2005 December | Boardmad

Dec
28
2005

Just like the buses…nothing for a week then two come long together !

Things to make happen in 2006:

#1: Be around for Z & M as much as possible.
Finish all the little snagging jobs around the house before starting anything else !
Try and surf more [hard as I'm at work all day and it doesn't always come up when I'm at home ?!]
Motivate myself to work in the garden more. *sigh*
Get a new job.
Keep biking into work and training hard
Bring "b ‘06" online with all the bells and whistles [blogging so I can do away with this, webmail, integrated RSS feeds, galleries of The Minx]

That’s enough for now I think.

Written by Scott Brown in: Musings |

Dec
28
2005

Nose to the grindstone…

Burbling away between holidays over the Xmas and New Year break today…The other guy in my team that does the same role as me has worked between holidays for the last couple of years (mainly cos he was contracting at the time…but anyways) so I agreed it was his turn for some time off.

Bit of a disaster on the way into work this morning…it was raining last night, then hailing, then at some point in the wee sma’ hours damn me it froze solid ! And it would appear that gritting services in East Lothian weren’t on the ball as I had a verrry tentative slippy and slidy drive to the train station…turned up late and missed the train so had to drive into town !?

The Minx had her first experience of Xmas which was quite good fun, but unfortunately all three of us had picked up coffs and colds a little earlier in the week meaning we were fu#ked come Xmas morning. M had been waking every few hours coughing and crying, and we were little better but there’s nothing like a good flu’ey cold and cough combined with sleep deprivation to make Xmas dinner go with a bang !? We were all in bed by 8pm on the 25th ?!?

Things are getting a little better though…M’s sleeping is getting back on track as her cough abates and Zo’s catching up on the zzzzz’s whereever possible.

Got the single nicest present ever though…a little A6-sized leather bound wallet with space for about 20 pics…"Daddy’s Boasting Book" and Zo had already put in about 7 or 8 piccies for me….there…finish on a positive note.

Written by Scott Brown in: At Work ! |

Dec
20
2005

Talking about Intelligent Design…my @rse !

Quote

Intelligent Design…my @rse !
This little snippet caught my eye…Once I’d wiped the screen down and lowered my voice from the raving levels it had reached while reading, I settled down to try and understand some of the implications of ‘ID’ and it’s propagation as an alternative to Evolutionary theory.

Wooohooooo !??! There MAY be some hope for our cousins across the pond…following my recent rant about the teaching of Intelligent (sic!) Design in Schools in a state in the US, Pennsylvania has (rightly in my opinion) banned it as effectively teaching creationism - ergo - teaching religion…which incase you weren’t aware is illegal in the states….

Oh man…you can get an full auto assault weapon and buy rounds by the 1000 like you or I would pop out and buy a pint of milk but they don’t teach religion. Snort…

Written by Scott Brown in: Rants, WWW (Weird & Wonderful Web) |

Dec
20
2005

Back in the smoke…

Travelling to London with my team from work tomorrow for a slap-up binge at Mrs. Miggin’s pie shoppe. Well…ok..not really ! We’re off to London for our Head office team Xmas lunch with a number of the high-heid yins from Lahndahn tahn mate…innit etc. Early early collection by taxi chez Broon before a a quick flight into City airport and thence to the Bank’s HQ in the City.

I think I’ve a couple of meetings before lunch *sigh* and will no doubt be attempting to damp down the flames rising around us following some new and contentious changes I released into our application yesterday morning…still if it was easy everyone would be doing this cr@p !

On a lighter note this afternoon I applied for a new job ! Bit of a departure for me as it’s not directly hands-on coding. It’s what’s called in our organisation a "business partner" (please feel free to visualise David Brent doing the universal sign language for "double quotes" and then gag !). It looks rather an interesting challenge working in HR as a focal point for all things web/intranet/internet related…I’m fine on the facing off to the business side of things, and technical…well…I’m ok ! Slight gap in the skillset is the old HR experience.

Still…have taken the plunge and we’ll have to wait and see whether my other abilities offset this shortcoming ?

[#Newsflash# me old mate and his bruvver me and the missus spent years trekking all over Europe 'boarding together are going to be out and about a looking for trouble (ie me !) tomorrow night after work. Get f#ckin' in - haven't seen the brothers' Harris in bloody years ?!??!? This is shaping up to be a DAMN good Holiday season ! ]

l8rs

Written by Scott Brown in: Travel |

Dec
18
2005

Cool records…or perhaps not !

Following JustLisa’s recent blog on first records etc…I thought I’d share ?!

First record i remember listening to on my Dad’s stereo:

Puff the magic dragon with Pinky and perky on b-side singing The Bicycle Song

First album bought:

Raiders of the Pop Charts (double album) bought with Boots Xmas vouchers accompanied by my Mum…

ergo I am not cool and is it any wonder I am as I am now ?!?!?!? Oh crap I just remembered another childhood flashback…driving North to Aberdeen to visit family in my old Granny’s mustard yellow Austin (?) Allegro listening to Jimmy fuckin’ Shand (yes that IS his middle name in Scotland - it’s official) and the Alexander Brothers on 8 track…I ask you ?

And in closing I passed grading this afternoon at Karate am now fully fledged 1st Kyu (starts at 9th kyu and works down until 1st Dan Black belt then goes back up - go figure !)…happily now with an 18 month break before getting to grade to Black Belt…I need the practice !?!??

l8rs

Written by Scott Brown in: Computers and Internet |

Dec
15
2005

Holy XBox Fiasco…the saga continues !

Following on from my earlier blog about the unfeasible prices some arses are willing to pay for a second-rate PC to sit under their telly [it's too dark on a standard TV to play the new Ubisoft King Kong publication...RoFLMAO]

This article has been reported on theRegister…a relatively simple social engineering trick based on the fact that most folks will read what they want into the advert instead of reading all the way to the bottom of the ad and realising that the auction was actually for a PICTURE of an XBox not the XBox itself ?!?

I just have this vision of someone whooping in delight at winning the auction, paying into the PayPal account then getting in the post a week later, the picture and a polite thankyou …

Written by Scott Brown in: Computers and Internet |

Dec
04
2005

BF2

I love this game…the game play is incredible, graphically it looks stunning and…well…I’ve always loved playing soldiers. Used to spend far too much time paintballing when I worked in London !?

But…and this is the kicker. The latest patch for the game has been released…all 280Mb of it and it is a piggin’ nightmare to get the patch to take !? This will be my third day trying to get the buggering patch downloaded cleanly and the checksums to match before applying the patches to the game.

It really ought not to be this difficult surely…and if it IS this difficult why are the game manufacturers not going back to the drawing board and getting it right ? The forums are rife with solutions and none of them have worked for me yet…looks like I’m just going to have to use the force ?!

Written by Scott Brown in: Games |

Dec
02
2005

Holy XBox Inflation

Just scooting about the BBC site and found a link in the article to eBay. Wandered over there and found to my amazement that some mook had just paid £1550.01 for a brand new xBox (the one with the headset and hard drive etc)…I make that a 553.6% markup. Holy crap some people just have NO sense whatsoever !?

M$ have (as has been widely reported elsewhere) rushed this product through QC and are miles behind on market supply, just in order to beat their competitors to market & for the Xmas market…Just makes me think…I’ve got the ‘old’ XBox sitting under my telly and the last time we had it on was about a month ago ! Wonder what they are changing hands for on eBay [googles...] Yup £66 ?!?!

I can’t help feeling we are getting a sh#tty deal here and that M$ are just slipping in a poorly specified PC in sexy clothes under your telly with a flaky and untested OS…I personally would MUCH rather have a quiet, powerful ‘proper’ PC under my telly on which I can store my photos, music, videos, download and watch telly through a TV decoder card, surf the interweb, read my email…oh and in addition play PC games on as well ?!?!

Now before someone mentions the price (£1000-ish) I know it’s expensive but, I have all my games I want to play on it already, don’t need to buy any new XBox platform-specific ones. I can timeshift Freeview telly with a little work on it (Murdoch stick yer Sky+ up yer erse !), and all the stuff I mentioned above…whay haven’t M$ been upfront and just said that this is waht they want your XBox to truly become..and if they have and I missed the presentation…where’s the upgrades ? Oh sorry…i’ll be shipping with the XBox 360 SP1 ?!?!? RoMFALMAO…Xbox 360…no thanks !

Written by Scott Brown in: Entertainment |

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