Well, Jess has just left.

She did manage to find my place, eventually.. though it took her a couple of runs up and down the estate to do so. Because of this we were a little late getting to the cinema but not too much. There was still time to get the tickets and popcorn before the film began.

The film itself was not exactly what I expected, with more plot twists and less of another “Die Hard” film. I guess Bruce is getting a bit old for that role now. Though the little kid did seem to be an apprentice for that role. (Not giving any significant spoilers.) Though I thought the ending did sort of leave a lot of plot points hanging. Oh, and the credits were very well done.

After the film we came back to my place where I plied Jess with tea (from a pot) and we chatted for a bit until it was time for her to leave.

As for vibes.. well, not sure. She said “we’ll have to catch up again soon” but in a paranoid way I’m not sure she meant it as the tone of voice wasn’t as upbeat as it could be. Anyway, I enjoyed the film.

The plans are now fully in place for my evening out at the cinema with Jess tonight.

Assuming that she can find my house, she’ll be picking me up just after 8pm to toddle down to the Ozone Multiplex to watch “Hostage.” then drinks/coffee afterward. Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

In case of her getting lost we’ve exchanged phone numbers.

It’s been about 2 weeks since I last posted on here. I guess a quick run-down of what’s been happening is in order.

Jess and I didn’t manage to sync our diaries to the point where we could go and see a film.

Out of the blue I got a phone call from Lindsey asking if I’d like to pop up to Liverpool to spend her parents money on a broadband router so as to set up her parents machines to share her cable modem, oh and to see her as well. So I toddled up on the Friday night, spent most of Saturday setting up wireless stuff and doing Windows Update on her Dad’s machine as well as trying for hours to recover from the installation of one of the security updates (KB891711) which nuked the machine before you could get to the point of removing the b’stard. (This update also caused massive problems for me on the librarian’s computer at work, but different symptoms.)

Saturday evening Lindsey and I saw Constantine.. not a bad film but reminded me of a meld of Dogma and Buffy with all the humour removed. Sunday started reasonably late before driving to Steve ???’s place for a roast dinner before driving home.

It was only then three days before I drove down to Cornwall to spend Easter with my parents. I also took the opportunity to mostly clear thier loft of my old computer equipment (which is now in my spare room until I can shunt it into the loft). I drove back on Tuesday through awful weather and awful traffic. Instead of the normal 4.5 hour journey it took 7 hours, amongst the very worst I’ve experienced on that route.

And so, I’m now back to work. Still, I have got Friday night to look forward to. Jess and I have managed to arrange to see Hostage at the Ozone Multiplex at last. It seems I’ve missed “A Life Aquatic” at the cinemas, oh well. Anyway, I’m not sure if you could class tomorrow night as a “date” as such but who knows what will happen, eh? I’m classing it as a night out with a woman friend, myself.

izye told me that xencat told people that I got caught talking to susanc and backstabbing reverendgrim. Don’t let me hear about that again or I’m gonna kick some heads!

And also I gave everybody my wishlist of computer hardware for my birfday, but nobody bought me anything :-(.

Oh and I don’t know why gfrancie went all psycho over me and jillybean2001 having a little fun.

This entry automatically generated by the LJ Drama Generator!

Well, first of all, my new bike arrived. Other than it could do with a slightly smaller rear cog and/or a slightly bigger front cog and a design flaw on the rear light which means that it turns off every time I go over a bump (the batteries bounce, break contact and the light resets to the off condition) it’s hunky dory. The roller brakes are REALLY efficient and only need the lightest pressure to brake heavily. I did manage to break the chain a week ago, however, a week after I got the bike. As compensation for the mix-up over the frame type and the broken chain Trek UK sent me a new hi-tech helmet.

The weekend before last Jerry and Em came down to visit. Em was going to a “Creative Memories” annual get-together event which was held down the road at The Kazaam Stadium. It was really nice seeing them and their two daughters, Laura and Amy. My goodness, they’re growing up! Most of the weekend involved trips to the park, plus a rather nice visit from Howard and Alec on the Saturday evening. Jerry helped me set up the bike’s suspension on the Sunday as well. What a nice fella he is.

A week ago was the Oxford Polar Society annual dinner. It took place at Pierre Victoire in Little Clarendon Street and a good time was had by all.

On Saturday it was the Polar Society’s trip to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Because of the relatively small numbers going (8) it was decided that instead of renting a minibus that two of us could drive the rest there and back. I was one of the volunteer drivers. I plotted the route which is the fastest and least congested I know, which involves going up to Northampton and then across on the A45 and the old A45, now the B645, which goes right past my old school, Kimbolton School. It’s a rather impressive place as its main building is Kimbolton Castle, where Catherine of Aragon died. One fly in the ointment of the journey was that while going passed the Wellingborough junction on the A45 I was concentrating on drivers doing silly things and missed the start of a 40mph limit due to roadworks. I only noticed the limit as I was exitting. I’m just hoping that there were no cameras.

The trip was fun with us drivers getting all the other expenses such as a greek meal, as payment for the petrol. After dropping off the people I’d taken (including a rather nice tasmanian zoologist called Jess) I finally got home at about midnight. Though I understand the other party who decided to go back via the M11/M25/M40 arrived back rather later.

Sunday was uneventful other than having time to rest. And so to this week. So far nothing, but there is a possibility of a night out at the cinema on Thursday (with Jess) and Lindsey’s asked if I can visit her in Liverpool this weekend (with the ulteria motive of getting me to fix their ADSL connection properly).

Today’s events:

The Good.

My new bike has arrived at the shop so I’ll be collecting it tomorrow morning.
My “spare” Atari ST arrived, it works and I’ve proved that the old disk drive I have is faulty and not my old ST.
The Tornado flight sim for the Amiga’s arrived.

The Bad.

As I was reversing out of my drive to go and collect the ST from work I bumped into the door of a car parked the opposite side of the road. I was doing about 1-2 mph att he time as I was carefully reversing out looking for traffic and cars behind me.. However, I didn’t see the dark green Micra. Even after I’d bumped the car I couldn’t see it in any of the windows and it wasn’t until I drove forward into the driveway and got out did I see what I’d hit. It took a number of knocks on doors until I found the owner, an estate agent who was valuing my next door neighbour’s house. I gave her my details. No damage to my car but a pushed in dent on the door of her car.

The Ugly.

It looks like I’ll not be able to leave Oxford over Easter as my colleague is going on a 3 week holiday to China. I *MAY* be able to drive down to Cornwall for a weekend over Easter, as in drive down on Good Friday and drive back on Easter Monday. Not exactly the break I usually need before the beginning of the summer term. Oh well.

The last few weeks for me have been relatively quiet. I’ve mostly reverted to my sort of teenage geek mode of playing with old computers, soldering and generally messing about with hardware. It’s been sort of fun revisiting this sort of thing. It is a pity that I don’t have the room in my house for all the old computers, a model railway and a whole host of other distractions to keep me entertained.

However, I did manage at least one social occasion. Last Monday reverendgrim, h0llym0nst3r, sleipnir_ and xencat decided to go see “Ocean’s 12” at the MyVue cinema in Reading. Because I hated the first film and had heard that the new one was actually worse I decided to skip the film but did turn up for the meal beforehand. It was nice seeing the group again and we all had a very pleasant time in Wagamama’s though I must admit that I wasn’t in one of my more talkative moods that day. After the meal I did get a little confused when picking up my change and accidently took the (larger) tip instead. Oops! I was obviously not at all on top form that day.

As for other things. My Mum went into hospital in Plymouth last Thursday to have a sore on her leg treated and a skin graft put onto it. Apparently the operation on Friday went well and she’s been ordering the staff about a bit since. My Dad’s been doing a daily trek up to Plymouth from Mullion, a 170 mile round trip, for the visiting hours. It sounds very tiring.

I’m still waiting for my new bike to arrive. I was hoping that it would arrive before the weather turned snowy as my old bike has great problems with the gears and brakes icing up and seizing. Neither of these things is pleasant. The former makes it tiring to cycle and the latter makes the cycling “interesting.” The new bike has all the cables and mechanisms either covered or internal, out of the weather, and hence would be far more suitable for the cold weather. It’s now two and a half weeks since I refused the women’s version of the bike that Trek first tried to foist onto me. If I’m paying £850 for a bike I definitely want the one I ordered!

Anyway, it’s time to get some lunch.

Hmm.. Maybe opening an account at eBay wasn’t such a good idea in the first place. It’s *FAR* too easy to spend lots of money on postage (but not a huge amount on the goods).

As far as the Amiga goes, I shouldn’t have listened to the advice I was given about getting an A1200 and should have stuck with picking up an A500 as I had first thought. Why do I say this? Well, although the A1200 is faster and more expandable than the A500, and is usually cheaper on eBay, it doesn’t run a lot of the old software. The newer software from the mid-90’s meant to run on the A1200 don’t actually work on the stock machine but require massive upgrades to the memory and/or processor. :-/

This has meant that the two items of software that I’ve so far bought from eBay, F-16 Combat Pilot and SimCity 2000, won’t run on my machine. The former ‘cos the machine’s too new and the second because the machine hasn’t been upgraded enough. At least if I’d have had an A500 I would have known not to buy the second one and the first one would have worked.

There is some light on the horizon, but it means spending more money.. £4 for Relokick software which often will help old games run on the later machines and an upgrade from eBay (which will probably cost more than the machine and the software to begin with). I’m going to see if I can use a last minute of the auction bidding technique to get a 40MHz 68030+memory upgrade card for less than £20 this afternoon.

On the Atari ST front, I’ve managed to get the memory upgrade working and have diagnosed the floppy problem to the machine not being able to read the second side of the floppy disk. The main problem now is that I can’t test whether the problem is at the ST end or the floppy disk end as to do that I’d either need a seconf floppy drive or a second ST. So, it was back to eBay… where I bought an upgrades 520STFM plus games for £6.50 (plus £15 postage… See, the postage is more than the item again!). That should arrive sometime next week. Still, I would have prefered a second floppy drive as a test item (for a start the postage would have been less) but they seem to be rarer than hen’s teeth.

On a positive front, I’ve got my olf Ferguson TV/Monitor out, made up a cable to go between it and the ST and that’s working fine. So I can play Bubble Bobble and PacMania (as they’re both single sided disk games) and Starglider 2 runs nicely on both the St and the Amiga. All is not lost.