Been a bit busy recently with all the start of year stuff (you know, coming out of hibernation and so on) so I have a fair bit to blog about.

First up, the holiday to Milton Keynes to see the other half’s family for Christmas. This was epic fun except I managed to catch a nasty head cold the first day there and subsequently spent the entire holiday suffering. One very nice thing that I always like about going to Milton Keynes however is getting cans of Jolt and/or Mountain Dew.

Second up, been doing a lot of short story intros – apparently its safe to call them “flash-fiction” pieces – but as soon as I have something actually completed Ill be uploading them!

Thirdly, been doing a lot more NFS recently while I wait for World Online to be unleashed. If you check my YouTube link (look to the right there!) you’ll see my attempts at breaking/setting records.

Lastly, Ive opened a small forum for the World Online community over at www.wogarage.com. Its still small but with next to no advertising its managed to get 20 members already in a week so Im pretty confident about it.

Anyway, a more detailed blog post to follow at a later date!

So, just got back into the office after a 2 week holiday (of which I had a nightmare cold for most of!) and found that my lovely Fiat-scotland.com coaster had its image defaced:

Hah bloody hah!

So, currently in the airport waiting to check in for a flight back to see Kaylieghs family. We’re very early however because of the kindness of a passer by!
We were walking up a long and lonesome road (tenacious d style) when a jeep pulled up next to us. The window went down and a man leant out asking if we were going to the airport.
Now, if this had been anywhere else in the world we would have of course declined but it was indeed a very long and lonesome road and it was just Jersey after all!
We hopped in and the man chatted away explaining that he was just on his way home – he wasn’t even going to the airport – but saw us and didn’t want us walking in the cold.

The Christmas spirit is not yet dead!

At the begining of the month, Andrew Collins at EA interviewed John Doyle, the Senior Producer for World Online, about his ambitious online project. After some discussion over at the NFS fora, I volunteered to transcribe the interview so it could be translated by other fans into different languages for the benefit of the non-English fans. Anyway, heres my finished product:

http://fasckira.com/nfs/wo_interview_transcript.pdf

It was bloody difficult to say the least! In parts, theres a lot of ahh-ing and um-ing going on, not to mention quite a few sentences that stopped midway and suddenly changed! All told it took about 3 hours to complete.

So it’s my first day off in ages but despite having plenty to do Im having a hard time getting the energy together to do anything constructive!

I blame the equally boring weather. Damn this weather, damn.

I just drifted out of green street it was bloody awesome! Cars had to get pushed out but the guy was like ‘if you think you can get enough speed up go for it’ – so I did! Think the punto side sliding round the corner cleared most the snow!

Jack ran round the corner into the office, desperately waving a cordless telephone and breathing heavily, to find his boss looming over him and grinning maniacally while holding a heavy ring binder.
Before Jack could cry out, the ring binder cracked down and sent a galaxy of stars into orbit around Jack’s head. With a slow almost cartoonish effect he folded up into a heap as his boss leapt over his prone form and darted back out the office. Jack collected himself and ran after him once more.
After a few more minutes of chasing, he eventually had his boss, Ricky, cornered in one end of the office, “Please, Ricky, you need to take this call!”. Outside the window behind Ricky the sun was shining through a clear sky and birds spiralled in the lovely breeze but inside the building the atmosphere was tense and stuffy.
With theatrical grace, Ricky raised his arms and crowed, “You cannot conference what you cannot see!” before casting his arms down sharply. A loud bang exploded into life and the room quickly filled up with smoke, blinding Jack’s vision with thick black clouds.
As Jack fanned the smoke away with his free hand he moved forward to find Ricky was no longer in the room but a quick look out the now open window showed him to be madly dashing towards his car in the distance.
With a sigh, Jack raised the phone back to his ear, “I’m sorry John, can we reschedule the conference call for later please?”

For those of you who haven’t already been passed it via email or read about it on one of the many sites this link has appeared on:

http://lilysussman.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/im-sorry-but-we-blew-up-your-laptop-welcome-to-israel/

Essentially, for those who tl;dr it, a lady went to Israel and got stopped by the border patrol police who then, after heavy questioning, decided to fire 3 shots into her Mac laptop under the belief that it may have been a bomb. To the rest of the civilised world we are all well aware that this isn’t exactly normal practice – even if it was a bomb, firing 3 shots into it is certainly not the way to establish whether it will go bang or not.

However, reading through the comments its interesting to see the different points of view. 90% agree that its retarded, 10% believe that the border patrol acted perfectly rationally. I posted a response to one such idiot and instantly realised how stupid I was being – if these people think shooting laptops will solve problems, what chance do I have of convincing him otherwise? Even if there was a bomb inside the laptop, firing 3 bullets at random isn’t a surefire way to detonate it!

Anyway, the blogger is still travelling through Israel and promises to update with her compensation claim on the laptop and anymore run its with the might of Israel.

A quick test post to see if my twitter link up thing works. If it doesnt first time, Im giving up (for serious).

Rebuilding an ISA server on a DL140 G3 – thank you very much Alexis for having created a packaged win2k3 iso with all the drivers and the license key preloaded, it’s made my morning a lot smoother!