Rik's Place

... and relax!

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:52:37 GMT

And so ends rather a stressful week. I'm definitely glad for the long weekend, I really need it!

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:47:49 GMT

In other news... I'm not nearly as hungover as I should be this morning!

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:46:36 GMT

Mr Canadian Dave....

If you read this.... EMAIL US OR SOMETHING!!!

We haven't heard from you in over 6 months, and we'd like to know how you're getting on!

If you have since the end of November.. sowwy {looks sheepish}... my email has been down... but should be back properly in about 10 days time... in the mean time you can use my work email (yes I am still working at office depot!)

:)

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:53:53 GMT

Purplethings: Hugs in your general direction! Long time no speak. xxx

yay!

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:49:22 GMT

I'm back on the internet at last!!!

Woohoo!

Hello to all again!

BTW I'm quite pissed!!!! I've been down the quite fantasically named Pavlov's Dog, A quality drinking establishment in Reading.

Hugs to all the people I know!

Work...

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:27:00 GMT

... I really need to get on with some! I really like working at home but its a real bugger to get motivated to start!

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:54:12 GMT

The last 2 weeks have been a bit of an eye opener... I've been on jury service... Although I only had to sit on one case during that time, it just highlighted how ridiculously turgid the criminal justice system is. The case I was on, if it had been conducted as a solid block would probably have taken 2 days, however due to the court not starting until 10 and the variously finishing at 3, 4 and 4:30 with an hour for lunch and a couple of other recesses took 4 (of which 3.5 hours were spent in retirement). the costs for the jury alone were in excess £3000! I also had to go in on one other day but an hour after they assembled the standby jury the defendant pleaded guilty and we were released.

After all that I didn't get to send anyone down, we acquitted the bloke in the 4 day trial because the prosecution case wasn't good enough.

And now, here I am on a Friday afternoon feeling meh and not wanting to do anymore work today.

Piccies Galore!

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 18:13:29 GMT

I've finally managed to get my ass into gear and sort out my holiday pics...

I have posted the rest of them here: clicky

There are a few from the trip down to Portugal ... then a shed load from the festival itself.

Edit: It helps if you point your link to the right gallery (slaps forehead)

Meh...

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 23:26:27 GMT

I have been back from holiday for about 3 hours... I will update on it in the near future. (possibly with Piccies too!)

Sproing

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:00:16 GMT

Here I am sat round a mate's house updating my journal, after a rather spiffing barbecue and a good evenings chatting of the breeze.

Just about to show of the picture I took at the last Boom festival to those who haven't seen them before.

On another note Vodafone have finally caved in and given me a decent phone for free, I ended up with a Motorola V3x. Bonus!

Grrr (update 4)

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 01:34:17 GMT

DNS and DHCP are now working perfectly, as is NTP. Samba still needs to be configured... Nearly there!

Grrr (Update 3)

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:05:13 GMT

I've now finished the OS reinstall, just got to tie up those loose ends like BIND and Samba!

I'm a bit more relaxed now!

Grrr (Update 2)

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:30:44 GMT

The kernel is now compiling... as the machine is a P133 it might take a while... time for bed methinks!

Grrr (update)

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:16:10 GMT

It's finally done after having to extend the timeout variable to 7.5 minutes.... now on with the rest of the installation!

Grrr

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:44:50 GMT

Blinking computers!!!

My network server crashed quite spectacularly today, now I'm going through the hassle of reinstalling Linux on it...

I'm currently part way through the reinstall, waiting for the gentoo portage tree to sync and it keeps timing out, trying another mirror now.

I currently have limited DNS and DHCP on my network as I'm having to use the functionality built into the router, which is a bit clunky to say the least.

I'll update later on!

Teh weekend :)

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:15:36 GMT

I had rather a cool weekend, not only did I do stuff, I also bought some stuff!

So to Saturday.... I've finally managed to buy some clothes ready for my holiday... I've known I've been going for the best part of 2 years, and still it takes me to within 2 months of going away to start getting organised. OK it's not like I'm going anywhere hugely out of the ordinary. I'm only going to Portugal. But I am going to a 7 day psytrance festival, by a beautiful lake in the middle of nowhere^tm. Anyways back to the point in hand. I bought shorts... this is unusual for me as I just don't do shorts, but I found some cool below the knee camo shorts in Next of all places, lots of pockets, just the thing for a festival in a hot place!

After that we trailed around town some more to find some stuff for ymw, but Uxbridge being the Chav central that it is, there was only 'fashionable' womens clothes, which amounts to overpriced, flimsy pieces of fabric in awful designs with a total area amounting to about 1 nanometre². So we gave up on that idea after trying nearly every shop in the 2 malls. So we resolved to try somewhere better on Sunday, got food and went home.

Upon arrival, sitting upon the couch was purplethings. I wasn't expecting that one! Not that I'm complaining!! :)

After some general chatting it was generally agreed that we go out and do something... So we had a think and then decided to try out The Pit in it's new location in Hounslow (which is closer to home than Richmond where it was previously). But as it was only 6ish we decided to watch a film first - Equilibrium was selected (my choice... partly as purplethings hadn't seen it before, and partly because it has some of the best gunfight scenes in a film to date! Think The Matrix meets John Woo!!!)

I have so got to go to a fancy dress party as a Tetragrammaton Cleric one day!

Anyway, film watched, we headed off to Hounslow to the pit. Now normally this would be a simple exercise, but when you forget the directions it gets more complicated! So after a little detour ( I wasn't lost as I knew exactly where I was, I just didn't know where I was going ) and a visit to a garage to look at a map, we found the right road. When a place is advertised as a pub called The Duke of Cambridge, you would think it would be easy to find.... but no... There were exactly no signs at all on the pub. I only spotted it when I saw the door staff, whom I recognised!

So finally having got there, we proceded to have a good night... I took some piccies and finally got kicked out at 1:30 and went home.

And then there was Sunday.... Having failed to achieve everything we set out to do on Saturday, we decided to go to Camden on Sunday. Having eventually fought our way through the North London traffic (don't ask me why I drove... it seemed like a good idea at the time) we ended up in Camden Town. We spent the best part of 3 hours looking round the markets, and ended up with a funky top and 2 skirts for ymw (all fairly hippy stylee) and a jumper and a couple of other small bits for me. When we got back to Uxbridge we headed off to ymw's parents to show off her new clothes and to drop off her sister's birthday present. When we got there they weren't in, and neither were her brother or sister. We ended up watching random tv with her brother's girlfriend which was cool. When her parents finally got home it turned out that on the way back from a bike show, their bike had broken down and they'd needed to get a tow back. So more tv and chat was necessary - we watched The Long Kiss Goodnight. It was fairly entertaining especially when play spot the plot hook and spot the continuity/plot hole!

When Terri got home we gave her her present. We had specially wrapped it so it was difficult to get into - 3 layers of paper followed by foil with absolutely all the gaps in the wrapping covered with tape. We did this as this how we normally receive presents from Terri!

We'd bought her a copy of The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett. After chatting and fussing the cat and drinking tea until gone midnight we decided it was about time to go home and wrap up a rather good weekend!

Partay

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:54:23 GMT

Last Friday, our mate Dave (canadave) had a bash to bid him fare-thee-well back to the land of bears, moose, maple syrup and the occasional several feet of snow. We all had a good time and much alcohol was consumed by all (well except me!).

I have now put up pics in my scrapbook ( http://pics.livejournal.com/rikj ).

Still recovering from a long weekend of partying with Dave's party followed by Baraka the next night ( which I helped set up and take down such is the life of crew!)

Yawn....

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 14:12:24 GMT

Work is dull. I hate transcoding programs, especially ones that I had to write in a hurry and didn't have time to comment properly. I am currently converting the site I developed for work from PHP into ASP.net. It's not that difficult it's just dull as fuck. At least I get work at home, which improve matters slightly, but does slow me down.

Plus I spent too much of last night playing HL2:Episode 1. I was only stopped by a power cut, probably a good thing given that it had gone 3 in the morning.

Still must get on, got to give a progress update on Monday to my boss.

[looks for the ProPlus tablets]

Sun, 07 May 2006 13:28:22 GMT

Here are some pictures I took last night at Awakening in Reading:

The rest are here : Clicky

...

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:45:52 GMT

I really must post on here more often! Work seems to drain of the will to create anything at the moment.

Just when I think I'm about to formulate something to sa....
<beeeeeeeeeep>

"Sorry about the interruption, normal programming will now be resumed"

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 23:13:15 GMT

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		60%
Spider-Man		60%
The Flash		55%
Green Lantern		50%
Robin		50%
Batman		50%
Supergirl		47%
Catwoman		45%
Iron Man		40%
Hulk		40%
Wonder Woman		27%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Hmmm...

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 20:13:57 GMT

A bit of a mixed performance from Reading today. Good first half, slightly shaky second half. Not a bad result for what was in essence a second team against a nearly full strength Birmingham side from the Premiership.

It was absolutely freezing in the MadStad this afternoon, I spent most of the game shivering... I wish I'd put on a thicker coat!

Back to the league on Tuesday against Norwich at home, I hope we can extend the league unbeaten run to 30 games.

Promotion is ours to lose now, lets not blow it!

Come on U RZZZZ!!

A Pic

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:16:07 GMT

I was playing with the settings on the camera, and managed this one.

I'll get some better ones soon!

New toys!

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 20:53:23 GMT

I finally managed to get my new toy today and its very shiny... a rather nice Canon EOS 350D!

Now all I've got to do is learn how to use it properly!

I'll post pictures when I've taken some good ones.

Whales...

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:21:54 GMT

... up the Thames...

How on earth did they mistake the effluent laden stream as a good place to be? Beats me!