Thrawns Journal

Yay! this is my firts entry from my new macbook! It arrived today and i am still posting, but had a cool weekend so will try a proper update tomorrow.

Went to Pete and Helens for supper, as usual for a thursday, and had a great time playing with Pete's Mac and learning a few things about what they can do. Found the voiceprompt thing fantastic fun, and stayed much later than planned due to listening to it singing the words to Bohemian Rhapsody in amusing voices. Went to leave at about 12, started the engine, went to put it into gear....... hangon the clutch feels loose and gears will not go in...... oh bugger, whats that pool of liquid underneath the car? Called the AA, and unfortunately it seems the hydraulic system has given way in the heat and split. Nothing they can do so I ended up having to be relayed home, and now have no way of getting to work tomorrow. I have emailed work this evening as a pre emptive warning, but have no idea what they are going to say as it feels really silly phoning in coz my car is sick, but with a 75 mile journey what can I do. I hope its not expensive to fix, or else i am stuffed!

Well I did it, I finally moved to the dark side and ordered myself a Macbook. It was a tough decision, but of all te bits i wanted the Macbook was the only one that did everything i wanted. I am still a touch worried about the fact its white, but i am sure i can paint it or something.
Specs are as follows:
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM- 2x512
100GB Serial ATA drive
SuperDrive (DVD+/-RW/CD-RW)
Apple Mini-DVI to VGA Adapter
Keyboard/Mac OS-B
Airport Extreme Card&BT-B

Not quite sure whether or not I can actually install XP on it though, as I keep finding conflicting information, so i guess its just gonna have to be a try and see thing. Although one thing that does seem to be agreed on is that Vista will install, so all i have to is wait until that is released.

ok, well its come to the time when i need to update my laptop. Its a lovely laptop, but i haven't actually turned my desktop on for well over a year and its just not up to the task of being my primary machine. I am looking for something that will run games (doom 3, halflife2 that sort of thing) but also will be suitable as a work machine too. So...... I have narrowed it down to 2 diferent machines:
Sony Vaio FE21M or (eek, never thought i would say this!) a Macbook (2ghz with 1gb ram and 100gb hd upgrade)
There are advantages and disadvanages to both, but i just can't decide and wondered if anyone has an opinion or any info on either one, or even better owns one. I keep veering towards the Mac for now, as apparently you can now install dual boot XP and Mac OSX, but the low memory graphics card, pricy accessories and colour keep stopping me. Help please?

bah! lots of stress going on still due to this big contract we are fighting for at work. Unfortunately this means masses of work load and long 12 hour days (+2.5 hour travel = very tired out thrawn with no leisure time). Not complaining really as i do get plenty of rewards and bonuses out of it, but boy is it wearing me out. Also i am losing my internet time and missing all my fun websites and lj reading time! Still the light at the end of teh tunnel is gradually approaching and this will hopefully all be over soon.
On a good note; My phone broke a week ago. Unfortunately i was honest when making the claim and they said it wasn't covered (i threw it against a wall by mistake, as my hands were wet) so i had to go and buy a new phone. I now own a sony k750i, not fantastic but it works and it is a good solid little phone which was proved when Darth pulled the strap off my bed and managed to land teh phone in my glass of water. 10 hours later after a through drying the phone works perfectly. Also last night was archery and i managed to smash all 3 of my personal scoring records for highest over all score, highest number of golds and highest score with 6 arrows. This is great as i am actually scoring very well for somoene who has only been doing archery for 6 months and i am even taken on the long termers in competition ;-)

Well last week was interesting. Headed to work on monday and broke down on the way to work, then spent 2 hours waiting for the AA only to find that the plug on my fan had failed and it took him 5 mins to fix it. Tuesday I went to work late as i had to take the car in to get the AA blokes temporary fix made into a permanent fix. Wednesday was work and archery. Thrusday I went round to a friends house for a joint birthday party with 2 friends. Had a great barbecue followed by childish games and jelly and ice cream, yay!!! Friday I was tried to stay late to finish off the backlog caused by my lateness ealier on in the week only to be sent home and told to relax by the director LOL.Saturday I was meant to go to a meeting of the Othona communications group, but unfortunately got a puncture. As travel to work was more important i then had to go and get that fixed as i only have a stooopid space saver thingy in the boot whcih would not even get me to work! Sunday we went to Tropical Wings, whcih is kind of a small zoo that is local to me. Had a good time, was surprised at how many animals they have (it looks really small from the outside) and well looked after too! Monday was uneventful, but long and dragged on. Tuesday was great! Got off work at 1, got to Pete's at 2:30 and went over to Ewas to collect her. From there we headed into London to go and be in the audience for the filming of an episode of QI. Got there early, so had food in a crepe bar, a short wonder round the south bank, and then went to queue up. Queue looked massive, but wasn't too bad in the end and went down quickly. Turned out it was the (or will be, for those who watch it on telly) Children in need special, with Jonathon Ross, Phil Jupitas, Rich Hall and Alan Davies. Was really good to watch, just like a 2 hour long episode with an 18 certificate LOL. My opinion of Jonathon Ross has changed a lot now too, he IS actually quite funny, but has such a bucket mouth that they have to cut half his comments out making him look boring LOL. Definately a fun evening and i have now registered for tickets for other shows on the hope I get picked for them too ;-)
Wednesday was boring and busy, but topped off with archery. Thursday is dreadful as I am the only one in today and there is so much to do. Oh but friday might be interesting as i might be going camping! (TBC)

Had a good last week. Woke up for work monday, started to get up and then realised it was a bank holiday, so went back to bed. Got up late and then spent the day tarting to reciver my computer. Didn't go too well as things were not were i expected them, so it appears there is more difference between linux and bsd than i thought. Never mind, i shall learn.Went in to work tuesday, it was quite busy but ok. ended up staying behind til 7:30 just to make things ok for my days off. wednesday i got up late, did a bit of shopping, had a couple of hours archery practice then went to archery club. Thursday I became old, went for a haircut, had a pub lunch with Mum and Dave, more archery practice, then round to Pete H's for supper. Friday was back to work to a very nice surprise. Lovely comical birthday card signed by all the staff and with a £100 cheque in it as a birthday present. Was really surprised about that, and very pleased. Saturday was spent doing at pete's fixing his computer and setting up a new wireless network while watching Johnney English and Space balls. Sunday was spent watching battle start galactica (nearly through season 1 now) and trying to mount a linux ext2fs disc under bsd. Turned out i was wasting time as i hadn't compiled the kernel with ext2fs support. Job done now and my old drive is now mounted. Just got to get the mail server set up and work out the differences in the config of apache versions and i will be back online.
Only a quick short update for now as i am watching battlestar and keep losing track of whats going on, which is irritating me, but only 3 more episodes left til i can concentrate again :-)
oh and if anyone is feeling hungry, have a cheese sandwich!

Had a crappy day at work. Lots of calls, no time to finish off the work and no time to catch up on all my work backlog created by the bank holiday weekend. Still i guess i shall just have to take some home with me this weekend.
Then got to archery and was brightened up. We had 2 archery competitions last week, and i came 2nd in one of them and 5th in the other. Even better than that; i then discovered they had made a scoring mistake and I had actually come joint first place! Was really pleased with that as there was abouot 30 people shooting in the competition, and i was one of the newer ones ;-)
Unfortunately the competion i came first in was barebow (no sight, stabilisers or helpers) and i got dillusions of grandeur this week so tried practicing barebow so i could improve. Unfortunately the targets were smaller and i didn't do so well, but i shall keep practicing until i do!

I haven't slipped on my lj, but unfortunately my hacker friend returned and destroyed my computer, so until i get the chance to rebuild it i am not going to have much net access. Very busy at work as we have just landed a huge new contract. Archery going well and new bow is really cool. car running fine, but driver is over tired. computer very dead. darth cute and stupid as normal. wallet is ok, and i won another tenner on the lottery. life in general is pretty cool, but neseds more chocolate and less years passed by!
hope you are all cool and well, and if not then i hope things pick up for you soon!

Bah! Got home friday to find i had allsorts of computer problems due to some little sod deciding to break into my computer, use it to attack lots of other machines, and ruin some parts of my computer (very odd). I now have most of it back up and running, but am seriously considering having to reinstall just in case i have missed anything nasty. Could be the opportunity i have been looking for to go to BSD though. Saturday I went over to my parents and did a couple of hours of archery, then spent the afternoon helping pete measure his house for his course and then watching films. I am sure i did something else too, but forget what LOL. Oh and my new sight arrived for my bow, but the mount was missing so he will send it to me this week. Sunday I went down to Othona and reviewed their telephone and communication system. Unfortunately (much as it pains me) it would seem that the Tiscali broadband and phone calls package is going to be best, although if anyone has any information on why not to use Tiscali then please please please let me know.
Monday was just another day filled with washing, xbox gaming, work, fixing my computer, driving and small fluffy stupid things. So interesting, maybe i should actually take up a hobby so i have something to write about......... hmmmm what hobby next?.....