Sleepypete's Pillow

Gosh – it’s weird watching telly from several months ago. I’ve caught up on a couple of ER’s today. I’m about two or three months behind on those and they are backing up pretty badly on the Sky plus box. Haven’t got to Lost yet ;-).

Meme time ! This one is grabbed from CQ’s blog …

1 I am sleepy !
2 I want Mini Eggs to be sold all year round.
3 I wish for a period where I can be injury free.
4 I hate being left out of stuff.
5 I love pizza and interesting Irish girls.
6 I fear injury and the potential to be permanently disabled.
7 I hear News24 repeating the news again. (Alisha’s Attic soon before raid)
8 I wonder why people are sometimes really stupid.
9 I regret acting too much out of instinct and emotion but only when that emotion is irritation.
10 I am not superhuman (stolen that line from a book).
11 I dance really, really badly….
12 I sing and then I know I need to replace the milk that just curdled.
13 I cry rarely, the last time was during an exam season.
14 I make people remember me, which scares me.
15 I write to express what I find difficult to say.
16 I confuse everyone as often as possible.
17 I need to feel I belong.
18 I should look after myself better.
19 I start books but have a bad habit of getting bored with them…..
20 I finish … ermm … what does the word “finish” mean ?
21 I would tag Craziequeen but she’s done this one already!

Hmm. I need to get back into the habit of making Blog entries !

Work’s cricket 1 : Summer Weather 6

We’ve had one game so far but have had 6 rained off so far. Ah well. I changed my MSN suffix to “The sun is taunting me” on Thursday after the latest game got called off … Dark and dismal up until lunchtime, which is when the game got cancelled. 5 minutes later, bright sunshine !

Also in the new – got a new monitor. The new PC bits made World of Warcraft look gooood … the new monitor turns good into spectacular. Me happy :-).

Chuckle – After the frustration of Friday’s and Saturday’s runs, I had a lot more fun today.

In the morning, I had the chance to let my warrior off the leash, this time just seeing how much damage she could do. So out came the pole that had previously only been used for dancing with. The pole hits harder than the weapons usually used, which helps when you’re hitting lots of stuff at once.

Then we hit the Ahn’Qiraj instance, where we weren’t totally invincible but we did manage to get three tough bosses down. It’s a fun place is Ahn’Qiraj. The encounters are all “interesting”, instead of just being a slugfest where the ranged people hammer the boss, the tank keeps the boss’s attention and the healers keep everyone alive.

Nah – today it was Buru, Rajaxx and K Bug (can’t spell the full name). Rajaxx hides behind something like 40 bad guys, so you have to make sure you have the endurance to get through. Buru ignores the tank until he’s at about 20% health but then he does nasty things. Instead of following the tank, he picks one person who then gets chased. The person who is “IT” then tried to get Buru over an egg, which is exploded when Buru is over it for lots of damage to Buru. Challenge is to stay alive to get ‘im :-).

Anyway, fun times – including the pvp battle I was involved in late. Thought about quitting because it appeared to be stalemate but good tactics broke the allies’ hold on the place they were defending and we rolled them up from there.

Is of course referring to the visit by one of our bosses yesterday. This is the fella in charge of the person in charge of the team I work in at the moment. Seems pretty sharp or well briefed. He was asking all the right questions at least and appeared to understand the answers. Promising … At least it didn’t feel like a jolly little “it’s all going horribly wrong and we’re going to blame you for it” speech like the old one used to do.

2 frustrating evenings in WoW over the last couple. First up was a visit to the Molten Core last night, which showed exactly why you cannot afford to have passengers in raids. And we had plenty of those last night. It came to the point where even though I did take up mobs like I should have been, I didn’t particularly want to because I knew incompetent healing wouldn’t keep me upright while I did my job. More often than not, the only healing I got while keeping a mob’s attention was from my own efforts.

Very frustrating.

And then tonight, I got saved by a phone call from the parents. We got taken into Black Wing Lair, which is the 40 person instance that’s harder than the Molten Core. We went in short of people. Knowingly short of people. What’s the point ? We’re still learning the instance and we hadn’t got the team that would have given us a chance. I think someone is losing the plot and it’s causing wasted effort for the people who get dragged along. Anyway, I got saved by the phone call.

Ah well – at least England is doing well in the cricket, Go Monty ! and we got some medals from the karting to show off at work yesterday.

Karting tonight (or rather last night)

I’m still winding down from it … Hopefully I’ll be able to get up tomorrow morning ! It was an endurance event tonight, with 16 teams of 6. As you can imagine, with 16 karts zipping around on a track that takes only about 35-36 seconds to do a lap, it was pretty busy …

I started off for our group in 5th and I don’t think I did too bad. I think we were still 5th when my stint was over. I could maybe have gone quicker, perhaps I need to lose some more weight. I did struggle to come to terms with the track though. However, after that partial disappointment, I closed the gap a little to our ringer and regular karter … My best lap was 35.02 seconds, his was 34.13 seconds. Last time we went karting, he was a full second ahead on a shorter lap … so I’m catching him up :-).

So I wasn’t the fastest … but I was one of our most consistent, which is what’s needed in an endurance event. The race started at about 8.45 and lasted 2 hours 30, so you can imagine the time I got home !

How did we do ? Well, we were the only team from our office at an event organised by our main contractors. They’re gonna hate us for weeks. MUAHAHAHA !!!! We won, we got the medals, we took home the champers and we’re going to keep those medals in plain sight for all the visitors from the contractor. That’s why they’re gonna hate us :-).

Consistency won us the night, we had one really fast guy who made up about 6 laps and 5 who were all up with the pace. We didn’t make mistakes, drawing I think only 2 penalty flags.

My body’s going to hate me tomorrow, especially my upper body. It’s not used to driving a heavy handling kart for 25 full minutes. Definitely fun though 🙂

Special mention goes to the organisers because the event wasn’t just about the karting, we also raised £900 for a children’s charity (I’ll supply the name when I get it). Hope the girl who got a banged/sprained ankle will be ok, she was cute. But not as cute as the slim dark haired girl or the blonde who was bouncing up and down, drawing attention after showing how much she enjoyed her spell at the wheel. Which is what it’s all about, lots of people had fun there tonight, including me !

It’s upon us again 🙂 The season of rain and thunder is upon us and it’s far too long since I put my last post on here.

What have I been up to ? Hmm. Can’t rightly remember … The most prominent bits would be :

Cricket season has started, we had our first game last week. I didn’t do much apart from field, because our batsmen didn’t give me the chance ! The other side couldn’t get our boys out until near the end. I turned down the chance to bowl, as I still have an issue with my shoulder, as well as a mental issue around bowling that I have to get around. The fielding was really good though, as losing the stone in weight since last season seems to have resulted in me getting my running speed back. It was a good fun game.

Lol – “I’m the Doctor and I just snogged Madame de Pompedoir” – muahaha. (Guess what I’m watching)

Other stuff, Warcraft is still going well, I had the chance to take my warrior into the Molten Core yesterday. Possibly the most fun I’ve had in a Molten Core run for quite some time. Definite case of being let off the leash to bite as many things as possible, with no responsibilities, save keeping alive.

Yey ! Time for dinner. I hear the “your dinner is about to burn” bell …

Yep, I’ve been getting out of the habit of updating this blog again :-(. I think I’ve been seduced by the lure of Godzilla’s graphics a little too much. I’ve been enjoying the computer upgrade a little more than is healthy :-). So what have I been up to ?

Starting from Saturday, this was when I started doing some serious PC installation. I’d figured out what was up with Godzilla and was starting to put the software on that it needs. Which involves having 2 computers side by side talking to each other. That lasted until Sunday, when I took the plunge and switched my main machine over to being Godzilla. Still not quite got everything transferred over yet, I still have all my email archives on Guilmon.

I took the plunge after having a bit of a look at Oblivion (gorgeous looking game) before going back to Guilmon for World of Warcraft on Saturday evening. WoW hit Godzilla on Sunday though and what a difference … Turning up all the pretty options meant that the fuzzy, drab textures I’d been looking at turned into pixel sharp, ornate and rather decorative outfits. And footsteps ! First time I heard the pitter patter of little troll feet, I was wondering what was going on … Never knew the running footsteps of the characters was even in the game.

Back to work on Monday. Snore. But that means I get doing stuff that’s productive, instead of being lazy playing games all day. Which can’t be bad. What am I saying ? More time off work please.

Been out and about around the various raids too … and I’ve been watching with interest the various politics that have been building up again around Guildlink. We’ve gotten too big for our own good there and we’re effectively splitting in two, in order to get people raiding with each other consistently. People have been applying to one or the other raiding groups over the latter half of the week. We’ve had the expected people going to one group or the other but we’ve also had people showing the bad side of human nature by saying things like “I’ve been raiding with you guys for months”, which is a blatant lie because the DKP page (relates directly to amount of raid time) shows they haven’t. And they still expect to get into the experienced team ? I dunno …

Bah … politics. I think I’ve made Sarai mad at me because I’ve exposed one of her guild people for being one of the more stupid and ignorant members of Guildlink … Ignorant in terms of not following the rules that we set out and generally being out for himself, which we can’t have in a team effort. I didn’t actually expose his stupidity, he does that for himself by continually doing stuff like running into the wrong place. I haven’t actually named the guy in public, outside of raids, but I think that time will come if he doesn’t take the hint and smarten his attitude. But his guild leader, Sarai, knows exactly who I mean.

Thursday – another indoor cricket match. Score was 108 to 75 in favour of us and from the moment we started batting (we batted second), the result was never in doubt. We had decent bowling, whereas the other team struggled there. We never had to push too hard and could just gently accumulate the runs. I got a couple of catches behind the stumps but should really have got a couple more. I like to have perfect games ;-).

Friday, I’ve come back to my parents’ place. Unfortunately (or otherwise), I only got greeted by the one dog as Goldie is now in a place free from the pain he must have been suffering due to the problems with his back end. He’ll now be chasing bonios amongst the clouds, with a happy willing slave to throw them around for him. Ben’s a bit down … he’s a little quieter than usual and more in need of human company than he was before. He’ll be ok though. He’s quieter but still a happy little puppy. He misses his big bro though. Don’t we all ;-).

Saturday … I have less hair this evening than I had this morning. My dad’s gone for broadband, so we played a little on that last night. Today, it came to converting to a wireless network. ARRRGGGG ! I remember why I distrust wireless and like wires. It seems to be behaving now but it took a huge amount of tweaking to get the modem to talk to the internet and for the computer to talk to the modem through the air. Seems more reliable now though. I’ll know when I hit the Publish button whether it’s stayed on air. Drawn a blank on the laptop though, it’s Windows 98 only and needs to be Win98se. Spectacular blue screens on bootup greeted attempts to get it talking to the wireless kit. Ouch ! So we’ll fix that over the next few weeks.

Sleep time now, hopefully Sarai will realise she needs to get angry at her guild person instead of me and actually start to value my opinions on stuff … (I’ve been feeling very ignored again of late, although I have managed to get her nattering once or twice).

Losing a Dog is losing a member of the family, very sorry to hear 🙁

And why build a PC when you can buy one ready done? (Partly kidding cos I understand custom specs – but boy is it a lot less effort – just plug in and turn on :-))

Yep. Been quiet for a bit … I could have posted but I think my holiday from work broke up my blogging habit. Mind you, that breaking of the blogging habit could have been due to me visiting the parents for the weekend.

Had some things to think about last weekend. Among other things, I think I will have seen Goldie for the last time. He’s been having more and more of a struggle to get around and even more of a struggle to summon up a tail wag. He still looked happy to see me when I opened the front door (at least when he managed to come say hello) but I could see the pain behind his eyes. I think mum and dad have already made the decision to let the poor old dog go gently. Ben will be devastated and I’m a bit choked up at the moment typing this.

Goldie’s been a good friend over the 15 or so years we’ve had him. Unusually intelligent and extremely gentle, it’s been a shame to see him struggle more and more with the problems with his back legs. Especially as he was a true athlete of a pooch in his youth. Everyone gets older over the years and it’s very easy to forget that. It’s a shame that our pets age so much quicker than we do. It’s a bigger shame that the thing that Goldie enjoyed (his athletic nature) is the thing that he’s struggling with.

Also in the news ! I’ve been spending money :-). I’m writing this post on the pooter known as Guilmon, which is getting very near to its retirement. I ordered some new bits on Monday and eventually got them through today. (Next day delivery ? Don’t trust Overclockers UK to do that …) Trouble is, Godzilla (new PC name) had a fair few teething troubles. I took my time building it and finished at about 5.30 today. I didn’t have much time to fiddle as I needed to be in World of Warcraft for a raid starting at 7pm, that gave me about an hour of tinker time.

I hooked up the power, the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and hit the on switch. Ok – the fans are going around but the hamster ain’t doing much more. Oh dear. Nothing from the screen, which should have been giving me those early pictures you’ll get from any PC. Tried an old graphics card, tried disconnecting various peripherals, still no joy. So I went into the WoW raid rather distracted and not really concentrating. (Still think I did better than most in there though)

I think the time away from Godzilla did me good. The first thing I tried when having the second look proved to do the trick. The problem is in the memory, one of the matched pair of Ram sticks is bust, so Godzilla is currently only working with 1Gigabyte. It’s got a heartbeat now and is currently formatting its brand spanking new hard disc. I’ve since gone through the forum procedure with Crucial and they’ve answered my “I gotta problem” post. Impressive, considering the very late time at which I posted it. I’ll be testing the duff one in this machine (Guilmon) tomorrow morning before sending it back. Hopefully it will knock out this one too, which will prove the duff Ram stick theory.

Long post – kinda making up for missing so many days ! If you’ve got this far, please spare a thought for Goldie, a rare intelligent pooch with not just a golden coat but a heart of gold as well.

HAppy Easter, darling….

and don’t eat all those eggs at once!!

btw – you missed an excellent blogparty the other night :-))

cq