Today was not a good computer day. The link was wonky between us and the main building, where the server is, so we had times where we couldn't do a thing for 10 minutes. It should only have affected the network drives, and not the actual computer as well, so why it did, I have no idea. Probably just to be annoying.

I spent most of the day setting up my new computer. It is so fast in comparison to the old one, and in things I wasn't expecting at all as well. So I was all happy with that (and my nice, new wallpaper of two guys kissing) and went to plug it in to my monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. Where there was just one small problem. The keyboard and mouse have PS2 connections. Dell don't seem to think people use these any more. Grr.

I'm very attached to my keyboard (I had a crap one until I nicked this one off someone when they left) so I refuse to have a new one. I also want to try out my Nemo mouse (which for some reason doesn't work with my current computer). So now I have to wait for some adaptors. More grr.

And then tonight I thought I'd have a game of Just Shoot The Thing (brilliant thing I found ages ago. It's a short game where you...just shoot the thing. While trying to avoid the thing shooting back at you). It refused to play, so I easily found it on the net, redownloaded and installed it. Except that as I was playing about with it on my start menu, Explorer thought that it would be far more fun to crash. As it does often. My Explorer is definitely Not Right.

Anyway, at this point Just Shoot The Thing decided to join in the party and I only really remembered the controls before it crashed as well. Twice. At which point I gave up and restarted. And did some work on the Arathorn/Gilraen thing.

I wrote myself a plan last night and put dates on it. Which was, worryingly, more fun than writing the thing itself. But still, it told me where I had a whole load of scenes all set in the same month, and elsewhere gaps of a year. Which meant that the scenes I'd been thinking about putting in, have been put in (although not written, I should point out).

I also remembered, as I wrote a touching reconciliation scene (or it will be touching with a few rewrites) that actually, the two people in question had an argument about which to reconcile. I remember exactly when it happened, just not why. Hopefully it'll come back to me at some point.

I actually managed to write about 800 words, pasted in Anniversary, which I wrote for an HA list thingy ages ago, which started this whole fic off in the first place, so now it's just under about 12,000 words. So I'm feeling quite impressed with myself (and not thinking about birthday drabbles I haven't even looked at for months or drabble communities I haven't either)

I've had a three and a half day weekend, which was very nice.

Saturday managed to be a bit of a disaster. I went to London to meet some friends for dinner. Someone threw themselves in front of a train at Acton, so it took an hour to travel the last ten minutes to London. Luckily, I wasn't in a rush and had my lunch and a good book with me, so I didn't mind too much.

I did the Earth section of the Natural History museum, which was mostly rocks which I found boring enough in Chemistry at school. There was an Earthquake simulation thing. I don't think it was set very high because there was a notice up saying that was as much stress as could be exerted on the relevant bits, but all the same it was quite freaky. And that was when I knew it was going to happen. It must be so scary to experience the real thing (I've slept through the tiny ones we've had here).

I also went to Camden as a friend of mine was always going on about the market there. It was a bit like the ones I went to in Melbourne and Sydney, only smaller and not as good. So I wasn't terribly impressed. I did find some mini eggs though, in the Holland and Barrett there, which was good.

Then I went to dinner and was ill. Luckily, I recovered enough to walk down the Mall and see Buckingham Palace (which I've never seen before). The Mall was interesting, but Buckingham Palace was just like you see on TV, so unimpressive. I had no idea they changed the guard more often than once a year though! I will have to go back in the daylight and see it.

Then, there were engineering works on the way home so it took an hour extra, which wasn't good as I was feeling ill again by then. And being ill tends to knock me out, so not getting to bed till 1.30am doesn't really go with that.

But I got all my jobs done yesterday, so I could do whatever I liked today. Which has so far consisted of sleeping for twelve hours (I feel so much better for it too) and generally not doing a lot. I did some more work on the Arathorn/Gilraen fic. Although that mainly consisted of actually reading through what I've done so far, deleting a couple of scenes and adding a few bits. With the result that it's now shorter than it was before I started.

I've got nothing on all week this week (in contrast to next week, which will be busy) so I'm going to try and be good and work on it a little bit every day. Or if not this fic, then another. Given that it's 10,000 words so far, is missing quite a few scenes, and is still very drafty, I reckon it could be 30,000 when it's done. Given that the longest thing I've finished so far is 5000 words, that would be quite impressive.

Blogger has just introduced those annoying text verification thingys on comments. I've not had any comment spam (yet) but I've turned it on anyway.

I got my SG10 ticket through yesterday and it was 274. Which I thought was quite annoying because it meant I'd just missed out on the cocktail party. And then I read the bit of paper that came with it and it turns out the cocktail party is for the first 300! Which is quite exciting. Although apart from Michael Shanks, the other guests could be anyone, I really have no idea who they are.

I also spent some time catching up on my LOTR fic reading and ended up actually doing some writing. Shock, horror! Needless to say I didn't actually work on anything I should be, but then that's because I suddenly realised this week how to solve a problem I'd been grappling with in my Arathorn/Gilraen long plotty thing (although looking through it I've created more, but still).

On the one hand I'm looking forward to this bank holiday weekend (and since I took this afternoon off to use up my overtime before I lost it, mine's even longer) I'm probably going to end up bored. I have a whole load of things to do (like I can't see my room for dust and I need to do some Rotaract stuff) but if I put my mind to it it's only a day's worth. I should use the rest to do some writing and play some games but we'll see.

I just saw Lost (well, then Coupling to take my mind off it) and it was actually good. I was surprised. I'm hoping they'll continue to do an early evening repeat, so they'll cut the bits that will disturb me. And as my landlady watches it I need to get her to tell me if we see the plane go down in an episode so I can be ready with the remote. Obviously, I'm not going to watch it live, too many adverts in it.

And because it's been marked as unread for a while, Saz tagged me with the five songs you are currently rocking the hell out of. I don't have five but it's Coldplay X&Y. I especially like Speed of Sound and that one they played last at Glastonbury. So it sort of answers the meme.

Today I set up my old boss's computer for my new boss - so then I can have his current one as mine is currently on it's last elbows (it ran out of legs several years ago). I don't think it's been updated ever. It took me an hour to get to installing SP2, which took forever to do, then there was another hour of updates. But she'd pretty much cleared the rest out (amazingly) so I didn't have much else to do. I'm leaving him to play with his wallpaper and other settings on the basis that he either knows what do or if he doesn't, I don't care.

(It was so much more fun writing this stuff than typing it - I want a tablet PC. Also, I had it portrait so I could see long parts of a website at a time - which is better than wide parts (which is why my Firefox window isn't maxised and is square))

I have discovered that train timetables are a work of fiction. Not only because the time they say the train's arriving bears no relation to the time it actually arrives, but also because more than once now I've got on a train that's not even listed in the timetable. And to make it worse, I've got on trains that aren't listed on the website either. So obviously the only way to get a train is to turn up to me station and hope. because when you ring up you can't even speak to a person any more.

On the plus side, I an writing this on dad's toy (his tablet PC), which is doing quite a good job of my handwriting). He's also put anvil on it since the last time I was home, and it's great. I love the bouncing icon instead of the hourglass!

Today was the annual water pistol fight in Winspit quarry with the local Blakes 7 group. Photos to follow, but it was good fun, as always. I even managed to paint my super soaker this year (well, last night).

I was also reminded that I read about the Discworld con on Judith's LJ and wanted to go. Well, the next one is August next year and looks good, judging from last years program. So, I think I might have to sign up for it. Up for it, Sel?

Am being pressured to watch Atlantis now that himself is ready, so that's pretty much a whistle-stop tour of my weekend so far. I will get round to replying to comments later, and 1 certainly plan to catch up on HLIII.

Just a quick post to say how much I love Linux. Tomorrow (or Sunday) I'll post more when I can actually writem rather than type, specially as I can't quite get used to this keyboard.

It's just as well I read Avon's LJ, I'd have forgotten otherwise (is it August already?). Happy Birthday, fileg. I hope it's a good one.

To go with Overheard in New York, I found Overheard in the Office and Overheard in the UK.

Dad sent me a link about PawSense which looks like a silly thing that detects when your cat is typing. Except that I looked round the website and found it actually exists, which is somehow more worrying...

It's been so long since I last posted I can't even remember when it was or what I said. Although this is partly because I've been so busy at work I've been a bit stressed and my memory goes when I'm stressed. Which is a problem because I have a good memory, so I rely on it a lot.

I got halfway through watching the first half of Lost tonight and got bored. It didn't help that there had been about ten minutes worth of adverts in that time. And, strangely enough, nothing in it had changed since I saw most of it last autumn. So I'm taping the second half and will find out at some point where I got up to. I also think that watching it just before I got to bed is a stupendously bad idea. That is assuming I manage to stay away till 11pm. It's not looking likely at this point.

I had a good weekend, despite working ridiculous hours to have Monday off. I met up with Sel, Kate, Beth & Terry on Saturday. Terry and I rowed in the Serpentine. Although rowed is perhaps putting it a bit strongly in my case. I think there was more swearing than rowing going on.

Sunday I saw a couple of friends in the London Triathlon. If I hadn't known anyone in it it wouldn't have been so interesting, but as it was I really enjoyed myself.

After that I was off to Somerset for the annual trip to the Windmill. It was good to swim in the outdoor pool on Monday while everyone else in the office was at work.

The only trouble with the weekend (and in fact, most of them) is I get some intelligent conversation. Or dirty conversation in some cases. But it makes going back to work so much more difficult when the main topic of conversation is Big Brother, clothes, shoes and diets. None of which I have any interest in at all.

On the plus side the latest Atlantis was great. Mainly due to David Hewlett, who was fantastic. Stargate was equally funny but can't quite match McKay and [censored] doing [censored]. I want a screencap of it as my wallpaper. At work, of course. (Note to people watching it on Sky, this is the fourth episode called Duet. It will be obvious which bit I am talking about).

I have been good and updated my website. Including music video recs that have been sitting around on my hard drive since January...

I was supposed to be playing tennis tonight but I stil hurt too much for that - but I can move a lot more than yesterday. So I'm not actually out a single night this week, so I am trying to be good and get things done. It's working so far but there's still plenty of time for it to go downhil...

I was followed home by a dog today who was very nice and just sat and wagged its tail while I stroked it. Which was more pleasant than next doors dog who is a bit enthusiastic - which is hard work in a big dog.