True, everyone probably learnt this tip a hundred years ago when XP came out but if you’re a Mac user like me that’s running XP on the side you’re probably as annoyed as I was with those stupid little balloon tips popping up in your taskbar every five seconds!

Here’s how you get rid of them….

Warning: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.

(Source: Microsoft’s Support Article)

It’s truly surprising what one can come up with to keep yourself occupied when you are truly bored. Tonight I was beyond boredom, in fact boredom was so far in my mind’s rear view mirror I’d crossed states, perhaps islands and was waving to it from Auckland. “Hello boredom!” So bored shitless with no desire to fire up the xBox, nothing on the idiot box and all my washing neatly folded and stored I did the only thing left to do to pass the time. I cooked, or rather I conducted a food experiment of monumental proportion!

In actual fact, to be truthful and all that, the experiment came about because of my uncanny craving for lamb chops. All day I’d been thinking about how I wanted to get chicken and chips for dinner but when it came crunch time my stomach told me otherwise.

“Listen fool” -my stomach talks like Mr. T- “You ain’t eatin’ no chicken & chips. No jibba-jabba you be eatin’ lamp chops! FOOL!”

Alright, stomach, calm down… Chops it is, doesn’t bother me I’ve got some in the freezer at home, it’s pretty much the only thing in my fridge/freezer besides one stubby of Cooper’s Pale Ale and a bunch of insulin for that pesky disease Diabetes I so thoughtlessly have. So I trotted up to the supermarket to get some fresh bread so I could the chops Aussie BBQ style with a bit of tomato sauce, maybe some potatoes and beans in there too, who knows? We’ll see how Mr. T feels about vegies later.

Back from the supermarket, or as I prefer to call it, the-slightly-less-than-super-coz-it’s-about-as-big-as-my-apartment-market, fresh bread and diabetic sauce in hand I open sesame the freezer draw and wham-o! No lamb chops. Fuckin’ crap, Mother F’er, no way in hell I’m walking fifty metres up the road again to go buy some, buzz kill a plenty. Unbelievable, I was 110% sure I had lamb chops in here, turns out it was mince and a couple of porterhouse steaks that I can’t even remember buying. Maybe one of my guests bought them when I was overseas and they felt sorry the baron waste land that is my fridge.

OK, OK, plan B… there’s steak, they’re in a chop like form, I could whack a shellacking of “Masterfoods Smokey BBQ Seasoning” all over them and pretend they’re lamb, it’d take a lot of seasoning though and I’m low on supply because of it’s constant use in The Cooking Show (Don’t worry folks, it’ll be back soon). Nix that, save the Smokey. Steak, steak…. oh you idiot… steak sandwiches! Oh hang on tomato, no cheese, no lettuce, pretty much no everything except bread and steak. Next move, cupboards and fridge door, what have we got to work with?

The entire contents of my fridge that was edible at this point in time:

• 1 egg (um, may be edible, it would be questionable)
• full cream milk (none of this skinny, soy, calcium enriched junk)
• butter (again, see milk)
• tomato sauce
• Dijon mustard (when did that get in here?)
• Dijonnaise (it’s like the mustard only mixed with a mayonnaise I presume)

So this is when my brain went a little crazy, crazy-time. What we have here is a lot of extras, accessories to a meal if you will. The multitude of condiments available to me was rather astonishing seeing that I almost never use them bar tomato sauce. I have to cook the steak, there’s no option there without that I’ll be eating bread and butter if anything, so fry pan on, steak in, lightly dusted with a bit of cracked pepper and salt for flavour enhancers. We’ll get the bread ready, butter her up, hmmm, four slices, that’ll at least make two sandwiches of steak and sauce. The rest of the steak I’ve decided is to be sacrificed to the gods of condiments that occupy the heavens of Fisher & Pykell, to be joined by the god’s messenger himself Gravox! Yeah!

With the wafting aroma of lightly charcoaled steak permeating through my kitchen I began lining up small dipping bowls of the delegated condiments for my impending culinary enjoyment. There lined up on my dining room table were four bowls with hand written labels scrawled beneath them just to make sure I didn’t get the Dijon twins mixed up even if they were different colours and consistencies, Dijon mustard, Dijonnaise, Tomato Sauce and last but not least Traditional Roast Gravy.

After gorging the two sandwiches in record time, who knew experimenting was such hard work, I divided the remaining three quarter chop into equal portions and began the taste test of champions. Here are my findings:

• Dijon Mustard - It has quite a tang to it, almost over bearing on the palette if the morsel is completely coated. Whilst the citrus like taste doesn’t take from the meat altogether I wouldn’t coat an entire portion of steak in nothing but Dijon.
• Dijoinnaise - I’m a big fan of this bad boy on pork cutlets. Unlike raw Dijon mustard it’s not quite as harsh or shocking on the senses and is more like a complimenting flavour than a competitor. Still I wouldn’t want to use this one too much, it can get a bit sickening after a while, most likely because of it’s mayo base.
• Tomato Sauce - Ketchup for you American like folk. Always a winner, love it and if you prefer BBQ sauce you can take your sugar filled shite and shove it, sugar free Tomato Sauce actually tastes better than the real stuff in my opinion. And yes I’ve had both.
• Gravy - You wouldn’t really think of this one as a condiment as such but if you make it as thick as I do you’d probably mistake it for wet cement. Beautiful, cover your meat in it, cover it I tell you! Do it!

Now whilst you might have thought, wow, four condiments, that’s zany enough, let’s go over that edge, beyond that mountain, and blow your mind with…. COMBO’S!

• Dijon & Dijonnaise - Um… it’s not exactly worth it, tastes like a harsher version of the Dijonnaise.
• Dijon & Tomato Sauce - Surprisingly refreshing. The sauce must take from the Dijon’s tang, strangely I might have that one again. Oh, nope, once was more than enough!
• Tomato Sauce & Gravy - Had this one before, it’s a delicate one to balance because too much of either can ruin the experience. I try to stick with two parts gravy, one part sauce for an even combination.
• Dijon & Gravy - One word. No.
• All Four - My head exploded! Not really, I wish (sorta), how cool would that have been!

Finally I’ll answer the question you’re all asking and no I wasn’t sick, that night or the day after. It’s not a meal I’d recommend every Joe Bloe give a shot but still it was something to pass the time. Moral of the story… don’t let your internet ever go, hold on to her and treat her well so you never have to do what I just did to keep you occupied…. EVER!

As if I was somehow psychic in yesterday’s entry in saying that there would surely be something to piss me off today I could have not been more of a clairvoyant if you had a purple towel wrapped around my noggin’ and my name was “Raj the ever seeing guy”.

It was at about midday when my mobile beeped away to let me know that I’d received an SMS. My telecommunications provider had sent me a little note to inform me that my phone line was now completely connected and functional, thus you would presume fixing my little issue of people not being able to call the newly installed landline and also having the order closed off in Telstra wholesaling system allowing me to proceed with the DSL connection. Well you’d think that would be the case now wouldn’t you.

I thought I’d give the old home phone a quick call on my mobile to make sure everything was fixed, I’m a tad skeptical when it comes to telcos, working for one kind of does that.

The number you have called is either invalid or disconnected, please check the number and try again.

Right; phone line not fixed. A quick call and forty minute wait in the support queue later I got through to the first person I’d spoken to at iiNet that had a brain. Not only did this guy understand that I knew what I was talking about, he also sympathized with my situation as he’d recently been through the same thing. Halle-fucking-lujah! Not only did this fine young gentleman, who’s name escapes me now, identify that I had a legitimate issue that was up until now further prolonging precious DSL provisioning time he did something completely above and beyond what any call centre worker has ever done for me. To verify the problem he rang my new landline number from his own mobile phone! Can you believe it?!

Well there is a bit more to it than that, you see first he rang it from his desk phone and it worked. This of course is because my phone is on their own DSLAM network, but when you call it from another, ie. Telstra’s, Optus’s or a mobile network, it doesn’t work for shit. A round of applause please for Tom, or was it Mike, or John, hell a round of applause for the dude that helped!!

So phone issue escalated to the provisioning department to get off their butts and do something he then saw I had a relocating DSL order, one that was half lost because they’d given me a new landline number and not linked it to my old account. Well Tom fixed that too (yeah, let’s stick with Tom as the name). I felt like I’d died and gone to call centre heaven!

Last but certainly not least came the miracle of the day, actually the miracle of this entire debacle that is a relocation request. Tom, the almighty wizard, started the order for my DSL regardless of the line state.

OH MY GOD!

“Tom, you’re a legend mate, I really appreciate it.” I said.
“No problems at all, I can imagine what you’ve been through.” He replied, obviously another member of the brotherhood nerd.
“Yeah I would imagine there’s a few notes on all this.”
“Umm…. 22 for this week so far.” For fuck’s sake, I’ve called these morons twenty two times to get this far and the phone still doesn’t work properly!

It didn’t really matter about the phone line though, there was a DSL order in and now I had to wait a mere four to six working days for an iiNet tech to go to the same exchange the Telstra tech went to last Thursday and plug in the DSL. It’s funny, the Telstra tech even said to me how easy it was to do them both at the same time but there’s all this legal crap and they can’t touch iiNet’s equipment in the exchange and blah de blah, what-a-load-of-bollocks, blah, blah. Stupid legalities I could’ve had my DSL turned on last Thursday with my currently retarded phone connection for fuck’s sake!

So anyway… the sum of Monday and the saga so far…

• Phone is connected but only half working
• DSL is finally on it’s way
• Unfortunately it could be upwards of a week until I get that, and then I have to rely on it working first time.

Thank you Tom! (Enjoy that, I don’t sincerely say thank you that often!)

The weekend was pretty much a non event when it comes to bitching about my lacking internet. I ate, I slept, I found out my recently connected phone line wont accept incoming calls, nothing I can do until Monday.

Other than a bike ride and some very delicious breakfast in North Melbourne I don’t have anything particularly exciting to report so this entry’s a nice and short one for you all.

Don’t worry I’m sure there’ll be something to piss me off on Monday!

Along with the internal jubilation that my phone line had finally been connected and was now on the path to broadband enlightenment today I had plans to check out the eGames Expo at Melbourne’s Exhibition Centre this afternoon. True it wasn’t a real internet connection but it was something to take my mind off things and perhaps check out a few goodies that I can expect to be playing on my current must-have-to-stay-sane toy, the xBox 360. Heck, I even came in to work before 8am so I could leave early and get to this thing, that doesn’t happen too often let me tell you!

The work day came and went without any great moments worth documenting and at 3:30 myself, Stu and another workmate Matt walked our butts over to the Exhibition Centre where the expo was taking place. Little did any of us know but there was another expo at the same location taking place that day and throughout the weekend, one that was most likely going to entertain just a few more patrons that little old eGames. Right next door, with hundreds of people who didn’t look like “Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons walking through its entrance, was Sexpo.

Walking in to the hall of the Exhibition Centre it was painstakingly obvious who was going where. A constant stream of leggy models and beefed up guys all wearing “Sexpo Exhibitor” badges around their necks and then a hundred odd guys in shorts and t-shirts with food stains from lunch, backpacks, video cameras and podcast equipment loaded up to the teeth looking at the ground and following the person in front of them like moths to the flame of video game beeps and twangs.

“It’s a me; Mario.”

OK so enough about the pale comparison of exhibition size (no pun intended) let’s talk about what was actually there at eGames. Well to sum it all up in one word, “nothing”. Alright, alright, I don’t want to piss off more people than I already have, there wasn’t “nothing” exactly I just personally think there wasn’t anything exciting worth $16 to see. You see last year we all got to get a glimpse of Gears of War (well you did if you waited in line for three hours to see it on the ONE console) a few months before it came out. This year there was a few things there like Assassins Creed and Mario Galaxy but these are out in a few days! Plus as I mentioned before, just like they did last year you were lucky if there was more than one screen showing the damn thing! I mean come on, if this is your big draw card let the people play dang nab-it!

It’s funny I’ve read a few “impressions” by journalists about the place who’ve showcased the bigger floor size and more software being shown off but seriously guys if you can’t get your hands on the stuff without waiting five hours I couldn’t really give a shit! You might have had three hundred guitars to play GH3 or a bazillion PC’s loaded up with Crysis but those games are already in the wild!

Breath Raj, breath…

So what was the positive, what was actually worth checking out? Gran Turismo 5 was there in its full Japanese charactered menu glory. I must admit it puts some of the models in Project Gotham 4 to shame. Singstar was also on show for the PS3 brethren, a big favourite amongst many a Playstation owner. xBox wise you got shafted a bit, Mass Effect was being shown but when I was there no one really seemed to care. If you were or rather think you are pretty hot in the LAN arena then there was a Halo 3 tournament along with Crysis and I think Call of Duty 4 all running and a bunch of keynotes from games developers and big guns in the gaming arena like Nintendo who of course were peddling the only game to come out for the Wii in a million years Mario Galaxy. I guess it wasn’t too bad but I still felt a tad cheated considering what I paid to get in.

One highlight I was actually really impressed with was God of War: Chains of Olympus for the PSP. I don’t think anyone knew it was there because I just walked up and had a crack. Best thing I’ve ever seen on a PSP, felt exactly the same as the PS2 version and didn’t appear to be cut down much at all in any aspect when compared to its big brothers. The gameplay was amazingly smooth, sound quality as good as you can expect from the PSP’s shithouse speakers and very well polished. It almost made me want to buy a PSP again after selling it way back in the day when there was nothing worth playing on it (and still isn’t in my opinion, well not until God of War comes out, or is already? I didn’t ask, too lazy)

When it all comes down to it the expo was pretty good for Australia, hell I’m impressed by the fact we even have a games expo! I guess the fact the AutoSalon has it’s little Game1 expo technically means we have two, but from all reports it barely counts. I’ve not been so I can’t give my own twisted opinion on that one. Anyway, back to eGames, I bitch and moan but truth be known if it’s back next year I’ll go again and most likely bitch and moan again. It is growing though and that can only be a good thing, and in order for it to continue to grow and become the great gamer heaven I want it to be in my head means it needs our support, even when it does suck a bit, to get the ball rolling.

So here’s to eGames Expo… pwn on bitches!

Today was a landmark day in what seems to be the never ending road that is my internet connection, or rather lack there of. You see today I had the most wonderful pleasure of being visited by Australia’s front running money stealing telecommunication provider Telstra. I’ve been looking forward to this day for a week now, you see even though I wont be using Telstra as my provider for any service at all because none of the wonderful mould-in-shower-growing tenants before me had done the courtesy of having a phone line connected to my new apartment. So being the wonderful country we are here in Australia it means our first and formally government owned telco is required to come out to your premises and plug in a few wires here and there because they’re the ones that own the infrastructure pretty much everywhere. (Unless you’re in an Optus HFC networked area which covers stuff all of the country and inexcusably wont connect to apartment buildings because they’re lazy even if you can basically reach out and grab the cable from your window. But I’m not bitter about that at all)

Of course having an appointment with Telstra means completely writing off the good part of a day with their rather large visiting windows where someone must sit at home twiddling their thumbs until the rock up an hour after the window they gave you. My window of wait was the lovely hours of between nine and one in the afternoon, and as I so crassly stated in the previous sentence I was by no means expecting anyone to arrive until 2pm at the earliest going on past experience.

At about 10:30am I got a phone call from a private number on my mobile, fully expecting it to be work and answering in the according fashion.

“Good morning, Raj speaking” I chirped.
“Hi there… “ I normally get this delayed response when people that don’t know call as they try to figure out whether or not I said ‘Roy’ or ‘Ray’ as my name and more importantly whether they should attempt using it, he didn’t. “… it’s James from Telstra, just calling to let you know I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

Were my precious delicate ears deceiving me?! Not only was it two and a half hours before Telstra’s window was due to finish but by some crazy miracle the tech called me before coming around to ensure I was there and ready for him! Either I had the best Telstra tech in the world or they’ve done some serious work on their customer service in the past three years! Granted their installation delay still sucks arse with a seven day wait (for a Diabetic that legally requires a phone connection for emergencies I might add) but I was… and yes hold your breath here folks… I was impressed!
Pretty much half an hour later on the dot there was a buzzin’ on my intercom and in waltzed James the Telstra tech. Nice guy as far as telco techs go. He went to work and during we had a small chat about how we both work for telcos, neither of actually using our respective employers for internet or phone providers because their plans are incredibly ludicrous. We laughed, we bonded, it was beautiful. If it was a movie there would be soft lensed shots of us trotting between my floor and the basement to the building’s patch panel in slow motion. Very homo-erotic. The money shot of course being the insertion of my phone’s cord into the now active wall socket to unleash an orgasmic scream that is the dial tone of life. Woah! Didn’t think you could make a phone line install into porn now did you!

So now; I have a phone. A phone that lets me use a dial up internet account. An internet account that is so incredibly slow because of me needing to use a V.34 string (Don’t know what that is kiddies? You’re too young and I feel old so piss off) to have a stable connection that I’ve resided to the fact checking my email once a day and posting these diary/blog entries is about all it’s good for.

I WANT MY BROADBAND!!!!

By and large my lack of internet connectivity these past few days has been made bearable through the rather large growth in my normally meagre social calendar. Unfortunately a bi-product of said ascent is the rapid descent in my bank balance. As I sit here, returning from my latest engagement my current total life savings comes to the massive total of….. drum roll please…. $18.18. Yes! Thank you for playing.

Granted, we are of course coming in to the silly season with everyone weekend between now and New Years rapidly being allotted to particular events but in one week for me to attend two birthday’s, a wedding, a catch up, a podcast recording and then tonight topping it off with a farewell is most definitely out of sorts even for this time of year. Quite clearly when performing this fortnight’s budget I had not allowed for such a bevy of social meetings, nor would have I got it right had I known that all of these events were to be occurring as I’m not normally associated with such a full diary. No, I am forever the hermit who’s diary would in the most cases contain blank pages bar the odd note here and there for a friend’s birthday.

While burning the candle from both ends, as well as sideways and any other angle I can try right now, has been interesting for the past week or so I hardly think I’m of any social stamina to go the distance on this one. I’m wrecked, completely tapped out of smiles and polite conversational small talk banter about the weather and how cute one’s baby son’s dribble might be. Nope give me the solace of a hyper egotistical petulant online forum where I can anonymously be a complete prick and the world be none the wiser; or more to the point no retaliate in a harmful physical manner.

I will give you an example of the draining politeness that sucked the life from my social positivity. Whilst at one of the many previously mentioned events there was a friend of a friend who rocked up late. Well late would be polite, he actually rocked up two hours after the hour we initially waited before ordering food! People can be late though, I mean it happens you have a good reason, his was helping someone move, life goes on. What you don’t expect is that when they do eventually arrive that they arrive half pissed and having quite obviously not moved any piece of furniture -well none that anyone would value- in the last hour at least! But no one out of the twenty odd people that had done the right-thing-to-do in waiting for this a-hole said anything about it but all smiled, conversed and bitched whenever he went to the toilet. Let’s not even mention he was also adorning the current wanker fashion of tucking in your fucking disgusting pink & brown stripped polo in behind your belt buckle but no where else around his muffin topped waist!. Ouch, that’s way harsh Ty!

Now that’s just not the internet way, at least people are honest straight up on the net, albeit perhaps a tad too upfront and downright rude in most cases. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some utopian balance where people weren’t completely fake and put on a face like we do in real life and could be a little more honest but not to the extremities of the internet. Is that what it’s like in a marriage or a long term relationship? Cruel but fair honesty? Nah, can’t be, that’d be like telling your significant other their arse looks fat in their latest purchase, only gay men can get away with that to their fag-hag handbags.

Oh hang on, I’m getting angry now… time to eat another can of Campbell’s soup. Stupid social life, taking all my money!

Damn you Internet!!!!

Whilst the idea of dragging my bean bag to the top floor of my apartment building and setting it up at the far end of the corridor of which is the only position thus far I’ve found that entertains a constant and open wi-fi connection is sounding like a better idea each minute, I have today been blessed with a mild reprieve from internet darkness.

Initially things weren’t exactly looking the brightest, work’s network once again decided to take an unscheduled holiday leaving us all in pre-historic times, I always knew that after work I would be graced with the burning white light of a solid connection. You see today I was heading off to Stu’s place to guest on another episode of the HundredPennies podcast.

I think Gav, Stu & Fu all took much glee in torturing my lack of connectivity, an entire segment was dedicated to my misfortune. Bastards! I can’t complain though, after the recording was done and a few beers in the belly I finally had the opportunity to jump online again. Yippee!!

Laptop open, wireless network connected and…. nothing. No, not nothing in that the connection wasn’t working, nope nothing as in what the hell do I want to do on here? Nothing. I’d looked at my email throughout the day’s up and down network issues at work, I didn’t particularly have anything to look up or source information on and I’ve given up Facebook so I couldn’t even waste time on there. What was going on? I haven’t had an internet connection like this in five days and there was *nothing* I wanted to do on it now that I had one?! I mean, five days for fuck’s sake!

So what did I do? Well pretty much nothing, looked at the weather for upcoming day and deleted some spam. Yay, how incredibly boring! I may as well not even bother about connecting the damn thing at home! Well, actually no, let’s not get crazy stupid here, I was just tired and clearly not thinking straight to say that!

It did get me thinking though, what do I actually use the internet for when I’m at home? What is it that makes it such a necessity for me that I pretty much have withdrawals from it and start climbing the walls? YouTube isn’t that damn good! The conclusion I came to was that it’s more of a security blanket for me these days. Having your favourite IM client open and being able to chat to someone should they be available, or looking up street directions and the weather, perhaps downloading a podcast or some sort of entertainment. The reality is though it’s really just a giant time wasting device, replacing the TV as the king of couch potato amusement. Seriously, think about what you do online, is it anything productive? I doubt it, how else do you explain the billions of useless websites about people’s pets? I can’t believe I’m saying this! How dare I?!

When it all comes down to it, whilst my job revolves around the internet I’m coming to the conclusion that if need be I could, and I do stress *COULD* live without it at home. It’s never a situation that I want to experience for longer than I already have but worse things could happen.

Peace out people with internet access (I hate you all)

Today was the first day that I truly missed having the internet accessible to me at home. Things started well though, I was practically delirious when I got to work this morning, the prospect of having a connection available to me had sent my head spinning and I was an a rather obvious high to my co-workers. The same high must have spurred on my table tennis abilities because I pretty much played the best I ever had downing colleagues throughout the day.

But work is work, and internet at work is restricted, there’s no ports open beyond the common HTTP and HTTPS and even then they’re restricted to certain sites. I can’t complain though, at least I could get into my various email accounts and check them through their webmail counterparts, removing spam and the majority of useless information I have delivered on a daily basis.

It wasn’t until I came home that the reality of the situation kicked in. I had no plans for the night which usually means I can ponder my way through various websites whilst the TV provides background noise in my pursuit of avoiding boredom. At one point I was rather excited that I might have stumbled across an open wireless network, it popped up briefly when I was listening to music from my laptop but the signal quickly disappeared. I wandered around the apartment from bedroom to bedroom, kitchen to bathroom, desperately searching for another glimpse of that sweet, sweet “NETGEAR” flash of internet light but it was all to no evail. There was no use in trying and having finished just Guitar Hero 3 I didn’t really feel like bettering any of my scores and I wasn’t really in the mood for tackling Call of Duty 4 so I did the unthinkable, I exercised.

Now most nerds/geeks/freaks, pick your stereotype, would run from a treadmill… well actually “run” is probably not the most accurate description one could use, let’s say “avoid” a treadmill about as much as they would the outdoors or sunlight but on occasion I’ve been known to indulge in this fanciful world of jocks and gyms. I myself am the proud owner of a treadmill that I must admit has not seen a great deal of usage these past months and certainly none at all upon my return from my trip overseas. The treadmill, along with my exercise ball and dumbbells do have their own little home now that I’m in my new place of residence, the second bedroom whilst harbouring unpacked boxes and irregularly worn attire is also playing house to said exercise equipment.

Having not done a great deal of exercise lately I didn’t particularly want to dive in all guns a blazing so a few sit ups here a couple of weight exercises there and a small stroll for fifteen minutes was more than enough to suffice my unaccustomed limbs and muscles. Had I not decided to exercise I would’ve probably spent the entire evening roaming the halls of my apartment building in search of that wi-fi signal again. Either way I would’ve been exercising I suppose, depending on how long I wandered I suppose.

I feel good that I did some proper exercise tonight though. Even though it makes your tired and weary you know that you’ve done something nice for your body. We’ll see how sore I am tomorrow as to whether or I not I still agree with that statement but regardless it should ensure I get a good and more importantly early night’s rest.

Yesterday’s solution of alcohol has the unfortunate side effect of this morning’s banging head and general all over feeling of shite-ness. Ahhh yes, the sweet, sweet remnants of the evening passed have given birth today an almighty hang over that could only be complimented more so by a call from work’s support desk asking me to drag myself out of bed and come into the office to fix an issue that has in an almost devil like twin birth forced me to face the world running at half speed and retarded.

The upside, or rather proverbial silver lining of this cloud is that whilst I may be going in to the office at 10 on a Sunday morning with a hangover to rival the Chernobyl disaster work does have a wonderful thing called the internet connected to it that will somewhat alleviate the cravings that is my nerd-dom’s internet addiction.

Take away coffee in hand, obligatory sunglasses covering eyes and recently digested Nurofen dissolving I boarded the train with what can only be described as your early Sunday morning collective of commuters. An unruly mixture of teenagers heading to the city to shop and loiter in their desperate quest to grow older too quickly, older persons who really aren’t quite sure what they’re doing but figure with the weather being nice it’d be a grand old idea to ride the “iron horse” and spend a day in “town” and then my category of cruelly injured revealers, most of which find themselves returning home from a night whence they know not what they’ve done, where they’ve been or god forbid whom they’ve been with.

“That’s a lovely shade of massacre panda eyes.” Did I just say that out loud? Hehehe; oh, mental note, don’t make self laugh, hurts head.

Work’s problem turns out to be nothing I can fix, it’s actually nothing to do with my department at all but instead the fact that, in an ironic twist of fate, that our little old office has been disconnected from the world with a switch failing and the redundancy being so slow that it too is as redundant as having the first broken. English, our network connection is ferked and low and behold that means no internet for me. Great. Three hours later after informing our lovely and obliging network engineers our computers burst into life along with the phones and magically all the problems disappear. Not bad I suppose, three hours and all, I mean it only took me an hour to get it through their heads that there was a problem. Let’s just say that IT support or for that matter most people working in IT (and I can say this because I’m one of them) have about as much in the way of communication skills, no let’s narrow it further, listening skills as Britney Spears does parenting.

There was no way I was sticking around the office any longer than what I already had so whence the network did grace all with its triumphant return I quickly uploaded the last two days diary entries and made sure there was nothing worth reading in my email accounts. There wasn’t.

Being such a lovely day, and the fact that there was really no rush to get home other than to unpack or sit around bored I took a wander through the city. There were a lot of parasites; crap… “people” crawling through the city centre and various shopping outlets. I did my usual lap of Borders with no purchase, a rarity for me, and then checked cooled the hangover blues with some of the Colonel’s finest popcorn chicken before heading home.

With no plans and nothing to really keep me away from relocation duties I started to clean up a little from the move. It was either that or sitting down with my thoughts and to be perfectly honest sitting around home doing nothing reminds me of being on holidays in a strange city where you know no one and there are not sights to go see leaving you alone with your thoughts. Frankly being alone with them scare me, I try and keep away from my thoughts as best possible. Depressing bastard. So I did the next best thing… I separated clothes I don’t wear any more and then arranged the most commonly worn attire in my new walk-in-robe by colour (Black-Grey-White then standard ROYGBIV of course) using a uniform coat hanger style and colour. Can you hear the psycho music playing?

Of course when dealing with clothes there are always dirty ones which meant numerous loads of washing, which to be honest I should’ve started about four days ago but even when procrastinating from work, there’s so many other wonderfully mind numbing activities to pursue than washing but my fingers were hurting from playing too much Guitar Hero as it was so I gave in. After drying the first load and putting another in the washing machine I began the arduous task of folding and sorting where I came across a rather unexpected find… There amongst my freshly dried washing was a pair of white woman’s underwear! Now either I’d had one hell of a night that I have no recollection of or I’ve started sleep-cross-dressing because there hasn’t been a woman near my place in a very long, long, long, long, long time. (Sorry I have over emphasised that fact?) How on Earth did a pair of woman’s underwear get into my washing?? I was positively befuddled! I put them aside and went on with my business and it wasn’t until later eating my dinner that consisted of Campbell’s Chunky Dog-Food, I mean “Beef Stew” in a convenient microwaveable tub that it hit me! I just moved apartments: Yes, yes you have. The dryer comes with the apartment: Uhuh, your point? It’s up high too: Again, correct. How many times did you leave stuff there by mistake because you couldn’t see it? A few I suppose, socks tend to become invisible in there. Eureka! It would seem the mystery underwear has been left by a previous tenant. So I just did a fresh load of washing and then dried it with someone’s underwear that has been festering away in the apartment’s tumble dryer for the past two weeks? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww…

I did some washing. Again.