A quick spin on the Stiffee tonight finished off a fairly poor month of riding, somewhat overwhelmed by a general mix of apathy and lethargy.

Must try harder.

It’s 10 years ago today that I bought my house. Doesn’t time fly?

A very messy game tonight, not helped by me forgetting that I didn’t have a lift tonight until 7:45, then having a half-hour walk to get to the alley in time for an 8:00 start.

Despite Dennis getting a 13 spare in the first leg, we soon went 0-2 down. We managed to win the next two to go 2-2, then swapped legs until we were left 3-4 down. Dennis got his second spare to bring us back to 4-4, then managed yet another spare in the last leg which Half and Half couldn’t match.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Half and Half took 4. It also puts us 5-4 up in the Bill Giles Memorial Cup.

I’m still laptopless as the repair company are apparently waiting for a motherboard to arrive from Germany. The laptop has been gone nearly 4 weeks now, and supposidly the motherboard was ordered 10 days ago. Quite why it takes so long to get parts for a laptop that is still for sale at the moment is anyones guess.

Given the poor level of service I’m not expecting to get the laptop back any time soon, and I’m not entirely sure if I actually want it back now as I’ve lost confidence in it’s ability to keep working, and more importanly I’ve no confidence that it’d actually get fixed if it ever broke again. I was about to buy a three-year warranty, but what use is a warranty when nothing seems to happen?

Apparently I’m not the only person getting very poor service from Fujitsu Siemens and Service Source^[1], they appear to be equally crap to everyone.

It’s not helped by the fact that my suppliers are having trouble getting any response out of their account manager at Fujitsu-Siemens, so it’s somewhat difficult for them to escalate the problem any further.

[1] See threads such as Do Not Buy, Prompt repairs by Service Source UK….NOT! and Service Source, on the Fujtsu Siemens Notebook support forum

Work is still very busy, my laptop is still off being repaired, Burns night passed with a plate of the obligatory haggis and the remains of a bottle of Whisky, and not a lot else has happened really, but then there hasn’t really been enough time for anything else.

Tune of the day: RIAA - Rise Above Circumstances from the album Recording Industries are Archaic, a mashup of "Rise Above" by Black Flag, and "Pomp and Circumstance" by Elgar. Odd, but good.

I headed out on the usual trip to Bradford and back tonight, however 10 miles out, part way along a particularly dark bit of canal, my front light decided to stop working. I turned back and managed to limp the 5 miles back to Bathampton where I could pick up the roads and more importantly some street lights in order to get home again.

I suspect that the Lumicycle battery needs replacing. It’s only on it’s third winter of use, but the Solstice HID lamp unit isn’t quite so tolerent of low voltages which I suspect is where the problem lies.

Update: I think I’d miscalculated how much I’d used the battery since it’d last been charged.

A somewhat inconsistent night tonight. We quicky lost the first three legs, then somehow won the next three taking it to 3-3. We then lost again to go 4-3 down, but managed to win the 8th leg quite convincingly putting us 30 pins in the lead. Our 9th leg was something of a disaster as we only managed 38, however Treasurers were even worse, only reaching 36, leaving us the winners.

Housing took the full 8 points, and Treasurers took 4. Somehow I ended up with top score.

In an attempt to resurrect the Stiffee, I’ve finally stopped procrastinating and have ordered some new Rockshox Revelation 426 forks for it. When they arrive, which will hopefully be early next month, it’ll get the 9 speed shifters and cassette along with the Shimano XT brakes from the Craftworks which should sort things out nicely.

I’ll then ressurrect the Craftworks with the aid of a new rotor and some Hope +20mm adaptors. Despite the fact I don’t ride it very much it’s not worth enough to sell, so it’ll get the second-line parts and remain in the cellar for occasionally local rides and the odd trip to Scotland.

Apparently replacing the CPU and the memory hasn’t fixed my laptop and they have now ordered a replacement motherboard. I could have told them that originally if they’d asked, as it was almost certainly a dead graphics chipset causing the problem. However this means that I’ll probably be without the laptop for another week or so which isn’t particularly handy.

A closely fought game tonight. We swapped legs for most of the match, quickly bringing the game to 3-3 before dropping behind with 4-3. However somehow Treasurers found it in themselves to throw 50 for the last leg, we never stood a chance.

Treasurers won 5-4 and took the full 8 points, we took a respectable 4.

Mondays return match could be interesting, we only have 5 players available at the moment.

It’s now two weeks since my laptop broke, and it’s still not back. Apparently it needed a new CPU and assorted gubbins. Hopefully I’ll see it again one day.

I intended to head out on the Stiffee tonight for a ride, but as I was about to take it down off the wall I remember that I’ve still not bled the brakes properly so ended up taking the Kaboom instead.

I headed out on the usual Uni route, the road climb nearly killed me, I’ve lost so much fitness over Christmas, and I didn’t exactly have much to start with. Once I got round the back of Rainbow Woods the mud took over and I spent the next few miles struggling to keep the bike upright at times as the slippy mud meant it kept wanting to slide away from me.

Once I’d made it down off the hill most of the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful apart from when my light cut out coming back through Sainsburys car park, I obviously wasn’t riding fast enough to keep it cool.

Today it’s the turn of Chelmsford 123.

I’m currently working my way through old copies of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. Despite first being shown on TV some 15 years ago, it’s still as funny as ever. Worryingly I still remember most of the jokes.

I’m still laptop-less though. Hopefully it’ll be back next week.

Tonight was my first proper ride of the year. Just a quick solo ride out to Bradford and back along what turned out to be a rather damp towpath. I really should have worn my winter boots though, I still can’t feel my toes.

I posted this elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating here.

At the moment there are a handful of bands/people who I’ll buy CDs by because I like the music and want to help support them, the rest I’ll download from the internet as it’s far safer, and there are no restrictions on how I listen to the music.

The last few CDs I’ve bought were actually purchased after I’d already downloaded the music via the internet. With the internet you can get it sooner, in the format you want, and without any of the unwanted baggage you get when you buy a real physical CD.

The lawsuit against people like CD-Wow a couple of years back just helped persuade me to download music instead of paying the record industries artificially inflated prices. Sonys recent secret rookit installation is yet another nail in the coffin of the record industry as it stands at the moment.

Home taping isn’t killing music, the record industry is.

There is only one word that can describe tonights match. Messy.

We lost the first leg with a particularly poor 37, but somehow won the second with what was only a marginally better 40. A brief resurgence saw us throw legs of 52 and 50, then a drift back towards normality somehow won us the game. I’m not convinced we won it, I suspect it was more that the other team lost it. At least Tony got a flopper in the third leg which provided some brief excitement, and no doubt plenty of options for cheap innuendo.

Housing Admin took the full 8 points, Engineers made do with a solitary point.

I’ve just ridden back from a scout planning meeting. Despite it only being 3.5 miles, and me wearing winter gloves and glove liners, my hands were bloody freezing and are still slightly numb, which isn’t doing my typing ability any good at all.

At least I’ve now reached a double-figure mileage for the year.

I’ve been ill since the start of last weekend, have been off work sick for the last two days, and my laptop has just packed up. Can I start this year again please?

Last year I rode 2401 miles on various bikes.

My aim for this year is to ride bikes when I feel like it.