An update? In MY blog?!

It's more likely than you think, but sadly, there is no free scan.

For those of you that didn't get that joke, welcome to the internet, where the porn is free but the coffee is pretty crap.

So I figured it was probably about time for my bi-annual blog update, which will no doubt cause another financial crisis, flood hapless American cities, incite the Russians to declare war on everyone and ramp up global warming so much that the Earth farts its way into the Sun with a most unsatisfactory 'pfarp'.

Before all that, though, I'll update my rapt audience with the happenings of the past few months. I'm still volunteering at ReBOOT, doing my bit in Workshop 3, where I have firmly nested. Myself and my friend / co-worker PiLoT have accosted a corner of the warehouse and made it our own, complete with tidied and organised boxes full of things. Truly wondrous.

Which of course means that I'm still gainfully unemployed. But the truth is that I can't think of anywhere I'd rather work than ReBOOT. It's also possible that there might be a government scheme where I could get paid a "wage" of sorts for 6 months; a lengthier placement, basically. I don't know all the details, but my fingers are firmly crossed.

Gaming-wise, I've been spoilt for choice. My recent purchases / pre-orders include the new Professor Layton, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Scribblenauts and Aion: Tower of Eternity. The latter of these is a new MMO - while I've not stopped playing WoW, it's a strong competitor for my time. A lot of people don't seem to like it, since WoW has pretty much set the standard for levels of grind and pandering to the masses, but it's definitely a lot better than anything before or since. Except for WoW at its best, of course.

I could talk quite a bit about Aion, but I won't, since I want to keep this entry relatively short. Continuing with games, I believe I am fated to pay the stupid amount of £45 for Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4 is quite assuredly the best first person shooter I've ever played, so a sequel can only be a good thing. I saw the demo earlier this year when Microsoft showed a demo of the ice-cliff climbing / snow mobile escape mission. Sort of set in stone from then on.

I've also pre-ordered the new Star Trek movie on DVD, complete with prequel magazine. It's due out in November, so still a little while to go, but I'm waiting with baited breath.

On the TV side of things, PiLoT has been both a blessing and a curse. He has introduced me to both LOST and Dexter. The former, I am coming to rather late, I realise, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. The latter, I have only just finished the first season of, and it is also awesome. Very refreshing to hear proper, full-on swearing in a US TV series. On a lesser note, he also made me aware of The Big Bang Theory (which I gave as much attention as anything else on Paramount Comedy) and FlashForward (which has just started, and is shaping up to be cool).

I've also been keeping up with my usuals; House, Heroes, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. It's gotten to the point of me having too many shows to keep track of off the top of my head. A bookmark system has been set up, for great justice.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the first blog since my computer decided to take a nosedive... I think it must be, since Dante hadn't gone to Honduras the last time I posted.

So yeah, my Alienware decided to stop working. I think it was something to do with a registry fixing program going a bit haywire. Booting up would only occur under the rarest of circumstances; Safe Mode wouldn't function, but hitting space bar when booting up "normally" would let you see the standard explorer shell. Of course, complex tasks like dragging and dropping, copying and pasting, plugging in a USB stick or burning a CD/DVD were completely out of the question. I found out I could copy files under a command prompt, but only one at a time, and then only to the same hard drive.

I bought a new 500GB Hitachi Deskstar after I stopped wailing and fretting like a little girl, installed it, put XP back on, slaved my old drive, then made the horrible, horrible mistake of turning it off for the night. Idiot that I am, I neglected to remove my other hard drives before installing the fresh XP, so the system partition was called F:. I didn't think this would be a problem, until I tried to turn the PC on again, and it looked for Windows on C:, which was my 80GB storage drive. Another fresh install, after disconnecting some troublesome cables, solved the issue.

Oh, and before I forget, I may be in eternal debt to Dante for introducing me to The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. They top even the Song of Ice and Fire series in my list of favourite books. Read them. Yes, this means you, Ravus.

And here I was saying that I wanted to keep this short. Ah well, an interesting read for some, I'm sure. Now assume the position, the apocalypse is surely just around the corner. Worry not, sinners, for hell is also frozen.