SpaCeMonKeY UK

Tuesday, October 28

I thought I might as well post during my lunch break, otherwise who knows when I'll get round to it...

I finally put some pictures onto Facebook of the Mini Show we went to, at Stanford Hall on September 14th. I didn't take millions, though there did seem to be millions of Minis..! It was an interesting experience, and we got to park in the special Mini carpark (even though we have a BMW Mini, not a 'real' one). The pictures are here.

I also put some pictures online that I took on Saturday, at Duxford. We arrived there at 11am and stayed until it closed at 6pm, and we didn't manage to see everything. It's a really brilliant museum, mainly aircraft but with a Land Warfare Hall and some other stuff. Well worth a visit. The photos of that are here.

I have finally driven the Mini, and I didn't crash or anything, so I suppose it was a success. It was very pleasant to drive, if I hadn't been so nervous I might even have enjoyed it! It must have been months and months since I drove last. Maybe even a year. Wow.

Rob and I have sort of decided to stop playing WoW, at least for a while. We discovered that talking to each other was actually better than playing. Which is nice. We're playing some games we've never really had time to play - WoW is such a time vampire.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to work!

Wednesday, October 15

We had an IT problem at work today - something had broken that meant lots of things didn't work (including the database we need to do all our work and external e-mail). I liked the e-mail they sent out, which included this segment:

"The current major ICT incident remains in progress, but a resolution path has now been identified. Services will be restored on the basis of business criticality."

I think I posted one of their comments last time a major 'incident' occurred. It might only be me that finds these amusing. Hee hee...

Monday, October 6

I guess I haven't blogged for a while. I probably wouldn't have today except for the fact that I can't play WoW - it won't accept payment on my account with my credit card, debit card, or Rob's debit card. Which is odd. I'm too scared to phone, though I did e-mail their help thingummy.

One person did ask whether I had any other stories I could post (hello Mark!), so that's at least one person who enjoyed the Indy story. He had already read it once, but still. Maybe it's even more flattering that he's read it twice and still liked it the second time. I suppose I do have some more stories but most of them are a bit odd (in a Stargate sort of way!).

Apparently lots of people have problems with their WoW accounts, so it's not just me. I don't know if that makes me feel any better. :p

It was my brother John's birthday yesterday so we had some birthday related fun going on - went for a carvery Friday night, then had Rachel and John round for dinner Saturday (we made curry and a banoffee pie), which did involve some Rock Band (woo!) and Sunday there was a present opening ceremony. We bought him a George Foreman grill to make paninis and a radio controlled boat, among other things.

Rock Band is pretty good fun - we had to wait long enough for it to come out on the PS3! We bought the instrument pack (guitar, drums and microphone) so we've been playing with bands of varying people. If Ali gets a PS3 at some point I expect she'll get it as well, then we'll have two guitars. So we can have bass. Woo!

Or as Rock Band would say, awesome!

We were lent an Owl (they're doing an energy challenge at work) so we've been monitoring our electricity usage for the past few days. I have to take it back tomorrow so they can give it to one of the families that'll be taking part in their challenge. I was surprised that turning stuff off instead of leaving it on standby didn't save MORE power, since that's what everyone talks about. We discovered that Rob's PC uses 4 times more energy than my brother's laptop to play WoW, and mine uses 2 times more. So PCs are quite variable. That was a bit interesting. :)

I did notice that the TV uses a lot less power when it's displaying nothing (or black), I don't know whether any black parts of the screen count as displaying nothing. It's a hi-def TV, flat screen thing, not a CRT. This led me to wonder whether using Blackle really would save a lot more energy than using Google. Hmmmmmm.

So, that's a bit of what I've been up to. :)