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Monday, meh
It is Monday late afternoon and I'm sitting outside in the sun to write this. I notice my eeePC is running really slowly now the harddisc is mostly full. I'm going to have to tidy up to free up around a gigabyte and a half (from the current 80Mb free - eek) then run a defrag. There's no VM on this machine, so why has loading a program gone from five seconds to thirty-fifty? I guess in "arduous circumstances", NTFS is every bit as crap as FAT. However it suggests that files are auto-fragmenting themselves. Well, given my experiences of Microsoft and FAT (if you ask me, broken ever since they left MS-DOS behind), it wouldn't be a surprise.
To be honest, I'm getting a little bit sick of Windows lying to me. At times like this, the system freezes with the harddisc light on for 5-25 seconds at a time. But no system monitoring tool will report on what just sucked 100% of processing time out of the machine. If I'm lucky, I might see "system" rise to maybe a 15% load. Well, with a 15% load, I expect a responsive UI. RISC OS used to freeze up during (non-blocking) file operations. I thought the NT class of Windows was supposed to be better than that?
Yesterday we went to the final vide grenier of the season. It was a chilly morning but a nice afternoon. Being set in a largish town, there were many winding streets to look down.
I got myself three DVDs and a PS2 game - these being:
- Cleaner - a movie with Samuel L Jackson that was, actually, pretty good (I watched it last night).
- Fast Food Nation
- Battle Royale - I have part 2 on DVD, now the (better) original too. The only downside is it is only subbed in French, but I would imagine I can rip it to XviD and merge in .srt subs. [<clicky-clicky> that was fairly simple - http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/3130594/batoru-rowaiaru-en]
- The Sims 2 - more on this below.
The season of this is now mostly over, and the weather is fast degrading into winter. Meh.
We came back to find 'visitors' munching the grass:
Which one is Bessie? [yes, I know they're steers - and?] Sadly there were only eight, and not enough time for them to chew the grass for me, so I guess I still gotta go mow it.
We went to the neighbouring farm and nobody was home. So we called the gendarmes (directly via local number, not central switchboard). After convincing them that we really were in their jurisdiction, he then asked what the problem was, and seemed somewhat surprised to be receiving a phone call saying there were cows in a field. Now, if the guy bothered to listen, he might have picked up on the fact that they were escaped cows, roaming, could roam onto the road. He said his colleague would swing by and take a look. Never did.
But, then, we called them up several months ago when cows were on the loose in town at 4am. During the explanation, the gendarme hung up. Like, sure, a fast moving truck with a tired night driver might not appreciate impacting into a big ol' slab of beef. Mom doesn't drive quickly yet we had to do an emergency stop. As it happened, mom lost her temper, got out the car, and herded the lot into some guy's field. Might not have been the right field, but they were off the road. The dumbass gendarmes must obviously not consider large lumbersome stupid animals to be road hazards. But, from where I look at it, the cows seem to be more clued up on reality than the gendarmes. Maybe if we should have the misfortune to be burgled, or mugged, or whatever, sod calling the law, I'll just go grab myself a cow.
Moe-ball
After the vide grenier, we went to McDonald's. [yes, there is a time paradoxy thing going on here, this was after the vide and before the cows] Well, with two €6,50 meal tickets, the whole shebang cost me 60 centimes. Can't argue that.
As I was ordering, there was a Japanese woman, part of a couple. I am guessing she was Japanese due to using the "come here" gesture - you stick a hand out, palm down, and flap the hand up and down gently, it is often mistaken for "bye bye" in the west.
She was excitable, happy, and pretty much a complete moe-ball. [I want one! ☺]
I was going to go say hello (and ma·de jō·zu ja a·ri·ma·se·n) but I ordered a red hot pepper burger. Now the thing is that McDonald's are never overly generous with their sauces, but this burger - slathered in lashings of chili sauce, was the most sauce covered burger I've ever encountered. I suspect the cook was a bit of a sadist. The burger itself? I ate it, but it was... yeah... Every once in a while I get the masochistic urge to eat some food with bite - I had my fill of blandness at boarding school. This... this was... challenging. I won't order it again, but it's nice to have a burger with bite at least once in a lifetime.
By the time my face had returned to a normal colour and I'd guzzled half a litre of not-quite-Coca-cola, the Japanese couple had gone. Oh well. At least it would save me the social awkwardness of pointing at the woman and squealing "mmmm kawaiiiiiii!".
Windows 7 kawaii
Talking of Kawaii, what was the British advertising campaign for Windows 7? There were two types of advert. The first was a family had their living room remodeled as a computer showroom in order to present them with the ideal computer (in other words, if we are to take it literally, some Microsoft guys broke into some poor sap's house, removed any vestige of their lives and personal treasures, and replaced it with a generic PCWorld-alike showroom, nice). The second was a succession of "blah blah blah blah and that was my idea" adverts.
Now watch this:
It's only a minute of your time, and its subtitled, so if you've not watched it, click the link.
Okay, so it is an animé girl oozing ditzy cuteness while telling you excitably how awesome Windows 7 is. But did you catch the bit about assembling your own computer? Damn, there's one heck of a culture gap here. I think if this advert was dubbed and broadcast in the UK, the general response would be "you what?".
The Sims 2
Far from the impressive sunsets of Grand Theft Auto 3 (Liberty City) and the mayhem of the rally game, the Sims are a whole different thing. You basically design a person and control their lives. It's like playing God, in a way. So I created my idea of a nice sim, I called her "Jessica Merrille". Cute, isn't she?
I moved into a house sharing it with two other people. Housemates, I guess. Now my Sim wanted a friend so I tried the first housemate - Ollie - who was a total jerk. I mean really. So I then approached the bratty teenager wannabe Felicity who left stuff on and dropped crap all over the place.
As it happens, my Sim and Felicity got on well. I mean really well. As in hand holding, cuddling, snogging, wet panties, I think they got married in the end, having fallen in love in the space of five minutes playing time (and about an hour or so sim-time). Nice to know my Sim is open minded about that sort of thing. Ollie, jerkwad that he is, sat watching telly and eating pizza.
My Sim is also into astronomy, writes a blog, enjoys a good jiggle on the trampoline, and is kind of shy and awkward with strangers but a total Genki Girl when on her own.
Somebody please put me out of my misery - that is Avril Lavigne doing the soundtrack, right?
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(Felicity? Marte? Find out!)
- Uh-oh, UV bug basher, Mouse quick fix, Extracting urine, Advent calendars. (2024/11/20)
- Congratulations Amazon your bot is the first one blocked, CreArt, Lemon cake. (2024/11/17)
- More frozen stuff, Mower bodge, Bread, Doing stupid things to doughnuts, Medicine cabinet, A brief bit of politics, The web today, Christmas sweaters. (2024/11/16)
- Frozen stuff. (2024/11/13)
- Freezer, Looking at cheap medical equipment, Pulse Oximeter teardown, Blood pressure monitor teardown, The Gloom is over!, Dual-camera setup. (2024/11/11)
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Last read at 14:12 on 2024/11/21.
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