2004-12-30

Finding old Friends

I was thinking about my old friend "aifos" from Sweden who used to post on the ol' IRC #caribchat forum and eventually visited some of the Cave Hill crew back at UWI. Trying to locate her wherabouts. Wonder how far I can get. Her e-mail addy I can still get but don't know how active it is. Maybe I should take on the adventure and fly to Sweden and search. People would think I'm a CIA agent or something, I wager, but heck. Sofia B., if you stumble upon this, drop me a line okay?

In the news, well that earthquake and subsequent tsunami... incredible. Damage beyond belief. Over 80,000 lives lost, from Indonesia to Thailand to Bangladesh to Sri Lanka to India to even Somalia? Tragic. I'll be making a donation to the International Red Cross to try to help out. I can't come up with words to describe what the tragedy means or how fortunate many of us are in that we don't deal with poverty and the like.

2004-12-23

The police are gonna be busy - we hope

We have some Evel Kinivel wannabes out here. This deliquent this evening decides that he wants to play Moto Racer on our roads, passing cars around corners and whatnot, forcing vehicles to slow down suddenly and whatnot. 989 AE, you're Booked, and hopefully the Police will follow suit quickly before someone gets hurt by the madness.

Weird thing happened the other evening when I was on my way home. There was this car that was stopped in the road holding up traffic. The other way was clear so I overtook the small line, curious to know why the car had stopped. I saw ahead this bike and as I caught up, I could see what appeared to be a small dog running ahead of it. I got to admit, this dog, and it was like the size of a large cat at best, was tearing down the road, and staying in the lane - I can't say the same for some of the motorists out here!

The passenger on the bike seemed to be trying to get the dog to slow down but it was to no avail - eventually the rider tried to hem the dog in by pulling alongside it, but then the dog made an abrupt right turn and fled up another road to the right. I'm assuming that what happened was that the dog somehow had jumped out of the window of the car or something, and the people on the bike were attempting to stop it from running off. It was odd. I'm hoping that the dog was only heading home, and that the car drivers found the little one safe and sound. I think I'll make a few inquiries tomorrow to see if anything became of it.

2004-12-21

Yet another driver risking it all

Yes, I feel that during this time of year, I'm going to find myself ticked off at the driving populace in general multiple times during the day, and I'm unapolegetic for it.

I was right behind this car, you know the type, with one of those kooky customized licence plates (congrats to the Government for taking advantage of Bermudians' vanity - and that's another topic altogether), it was something like K8R2U or K8R4U - I was too busy shaking my head at the silliness of the driver's action to pay the detailed attention I usually do to these situations - but the driver failed to recognize that the green light was only a green arrow pointing left, so you can go if and only if (what's that computer term, "iff", right?) you're turning left. If you're turning right, you still need to wait because there's a green light for traffic coming from the other junction to continue along their path. Luckily, there was none and the driver continued his or her merry way along. I could theorize that the driver took the chance on purpose as they didn't see the traffic.

Cameras at traffic lights, please!

2004-12-19

The Annual Birthday Speech

I have managed to survive for another year. Still on the rapidly ascending (descending?) road to Thirty.

As has been the norm for the past six or seven years, whenever my birthday approaches I hear that ticking sound in my head - as if my biological clock gets louder every time or something. I think it's something to do with that. Again, at this time I think about the things that I thought I'd be well on my way to achieving - house, car, wife, family. Those things are still specks on the horizon for me, I think, but I think I'm a little closer to them. Besides, I still have a job at least right?

I'm a step closer to biting the proverbial bullet and buying a new PC before I delve deeper into Upgrade Hell.Vendors in Bermuda put large mark-ups on PCs and PC equipment here but it's not yet worth the hassle of going abroad and bringing one back from the US or Canada - and I can't be bothered to deal with Customs hassle with online ordering just yet.

Survivor has ended (satisfactory), the Apprentice has ended (not quite as satisfactory), and The Amazing Race is in full swing (although with a batch of hateful characters already). Not much else on TV so heck.

2004-12-17

Another quick traffic rant

Driver of car #36879, you are Booked for the simple reason that a turn-signal is not that hard to perform, plus it is the law, even if it is 9:00 pm.

And just so that it doesn't seem that it's only the drivers who are terrible on the road, I have to say that there are some people who while walking seem to think that the road is their red carpet or something. I see people walk across the road while the light is green, with the sure confidence that the vehicles will slam brakes (risking their own health and that of fellow drivers behind them) in order not to hit them.

This is the worst time to be working in town. School lets out this week so what this means is that from today and lasting the next couple of weeks, town will be overloaded with holiday shoppers, teenagers milling about and lines of cars, bikes and trucks. Considering I still have a bit of holiday shopping to do, I am so not looking forward to the next few workdays.

I'm convincing myself to get a new PC. There's a vendor here offering something for under $900 but I'd like a processor upgrade of it - the vendor is recommending instead I go for a higher model which would set me back $1400 instead. Arrrgh, I hate spending so much money - yep it's somewhat of a character fault in certain instances, on the plus side of course I'm not in debt to anyone :-) I think I'm going to do it though, and then end up cursing myelf for the first few weeks then forget about it when I'm able to do what I like with my new gadget.

2004-12-13

Install cameras at street junctions

For blatantly running a red light, bike 734 AD, you are Booked. And I don't care that it was 8pm and there was little traffic in the area.

Just another reason why they need to install cameras in town - these traffic law violations are dangerous. And yes I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but sheesh. It wasn't even close.

Anyway life is okay. Computer is okay. FIFA 2005 won't run on it though. Keeps crashing. Sigh.

2004-12-07

They've stated decorating our office

More on the Yuletide goings-on later. Anyway.

I may now need to get a new power supply unit for my PC. The power light keeps flashing on, and I've got a workaround in place that disables power management (ie system going on standby). Maybe there's a leak or something. I dunno. Sigh. Will try to install new games this week I think.

My ISP finally cut my dial-up rates, now I'm supposed to be paying only 25 bucks a month and now it's unlimited. Yay, I suppose. DSL still requires buying an expensive modem from the telephone company. Bleh.

Comp Ops had their annual Christmas dinner the other day, pictures are somewhere on Mitch's website. I'm somewhere in there, I think. Was a decent night out.

Plus, from that, I realized that everybody now has a digital camera. Maybe I can add a new camera to my Christmas wish list, not like I keep wish lists around, mind you. I'm not too fond of people asking me "what do you want for your birthday or Christmas". Just icks me out a bit these days, I imagine. Maybe I need to have kids to appreciate it or something.

Honestly, I'm not bothered at all about receiving gifts. But I think I'll be doing a fair bit of shopping the next couple of weeks for people. I don't mind that too much, except for the rush in the stores. Luckily the Web is my friend.

2004-12-01

Adventures with my PC

As December rolls in...

My sister bought me a couple of sports games for my PC (thanks sis), but I realized that the hard disk requirements were well over 1 GB. With only like 700 MB to spare on my measly 12 GB hard drive, I decided to buy a new hard drive that would eventually become my primary drive. So I get this nice 80 GB drive and feel good - all I need to do is study up on the art of partitioning.

Problem, my BIOS was dated and couldn't recognize the large hard drive. So I ordered a BIOS upgrade from the BIOS manufacturer - pretty easily, mind you. Download and install was okay.

After partitioning my new hard drive, I'm unable to get too far because sometime after I boot to Windows and am apparently all right, the system hangs. The power light goes into a rapid flashing state. I think it has to do with the system thinking that it's in standby mode. So I'll have to figure out how to beat that.

Meanwhile, I already know the step that I'll have to take afterwards: my processor speed is only 500 MHz. Potentially, I'll need to upgrade my video card as well. Kevin S is correct - I should just get a new PC already. Heh.