Relative Boredom

Wednesday. Today was kind of a good day, the pollen has been really high in the last couple of days, for the first time in a couple of years I have acutally suffered from it, so after a couple of piriton which made me feel much better. As the blog title suggests, the last week has been a bit quiet, starting to settle into the work routine, but as far as I know not many friends are around at the moment, ah well, just think of the money :) It seems that my parents are having a good time on holiday, got several cryptic text messages from them which convey they are having a generally good time. As you can see, not much has happened in this last week!

Drakelow Tunnels

I was really tired after work on wednesday, but still went on the trip to the tunnels with dad. They are really impressive, they were originally a "shadow" factory for rover that was designed to be a backup if enemy bombing knocked out an important factory (about 6 miles of tunnels in all). Then in the 60s it was converted to a regional command centre for regional government in case of nuclear war etc, and later updated in the 80s with the newer communications technologies available etc. The site is not a museum, it is just in the condition it was left by the home office when the place shut in 1992/3, so really gives a different perspective than the other visits that I have been on that are more "exhibitioney". What is interesting is that the site was reduced in size at each refit, so there are parts of it that are the original factory, parts that are the 60s command centre, and parts of the 80s site. What i found funny is that the carpets, chairs and tables that remain are exactly the same as the ones I saw at places like Hack Green and Kelvedon Hatch bunkers :)

Well worth a visit if you get the oppertunity (there are only occasional visits run)

The Week of chaos

Friday, well, kinda busy this week to say the least! Trip to aber for the day on tuesday totally wore me out, managed to get a lot of stuff sorted tho, the house has really been cleaned up by the landlord, its looking quite respectable. I have made it my plan to get the tiles in the hall all cleaned up to their original glory to make an impressive sight. Arrived about 15 mins before the BT engineer, turns out there was a line box afterall but in the loft of all places, line was re-activated however had a DACS, after some negotiation, this was removed, so Demon were faxed with the ADSL order :) Journey back was "fun" the A44 was shut for some reason or another so had to go via the "mountain" road.. when some guy in aber says the Mountain road to you, believe him, it was a single track road mostly in the middle of nowhere. What I can say is that some of the scenery I saw was the most impressive I ever saw, at one point I stopped and took some photos, but there are some collapsed houses that I want to photograph next time I am around there.

Wednesday saw the start back at work, so had to get up at 7.30am :| Was good to be back, some really impressive kit around now too :) Wednesday night was a trip to drakelow tunnels north of kidderminster, more to follow on that one :) Well, now its friday evening, and I am bloody knackered, got to get some sleep! Possibly computer fair tommorrow to get some kit for the house network - everyone has given me cheques for the ADSL costs, so I really should be in a position to actually share the connection!

After 30 hours at home

Monday, well, here I am at home, last few days have been very chaotic so not had time to complete a blog, got halfway through one, but gave up :) Oakwood on thursday was good, ended up going on pretty much everything bar "bounce" which was one of those things where you go up and down in a seat, and I didnt like the sound of that.. a bit lame considering I have jumped out of a plane! Journey back was good, and managed one or two "colourful" overtaking manouvres :)

Friday consisted of meeting landlord at the house at 9am, I cant see how the current tenants can keep the place in such a mess, its really gross, but the lanlord has got professional cleaners in, apparently they do crime scenes as well, and recently cleaned up skull and brain off the stairs in a house somewhere... how fitting that they should be cleaning out our house.

Finally set off home at about 4pm on saturday after a lot of packing, sorting and shifting, also a lot of goodbyes :| Hopefully I'll get to see a fair amount of people over the summer, got quite a few spare weekends.

Today consisted of shopping, eating and unpacking, its quite interesting, I have a much bigger room at uni, and cramming everything into room at home has proved to be interesting :) Tommorrow is trip back to aber for the day to supervise BT installing line and measure up for stuff like wires etc. Im quite looking forward to being a small network administrator, just hope that it doesnt consume too much of my time.

72 hours left in aber

Well, its 3am, im still awake, which is a bit of a hinderance considering that I have to be on the road to south wales by 8.30am complete with passengers :)

Did not do all that much yesterday, went down to the house and checked to see if there was any post, it turns out that BT had sent me the expected confirmation of their visit next tuesday to "repair" the line... upon investigation there isnt really very much of a line there for them to repair, so lets just hope that once line is rerun complete with line box its ADSL capable. I have a secret plan if they say that it is not ADSL ok, im going to first of all get lucy to phone and cry at them about it, if that fails, I will try the same, and then if that doesn't I am going to hack off a limb and become disabled :) On tuesday next week i am going to come back to aber for the day for BT to install the line, I wont be impressed if they dont turn up!

Arranged with dad that he will visit on friday to pick up the majority of my stuff so I got my cds and other bits of random crap packed away, and told dad to bring a hold-all for all the clothes that I wont need. I have decided that I will keep all the computers here until the bitter end as I dont think I could cope without MP3 collection, and I need my router to connect everything up!

Im kind of looking forward to being at home, It will certainly be nice to be 23 minutes away from birmingham again (yes, it has been done dispite the distance, but not in my car!) and the money ill be earning over summer will certainly be nice. However, next year at uni is going to be very different, Pete and Co. will be going off to work in surrey, James will be in the states and I will be living in town, all very, very different, plus a much bigger workload that counts. I know I sound a bit depressive, but I always tend to be pensive around times when things are changing, like when I was about to come to uni, and I cant say that came out all that badly!

Right I am wittering on like a cheap paperback novel now, and my eyes hurt, time to make the most of my 4 hours sleep - if that! :|

96 hours left in Aber

Another couple of days have passed, not really managed to do very much useful at all :) Done quite a lot of ebaying looking for a hub/switch and an ADSL modem for the house next month, managed to get an alcatel "stingray" modem locally that someone off IRC had going spare, its much bigger than I expected it to be. Have installed the linux drivers and managed to get the lights to flash as they should when the thing isnt plugged into an ADSL line :)).
Might be going off to oakwood theme park down in south Wales on thursday which should be interesting.. I have herd that it is a bit of a "local theme park for local people" type affair but we shall see!
Arranaged for dad to come and collect the majority of my stuff on friday, which should be interesting as hes coming right between two nights out!
Tommorrow will be a day of getting the bandwidth management software (want preference for stuff like SSH), webserver and firewall all sorted on my router so it can be as "plug-and-pray" as possible when I set it up in the house.

Sunday morning, ahh :) Spent the day yesterday bimbling around and not doing much, Installed litestep to see how development was going, found it a bit clunkey, so removed it. However, it changed my colour scheme to a really cool steeley blue-grey, so I kept the colour settings [See Photos].

Tried out Winamp 3 beta, its kinda nice, however they seem to have removed the playlist search function, which I kind of depend on with an 1800 track playlist :|

Went to the union last nite for re-load (basically a mix of cheesey stuff from the last 4 decades), It was a generally good nite (no-one fell out) However, I did feel a bit of a tit being the most drunk person two nites in a row :| I am sat here, somehow, totally awake at 8.30am with no hangover to speak of. It seems that my mother's drinking "tip" of sticking to vodka stuff actually works. The inherant problems asociated with taking your mother's drinking tips are totally beyond the scope of this diary, but anyone who has met her will probably understand that my family can in no way be considered "normal", then again, the same is probably true if you have met me!

Well, time for the house meeting soon, worked out how much the ADSL will cost us when I got back last nite, so I had better check out the maths :>

Well, final exam out of the way, found it quite trickey, most of the questions seemed to be set to catch you out, ah well, most people thought similarly, and im fairly sure I have a pass so a reasonable end to the first year of university. It doesn't seem like 2 minutes since the first day when I arrived here and met everyone, and now, months later, we are off to spend the summer earning money for next year.
Went out last nite, was good until I started on the quad vodka and cokes, then things generally went downhill... Surprisingly no hangover to speak of (yet) which is good considering im going to the union again tonight :) If some sort of delayed hangover sets in im going to have to spend the night sat in a darkened corner with a large glass of water I think.

Sunday morning (will I be concious?) is going to be meeting about the house for next year where we can all get together and sort out stuff like bills for over the summer, should be good to get things sorted as long as it doesnt turn into a brawl ;)