Haven't blogged for a while, eh? I figured that since I was MP3ing a ton of CD's for my brother John (honestly, how nice am I, he should be doing it!) I would take the time to tell you all what I've been up to. Because I haven't spent much time online - it's just not convenient here. At home. Sad but true.

I am having to use John's bizarre Advent keyboard, though. It's annoyingly difficult to use, but for no clearly definable reason. My laptop keyboard's easier to use, when you get used to the 'pressing two buttons at once' business to make some of the keys work. On this keyboard the end button's hidden away on the keypad, so you can't have number lock on and use the keypad. I find that annoying. It's probably just me.

This could be very long if I continue to completely fail to talk about what I've actually been up to. Thankfully I haven't been doing much. ;)

Last time I blogged was, what, Saturday? Hmm...

Sunday:

I went to the Elim church, had lots of comments about my hair (not all flattering - one person wanted to know if I'd been working in a mattress factory (using hair to stuff mattresses, see), then he wanted to know if I'd just come out of prison, and then he said I looked like Jo Brand. (Drat, tried to use the end key then, silly me.) I think I preferred the "drastic" comment.

After church I went to my Nan's for dinner, and watched the San Marino Grand Prix (which I always type San Marion, for some reason). It wasn't that exciting, really. Least exciting race of the season so far. But my Fantasy F1 team didn't do too badly.

And in the evening I went to Emmaus, at the Ashingdon Free Church. And played my bass guitar. There wasn't a large musical group - just me, bro John on the drums, Steve on the grand piano (he's so good) and Matt played the sax a bit. I miss playing the bass... ah well. That was about it for Sunday.

Tried to use the home key then. And delete. Who designed this keyboard?! Aargh...

And the end key. This is a surefire way to drive someone to insanity, making them use this keyboard for a prolonged period of time.

Monday:

This was a day of car boot sales, because that's what happens on Bank Holidays! I went to... three in the end. At the first one I bought a picture frame, which is unfortunately just too small for the poster I wanted to put in it. That cost £3, and it looks like it's glass rather than perspex, which is good. It weighs a ton, anyway. I also bought a Simon the Sorcerer T-shirt for 30p, just because it's an old computer game and it was interesting to find a T-shirt hanging around. And a really old jigsaw of an F1 race featuring Brabhams, for 25p. That was at the Blenheim Primary School.

After that we went to one at Barleylands. That was mostly traders (new junk). I didn't buy anything there.

Finally, we went to the one by the bizarre roundabout system (Sadlers Farm). I found a guy with a crate of Star Wars books, so I was rummaging through them, amazed at the amount of books he had that you can't buy in this country. Lots of American series that were never published over here, as far as I know, like the Young Jedi Knight ones. And ones like this one. (The reviewer really hated it. It's amusing.) And the X-Wing books were in there, which I hadn't started collecting. I have 8 out of the 9, now. And better copies of some of the other books that I already had. A lot of them were pretty much perfect!

He said they were £1 each, and when I asked how much he'd take for the whole crate he said £20. I agreed rather hurriedly. I now have over 60 books (a few of which aren't Star Wars, but hey) sitting in the living room! One of my faves is a book that looks like a normal paperback, but it's actually the Marvel comics version of the Empire Strikes Back. Wow... John was immensely happy with the photostory paperback of Battlestar Galactica and the International Rescue badge, so all round it was a bit of a bargain. Especially since Mum gave me £20 for Easter. Hooray!

I'm selling about 30 of the books on eBay, so I might even make the £20 back! You never know.

Oh, and I looked at cars with John in the afternoon. Because he wanted to buy a Peugeot 306.

Finally, we crawled along Southend seafront because of the Shakedown - the enormous collection of motorbikes and scooters that gather along the seafront every year. We went that way on purpose, to look at the bikes, obviously. ;)

Tuesday:

Went to another car boot sale. Didn't buy anything. Can't really remember what else I did. I think it was the day John found the car he wanted to buy. A white Peugeot 306, a diesel turbo with alloy wheels. Very smart.

Wednesday:

Did some ironing. Went with John to buy his new car - I paid for it with my debit card (and my enormous interest free overdraft, don't think for one moment that I have loads of money!). Had lunch. John and Mum went to fix my scary aunt's car, so I stayed at home and pretty much wrote an essay about the presentation of small finds in archaeological reports. It's probably pretty awful, but at least it's almost there.

Thursday:

Went to the market with Mum. Bought the 10th anniversary issue of PC Zone for £1 from the magazine man. It has lots of exciting CD-ROM's on it, and a special DVD with 50 demos from the last ten years. I bet a lot of the games won't work, but hey. Some might.

I spent the afternoon doing something I now regret - namely taking my Dad's PC apart. Predictably, it no longer works properly. I thought it might be okay because the USB card I was trying to install was plug and play. (Ha.) Unfortunately, I couldn't squeeze it into the PCI slot without moving the modem card, because I had to move the parallel port gubbins etc (to free up a slot in the case) and their cables weren't very long. So everything had to move along. (Maybe moving that was the problem, I really don't know.)

Anyway, I put the cards in, closed up the case, plugged everything in, switched it on, and it beeped a bit and didn't do anything. I panicked, opened the back again, and put everything back the way it used to be. And now it won't work properly. It was having display adapter problems, and John reckoned he made that work, but then it wouldn't shut down. Beats me what I've done. I think I'll give up with the insides of computers. Or Dad's, anyway. When Jonty tried to fit its new graphics card it all went completely wrong. And he knows what he's doing...

I bet I made some grievous error by moving the modem card. Maybe it really matters that it was in the slot it was in.

Jason's going to come round and mend it, anyway. And I've set John's PC up so that Dad can check his e-mail (and eBay, he's obsessed!) in a separate profile.

My computer destruction was (thankfully) brought to an end by John. We went to pick up his new car, and then we drove around. He dropped me off at my old WHSmith work colleague Cheryl's house, and we chatted and watched one of her videos: Don't Look Now. It has Donald Sutherland in it (yeah, Ali, he doesn't half look like Keifer Sutherland... hey, wait a minute, Sutherland, could there be a connection? *g*). Barbara came round for a bit as well, and Cheryl gave us a virtual tour of Poland. I hadn't realised how amazing Poland is. For some reason I always figured it was kind of drab.

And that's pretty much it! Today I've been sitting here MP3ing and blogging. And John took his car back because it was leaking diesel. (Uh-oh!)

This is long enough, right?

I'll stop now.

Bye!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 11:27 AM