This is not a good sign

Why must I take every little thing so seriously? The number of times I've caught myself and told myself to lighten up, relax and enjoy life has been growing recently. I think there's something that I'm missing that's causing this. It's either going out regularly or my laptop. I think it's the latter. Apparently I need stupid kitten photos to relax.

So many plans...

So little time (and money).

I've been tempted to get back into the time and money sucking hobby that is Warhammer. I wouldn't mind having a few models around to paint as something different, but I don't know how much commitment I could make to building a whole new army.

I've also got to get back into gyming. It's taken a hit over the last few weeks with the move and all. I've also discoved that Kilburn Gaels hurling club train about 2 miles from the flat which would definitely make joining up with them appealing. Of course there's a (Gaelic) football club that trains in Finsbury Park (about 1.5 miles away) too, but that's football and the club is also called Éire Óg so that'd be a bit weird.  We'll see. I'll have to get back into shape and be able to run again before I could go into training anyway.

Which brings me to the last plan, I need to go see a doctor. There's nothing wrong, I just want a check up and I'd like there to be a doctor in this country with my medical records... That's number one on the list at the moment.

The Riots

I get this bad feeling that Holloway might kick off tonight.

I experienced a genuine fear that I haven't felt in a long time on my way home from work. Just at the top of Parkhurst Rd near Holloway Rd, there were a few guys hanging around; mid 20s, black, hoods up. One in particular was very large and had a bandanna covering his face so that you could only see his eyes. When those eyes turned to me, I felt a long, cold chill go down my spine.

Nothing happened there though, and closer to home I found a couple of cops hanging around. That made me feel a lot better. Hopefully this madness will end soon.

One year.

Living in London 369 days.
At the job 364 days.
Was in the old flat for 360 days.

So much and so little has changed in that time.
Hopefully all for the better.

Almost exactly one year after me, my brother is also fleeing the nest for a job somewhere foreign, with no idea how it'll work out, leaving a new girlfriend behind. The parallels are eerie.

Annoyance

Sometimes I wish I had my to-do list stapled on to my forward so it was dangling in front of my eyes constantly. Then I'd be more likely to actually do the things on it.

IT LIVES!

I've had some problems with the laptop of late.

There was something wrong with some temporary files that caused the C drive to fill up. Then the laptop crashed via the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). I went to start it back up, crashed during start up that time. Booted it up again and it went into Start-Up Repair mode (as expected). It tried to solve a problem, but couldn't. Not a problem I thought, I have an image of the C drive backed up on my external hard drive. I'd lose most of my installed programs, but that's not a problem. I tried to restore from that image file. Things were going well until the laptop crashed again during the recovery. As it was in the process of essentially deleting and reinstalling Windows files, there are now some serious problems with the laptop and it won't ever let me get to the point where I can try to restore from my external again. 

No problem I thought, I have one month left on my warranty. I'll just take it down to the shop and they'll fix it. I went down to Tottenham Court Rd. The shop was shut. Like closed. Gone. Extinct. Bugger. I thought it'd be ok; Toshiba should still honour the warranty. I rang them that night to be told that their warranty only covers the hardware and as this was a software problem, I was on my own. Well not quite, they offered to pass my through to their Virgin Digital Help who would help me repair my laptop for a £50 fee. Grudgingly, I agreed.

Forty-five minutes, two escalations and lots of restarting later,  the technicians there admitted they couldn't help me. They advised me that I should get a CD version of Windows 7 and boot up the laptop using that rather than using the hard drive. As I had spent the time they wasted reading the laptop's manual in detail, I had already come to that conclusion myself. So I'm now hunting for a copy of Windows 7 Home edition to use for the repair. No-one in work has one and my sister's leads are coming up cold. The disks are expensive so I preferred not to spend money on them. 

The next idea I had was to use someone else's computer to torrent and burn the necessary disks. I cycled five miles to the Old Kent Road in the pouring rain, and slept on a couch while waiting for the 3GB installation disk to download. I burned it and put it into the laptop.... Nothing. I shouldn't have been surprised; the CD drive had been having problems of its own of late too. I had nothing to do but cycle back home. Again I was a victim of pathetic fallacy as the heavens opened up and I got drenched on my return.

So this Monday, I did the the unthinkable. I gave up. I had reached the point where I realised that proper professional help was needed. I dropped the laptop off to a repair shop, got a quote and returned a couple of days later. It's working now, but it'd have been much more satisfying had I fixed it myself. Oh well. I tried, valiantly. Plus, there's always that CD drive still to fix... I think I'll let Toshiba and my (hopefully still valid) warranty handle that.

Deliverance

Soon... soon... soon my laptop will be returned to me. Unfortunately the CD drive isn't working so well so it looks like Toshiba's warranty will be used after all.

A little thing I love

The UK-Ireland common travel area. Ain't nothing like by-passing the sunburned hoards coming back from Spain.

The Hardest Part

Back in London after a Christmas at home. It wasn't just Christmas; it was over two weeks off. Woo! Although right now, it doesn't feel so good. After being around people and around my family for so long, I'm feeling living on my own for one of the first times. I know it'll wear out after a week or so, but for now it sucks. I do miss being around people, but coming home to an empty flat after work has its own benefits. In a little while I'll be fine; I keep telling myself that.