Thursday, July 06, 2006

Ok this is what has happened

Yesterday was a public holiday in the Isle of Man as it was Tynwald Day, and for once it was a glorious sunny day. In fact you could say too hot for the average Manxie.

Unfortunately one of the kids was really sick (temperature of 104) and so we couldn’t venture far from the house.

Daniel and I donned our trunks and headed for the beach for a couple of hours in the morning, digging holes, making Sand Castles, paddling, catching Crabs, looking at fish, poking Jelly Fish all the usual stuff.

We got home just in time for a picnic lunch.

Then the afternoon as spent lazing around the house and garden playing with trains and cars, and when ever I got a spare 30 mins, playing on Oblivion.

The only down side yesterday was our Sky+ has finally died. It has been spluttering along for the last 6 months or so, continually failing to record, or losing everything that was recorded. So after our third system reset by Sky they admitted it was “likely” that it wont work again.

So last night we had to watch TV without Sky+. How the fuck do people do it?
If you sit down at 20 past the hour, you’ve either missed most of the program or have to sit around twiddling your thumbs until a new one starts. We spent 10 mins going through all 999 channels looking for something we’d watch and found nothing. We settled on something that might be OK, but then we had to sit through the Adverts. I haven’t watched an advert in years. PLUS, if you need to go to the toilet you have to wait for the adverts, no pausing and saying I’m just going for a quick piss. PLUS, if you need to get another drink from the kitchen, you have to wait for the adverts. So you are sat there gasping till they decide when it’s time for a refill. PLUS, an hour long programme lasts an hour? What’s that all about? With Sky +, since you don’t watch the adverts they only last 40 mins. I swear it was hell, sheer hell. How on earth people live without Sky+ I don’t know, the poor poor bastards.

There was also an alarming twist to the Sky+ failing, which gave me kittens….

During the failed System Reset Procedure that Sky had me do, was turn off the system at the mains. I just flicked the switch at the wall, and this switched of Sky, the TV and my Xbox 360, which I thought nothing about. Later that day I sat down with my wife and poorly child, who was thankfully feeling much better, to have a quick blast on Oblivion. So, I’m sat there chatting to them both whilst it all fires up and then it only gave the option to start a new game? Where were my previous saves? There was nothing, I literally went white. 60 hours of intense gaming GONE! Hours and hours of quests and levelling up, GONE!

I almost literally cried….. I shit you not.

Then it dawned on me that it had mentioned I had signed in to live as Daniel, which was the second Profile on the machine, so I restarted and logged in as me and all the saved games were there. I could have cried again with relief…. Seriously I was that relieved. No I am not a geeky nerdy loser…..

Finally I was reading about this in the paper today, Squaddie Beasting. I am of course not happy he died, BUT seriously, any one who skirts an Officer with a fire extinguisher is going to get a SEVERE beasting. I can’t believe he actually thought they would take it as a joke….. It’s his own fault but a terrible accident. Apparently he asked them to stop. He’s in the fucking Army, they tell you when to stop… As an ex squaddie I sympathise with the Army and not the dead soldier. It was just an accident and not man slaughter. Obviously, that’s just my opinion.

That is all….

2 comments:

Donna said...

You may be interested in this SKY+ article I bookmarked. It may enable you to fix it yourself (or not).

I'm actually really interested in this case about the squaddie getting 'beasted'. As an against-violence-sort-of-a-girl I find these things abhorrent, but can you tell me what sort of things a 'beasting' is likely to involve - just out of interest?

Donna said...

would help if I'd actually included the link ... D'Oh!