»12th November 2005

Week Seven

Things that have been fucking me insane this week

Public Transport: The 87A to Morley is slow as shit and didn't help me get to my guitar lesson on time. It goes through Chav-Mecca, or Middleton. I hate that place. Arriva Buses have changed their timetables again, the 219 has now resumed the route it took before the last unnecessary timetable change. This both shows Arriva's failure to improve their own bus service and gives the lazy-ass bus drivers another excuse to run late or skip services entirely. Plus they charge £1.90 peak fare for their poorly timetabled, perpetually late and wholly unreliable service.


Steam: Despite me making sure all my Steam games were fully up to date before moving back to Leeds, I discovered today that Half Life 2, despite being to my knowledge fully installed, has only 75% of the game files on the hard disk. Now either the latest patch for Half Life 2 adds 25% more game content or Steam is being a shit head again. I'll let you decide.


Cash Flow: Things aren't looking good. Park Lane are still doing a great job of fleecing me.


Leeds: The legions of the damned are gathering force, their great assault on the fair realm of West Yorkshire draws near. Fear the crowds of loitering lost souls, dettermined to get in your way, try to sell you Big Issues and behave in a generally inconvenient way!


LT5's Heatsink: It's got a spring which is a fucking bitch to pry off. On Thursday I was getting concerned that there was a dust build up in the PC again and so thought a good clean was in order. I was getting very worried when I found that the only way to get the heatsink off the processor was to push down on it with a heavy pair of pliers and a pair of scissors. The number of times my grip on the heatsink slipped sending heavy pliers slamming against the mother-board was quite distressing. Quite why such a strong spring is needed to hold the fan down is beyond me. There is literally no way to get it off without putting quite a lot of pressure on the delicate processor beneath.


Leeds Student Newspaper: Firstly, Leeds Student Newspaper has such poor editors that a typo found its way onto the front page headline of one of this week's issues. Further typos and grammar errors were present throughout the over-opinionated and self important paper and I found myself despairing at just how amateurish the whole thing is. Secondly, I was filled with rage after reading about the row between the Palestinian Society and the Jewish Society, the rather confusingly named J-SOC (Japanese Society, anyone?). 'Exec' officers from the union stepped in to clamp down on the Palestinian's protest about the wall the Israeli government is building after someone from JSOC started complaining that it was 'inciting hatred'. This problem was followed up at the AGM (which is an opportunity for meddling bureaucrats-in-the-making can rant and rave to each-other about irrelevant 'issues') where the rift between JSOC and the Palestininan Society was worsened when someone tried to block someone else's motion on some wording of some document. What annoys me most about this is not that either society feels the need to blame the other for trying to put a downer on whatever pro-peace thing is going on next week, but that the Student Union is such a bulwark against free speech. The dispute between JSOC and the protesting Palestinian's was never going to rise above anything more than a 'heated debate', yet the Union in it's infinite cautiousness decided it best to shut the whole thing down when it became clear that there was some form of confrontation going on between people with strong views (the horror!). It's nice to see that free speech and open debate are things that the Union sees both as dangerous and undesirable when everyone could just shut the hell up and stew over their own resentment.


Fucking Brannigan: This isn't just about crisps! This is an important issue! Damn that damn smoky bacon. Crackerjack Blackjack thinks I don't know what sauce gets used? They've got another thing coming. From the makers of Mc.Coys? Somehow I doubt that is relevant.



Things that haven't been fucking me insane this week

Quake 4: The most fun I've had in a video game for quite a while.


Slayer - God Hates Us All: Its becoming the soundtrack to my weekly battle on fridays to navigate my way back to Heckmondwike via public transport in time for my piano lesson.




Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!