Well, my 4 DVD Extended edition of the Fellowship of the Ring arrived in the post this morning. I had to hide behind my front door when the postman called as I had to dash out of bed and didn’t want to be had up for indecent exposure.

Anyway, although I’ll not have time to watch it this evening, it should make very good entertainment tomorrow evening after my parents arrive. They didn’t get to see the film in the cinema, so my Dolby 5.1 system & big widescreen telly should give them a small taste of the experience.

*bounce*

Work’s
still on the busy side and it’s not being helped by outside suppliers who
want to install things starting at 4pm on a Monday afternoon on a day when
you’re hoping to go meet some friends for a social event. It also doesn’t
help whenSun’s sunsolve portal won’t authorise a login account for contrct
customers when given our contract code.

Other than this, a bad attack of sinusitis over the weekend when i wanted
to be happily socialising and my bike’s gear lever mechanism breaking on
the way home last night, things are fine.

Saturday afternoon and evening was spent with one set of friends in Reigate
watching videos, chilling out and watching other people’s fireworks. it was
good fun until the sinusitis hit half-way through the evening. With the help
of some paracetamol and careful driving, I managed to get home in one piece.
Sunday was a bit of a wash-out due to the pain and the drousiness the sinusitis
usally causes. I did manage to dismantle my coffee table and pack it waya.
Now my living room is less cluttered, though I don’t now have anywhere to
dump my cycle helmet etc. when I get home from work.

Last night, after I managed to get rid of the suppliers at 7:30pm, I sped
off to meet the friends I’d mentioned earlier, as it was Paul’s birthday,
a mere 24 he was. Anyway, after a rather nice lamb passanda and some good
comapny I was ready to cycle home. It was on the way home that something
went twang in the bike’s gear changer.. it felt like it was possibly a casting
breaking.. well that’s another 50 quid out the door then as you can only
buy these things in sets.

Anyway, highlights for the week now are, my parents arriving on Thursday
and staying ’til Monday morning. The 4 DVD Extended Edition of The Lord of
the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is released today and is on pre-order,
so that should hopefully arrive soon.

onwards and upwards, as they say…

Work is still busy. Trying to get all the components for the DVD jukeboxes to arrive and aarange the installation is proving a pain.

My brain is still on BST, as I keep waking up at 06:30 instead of 07:30

No news on the medical tests front. My insides have clamed a little and changed
the annoying feeling from one place to another totally different one. It
think it got bored.

This weekend is at least partly busy with a visit to one of the BTG gang to make merry and watch videos. Sunday is the rest day.

Monday evening is likely to be a posisble problem with the people doing the
RAID array installation arriving at 4pm and the possiblility of them not
leaving until after I’d like to be helping someone celebrate their birthday
with a curry. Oh well!

Well, what have I done recently..

On the whole, not a great deal.

Other than the annoying abdominal horidness, I’m still trying to get my body
clock into some sort of state where I can sleep properly. Currently it’s
totally all over the place so I’m not getting any really decent sleep.

The highlight of the whole week, therefore, has been washing my car yesterday.
That shows the depths of social life I’ve come to. I DID attempt to go see
some fireworks of Saturday evening, but the weather scuppered that plan.

Also, for the last few days I’ve had annoying sinusitis which just won’t go away.

I just want to be able to have a really good night’s sleep and wake up with some energy.

I was awake most of the nigth with tummy troubles.

I went to see the doctor.. She proded me, she bled me (took a blood sample) and read my stools (asked for 3 stool samples).

She thinks the problem I’m having is something she can’t diagnose by finding out what it is, just by finding out what it isn’t.

It’s all very medievil.

Seeing as the sky was so clear last night I tried out my digital camera with the telephoto adapter for moon and stars.

I’ve put the photos here, they aren’t cropped and are pretty raw.

The moon was taken with a tripod but it didn’t need it as at F2.8 the best photo (DSCF0246.JPG) was taken at a shutter speed of 1/100th second.

The star photos were taken by focusing on the moon and then setting the camera
at F2.8 for 15 seconds. As you can see in 15 seconds at a magnification of
x9 there’s quite a lot of  movement.

DSCF0251.JPG
is a picture centred on the centre star of Orion’s Belt with the orange line
going through the centre being one of the high tension power lines which
is nearby reflecting the street lights.

Oh, and the first picture is just of some interesting clouds I saw last week.

Before I forget, the timestamps on the moon and star pictures are one hour out as I forgot to reset the clock on the camera to GMT until after I’d taken the pictures.

Help! Brain, power, fading…. *phut*

Seeing as the name MROD comes from the Magic Roundabout Of Death on the Bullet bulletin board, it sounds an apt description.

Well, this is another of those sporadic updates to my journal.

It’s still pretty busy at work, mostly now catching up with the things I
couldn’t do earlier due to the preparations for the start of the new academic
year. I’ve just got one more thing to do on that front, tell the new postgrads
how to use the computing facilities they’re already been using for the last
fortnight! I know it’s silly but it has to be done so that  a little
tick box can be ticked on the NERC form stating that the new students have
had some induction training.

I’ve just realised somethign though. I’m meant to be doing this induction
thing at 3:30pm tomorrow.. Now the termly IT committee meeting is at 2pm
tomorrow.. Which means I have a useful excuse to escape from it half way
through.

As for the important things in life, well, I’ve not had the energy to do
much in that area. I did manage to get enough energy to go to the happy hour
on Friday evening but flaked out early, got home at about 7:30 and was in
bed by 9.

Saturday was again an unenergetic day, though I did manage to get my car
taxed for another year and my credit card bill paid. Oh, and having bumped
into one of the new postgrads, I was informed by them that HMV had a sale
on.. So I spent *FAR* too much money on CDs and a couple of DVD’s. I’m not
sure I should have taken Isabelle’s advice about taking a look there. 🙂

Still 50 quid for 7 CDs (including the 3 in the boxed set of Madness) wasn’t
half bad, and the 2 DVDs for £20 at Virgin (which temped me afterwards)
means my DVD collection has expanded (to include The Matrix and The Hunt
for Red October).

Sunday morning was spent in bed.. Firstly watching telly, then, after deciding
at 10 am to have a quick doze before getting up, woke up at nearly half eleven.
By this time the weather had closed in so what else could I do other than
watch “Saiko Exciting” on the SciFi channel rounded off by the rest of the
afternoon watching the new CNX channel (Cartoon Network eXtreme?).

Still, the lack of doing anything yesterday plus all the extra sleep has
helped, dispite having a bit of a dodgy tummy yesterday and first thing this
morning.

Well,
it’s a soggy Monday morning. I’m still tired from the combination of being
out late/early Saturday night/Sunday morning, getting home at nearly half
two, and the change of daylight due to the season. My sleep patterns get
thoroughly messed up by the accelerated day length change at this time of
year.

BTG was fun, pictures from it can be found at here.
And no, Moreen doesn’t usually look like that or wear such strange things.
The pictures themselves are the raw photographs and i know now that I need
to remove the skylight filter if I’m going to use the flash. Oh, and the
extra dark pictures are caused by either my finger accidently being over
the flash sensor or the subject being out of the range of the flash. Oh well.
(And, yes, Myk DID spend a lot of the time laying down on the floor and that
was even before the shampers came out.)

Yesterday was spent recovering with an interlude to put the pictures on a
CD, drive into work and install them so other people could have the viewing
pleasure.

I missed the end of Scrapheap Challenge last night due to a power cut.. I
was just tucking into my dinner, had watched the first team do the first
part of their challenge and sail off down the track when the telly and lights
went out. Apparently, most of East Oxford was plunged into darkness. Anyway,
it was 1.5 hours before the electricity returned. I must admit it was quite
pleasant having no lights around.. though the sky glow from the light polution
generated by the rest of Oxford was annoying and lit everywhere to the same
level as the brightest full moon.

The two things I hate about living in (or rather on the edge of) a town are
(a) noise pollution from annoying humans with engines, stereos or voices,
and (b) Light pollution from streetlights, high powered security lights which
are never turned off and car headlights. If I could afford to I’d live back
in the country where there are less of these humans making a mess of the
place.

Anyway, today is the day I take my little practical with the fresh faced
kiddies where those who know enough to be dangerous with computers will race
ahead dispite my warning at the beginning and screw up their e-mail set-up,
leaving the last 20 minutes for me to try to clear up the mess. Which reminds
me, I could do with finding some people to help demonstrate.