health clearance
    – It takes at least 3 weeks to buy a house in the UK

    So. The only option I can really see is to extend the lease – *now* so that I’ve got somewhere to live. Because at this moment I have no house and no job which is a somewhat untenable situation. But how long to extend it for. Do I hope that everything comes through and just give myself the extra couple of weeks -if they’ll extend it – or do I give myself another month and a chunk (because one month only gives me ’til the day I get back from Toronto). Argh. I’m not sure what I should do at this point.

    To make things just that teensy bit lovelier today, I need to go over to UWE and see if my results are back from my essays. I’m terrified. If I’ve failed again I’m royally fucked. Argh.

  • Home and Religion

    So, at home again. It is, today, the first anniversary of my dad’s death; and so I came home to spend the weekend with my mum; to give dhanna (sp.) to a small group of monks and nuns my mum had invited over from Amaravati, and – as usual to do a few odd jobs around the house; do some tidying and sorting and so on.

    So, today was giving dhanna; which was good. Yesterday was spent mostly cooking, and then today again the entire morning spent cooking to produce what can only be considered a vast quantity of food – the monks and nuns arrived and we gave dhanna; and then talked – in a way completely unlike that that we normally encounter at the monastry – I’m sure my mum’s informally talked to monks and nuns before, but for me it was somewhat of a novel experience. Mostly, my mum took the lead, and we spent some time talking about my dad – his illness – his death, and perhaps more importantly his life. Eventually, they headed back to the monastry, and we began the long process of cleaning up.

    It’s funny, as long as organised religion and myself stay far enough apart I’m not made uncomfortable by it – and this experience, like my experiences of working with chaplains (at work) – again, was totally fine. However, when after they and my sister had headed off my mum wanted to do some chanting – well, that’s always been fine before; but this time she had her hands on a book which has the translations in it of what the chants mean. Now, for the most part I only know the basicest, basics of the chants. I know what you say before meditating and err, after. And that’s about your lot. I can do a passable repeat-after-me; but generally at the monastary you just listen and it’s all in mangled parlee (sp.) (apparently the anglicised pronounciation is terrible!).

    So, yeah. I did it, let’s get that clear. I didn’t express to my mum my discomfort. But I was uncomfortable. See, I have no problems with religion in general. I’m not mad keen on it, I think lots of quite rude thoughts about it, but so long as the religious believer doesn’t try and inflict their beliefs on me then that’s fine and dandy. Believe what you want. I don’t – and never have – believed in god (with an upper, or a lower case g). I am, loosely, buddhist. Very loosely, apparently. See. Generally my problems start once you get beyond the ‘good idea’ and into the ‘reverence for things or people’ area. Philosophies I’m good with. I really love the buddhist philosophy – that which I know of it – but it’s not that that’s the problem. I really loved spending time with the monks and nuns, they’re wonderful people who are good, and devout, and funny, and intelligent, and able to express themselves well.

    It’s the chanting. It’s the whole point at which you, or at least buddhism, seems to lose sight of this whole thing. The Buddha, I am told, never wanted people to use a statue of him as a symbol. He suggested ’empty space’ or – if you needed something to concentrate on – a bodhi leaf. Which I, somehow, would far prefer. Because this whole chanting process seemed not to revere just the teaching, but also the buddha – and that bothers me. I’m not good at that.

    It ended up being almost the same discomfort that I had last year, in Alaska, with the Carol singing. Which suprised me. I hope my mum doesn’t ask me to do it again, but I suspect she will. I don’t quite know how to explain the miriad complexities of what I think in my head – again, we’re back to my own personal philosophy about life – and it’s meaning – and purpose. Which some of you have asked me about and are aware of it’s many flaws, contradictions and it’s general incompleteness – but it works for me. But one of the most notable things about it, is that it lacks any figure  to be revered. Perhaps it comes down for my general lack of respect for humans as a race; individually yes, I have met some fantastic people, but overall, not that keen. Or perhaps it comes down to the fact that we are all people. Some are nicer people, better if you wish, but I tend to feel that people are people and all deserve respect.

    I don’t know, it all ends up being complex – and obviously, it gets blurry because of my upbringing and my childhood, but at the end of the day, I think it’s simply that me and organised religion, we don’t mix.