Year: 2006

I hurt …

Which I deserve 🙂 It’s my body’s way of telling me that I’m a lazy git who should be in training or at least getting regular exercise.

What’s the problem ? The wicket keeping from last night means a lot of crouch, stand, crouch, stand etc. Plus there’s short, sharp sprints on slippery floors. And bowling, which exercises the shoulder. So I have sore quads (upper front leg) and my right side is a bit stiff. What it means is that I have to concentrate on painblocking in order to walk around. But I’m not too bothered about that 🙂 It’ll steadily slacken off over the next few days and it’s nowhere near being permanent damage. I got away with potential cramp – my left calf felt like a piece of iron yesterday but I got enough water in me to prevent it from going BANG.

What I am concerned about still is my neck and my ribs. My neck is a carry over from my dislocated shoulder and I really should get it looked at. I get the feeling that the fella who did physio on my shoulder originally caused the problem in my neck. The ribs still feel as if I’ve been jammed in the side with a spiky thing due to an attempt at making a throw easier at the end of last cricket season.

Heh heh heh – I can still, walk, talk and turn a game of cricket around though, so that’s one way of saying – “I’m still here ! Ready to kick butt and take the names of the people I run out”

Next game – 6th Feb and I’m looking forward to it already. Despite the likelihood of a repetition of the soreness I have now.

Game tonight 🙂 4pm until 5pm at work’s gym. I play for the team around the corner, which has lots of decent looking young ladies working for it. We’re “Small Swings”, the other side were the “Sloggers”. Bit of a contrast already in what the two teams go for I think …

They batted first, which means I stand behind the stumps, waiting for the batsman to miss it. There were lots of accomodating people tonight who just wandered down the wicket slightly, letting me stump them. A wicket takes 5 runs off the score so that was being rather profitable 🙂

Everyone has to bowl two overs and mine came in the middle and end. I have a shoulder problem, which means my bowling isn’t as reliable as I’d like (used to be a strike bowler for a village team) but I managed to keep the nasty ones to a minimum tonight. 10 runs and 5 runs off my overs. The other side got 55 in the end off the 12 overs, which is not something to write home about. My batting record is I think 54 in 4 overs … I think my bowling suffers from not having my wicket keeping to get the stumpings 🙂

We batted next and cos I’m not anywhere near fit yet (down to 13stone 2 last night ! from 14stone 2 a few months ago) skipper let me have a break, having me bat in the middle. First pair got 37, my pair also got 37 and our last pair got 44, making our total 118.

Handy win 🙂 Not as spectacular as we could have been, the ball can make the game a bit of a lottery. It’s good to know you can make a difference though 🙂 We had 2 outs for -10 runs in all, they had 11 outs for -55 runs in all. When you also consider that you don’t score off those balls, the actual loss for us was something like -14, with the average loss for them being -77. My keeping must have gained us about 6-7 of those outs.

They really were being that suicidal.

It’s real good to know that when your main skills aren’t that effective (I’m work’s opening batsman and should be a main bowler), that you can contribute in other ways. That’s tonight’s game – both sides played pretty well, with us having a better run with things. It was also played in excellent spirit, which is the most important thing about these games.

PS I’ll add a Blog post sometime summarising the rules 🙂 They’re a little bit different to the outdoor game.

I might be gamed out … I’ve signed myself up for Guildlink runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday. That’s no guarantee that they’ll actually pick me though …

we’ll have to drag you back to Civilization IV this weekend

Not as dreamy as Suzi Perry though. That’s one of the best reasons I have for blogging via the laptop – the Suzi Perry wallpaper 🙂

I’m honestly writing this post at the time it says on the bottom, I’m not playing with the time buttons again … honest …

Ok. Maybe cheating a little …

Heh – my World of Warcraft retirement probably lasted until this weekend. Friday night was spent in the Lower Black Rock Spire, which we completed. I logged on today lunchtime to put some items up for auction and immediately got a “Please help!” from people I like. So I jumped … Completed that place too … Although I didn’t tank quite as well as I’d like. Still learning. I also got a “Please help !” from the guild as well, so we hit the Lower Black Rock Spire again tonight.

Completed it again 🙂 Not as well as the other day but still pretty well. And I got another bit of loot to keep as well. I’m finding the tanking to be a lot more fun than the mage job but then I always get more fun from a bigger challenge.

No WoW for me tomorrow though – cricket instead 🙂 Which will turn my brain to absolute mush due to what usually happens when I’m running around. I even have trouble counting to six when I’m bowling, with the number six being the number of balls in an over. Yep – my brain goes [fry][sizzle][pop].

Scarlett Johannssen….

Joins SleepyPete in dreamy moment….

Here at the Family Aginoth place today. We be watching a heap of dvds and nattering.

Lots of natter about blogs cos they’re even more addictive than things like World of Warcraft.

Seen Scooby Doo 1 so far, which is good fun and has Linda Cardellini in it, which is enough to keep me happy. We’ll be watching The Island later. Hmm. Scarlett Johannssen. Hmm.

Dreamy moment – Please wait until normal service is resumed

Ah – that’s better. More later maybe. Currently sitting here, stealing an Aginoth laptop, writing this entry with an evil grin on my face. Muahahahaha !

It’s funny how a job that needs a huge amount of concentration and attention paid to it gives you a rush when it ends up as a job well done. I took my warrior into the Lower Black Rock Spire today, to help a few people through a quest sequence.

How did it go ? Before that, I’ll give a little history. We’ve hammered at this place before and it wasn’t pretty. It took a lot of effort and frustration to get the job done. Tonight, the team was Zalzar healing, Tauranius doing everything, Tarook being mage and Augorn being ranged damage with his hunter. My job, as the professional punchbag (aka warrior) is to hit enough things just enough, so that the bad guys hit you instead of the more vulnerable people. How did we do ? We aced it … We died about 3-4 times but you expect that. Sometimes you just can’t stop extra mobs coming in, which is when you have lots of problems. But despite that, we got all the way to the end, with the bosses (toughest things in the area) not knowing what hit them.

How did I do ? I run something called damagemeters, which is a stats person’s dream. Even though I only contributed 1/7th of the damage, between 5 people, I hogged 54% of the damage done to us 🙂 Which, considering that a hit on me does half the damage that a hit on a mage or priest would do, I’m pretty impressed with that. However, it helps having a decent priest to keep you alive. We announced what we’d done on the Guildlink chat channel and were greeted with disbelief 🙂 Think I’ll be walking my warrior into future raids. When I take my breaks from semi WoW retirement that is …

Oh yeah – I got to spend an hour in the same room as the lovely Miss L while at work, so a very good day all round.

Ha – I’ve been struggling for the past 15 minutes to figure out something to put today, so I thought I’d give a little bit about me. Things that people who know me now have only seen glimpses of.

Curious ? Muhahahaha !

What do I do ? I’m an Electronic Engineer by trade, specialising in computers and software. I studied at Nottingham University, taking 4 years to do a Masters in Engineering. Since then, I haven’t actually used much of what I learnt in the lecture hall, I’ve used what I learnt at home with the PC instead. I’m still using that as well … You see, I build my own computers, have done for 10 years now, starting with my second. It’s a pretty good way to get something better without spending huge amounts in one go.

I’m now using that Electronic Engineering to help out on a project that needs a lot of computers to work together, in different linked systems. They need to pass data around between them, they need to be robust and they need decent performance. And they need to be usable by normal people. So that’s what I do ! I try to get my fingers into absolutely everything …

Fun 🙂 Especially when you get full clearance to do digging where people didn’t really want to tell you anything.

Back to uni – 4 years at Nottingham, where I met friends who I’ve kept up with since leaving. There’s 1 or 2 Centre Parcs trips every year, where we meet up, play games and where I get challenged at badminton. The fella I was chatting to on Eve last Sunday is one of those friends.

1st year – I got second in the year, with an 82% average. I also met someone called Alyse who I eventually ended up going out with in my second year.
2nd year – Alyse and the PC appeared … and my work done amount suddenly went through the floor … Oh yeah – I was also the van driver for the hall shop, which my Astra didn’t thank me for.
3rd year – Living in a house with Alyse and Fraser (Maths grad, very smart – First +10% probably). Moved into the house to find Alyse curled up with some other bloke … End of that relationship. Shame I still had to live there for the rest of the year. I spent most of the time at the uni hall with the Centre Parcs people.
4th year – Living with the Centre Parcs people. This was actually a fun year but I’d got disenchanted with the uni lecturers and uni method by then. If I’m looking at things that have been done many times before, I’m just not interested …

So that’s uni … and that’s it for now ! Especially as the dinner bell’s (microwave timer) been gonging for the past 5 minutes …