The Llama have a new crazy ass menu. They are not actually enforcing the new pricing structure so it costs £6 for the 2 for 1 meals which there are now a limited selection of – chicken melt has been moved to the steaks section so it costs £6 on it’s own and burgers now only seem to be on the beer and burger for £5 deal though they may still be on the 2 for 1, we didn’t ask for clarification. All in all though, not a good change.
I found out why my Dell didn’t update the time properly – it was running quite out already. A month out in fact, it thought it was April.
Thursday consisted of heading to The Pack Horse for the Computing 50th Jubilee celebrations as they were holding a quiz about the history of computing. All the other teams had a big advantage over us given that they lived through most of it though :p. The celebrations continued on Friday with a giant buffet and free bar consisting of the specially brewed ales for the celebration. The night ended with a short but relaxed drink in The Library.
Saturday marked the arrival of Michelle’s sister Rosie so myself, Michelle, Rosie and Norm headed to Walkabout for lunch. It was (unsuprisingly if we had put any thought into it) a lot noiser than on a weekday and so probably a bad choice of venue but never the less the food was quite good. I had to run off to work the Saturday close soon enough though.
After work we headed off to find a petrol station deciding that Texaco was too expensive so we went to the BP in Crossgates. They were night pay window only though so we headed to the one on Otley Road so that we could go in store. They had closed both sliproads off the inner ring road however so we ended up on the Armley Gyratory! The roadworks are just stupid, closing both sliproads is an absolute joke, it doubles the length of your journey. Anyway, we managed to get a sandwhich in the end and headed back to my halls to eat given we were so close, then headed home.
Sunday I was on the close again, and we were actually fully staffed at least on the closing team which seems to make a refreshing change these days. Monday was yet another close, we were staffed for a normal weekday but because it’s Easter we were fairly busy which was flustrating when I was trying to get the close done. We still got out before 2 though.
Then yesterday I headed back to campus in time to catch a lunch at The Llama as it’s been far too long.
EMI and Apple have just announced a new edition to their offerings – EMI’s entire catalog will now be offered DRM free. For $.129 a track (opposed to the classic $0.99 which is still available) you get your tracks at 256kbps rather than 128kbps and DRM free though they will still be in AAC format.
This is one step closer to making buying music online a good alternative to buying the actual CD, indeed it’s by far the biggest one. You will now be able to move music between devices which was the major problem and it also solves the licences problem (losing them) as you can back up all your music without any problems.
Google launched their new ISP, Google TiSP which offers wireless broadband usage using a network built through the sewerage system. Simply install the kit in your toilet and flush the cable down to connect to the network.
Facebook offered LivePoke, in which they dispatched live people to go and poke your victims, good for the first 100 pokes you made.
Microsoft posted instructions on how to run Mac OS X on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.
The Pirate Bay disclosed plans of the upcoming move to North Korea.
Unfortunatly, Buffy Talk was missing it’s traditional April Fools celebration. I put it down to my life getting in the way, it’s just not on.
I need a bigger credit limit! Whenever I want to buy a large purcahse on my credit card I have to move money over to my credit card. Looking back, I should have probably just bought it with my debit card and given up on the cash back. But anyway, it takes 3 working days for the money to clear – let’s count that. Today is Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and we’re on day one, Tuesday day two, Wednesday it should finally be in there. That’s like a week from now!
If I wasn’t using online banking it would be sooooooooooooo much faster. I would simply go down to my account and draw the money out and go to the other bank or whatever and pay it in and it would be available instantly. But because I’m using debit card payments and electronic fund transfers (more usually) it takes forever to do anything. I mean 3 working days! Why do computers need the weekend off?!?
It actually is a 6 days. I say it’s Friday, it’s currently Thursday night for me but if you don’t get it sorted before 2pm it’s actually 4 working days which is why it’s effectively Friday in terms of timing. But in my time it’s going to be 6 days. I don’t even seem to be able to change my mind about transfering the money now.
Despite getting to bed as late as usual last night I managed to drag my ass out of bed and make it down to The D for breakfast. Didn’t quite wake me up as much as I had hoped though, I think my spirit was all beaten down by the miserable weather. I did manage to get some productive work done though, I posted my student loan application form off, did a bit of shopping then made it to DEC-10 to finish off the A-Soc posters and do a very small amount of SY23 and SE24.
Speaking of the posters, curtesy of Izzy we now have two of them printed and they are looking pretty cool! Let’s just hope that everything on them is typo and error free as I only had time to proof them on screen so nobody else has proofed them and it wasn’t even a printed out copy, though to my credit I did read through everything as it was copied over from Writer to PowerPoint which I normally wouldn’t bother to do. Still though, I’m going to have to use a few of the stockpile of faith points that I haven’t really invested anywhere else ;).
Having said I would be in the lab yesterday I actually managed to drag my ass out of bed to get in there for 12 after another night of insomnia and get some coursework done. We’ve made a start on both SY22 and SY23 which I am quite pleased about. This compares to today when I managed to get a decent night’s sleep in and still I’m not quite up :(.
The evening consisted of another three hour planning meeting for Rationalist Week – at the moment we’re not looking too much over budget if you work the figures out the right way. Moz bought the tents and I’m buying the PA system so if you don’t count those and you don’t count all the food and drink which we’re again funding ourselves because the union won’t cover those costs (even though we wouldn’t have enough money to cover them anyway) we are only £7 over budget! That is of course before we upgrade to a bigger generator.
Everything seems to be falling nicely into place though, there is still a lot of work to do but I think we have the timescale to do it in and once we get a few more things finalised I will even pretty set. Once the event is rubberstamped by the university and we have the generator sorted I think are the main concerns at the moment. Although I’m sure it’s going to be nerve racking throughout the build-up to the event.
Later that evening we hit The Terrace to chillax for a little. It closed at 11 though, they are just not hardcore.
Apparently my desktop didn’t take heed when I posted about DST. I thought I was going to get to bed a little after 3 and get in a good 8 hours – I’ve been robbed! My computer hasn’t re-adjusted itself automatically! Windows 95 could do that!
Seriously though, there is something wrong with Dell computers and telling the time. My desktop will sycronise itself and then within a few days it will be a minute or two out again. It’s turned on all the time so it’s not like it’s without power or even turned off but it can’t hold the time. Nor does it apparently know when DST changes happen as it’s set to automatically update with DST changes.
Got out of work Saturday night and got to sleep at gone 6am due to having problems sleeping. I then got woken up at about 10:30 by the sound of drilling. Awesome. So working on about 4 hours sleep I spent my time going round Argos and Tesco picking up garden furniture for Rationalist Week – I now have 12 plastic stacking chairs and 3 flat pack round tables in my bedroom and there is more to come.
I then went to work at 2pm for unit classes before my normal 5-close. Evil. Unit classes ended up running for 5 hours so I got to do nothing for the first 2 hours of my close plus as soon as I walked into the kitchen at 7 I got sent on my break. To be fair though I was on a really long shift and little sleep so I don’t feel too bad about spending 5 hours sitting around. Plus I past all the test so I should have three stars on their way.
Liz (the shift runner) turned up and was promptly sent home sick so Jay ran the shift who was supposed to be part of the closing team, hence we were down a closer and resulted in me being by myself in the kitchen from 9pm onwards. Again evil. We got out at about 2:30 though due to the fact the kitchen was left in a somewhat shocking state (by my standards anyway, that would be a normal close for some people and by some people I mean Rich lol).
I ended up going back to Amanda for a bit and we ended up watching the first half of Hot Shots. I then headed home and got to bed at like 5 or something. I intended to get up at 2 but kept going back to sleep and ended up getting up at 5:40. Had some dinner at home and then headed back to uni to join everyone in The Terrace.
End result, day one of my coursework blitz so no coursework get done. But to be fair, I was expecting most of today to be a write-off. Let’s home tomorrow is a bit more successful.
I never blogged about Friday night. I can’t remember most of it now. It involved The Terrace though.
The day started with a trip down to Weatherspoon’s for breakfast (I had suggested we go to try and sort out our sleeping patterns and Phil took me up on the idea) so at the early time of 10am for students who normally sleep until dinner time we grabbed some along with Michelle and Cara who had just arrived in Leeds.
The afternoon consisted of me getting a bit of productive work done before hitting The Terrace at 8. As it was Friday they had the DJ in, much to most people’s disappointment though I wasn’t too bothered. Kat turned up on the one night they had loud music :D. I don’t know how she does it, it’s like when she turns up to the Llama and that is the day when they take ages to bring us our food. I think Allah is on a mission to make her jaded. John also turned up which was cool as I haven’t seen him in a while and I feel he’s become a bit disconnected from the circle.
I was up for heading into Fruity afterwards due to Easter being one of the few opportunities it wouldn’t be packed but there was only myself and Michelle left by the end of the evening and she wasn’t particularly feeling up for it so we headed for food and back to mine.