Aside from geeking it up, i havent done much really. I bought 2 Gigabit NIC cards and a 5 Port Gigabit switch, so my network is now fully 1000Mbps Full, which is nice Ive also been working on creating a security box, using PF Sense, a Linux distro, which is verrrry cool, along with SmoothWall 3.0, another sweet OS. These can do IPS/IDS, Firewall, NAT, IM Logging, Email logging etc. Secure to the max.

The usual stuff is planned for the weekend- im going out tonight with everyone, staying at Frans, same again Friday night after work, then the rugby is on Saturday and ill probably head out Saturday night and spent Sunday in bed recovering! Action packed – but we love it.

Quite a busy week actually – went for a meal with Fran on Wednesday night at the Kyhber, followed by a few drinks in town which was nice. Thursday night we had our Q1-Do with CSO/RAS, at some bowling place in Swindon – needless to say i was shit but hey its bowling! Met everybody town afterwards, and had a rather good night indeed!Friday was spent recovering from Thursday night, although we did do the pizza hut challenge for dinner; with me coming second to Jamal in the slices race lol. Didnt do anything Friday, Fran came round and we just both crashed out lol Everybody was knackered from Thursday.

Saturday was spent relaxing, watching TV and generally doing FA. Went for a curry with Toma, Emma, Andy Li, etc at the Curry Garden which was good, and went back to theirs to watch Inside Man – a generally chilled out night and importantly an unexpensive one lol!

Today im not doing much – watching the Mighty Reds at 2pm before going round to Frans for our traditional sunday dinner lol Laters.

Didnt get up to much really the rest of the weekend, spent Saturday doing not so much, had Fran round at night and we generally just chilled out – watched a film etc. Went round hers on Sunday for sunday dinner, watching MOTD which was fun lol.

Rest of the week has been fairly quiet. Confirmed our house at university for next year which is good, means i have one less thing to worry about, and the water board are coming round on Friday afternoon so hopefully that issue will be resolved too.

Ive spent most of last week and this week trying to get the Corporate Games rugby 7’s team sheet finalised for Intel, but its proving tricky to get people to commit.

Have got a busy few nights planned in the upcoming week; going out for a meal with Fran tonight, got a team night out tomorrow night @ some bowling alley thing, and then Friday im having Fran round before she goes to Portsmouth or something. Not sure whats going on on Saturday, we were trying to organise a Bournemouth/Cardiff trip!

Well, after spending the last week trying to get Vista to work PERFECTLY, ive given up. I re-installed 5 times, on x86 and x64, and installed chipset drivers etc different orders etc, and the sound card is still hissing and popping, onboard and Audigy 2 ZS Pro, ive tried different speakers, doing the same, different wire/optical, doing the same.

I therefore re-installed to XP, and voila – its perfect. Vista driver support is shiiiiiite, end of. Got my Fatality Pro gaming headset yesterday and played a little COD4 before heading out into town with Jamal to meet everyone, had a royally good time in Revs and strangely had no hangover this morning which was a plus! Having dinner with Fran tonight, to end a very crap, boring and frustrating week on a fairly good note lol.

Got my new PC up and running etc fine last week, and decided to test out how it worked and performed with DX10 Games, so i installed COD4 and started playing. All of a sudden, i get a BSOD and it reboots. Strange, so i did it again, and again got a BSOD, this time catching the name “IRQL_not less or equal”. I asked around and apparently this is a memory issue, related to bad RAM. Obviously this error only happens when the PC is executing very RAM intensive operations, such as COD4, but still it was annoying!

I took out the RAM to have a look, after spending 2 hours panicking that the PSU might not be powerful enough and that i’d just wasted £65. It turns out there is a tiny crack in one of the sticks of RAM from where i must have caught it with the scissors when building it, which has obviously damaged a trace in the RAM stick itself. I took out the stick in question, and voila the PC works beautifully, although 1 GB down

Aside from diagnosing, i havent done much else! Fran came back from skiing Saturday night so i met her at Intel off the coach and spent Saturday and Sunday night with her, even had her and her housemates cooking me sunday dinner which was nice! lol

The rest of the week has been business as usual, working 9-5.30pm and then chilling out at night, nothing interesting at all, yawn. We went out for a curry last Thursday to the Khyber with those who didnt go skiing; Toma, Jamal, Gibbons, Brad, Jules, Adjei etc. had a good laugh, although town was absolutely dead – according to the bouncers January is always a quiet month, so i dont think im going to bother heading out until after payday!

Have just noticed that 90% of my posts start with “well..” lol, so im going to try and mix it up!

So, i havent done much this week really. Except oh yeah, build an awesome new gaming PC, spec as follows:-

Intel Q6600 G0 Stepping, Gigabyte P35-DS3P Motherboard, 4GB OCZ PC2-6400 RAM, XFX GeForce 8800GT, Antec Nine Hundred Gaming Case, Coolermaster 550W Modular PSU!

All in all it is a very good, very fast machine which makes me happy Im retiring my old faithful to be a potential solaris box, depending on whether i can be arsed learning Zfs or not. If not, then its off to the glue factory! Next stage is to get myself a 24″ Acer for micro-d (only £200), but that can wait until payday i guess!

Geekery aside, ive not done much else -Me, Toma, Jamal and Gibbs have spent the last couple of nights in the gym as everyone is skiing so not much to do, and as Fran is with them i cant go round to hers either! So im sat at home twiddling my thumbs.. well, my thumbscrews, woo new PC Goes very nicely with the new Logitech Z-5400 system, the P35 based motherboards have optical 7.1 out as standard, so im deliberating whether to install my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro soundcard.

Didnt do much rest of the week, stayed in Bed most of Wednesday and then chilled out Thursday day. Went out for Cooneys birthday on Thursday night and had a banger with Jamal, Signorelli and co. Didnt stay at Frans as she was up at 7am, and i dont do mornings

Went round hers on Friday night and helped her an the girls with their bags etc as they were skiing! Had a surprisingly good night, even if i did have to wake up at 9am to help them get to Intel so they didnt miss their coach. Said goodbye etc because i wont be seeing her for a week, then went home and have been chilling out ever since! Its been pretty good!