radiac.net

But I had to do something...

Tested Red Squirrel 0.65tr2 today. Which was fun.

Also got another email from barclaycard; in case I haven't mentioned it before, the credit limit on my barclaycard is pitifully low, so I've been trying everything to get it higher. Spending patterns - maxing it out every month and paying it off immediately, maxing it out and leaving it for months, paying it off and leaving it for months etc. That didnt work, so I tried contacting them. They told me to go to the 'Request new credit limit' section in the 'my account' part. I replied it wasnt there, and today, I got the following reply:

I am sorry to hear you cannot locate the section headed CREDIT LIMIT

Yes, that's because it isn't there.

it is there

No, no it's not. *sigh* Think I'll ring them again; hopefully this time they'll be more helpful than telling me to go into my nearest barclays bank and pay it off halfway through the month...

And this has a rather 'wag the dog' feel about it... Still, nice to see some positive news for a change.

Awww, young love. Brings a tear to the eye :)

I've just received in the post a Netgear WG602, wireless network access point. Trying to get it to work on a pocket pc is a bitch. So I thought 'Hey, I'll try making it work on my laptop'.

My laptop is running Windows 98.

You have changed your ip address. In order for these changes to take effect, you must reboot your computer. Would you like to reboot your computer now?

*sigh*

You have plugged in a network card. In order for these changes to take effect, you must reboot your computer. Would you like to reboot your computer now?

It's taking a while to get going, so I thought I'd make a diary entry.

You have put a floppy disk in the drive. In order for these changes to take effect, you must reboot your computer. Would you like to reboot your computer now?

I'm having a really fun holiday. Couple of days ago, Elfie kindly opened a bill that had arrived for me, and rang me up asking me why we were getting a bill for gas going back to august last year, and had I not paid the bills which I had collected the money for, and what the hell is going on. I explained that the gas company is incompetant, and told her to forward my mail on to me, and I would deal with it. Oh yeah, in case I haven't mentioned it before, paying the bills for the bath flat has fallen to me.

You have loaded Microsoft Windows. In order for these changes to take effect, you must reboot your computer. Would you like to reboot your computer now?

So I rang the gas company, and told them that they are incompetent. See, the problem is that they had been billing me as 'The Occupier', despite me filling out whatever forms they told me to. So I paid the bills. Then I had an extremely large phone bill, so I rang up to check. At which point, they decided to change the account name. And of course, since Richard Terry hasn't paid any bills, I get all the bills since when I moved in. I explained all this to the woman today, and she said 'oh, uhhhhhh ok please hold', and then went away for a while. Quite a while. She returned and said 'oh, well, ok, you'll need to send proof of payment to us'. I was like 'um, well, don't you have that?'. Like I said, incompetent.

You have moved the mouse. In order for these changes to take effect, you must reboot your computer. Would you like to reboot your computer now?

Wonder who's going to be in the pub tonight.

Went to the pub tonight, and Tomris gave me my birthday present! Apparently she bought this for me last year, forgot to give it to me, and then it got given away by accident to someone else at Christmas. So she bought it for me again this year :)

Isn't it beautifully wrapped? ;)



It's a cow!



It makes toasted sandwiches, and moos when you press the nose :) Fantastic!

I forgot to go to bed. Sun's coming up.

I'm ready for a night of working.

I've just been to the pub. Had a fair amount to drink, and became intoxicated. To a level where I would feel unsafe driving. Actually, to a level where I would feel unsafe talking to people (I havent drunk for a while, I'm a lightweight :p).

Anyway, I'm back home now, and I found that just as i wanted to start coding on some of my coursework (check my diary in a few months for a URL), i was sobering up.

So i went downstairs and raided my smirnoff ice stash (it had survived for quite some time), and I found some stuff I had forgotten; over the past year or so, friends etc have given me SI and stuff as presents. I found a lot, including a very large bottle of 1664, and 5 smirnoff ices. I now have these 6 articles in my room.

So I have downed 2 of the SIs, and am working my way through the rest making turbos. It is fun. This should keep me going through to at least mid day tomorrow ;) Then I shall make a start on the rest of my stash :)

Oh, and by the way, the Chemical Brothers tracks 'Music: Response' and 'Under The Influence' (this one especially - play it, and play it LOUD) are very very very good. This may be partly due to the alcohol, but I swear it's good :)

I'm drunk now

So I went onto play (they're not paying me, but they should), and bought myself some CDs. They'll arrive on Wednesday or so, and they'll be a complete surprise; a present to myself, if you will. God knows I deserve it ;)

Oh man I need to pee :p

Perhaps the cobwebs on the 1664 should have given me a hint as to how long it had been sitting there...

I started work on my fleet of starships, ready to repell the borg invasion.

My god I'm bored.

The holiday courses started again; I'm teaching mornings this week, and we're 1/4 of the way through day 3 (of 4). Nice bunch this week.

I have a security pass this week, so that they know I'm not a child molester or abductor or something. Jared doesnt have one *immature giggle*. And he still sucks at quake 2...

Not an all-time record breaker (because that is a pretty hard target to beat), but the bar has been set at 2 days, 1 hour and 17 minutes. I think we will see fierce competition later in the year...

Got home from teaching and found a couple of CDs had arrived from play. Didn't remember ordering them, but opened them anyway. Looks like I bought them on Saturday. Thank god I'm a lightweight.

Like I said earlier, we all love the war because of it's entertainment value. And let's be honest, it doesn't come much better than Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

Another CD just arrived :p

And I got onto the high scores for a game featured in the b3ta newsletter! Probably won't stay there long, so:

print "Location: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_769695.html";
exit;
}

I have, after days of trying, finally managed to get my pocket pc working on the internet with my wireless network. Fantastic.

*Smirk*

*Sigh* another week of teaching starts tomorrow... morning and afternoon :(

Guess I should also mention that Tristan has started a blog. I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that I started my diary on radiac.net back in May 2000, and before that I was running one for quite some time (a year or so?) on radiac.co.uk (unfortunately lost due to an ISP that used to be incompetent) - well before everyone else at school/uni/TR started! Mwhahahah! Achem. Hmm. These things are very important to me :p Hell, it was even before the term [we]blog sprang up, or at least before it came into common usage... This is why I have a diary, not a blog. It's a matter of principle. I am extremely resistant to change of any type, apart from the weather. Speaking of which, it's getting hotter. I was driving round today, and noticed that I had to open the window. This is good. Need new speakers for my car though, I've got two crappy manufacturer-supplied door panel ones. The Chemical Brothers don't like it :p

Well, I'd better get off to bed otherwise I won't wake up in time to teach the little people how to draw pictures.

Two new sets of children today (morning and afternoon). Am about to go off and pick up the afternoon lot, but a few in the morning lot are the spawn of the devil. Seriously, three or four of these kids are Satan's offspring.

One of the children on the morning course has the foulest bowels of anyone I have ever met.

The fact that so much stench could eminate from something so small amazes me. It also makes me feel violently sick.

Oh, did I mention that this room has no windows, and the corridor it opens onto has no windows, and the nearest window is behind 4 doors? And I have no door wedges? And that I have to sit in this damned room for another 3 and a half hours?

I just ordered me a new phone. 6310i.

It does bluetooth and GPRS.

Well, the holiday courses are over till the summer, and now I have to get on with my work.

But before I put this subject to bed, one of the kids doing computer art drew this picture:



Apparently, it's me.

Don't think he quite got my cheek bones...

Oh, and if you were wondering, apparently the green is snot. I asked.

Been programming a little bit recently. Silly courseworky things.

Anyway, since it's easter day, I thought I'd do some special easter diary post. But I have chocolate, so that's not going to happen.

But what I will do is tell you what I'm listening to; some remixes of popular tracks. Kylie Vs Ludacris, Nelly Vs Grange Hill, and A-Team (Mike Le Watt Remix). Fantastic.

Well... back to the chocolate :)

Well, after months of meetings and programming, we've finally finished our group coursework. You can see it here.

(And for those of you at bath who will understand, Mark's project is at ~cs2projo :))

Latest b3ta newsletter reminded me of this. Thought it was rather apt, so I'd stick it in here.

Spirited Away DVD arrived today :) Along with Fargo and The man who would be king.

I went to bed at 6AM. I woke up at 9.30 :)

Yay, now I have a wireless 802.11g NIC to go with my 802.11g WAP :)

Working nicely :)

First of all, O2.

A little while ago, I ordered a new phone. I ordered it from O2.

This was a mistake.

Two days after placing my order, I recieved an email saying something along the lines of 'There was an inconsistency with your billing details, we have not been able to process your order. If you know what's wrong, please place your order again.'

They didn't ring me to say there was a problem. They didn't ring me to ask if I would like to supply them with new details.

Instead, they told me to go back and place a new order. So I go back, log in, place my order. And it says 'You already have a tariff on this account! You will have to create a new account!'. So I left it for a couple of days. Then they deleted my account.

So I rang Orange and got them to move my phone from my mum's name into mine. 5 minutes on the phone, all sorted, and the tarriff's not that bad either. Have to ring up tomorrow sometime after 10am and ask them for a new phone. Of course, the down side to this is that my phone will probably be delivered here, and I'll have to come back to get it. Hohum.

Anyway, the uni sysadmins. Mmmyessss. We're running MySQL 3.22. Latest production release is 4.0.12, and even if they didnt want to run that because it's not mature enough, there's 3.23.56 out. This out-of-dateness causes problems. You can get round them easily enough once you notice, but there's the half an hour of quietly puzzling beforehand. And the hour or so of screaming while making little voodoo dolls. Same with PHP. And as for their web server and mail setup *shrug*. True, I could probably drop them an email and they'd do something about it, but it would take time, and I need to get it working now. Still, reassuring that they have jobs ;) If any of the uni sysadmins read this, please don't terminate my account, I'm sorry and I'm sure you have very good reasons for running software that's buggy and out of date.

Kobe just found something that utterly rocks.

I'm watching CBeebies

They were naming things in the studio that start with B; buttons, bracelets etc. I feel very immature after screaming a b word at the telly for the past minute.

Now I'm watching a show called Balamory. They keep saying 'What's the story in Balamory?' It's set in Scotland, has a poof in a kilt, beret and queen's english accent, who lives in a pink castle, wears a pink jumper and dances while singing, and a black guy who cycles round the village graffiting buildings. It has everything.

Oh, and my 6310i has arrived. Yay. And this is my 600th diary entry.

I checked my Barclaycard statement today, and noticed that O2 have taken £50 for my phone. Only they cancelled the order last week.

So I think 'Hmm, took them a week to reply to my e-mail about my PAC, I'd better ring them up and sort it out now', so I find the number and ring. 50p/minute. Although for the first half an hour, that isn't an issue, as at first it's engaged, and then when I eventually get through, it rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings. A nice lady answered and asked me some questions, and then told me that her system was down, so I'd have to e-mail them. Joy.

So I e-mailed them, and while I was in the ringing mood, I rang Barclaycard and told them to increase my limit. They said 'What would you like your limit to be?' I said '£1000', he said '850', I said '900', he said 'um, sir...'

On the plus side, my phone's all set up - it's got my ring tone, my operator logo and address book. Fantastic.

Kobe strikes again... finding quite possibly the most disturbing set of stories I have seen since that time when I was young and innocent and new to the internet, and thought that scat was what you said to animals and small children to make them run away. But then I found it worked on adults too. *shudder*

He apprises Jetta's lines with a keen eye. 'That is a well-groomed terrapin,' he says.

Aaaaanyway, I needed a haircut:


So I got one:


Don't I look sexy. Remember, ladies, I'm still single...

I'm back in Bath now.