Damn bloody car, Damn bloody garage.

Put the car in for it's MOT on Friday, and it's failed. Ended up a boot on the steering mechanism had split, and a rear wheel bearing had excess play. Got a quote from them, and assurances that the car would be ready by Sunday morning. I get a call a bit later saying they can't get the part for the bearing till Monday morning.

Now, I had the day off on Friday to take the car down, and took the day off on Monday on the assumption that I could pick the car up that evening. Called at 4pm, and was told that they hadn't had the part in, and that it would be in on Tuesday.

So I take the train in to work on Tuesday. Now, the station is a half hour walk away, and to get to work for 8am, I have to leave the flat at 5:30, catch the 6am train, with a 15 min walk the other end.

So I call up today, and they get told that their supplier can't get the part they quoted, as it isn't made yet. This is a 1997/98 car.

So the walk home, I walk straight past a pub. I'm like "Fuck it, a pint is in order". Along rolls the second pint, and I'm being a sad git, sat there eating dinner by myself.

The Problem with Maria??

OK, maybe it's a bit gay watching a program to choose who will play the lead in the Sound of Music on stage, but tonight it at least proved I have a damn good eye for the ladies.

I've been watching Sinchronicity, it brings together 2 of my favorite programmes of the last few years. It seems to have half the cast of As If, and the Mum from Doctor Who. Unfortunately I missed last weeks, and managed to download it. Anyways, was watching it tonight and there was this character in it who is a Dutch porn star. As soon as I saw her, I was like "I'm sure I recognise her" and after a while I was certain it was Simona, the Romanian entrant, which was poven to be correct by the credits.

Go my eye for the ladies!!!

Getting away for a bit.....

Well, I've finally decided to bugger off for a semi-proper holiday.

This was all prompted by a visit to my local outdoors pursuits shop and picking up a leaflet for outdoorsy holidays. Looking through it, I was tempted by a certain activity. A few days later I booked up.

So come 27th August, I'm off to France for a week to do some kitesurfing. It's been something I've been thinking about for a while, and this was just the temptation I needed. They provide pretty much all the kit, teach you how to do it, and keep an eye on you. Trouble is tho, I can see me ending up spending 3 times the cost of the holiday when I get back so I can kitesurf back here.

But Yayy!! Kitesurfing dude!!!!!

Crazy Mofo!!

OK, so I got myself another toy. I finally got myself a kite I can go boarding with when the wind is a bit light. For those that have any idea, it is a Flexifoil Sabre 9.5. That's a 9.5 square metre kite, with a wingspan of over 6m! The first day I got it, took it out, but the wind was really light, and barely got it up.

Anyway, yesterday I decide to go for a quick fly at lunchtime, minus my landboard. I slightly misjudged the wind, and mixed between a few graceful kite assisted jumps I had a couple of wipeouts. One wasn't too bad, got twisted round as the kite lifted me, and landed on my arse. The second one was a right pearler. Not sure how high I was, but my mate says that between takeoff and landing was 30ft, which ended up being a bit of a face plant, followed by a 20-30 ft drag. After checking a few websites, turned out the wind in the area was 20-30 mph!!

Slightly bruised, slightly grass-burnt, but a huge high!! Now can't wait to get it out in a sensible wind with my board!

Hmmm, Time for a new job?

The space industry is rather turbulent, and rather incestuous as well. At the moment it seems like we can't go a week without someone leaving. In the space of two months the team I'm in has going to go from 8 to 6 (three people left/leaving, one joined from another team).

*EDIT*
Realised I never stated why I said incestuous. There really aren't that many space companies around. A fair number of people tend to move between them as and when work appears at those sites due to the rather turbulent nature of the work distribution.
*/EDIT*

Now I'm here on a Friday night, looking at the jobs site of a local space company, contemplating putting in an application for a job or two they have there. I'm torn between a bit of loyalty to the company that has given me a chance that needs me there so they can complete current projects, and possibly a more secure job.

Arghhh!!!!!

(Celebrity) Love Island

OK, I am loving the evilness of this program this year. OK, so Fearne Cotton presenting it was my first draw to it, but the twists that are happenning.

OK, there are 6 girls, and 5 boys. The first this they had to do was "couple" off. This obviously left one girl "rejected" (Sophie Anderton). We've now hit a situation where the single girl has ended up in the love shack, so they've re-coupled off. The girls are getting soo emotional over this rejection thing. It is sooo funny (and yes, I am evil!)

This time Alicia Douvall is the singleton, which in my opinion is OK as she is kinda freaking me out as the ammount of plastic surgery has made her look a bit like a freak! (OK, I am soooo shallow)

Cordelia is dead - Long live Cordelia!!!!

At some point towards the end of my trip to the States, Cordelia died. She's my web, mail and file server, running Linux. Looking at the symptoms, it looked like a hard drive was causing the problem. She'd boot up, start mounting the hard drives, then halfway through a filesystem check (on a 200GB hard drive, takes a bit of time) she'd re-boot. So I bought a new hard drive to replace two that could've been causing the problem.

Anyways, I get back from Becca & Neil's Dr. Who finale night, with the best intentions of cracking on with the transplant, and she's not starting at all. I had a brief flicker of life from her, then nothing. Now the power supply has been a bit dodgy ever since she was my main computer. Sometimes took a bit of a wiggle on the power connector to get her going, but once she was going, she'd be fine. This time, nothing. So, after dropping my car off at the garage, I popped into PC World for a new power supply. Not the most economic place to get one, but at short notice it was the best I could do. Novatech is a 30 mile round trip for me and would've saved me £5.

So now I'm in the process of transplanting her heart, and giving her a go with the old hard drives, see if I can't bring her back to life as she stands.

**UPDATE**

After installing the new power supply, and re-installing all the hard drives, looks like she lives!!!! Ran an fsck on the large drive, only a few errors which were fixed OK.