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.

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.

I forgot to write something last night because I had to get up early to catch a coach to Bristol. No big loss, I didn’t do anything noteworthy. Today I woke up feeling shitty from not enough sleep. Got ready to go. Took the tube to Victoria Station (every time reminds me of the Tommy song). Walked to the coach station. Got some ice cream and waited for the coach. Sat on a cramped coach for two hours with my ass asleep and a twenty-something talking audibly on the phone the entire way (got some pointers for my accent). Caught a cab to the Bed and Breakfast where we are staying. Got my own room, but the wireless doesn’t work. Had to get a power line adapter. Went out for walk. We went to a cafe. Got lip and a shitty muffin. Then went to look at a suspension bridge from the eighteen hundreds. We passed where a funicular had been, but was now bricked up. I scraped myself trying to throw money into a donations bucket. The fifty pence went too far. It was a bridge alright. On the way back on the other side we saw some people on a metal overlook sticking out of the side of one of the gorge walls. Turned out to be the exit to a somewhat disappointing cave which one had to pay to enter. I’ve seen better and I did not trust the balcony. Got some more ice cream when we came back up. On the walk home we discussed how one goes about finding hedgehogs. I saw a squirrel. Walked back into town to find a place to eat. Smelled something good. Weren’t sure, but figured it must have been the Indian restaurant we passed. Either way it was good. Continued to walk along the high street. My mom kept stopping. Got back and found a cute girl and her parents waiting for the proprietress. Was worried I’d have to try and play TFTwo on my lap. Realized I could move the set of drawers. Played for a while till Trung and Sofa left. Watched Farscape until three in the morning.

I woke up at eight or something and figure I should get up. My mom wanted to take me to the larger super market she found. Guess what, I didn’t. When I finally got up and finished my shower. My dad’s colleague had come over and they decided to try the food at a pub around the corner. I got a Chicken BLT…without the LT. It was ok, the potato wedges were better. The fudge cake was so so. Next we walked over to Waitrose which reminded me of the Tesco back in Lewis with it’s little cafe on the side, but wasn’t quite as big. I found a cheap bottle of sparkling water and a five pack of Cadbury’s Curly Wirly’s. I later ate them all on one sitting. When we got back my dad told us that he had found a guy at  Spitalfields flea market selling fur hats with Soviet insignia. I had wanted to change into my shorts and cool down after the walk back lugging heavy bags, but I wanted that hat. In short, it was exactly what I wanted: sturdy construction that will let me wear it when it gets cold and a red and gold star insignia. Twenty pounds, maybe a bit expensive, but it’s a sweet hat (Trung pointed out that Fran has the same one, oh well). Then my parents left to go see a play and I suggested to Trung (who was up surprisingly early) that we the Half-Life Two mod Synergy. Unfortunately his computer’s IP keeps changing which means he has to forward the port each time. I tried to fix this, but forgot about the DNS server the first time so he logged off due to loss of internet, goo thing he has a laptop. We eventually got it working and finished the map we had been playing. It had a rather unimpressive ending. We didn’t know what other maps we could play so we gave up and went to TFTwo. At first it was a bit slow. Then it picked up and I got seventeen points in one life as a spy; a new record.  We didn’t do too bad, but out team lost that game. The next game was very different. Trung recently stopped caring about team stacking (known good players banding together on the same team and dominating) seeing as people have started to follow us onto teams. We were happily slaughtering the other team when one of them decided to complain. He said that a number of us (including the “SED fags”) always teamstacked. Now, this obviously is a little offensive. So we asked him why he thought that. He didn’t make a very compelling argument as we told him that, in fact, we don’t always stack, sometimes Trung likes to play on the weaker team for a challenge, so we kept dominating them. He told us to grow some balls and play on a weaker team for once (it was clear he wasn’t listening). When the next game started, I randomly chose a team. Two of the leaders from the last game were on the other team and we had me and Trung. The complainer didn’t join a team and left after a short while. Later on while playing someone tried to votekick the clan (at this point out fourth member had joined the game), when I asked why he didn’t respond immediately, but apparently he said he didn’t know this server was for clan practice, which as Trung told me is meaningless because we aren’t a scrimmage team and additionally it was one of the Lotus Clan servers. Either way, he didn’t get any support in kicking us. It’s nice to be hated, it means they fear you. I can’t wait until Emma starts playing and we have four member of Silent Earth Dirigible playing at the same time.

In Soviet Russia, hat wears you!

Watched more Farscape. Played more TFTwo. Both were good.
P.S. PK Tech Girl is an episode of Farscape. Where they meet a cute Peacekeeper technician and fight frog people.

John and Gilina

Cute, eh?

Slept four an a half hours. Got up and found the internet had slowed to a crawl. Pining google.co.uk took one hundred and sixty-seven ish milliseconds. I thought that it was a problem with the router again so I tried switching back to the old one, but that refused to work entirely. In short I couldn’t fix it meaning no TFTwo. Trung said he was getting tired of it anyway. That the lack of teamwork was making him lose faith in humanity. If that’s all then he’s lucky. We tried to come up with another coop game we could play. The only one we both could easily get was Synergy. At this point the internet started picking up and I was able to install Synergy in a few seconds. I then had to walk Trung though the steps necessary to get the server working so I could connect. When I finally connected my ping was over nine hundred. It wasn’t long before we turned on cheats because I couldn’t really walk let alone shoot anything without dying. We played for a couple hours until he decided the sun coming up was a sign he should go to bed. Then I took a shower. Then I floated lifelessly for a while until I got the idea I would Photoshop a TFTwo dispenser into a picture from the living room window. I needed to use Garry’s Mod to get a good picture of the dispenser and I thought that I could get an addon thatwould make the dispenser have a display. I ended up getting some other addons which I was then distracted by for a number of hours. I spent twenty minutes trying to back stab a manhack (an enemy from Half-Life Two) with the spy’s knife from TFTwo (I eventually got it). I never got around to the shooping. Finally, Trung and I played some TFTwo. There were some good parts, but it ended of meh.

Like the depth.

NEED A DISPENSA HERE!

Knife fight.

Playing with the AI.

My alarm didn’t work and I got pissed at my dad for waking me up. I promptly fell back asleep. My mom woke me up again at three to yell at me for not changing my sleeping habits. I took a shower and when I came back found my window and window shade open. She did this back home too, I fucking hate it. I grunted and attempted to close them. I couldn’t unwind the shade cord due to my anger and shouted at it. My mom came in and I got pissed at her. We got mad at each other and I told her to get out and she said that if I was going to sleep in late and be grumpy that she would find somewhere for me back in the States. She then left and lashed out at my dad, asking why I had even come if I didn’t want to be here, as if I couldn’t hear through the walls without trying. I then had a mental breakdown standing in my towel trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing here and with my life in general. I didn’t come to any conclusions. I eventually calmed down somewhat and got dressed as it was six and we were going to see a play at eight. I was still pissed. The play was a farce by Hitchcock of a spy novel (something like that). Performed by only four actors it was centered around that “for another character to come on, one must go off” style of comedy. It was very funny. When we got home I started to watch Alien, but it wasn’t really the kind of SciFi that I like, not that I was scared of it, it just wasn’t techie enough or actiony or westerny. Then I played some TFTwo with Trung.

I meant to wake up at ten in the morning. I woke up at seven. I went to bed  at two. After finally figuring out where to put my laptop so as to not burn/melt/crack anything I played TFTwo for about an hour completing an entire game (getting two hundred and eighty nine points) without the internet cutting out. Although my ping was at a near constant one eighty to one ninety, it played smoothly. I’ve now determined that the router resets whenever a computer connects…or when it feels like it. I had planned on going out, but I had no money and by the time I was done with the game, my mother had fallen asleep. When she did wake up I helped her with her laptop and we eventually went shopping. The city does not smell very nice. I took some pictures on our journey to Marks and Spencer. The first thing I wanted a shot of is what is called the gurken, a large, pickle-shaped office building:

Giant Pickle

We walked through the place where (according to my mother) the Diagon Alley scenes of Harry Potter were filmed. I couldn’t give a shit, but I figured Emma would be mad if I didn’t take any pictures:

This is for you, Emma.

When we got to Marks and Spencer I found this:

Might have to get this for my birthday.

Then there was Lloyd’s Tower which looks like something from a dystopian mining facility, but whose picture is currently sideways. When we got home I fiddled around on the computer for a while and then Princess Mononoke was on and having never seen it I felt I should watch it. I did. It was of course very good and trippy. Then I fiddled on the computer some more. We’ll see how sleeping goes tonight.

I stayed up till four last night and then slept for twelves hours. At least it’s not like vacation where if you sleep all day you lose a day of doing things. I sill have six months in which to explore England. Our landlord came over and he attempted to fix the internet situation. I surprised to find that he actually knew what he was doing (he had putty running on his Nokia phone). He fixed a few things like the router only giving out two IPs and it giving the wrong DNS server IP. My tablet still insists on using the first IP address that the router gives out even if it was given to another computer. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to figure out why the internet cuts out randomly. It looks like it might be on the ISPs side. I hope that it doesn’t stop me from playing TFTwo.