Here we are again. Back down in Cornwall for another couple of weeks.

The trip down was rather a long one, about 7 hours! I left home aat abot 10:25am and first went and got some petrol and checked the tyre pressures.

It was after this that I made the first mistake, I went south along the A34 not knowing about the ongoing roadworks on the junction of the M4. I spent about 20 minutes in that jam.

The next jam was on the M5 starting at the junction with the M4 and continuing beyong Gordano services. That was a good half an hour’s worth. Then there was another between Sedgemoor services and Bridgewater. This meant that I didn’t get to Taunton Dean services until about 2pm, where I had lunch.

The roads were reasonably clear from then until the Bodmin bypass. That jam was at least half an hour’s worth.

Anyway, I finally arrived at about 5:30.

Anyway, time for bed.

See you all in a couple of weeks…

Your soul is STEADFAST. You are a fiercely loyal
person who would never cross a loved one.
People always know they can rely on you and
your dependability is well-known. You’re
probably a little on the quiet side, but your
faithfulness is never doubted, and you always
back up your kith and kin whether they want or
need it or not. You are a dependable and
trusted soul.

What Is Your Soul’s Trait?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yesterday evening and a lot of today I’ve been playing “Return to Castle wolfenstein” after seeing it on sale for £10 at the “Game” shop within Debenhams yesterday morning. Hmm.. not a bad 1st person shooter. very much a single thread through the levels though and quite tricky in places. It still has the drawback of having “basses” at the end of a number of levels. The whole thing reminds me a great deal of te original Quake, even a lot of the sounds are the same. The background music seems to have come directly from “Freespace 2” and was again lifted for use in “Unreal 2” later. I think the composer must be rolling in it by now.

As for other things, my cold is mostly gone. however, I still have the same degree of gloopy snot as i had a few days ago and it’s not getting any better. Not only this but the cough I had has got worse. It’s a phlemy cough which is worrying. At te end of a cold the cough should go away, not get worse. OK, it’s still only about one cough an hour, in general, though a few days ago it was only a couple of coughs a day.

Anyway, enough of the medical stuff. This week is the last one ’til I’m off on my summer hols. It’s also the week that the department (ie. the administrator and myself) decide who’s the lucky company who will be allowed to sell us the new undergrad PCs. Oh, and there are a couple of Linux machines to rebuild.

I’ve just got back from seeing Shrek 2 at the local multiplex.

I was dubious about the reviews saying that it wasbetter than the original… it is! Tons better. Just go see it and laugh your head off.

Here I am sitting Borders awaiting a shower to go through.

I hope it stops soon as I want to get home in time to see “The Sky at Night” which starts at 12:45.

The main reason for this posting though is to see if the software update on the Treo has fixed the long posting bug. I wonder if I’ve written enough yet to trigger it.

Today I spent at home trying desparately to shake a bad sinus headache caused by the cold I’m also trying to shake.

I got very little sleep overnight due to this headache so I took the day off. Lemsip Max Strength has helped with dampening the cold symptoms but even the highest paracetamol dosage included in the powders did nothing to help with the headache.

After an afternoon nap I did finally manage to shake the headache, thank goodness. I just hope that it doesn’t re-appear. Unfortunately, the cold’s going into the coughing stage now, so I wonder if I’ll manage to sleep much tonight.

Anyway, the new series of Coupling is about to start so I’ll sign off. I wonder how good it’ll be without Geoff.

Well, it started Friday night with a trip to Reading to meet up with Grim, Holly and Matt to see a film, any old film.. it just happened to be “The Day After Tomorrow.” Before that, however, we had a very pleasant meal in Yellow River Cafe.

As for the film.. very silly, scientifically speaking, but still quite fun. It was good to see Denis Quaid in a proper starring role again. (Oh and did you notice that the person playing the female scientist of asian decent was the actress who played the original lieutenant commander in the pilot tv-movie of Babylon 5 “The Gathering”? I thought you didn’t.)

Yesterday and today have mostly been spent trying to shake off this horrid cold and do the housebound things I’ve been meaning to do for ages. These included replacing the motherborad, processor and memory of my old server (Celeron 300A, ABit BX6 motherboard, PC100 memory) with the left-overs from my big machine’s upgrades (Athlon XP 1800 , Jetway KT133 motherboard and DDR2700 memory). This I did yesterday afternoon. The slowest part of the machine now is the hard disk which is a 7 year old 6GB Seagate drive. It’ll do as a SMB-to-NFS gateway and possibly even a web server which can run Gallery at some point. You never know.

Today’s task was to wipe the hard disk on my old laptop, re-install the OS from the supplied recovery disk, update windows so it’s up to date and load useful stuff such as OpenOffice.org and ZoneAlarm on it. It’s now ready for sale to Rachel, the ex-4th year undergraduate.

Anyway, this evening I find myself sitting on the settee with a headache mostly dulled by Lemsip and a partly runny nose. Maybe by tomorrow it will be on its way out. At least the sore throat has gone totally so I can swallow.

You are an SRDF–Sober Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a font of knowledge. You are cool, analytical, intelligent and completely unfunny. Sometimes you slice through conversation with a cutting observation that causes silence and sidelong glances. You make a strong and lasting impression on everyone you meet, the quality of which depends more on their personality than yours.

You may feel persecuted, as you can become a target for fun. Still, you are focused enough on your work and secure enough in your abilities not to worry overly.

You are productive and invaluable to those you work for. You are loyal, steadfast, and conscientious. Your grooming is impeccable. You are in good shape.

You are kind of a tool, but you get things done. You are probably a week away from snapping.

I think I’m coming down with a cold.

At almost precisely 4:30pm this afternoon I noticed a sore throat coming on. This evening it’s got steadily worse and I can feel it spreading up the back of my nose.

Boo! Hiss!