October 2007

This weekend was a strange one for me. I had a few of the boys over on friday night for some drinking, and to have a session on the new Pro Evolution Soccer that came out that day. After many, many beers, three bottles of wine, and countless hours of PES I finally got to bed around 4am. The problem was I lay there for about an hour unable to get to sleep. I finally drifted off, but woke up a couple of hours later feeling exhausted, but unable to get back to sleep.

Saturday was a day of rest. I lay on the sofa watching episodes of the West Wing, and playing the xbox every now and again. One of my friends came around that evening, and we sat around watching Battlestar Gallactica until about 2am. After he left I put the clocks back, instead of leaving it to the morning, and went to bed. I lay there unable to sleep, but completely exhausted, and only managed to fall asleep at about 6am.

Yesterday was the same, I was awake until about 4am last night, and had to get up at 8am to come to work. I’m sitting here completely shattered, but with my brain working overtime. I have no idea what caused my recent bout of insomnia, but whatever it is, can it please go away for an evening so I can get a good night sleep.

I’m going to need a coffee or two today, which I know is just going to add to the problem, but I’m already lagging.

Damn insomnia.

{ 0 comments }

Last week my friend Claire, made her boyfriend and I Thai Green Curry for dinner. It was very tasty, but… well let’s say it was a little hot. When I say a little, I mean my lips were on fire, the sweat was pouring down my face, and I lost all sensation from the neck up. That may be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Distraught that she had nearly killed us, she decided that I had to go back to their place for dinner one night, so she could cook it again, this time making sure our tastebuds still functioned after the first bite, and the fork didn’t melt with the heat.

Tonight was that night.

I may never taste again…. no I joke. It was really, really nice.

It was still hot, but the good hot where you know your eating something spicy, but all the flavours are there and make you want to eat more. Added to the evening were a few beers, and one of my new bottles of wine, which was pretty damn good.

It’s always a pleasure, apart from the face melting first attempt, when Claire cooks. Of course the problem then becomes that I really should return the favour and cook for them one evening. Being an okay, but not great cook makes me a little nervous about doing it, but that shouldn’t stop me.

I just have to find something decent to make, and give it a few practice runs. Hopefully not poisoning anyone in the process. It also means we get to sample wine from their ever growing wine rack.

Happy Days.

{ 0 comments }

I wasn’t going to buy Leopard on it’s release this Friday. That’s not to say I wasn’t planning on buying it at all. As I’ve said before, I really want to get my hands on all the new techie goodness of it all. I just hadn’t intended on pre-ordering it, or buying it on the first weekend it was available.

“Why not?”, you may ask, if in fact you care.

My reasons were simply two fold. One: I may need to use my spare cash to pay off a few other bills I let slide because of the dental expense this month. Two: I was going to wait to see how it’s first week in the wild went. Basically let Apple do a weeks worth of troubleshooting on any issues that come up.

Did you notice that reason Two was in past tense?

I still think installing it on the first week may be a mistake, but I spent half an hour during my lunch break today watching the Leopard Guided Tour on the Apple website. Now I really want some of the new functionality of Leopard. Consequences be damned.

So what I’m contemplating is; buying it this weekend, making a complete backup of my current system to one of my external drives, and doing an install of Leopard halfway through next week. That way, any initial bug reports will be picked up over the weekend and, hopefully, quickly resolved.

So in an effort to make the process as smooth as possible, I intend on only reinstalling the main applications I use, and ignoring the rest, when I do a clean install. The Mac could do with a clean out, which is why I’m going to do a clean install and not an upgrade, even though it’s going to cause me more work.

I want there to be as few things as possible that could go wrong with the new installation, which means some of the little apps I have installed but don’t use everyday won’t make the cut. Plus it gives me the opportunity to see if anything native to Leopard can replace a few of the apps I use.

There are a few things that will be getting installed straight away. Things like Nisus, Ecto, NetNewsWire, TextExpander, and QuickSilver, are apps I use everyday and would struggle to get by without. So essentially, as long as they play nice with Leopard I should avoid any issues.

Now the only real question is whether I actually go and buy it or not. Decisions, decisions.

****

So are any of you Mac users with plans for upgrading this weekend? If you are, I’d love to hear how it goes.

{ 0 comments }

Fifteen minutes with Chris is a series of posts to get my blogging juices flowing. Eww. I have no idea what these posts are going to be about, in fact it could be complete nonsense. I just don’t know. So read on if you want, or wait until November when the posts will probably have specific topics again. – Chris

What a Weekend

Oh my liver hurts. I basically spent this weekend in two states, Drunk, and Hungover.

I had a few friends over from Madrid, and we all went out to catch up, have a few beers, and generally have a good time. Of course, after having a few beers over lunch, then a couple more after work before meeting them set the tone of the weekend. The quiet drink or two turned into a bit of a session that ended around 2am-ish.

I woke up late on Saturday with a sore head, and a great hunger. I’d forgotten to eat dinner again, but I’m sure I managed a snack at some point in the booze fueled evening. I stumbled through to the kitchen and threw together something to eat, but as hungry as I was, I really didn’t feel like eating.

Sitting in my living room, I fired up Rising Dead on the Xbox 360 for a spot of zombie killing to ease me into my day. I had plans that afternoon, to go to a friends place, and spend the day drinking beer and shooting the shit. I had a few hours to get myself together before I had to head out, and needed to let my body and my brain recover before I started kicking their ass again.

Sitting around my friends flat, we decided that the drink of the day was going to be bottles of Budweiser. For some reason, we decided that one of the shelves in his flat, was going to become a “Shelf of the Fallen”, and all of our empty bottles would go there. At last count there were over forty up there between us both, and that’s not including the cans of Tennents we didn’t feel should go up there.

I was going to ask for an official count on the Sunday, but I don’t really want to know.

My Sunday was essentially a non-event. I’d staggered home around 4am, and crashed for about five hours. I woke, feeling awful, and somehow managed to get back to sleep for a few more hours after drinking about a litre of water.

When I finally managed to drag myself out of bed, I realised I had no food in my house at all. It meant I was going to have to make a trip to the closest supermarket to get something. I hate to think how shocking I looked, but I made no effort to hide the hangover. After the trip to the supermarket, that lasted about fifteen minutes, I went home, lay on the sofa, and fired up the xbox again. I went through virtually every game I owned, never really getting into any of them and really making a mess of everything I tried.

In the end, I realised I had no hope of concentrating properly at anything, so instead I did a lot of web surfing looking for the new TV I’m going to buy. I managed to find one, but I may need to double check it tonight to make sure it is the one I really want, and then I get to play the Xbox in HD goodness.

I still file a bit dodgy today, but I’m getting better with every coffee. An early night is definitely something I’m going to have to consider in order to feel normal again.

Still it was a fun weekend. No doubt one similar is right around the corner.

{ 0 comments }

Fifteen minutes with Chris is a series of posts to get my blogging juices flowing. Eww. I have no idea what these posts are going to be about, in fact it could be complete nonsense. I just don’t know. So read on if you want, or wait until November when the posts will probably have specific topics again. – Chris

Bahamarama

There is a poker tournament based in the Bahamas starting on the 5th January that I really want to play in. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, or PCA, seems to me, to be the best possible way to start the new year. I wanted to play in the tournament last January, but never managed to qualify, and this time around I’m giving it my complete focus in an attempt to get there.

Thankfully, the wonderful people at PokerStars have made the qualification process a little more manageable for those of us on a limited bankroll. They recently started the Steps qualification route, whereby you play in 5 single table sit-n-gos of increasing value, and then a 2 table SNG. Essentially, you need to place in the top two of each SNG to progress to the next level. What makes it better are these SNG’s start at $7.50 which is just amazing. When you get through to round 6, you play a 2 table SNG where the top three places are given the $12,000 package that takes you to the PCA.

I’ve found myself playing these tournaments at every opportunity, and I’m currently sitting on a ticket to round three of the qualification path. I plan on using that ticket over the weekend, with the outcome being a step 4 ticket.

What’s good about these SNG’s is that even if you don’t manage the top 2 places, usually third, and sometimes fourth place finishes wins you a ticket to the same round. So you get to retry that step without having to buy back in. Suweet!

The one thing I’ve noticed with my play since I started attempting these, is that every time I go up a step I get a lot more excited, and much more cautious. I don’t want to make any stupid mistakes and get busted out in 9th place, because it means I’d have to start again from the beginning.

So the plan, if you can call it that, is to get through step three either Saturday or Sunday. Then depending on how I’m feeling I might give step 4 a bash the same day, or I might leave it till Monday or Tuesday. I’m hoping that I can go up a level every couple of days, and then next weekend I can play the round 6 two-table SNG that could send me to the Bahamas and away from the cold Scottish winter for a week.

Fingers crossed I’ll soon have some very cool news to report.

Technorati Tags: Poker, PokerStars, PCA

{ 0 comments }