rboleyn's Journal

12:09am: Thought I'd do the meme thing...
Swiped from murbin

Ubiquitous Book Meme
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually nearest to you (We already know you, no use trying to be pretentious).

aurictech wrote:
Sentence: What he seeks is power over reality and over men's means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

To which murbin added:
One of these related to "electrostatic field-generating techniques" in the B-2's wing leading edge with a view to reducing the giant Stealth Bomber's radar cross section."

And I add:
These blocks are machined to fit the Panda only, and cannot be used with other vehicles.

1:46pm: Yet another Earthquake
At 6:31AM. Such a lovely time for a quake. It was about 90km away so, even at 5.4 magnitude, it was a bit of a rumble and barely enough to wake me. Still, I've think I've just about had enough of this earthquake thing.

8:25am: 'Tis the season for earthquakes
Tuesday night saw a large series of small to moderate earthquakes over the course of the evening. They weren't far from Wellington, and provided a bit of excitement, but nothing more.

Just before 8am this morning I was woken by a long, but sharp earthquake. It was strong enough to move the cups in our kitchen around. Five minutes later there was a little shimmy from an aftershock. What fun.

It turns out to have 'only' been Richter 5.5, but it was only 30km deep, and 30km from Wellington. Not big, but shallow and close, and not the sort of wakeup call one really wants.

10:45am: More computer fun
Over the last 48 hours I've had effectively no internat access because both my computers started playing up. I managed to not lose any data, barring my Firefox profile with the bookmarks, passwords, etc., which is a nuisance, but better than last time something like this happened and I lost just about everything.

Sometimes I wonder if all this shiny technology is worth it.

12:25am: An Invention of the Devil
I bought a nice, shiny new 200GB hard drive today. Installing it should have been easy, but no.

First, I found the BIOS didn't understand drive bigger than 128GB. I downloaded the new version and flashed it. Then, I( found that neither Win2K nor WinXP could see more than 128GB.

Currently I'm copying all the stuff from my old drive to a 128GB partition on the new drive, with WinXP as the OS. Hopefully I can find a workaround to let me use the rest of the drive that doesn't involve other operating systems or more upgrading.

So far something that should've taken half an hour has used six hours, and counting.

12:07am: Late Veteran's Day Observation
A bit late, but hey...

While waiting for a bus today, I found myself seated behind a couple of old gents, returning from an annual reunion for Signallers at the RSA (Returned Servicemen's Association). They were veterans of the Malaysia conflict, and were chatting of old friends they'd missed at the reunion - both those who had "shuffled off", and those who had simply missed the get together.

Sitting there I was reminded of the old guys in the district I grew up in - veterans of WWII, now mostly dead and gone. This pair, like those old men, had an optimism and lively humour of a sort you don't see much today.

It just made me realise how much we owe that generation, and its optimism, belief in the future, and willingness to dig in and get things done.

12:05am: Oooooh Pretty!
I've just found the pictures of the new Deluxe Edition of GURPS. It's very shiny, and one wil be mine. A pity it'll have to come by surface mail. :(

9:38pm: A grand new experiment?
Well, I've finally gotten round to setting up a LJ account. now we get to see how long it takes for the novelty to wear off.