Sleepypete's Pillow

Been a little more stressful over the last few days, although I usually do my best to not allow the outside world to notice when I’m stressed. (The signs are usually me trying to stretch my back as it tenses up)

Couple of changes but mostly annual milestones getting passed.

One source of frustration over the last few months has been the satellite tv reception. As someone addicted to Input (as well as coffee and chocolate), I miss not being able to watch the stuff I want to watch. Plus there’s the frustration of being prevented from doing something you want to do, due to mechanical or electrical mishap. Ok, in the case of the satellite, it’s actually an agricultural mishap 🙂 due to the tree at the bottom of the garden blocking the signal. That’s what I reckon has been going on, although I can’t test it until I hook my skybox to someone else’s dish.

So that’s the first change, a bit of a mercy killing for the skybox. Oh, I also got two letters through the post today. The first was trying to get me to reactivate the repair plan for Sky, the second was acknowledging that I’d cancelled that plan. Left Hand vs Right Hand ?

All this meant I was a happy geek yesterday, tinkering with the new toy (Virgin V+ box) while watching England batter the West Indies in the cricket.

What’s the verdict on the Virgin system ? Got to say, there’s not actually that much useful information on their website. I had to go to wikipedia to find out how much recording capacity the box had. Well – coming from Sky Plus satellite, I’ve noticed :

Sharper picture. Things like being able to see a line around the box with the cricket score in it. Same telly, same SCART lead, different signal source. Could be because my Skybox was clapped out.
Skyplus is a friendlier system to operate – the menus are faster and smoother.
Recorded stuff planner. Again, Skyplus is better here, simply because it has oldest at the top. So you know what to watch first. Not usually much sense watching episode 5 before episode 1.
Tuners – Skyplus has 2, V+ has 3. Record 2 things, watch another.
HD ready – I’m still waiting for my TV to quit on me but it’ll be good to be able to plug a new one up to the box in time. Sky either do normal TV or HD, the V+ is one box doing both. It ain’t 1080p though, either 1080i or 720p.
On demand TV – Sky has Multistart but a satellite system just can’t compete with cable for true On Demand. Managed to watch the first two episodes of Dexter season 3, which were amongst the victims of my clapped out Skybox.

Milestone 1 was performance appraisal, which comes around every year. I’m seen as fairly efficient at work (and do nothing to counter that notion, if “do nothing” is the right phrase !) but it’s always a worry in case there’s a surprise coming. I get on pretty well with my boss, 2nd RO and the blokes in charge of them and manage my work activities quite professionally. Although I could do with working on my absent mindedness, which can lead to me forgetting to do stuff.

And the second milestone is the one that was causing the most stress. One thing guaranteed every year is that I’ll leave the MoT test for the car as late as possible. Well, it would have run out tomorrow, so I’m actually a little earlier than I have been in the past. The Focus I bought last year has done pretty well so far, the only sign of trouble was the brake warning light coming on. I put that down to a faulty sensor being loose, as the feedback from the car was :

Solid brake pedal – so no issues with low or poor brake fluid
Excellent braking performance – so I had brakes on all 4 wheels
Straight line braking – same with the potential of bad brakes
Trusty handbrake

Warning signs should be kept an eye on but sometimes it’s a false alarm. And I’ve not seen that red light when I shouldn’t have for a few months now. The MoT tester guy didn’t spot anything wrong with the brakes today. Nothing wrong with anything actually, except for the trim thing I’m not fixing for superstitious reasons.

Every car has at least one problem – I’m very happy for that problem to be a bit of badly fitting trim 🙂 Much better that than the absent handbrake of the Puma.

Right – back to what I’ve been doing since I got bored with IPL cricket, book + music 🙂

PS Last milestone – it’s gotten warm enough that the butter is starting to spread easily. That’s an important milestone for me each year, cos it means I can have buttery toast for breakfast. Or should that be toast with my butter …

The Crazies have a habit of checking out the movies as they come out in the cinema. The latest couple have been Outlander and the new XMen film, Wolverine. So what did we think of them ?

Let’s start with Outlander :

Spaceship crashes, survivor struggles to the shore. But … there’s a hitchhiker along who is Big N Nasty With Claws. There’s the expression “as big as a house”, well this alien nasty is as big as an office block. Oh – our survivor and his hitchhiker have landed at around the 7th century, in Viking territory.

We didn’t have much in the way of expectations with this one but we ended up really enjoying it 🙂 There’s a required minimum of scifi on show here but it doesn’t get in the way of the story. Just enhances it by allowing the Monster vs Alien Sole Survivor vs Vikings setting to make sense. The plot is telegraphed all the way through but that doesn’t obstruct you as you sit back and enjoy the show.

Good bit of Viking fun along the way, look out for the athletic drinking game. We also have the highly photogenic Sophia Myles playing a major role in this one, will be looking eagerly for more from this actress in the future 🙂

Film 2 ! XMen Origins Wolverine

This one’s the fourth XMen film made recently, so it’s tied into the backstory built up in the 3 previous XMen films. So you’ll know where Logan went Heavy Metal and you know who put the metal in him. This fills in the gaps in a kind of Filming By Numbers way.

A good film but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did Outlander. (However, I was on a super-caffeine high when watching Outlander!)

Special mention for Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth, who puts everything into this role. I fear he may get typecast as Fierce Warrior Guy, especially after he put a similarly high quality effort into his part in Defiance. Wolverine also gives a guest role to possibly my favourite Xman, Gambit. Gambit has a lot of style and you really, don’t want to take him lightly. He’ll kick your butt.

Sooo – Outlander, well made, paper thin but highly enjoyable slashermonster flick. Will be buying this one and attempting to not drool too much when Sophia Myles comes on screen.
Wolverine : highest quality effects, as you’d expect from a high profile blockbuster but it kinda left me cold. They attempt to put a lot of gags in which don’t really come off due to most of the characters being pretty nasty pieces of work. With that sort around, humour doesn’t really ring true.

Now watching the Final Fantasy movie from 2001 again, with a bit of Warcraft and Eve later. I’m an input addict, so I find it difficult when on my own just to sit and eat. At home, I’ll munch while watching something. At work, I’ll be peeking at the internet (lunchtime!) or giving my brain a bit of exercise on Spider Solitaire :-). And because my Skybox has decided to give up almost entirely now, watching something means DvDs …

The Eve gang did something different last night, we went Alice and disappeared down the rabbit hole. Translation, we checked out a new bit of the game where you can peek in unexplored wormhole space. Curious 🙂 New things to see, new places to go and the same people to have a laugh with.

And it shares something with what I’m watching now – Final Fantasy was released in 2001 and there’s the well known Arthur C Clarke/Stanley Kubrick collaboration called 2001. Well – the Eve wormholes have the signature feature of 2001, Big Black Monoliths. I took screenies and will hopefully post one later 🙂

Makes me think of the new U2 song, something about boots. Here we say ‘you bet your boots.’ Netchick booted me over.

Still scratching my head for something that’ll fit “musical” – although the old Turtle that CQ got me could be an idea 🙂

[chuckle] The wiring as it is at the moment is going to change again – changing who delivers my telly so the cable modem will move across the room again …

A couple of posts down, there’s one about Jargon Busting where I say something about the dangers of letting geeks and nerds close to coffee and cookies … Let’s just say :

It’s a Bank Holiday (i.e. lots of time)
I have plentiful coffee and fizzy drinks with caffeine
I’ve laid in a supply of Cookies

Watch out world.

Before I jump in to the whole “boot” thing, quick word for The Rose :-). It was great to see her back in work this week, albeit just for 2 days. Small steps. Long term illness can really knock the stuffing out of people, so it’s good to see them fighting back. There’s a lot of strength here that’s allowing this lady to bend and absorb the strain, rather than breaking like my Evil Ex used to do.

Caught the occasional small smile too, although my Big Grin ™ tends to draw that out of people. (Big Grin is also handy for getting the canteen girls to put more into your sandwiches). Still looking forward to seeing the same Big Smile from The Rose that accompanied the raid on my birthday cakes last November 🙂

Fingers crossed that recoveries continue here for The Rose and also CrazieQueen and Aginoth. CQ’s just had knee surgery and Aginoth is still in to sort out his Psoriasis. I’ve been lucky, my only hospital overnighter was a few years ago to have my second nose job.

Ahh – always getting sidetracked by a pretty face, back to my plans for world domination.

People like Sky and other providers love you to join their service but don’t seem quite so keen on you moving away. I’ve been trying to find info on cancellation procedure on Sky’s site for a fair bit of today and have drawn an absolute blank. Think I’ve found something but I get the feeling I’ll be ringing them up on Tuesday. Reason for giving them the boot ?

I’ve been steadily losing channels from my Sky box and it’s got critical now because the channels I watch are going … And the sport too. So hopefully Mr Branson and Virgin Media will come to my rescue before the start of the England v W Indies Test Match to give me an alternate way of watching the cricket. Probably Friday when they fit but won’t be a big loss as most of the cricket happens when I’m working during the week, so I’d get back home with only half an hour or so of play left.

Other big reason is cost – it’s more cash to do phone & internet with Virgin and TV with Sky than to have one place do all 3. And the reason for going to Sky in the first place has gone away, as Virgin now do a video recorder in their set top box.

Easy to join a subscription service but they don’t make it easy when you want to say byebye. British Gas are still being a pain by ringing me at work, even though they’ve been referred to Ofcom for putting 13 silent messages on my answer phone at home in just one day. True ! And it would have been more if the “tape” hadn’t run out.

One thing that going back to Virgin means is that I’ll need to rearrange my network again, so no more stretching of cable across the floor when gaming.

Right – my glass is now empty, so it’s time to refill. Which will take me dangerously close to the Coffee And Cookies.

Muahaha – see you later, if the world survives.

I will have to photo some of our wiring setups for you sometime. 🙂 We have a tendency to collect a lot of pieces of wood and make a lot of shelves/desks/etc. DIY is more fun sometimes.

Those items are very round, indeed!! Tanya sent me to say hello, enjoy your weekend!

This one’s another inspired by Carmi Levy’s Thematic Photographic, with a little help from peeking at Sweetly’s pics over at Gaze Sweetly 🙂

Ok ! It’s wires !

But in the right hands, it’s also a Secret Weapon. Or rather, the one on the left is. The one on the right is being retired in favour of something more appropriate (the new one has more plugs)

I spent a little more money yesterday on :

Surge protector for my internet bits, laptop & speakers.
New router
Big Long Wire

The new router (a Linksys Wifi-G model) is the third Linksys item I’ve acquired and I’ve been pretty impressed with what I’ve seen from Linksys so far. The new gadget has slotted in with no trouble whatsoever. Even my desktop with its dodgy wifi card can see it 100% reliably ! Incredible !

And the Big Long Wire means I can play Warcraft with no lag/latency coming in due to that dodgy wifi card. Although the “roundness” of that cable means I’m having to cover it with the plank to reduce it’s chance of tripwiring me into a plaster cast.

PS The other end of that wire is hidden under the sofa … When gaming, I’ll have the cable running across the floor, underneath the plank. When doing other things, it’ll be coiled up and hidden beside the sofa.

PastorMac’s Ann – lol 🙂 During the international matches one summer (very recent, can’t remember when), they had players taking us through their kit bags …

I have just one helmet, 2 bats, 2 pads and the rest. These guys were packing 2 helmets (there’s a good reason 😉 white pads, colour pads (for one-day games) and enough bats to fill a shop.

I have strong legs but weak arms … If I pack too much, I can’t lift my bag !

Thanks for all the comments everyone 🙂

Ahhh – there’s fierce and there’s fierce 🙂

I like to think I’m the type who can take all the aggression and focus it into something useful (like running faster or concentrating more), instead of lashing out.

Don’t get mad, get even 🙂