2004 Archives

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Fra Giovanni, Christmas Eve, 1513

A little over a week to go until Christmas, and I've already got everybody's presents bought, did it all online, but still haven't sent out any cards. I'm not yet into the festive spirit and the ways things are I probably won't be up until the 23rd when I'm going out for the office celebration.

Well, I'm home from my Blackpool trip and had a good time whilst away. Watched some Smallville, some D&D cartoons, Aladdin, Tomb Raider 2, Kung Pow, Indiana Jones and a couple of episodes of Lost.

It's Blackpool time again, and a chance to meet up with all the old Quest gang... I'll be back on Monday; although I doubt anybody would really notice that I've gone anyway...

Ratkin went very well at the 24 hour sponsored charity roleplay event.

I've just finished planning my Ratkin game for the 24 hour charity roleplaying event this weekend. We're raising money for the local maternity ward and to help a former club member raise funds to do a sponsored walk up Mt Kilimanjaro for Scope.

Bought myself a couple of new Sony DWD-22A 16x Dual Layer DVD writers, which have replaced my old Plextor drives. They seem fast enough doing CDs although I haven't done any DVDs yet; I haven't even got any 16x media to test them with.

Well, not totally anyway. Just reshuffled the existing content in to a slightly different format.

Hmm; Norton Speed Disk caused havoc with my PC yesterday.

Knocked my car last night.

I have had reports of problems recently whilst attempting to post a comment to my blog. Could everybody try and post a comment to this and if unsuccesful, mail me.

Virtually a whole month goes by without any posts here.

Installed SP2 today on 2 of the 3 PCs. All seems good. So far...

Just realised that I hadn't made any mention of Folkestone since I got home.

Took the plunge and decided to move my Blog from the old zShaped format I was using, which was rather basic to say the least, to Movable Type, which has options for comments etc...

Going to Alley's for the weekend; and will no doubt end up getting drunk with Mojo and Alley's wife, Babs, while I'm there. This year will be the first time that I've driven it; previous couple of times I've used the train, which were both ok, especially the last time when I took my laptop with me and watched a couple of DVDs on the way down. and the very first time I used the coach, which seemed an interminable amount of time. Really looking forward to the adventure, for want of a better word, of driving the 400+ miles from here to there; but, at the same time, I'm slightly anxious, because it's 400+ miles of motorway driving. And if there's one thing I've noticed since starting to drive it's that you cannot switch off for even a second; there's too many other idiotic drivers around ready to try and kill you with their stupidity. I'm not the best driver in the world, far from it, but some people take it to extremes.

Well, the season is almost upon us and it's time to pick Fantasy Teams again.

For anybody interested it's located here.

Sunday dawned nice and sunny, and gradually got hotter as the morning went along.

Iggy and the Stooges arrived on to stage to very little fanfair and it was immediately evident that he'd been back in the gym again. I think the main standouts from his set is the fact that he didn't play any of his later stuff which most people today would know him for, such as Lust For Life or The Passenger, but rather stuck to the old stuff. Iggy's famous for crowd-surfing during the middle of his set but he took it one step further here. Rather than go out in to the crowd he got the crowd to clamber up on stage with him. Security tried their hardest to prevent it but sheer weight of numbers eventually got to them, although 1 guard, rather short-arsed, decided to do his own little Hitler impression and started frog-marching people from the stage area with arms shoved up their backs. It was quite funny standing on the sidelines watching some young kids, 14-17 years old or so that had shown no interest in the set suddenly jump up and start pegging it to the stage in a rather sad and pathetic effort to get on stage. Whilst he had the crowd on stage Iggy clambered off stage and went off in to the front of the crowd anyway. Looked like the head of security was about to have a nervous breakdown.

Saturday morning dawned cool and dry with a very slightly overcast sky; no real indication of the weather ahead. Spent most of Saturday morning pottering around doing nothing much. Colin and Scott decided to go and queue up about 10:00am ready for the main gates opening at 11:00am. We decided to leave it until closer to 12:00 and Scoot decided to try and get some extra sleep; apparently a group of revellers a few tents over had kept him awake all night. At 12:00 we made a move and headed off to the queue.

Well, the original plan was to set off at about 9:00am, unfortunately, Paul needed to go to Tesco so didn't get to John's until 10:40am.

I'm home; I survived, I got photographs, and I'll blog at some future point about it...

Suffice to say it was awesome...

This weekend is the Download Festival at Donnington.

I was thinking that my life seems to consist of getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home, doing nothing much, going to bed, sleeping, getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home, doing nothing much, going to bed, sleeping, ad infinitum. But, recently, I've managed to do a few things.

Yay! My Donnigton tickets arrived today; well, technically yesterday, but pfft.

Had the router back for 3 days now and it's working fine; so much so in fact that I've finally gotten round to putting the cabling in to share the broadband connection with my dad.

Well, D-Link have sent my router back to me; complete with a note stating the problem has been identified and fixed, and that they are confident it works fine.

We shall see...

Got my TV back; they had to replace the tube; all is good again...

And sent my router off again today; hopefully for a replacement, rather than a test, possible repair and return...

My TV is bust...

Well, today had been extremely hectic so far, and it's only 2:30pm.

I spoke (or typed in this case) way too soon. After only an hour back in service the router has developed the exact same fault; looking closer at it I realise now that it's the same bloody one... I shall be having words with D-Link in the morning.

Left my PC defragging drives overnight and woke up this morning with a locked pc. Had to reboot. XP wouldn't load afterwards; even in to safe mode.

Today was a Bank Holiday in the UK.

It's a real minefield.

Was discussing the possibilty of purchasing d20 Modern with Pixie the other night and he asked why?

My D-Link DSL-504 ADSL Router gave up the ghost on Wednesday night, plunging me back in to the realms of the non-connected.

Blackpool was good.

I hope not.

As mentioned previously I've finally passed my driving test and have been looking at options.

Amanda stayed for the weekend, what with it being Valentine's Day yesterday and all.

Hey, it's Friday 13th; Black Friday...

I had my driving test today...

I PASSED!!

Who cares about Black Friday?

A couple of people have asked for an update on the Amanda situation, and to be honest it hadn't occured to me. So, anyway, here it is.

Well, the temptation finally proved too much, and I now own an XBox.

Well, took, and failed, my driving test for a third time today.

Amanda phoned...

I'm seeing her on Tuesday night...

Mojo continually refers to women as being evil, and with his track record at times I can see why.

Well, 2003 has disappeared in to the ether and 2004 is upon us.