You are allowed to enjoy this…

Every couple of years or so, I have a major falling out with technology. Usually something goes wrong with my PC to the point of distraction and I spend hours trying to fix it. I have just been through one of those phases at the moment.

It all started when I decided to simplify my setup. I was sick of have computers all around the place and I wanted to ditch the little PC I had in the living room and replace it with a dedicated media server. The idea was that my music collection would be held upstairs on my main PC, affectionately known as “The Beast” due to its sheer size and weight, and this would be beamed wirelessly downstairs to the media server.
This didn’t work out too well and it seems that the media server I had purchased wasn’t actually fit for human consumption and so did a little modification, changed the software upstairs and now it is working. However, to get to this point, I upgraded my wireless network. It is now faster. Whoo-hoo! To accommodate this, I bought a new wireless network connector for The Missus’s PC and one for my laptop. The Missus needed a new network doo-dad because her one was playing up and on the verge of breaking, so no problem there. Because it was Belkin brand adaptor, I bought a Belkin brand one for my laptop.

Firstly, I couldn’t get the damn thing to work with my PC and decided to reinstall Windows XP. I needed to do this anyway, so it wasn’t a problem. When I did get the card to work, the signal strength was minimal. I only got a strong signal when I was sitting right next to my wireless ADSL router. Downstairs it wouldn’t even connect. I tried new drivers, adding a better antenna to my router and searching on the WWW for a solution. Anyway, I’ve reverted back to my old adaptor and I have realised that I have pissed my money up the wall with this particular piece of equipment. I just hope I can get some money back on it from eBay. I should really take it back, but I bought it at PC World and I can’t face going back in there again!

God – that was boring, wasn’t it?

Spent last night noodling around on my bass guitar – a good hour with a drum loop and the bass just noodling and getting lost in the noodling. Despite there being no recordings done, I was somehow satisfied by this noodling. This seems to be my main mode of operation at the moment.

As the days pass, as the time marches on, I realise that as you grow older, you lose some of that “brilliance” you had in your youth, the drive that kept you interested in a project for any period of time. Instead, I am turning into a drifter, just drifting in and out of things. It annoys me that I used to have so much focus. I was like a laser beam, but now I am just a drifter, an amorphous blob of a man. I know I should finish that novel that I am halfway through, but I just can’t be bothered. I know I should get my stuff together and finish the artwork for “I am Not Your Enemy” so I can put that CD on sale, but again I can’t be bothered. I just don’t see the point. I go to bed every night aware of my mortality (like I have done since I realised that we have a brief time here when I was seven years old) and totally unable to make proper use of my waking hours. All the time I know that tomorrow it could all be over and instead of grasping the day and not being so afraid of the world and of people, I continually waste my time. On my gravestone it will read: “Failed to live up to his potential”. I realise that by being creative I am trying to stave off the decay that comes with the mortal life. I live in the misguided belief that I’ll leave something behind – either a pile of crappy CDs that no-one wants to listen to, half-hundred weight of manuscripts no-one wants to read and god knows how many magazine articles that I’ve written. Unfortunately, I know that this isn’t going to work. We are all worm food in the end, right? No one gets out of this alive!

I just wish I could have been a bit more confident when I was younger, a bit more sure of myself, but it’s just not me. If I ever have children there’s only one bit of advice I would give them: “Don’t ever be afraid.”

Anyway, I digress. I apologise, dear reader, for that stream of consciousness nonsense. You didn’t come here for that, you came here for wacky Darren. You came here for the funny man to make you laugh and tell you about the infinite minutiae of my daily life. 🙂
Yesterday, cooked a fantastic Easter Sunday lunch of roast chicken. This was topped off by Christmas pud and custard and washed down with some expensive champagne. I like to celebrate our Lord with food and booze. Hurrah! In the afternoon, a DVD showing of “The Incredibles” – I enjoyed this much more than when I saw it at the cinema. I still think that Mrs Incredible is the best character and the whole story should have been centered around her.

Today, working in the front garden, mowing the lawn and tidying up. Then I played at being the good son and mowed my mother’s lawn. But we spent a good chunk of time just chatting and gossiping.

Tonight, who knows? The remnants of that chicken need to be devoured (though Alex the Wonderdog has dibs on all the mucky meat we don’t want) and we have some Christmas pudding left. I’ve got “A Mighty Wind” stored on the box, so that might be tonight’s viewing.
Joke of the Day: there is no joke of the day.

Well I was pleasantly surprised by the new series of Doctor Who. It was rather good fun and made me laugh and smile on a couple of occasions. I am actually looking forward to the next episode. The Missus pointed out however that the new Doctor had nicked my sober look (battered leather jacket, dark T-Shirt and jeans). The bastard. It took me years to cultivate that “style”…the swine.

It’s springtime and spring has certain responsibilities…like spring cleaning. And so we ventured out into the garden to blow the cobwebs from the lawnmower and attack the vegetation in a series of stop-start, grassy pulp stuck in the blades, anthill slicing, huffing-puffing, dog-shit avoiding moves. And thus the grass was cut. I leave The Missus the tough jobs, like weeding because 1) it is boring 2) I am genuinely no good at it 3) I am a lazy sod. But I cleared the shed of boxes and arranged stuff to be taken to the dump, so I get bonus points for that, right?

Meanwhile, I got a copy of the first episode of “The Office – An American Workplace”. Man, the authorities are going to bust my ass when they find out…and when they break in they’ll find all the legitimate DVDs that I’ve bought. But anyway, back to the sitcom: I liked it. Despite being a direct lift from the UK version, I really liked what the Americans have done with it. Not bad considering some of their other efforts of converting UK comedy have tanked. I look forward to seeing more.

Meanwhile, less than 24 hours to the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t worry, I was one of the kids that DIDN’T hide behind the sofa. The only time when Dr Who unsettled me was during the series “The Deadly Assassin” and the Tom Baker-regeneration of the good Doctor gets his foot stuck in a railway points and a train is going to squish him like a bug. It was a standard Dr Who cliff-hanger, but it really got to me, probably because the danger seem real, rather than some rubbery man-in-an-alien-suit-lunging-towards-you kind of cliff-hanger. Oh well, I am sure it will all be a lot of fun tomorrow.

I was a fan of the BBC’s “The Office” and so I am quite looking forward to seeing the US interpretation of that sitcom. The premiere airs in America tomorrow and I am sure that I can download the episodes by various nefarious means.

In the meantime, pay a visit to “The Office” website and look at the many different video clips. I know it is too early to say, but I think they have nailed it with this guy. He is David Brent turned up to 11. 🙂

Finished another track for “Fragments” – it’s called “The Loud Track” and it sounds like this:

And here are some “before & after” pictures of Alex the Wonderdog.
Before

After

And the “Loaf of the Day” is a standard white loaf baked in the bread maker by yours truly:

It was another beautiful day yesterday and so we decided to spend the afternoon sitting outside our local pub. We were having something to eat with our pint, when a young fellow stood just a couple of feet away and began to have the loudest mobile phone conversation with his pal. This conversation lasted about half an hour and during it we found out that he’d taken the last week off ill from work, spent this time buying a new bike for £1000 to replace the last one that got stolen. He was surprised that his insurance paid out so handsomely and he was very proud of his £1000 bike, so much so that he kept staring at the bike and mentioning to his friend just how nice and expensive it was.

Now I find mobile phones an irritant at the best of times, but when you are trying to enjoy an afternoon in the sun, eating and drinking and generally chilling, you don’t seem some oik to come along and share his coversation with you. And this guy was REALLY loud. He just wanted to show off and inform everyone of his own self-importance.

Anyway, the Missus came back with the next round and then turn to the fellow and asked him if he could take his phone conversation elsewhere. He promptly told her to “fuck off!” (nice fellow) and a little spat insued. I intervened and told him that I had no interest in hearing about his life and that he should conduct his conversation a little quieter. Much eye contact happened and I stared the guy down. He continued his phone conversation but at a much more reasonable level and we moved tables to get away from him. He spent over an hour on his phone talking about nothing in particular. I guess this is symptomatic of our “always-available” culture.

Man, I hate mobile phones! 🙂