Eriq’s Blag

Somehow I managed to completely forget to post anything for the last three days. After we got back from house sitting I attempted to play TFTwo only to find that we had literally run out of internets. I was unaware that our service was capped at twenty five gigs and I had managed to go over that. With four days left in the month, I had to pay five pounds for five more gigs. I did almost nothing yesterday as I had stayed up late the night before, but in the evening my dad and I went to see Surrogates which was a cross between Die Hard and I, Robot. It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t mind blowing. One thing to note is that no matter where you go, movie theaters suck. They overcharge you to watch ads that they are being payed to show you. I suppose they have to pay to show the movies, but fuck them. Then I stayed up late again watching Farscape. Again I got nothing done today. I got Trung Left 4 Dead and Garry’s Mod for his birthday and we played through a couple campaigns. When we tried to play GMod, he kept getting kicked from servers claiming he was logged in from another location, despite the fact he wasn’t. Hopefully that will fix itself because he can connect in TFTwo just fine. Now for more Farscape.

My mom got pissed because I was slow this morning and we only made it to the train with two minutes to spare. Whatever, we made it to Haddenham where the Tiggywinkle Animal Hospital is located. After finding her some decent coffee we walked from one end of the village to the other. The train apparently arrived after the village as it is at the periphery as opposed through or near the center. There were a number of attractive girls about my age volunteering at Tiggywinkles and one of them was kind enough to dig a hedgehog out it’s hay nest.

The Hedgehog is cute too.

There were also a lot of birds, mostly ducks, some tortoises and at least one rabbit. There were supposed to be a large number of badger, badger, badger, badgers, but they must have all been asleep as were the foxes. Afterward, we got lunch at an uninviting chips shop and took the train home. Mission successful .

I had my first day at Comm-Tech today. My first task was sorting through the massive amount of RAM modules that they have in an attempt to make some order of them. This wasn’t as tedious as it sounds. The only irritating part was that there were quite a few that didn’t give any clear indication what size they were. I also removed a couple hard drives from computers. This weekend we’re house sitting for that “uncle” I mentioned. Tomorrow we’re going to a place called…Tiggywinkles. It’s a wildlife hospital that has baby critters including hedgepigs. Unfortunately it requires that I get up early on a Saturday morning…urrrgggghhhh.

I’m starting to get lazy with these. I just don’t feel like going into extreme detail. Maybe that’s because I’m writing them late at night right before I go to bed.

My dad had a lunch meeting in Oxford today. I had to get up early so we could catch the train. We spent the day walking around the city. Saw a chalkboard Einstein had written on and the cameras of Lawrence of Arabia and Lewis Carroll. Then we ate lunch at the pub where J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis hung out together. Last we went to the natural history museum where there were a bunch of stuffed animals (the dead kind) and souvenirs explorers had brought back from their exploring. I have to get up early tomorrow because I have to go to work, bleh.

Phantom Shield

Shield Caption

Einstein's Chalkboard

Stayed up late watching Farscape. Slept late, watched some more.

I went in for an interview at Comm-Tech today. My dad gave me directions to the place and sent me off from Liverpool St. station. I like the Santa Cruz Metro better because they announce all the stops. So long as you know where you’re going, you know where to get off. I had no fucking clue how far the bus had gone or even what the stop would come up as. It didn’t come up, but thankfully other people were getting off there and I saw the stop letter. After walking through a residential area I came to the place marked on my map. The front doors were covered by metal grates, but inside it said Comm-Tech. They sat me down and asked some questions about what I had written on my application, trying to get an idea of what I know. It seems they felt I knew enough because I start a trial run this Friday. Getting home was much easier as the bus’ destination was Liverpool St. I’m seriously considering buying a bunch of EL wire and an old leather jacket and lighting it up.

I eventually got out of the house today and went to Maplin Electronics. I wanted to see what they had to offer in terms of tech toys and DIY parts. They have some LEDs that might be useful and some cool looking kits, but I’m still not sure what I want to make. I think it would be really awesome to make some sort of Daft Punk costume or outfit. Maybe a jacket with lots of embedded LEDs. Tomorrow I’m going to the office of the computer chop shop I might volunteer at to find out exactly what it is they do. Hope I don’t get lost.

Slept till five something. Spent a couple hours trying to clone my tablet’s OS. Failed. Got out of bed at seven.

While we were in the neighborhood we took a trip to Bath where the old Roman baths are. Before we went to the baths we ate lunch at the Huntsman, I found this relevant. The baths were indeed old except for the statues around the top, which were made by some guy in the Nineteenth Century. I opted to not take the audio tour because I’m really not a tourist and didn’t want some guy talking into my ear. Afterward we got ice cream and listened to a man playing the guitar and singing the chorus of One Love over and over. There were a lot of attractive girls walking around. This time the baby on the bus was very vocal. He was screaming in joy and sadness the entire threeish hours from Bristol to London. It should have been two hours, but we got caught behind two accidents and a diversion. Upon going through the tube gate a man that had walked up before us, but hadn’t gone through, squeezed through behind me. Hopefully that won’t affect me at all. He got into the same car as us and walked around looking suspicious. A few stops later he got off following some other people. He had pink shoes.

I went to bed at four and was woken up at eight on the dot by screaming children outside my room. The dining room is the next door over. After giving up on going back to sleep. I got up and went to breakfast. I made the mistake of saying I wanted tea. I don’t like tea. Then I noticed the orange juice. My mom said she’d be back later and we’d go to the camera obscura that overlooks the Avon Gorge, but that didn’t happen. I played TFTwo until Trung went to sleep. Then sat around for a while before looking for a towel so that I cold take a shower. I got in the shower and tried to close the door, but it decided to fall off its rail so I tried to put it back on, but it didn’t work. I ended up closing it and hoping it would fall on me. Then I sat around some more. Eventually, I went looking for my mom, who decided to come looking for me as well. We went to lunch at a cafe. I got a tuna melt and a ginger beer. Again, ginger ale is nothing like ginger beer. I came back to the hotel and started working on a model that I’ll likely never finish. Around six my mom came back we set out to meet my dad somewhere for dinner. That’s what I thought. Turns out we were meeting him at a reception after his conference. This put me in a foul mood because I didn’t want to stand around and wait for him; I had been working. We eventually got dinner at a posh restaurant called The Shed. The burger was meh, but the chips were good. Still pissed, we walked along the harbor to find some ships my mom wanted to see. We eventually found them. They weren’t all that exciting. Though the replica sailing ship was tooling around the harbor with people on it. On the way to catch the bus back a group of teenagers passed us. One of them attempted to engage me by saying he liked my glasses. Maybe that’s some English insult, maybe they were just stupid. I ignored them. I found out that Fringe is back, but to watch it on Huku I had to install an automatic proxy finder cause it’s only available in the US and the proxies I tried didn’t work. That’s something to look forward to.