tales from the "it's life Jim, but not..." dept.

t’was yesterday. I left at 22:15, first 20km through a forest, with just the lights of my bike to guide me. man it was dark, for sure o0 I am slightly night blind, so contrast dropped away until everything was a wash of pale grey except the bit that my headlight illuminated. I couldn’t see much of anything, just the light grey ribbon of the path, with darker grey around it and pale grey trees -like columns made of mist- and so and went off the road twice where the bike path veered away from where I thought the road was (the road was still there, just a sandy path for horse riding where the hard bike path turned away - not good for a racing bike hehe).

Also, I have a VERY active imagination. VERY active. There were all kinds of scary monsters in the forest, I kid you not. Luckily I could psych myself away from thinking about them because I could “see” them quite well, and as I can see mostly jack shit in the dark I could tell the monsters weren’t real. Until I came apon a man standing by the side of the bike path. I thought he was a tall, pale spindly monster and ignored him until he scared the shit out of me by suddenly moving and speaking. Turned out he was on a bike with no lights (the fool), and had kindly pulled off the path when he saw me coming in the distance. Ofc he nearly gave me a fucking heart attack, but there you go. On the whole, the ride on the path through the dark forest was completely awesome. I had to focus my full attention on staying on the path, and had no time to think about anything but that. Just what I wanted, but even so I don’t think I’ll be doing it again until I get an extra headlight.

Posted by TdC at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My mother, bless her, has taken a tumble. She managed to trip over her own feet and fall, and in doing so has hurt her ribs and dislocated (aaaah) a finger. Her being her, she then got in her car and drove to the nearest hospital where she got her finger set (aaaah2), taped, and went about her day. Then she called me, to tell me she wasn’t going with me to the art market as we had planned, because she had had a fall and then she told me that she hadn’t told me that she’d fallen the week before as well, for no aparant reason. Then I got very angry and demanded she go to see her doctor, which she feebly tried to claim wasn’t nessecary perfectly fine etc etc, but I was absolutely adamant she get herself checked and kept it up until she agreed to go.

So I waited while consumed with worry that something was going to be amiss, and I had the supremely selfish thought that I didn’t want anything to be wrong with my mother because I didn’t think I could handle another bad thing happening to me this year. And that’s when I started to feel really bad about what kind of a heel I can be at times and how much of an impact the other thing has had on me, as well as the fact that I was scared to death something would happen to my mum.

She’s been to her doctor in the meanwhile, and he couldn’t see anything obvious, blood pressure etc, and my mum, instead of being herself and going home again, actually asked for a full set of tests to be done on her so she’d know what was up. So while I wait for that to come through so I can hear if there actually is anything wrong with my old mother I am slightly less worried (but am entertaining the thought that if it is not something obvious it may well be something really bad :( but ofc she may well have just tripped and it could all be a coincidence) but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Posted by TdC at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

eek had 15 hours of unexpected work on saturday, and more on sunday, with about 7 hours sleep in between. been at it for 6,5 hours now o0

I can remember going to Hotel Bosch on friday with Max and Dennis to go see Tim Vanhamel, which was pretty awesome, and my friend Max giving me a car radio for my babe magnet, which was even more awesome, but apart from that, I can only remember working :(

there were some plans, get a haircut, go bowling with Jeff, Anita, Isabelle, Martijn, André, Easy and Sophie, drink some beers with Boudewijn, but sadly that’s all disappeared and there is only big company.

I’ll have to take some days off next week :/

Posted by TdC at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still somewhat surprised to have had my ex girlfriend at my door on Saturday morning. Surprised at how shocked I was and how bad I instantly felt. Weird how that works; why can she not leave me to mourn the loss of our friendship in peace? I do not care that she claims to miss me, in fact my more harsh half is inclined to either write her nightly visit off as drunk lies, or to be glad in the fact that she seems to feel some of the emotional pain I’ve felt every day since she fucked up our relationship and I left. Or both. I wonder what she thinks and if she realizes that I just look at her with a mixture of sadness and pity. Amazing how love and friendship and sex and laughter and every other emotion has been boiled off in a wash of hatred until there was nothing left, not even the hate that began it. I don’t really care, there’s just this vague sadness where my friend used to live in my heart. I miss my friend. She was funny and beautiful and smart and I loved her but now she’s just some stranger whom I pity. Oh well. As long as she doesn’t fucking come calling in the middle of the night again things will be just peachy. You read that ex-girlfriend? Stay the fuck away from me.

Saturday I went for a little bikeride and had yummy dinner at my mums place, then I went home and met up with my friend Max in the park where he was working and trying to entertain Sigrid at the same time so I laughed at them and then S and I watched the circus theatre kids do a try-out for a new show they were putting together which was amazing and made me want to be 15 again and join a circus school so I could do the stuff they did. And the park was dark, but they’d put out lots of little lights along the paths which sparkled and were pretty and so I tried to pretend I was the only person there, except my friend Easy texted me that he was upset and ofc having no idea what he was on about it took me about 5 minutes to realize that Holland had lost the footy match against Russia. I heard the Russians were pretty good though, which is nice, because it seems better to lose against some really good fellows than against some team who sucks and just happened to be lucky.

Anyway I told Easy to bring his girlfriend to Hotel Bosch where Max and I were going to meet up and went there while Max took Sigrid home. There I met up with Derek, who actually spoke to me first before I recognized him which was very pleasant. He made a point of asking me how I was and we had a nice talk before Easy and his gf and Max showed up and then Joost also turned up and there was lots of laughter and beer, though Easy+gf were both already quite drunk with having watched the football in the town and my throat started to kill me after a while. Some serious bacteria action going on in there; I just wish the cold would break through and then I could get better again. It’s always so poo when you know you have a cold but it just kind of hangs back and doesn’t develop, meaning I have horrible tasting bacteria having mass orgies in the back of my throat and a runny nose but otherwise feel absolutely fine. Also when Will was still here (Will - teh crazy, has done a 100+ mile bikerace this weekend o0) we ended up at a cyber-goth party at Bosch and that was quite amazing and I kind-of agreed with Sophie to go with her and her sister to another party as long as she would make my outfit. Which seems kind of a good deal haha :)

Sunday was quite a slow day. I’d meant to get some house cleaning in, but I’ll have to do that tomorrow, monday being the last day of my holidays. Took it very easy today, had quite the hangover and finally finally it seemed my cold was going to break through (ofc it didn’t in the end) so I lazed about and spoke to some people on FreddysHouse. Feeling a bit naff, I declined my friend Maks when he called to ask me out to the park and later for a meal, and just lay about on the couch with some music and a paracetamol to keep me company. I should put the rest of the stuff from my Bro’s wedding up, and a bit of a writeup of the holiday fun I had with Will. I’ll see about that tomorrow.

Posted by TdC at 2:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hmm in reverse order, the bloody courier GLS has fucked up again: I bought a CX bike from PlanetX, and they sent it to me really quickly, but the idiot deliveryman at GLS failed to put a note through my letterbox, and now the bike has been sitting in a GLS depot somewhere while I waited for it to arrive! Idiots! This is the second time they’ve done this to me, ie no note, making me wait, etc. And today being a holiday in Holland I can’t call them ofc, which also sucks :/
My energy supplier is also messing up bigtime. It seems they’re willing to sell me electricity, but now they deny the ability to sell me gas, which means that either they’ve screwed up (again), or they really can’t, in which case I must wonder where the gas is coming from :/ Anyway, they now won’t let me log in to the online thing, because they deny me taking services from them. Well, I’ll see what happens. I’m about to go biking though, so I expect it will do me some good. I’m kinda hoping for a beer later on, but I’m not sure if the cafes will be open because everything seems closed.

Yesterday I was mostly trying to recover from the furious biking on saturday, and I spent the afternoon and evening at my friend Robert’s place helping him to fiddle with a mountain bike he was trying to salvage, then dinner and nice long chats with him and his wife, the cat lady. Then I went to my mum’s, as it was mother’s day so I sponged coffee off her and we had nice conversation, until I went home, played some X3 and crashed in bed.

Saturday I went to Brussels with my friend Easy Erwin, because we were going to be all nerdy and stuff by going to a Star Wars exposition. Very cool, some original props from the old movies, new movies, concept art (brilliant!). So we drove there, quite fun, felt like a little road trip kind of thing, and we were laughing and joking and the drive there was fine, weather great ofc. Expo was pretty big too, quite busy as well. There were actually girls there! By themselves! Amazing! Though most of them had their “I’m doing this for my boyfriend but I’ll make him pay later” faces on, some actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. Average public was pale long haired men wearing nu-metal or nu-goth band tshirts though hehe.
We decided to not go into Brussels proper and just drive back, as the idea was to go lie in the park with some wine. That changed to go out for beer later, so I went biking as I’d started to feel a little depressed again and needed to get rid of the cloud. So biking it was, and I hammered myself into a pulp by doing 55km in under 2 hours: 27.6km/h average. Quite fast on a mountainbike, in the woods. I somewhat frightened myself, as at one point I was rocketing down a forest trail at about 45km/h, but I have slicks on the bike as it’s supposed to stay on the road, but I didn’t care and just wanted to faster and faster and faster. Anyway I made it home and was completely wrecked mentally and physically, so I had a shower and went to bed. No going out tonight, oh no. It was nice to feed all the anger and hurt into the bike. At least that way I can be relaxed again once it’s gone. Just empty, no bad things, nothing.

Hmm my memory is failing, but I had another bbq night with Jacqueline, Patrick, Maks and his friend (but I forget her name oh dear oh dear) and it was really nice. Lots of music, beer and burnt food thanks to darling Maks, who forgets to turn things over fast enough hehe.

All in all a pretty decent couple of days, though I want my bike and I want time to go really fasssst because I still feel like shit on a daily basis thank you very much.

Posted by TdC at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve received a letter from Continuon threatening to cut me off the power grid as they’ve not heard from my power provider that I have an account. Ergo Nuon. Meaning that all the things I did when I first moved into my house hadn’t been processed by them regardless of the fact that I have all the papers and things.

So calling Continuon, a helpful man told me to call Nuon with the serial numbers of the meters in the house and they’ll sort it. And yes, in a big plus, the girl I had on the line confirmed I had not been put in the system, was surprised I had received the letters, laughed at my jokes and sorted everything while I waited on the phone. 10 minutes later all was well. Extra plusses for her super sweet phone voice. Mmmm :)

Another plus: today I got a call from the company I bought my lovely couch from. The thing is completed, and they want to get it to me. Monday 19th, I will be in possession of a big lump of italian goodness :D

Posted by TdC at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, where to begin? Hmm, so after a perfectly rocking weekend that started on thursday the 10th (yes the 10th, ie more than a week ago) I got up that monday, and I didn’t really feel very well. Wondering what was wrong with me, I just went through the day, and ended up having a beer with my friend Max before going home for bed and work the next day. I got up tuesday feeling like I’d been hit by a rather large truck, with my whole body aching and my classic “I’m just about to get a bad cold” grumpiness.

Which was somewhat strange because I’d only just recovered from a nasty cold and even virus sensitive me doesn’t normally get it twice in a row. So I went to work. And came home early feeling very broken, went to bed and got a fever. I can tell when I have a fever, because my dreams (always pretty weird) suddenly turn up the strangeness to maximum. Ofc currently meaning that I dreamt about my ex girlfriend quite a few times.

Most notable dream was this one: I realized I was dreaming (not really, it was part of the dream) and looked around. I was lying on a bed, fully clothed. My ex girlfriend, also fully clothed, was asleep beside me and also somehow I knew I was in Australia. I got off the bed and walked over to a cabinet where I saw a little box. I opened the box and inside I found some pieces of crystal. The pieces fit together like a puzzle, and from them I could make a little teddybear, shaped a bit like Ziekenhuisbeertje, the bear she gave me when I was in hospital with my broken leg. I realized that this crystal bear was my heart, and it was broken, and while I had put it back together again I could still see that it had been broken, like you can, with things like that and if I’d touch it wrong it would just fall apart.

As you can imagine these profound images woke me up, and I felt very sick and overwrought, so I got up to take some paracetamol or ibuprofen or something, and while still shaken by the dream and some of that fever and still half asleep I thought that she might really have found the pieces of my heart after she broke it and maybe she had really put them in a box in the house somewhere, but I hoped she’d just thrown them away, like she callously threw other things away with such ease, because I didn’t want her to have something as precious as to me as that.

The day after I had the dream I felt so sick and low that I stayed in bed for most of the day, and after forcing myself up I took a shower to try and get rid of the chills I was having so the hot tap on and I soaked myself in the lovely hot water till I stopped shivering, which took over an hour of doing. In fact, I got tired and dizzy from not feeling well and lack of food so I just sat down and let the hot water fall on me. Even after that I felt so shit from being sick and not eating anything, not to mention my ongoing emotional vacuum that I almost called my mother to come save me but instead took two paracetamol and two ibuprofens and went to bed under a pile of blankets to try to stay warm.

After three shit days I felt a little better and a little stronger so I did something geeky and reinstalled my computer to allow Vista to run off a mirror instead of just the single disk. This because I was scared to death that one of my harddisks would break for whatever reason and I’d lose all my image work and other pictures, music, etc. Anyway everything went swimmingly and 20 backup dvd’s later I had a new install and now a disk can break and the mirror will save me. But I was still ill at this point and had to sleep alot or the coughing and snot explosions of sneezing would kill me (at least, that’s what it felt like).

Ooh I realize I completely forgot to mention that I had been to De nacht van het Kippenvel or Goosebump Night at Tivoli De Helling in Utrecht on saturday (see last.fm even here) with my friends Dennis and Max. Dennis was photographing ofc, and you can check out some of his work on the last.fm even page or on his own. It was quite nice, but young lady singer songwriters don’t really do it for me right now, even though (especially) Alela Diane was certainly very nice to look at and had a goodly number of mostly very beautiful songs to play. The place was pretty packed also, but I discovered that young ladies with henna-red hair elbowing their way through me to then stand directly in front of me and start talking to each other about how much they’re enjoying themselves makes me see red and want to knock people’s skulls together. Maybe it was the henna.

Ah yeah, the snot explosions were slowly going away, and thank god the fever was gone, so I was feeling more or less like a human again. About this time work started calling me because things were going pear shaped with a certain project, so I helped out as best I could on the phone between coughing, but they seemed to be getting nowhere, so on friday they made me promise that I’d work on sunday, which I said yes to (idiot) and actually did (fool) so I sat in the office for nearly 12 hours on sunday while full of pills, but luckily I could reproduce the problem and it can be fixed, which is good, but after this exercise of work-while-ill, albeit voluntary I was in serious need of lots of comfort so I stopped by the chinese place in the steenstraat on the way home and got lots of yummy, once home ate most of it, and went to bed.

Today I ate the rest, but before that I spent a couple of hours cleaning my house, which was pretty damn, uh, covered in crusts after me being sick in it for a week, so I put a lot of effort in to clearing away unnecessary crap, taking the dry washing off the rack, vacuum cleaning, then the dishes, the shower/loo, then mopping all available floor areas. Had the radio on all day so I could judge how long I did chores for in a single run of continuous effort, and at about 17:00 I was done and dragged the FatBoy outside so I could sit in the sun and have a coffee. Which was great. And then I walked about roof terrace of my “penthouse” and let it sink into me that this was all mine, and that I’d just cleaned it, and there was sun and warmth and coffee and music and I felt really good. So I bought a bike :-)

As I inhale the urge to kill all my emotions - K’s Choice

Posted by TdC at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

yesterday I got over 50kph on the brick road sloping down in Duno zomg. 52.8 km to be precise. And I’m not even really trying, as I’m dead scared most of the time because the road is like the letter M inclined down a hill’s slope. Ie there are some points where you can’t see what lies ahead, and this being Holland there is a good chance that some old lady will be smack bang in the middle of the road walking her dog, or better, her great-grandchild, which you will promptly hit, split in half, then veer off the road, careen down the slope and impale yourself through the family jewels on some handily out thrust branch.

And it will be your fault ofc, because clearly mountain bikers are the spawn of satan, even when they’re on a road, whereas pedestrians (aka les morons avec les death-wishes) are allowed to go anywhere.

Mind you, I don’t particularly hate peds, as my most virulent emotions are reserved for women on so-called preggo-bikes, which are bikes with eeeextra wide handle bars and low gears, mirrors, bags, kids, day-glo flags and all kinds of other things attached. For some reason the people riding these kinds of bikes seem to think they are allowed to veer all over the road without cause, or ride in the exact middle of a narrow bike path, where their ultra wide handlebars and fat arses make it impossible for others to pass. And when I did scoot past yesterday, I got the feminine annoyance noise] made at me, the click they make with their tongues against the front teeth/roof of mouth, which means that whatever you did no matter the reason, you are wrong in all ways and suck at life.

Posted by TdC at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

future plans become meaningless. truth becomes valueless.
it’s all shit.

Posted by TdC at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

for those reading up on my quick and dirty how-to on configuring ftpd in a chroot on solaris 8, you may want to read the edit I did regarding the possible LDAP strangeness. read more here.

Posted by TdC at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

because it seems that when you’re swimming in a lake of money, special dispensation cards for everything are created for you because someone might get pissed off. You know, next time I get arrested and sent to jail because I broke the law, I’m going to tell the judge I can’t be in confined spaces right away and I bet he’ll be nice and let me stay home that day because apparently that is how stuff works these days.

This morning when I saw some footage from CNN’s Larry King interviewing Paris Hilton and her telling the world in her little-girly voice that the nice men let her go home because her little cell was giving her the whooping heebie-jeebies but that she was trying to be strong about the whole thing made me want to have explosive decompression of the bowels just to rub away the memory of what I’d just seen. I sure hope the poor girl pulls through, because if being treated that inconsequentially had happened to me, I’d need some serious counsellings before I’d be able to take the world seriously again.

Mad? Yeah, you bet I’m mad! I’m mad as hell at the so-called justice system of the united states of america for being so scared of public opinion turning against them that they let this kind of stuff happen in the first place. Little Ms Hilton doesn’t know how to be anything other than a very rich heiress slash celebrity with a bad taste in home video equipment, but surely the ffing DOJ would know how to deal with these people? They seem to believe that they can handle us average Joe’s perfectly well, but confronted with a celebrity you can see the sweat breaking out.

I’m so glad nobody knows I’m a rich celebrity, because I don’t want to be treated any different than I am today. I certainly hope nobody ever finds out or the velvet gloves thing to protect me from teh badd wurld will drive me insane! You know, scratch my opening thought in the first paragraph, because if rich and famous me ever gets arrested I’m begging the judge to keep me inside for a while because I certainly don’t want to be in no rehab clinic filled with celeb fruitcakes or at home surrounded by three dozen aids, PA’s and other assorted wet nurses. Please Mr Big Man, put me somewhere safe for a while, and no matter what I do, keep my bloody doctors away from me!

Posted by TdC at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the past, my managers used to tell me that I didn’t say “no” enough to people wanting things from me and worked too much out of my goodwill pool. Now my managers tell me I say “no” too often, and I should be more flexible. If I am flexible, my manager complains that I am not holding to my schedules. When I create bomb-proof schedules my manager complains that I am too inflexible and should show people some goodwill.

Recently Scott Adams created what I consider to be the best Dilbert comic ever.

Posted by TdC at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay for biodiversity! Some of you may know that I am going to Australia for two months come the end of this year. Some of you may know that my lovely gf dislikes toads and frogs. Dislikes as in if all toads and frogs were to disappear from the earth it would still be tainted with their loathsome memories. Yep, she doesn’t like them at all.

Well, something I didn’t know (well somehow I think I did but conveniently forgot iirc) is that Oz at one point gave in to Man’s thinking that he could force nature to His Will, and imported a whole ship (I actually mistyped shit there for a second) load of Cane Toads, which are an extremely large and prolific kind of toad, to combat some native beetle thingy. As you can guess, the toads loved Australia and native wildlife lost out.

Oh, did I mention my gf hates toads and frogs?

Anyway, media tend to grasp the toads from time to time because they are large, will eat anything that they can fit in their mouths, like to breed (bit like me really), licking them may get you high (not really like me, unless I’ve been biking), and ofc they took over a large portion of Oz in a relatively short time because they liked it there (that bit does resemble mankind somewhat though).

Well, I read an article somewhere about the toads, and it drifted about the dim recesses of my mind for a while until earlier today when my beautiful gf reminded me that she wants all creatures of toadish and frogish descent gone by complaining in a squeaky girly voice (that I really love btw, because it gives me manly chills that I must make fire, grunt a lot and defend teh cave with a spear) that there was a frog-like smudge near her front door where something that may have once been a frog had been pasted into the road surface by countless cars. She dislikes them even where you can’t tell what they once were. So I told her about the Cane Toads, and there was much rejoicing.

That ofc, prompted me to look up things made from toad leather and send her a pic of a toad hat. Coolness incarnate. Those guys also sell authentic kangaroo shit, if you’re so inclined. It’s biodegradable!

Posted by TdC at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve had a busy day. A very busy day. On a busy day, my desk phone rings about once every 10 minutes or so, whereas on a very busy day it will continuously whenever I put it down. Also especially irritating people will call me on my mobile when they discover my desk phone is engaged. I do not answer those calls, and the burmese kitten whispers in my ear that I must kill them all. Muuuusssssssttttt kkkkiiiiiilllllllllllllllll…

Anyway, that’s just the background. I had people over for dinner, so I was a bit rushed. A strange facet of getting older is that you can’t spontaneously have fun any more, having fun now involves preparation. So I wanted to cook an uber yummy meal, one that would involve some time in the kitchen and some ingredients that I would have to get fresh. So I was a bit rushed eh.

After finally escaping from work an hour later than planned, I managed to arrive at the supermarket in time to discover I actually remembered most of what I wanted to get, and to discover that I really had to pee. To urinate. Making water. Going wee-wee, a number 1, draining the lizard, you know. Relieving myself via my front bottom. There are lots of ways of describing it. Anyway, I was up to description eight thousand and twenty seven while waiting in line to pay for the stuff I’d collected.

One of those things you know: you are in a rush, and suddenly all the old people in the world want to talk to you, your phone rings twentyfour zillion times, all the traffic lights are red, all cars are driven by homicidal maniacs out to kill you (or at the least merely hinder you) and now, la piece de la resistance: the mother with child.

Don’t get me wrong, I do tend to like kids, and I certainly like women. In fact, I love a woman very dearly. No, it’s what mothers and their kids do together at inconvenient times that burns me. Inconvenient meaning in a supermarket. In a queue at the checkout. When I have to pee. After I’ve had a very busy day. Hey little Johnny do you want to pay for mummy? Sure, there are only fifteen people in the queue, one of which is about to die of a ruptured bladder, why the hell not? God I love kids. Oh look! He dropped the change! Now mummy has to pick it all up. Yes he’s a big boy isn’t he?

I got home, ripped off my jacket, nearly garotted myself with my headphones (but luckily my ipod flipped out of my inner pocket and smacked against the door and then the floor, saving me) before I could finally unleash the golden liquid noisily into the porcelain telephone. Bliss.

Posted by TdC at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

in case you non-EU people don’t know it, Germany is the current chair-country of the EU (since jan 1st), and they’re pushing for the banning of violent games.

as we all know, video games are clearly the root of all evil, and violent ones are the worst, and we should never beg the question why some flipped out kid is playing violent game for 14 hours a day and never going outside, because obviously the game is at fault even before said kid gets his sticky paws on it. it sits there in the cesspit of evil that is the poota-game shop (run by a raving psychopath ofc) on a shelf while radiating violence and oozing insanity.

it almost makes me wish that someone would freak out and go on a death rampage and it would come to light that they play a totally non-violent game like World Snooker Champ 18 hours a day. obviously it would still be the games fault :/ anyway, since rock and roll is here to stay, television just makes too much money and book-burning is so passe, I suppose they have to blame something.

personally I blame burmese kittens for all the violence in the world. those ickle fluffy beasties just sit there, being cute and extruding death. I had one in my hands the other day, and after playing with it for a bit I just had to go outside and kill some old lady with a hammer. the cat told me to.

Posted by TdC at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a little looking, I find the quote below on the EA website:

Our support staff cannot alter or modify stats, ranks, kits, and badges for any account.

Why was I looking? Well, just now I was playing on a server, and I noticed that I had a global score of 0/11300 odd points. How strange, I thought, I have 0 points but I’m still a petty officer silver, it must be some sort of server glitch. It’s happened to me before a few times, iirc before the 1.6 patch came out.

Anyways, I play for a bit, and then I suddenly get awarded the bronze resupply and support badges, and the good-conduct ribbon (these total 540 points iirc). As I’d already worked out that the server I was playing on thought I had no points, I decided to disconnect at the end of the round and go play somewhere else. To my surprise, on disconnecting, I see that my score has increased by 540 points plus some loose change, and that I’m now at 11900odd points and am thus 400 points over petty officer gold.

Well, I was a bit surprised, but as no bug in BF2142 seems impossible tbh, I gave it no further thought and went and did something else for a bit. After said bit I returned to my computer, logged on to BF2142 and was once again a bit surprised to see that the game still thought that I had 11900+ points. I connected to a server, and the very first point I got the game awarded me petty officer gold.

By now I was slightly angry, and decided to contact EA support to get 540 points deducted from my account’s score as I considered having the points to be cheating, as I clearly got them in an illegal manner, and in looking for a way to contact them I discovered the quote above. I’m not so driven that I will delete my account or anything, but I did get 540 points in a dodgy manner, and that irks me somewhat.

Posted by TdC at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

more the latter, I suppose. My collection of mad skillz at BF is sadly lacking. What specifically pisses me off about myself in combination with BF2142 is the fact that my enemies just won’t die the same way that they make me do. I hazard to guess that this mostly has to do with the way I aim at said enemies. You see, I tend to go for the upper half of the chest / lower half of the head area. I’ve learnt that this is bad. Why? Well the BF2142 guys tell you that a sniper that aims for the head exclusively will be more successful than a sniper that aims for the ‘easy’ center body mass.

A headshot being insta-death ofc. Well, I have trouble with that, inasmuch as I expend huge amounts of amunition trying to make the bad men go away, whereas if a butterfly flaps it’s silken wing somewhere close to me I get a one way ticket to the pearly gates. I have trouble believing that all the other guys who get me dead are such good shots that they headshot me every time with whatever weapon they are using at that moment. it’s hard for me to put my deaths down to purely sucking. Ofc there are times where I actually manage to get people dead with just the lightest touch of my weapon’s trigger too, but I attribute that to them already being nearly dead in the first place, and my bullets smashing into their faces mearly finishing the job someone else started.

My thought is that I will have to slightly up the sensitivity of my mouse, and maybe, just maybe, switch my Baur HAR to single shot mode allways. This to force me to aim for the head and double-tap the trigger, finally doing away with the BF2142 tendence to spam bullets with all weapons, because it is a bit of a spammy game in that respect imo tbh.

The wierdness: I’m still smarting from the first time I got a 10 kill-streak and didn’t get the pin. Today I got something called a Ground Base Medallion, and looking it up I discovered that I don’t actually have a right to it! It’s criteria are the following: 20 kills IAR, 100 captured CP’s and 200 repair points. I have the first two, but not the latter as I only have 174 repair points. So, the game awards me things I’ve not earned and doesn’t allow me things I fought long and hard for. Ho hum. (btw I kinda feel that I also should have the Meritorious Unit Service Ribbon,. but as I can’t prove that we will see what happens whenever I manage to earn it heh)

Ooh, in a bout of rampant geekness I checked my weblogsitething against the Gunning-Fog readability index via a web form found here.

The result is your Gunning-Fog index, which is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.

Posted by TdC at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIu3JMGxk3Q

ooh. Video games linked to, lets see now, the planes flying into the WTC, amongst other things. Just to touch on that briefly, I have played flight sims, but I’ve also been in a two person trainer aircraft with an instructor. Unless big jets are hugely easier to fly than a trainer I do not believe that purely playing a sim on a computer will equip you with enough knowledge to be able to hit a target with any kind of accuracy.

anyway, it’s another “let’s blame video games for the evil that ails the world” documovie.

A quote: “nowadays, kids want to be game designers!”. (whereas in the era that the speaker was young, many 100’s of years ago, kids wanted to be “useful” things? yeah, right :p) “what you you want to be little Johnny?” “I want to be an optician mum!” yeah right little John, you want to be an explorer and circumnavigate the globe in a balloon in your heart of hearts and any half decent parent should know that imo.

duh. 30 years ago kids wanted to be racing drivers and mountaineers and firemen. Kids still want to be that stuff. Some kids end up with PhD’s, some kids end up in McD’s and some kids don’t end up anywhere at all. It’s the way of things imo. Ah well.

edit: btw I posted this thing on FreddysHouse here.

Posted by TdC at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

holy crap this game’s backend is buggy as hell :(

• firstly there is ofc the nice “Connection to Master Server lost!” thing, where I get thrown out of games at random times at random intervals. Holy sweet baby Jebus but that is frustrating as hell. Especially when you’ve just crept up behind someone and are about to stab them. You just know that the server is yet unaware that you’ve been dropped, and in your mind’s eye you can see the enemy turning round to discover to his surprise that you’re just standing there and he’s not dead yet so at his leasure he will stab/shoot/attach demo-pack and destroy you while laughing like a hyena.

  During this time you’re sitting at your keybord impotently trying to log back in, gazing sadly at the little battle-walker mouse pointer. Ofc even if the Master Server does let you log back in right away, in my case the server I was just playing on in my multiplayer history will have mysteriously turned red, and it’s name will have become an IP number (ie the master server’s list of servers is borked). Trying to log in to such a server returns the extremely helpful error-message “ERROR”. Yeah boys, I sure know what happened now doesn’t I? Fuck!

• secondly the game awards me pins and things that I do not actually get: yesterday I got awarded the distinguished combat efficency pin for the first time. I had been defending the central anti-titan missile on Sidi in a battlewalker. Some bright enemy squad leader had dropped his spawnpoint on top of one of the blocks that surround the launch installation, and they just kept coming and I just kept blasting them. Anyway I got a 10 kill streak, and the DCE pin showed up in my hud. I was really pleased for two reasons: one: the game was actually letting me play. Iow I had not been disconnected yet. Amazing!. and two: a 10 kill streak! 10 kills! me! wow!. Now the bug is here: the game has registered that I have a ten kill streak, but I do not have the pin? funny that. Also, in the past the game has awarded me badges that I didn’t get and had to earn all over again. Oh well.

Also, I have some requests for the next patch:

• flying vehicle units will not work unless there are at least two people on board at take-off
• if the pilot of a flying unit bails out and the unit crashes, ie is not destroyed by enemy fire or was not being shot at at all, any resulting deaths of the passengers are credited to the pilot as team kills

also there is the question of me emptying whole clips at people who just don’t die whereas if they pass wind in my general direction I instantly get gibbed :/ That’s prolly my lack of skill though heh.

Posted by TdC at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

for driving me insane with frustration. EA’s Battlefield 2142, which I happen to own, is disconnecting me from the game every five minutes or so (and at other random times), with the dreaded “Connection to Master Server lost” message.

however, it sometimes lets me play a full map! ooh, something like 30 continuous minutes of gaming. not too much to ask I suppose. anyway, those are few and far between, but because it’s all so random *any* game could be a full game. I tried just now, to test if playing late at night differs from any other time, and sadly it doesn’t. I got d/c’d about 5 times in some 20 minutes of playing, which is just too much frustration for me to handle.

I read that EA know of this problem. I read that EA rent their servers from GameSpy. I don’t particularly like GS, but a server is a server and software is software. if I can ping the thing that my pc sets up a connection to within the EA domain when I start BF2142 with no problems at all, then I expect that connection to hold out. So, I diagnose this particular problem as shitty software on the server side, which really gets on my tits.

don’t patch the game EA/Dice, patch the master server, because until that is done I can’t play your game any more.

Posted by TdC at 2:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

well, I discovered that some important files were missing from my website. Amongst others, the CMS that brings you this blog (though lucky for me there are automated database backups so the damage isn’t too much) and the GALLERY (which may yet bring me to tears because while I have all kinds of backups, they are daily and I am worried that the backup may have occured after the files dissapeared and before I noticed)
so. I am worried :-(

Posted by TdC at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

they may look good, but tbh inho they are aluminium clad shite :/

ever since I got the RAZR, based on a whim ofc -no research at all-, as I only make calls and texts and don’t use my phone for anything else (partly due to the Dutch telecom companies all being *****, partly due to the fact that I *already* have an mp3 player/camera/agenda thing) I thought it would be ok.

so, after having gotten the thing it was broken within a week: the pretty laser-cut keypad stopped working after a ride around town in my pocket. That got fixed, and the phone was fine imo. Despite a slight dwindling in battery life, and the fact that sending text messages with it is pure hell due to the crap software everything seemed to be going well with it.
Yesterday, after another ride about town the tft packed it in. Sure, it was raining and all that but the phone was in my backpack for crying out loud. Now I have a phone with no screen! Last night it totally didn’t work, this morning it will turn on -though it’s kinda hard to work with when you can’t see shit eh?

I want a new phone! Someone recommend me one!

Posted by TdC at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

no, wait, I do not hate posties. I fucking hate the antiquated system that posties are forced, under threat of torture, to use to deliver (or should I say FAIL to deliver) people’s post. As the posties, my brothers all, take to the streets with vans full of much anticipated parcels, surely they must cry in their heart of hearts, knowing that 99.99% of the people they are striving to reach will not be there?

Where will these heartless people be I hear you ask? Why will they not be awaiting in their homes, for the brave postman to come a knocking? Those people, those fiends, surely they must know that their parcel, which they’ve waited a working week for, will be delivered on this happy day?

They will not be there, safe in their homes, because they are at work, like most people are who order parcels from companies on the internet. They are working so they can earn cash to order yet more parcels, or gifts for their girlfriends (I joke, she’s not getting it), the jist of it being that they are not at home.

What does our vailliant postman do now? Driven by his antiquated whip-wielding masters our brave brother is forced to carry away our parcel, that we have been waiting so long for, to bear it away and keep it in his posession, in order to attempt to deliver it yet again, between 13:00 and 18:00 on a working day, when once again NOBODY IS THERE TO ACCEPT IT BECAUSE THEY ARE AT WORK YOU ASSHOLES!!!!!

Now, how do I know this? Well, because I just tried to pick up a parcel that I ordered last thursday. Ok, sure, it’s not life threatening that I do not yet have it, but ye Gods!!! do the inbred morons who dream up these systems not see that it would be far more efficient to deliver parcels, or post that hast to be paid for / signed for / et al at a specific time in the evening? Or better yet: deliver it direct to your local post office, where it could be collected at one’s leisure? Why do they insist on fucking about with my parcel when they could just have left it at a depot where I could have dropped by after work and picked it up? For fucks sake!

On top of this the girl at the post office looked at me like it was my fault: “I’m sorry Sir, we do not have your parcel because it’s on the distribution route.” “You can pick it up here thursday after 13:00 in the afternoon.” FUCK! You know this means that if I abide by the rules the earliest I can get my parcel is SATURDAY MORNING? WTF?? I had garanteed 48 hour delivery! By saturday 192+ hours will have past! “I’m sorry Sir, but you failed to be available to accept the parcel. If only you had been at home, we would not have been having this conversation.”

GAH!

OK, it’s possible that I am over-reacting. Maybe it was the arabian guy in the ratty mazda 323 who tried to kill me on the way home by not giving me right-of-way where Dutch law claimed I should have had it. Maybe he was angry too. Maybe he’d just tried to pick up a parcel from the post office as well. Perhaps it was the uber-nice weather, warm, sunny that I had to leave to go back to workies after being turned away at the post office like a scruffy dog. Perhaps it’s just because today is my monday.

At least we have air conditioning.

Posted by TdC at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)