greetings all.

The last few days have been incredubly trying to be honest, just about every piece of hardware / transportational equipment I own has broken down. The time has come to say goodbye to my beloved Rover, as the gearbox has fallen into the clutch and the two have become rather too intimate to be able to change gear. As a result of lack of funds I am going to be carless for the forseeable future, a concept I, frankly, hate. I very much enjoy helping people out with lifts and stuff, and I really hate relying on anyone else (including trains and busses) for lifts and stuff.

The playtest on Saturday is written and the fizreps should be bought tomorrow. I am really hoping for a fun game and would urge anyone hanging on the fence to come along as I fully intend to indiscriminantly kill players and monsters as much as I can to test the rules. You will be baked, and there will be cake :) I am dreading *walking* to campus...

New job is incredibly busy and I have been told I show signs of sleep deprivation, so I am hoping to get a few nights decent kip, although the chances of this actually happening are negligable at best, frankly I have too much to do, even more now I need o dispose of the damn car. I ripped out the 500W amp, speakers, fluffy dice, toolkit, additional wiring, and oversized throttle body earlier, it felt like I was betraying a good (20,000 miles with only 6 disasterous breakdowns) friend. I am going to miss it a lot, especially when I am meant to be going back to Kent for work next week, and I have no idea how to book a hire car, or wish to drive anything other than mine.

If anyone has any good ideas of how to, at a profit, or at least free, get rid of a rover 25 please let me know, and also if anyone knows how you legally declare it to be dead and off the road, let me know too.

PS the clutch is siezed on, so it is actually drivable, you simply have to put it in second and put your foot to the floor, then turn the engine off when you get to a roundabout. I wasnt man enough to try but the RAC dude got it from the london road to my house like this. Utter respect!

PPS LARP Disclaimer - I am not picking sides and will run and hide at the first sign of trouble. I intend to still attend both clubs wherever possible. Also as my game is a playtest, please do not mistake my ineptitude for a sign of things to come.

PPPS bees!

Foo Fighters at wembley turned out to be two and a half hours of awesomeness. Dave Grohl is like the duracel bunny with a guitar, just keeps going!

Back at work now reflecting on what was actually a very nice weekend. There were small issues, such as getting horribly lost in rush hour wembley, and loosing horribly at poker, and not getting any BMXing in when NASS is only a week away, but on the whole it was very relaxing.

I finished the book I was reading, called Titan and was very very dissapointed. It was a very good book, but i like stories to have happy endings, not have everything die, then get resurrected by aliens, who are about to die, and everything die again. This is not a suitable ending to any story. There was also far too much NASA bearding. Dont get me wrong, I like technical details in Scifi, but it was just plain boring in places, and the actualy physics was a little shaky anyway.

Girlfriend based implosions have been kept to a a minimum and after 4 months she is still speaking to me, which is an achievement I am very proud of. She is made of more win than a Kama Sutra wrapped in Ice Cream.

I am having to wear glasses more and more at the moment, which I am not overly happy about, but the transition to having scaffold on my face impeding my peripheral vision is getting easier, especially when I take into consideration just how much more I can see with them on, which is becoming more notable. Gah!

Car hasnt broken down for a month, and has thus beat its all time record. luckily its only got 5k left before it needs a cam belt change, so I had better start saving anyway. snapped cam belts are one of the most eficcient ways to write off an engine and they are only rated to 90,000 miles on rover k series engines (advice for the other rover drivers whom I know will probably read this)

BMX is made of light, but my belly is made of heavy, as a resuly I dont seem to get very high on jumps any more. Im going to have to find ways of removing more weight from the bike, as getting the lard off my ass would be a lot harder.
Damn those 15 year old kids and their high metabolisms. I wonder if I eat one It will increase my metabolic rate...

Next week is NASS, which I will be taking the BMX, and will likely come home with a grumpy face and a broken bike. If this doesnt happen though I may actually do quite well. I am not intending to enter the competition this yuear as I am simply not good enough, but I hope to be of a standard to be able to actually ride the course fully and get a few good lines in before the kids start pulling backflips to show me up :(

Wheres my pipe and slippers.

As some of you may or may not know, i own precisely One pair of shorts. These shorts are for doing silly things on bikes when it is hot and sunny. Sadly, these shorts have seen better days, and have holes from falling off, holes from battery acid eating throgh them, and various paint and grease stains. In addition the zip does not really work.
Yesterday I found myself at the skate park having a glorious evening jumping y BMX over te box jump they have there. It makes a glorious noise if you do it right:
petdalpedalpedalpedla rrrmp whoosh clunk

But unfortunatley the following happened:
petdalpedalpedalpedla rrrmp *ping* whoosh clunk

Upon stopping i noticed the following:

1. I had made the jump
2. the button that held my shorts up had just fallen off to an unknown location
3. the zip is not working
4. I am not wearing a belt
5. I am over 18 and in a childrens playpark with my shorts undone.
6. I am going to get arrested.

Now the seat on the bmx is not easlly meant to be sat on, its so low you can barely pedal, but sit down i did, as the seat was the only thing keeping my shorts up. and sit down i did all the way back to my house, along the lower bristol road, and along oldfield park high street.

Luckily no polic officers apprehended me and no innocent bystander got too good a look at my undergarments.

Sadly today im off sick with a temperature and a sore throat so no more BMX Escapades for a while.

Ping statistics for 64.233.169.99:
Packets: Sent = 193, Received = 193, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 109ms, Maximum = 2267ms, Average = 940ms

This is not acceptable from ANY Internet Service provider.

I just want to play team fortress 2, is that so much to ask????

British telecom - proudly providing a shit service and putting Briatains name on it since 1066.

im going to go listen to avril lavigne

*commences flailing*

Last nightI was hoping to get to Oxford to see Kill Hannah (look them up on youtube, they rock) in Oxford after work. Sadly i got as far as a petrol Station in bristol before notinging the plume of smoke eminating from the bonnet of my newly washed shiny red car. Sadly this was telling "radiator says no" smoke. I spent the entire evening with the RAC getting the car sent to a garage for a new radiator. It turns out when they told me my radiator was badly corroded 8 months ago, they were right, it had literally rusted through and gushed water everywhere.

I am now faced with the 30 quid lost from not getting to the gig, and whatever a new radiator costs (300-400 quid im told). I could fit it myself, but id probobally do it wrong, and the car is at the garage anyway.

Big thank you for Alice for sticking around all evening while this went on.

The only good news for this really is that my run of 3 is now over. laptop power supply, bike, and car have now all broken down, so with any luck there shouldnt be any more equipment failures for a while. Both the other 2 were fixed in house with a soldering iron and a big stick.

It has come to my intention i havent posted in a while, this is primarily due to a lack of interesting and reportable things I can talk about on LJ, coupled with a lack of spare time, and an evil, evil 7 year old broken laptop which has been distracting me horribly and is now completely cooked.
This weekend i mostly had a lot of fun. Me and Alice (new girlfriend of 2-3 weeks, and consumer of all my spare time) went to Oxford to go and see the mutual friend who introduced us. On the way up we wandered around oxford and got to chill with RunningRainDog. This was really cool as Alice hasnt really met any of my friends as of yet, but this went really well. We went on to the house of said mutual friend in the evening and pigged out on chinese and watched family guy. excellent. This was the start of my troubles though,
i (stupidly) expressed an interest in going on the back of their other half's Motorbike. In retrospect going on the back of an ex motorcycle *racer*'s Kawasaki Ninja having never been on a motorcycle was a baaaad idea. Also said friend happening to have a set of leathers which fitted me (and made me look rather femenine) did not help me to wiggle my way out of this. The following morning I stood there looking like a leather barbie and was instructed to "hop on" the back of the lime green superbike being piloted by a 6ft3inch woman. Before i could find my balance we were going rather faster than i would like.
It was at this point i realised 2 things. 1. I am going to die. 2. My hands are not in the handholds properly but i cant take them off to remove them. 3. This is by far and away the most dagerous thing i have ever ever done and makes all the bicycle stunts i have pulled look like childsplay. 4. I am going to fall off the back and die if she accelerates like that again. 5. OMYGOOODDDDDDDDAAAAARGH. 6. At 100mph, the driver cannot hear you scream, Everyone else can.
What was actually a 10 minute ride out to a greasy spoon restaurant, in my mind, took about half an hour. By the time we got there my mind was beginning to get accustomed to the balance points, and using my (not small) arms locked out with all my strength to brace for the considerable forces of accelerating and braking. By considerable i mean i nutted the drivers shoulder when she floored it and then changed gear doing over 100 down a country road. Not cool, the reason this is not cool is that at over 100 the air resistance on your body is such that the quick forward baclward motion of changing gear at high speed (while still accelerating and doing a cluctchless gearchange) allows the air to get between me and the driver, almost knocking me off the back.
After the torturous holding on, and me praying it will be over soon so i can rest my badly aching arms, we stop at a biker garage, where we got more than one funny look as the 5ft6 guy with long golden hair gets off the backof the bike, where the 6ft3 girl gets off the front. the set of leathers i had borrowed did belong to a girl. this did not help.
After a sandwich and me regaining my sanity and rubbing some life back into my arms, we set off back. This time i knew what to expect, and i had the "lean into that 80mph corner round that white van on a country road" thing a little more dialled. I knew what to expect, and critically, i had worked out the correct way to hold on to the infernal machine. WIth only minimal risk of death, the way back seemed a lot quicker and was actually quite fun, with only one bit where i thought i was going to die. I believe we were doing 140 and did a clutchless gearchange...
I want a bike. I *really* want a motorbike. anyone who has knowlege of how this is achieved let me know.
After recovery and being mocked for standing there, grinning and shaking slightly, we left for Alieces mums house. We were needed to put up a greenhouse. Those of you who remember the day of putting up Granny Gertrudes plastic shed will remember my love of small engineering projects (and rubber mallets). This was fun, with us managing to shatter a 1m sheet of toughened glass in a fit of giggles. Despite this setback the greenhouse was completed and (hopefully) survived last night storms.
A good weekend was had by all, well, possibly not Alice, who ended up spending half an hour getting all the motorcycle-based knots out of my hair and trying to free up my pulled wrists from holding onto the motorbike... <3

The last few days have been quite trying, compounded from various sides. However this post is not an excuse but an appology.

Today I was meant to Co-GM with Tim the Veil of Tyr game.
Yesterday my car develloped an interesting immobiliser problem meaning it does not start 50% of the time. I had throught i had fixed this. Yester day also i ended upgoing to bristol, staying up far too late and waking up at 12:30am.
Upon waking upo when i *should* have been GMing i got in the car, have just got to my house, picked up all the stats, and got back in the car.
And now it dont start, and i cant fix it.

I appologise for being a complete airhead and not getting up on time, and not sorting the car when i had the chance. I hope the game is going okay. Im going to try to find the wiring diagram for my starter motor for the damn car as it will be 2:30 by the time i get to campus, and its not even worth bothering as the game will already be almost over and the stats i have hopefully worked out already.

I cant get hold of Tim either to tell him, he still thinks im on my way at this point.

I appologise profusely, but i really dont have an excuse for this one.

Today i decided its time to do something about the fact that i have not cooked a meal since last thursday. This is party becasue ive been quite busy, party because im lazy, and partly because all i have is the ingridients to make chilli, and some potatoes, and i really dont want chilli. To counter this trend, i decided it was time for a challenge.
I have bought a pheasant.

I will be attempting to cook and consume this before rolemaster tonight, possibly with mashed potatoe. If anyone else has any ideas how to cook a pheasant, or would like some mildly charcoaled pheasant flesh, let me know.

Isnt cooking fun ^^

My first LARP actually seems to have gone OK, despite my reservations over a lot of the detail people appeared to have fun, and making players walk through a tesla coil was kinda fun too.

I already have a new idea which is bigger, uglyer and with more levels of special, time will tell wheither i finish the statting and am allowed another game.

I really really do have to give a big thank you to Dave for sorting out a *lot* of the bugs in my plan, and stats for pretty much everything. Im hoping to put the debrief up tonight once i work out the base points and which players played... If someone could point out how i work this out (was a 5 hour game) i would greatly appreciate this.

Hope people had fun.

In a moment of insanity/clarity I have purchased a 1kg bag of wine gums. This is a lot of wine gums and they are very yummy. Unfortunately in the interests of not giving myself permanent liver and dental damage I must not consume them all in a matter of days as I had previously intended. I hereby challenge people to suggest how i may dispose of them effectively. Points (and wine gums) will be given to the most creative, and achievable yet random ideas.
A number of them will be set aside for bribing people during LARP on sunday as I will be co-GMing.

Due to the recent flurry of creative Memes, i propose people write about "...and then I ate a wine gum..."

had a weekend of many things.
One of the most special elements of this being myself an Mr Jem going into town on sunday to get a birthday present for NoVisAnima, and while standing next to the gift we had decided on, him happen to walk into the shop. Somehow he did not notice. Remote control MarioKarts are very fun :). Saw lots of people from my old job, larp people, bath people i know. While its cool to know lots of people this in itself is daunting, but no one wanted to hit me (yay) so all is well. Thank you all for being ma friends :)

Keep thinking about a song:

"carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done, lay your weary head to rest, dont you cry no more"

its pwetty.

This morning, as i woke up late there was no option other to cycle to work having eaten no breakfast. This wouldnt have been so bad if the heavens had no opened the second i got outside the door, and this in turn would not have been so bad if i had a complete change of clothes to replace the drenched ones. as it happens ill be walking around in drenched socks and squelchy shoes and trousers all day.

win

Here i am working like a worky thing,
except im not, im posting on LJ instead.
gah, cant the databases fix *themselves*

Every year i try to start the new year with the intention of doing new and more stupid / healthy / economical things, and this year will be no exception.

Having had a really fun time yesterday Helping Dave GM at Larp, and having recently enrolled in a further 2 Tabletop roleplay games it looks like the theme for the new year is socialising and having fun with roleplay (giggle). As soon as the weather improves and its light in the evenings im closing down the warcraft account untill November once more so i can concentrate on bike riding and losing the added piebelly ive added (which is considerably less than last year :) ).

The new job is going well, long may this continue. The preliminaries are pointing to this being a reasonably good year.
This leaves the girlfriend front, a particularly difficult topic. maybe best leave that till next year.

PS i now have plushy weighted conpanion cubes. they are the best most retarded stuffed toy i own and are amazing. hamtaro is very jealous of them.

Just got back from Tim's shadowrun game, have started my new character as a tyranical buisunessman fallen on hard times. All the other characters hate him already, to be fair i dont blame them, he told them they were crap before he introduced himself. Im concentrating hard enough to give myself a headache, i think im gonna lie down now.

work was tiring, i think...

I think im gonna like this game, although John might get slotted before the run is over by friendly fire.

the song lyrics say "but im not ever gonna know if its right or wrong, cos were all going the same direction". i used to love this song, and i saw truth in the words, but now everyone is diversifying so fast, so many people i know do so many different things, in the jobs they do, the homes they live. everything is confusing. In some ways we still follow a similar course: consume obey! etc etc, but the individual flair and fluke and variation is immense. but are we in control, and if not, who is? divide and conquer, is that their plan?

This week i have mostly been working in a new job in the centre of Bath working on a support helpdesk for a database system. Various people have requested updates, so here goes:

The job itself is kinda complicated, its a 15 year old oracle database with random extra bits bolted on to add new functionality. I have never really studied databases, so the whole concept is new to me, but here i am answering the phone pretending to know what im talking about: Helpdesk work never changes :P The people are excellent and its great to be in quite a relaxed environment, and to not be treated like poo. I have an awful lot to learn, but so far it is going ok, ive slipped up lots, but nothing irretrevable :)
Working in the centre of bath is ace, i keep running into ramp trolls / larpers i know which is nice and there is an abundance of yummy food, and because im going for walks every lunchtime and cycling to and from work i dont have to fee *too* guilty :). I am really really enjoying the lack of having to drive, it really really rocks more than i can say. cars give you tunnel vision.
Heres to the future, and to carry on as i started.

Merry Everyone! Ho Ho Ho.

On the way home from LARP, I wandered into the little kebab shop on moorland road, and duly ordered my cheesy chips from the middle eastern stereotypical man behind the counter. While waiting for said order, my mind started to wander, and it was then i remembered a friend of mine from the Five Ways Takeaway, in Charminster, Bournemouth. The delivery driver there was a guy named Ramsay, I believe he still is. Ramsay has a wife and a kid, a 1989 Toyota Corolla which is now on its third engine, and is rusting apart, and has a degree in Nuclear Physics, and is more than qualified to oversee nuclear containment at nuclear power plants. For as long as i have known him, he's been a delivery driver. Unfortunately his Iranian degree doesn't really facilitate many jobs.
This got me thinking even more, about the people i know, and the degrees (or lack thereof) they have, and whichever way i look there are people living their lives doing jobs they are apathetic to, none of them seeming to do anything they are really passionate about, and this seem like the same wasted potential Ramsay has. I do the same job as 3 friends of mine, and earn the same amount, despite all 3 of them having a good degree, and me being about as qualified as a trained hamster.
The jobs are bullshit, the society is bullshit, the goals we hope to achieve through the above are mostly mundane, because we cant hope to achieve any more. Yays, i earn enough moneys to run a car! What a fucking life changing event. This is really going to make my day more bearable and less like doing the same damn thing over and over again. Great!
So we spend our 7th day of every week pretending that the world isn't real, and we are heroes in a foreign land, being law and goodness and life to poor people, doing something that matters, is different, and genuinely important. What we all wish we could really do.
Society's bullshit sucks. Sane , happy, intelligent are all just buzzwords to the cause of worker bees pushing their cogs. Im not saying i can rebel against that, i am quite sure i cant, but i hate fighting it because my nature compels me to want something more
fuck the dreams and just turn the wheel.

After a long week at the playground/office/call centre i was oficially looking forward to a lazy morning. I went out for all you can eat chinese (thanks ailsa-chan) and stuffed myself, and went to bed far too late, heralding in my week off work. Unfortunately ye olde body clock decided this was unacceptable, and i woke up feeling not in the least bit tired at 7:30 this morning and as a result i will probobally be grumpy all day.

All those annoying admin-type bill based things keep coming in, i have no idea what i do with these water bill/phone number change request/proof of no claims discount forms, and looking at them does not appear to be helping. suspect burning them may help more.

so im sitting here waiting for the call centres to open in my jimjams so i can be one of those ignorant people who calls customer service desks with stupid questions. You know, the type i deal with at work regularly and despise utterly. What goes around comes around i guess.

Just ordered team fortress 2. Should get first play at 18:00 on the 19th Oct. Im expecting my first death will be at 18:01 when i get pwned by NoVisAnima. Curse your leet gaming skillz.

jobs for the weekend - appease parents, burn forms, hit car with spanner untill the gearbox stops leaking, cook for an old friend, oh, and pose angstily when no one is looking.

oh, and i have bacon. mm, bacon.

He's like a teenage version of Einstein.
...If Einstein wrote angsty rock songs...