Date: 17-01-05
Time: 6:00pm
Bit of a long day in uni. Nearly at the end of it now, Then going to pop up to Craig's to get some files - 24! Woohoo!
Had my meeting with Phil this morning - always a lovely way to start the week, with him saying how crap my research report was...
As they keen people among you will notice, I have now added a DVD review section to my site - I'll hopefully be adding more reviews as time goes on, and I think I may have roped Craig into doing them as well. So theres another 400 or so reviews...
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Date: 10-01-05
Time: 5:30pm
Well, in my last lesson of the day.
Meant to post today about my cousin, who was in the newspapers in Scotland a couple of days ago. She bought a DVD player from Asda's, and it came with Paris Hilton's movie free! She wasn't happy, since it was a birthday present for a 13-year-old... The newspaper clipping will follow.
Also meant to post today about how crap Comets is for returning goods. Our TV died yesterday, so Mum phoned the helpline. "Take it back to the store, and they'll replace it". So we did. Only they didn't. We had to park about three miles away, and then we got a blokey to bring a trolley out so he could take it in to be "tested". It was tested, and found to be dead. Then came the bad news: "We can't send it off to the engineer from here, it's too big".
So back out to the car it went, now with it's own raincoat (courtesy of the blokey with the trolley). The engineer can't come out til Wednesday morning, so I've donated my TV to the living room (this was before I knew they would be keeping it til Wednesday), so I am now TV-less til then. My laptop's DVD drive will have to suffice until then.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention, I now have the blog post HTML generator back up and running - version 2.0 now...Improved on the last version...
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Time: 9:30am
Firstly, an addendum. I meant to say in my last post that Troy, our Spaniel, had died, on the 6th of January.
Well, I'm back in Uni. Got in a bit later than planned, but in now...
Phil is moving the meeting times around, and I haven't heard form him what time I've got yet. Its gonna be an early one though - he's free between 9 and 10...Most people haven't woken up fully by then!
Now, I need to find graphics drivers for my laptop, since the ones that Craig kindly downloaded for me don't work. Fecking ATI.
Also, I heard from Tom yesterday. He was home all weekend, and the Police hadn't sent him a form. But, Sod's law states that it would have arrived this morning, since he left yesterday evening.
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Date: 6/1/05
Time: 8:00pm
Message:
Well, theres a couple of things I have been thinking about today that I thought I'd blog.
Firstly, happy birthday Dad.
Secondly, I said in my last post I would post any problems I had with my laptop. Well, it went back to PC World yesterday. The day after I bought it, I had to re-master it. I put up with it since I had only put a couple of programs on it. All was well until I switched it on last night, and discovered it yet again needed re-mastering.
Now, I don't expect to have to re-master a brand new laptop twice in less than two weeks. Especially since I had done nothing wrong. So, back to PC World I went, taking mam along for support (she is good at arguing with them...)
We firstly spoke to a young woman, and I briefly explained the problem to her. She thought she understood, and took the laptop into their backroom to try it. She returned 5 minutes later (even though it would have only taken a matter of seconds for the error to show up), and told me the laptop needed re-mastering, and she started to pack it back into the box.
I was not amused by this, and said to her that I found it unacceptable that a laptop needed re-mastering twice in it's first 1 and a half weeks. Plus all my uni work that I have lost (its only a bit, I have older copies of most of the stuff).
She then said the line beloved of helpline staff everywhere: "You didn't back it up?", followed by sucking in the air through her teeth. I proceeded to inform her that I was a final year computer studies degree student, and my backup procedure operates on a two-weekly cycle (It doesn't, I don't actually have one...). The fact that the laptop failed to make it to it's two-week birthday was a deciding factor in the no-backup situation. She was clearly unprepared for this, and retreated to her backroom for backup.
Then, a couple of minutes later, a young blokey walked out of the room. He seemed much more cheery than the girl, and tried to start up the laptop to see what the problem was.
"Ooo, this needs remastering", he said. To which I replied that I didn't think a two-week old laptop needed re-mastering twice. (Do you see a pattern emerging here? I had a bad case of deja vu all night!). He then disappeared into the back room for a few minutes, and came back out and told me that the technician thought that one remastering whould have been enough, and since the machine had already had one and wanted another (greedy machine!), there was obviously a fault on the machine. I could have told him that if he had asked!
So, He boxed my old machine back up, and said for us to be back at the desk in 2-3 minutes, as he was just going to get another laptop for me. We got back to the desk about ten minutes later, and he still wasn't back from "the cage". We waited for another five minutes, and he finally arrived back with my laptop. Couldn't give me anything free though... :-(
So, new machine, means I have to re-install everything...Great! Plus, I had written a nice little program in VB6 to format my blog posts. They way I'm doing them, you see, I write all the HTML code. It can get quite repetitive, so I had written a little program, whereby I typed in the date time and message, and it generated all the HTML for me. Except I'm going to have to write it again. Great!
Okay, so that's two things...what's the third? Ah yes!
I had a form through the post this morning from the police. The accident happened on the 22nd of December, for you to bear in mind as you are reading through this...
The covering letter was the best bit. "To enable the police to make a full and prompt enquiry, please fill in this form and return it to us in the pre-paid label within 21 days". Firstly, prompt??? The accident happened 15 days ago, and now they want to conduct a prompt enquiry? Secondly, you wouldn't enclose something in the pre-paid label. There was an envelope, which had clearly been seconded from another department, as they had crossed out the top line of the address and replaced it with their's.
Then, the form. They wanted to know "the in's and out's of a cat's arse", as my father would put it. Basically, for me to do their job for them. A bit of thought, they could have filled in most of the questions with the information me and Tom gave them on the side of the road!
Wow, that's quite a rant. Obviously there was quite a lot for me to get off my chest!
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Date: 1/1/05
Time: 7:30pm
Message:
Happy New Year! (And a belated Merry Xmas!)
Well, I haven't posted since the crash post, on 23/12/04. So theres a bit to catch up on. Where to begin?
Well, Christmas went well. Got my DVD player from Amazon, and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Collectors Version) off my parents, unsuprisingly, since I bought them myself...
Also got my USB Flash drive, a Jack Daniels Poker Set (a miniature of Jack Daniels, two shot glasses and a pack of cards) and a Kylie calendar. I was chuffed by the Minas Tirith statue from the Lord of the Rings DVD though...
Boxing day, I had a look through the papers for a laptop. Seen one I liked, so went and got it. A Toshiba Equium A60-173. 3.06 GHz P4, 512MB Ram, DVD burner, 40Gb Hard drive. Basically, exactly what I was looking for. So far, no major problems, although I will post any that do occur here.
After Christmas, the yard opened back up for a few days on Tuesday, but I didn't go in. I was on call on Wednesday, but I had to go and pick up Laura from Bridgend (shopping), so wasn't needed. I went in Thursday, as there were cars to pick up. We closed again on Friday, until Monday (3rd).
Went to a New Year's house party down Laura Spear's on Friday. Caught up with a few people, like Craig Luke, Dai Taylor, and Laura's boyfriend Charlie. A good night was had by all, expect perhaps Dai Taylor, who not only managed to cut his finger on the bathroom door, but managed to get lemon juice in his eye whilst partaking in the tequila challenge.
As you can see from the following picture, we may have gone slightly overboard with the party-poppers...
Aimee Bamford, the unwitting recipient of the contents of many party poppers
Laura (my sister) also went to a house party just down the road from where I was, and she was slightly sloshed when we picked her up at 1am.
Mr Shaddick went to a party in Bideford, with Mr Skinner. Not sure what Mr. Parsons was doing, and I'm guessing Mr Parry spent it with Cath and Chloe.
And we finally get to New Year's day. Tracy has the rather dubious honour of being the first person to text me in 2005, followed closely by a turps-drunk Becky (according to Tracy), who apparently raised a glass to drinking more in 2005. Ironic..
We had a family meal today, with both Gran and Nan present - see the below pic.
Gran (Left) and Nan, just after our meal finished
Also worthy of note, and this is a request, is I undertook the Party Hat Challenge. I managed to wear 7 paper party hats all at once. Proof is in the picture below. Think you can beat my record of 7? Email me
Ha! Seven hats! Beat that!
Well, thats about it for now. I think that's everything.
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