I have a car! It has wheels... and doors! OMG!!!11!!!one1!

It wasn't the 'reasonable' price I had in mind in my previous post, but my view on what is reasonable when it comes to cars has changed dramatically. There was me hoping to get something newer for not much more than £3k, which turned out to be a very difficult catch after that Ford Focus got taken from under my nose. Instead, I've practically spent double that, which seems to be the norm, depending on the car, of course. I'll get straight to the point and just say that I got a '55' reg Seat Ibiza 1.9 TDI Sport - '55' reg being the later part of 2005, so 4yrs old. Price guides say it was average price for that specific car with only 31k miles on the clock. Couldn't get the price down anymore after pushing a small reduction and the addition of road tax. I'm happy though; I have wheels. Now to pick somewhere to actually drive to...

I'll post a pic upon request :)

Unfortunately, it didn't come with a flux capacitor :(

Aside from this, I have more or less just been working, eating and sleeping. Will hopefully book some holidays from work soon and go driving places. Time will tell.

Auto Detect today says: Can't Detect

Tags: cars
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Mood: happy

So I haven't updated in ages, as usual. Things have been pretty much the same, so there's been nothing new to report, unless the few readers want to know how I went to work, came home, ate and slept :P

On the work side of things though, I have been rather busy travelling from one end of the county to the other doing Active Directory migrations on all the computers in libraries, installing more stuff in schools, and just general computery stuffs. Not the most exciting thing to report about, but let's just say that I've been kept busy for the last few weeks and it's finally starting to catch up on me.

This in turn leads me to put some serious consideration in to planning a holiday from work. I'm not sure where I want to go, or what I want to do, but a break in itself would be nice after all this running about. I would like to go off somewhere though, but it's just a matter of where. I'm also currently putting a lot of thought in to getting a car, so a holiday abroad might be out of the question. With said car though, I could go see various friends around the country :)

It's just a matter of finding a car for a reasonable price now though. Parents say get something newer, within the last 5yrs. This knocks the price up a little. Will I have to get a loan instead of hoping to scrape up the cash? Mum insists of buying local first. Apparently this is the thing to do for your first car... get ripped off by local garages instead of shopping around. She says go for garages. Dad says check ebay and autotrader. Seen some good deals on some cars on autotrader actually - a Ford Focus 2004, 1.8L Petrol, 30k miles, for £2700! A bargain, but it was gone already when I tried to enquire. Not surprising. I suppose mum's idea of buying local is to avoid travelling loads to see cars I might not even buy. Lloyd insists I get something cheap because 'everyone crashes their first car'. His record of totalling his first car within 3-4 days isn't much to go by :P For the supersticious, it was on Friday 13th though. Besides, I've driven loads with work as of late, so I'm pretty confident that I won't be crashing too quickly, if at all. And in contradiction to keeping an eye on costs while going newer, I had one person constantly sending me old boy racer cars... Honda Type-R models mainly - Civics, Preludes, Integras. Car was cheapish, insurance wouldn't be! So the search continues...

Oh yeah... Went to see Inglorious Basterds last week. Good movie. Went fast though. Felt like a 1h30 movie, was actually 2h30. Still good regardless. Next is District 9. I hear it's very good, so Wyeside Cinema will get it... in a year or so? They're SO SLOW! Time will tell.

ADDITION: LJ has this 'Detect' feature to auto enter your location. ALWAYS gets it wrong. Today has been the closest though... Bristol!

Tags: cars, movies, work
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Mood: indifferent

...is overrated.

Attempt #2 went rather well:



And yes, that's a riceball snowman :P

Tags: sushi
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Music: Metallica - S&M

Random drawing I did the other day (copied as always (not traced!))

Tags: drawing
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Music: Suilen - Spine

Routers!

Over the past 2 weeks, I've done a significant amount of driving on behalf of my new job thing. Quite scary to start off with considering I hadn't driven for about 5 years with the exception of a day or two last year in Aus, but that was an automatic, so it was easier. Regardless, I made sure that the car was diesel so I would know what to expect - those that don't know, diesel cars are easier on the clutch. 2 weeks in, I'm enjoying the driving, getting out of the office and venturing around the county (county, not country - it's not a typo), although it's quite tiring. The people I'm working with are fun though, despite the sexual harassment :P Nah, it's just a lot of joking about, but it's more than what happens in the office, so the change is good. Shame the project will practically end next week, with the odd exception. That said, I haven't even mentioned what said project is! I'm basically replacing some equipment in various schools while the other people I work with reconfigure everything to make sure it all works with the new kit. Sounds boring and it probably would be if it wasn't for the company, so for working with people with a sense of humour I am grateful.

That aside, nothing too exciting has happened. Work, work and... drinking at the weekend :P Wai gets to the UK in a couple of days too, so it'll be good to have the chance to see her sometime, although I'm not sure when yet as she's going to be in London. Time will tell...

Tags: wai, work
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Blind Guardian

Last night was rather fun and gave me the chance to actually use my camera a bit, while also perving over many a skantily dressed women. Having all suited up, Lloyd, Ieu, Hicks and I made our way to Llanidloes for the Llani Fancy Dress, which is basically just one big costumed street party. I'm not actually sure what we were meant to be in our glowing bright white overalls, but during the night we were given a few tags including 'butchers', 'CSI' and I had one girl insisting that I be a Ghostbuster, despite being dressed in the wrong colour. We certainly stood out at least as we patrolled the streets in single file while checking out the variety of costumes that so many looked as though they had put great effort in to, which included zombies, super heroes, Thunderbirds and a large group of ladyboys. I saw the odd person that I recognised, and any that I should have recognised were obviously too well disguised... or were just hiding from me! It was a good night overall though, which of course involved drinking, and a bit of dancing while trying to drink and juggle my camera and remaining cans of beer. Luckily, we didn't get stranded and managed to catch the bus in time for the return home, while still in one piece and surprisingly still bright white and stainless.

For such an event, photos work better than words, so HERE THEY ARE!

Tags: llani fancy dress, party
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: NIN - Ghosts

Having just finished my 2nd day in work, I'm still feeling rather lost as to where I'm going to start picking things up. Ieu will make the joke that I'm no different to anyone else in IT, but he wouldn't be far off in some respect. There's only one other person doing the same work as me, and due to me joining in the middle of the start of an Active Directory rollout, they're also not sure exactly what they're doing with regards to AD, so it's a learning experience for us all. I can't be expected to know too much by the end of my 2nd day though, where I should still be going over induction stuff, including figuring out when my proper induction day will be. My first day was practically just reading over the 'induction handbook' and being shown around. Today started off slow, just reading over some things and doing a few bits that I can't quite remember, followed by sitting in on a brief meeting about a rollout that I'll be involved in in the coming weeks. After lunch, a guy came round to demonstrate some software that we'll eventually be using - the demo failed, meaning he was around much longer than needed as he tried to fix the issue. He just showed us the software on his own laptop in the end and arranged for someone to call us tomorrow to try to help us get the issues sorted. That'll be fun as I was struggling to follow some of the terminology used earlier today, so I may just sit back and let the guy do what he needs to remotely.

Aside from that though, it's been alright. Days have gone quick enough. People are friendly. Something I will have to be careful about if I'm to speak about work on here is that I'll have to try to generalise and be non-specific for security reasons. Fun!

Friday tomorrow! Maybe I'll be lucky and finally get my swipe card so I can start using it at the start of the new week. We will see...

Tags: work
Current Location: Llandrindod Wells, UK

After living in Australia for 2 years, you'd think I'd be used to the heat that the sun throws at us. Unfortunately not. Got some lovely blotches across my wrists and ankles. Meh, doesn't hurt or anything, so I'm sure I'll live (oh noes!)

Picking up from where I left the last post, we went to Beziers on Thursday. 'We' being just my nan, grandad and I seeing that Gemma was having a 'moment'. I had to take a wander by myself for the first hour as my nan had an appointment somewhere, so I picked a random street and headed in the general direction of the cathedral. I surprisingly found it, despite feeling that I'd walked back on myself at one point, and went about taking photos from the lookout that was near the cathedral itself. I must have been there a while just looking because before I got the chance to even consider going in to the cathedral itself, I was summoned back to the main boulevard where I'd arranged to meet my grandparents. Unfortunately, at this point, it was now close to midday, so the cathedral would have been closed by the time we got back there to have a look, so we had a drink before heading to the steps of locks that are on the canal that runs through Beziers. More random photos were taken before heading home to jump in to the pool... again.

Also, that morning, I received an SMS from my new boss informing me that references have come back, medical checks cheared, and so forth, so I am expected to start working at 9am next Wednesday! :) I'd kind of already been given a heads up about this though as one of his 'clients' (he sells insurance) told him so, thus annoying me of the apparent breach of confidentiality in telling him in the first place, especially before telling me!

ANYWAY...

We all went to Montpellier yesterday (Friday), Gemma included. We took a long walk around the city and down the alleyways. It was the first time I'd seen a tram since leaving Melbourne, 7 months ago, which they use primarily for transporting visitors from the carparks that are further out from the city centre itself in to the city. I did take a few more photos, just to be a typical tourist, which I'll share upon request as I'm being lazy and can't be bothered linking to them right now.

Today was a lazy, and very hot day. We did nothing in particular and just enjoyed the weather the best we could. Because of this, I was in the pool earlier than usual, so there was no shade of half of the pool as usual, so I appear to have caught the sun a bit -_- I didn't burn much, but I'll be peeling soon enough! Long live the pale-ness!

Tomorrow, we're going to the Sunday market in Capestang, but it will be another lazy day for our last day here in France before the early Monday morning flight home!

And now that I've covered the next couple of days, I don't have to bother updating this for another month or so... :P

Tags: france, work
Current Location: Maureilhan, France
Current Mood: hot

So I arrived in France on Monday morning having had little to no sleep since waking up at 10am the day before. Surprisingly, I wasn't all that tired and managed throughout the lazy day that was made of Monday. Gemma had passed out on the plane, and didn't even stir for takeoff, dozing in and out until just before landing at Beziers just after 9am. Having found a space in the scurry of people that were rushing to get off the plane, we collected Gemma's bag and were greeted through the glass divide by nan and grandad. Following a brief shopping trip in Beziers for food, we arrived at their house in Maureilhan to laze.

Tuesday was a late start, having needed 13 hours of sleep to catch up from the day before. We had some breakfast about 11am and went for a drive. Nan and grandad were keeping an eye over a friend's house while they are away, so our first stop was there in Puisserguier. Their house was a bit weird in that they had a well in their living room! It wasn't an open well, but the fact it was there was novelty in itself. Next was a stop off at a lookout over a dried up salt lake near Montady that has now been turned in to fertile land. From the lay of the land, it looks akin to a dartboard of sorts. Looking on Google Maps for an above view shows it to be a rather strange dartboard if at all, but it still has an interesting layout for sure. We also checked out the only tunnel that is along the nearby canal, the Canal Du Midi. It certainly was a tunnel! This was followed by a stop-off in Colombiers for a drink before heading home for the rest of the afternoon.

We had an early start today as we making a trip to Narbonne and wanted to get there before midday. It seems that the French drop everything as soon as it hits 12 for lunch, leaving the only places open being restaurants. This lunch break last until around 2pm when all shutters open again to continue business. Annoying if you have nothing to do to fill those 2 hours during a visit. We arrived before 12, bought a few bits from the indoor market to restock the fridge and headed towards the cathedral. They wanted to make sure they meet their midday closing time and wouldn't let us in at 11:45, so we went for a drink first before wandering further for a bite to eat. We finally got to have a look around the cathedral before driving down to Narbonne Plage (the beach) for a quick look around for my sake. It was surprisingly quiet considering today's weather, which was around 27°C. Previous days have been rather cloudy, so today was the most intense sun we've seen this week. Returning home, I took a dip in the pool, which included failed attempts to get on to a lilo bed thing and now aching shoulders from the mere existence of exercise! I believe nan got some photos of me swimming and falling off the lilo, so I'll have to check those later for my own amusement (no, I don't plan on sharing my pasty white body with you all :P).

Tomorrow, we will be off to Beziers for a short while, but due to expected high temperatures, the day may be spent mainly at home. See what happens.

Tags: france, swimming
Current Location: Maureilhan, France
Current Music: KMFDM Radio (Last.fm)