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June 26, 2004
I Really Need A New Job...
...and preferably much better paid! Currently my job is doing its best to wear me down... On Monday morning I get an email about 11.00 to say that something I ordered had arrived. I had to go out at 12.00 so couldn't exactly go over to Clitheroe to collect it, could I? I'm then out till Wednesday morning when I get two snotty emails - one about why this thing hadn't been delivered (a slip-on telephone amplifier - usually it would have been posted direct to them, but noooo, not from Clitheroe...). The second (also from Clitheroe) is that something (for the same people) had not been ordered. They had ordered it (a flashing doorbell) and something else from one company, then cancelled the order wheh they realised the second thing (a loop system) was actually in a cupboard and could be delivered to the engineer straight away for fitting. Then comes the message that the doorbell should have been ordered, and they first blame me (it's on the paperwork, dear!!!) and then mention that the engineer is unhappy as he has to go back to fit the doorbell. Where is it written that this was my problem, or my bad? I put the details of where to order stuff on the form, and they order the wrong thing, then cancel the order all by themselves. And the engineer can't bloody moan as he can claim two installation charges. Basically a big heap of Not My Problem.
Also, Universal Aids (I have moaned about them before) are really annoying me, as I have people from March asking why nothing has been fitted yet - something to do with them sacking a lot of people, it seems - again, not my problem, though I have decided to 'own' it and sent everyone a letter apoligising on the behalf of the County Council, and that they still have to wait till the end of July at least...
I also had to go to a Deafblind meeting in Preston at short notice, meaning that I had to cancel an afternoon of appointments, and move them to Friday. On Friday one of the old dears I talked to on the phone can't see me then as she has some people coming to value some antiques. Could have told me this when I spoke to her on the phone, but noooo...
Then, on Friday I found I was well over my overdraft limit despite not spending much, and all the eBay sales I did. Somehow it looks like a cheque didn't go into my account, which leaves me with at least £50 of charges to pay. And I may now be over next month too. It's like paying taxes on taxes... This means that going ut may be a little difficult for a while (as may petrol, and getting a new tyre on the car (another bloody flat!).
Luckily I just said "Sod it!" and bought Joint Ops anyway...
I may have it (ahem) but playing 4 players is not as much fun as a 150 player server... at the moment the UK Island Hopper Servers (I usually haunted Server 2) are still running the demo, but a few of the players have migrated across to the UK servers now running, and if you have a fast connection and a decent PC (who, me? ;-)) it runs well with no lag - and some of the maps are enormous! I played one for a while last night, and it takes place on a long coastline - with at least 7 bases to capture to win! This, just as a mini-review, is one superb game - you can play single player either in the training missions or by running a LAN server on your PC with only you playing it (though the enemy will kill you a lot!), but online it is superb. I enjoyed playing Unreal Tourney 2K4 in assault mode, and Far Cry was good (though it had lag problems - still has as far as I know) but JO is stunning - it is up there with the original Battlefield 1942 (BF Vietnam just didn't do it for me - probably the fact that four trees don't make a jungle!). I haven't heard about Soldner, though it was fun on a LAN... Get it if you can, do the 'fun' registration process with Novaworld and get playing - watch the UK servers for Rogue Noid UK - I'm usually on anti-sniper patrol... But be warned - soon my connection goes up to 1.5mbs, which is technically close to a T1 connection... heheheh!
Other stuff - not much to say besides the fact I like the new Thunderbirds designs, and the fact that there is an attempt to make The Hood a credible threat (!), and I fully understand the reasoning behind Lady Penelope's car being a slightly rejigged Thunderbird (Rolls Royce apparently didn't want the car to be a Roller - it should have been a Bentley anyway!) But Alan as a school kid enlisting his friends to help save his father and brothers - did the production team only ever see Saban's Turbo-Charged Thunderbirds?!?!? remind me to get my draft script/plot online sometime soon... easily doable with the same TB craft!!! I havn't heard the Thunderbirds Are Go! track by Busted, yet, but it does worry me... why not use SOS from Terrahawks? Luckily, the new CGI Captain Scarlet looks far more impressive - and wait till you see the new Cloudbase designs... comes from actually involving Gerry Anderson, I suppose...
Ah well - I'm off - see you in a week's time!
Posted by Badgers at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2004
It's Not My Job I Hate...
...no, I tell a lie, it is my job.
I go back to find a pile of problems that I had managed to solve and deal with before I went back to work on Monday. One of these has gone wrong again as the equipment isn't working properly. Bloody typical.
Apart from a few annoying people to see (one person who didn't want any equipment at all, a couple in out of the way places) it has been a week of meetings! One at Preston, one in Burnley, and on Friday another in Preston, this time at a place in the Docklands area - shame I was given the wrong directions! I managed to avoid being too narcoleptic in them, though the Friday meeting saw me feeling under the weather with a 4-day headache (so far) that refused to go away - I feel better now, but its still lingering and annoying me. Of course there was Joint Ops, and this managed to mess up my drawing of comics. Another thing that messed things up was finding that my plan for next week's strips was tits up as I had slightly underestimated the work needed to draw the 4 1/2 foot long strip (!!!) that was to run. I'm currently finishing the strip for the week after so I can run that a week early, and run the other in it's place. The fun of running an internet webcomic! And it will only get worse...
A few good things though - we went to Nick's (apart from James who didn't make it, but will this week or so he said when he popped up with his wife last night) and played Bomberman (hooked on that) and little else. I did get a scarily up close view of Andrew's face, and he has varicose eyelids - great ugly blue veins on them! Eeek! He did good though, as he brought a picture of Nick. An old picture of Nick. In black and white. And even bearing in mind the grey that is starting to run rampant through his head, he still hasn't changed. At all. I think he has a painting in the attic or something... It was such a shame James wasn't there - but I'll endeavour to pop the picture online for you all to see...
More interesting stuff came from Andrew during the week (a shocking experience) including an email saying that a friend he worked with from Macdonalds was renting her house out.. and it meant we would have another place to go other than Nicks on Sundays, and it would have broadband... Slightly cryptic, but sadly I don't think it means he is moving in with the person (would anyone fall for those eyelids? Yeecchhh!!), but it does sound like he may be moving into a home of his own-ish (lucky bugger - the nearest I'll get is when my mum and dad are pushing up the daisies and joining the choir invisibule!) and it opens up many, many possibilities...
James has finally caught onto the fact that we want to go to Alton Towers (as does he), but says we have to do it quickly as the prices are going up and it will be packed. This is, therefore unlikely - Doof will be away for a while (probably hiking and looking after the Americans that came over last time - one of the ladies of the party sent a picture to him on his new cameraphone - I'm worried Andrew is about to come out of his shell - run to the hills!) so all four of us is so not going to happen. Heck, a simple night out/night in/getting together for the Sunday blasting session is hard enough to organise... Heaven help me when I need to get them together to do the voices for the animations!
If you read the front page, you'll know that I may not be updating much for a litle while - I have a few things to do (see above!) and need to get down to converting the site to PHPNuke. It's not Goodbye, but it is a Be Seeing You!
Posted by Badgers at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2004
Seven Days Of Very Little
Not a whole lot has happened this past week - I spent a lot of time cutting boards to draw the next few weeks of comics on, making plans for Halloween, trying to plan out how to make a Haku-clone style I.T., avoiding Big Brother (A bedsit?!?!) and preparing to avoid Euro 2004 like the plague (but good luck England, anyway!)
Good things from this week have included reading Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (brilliant, and then some), starting The Accusers by Lindsey Davies (the best roman detective in the business), and watching Shrek 2 (Best. Shrek. Sequel. Ever.) There was of course some art, and some clearing up to be done over at .com and then there was Joint Operations. The beta was great, and ran well, but this week the new official demo arrived, and on my PC and connection it runs really well with all the detail on - no lagging (something that a lot of people have complained about - not too surprising considering 100+ players) and a framerate of between 24 (lowest) and 44 (woo!) with all detail turned on (which means all reflections, glows, heat shimmers, everything!) which is nice. James finds it jerky. Andrew's machine might as well be drawing on the screen with a pencil (though he has managed to play fairly lag free with a 30-player server). Time to upgrade, I think - not for me, obviously as mine will last a lot longer! - but for others. I'm happy though as I am good with the big machine guns and tend to get lots of kills by going sniper hunting in the hills - there is no better feeling than creaping up behind a sniper and shooting them at point blank range with an M60 'cos they were too target fixated to hear a guy rattling like Marley's ghost coming up behind them... unless its the feeling of strafing the jeeps coming along the road one by one from a chopper... or sitting on a rock calmly shooting people in boats that think they are so clever to go out to sea and snipe!
Oh - one last thing (what a short entry - am I rushing to play more JO? Maybe!) is to say a big thanks to the people who, via my eBay sales, have raised over £100 for my bank account - the money was badly needed, and will save me from poverty! And thanks to Paypal who don't seem to charge now to take the money out (though they do take some out when it goes in which makes better sense!) Heck - another night out might even be possible this year, or even Alton Towers! Unless James is Mr Grumpy again. I haven't had any blog entries from him to gauge his mood...
Posted by Badgers at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2004
A World Without Work
Well, almost - The past week has seen me not have to moan about my job and not one car has tried to force me off the road. I have actually enjoyed this first half of my fortnight off for the most part!
Sunday of course saw the usual gaming session at Nicks, and James even turned up! We played Nitro Family (seriously not impressed) and lots of Joint Operations. No Bomberman, though. The rest of the week has seen me sitting down and drawing a bit (not as much as I wanted, but I'm now two weeks ahead on the art, though the strips need to be lettered this week) and I've been playing the Joint Operations demo online. With 120 other loonies on the server.
Wow.
It may take all day to capture all the bases, but this game is something good, though there are a lot of cheaters about (a number of moans about aimbots and also people who fly around without a chopper, though these gits I am pretty good at blowing away as the go by!). This is definitely a game to watch! Soldner is also out now, but I haven't managed to get round to getting it yet - JO is just too much fun!. I also managed to finish Far Cry - the build up to get to the last bit is evil and involves the use of chairs, but the final battle was anti-climatctic - I just fired a rocket into the room and got the end sequence, which is a little subdued and not the all out five minute video-fest I was hoping for after such a good game. Still, I'm hitting Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow now!
So, the week has been quiet otherwise, though I must admit to watchng a little of this year's Big Brother, though the simple fact that the morning feed (until babout 10.00!) seems to consist of a single picture. For hours. need I say that the housmates (even the now ejected Kitten) are a bunch or idiots? I kinda hope that Ahmed, the asylum seeker, wins in his jumper!
Saturday night, on the other hand, was a blast - Me and Nick went out for the night and had fun. First, the Swan has now got a Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines table, which is not bad, and is, for all intents and purposes, the classic T2 table except for an added captive ball and the gun being put on the backdrop to be an evil RPG skill shot. Lots of nice ladies out and about, and we ended up being dragged onto the dance floor at Lava... We were drinking, I was singing and then a girl (who had been told to do it by her friend), dragged me (literally!) onto the dance floor for a while. Now, I can't dance - I admit that - I'm a singer(!). But at least I wasn't doing the zombie dance. After a while, we escaped! We played pool (on the tables which are now downstairs, and I did well, managing to sink a few balls and annoy Nick! The tables are now downstairs as the terrace is now open - and very nice it is too! We spend half the night up there watching the world (ie the girls) go by from a nie elevated position. James would love it. Andrew would too, but only for the sniping possibilities.
One thing worthy of mention is that when we were going in (and we were the only people in apart from the bar staff and a couple of girls who had come in via Ignite) was that one of the bouncers asked Nick if he was over 25. Now, granted it was getting dark, but this hasn't happened for a while as he has so much grey hair! He even had to show his ID! Madness!
So, that was the night - I could go on about the amount of bare flesh, but this isn't that sort of site. It was fun, as always, and I managed to drink 4 bottles of Schmirnoff/VK/whatever and stuck to J2Os for the rest of the night, meaning that I left totally sober. Apart from a slight headache from the speakers and the music! Even my voice isn't too bad. Hmm - am I sure it was a good night?
Posted by Badgers at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)