Month: July 2010

One of the unwritten laws of cricket goes something like :

If it’s likely to rain, it will. Or rather, it’ll rain until the game is called off and then the sun will come out.

That’s today’s story 🙂 To be honest, I really shouldn’t be on a cricket field at the moment anyway as the little injuries are starting to gang up on me. What’s up ?

Ankle’s still bad, the first step of a running stride will lead to CRUNCH. It’s passable for cricket though because I can run on soft ground. I just have to be careful and disciplined with how I use it. No CRUNCH = full running power available = no problem. I just have to remember before I go running across the road to avoid trucks.

Sore back. Yet another of the long term injury lists. It hasn’t bit me yet but it’s thinking about it. Same again with being disciplined, I know what movement makes it reallly bad, I just won’t do them.

Shoulder. This is the worry at the moment. I had 3 catch chances in the (rather eventful!) game last Thursday, the second of which led to Big Ow. Drop 1 – running in from the boundary, I got fingertips to it so I think I should have caught it. I thought I had a bit more room … Which shook my “Is the ball really landing there ?” confidence for the second. I stand in the right place, get under the ball but second guessing and too much time to think lead to me blinking at just the wrong moment.

Result – one bruise on my bicep like a flesh eating bacteria’s got to it. And a very sore shoulder as a result of me getting angry at myself and overthrowing. My shoulder’s quite weak as a result of a dislocation and throwing in from the boundary doesn’t help. I’m not in true pain, just low level reminders of it. And a feeling that if I reach too far, the arm will come off. I’ve probably damaged the tendon or ligaments at the back of the joint again through the repeated overthrowing.

Oh – catch 3 was held, just in off the boundary at long off. It was pretty dark at this stage, to the point where if the ball was coming along the ground, you couldn’t see it. Red ball against cloud was ok 🙂 We won a rather close game, short handed at the start which got worse early on when one of our opening batsmen tore a hamstring. Due to a poor shot (I blame my Demon Soul Bat!) and possibly some jinxing, I joined him shortly after. Cue one hospital trip to get sore legged person some attention …

Doh – was talking about the injuries. That I’m noticing them more probably shows that I’m a bit worn down at the moment. Looking forward to a week off work next week, it should be a good chance to chill out, take it easy, let those injuries have a chance to recover.

Left hamstring is just annoying, as is a knee that likes to click in and out as it feels like it.

Time to put those injuries away again, as focusing on them is a cause of depression. I’ll be going back to ignoring them 🙂

PS I promise not to put myself in a position to have to run away from trucks in the near future !

Got home yesterday, tried to get in the house. Door lock felt a bit strange but it let me in and I thought nothing more of it …

Until I got back from gaming later … Key goes in the lock and I turn it. Key spins but doesn’t achieve much more than that. This is accompanied by me going “uhoh” (well, words to that effect). I manage to get in, before I start going for the breaking in solution.

That’s right – I keep the tools at hand for breaking into my house. And they’re simpler than you’d think …

It’s 11.30pm right now, so out comes the toolkit for a bit of impromptu DIY. Latch comes off the door and I start a-peeking at it. First thought – should that snurgly be loose ?

The Right Handed Toothy Snurgly (labelled “Bad Snurgly” above) was what was loose. It’s a bit of metal that looks like a washer, except it has a pair of teeth on the outside and another pair of teeth on the inside. The way the lock works is :

The bolt is on a spring loaded frame. When there’s nothing acting on it, the spring will push it outwards, latching the door.
The inside handle has big teeth on the inside that pull the latch in when you turn it.
The outer lock has a bar that comes in through the door, which acts on the Snurgly.
The Snurgly is retained by the Circly Grip.
When rotated, Snurgly acts like the handle above, pulling the latch in.

What had happened was that Bad Snurgly worked its way off the Circly Grip, so the outer lock had nothing to work on to pull the bolt in.

Five minutes with a Mend Stick (hammer) later …

And Bad Snurgly has been persuaded to play nice with the Circly Grip again. Lock gets put back together and is put back on the door. All seems to be working …

Almost. As with any DIY stuff where you’re effectively making it up as you go along, it doesn’t quite work the way it did before. But I’m not complaining, I can now get in my front door without resorting to my unconventional lock picks.

Looking forward to having a break soon. It’s booked for a fortnight’s time and I definitely need the downtime. We’ve got a few big events coming up in the project in the next couple of months and it’ll be good to get a bit of recharging in.

I have a few things that are causing me stress at the moment :

Ankle is still bad.
Very busy at work.
Too darn hot.

And when I get stressed, the things that would help me calm down a little don’t work so well. Like games, I could normally bury myself in one but which game ? Must crack on with Forza and all the other Xbox games. I’ve fallen back into an old favourite in Moo2, partly because I don’t want to expend the mental effort in masterminding a JA2 or XCom campaign. Music definitely helps, I now have just over 4000 tracks in the iTunes library. One of the newest is the third Dubstar album with one line : “Sarah makes it better”. It’s a better album than I remember.

Ankle is still bad. I can walk on it and reasonably treat it as ok but as soon as I break into a running stride on hard ground, it’ll crunch up again. Will have to keep a close eye on it in case I need to take it to a professional to check it out. Cricket was fairly ok with it, I just need to turn and then hit the gas. It cuts my fielding range down a little but I’ve compensated for that by coming a little closer and diving around more.

Busyness at work is normal and I prefer it that way. I’ve been where I am long enough to have not just The Knowledge but Deep Knowledge. Comes in handy when we need to collect information on something rapidly. Deep Knowledge lets me apply a bit of quality control to the forest of information we have available on subjects to just select the most appropriate for the argument.

But every so often, I’ll feel the need to escape work for a while so I can chill out. There is a downside to that though, work has very special people like the Snow Queen, Lady P & The Angel, Sunshine, Little Canteen Girl (and her mates) and The Boss when she gets back. I miss having the chance for a natter when I’m not in.

Oh it’s also very warm in Blighty at the moment.

I don’t do too well in hot weather. I tend to kick out a lot of heat when I’m doing stuff, so when conditions are hot, I tend to wilt. It’s not been nearly so bad this year though. Hot weather provokes the allergy stuff, so people tend to hit the anti-histamines. That doesn’t seem like an option for me though, as the anti-histamines I used to use have been giving side effects … Think 36 hour chemically triggered grumpiness combined with absolutely no power available in my legs. Not good when I’d take an anti-histamine to prep for cricket and the first sprint I go for, no petrol in the tank.

I’ve been better this year by avoiding all medication and tackling causes instead of symptoms. Like eyes that stream because glasses are filthy. Clean the glasses, the eyes settle down. Not much I can do about the sneezing though 🙂

Always in 2 camps with hot weather. I enjoy the sunshine but suffer if it’s too warm.

Gaming has been interesting lately. I’ve been tempted by another look into WoW but that’ll wait until Eve has calmed down a little. Cos of an incident where a pair of spies inserted into our alliance caused a muppet to lose his expensive supercarrier (he was pvp’ing on another character while his supercarrier was earning him cash).

That led to us leaving our deep space home to return to Empire, where the usual problem is “what do we shoot ?”. Not so much of a problem at the moment, as a griefer alliance declared war on us. Pity for them, we’re now organised and know where their expensive stuff is. It won’t be there tomorrow 🙂 We’ve found that the most effective way to get griefers to drop a war dec is to blow up their stuff.

Oh, there’s also a little something called the Curse Of Volt, where alliances that have taken a shot at us tend to not last that long afterwards. We’re rarely the ones pulling the trigger (we’re not really big enough) but it’s been a curious pattern so far. Wondering if it’ll continue with our ex landlords who are currently making themselves look silly by claiming we’ve done stuff that we’ve had nothing to do with.

The editor team also pushed out the latest Voice of Volt, which tends to keep me quiet towards the end of the month because I work on content as well as trying to jump on all the typos. If you look in the link and download the pdf, I’m the one in there called “Keela Danne”.

Go read VoV ! And if you find anything that goes over the Too Geeky line, drop a comment and I’ll try and de-geek it.