Our living room currently looks like a cardboard factory exploded in it. How can you cover an entire living room with the packaging for one little computer? Everything came packaged in a bag, within a box, within a box. Why does everything have to be double boxed? Is that really necessary? Especially when at least one of each set of boxes is made from some pretty solid material. So solid in fact, that the box our Corsair 620w power supply came in has now become my footrest. Its the perfect height and can’t possibly crumple under my weight unless I stomped on it or something.

Soooo, yesterday I woke up really wanting to spend most of the weekend playing civ 4. Except, I knew this wasn’t going to happen since Jad would need the computer, or face dying of boredom. I finally got really sick of us having to share one computer, so I check my bank balance, decided it looked ok and we went out and bought “me” a new computer. Except, of course all I want to do with it is play civ, while Jad plays online FPS games and such, so what really happened is he got a new computer and I got our old one that we bought at the start of ‘07. I guess since he plays such high-end games I’m always going to get the hand-me-down computer (*lol* and mum will get the hand-me-down from me… what’ll she ever do with our kind of graphics cards?). But thats ok, because even tho it is our “old” computer this one is still nothing to sniff at (I don’t actually think there is a game out there that this computer couldn’t run competently), and it is one hell of a lot better than the previous computers I’ve use at home. So now my bank balance is down to it’s bare minimum again (ah, it was nice having some money in there for a bit), but we’ll both be able to use our computers whenever we wish and we’ve got a shiny new 24″ LCD monitor… Oooooooh! Tehehe ironically since we spent half of yesterday shopping for computer bits, the rest of the day putting together the new computer, and then half of today arranging our study, I still haven’t actually played civ yet. But I’ll get to it after making this post.

Oh, I do have a shiny new keyboard, mouse and leather office chair to go with the old computer. I’m not used to the backspace key being the size of the letter/number keys tho. I keep hitting the “Home” button instead.

The big spends? The 24″ monitor of course, the GeForce GTX 260 XXX card (which only just fit into the case, I might add. I don’t know where they get off calling that thing a “card”, it’s a bloody brick!), and the GeForce 780i SLI board. Everything else was pretty much on budget, it was just those 3 things (ok, it was mainly the monitor really) that took us a little over budget. But it was worth it…we hope. As I’ve said before, we don’t have a TV, thats what our computer/monitor is for, which is how we justify buying such big monitors.

There you go, so now I can’t say I don’t make blog posts because I can’t get enough time at a computer to do so. I’ll have to come up with other excuses And the old 180 is going to have to wait a few more months to get the new suspension that she needs pretty badly. *sigh* This is one of those rare times when I’ve kinda ignored priorities, or have I? I’m really not too sure, because we really kinda needed this second computer as well.

This is what Ron (our housemate) needs to buy for his cat, since he’s too lazy to change the poor thing’s kitty litter. We came home to find that she’d completely ruined one of our couch cushions by soaking it through with cat pee… Least the couches were free.

On second thought, if he’s too lazy to change the kitty litter, who knows how often he’d change her cat diaper? And thats just a horrific thought.

On a completely unrelated note, time for a new keyboard. The space bar on ours is busted. I’ve gotta hammer on it to get it to work.

Well, I’m off to visit some of Jad’s relatives in the country for the weekend. 4 dogs, 4 kids, 1 house. Hmm… this is gonna be interesting. I’ve got the camera batteries charged and everything tho so, as long as I don’t forget to take the camera, I should have some pictures to post when we get back.

My latest bout of blogging silence hasn’t been due to laziness, surprisingly enough. It’s actually because I’ve finally gotten around to cleaning up the house a little. I gave up waiting until I actually have the time, and inclination, to do the whole house at once. Instead I’ve started cleaning a room at a time. fitting that in in between gymming (yes, I know thats not really a word) and cooking, and stuff, after work doesn’t leave much free time for blogging or reading or anything like that . But at least in a day or two the house should stop looking like quite so much of a dump. Having said that, the housemate is cooking dinner right now so there goes the kitchen again. *sigh*
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Thats the main reason for my silence this week. I’ve alternately been too lazy or too busy to blog and blog surf. I owe a number of blogs visits too, not so much out of obligation, but more out of interest. Hopefully I’ll either get in the mood for some blog-surfing after I post this or by the end of the weekend.
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Just a recommendation really. Go watch it. ‘Tis good, ’tis very, very good. This Batman sequel is at least as good as the previous movie.
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For the first time since getting my new (not anymore) mobile phone and signing up for a ($50) cap plan I’ve finally managed to make enough calls and send enough SMS messages to almost hit the cap. My bill today said I’d made AU$46 worth of calls and SMS last month. For the past 7 or 8 months I haven’t managed to get it over AU$30. Tehe, yeah. I don’t make many calls and I’m too lazy to send random SMSs. Jad usually sends me a message at lunch time on work days. They’re very sweet messages too, but nasty old me rarely bothers to reply unless his message requires a reply. I’m not ENTIRELY unromantic, I will occasionally send him a nice reply just for the hell of it… but only sometimes. :-P. Even with interpretive text on it ust takes too long to punch in an SMS. I guess I’m showing my age. Anyway, I’m sure I only managed to get so close to the cap because dad was in town for a couple of weeks. Now that he’s left my mobile usage will probably drop back down again.
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‘Tis no secret that I love board games. In fact, one of the highlights of any month for me is getting to attend the Perth Eurogames Fest. One of the reasons I love going to EGF meetings so much is because of the sheer number of games that people bring along. Generally, in the 5 to 7 hours that I’m there, I’ll get to play at least one game that I’ve never played before. Some of the new games I’ve played over the last 3 to 4 months in particular seam to be real winners. They’re definitely games that I would, at the very least, like to play a few more times, if not right out own. Previously, if you asked me to list a board game that I would like to own, Alhambra is the only one that would come immediately to mind. Thanks to EGF, it’s not all on it’s lonesome on my list anymore. So, in no particular order, here is my current board game wish list:
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I had to travel about 2 hours out to the country at 7am this morning to help 7 other people count out 100 germinated seedling in each of 580 plots. We were facing a day out in the muck with 16 degrees celcius temperatures and a forecast of rain and possible thunderstorms. Thankfully, while it was certainly that cold and there was a nasty wind blowing, we got almost no rain while we worked and only had to run for the cover of the vehicles once. On top of that the company bought us breakfast, morning tea, and lunch and we got all the work done in record time. So all in all it wasn’t a too unpleasant trip for some field work in the country. It was kinda nice even (although my back is kinda complaining now). Anyway, I digress. Knowing the people who were organising the trip and having listened to the weatherman, I was expecting it to be a bit of a fiasco, so one would think that having to wake up at 0530 in the morning and facing a day like that, I’d have been somewhat grumpy. But no, I wasn’t. It would be pretty difficult to catch me in a bad mood on a Wed morning these days. If you do, it wouldn’t be entirely far-fetched for you to assume that for some reason a new episode of season 11 of Top Gear didn’t air in the UK that week. Tehehe I love that show. According to Jad, the theme song (which I use as my ring tone ) always makes me smile, even when I’m feeling grumpy. Anyway, that was my (very) roundabout way of leading to this week’s episode.
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