Year: 2006

Superbowl’s about to kick off – how long will I last …

Unknown but I’ll definitely try to make it to half time :-). Highly surprised by Scotland beating the French earlier, big turn up for the bookies. Only saw about half of it because I was watching the cricket highlights on Sky. I didn’t want to watch the Scots get a drubbing.

It’s been a good weekend for my main World of Warcraft character – she got new boots and a new belt … Darn good stuff too. The second best gear in the game. Needed to earn it though, which we definitely did by having a record breaking run through the Molten Core. We did it the quickest we’ve ever done it, with only 2 bosses causing problems for the group. The rest went down easy.

We’re definitely getting better at this. We’re not totally there yet as we still have people dying when they don’t need to and people not pulling their weight as much as others. But getting through the whole of the massive Molten Core instance in 2 sessions means that enough people are pulling their weight for our group to be incredibly effective.

Doh ! Superbowl just kicked off and I’m missing it … More tomorrow 🙂 I might have a match report – if someone drops out. I put myself to first reserve because my back didn’t appreciate the Scotland trip last week.

Just come back from the Mall …

I wasn’t really looking to spend any money, I was just trying to figure out how to stay awake !!! The launch day on Wednesday took a little more out of me than I’d like to admit I think. Plus, my back definitely didn’t appreciate the cold. If I’d come home, I’d have most likely plopped my head down on the pillow and slept ’till morning …. Which would have been a bad idea, seeing as I’m supposed to be inside a dragon’s lair in an hour.

Lots of pictures got exchanged at work today, which was fun. I wonder why they all tend to congregate at my desk when they’re looking at the pictures though … It’s not as bad as it could be, as my boss and his boss were two of the main people looking at pictures and keeping me away from the work I was supposed to be doing :-).

I may get published as well … My blog entry from Wednesday, with a few minor alterations, is going to get passed on to the Works’ newspaper. We’ll see if they put it in. Just remember – you saw it here first …

I’ve been a bit let down by my previous credit card company.

The first thing they did was to break their original promises by reducing the 0.5% (potentially 1%) cashback rate down to 0.25%. Bit irritated by that but shrugged and didn’t think it was worth changing just for that.

The reason they have let me down is Chip & Pin. Without a Chip & Pin card, I won’t be able to use the card in shops come 14th Feb. Which makes having a credit card pretty pointless. I prodded them about a month ago on this but have still not got the card. Makes me wonder whether they do actually want my business … My bank on the other hand, have given me a Chip & Pin card.

Ah well – byebye one credit card, hello to the new one :-). I’ll be hanging on to the old one until it’s time for the last year’s cashback to appear, then it’s gone. Now it’s time to tell off the bank for making it awkward to change a mortgage.

Up at 5am, up to Scotland for the launching of a ship. Currently writing this entry at 7.20 pm waiting in the airport for the flight back.

There’s been two very significant ladies in my life for the past few years and it was the turn of the faithful one to have her moment today.

It’s strange how an object you called ‘it’ suddenly takes on her own life as soon as you see her move on her own. (kinda) It was a very proud moment for me earlier, seeing Lady Daring go down the ramp. In fact I’m still rather emotional about it now, several hours later.

For this particular lady, I’ve invested 6 years of my life so far and she’s worth every second. I’ve put in heart and soul and, although I’ve only set foot on parts of her twice, I feel as if I know every inch of her from bow to stern. Seeing her there today, made her into something rather more real. Being able to see the sheer scale of Lady Daring was quite frankly, awe inspiring. There is a definite sense of strength there, she looks ‘the business’. And she hasn’t even reached her full height yet … I’m rather looking forward to the near future when she’s completed.

There were a heap of friends from the team there today, with the shared excitement making the moment even more special. The best thing about my project team is the people and how we come together and pull for each other. It’s one reason why I’ve stayed with the team for so long. I even managed to catch a fleeting glance at Miss L as she made her way to Lady Daring to take her launch station. I hope to have a few decent long range pictures too.

In fact, lots of pictures :-). What an amazing day !

Yep, my baby will soon be hitting the water.

Not sure if I’ll be able to post a picture though, as it will give information that would let people guess the occupation of my blogmates who wouldn’t want that ! I will be taking pictures though, will have to see if I can get a postable one.

Ok. What am I going to be getting up to. Gotta go to bed early tonight to let me get out of the house at as close to 5am tomorrow as I can manage. Then it’s a 7.10am flight up to Glasgow, followed by figuring out things to do between landing and the launch. They want us at the yard around 12pm, with launch happening at 2.25pm. We’re hoping that an event labelled “hitting the other side” won’t be scheduled for 2.26pm. Then we hit the pub and head back to the airport at around 6ish.

Should be a fun day out but going to bed at 10pm (ish) will be highly weird.

Addon – think the laptop needs a better name than Minibox. Will have to peek in Godzilla lore for something that could resemble a faithful, but slow partner.

Cos the laptop works extremely well, it just can’t do graphics and the cpu isn’t as quick.

I think I got ’em big time …

And I blame my sister – muahahahaha !!!!! 🙂 Think my envy centre has been pinging since she got her laptop over the weekend. Anyway – here’s what I plan to build :

Athlon X2-3800 (cheapest dual core)
2Gb Ram (more Ram helps and I’m not planning to fiddle for ages after this upgrade)
Radeon X850 (ok – it’s not the newest but it’s the most cost effective …)
160Gb hd (current 120 is fine but a newer one is needed cos of a faster interface)
Water cooling

And the rest of the spec is fairly insignificant when you get down to it …

The monster above will be called Godzilla, to accompany my Ipaq which is now called Godzookie. The water cooling is something I’ve been interested in for a while but I’ve never had the excuse to check it out. The chiller system pulls in some curious considerations though. With an internal chiller, it needs a decent size box to give somewhere to put the radiator. With an external chiller, it adds an extra box and extra fittings (fittings = potential leak point) but gives easier access to the reservoir for checking the water level.

It’s kinda fitting in the way that Godzilla will be water cooled, seeing as Godzilla is the monster that arises from the sea to save the day. Sea, Water cooling … Yeah I know. Any excuse to go for an expensive toy.

Which reminds me – must try out my other new toy – the vacuum cleaner. Watching Batman Begins at the moment though.

I’m surviving without central heating – thick dressing gowns and additional blankets wrapped round me while I’m watching TV are making it bearable – but SOOOO moving into a new place before next winter…

Blimey it’s cold in here.

I’ve been at my parents’ place over the weekend, which means I sensibly turn things off before I leg it because the house stays empty. The thing I always, Always have second thoughts about turning off is the heating … Currently typing here on my main pooter contemplating putting my gloves on. It’ll warm up soon. At least I have a working boiler … which is more than can be said for one of my dearer friends. She has lots of heaters though 🙂

Anyway, it was my dad’s birthday today, which is the reason I went up there. He got stuff, my sister found a rather impressive laptop in clearance sale, I got a vacuum cleaner (mine died through overwork – yeah really !) but I didn’t manage to get mum & dad to spend money on buying bits for putting wireless broadband into their house. Must keep trying there.

I got to see the dogs too. Ben is still a lovely pup and happily exuberant. Goldie is suffering a bit though, I don’t think he’s got that long left in him. I reckon he’s got steadily worsening arthritis in his back end, which is making it harder for him to move around. But he still manages to get a Big Tail Wag going when he sees me for the first time on a weekend. He’s done well has Goldie, I think we’ve had him for about 13-14 years so far and I think he was about 2-3 when we got him as a rescue dog.

I better get the washing on so I can wear my black jeans on Wednesday … We’sa going up to Glasgow to see a ship launch and I want to wear my black jeans. Even though I should probably retire them for being too big. That’s right – my black jeans are now feeling rather too loose 🙂 Something must be going right with my diet. This month, 13 stone, next month 12 stone (heh), this summer – more cricket due to less breakages caused by carrying too much weight. We shall see.

Washing time ! More tomorrow.

Missed posting yesterday …

We did go dragon hunting and it was both an excellent display of teamwork and a let down for me at the same time … The dragon in question is called Onyxia and the fight to kill her comes in 3 phases.

Phase 1 – she’s staying still and our job is to make sure she stays on the warrior. Which means our usual Hit As Hard As Possible technique gets watered down. In this phase, she’s on the ground and can either breathe on an area or whip with her tail. Both can do lots of damage, so the thing to do is stay out of the way.
Phase 2 – she’s up in the air. We need to keep her attention on the warrior but in this bit, she tends to do a “deep breath”, which precedes her breathing Big Fire on the raid group. If there’s no clusters of people, the deep breath doesn’t happen.
Phase 3 – she’s back on the ground again as per Phase 1. This time though, she fears people … There’s things you can do about fear but if you break the fear when the warrior isn’t feared, Onyxia will turn around and eat half the raid group. There’s also molten lava coming out of the floor, which people have a tendency to run over.

How did it go ? On a fight like this, with people who haven’t done it before (me!), you would expect to get wiped out a few times and have to start again … Amazingly, we actually did it on the first try ! Stunning hey … Time to go back to Orgrimmar and annoy everyone by having a party in front of where Onyxia’s head gets put on a big spiky pole.

So why was it a let down for me ? I died ! In phase 3, I strayed a little too far south. Add that to a badly timed fear that had me running a little more south. Stir in a little bit of Onyxia style Tail Baseball Home Run and you get a me going for a flying lesson into a pit … Couldn’t see a thing ! Better luck next time for me 🙂