Articles – Page 116

Back From Lancashire, Continued

Spent the last four days in Lancashire and elsewhere in the North of England, visiting my folks (among other things). Details follow…

Saturday 28th June 2003
Dan’s Mum’s House, Preston
More video games. Yet again I won at Mario Party 4. Claire is starting to get really pissed-off with always coming second-place. I don’t think she’d mind being last or second-to-last all the time, but coming second-place time and time again really seems to annoy her. Particularly when I proceed to dance around the room chanting “I am the Party Star!” at the top of my voice. Ah well.

Horton Tower, Horton
Went with Claire and my family to see the annual symphony orchestra at Horton Tower. It wasn’t as good as last year, but it was still fun. Taught Claire to waltz.

More to follow…

Back From Lancashire, Continued

Spent the last four days in Lancashire and elsewhere in the North of England, visiting my folks (among other things). Details follow…

Friday 27th June 2003
Dan’s Mum’s House, Preston
Played on Claire’s Nintendo GameCube with Claire, my mum, and sisters. I won at Mario Party 4.
Went to meet the managing director who’ll be taking over from my dad upon his retirement. He didn’t seem remotely scared enough by the idea that if my dad fell under a bus (oh; the irony of a transport consultant being run over by a public transport vehicle), I’d be his majority shareholder, nor did he seem to believe all the stories the rest of the staff told about me. He’ll be taught to fear me, yet… <evil grin>

Later, met up with Andy, Dan’s AvAngel.com co-webmaster, and played more video games, before going out for KFC and to see Bruce Almighty at the cinema, which was a pretty damn cool film.

Finally, retired to my mum’s house for yet more video games. I won at Mario Party 4. Again.

More to follow…

Back From Lancashire

Spent the last four days in Lancashire and elsewhere in the North of England, visiting my folks (among other things). Details follow…

Thursday 26th June 2003
Linux Expo 2003, Birmingham
Sorted out Claire’s bank, packed bags, and set off for Birmingham to the last day of Linux Expo 2003 at the National Exhibition Centre, to meet up with Gareth and some other geeks to talk about a project on which my input could be valuable. Gareth is going to come over to Aberystwyth next weekend and we’ll knock together a prototype of the system we’ve suggested.

Claire got scared by the vast numbers of stereotypical geeks (and the distinct overdose of testosterone in the air – she was one of only three women in the whole place), and by the fact that, unlike normal, she couldn’t understand one in three words spoken. I smiled. She’s got a little way to go to earn her geek stripes, yet.

Bon Jovi, Manchester
Arrived late at Old Trafford – missed the support group, but in time to try to find standing room before Bon Jovi came on-stage. All-in-all, a good concert: Claire was a little short for standing on the pitch to have been a good idea, and the sound quality was a little below-par owing to a lack of adequate repeater speakers, and the only beer available was Budweiser and Boddingtons, but it was still a pretty good gig. Went to a Manchester pub afterwards before catching a really, really late train home. Got to bed sometime after 3am.

More to follow…

Seagulls

Woken at 7am this morning by an irate Welsh fishmonger repeatedly ringing my doorbell. Apparently a swarm of ravenous seagulls invaded the street two hours prior and shredded my bin bags, scattering my litter across the street, and this was obviously entirely my fault because I shouldn’t have put my bin bags out the night before. I explained that I put them out the night before because I had no intention of being up this early, but I don’t think he saw the irony.

Went out with bin bags and cleared up, while he glared from across the street and complained about the laziness of the youth of today.

I passed at least half a dozen other pillaged rubbish piles on my way to get a lift to work. It’s no wonder the gulls around here are so big, what with the heavy diet of human trash they consume.

Claire’s Back

=o)

Last night was fun. After spending most of a day hacking into the BBC’s weather centre (I wanted a weather forecast XML stream, but couldn’t find a free one, so with Kit’s help I stole one instead), he, Claire (recently returned) and I went down to the beach after midnight with a bottle of Caern O’Moor Bramble Wine and enjoyed the first cool air the town has seen in most of a week.

I had a weird dream last night. Apparently, so did Kit. Must’ve been something in the wine.

A Brighter Day

I’m glad to report that I now feel that I have recovered from something that’s afflicted me for most of the last year.

As you may be aware, almost eleven months ago my girlfriend, Claire, and I got together. At the time, she’d recently started (in part by my orchestration) going out with De, a great and close friend of mine.

For some reason – the obvious one seems clear, but he insisted upon playing a “guessing game” and I’ve tried all the ideas I can think of – De then decided to hate me. He won’t tell me what I’ve done to hurt him so much, but insists that it’s not any of the things that I suggested it was.

For the greatest part I wanted to make it up. I wanted him back – we were great friends, we really were. And I would have done anything for him if I thought it would give me a chance of getting that back. But he’d made up his mind – he asked me not to try to contact him, and I, for my love of him, did exactly that, as far as I could. It was hard. Were it not for Claire’s support, I couldn’t have done it.

My friends assured me he’d come around.

It is now over ten and a half months later, and I’m happy – relieved – to report that the part of my heart that he held has now been released. I no longer care about him enough to want him back. It took almost a year, and at times it felt like a lifetime, but I can now be proud knowing that I did not let his hatred beat me!

I don’t care about him enough to want him back. I just want him to stop being such a bastard.

I don’t care about him enough to want him back. I don’t even care about him enough to honor his request not to contact him. He’s a wanker, and I shouldn’t have let him control me for this last year through the false hope that we could once again be friends.

I’ll always remember the good times we had. This is where it ends.

[photo removed]

Scanning And Zelda

Talked with ICQ-friend Summer for the first time in over six months this afternoon, which was great, because I’ve missed chatting with her. Caught up on each other’s news, then chatted about Love, Sex, and What It All Means for awhile. Refreshing. Made her promise to be online more often in future. We’ll see.

Couldn’t be arsed going to campus to help Kit scan magazines this evening, so I bought a scanner and set it up on Claire’s computer, where he’s now scanning away to his little heart’s content.

Got a little further in Zelda: The Wind Waker on the GameCube this evening – all the way to Ganondorf, the bad nasty guy at the end, but he kicked my arse.

Friends

It is Claire’s birthday.

“Our feet are going to get wet.”

Somebody had to say it. Somebody did.

The waves roll up the beach, rustling gently against the smooth pebbles. Claire sits in front of me. Kit is to my side. The remaining embers of the fire flicker, as if trying to fight to hold onto the remains of their minimal existance against the oncoming tide. We watch the waves through the dwindling smoke.

I put my arm around Claire, holding her hand against her busom. She returns my grip. I glance across at Kit, and he looks back. For a moment, I look into his eyes… try to see what he sees… but to no avail. We turn back to the sea.

For the best part of half an hour none of us had spoken. For a half hour to come none of us will speak. Sometimes there’s no need for words. Sometimes just being together is enough.

The greatest secret you never tell is how you feel.

Goodnight;

Practical Joke Of The Week

Am pulling off a fantastic one against my girlfriend, Claire. On Friday, our landlord arrived with a plumber to replace the leaky taps in our bathroom. The new taps are very similar in design, but significantly taller. I didn’t tell Claire that we have them.

Yesterday – Saturday – night, after washing her hands, she remarked “This is going to sound really weird… but have those taps changed?” I played it cool – after all, these were the same taps we’ve always had, aren’t they? She keeps looking at them in an odd way every time she walks past the bathroom.

Claire’s birthday tomorrow.

Makes You Feel Stupid

Don’t you feel really stupid when you plan to go via somewhere on the way to somewhere else, and completely forget about it. I managed that this morning: I’d put some keys in to get cut at the hardware shop around the corner from where I live, gone and bought my lunch from Somerfield, then returned home. When I went to work, past the shop, I forgot entirely to pick up the keys, until I got about a third of the way to the office and had to turn back. D’oh!

One of Claire’s birthday presents – being delivered by post – hasn’t arrived yet, and her birthday’s on Monday. Must remember to phone the company today and find out what’s happened to it. Can’t say what it is, here, ‘cos she reads this page, too.

Keep having to give my work colleague PHP tips so that he stands a chance of writing the website of Borth Surf Club. Looking at the web site so far, I can’t help but feel that it’s not PHP tips I should be giving him, but basic design pointers! Like not putting the title of the page as “Untitled Document”, for one. Here’s a chunk of code I just lifted out of the web site:

             

For the non-techies out there, I’ll explain what this bit of code does. It prints seven empty paragraphs. Exciting, eh?

I’ll resist strangling him with my keyboard cable on account of the fact that I believe that there is some hope for him, yet. We’ll see.

Anyway, better get some work done…

U.W.A. Professor Dies At ‘Massage’ Parlour

I laughed.

[picture rem0ved]

The chap pictured above, a certain Dr. Williams, professor in economics and astronomy, was found dead this morning at a massage parlour in Cardiff (full story here). Just out of curiosity, I looked up the parlour in question. sexywales.com reports it as follows:

A Touch Of Class Massage
112 Woodville Road, Cardiff
029 2023 6880

It turns out that one has to go all the way to Cardiff to get a good prostitute. I’ve looked on PunterNet UK, and I can’t find any reviews in Aberystwyth at all! It anybody knows of any working girls in Aber, please submit them to PunterNet, as they seem to be lacking!

Anyway; that naughty issue aside, I’ll get back to work.

A Violent Evening In

Spent yesterday evening drinking and playing Cel Damage with Bryn, Kit and Claire. Cel Damage is a stupidly fun game on the Nintendo GameCube in which up to four players drive cartoon cars around a zany landscape attempting to kill one another in bizzare ways, such as chopping with axes, harpooning, tricking into falling down Acme Portable Holes, burning, shredding, chainsawing, flattening, chaingunning… It’s a lot of fun. Like MarioKart, but with an attitude problem.

Stayed up too late and, as a result, woke up late this morning. Will get into the office yet. But first I oughtta dig up some clothes from the heaps I still haven’t unpacked since laundry day.

In other news: Bryn managed to find a place to live in Aber for his industry year, and Paul – another friend, this time a hat-wearing Troma-freak – may also have found somewhere here. Updates to follow.

How To Fix A Flat Car Battery For Beginners

Unfortunatley my plans for a nice relaxed evening over a pint were delayed somewhat by having to help to fix Claire’s car, first. In a fantastic display of sense she’d left the headlights on on Sunday night, and all through Monday, and so by Tuesday the battery was very, very dead.

So she, Bryn, Kit and I stood in a cold and rainy car park, trying to remove Bryn’s car battery to get Claire’s car going, then switch back to her battery while it’s running so we could charge it with a nice long drive. But no such luck: the considerate engineers at Vauxhall decided that to remove the battery you must either (a) own a spanner with a neck width about the size of a human hair or (b) remove the engine first.

Thankfully I was able to persuade a taxi driver at the nearby rank to drive around with some jump leads and get her going. Suddenly this made things a lot easier.

In brighter news, Bryn got offered a year in industry placement with the National Library of Wales, which means that he, too, will be living in Aberystwyth for the summer.

Scatmania Launched

Well; I finally did it. I finally got myself a weblog. After weeks of peer pressure by such friends as Paul, Alec, and Kit with their shiny LiveJournals, I decided to have one of my own.

Just to remind anybody who doesn’t already know that this isn’t, technically, my first weblog. My first one ran from 1998 to 1999 – before the term ‘blog’ was coined, and before it became fashionable to ramble on about yourself online. The “Avatar Diary”, on my old, old web site, was a source of perpetual interest from all kinds of people for some time. Well; until I got a scary cyberstalker (really, it scared me, and very little does), and then I packed it in.

I suppose now I’d better get something more productive done. I’m not getting paid for this.