At last, a good night's sleep. With the stress of house-hunting lifted and the disturbingly large cheque handed over to the estate agent, I have finally been able to sleep normally again. One less thing to worry about, at least for the moment.

I also contacted Psycho's brother yesterday, since he used to run a team of builders and is good at construction stuff himself. He's going to be jolly kind and rebuild the bathroom for me, put in some new electrical sockets and hopefully also plumb in a washing machine. Excellent.

Now all I have to do is sort out the actual funding: of course, the bank wants details of the company 1% loan before they'll finalise anything... and the company wants details of the bank mortgage before they'll finalise details of the loan! Graaaah!

Have I attained house-buying obsession level yet?

If any of you out there are role-playing geeks, that title will make you think of Dungeons & Dragons. If you had been me on Sunday night, the title has an entirely different meaning: I actually set fire to myself by accident. While refilling a Zippo lighter, I managed to get my hands pretty much soaked in fluid and, although I'm usually careful about that, I didn't notice. So, when I lit up to check that there was enough fluid in the lighter... my hands went up in flames.

Thankfully, lighter fluid burns fast and hot and evaporates at the same time (sort of like ether, in a way), so unless there's a lot of it, it'll burn off before doing any serious damage. Fire is not something that panics me, either, so I was able to deal with the problem quickly: one thumb and one finger were lightly burnt, but that's all. I left them bandaged for a day and they're fine now... and that's why I've been away for a wee while.

So what else has been going on? Quite a lot, actually.

When not setting myself on fire, I've mostly been concerned with the whole flat-hunting thing. I've booked a meeting with the bank tomorrow morning at 10:00, after which I should know how much money I have available and, consequently, how big a place I can look for. Let's hope that the bank is as cool with me as they usually are: I've been a good client, never let them down (well, not too badly) and earn a regular salary. The advisor I'll be meeting is female, so I could also use my devastating charm on her... or not, if I actually want them to lend me money!

Psycho's also been busy. She's spoken to a couple of agencies and we went to look at a place on Monday night. It was about the right size and only a little overpriced, but the main problems were the bathroom being the size of a closet and the fact that all the windows faced a brick wall. The guy showing us around was also a laugh and very helpful - if a little anal - when it came to answering my questions.

Mostly, I wanted to get some idea of how much a place like that would cost per month on a mortgage. He said that it's not possible to know: the bank starts with how much one earns and how much one wishes to borrow, then works back to the sum per month. No matter how many times I tried to get some idea of the price, he was adamant that the calculation doesn't work that way round. One-way maths. Now, there's something I've never heard of before. D'oh.

The different options open to me are also becoming clearer. A bit of research on the web on Monday evening provided a better idea of the amount I should be able to borrow (despite there being a distinct lack of detail on the rates of interest everywhere I looked!) and how long I would need to borrow it for. No surprises there: more than I thought, for longer than expected. At least it's a relatively solid investment.

I'm also considering the option of buying a smaller place and moving into it myself. There's a lot to be said for living somewhere that belongs to you, as opposed to squatting in someone else's space. Psycho and I discussed the different variations yesterday, in fact: where I am right now is a great place, but I can't afford to buy it¹. The rent is incredibly low, considering the size of the place. Psycho's place is also lovely, but not worth buying² and expensive to rent: she has about half the space I do and costs more than two thirds as much as mine.

If I were to buy a place and move in myself, things might actually be easier. I hardly use any of my apartment: the bath, the bed, the loo, the fridge and microwave and a corner of the lounge where my computers are set up. I don't need much light (I'm a geek) and I don't care if it's calm or noisy.³ All I need is a bath (prefer them to showers), room for the PCs and a place to lay my head. Psycho, on the other hand, uses everything in her place: every last centimetre of the apartment is used for something, even if it's just walking through. She needs light and calm. She doesn't need a big bathroom.

So we also discussed the possibility of me moving into a new place and her taking my old one: I'd get a place of my own that actually belonged to me (well, the bank, but whatever) and she'd get the space she loves in familiar surroundings. My landlord is absolutely brilliant when it comes to being flexible, so he'd have no problem with her moving in. The rent would be the same as before and I'd feel like I'd actually be getting my money's worth instead of paying for the current festering hole with a crap agency who don't do anything, won't pay for any repairs and generally just take the money and run.

Hmmm. That may be the way to go.

¹ I asked the guy from the estate agency: his estimate without seeing it was in the region of 190,000€. That's about $360,000 or £200,000. Yipes.

² Despite having a balcony, good neighbours on both sides and enough room to live in, the crumbly walls, dodgy water works and schizophrenic living downstairs do not inspire confidence.

³ The exceptions to this are children and babies: I can't stand living next to people with sprogs running around screaming. It annoys the crap out of me and I would be likely to smash the wall down and slaughter the offenders.

Once again, Agony Uncle Spike is in demand. Today's request comes from one Adam who posted on the Stubborn Nerd entry.

"I have a pc with a pent.3 and win 2000. I just picked up a dell lattitude with a pentium 1 and win 98.....is there any way possible i could switch the processor to the laptop and possibly my win 2000 also....I dont have the 2000 disk anymore."

First off, he at least had the sense to post on an entry that had something to do with PCs - absolutely nothing to do with what he's asking, but at least it's vaguely the right area.

Ignoring for the moment the blindingly bad typing, spelling, syntax and grammar in the comment (it'd be too easy to ridicule that), here's the response:

Dear Adam,

Uncle Spike

Could someone please tell me where on this site there is a message inviting all and sundry to bother me with their problems? Apparently there is one, since I keep receiving emails from people I have never met nor spoken to before, asking for advice, solutions and general Agony Uncle crap. If someone could point out the entry that invites such emails, I would be grateful as I can then delete it.

I thought I would post a couple I received this week, so you can see what I mean. Hopefully, this will also act as a deterrent: anyone posting unsolicited, stupid-ass questions will be ridiculed. That is, unless you want to pay me for my time.

This first one was posted on the entry titled Buzzword Bonanza!:

Name: Jessi
Hey! I done my belly button about 2 weeks ago. I know it was stupid and i should've had someone who knew what they wre doing do it. But anyway, I don't think I got enough skin between the holes so it doesn't look as good as some other chick's.(I don't know if that makes scents or not.) But it is also looking like its peeling like dead skin or something. Is that normal?

First off, this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of that blog entry. Secondly, I presume she is talking about body piercing. Thirdly, it'd be nice if the question was in English instead of some kind of teenage mish-mash of bad typing. What possessed this person to post a question to a random entry in a seemingly randomly chosen blog is beyond me. At a guess, it's the same thing that possessed her to punch holes in her body with absolutely no idea of what she was doing. My advice? Go see a doctor. And a psychiatrist.

Secondly, we have this one, posted to the Stubborn Nerd! entry:

Name: Serbo
I have Windows 2000 on my pc. Originally, I did not set a password to logon; I usually click on "OK" at the logon screen and I am granted access. Unfortunately, one of my kids changed it and created a password; they do not remember the password. I did not even create an administrator password when W2k was installed. At this point, I can only get to the BOIS. I will like to go to the DOS prompt and format my hard drive to start all over. I am having problem with that.
The Operating system doesn't see the boot disk nor CD when I even change the settings in the Bios to boot from floppy or CD. Please show me how to fix or bypass this problem and format my hard drive. Thanks...

At least this one is posted on an entry that has something to do with the subject. It has almost no spelling mistakes, too. Impressive. It does, however, show how computer ownership should be limited to people with an IQ measurable using only integers. The number of people who log in on a shared computer using an unpassworded administrator's account is frightening. My advice? Sell your children and, with the proceeds, invest in some computer courses. Kill two birds with one stone.

Happy new year to you all. This morning brings a completely arbitrary lemming-like desire to believe in resolutions, a new start to life and other similar nonsense. It's also brought a lot of snow here in Paris: I woke up this morning around 10:30 and looked out the window to see whiteness everywhere and a rather disturbing number of large snowflakes drifting down.

It's very pretty. I hate snow.

May 2004 bring much peace, kindness and prosperity as well as much fewer neo-fascist imbeciles running countries, fewer wars and less suffering. Stay safe.

Yesterday evening was full of life's little ups and downs. It started when I got home from work: Psycho had gone for a siesta in the afternoon and had asked me to call her to wake her up before JC arrived. This is quite normal for her. At the moment, she sleeps at least twelve hours a day - sometimes as much as sixteen hours - and rarely uses her alarm clock. It's one of those endearing qualities she has (read "bloody annoying habits") that sits in the 'act like an adolescent' category. She's always asking me to phone and wake her up, since she's in desperate need of the molly-coddling mother she never had. Of course, she doesn't think so, but then even Freud couldn't analyse himself.

So I called her to wake her up in time for JC's arrival, but it took a lot longer than I thought. She's a very deep sleeper and, after a lot of calls, she finally woke up because he was knocking on her door. She was, of course, annoyed as hell and as usual tried to blame me... most amusing when she checked just how many times I'd phoned.

The evening itself went well, for both of us. I spent my time watching films and series, burning a couple of CDs and messing with the computer. She went out to a restaurant with JC and, it seems, everything went well: he's cuter than she remembered (which is good) and is as nice as suspected. Being Psycho, she managed to find a couple of things to whine about, but they were fairly minor and I told her this morning to stop dwelling on them and just talk to him if he has habits that annoy her. Starting a relationship based on lies, secrets and keeping one's mouth shut is not a good idea.

Unfortunately, my evening took a turn for the worse at around 11:15, when I was just deciding to go to bed a little early for once and get some decent sleep. Rebooting the primary computer, the anti-virus came up all red, shouting "Tampered!" in every category. Most disturbing. Even worse was that, when I went to the page it suggested for solutions, there was no description of what was wrong, just how to fix it - by uninstalling and reinstalling, of course.

Uninstalling is always easy. The clean reboot afterwards, however, caused the disk checker to kick in on one of my drives... and it spent thirty minutes verifying, rather than the normal twenty seconds. Eventually, the PC came back up and I could reinstall the AV. Updating the DATs then caused the PC to hang, so another reboot was in order... time ticking by all too quickly, of course. Finally, everything was back to normal, so I kicked off the full system check and went to bed.

This morning, no virus problems were reported and I was completely knackered from lack of sleep. Very strange, after all those ugly red warnings last night! Everything seemed normal, so I kicked off a drive defrag and a couple of other things and came in to work for the massively important (not) IT Director visit. Unfortunately, if I try to remote control or even ping the machine at home, it's not responding. I even tried connecting to the secondary and remote controlling it, then remote controlling the primary from there... no luck at all.

My poor baby PC is sick again! *sniff*

What a weekend. Since Rebecca died on Wednesday, I've slowly been dismantling her park and cleaning up to make some space. This weekend, I decided I should deal with it once and for all: clear up the stuff from which the park was built, throw out all the old useless wood, chicken wire and so on, clean the carpet and make room for storage in her corner.

The surprising thing was just how big the park was! I remember looking at it every now and then and thinking "Is that big enough for her? Does she feel enclosed or does she have room to hop around a bit and not get bored?"

Well, having cleared it all up, I believe my fears were unfounded. Seven bin bags full to bursting of wood, plastic flooring, boxes she nibbled on, protective caging and so on, plus the roll of wire I used to protect the corner where she always tried to nibble the carpet! Having cleared it all up (and cleaned the carpet three times...), I've been able to store everything that was stacked in corners of the lounge, the entryway and the bedroom, with plenty of room to spare - she had so much space!

Now all I have to do is clean the bedroom and sort out the wardrobe to finish tidying the entirety of the flat. Then I can move Pie's litter tray into the space where the park was and finally everything will be sorted. Excellent.

626 (aka the Scariest of Rosses) and I were chatting this morning, as is our wont. We touched on blogging a little, since we're both techie geek types, and he mentioned a review site he had seen linked from somewhere else. I won't include the name here, because I'm going to be a little mean about it.

One of my part-time, outside-of-work, unpaid jobs is at The Wargamer, where I used to write reviews. These days, with work becoming more hectic and Psycho eating all my spare time, I edit other people's work. Of course, this requires a great deal of concentration: spelling mistakes are easy to spot, particularly with the help of Microsoft Word, but a good knowledge of grammar is essential. Programs can spot potential mistakes in a document, but are still unable to make decisions on, for example, the flow of content within a piece of writing. The Wargamer maintains high standards, too.

Consequently, when I visit other reviewing sites, I'm harsh - particularly with the quality of writing. The way I see it is that one should not be writing reviews about other people's work if one cannot maintain a higher quality level in one's own.

The site 626 and I were discussing this morning is, to be bluntly honest, funny in its naïveté: a small group of apparently teenaged girls write reviews about blogs. The problem is that, in the same breath as criticising a site for using wonderfully ugly internet slang such as "b4" and "u r", the reviewer makes her own blatant errors, including "Im", "but your just" and the truly exceptional sentence "There all there". Quite what the last of those is supposed to mean eludes me.

To avoid misunderstanding, I should point out that I think it's a nicely designed site, is easy to read and has some reasonable commentary. It's also good to see teenaged people trying to write balanced criticism, rather than just spouting crap or verbally destroying everything they can find. They really just need an editor, to improve the quality of writing. I'm sure I could work with half a dozen teenaged girls. Go on, twist my arm.

Killing time 'til the US chap I need to speak to comes online, I thought I'd join Mlle Srah in this very, very long meme...

1. Name: Spike
2. Birthday: Yes
3. Piercings: None. Ick.
4. Tattoos: One
5. Height: About 6'
6. Shoe size: No idea, actually!
7. Hair color: Brown
8. Hair Length: Long. Very long, for a male.
9. Pets: One cat, Pie 'Oh' Pah and one rabbit, Rebecca. An extra cat, Biscotte, over at Psycho's place.
10. In the morning I am: Always late and half asleep.
11. Love is: Way too much hassle.
12. If I could see one person right now: Scary Ross. It's been too long since we harangued each other in person!

Last...

1. Movie you rented: Good grief... er... no idea. Probably Le Diner De Cons.
2. Movie you bought: Stalingrad - it was going very cheap at the petrol station.
3. Song you listened to: Le Vent Nous Portera (Noir Desir and Manu Chao)
4. Song you had stuck in your head: That damned advert for Danette.
5. Song you've downloaded: Er... something by Jeanne Mas, for Psycho, at a guess.
6. Person you've called: Psycho. I hate phones, too, Srah.
7. Person that called you: Psycho. No surprises there.

Do...

1. You have a B/F or G/F?: No thank you.
2. You have a crush on someone?: Not to speak of. I suppose I could mention Lien and Ia, but they're not really crushes.
3. You wish you could live somewhere else?: Not really.
4. You think about suicide?: Nope. It'd be such a waste of a perfectly good set of teeth.
5. You believe in online dating?: No.
6. Others find you attractive?: I would be very surprised.
7. You want more piercing?: Never: I don't like the idea of puncturing holes in myself.
8. You want more tattoos?: Not at the moment. Maybe some day.
9. Do you like cleaning? Not particularly.
10. You write in cursive or print?: I type. :)
11. You carry a donor card?: Yes. Definitely. Always.

For or against...

1. Long distance relationships: If necessary.
2. Using someone: As a door-stop? A hatstand?
3. Suicide: Neither. I don't like it and would try to stop people, but if it were too late I wouldn't hate them for it.
4. Killing people: Any people in particular? :)
5. Teenage smoking: Neither. That's a personal choice.
6. Driving drunk: Very much against. Stupid-ass idiots.
7. Gay/lesbian relationships: Definitely strongly in favour of them. Though not for me, personally.

Favorite...

1. Food? Pizza!
2. Song? The Kiss (The Cure)
3. Thing to do? Drive drunk... er... no. Ummm, faff about on a PC.
4. Thing to talk about? Anything except politics.
5. Sports? None, really. American football is watchable, as are athletics.
6. Drinks? Orange juice, with pulp.
7. Clothes? Black.
8. Movies? Shichinin no samurai, The Wicker Man, Leon, Det sjunde inseglet, Yin shi nan nu... amongst many others!
9. Bands? The Cure, Depeche Mode, Paul Oakenfold...
10. Holiday? At home, alone.
11. Car? Lotus Elise. I want one. Now.
12. Ever cried over a girl? Yes.
13. Ever lied to someone? Hah! Of course!
14. Ever been in a fight or arrested? Yes (if you class being hit and not fighting back, or stopping someone's punch because he was so drunk it was incredibly slow). Never been arrested.

What...

1. Shampoo do you use? Organics.
2. Perfume/Cologne do you use? Pi, but not often.
3. Number of times I have had my heart broken? Three. Or alternatively "enough for one lifetime".
4. Number of hearts I have broken? No idea. Probably none.
5. # Of girs I have kissed? No idea. Probably half a dozen. If you include the French greeting, lots.
6. # Of drugs taken illegally? Ummm, four or five at a guess.
7. # Of people I would classify as true, could trust with my life type friends? Two.
8. # Of people I consider my enemies? One.
9. # Of people from high school that I stayed in contact with? Not many - two or three.
10. # Of CDs? Goodness only knows. Fifty or sixty with music on them, at a guess.
11. # Of scars on my body? A couple, on my head, from stitches.
12. # Of things in my past that I regret? Only a couple, both female.

Have You...

1. Pictured your crush naked? Nope. I prefer women partially clothed until things get down and dirty - much sexier.
2. Actually seen your crush naked? Hah! Nope.
3. Been in love? Yes
4. Cried when someone died? Yes, three times I can think of.
5. Drank alcohol? Yes.

With the opposite sex:

1. What do you notice first? The eyes, then the hair and smile. Then I aim lower.

Who:

1. Makes you laugh the most? Scary Ross, without a doubt. Then Psycho, very close behind.
2. Makes you smile? The same two, and a bunch of other folks. I smile very easily.
3. Gives you a funny feeling when you see them? Ia and Winona Ryder.
4. Is easiest to talk to: Scary Ross.

Have you ever:

1. Sat on the Internet all day waiting for someone special to I.M. you? Nope.
2. Saved AOL/AIM conversations? Nope.
3. Cried because of someone saying something to you? Not since the age of about 10, no.
4. Fallen for your best friend? Best female friend, yes.
5. Been rejected? Way too many times.
6. Rejected someone? Nope. Never been asked.
7. Been cheated on? Yes, every time.

Who was the last person:

1. You talked to? A colleague at work.
2. Hugged? The cat. Excluding non-humans, Psycho.
3. Kissed? Really kissed, probably Psycho about six years ago.
4. You instant messaged? Scary Ross.
5. You laughed with? The same colleague I spoke to.

Do you:

1. Color your hair? No, but I have in the past.
2. Ever get off the darn computer? Not if I can help it.
3. Habla espanol? Ta gueule.

Have you/ Are you/ Do you:

1. Obsessive: Reasonably so, yes.
2. Could you live without the computer? Not unless I found a really splendid woman, and even then I'd really rather not.
3. How many people are on your buddy list? A dozen or so.
4. What's your favorite food? Pizza, but then I said that already.
5. Whats your favorite fruit? None, really. Bananas are good.
6. Drink alcohol? Only on special occasions.
7. Like watching sunrises or sunset? Umm, usually asleep or busy, but they can be very pretty, especially on a beach.
8. What hurts the most, physical pain or emotional pain? Emotional, of course. Unless we're talking physical torture, here.
9. Trust others way too easily? Nope. I don't trust anybody as far as I could comfortably spit a large rat. Exceptions are Scary Ross and Psycho.

Final Questions:

I want: People to stop expecting me to always be the strong one in the group.
I wish: I could speak every language on Earth, perhaps even including animal languages.
I love: Quiet days on my own, Psycho's omelettes.
I miss: Having proper holidays.
I fear: Spiders.
I hear: The whirring of many PC fans.
I wonder: If humanity will destroy itself in my lifetime.
I am: Going home very soon!

I just (pointlessly) reinstalled my main PC's operating system (WinXP Pro): a couple of games had been crashing badly during play and I suspected it was probably due to the constant installing-uninstalling which is part of that machine's life. Since DirectX 9b was released, nVidia have also updated their drivers (I have a GeForce card in that PC), but unfortunately it seems that one of those two sets of drivers is the problem. In other words, I just reinstalled my main PC's operating system for absolutely no change whatsoever. Ho hum. Such is life.

On the other hand, it did allow me to ghost an image of the system drive (for future reinstalls - much easier than faffing around with an XP install and trying to find all the appropriate CDs for basic setup). It's also wiped out all my old email (oops) and cleaned out the registry.

One thing I hadn't thought of when I decided to format the C: drive and reinstall was all the cookies. I have prompting switched on in IE, since I don't like too many cookies invading my PC and spreading my info all over the place - I get quite enough spam mail without adding any via spyware and so on. It's quite astounding how big a list of blocked sites can get when one has been using a machine for months and months: now I have to rebuild that list, click by click.

*sigh*

In other news, Psycho's new PC has arrived: as I said to Scary Ross yesterday, it's in 2BBB format. Two Big Boxes of Bits: that is, it's a kit and I need to build it for her! It'll be a vast improvement over her current box (that wording is just for you, Ross), since the CPU will jump from a P133 to an AMD 2500 XP+ and there's an extra 384Mb of RAM in there, too!

Her old PC will make its way here, making a total of three permanent residents and a visiting laptop (!!). I have yet to decide what to do with it, since it's such an old piece of crap: I might install Linux or FreeBSD or something on it, just for laughs. There's a spare slot on the hub, so it could even be connected, although I can't honestly think of a good use for it at the moment. We'll see what I can come up with.

In a misguided attempt at Apartment domination this weekend, the evil genius Pie 'Oh' Pah tried to push the boundaries of his territory into the neighbouring Rabbit State. Following an initial reconnaissance action from the top of Scratching Sofa mountain, Pah believed his covert ops abilities would gain him access to Rabbit Park, thus establishing a foothold in enemy territory.

Under the cover of evening greyness, the feline leader moved to the assault, attempting an infiltration of Rabbit Park through a gap in the wire fencing. After much careful pawing, an entry was created through which he could slip.

However, the undefeated master of the Apartment met with stiff opposition from the Rabbit State's queen, Rebecca. Hopping quickly out of her palatial abode, the monarch was reported to have given her enemy a sidelong look before scrabbling frantically with her front paws, only a matter of inches from his entrenched position.

Faced by an obviously belligerent defensive force, Pah opted for a strategic withdrawal on this occasion. No casualties were reported, although both parties maintain that they were victorious. This attack comes after months of unsteady peace and mutual respect.

Diplomatic relations have not yet been re-established.

"Fuzzybutt", as Pie 'Oh' Pah is known to The Magic Midget - a university friend who stayed with me for several months from the end of last year while she was looking for an apartment here in Paris - enjoys eating plants. Apparently, his old owner, from whom I 'rescued' him, did not like this habit.

To begin with, I should point out that his old owner did not abuse him as such: he was more a dog-person and should not really have had a cat. When Pie was but a baby, he lived with a drug addict who, obviously, did not look after him very well. He was 'rescued' from this situation (voluntarily given away by the addict, to his credit, for the cat's own good) by his last owner who took great pains to nurse the poor little guy back to health. Suffering from "cat AIDS", he had little chance of survival, but the attention and care of this second owner brought him back to health.

Unfortunately, Pie then revealed his true self: he's very energetic, he loves long cuddles, to sleep on a lap, to play and to eat plants. His last owner could not handle this and was not particularly nice to the little guy. It's difficult to deal with a cat when one does not understand them and he did not want to understand. He wanted Pie to be trained like a dog (never gonna happen!) and got terribly upset when pusscat tried to get attention by shredding rolls of toilet paper, leaping all over the apartment or eating his plants (of which he was very fond). Of course, lots of animals eat plants. They just don't regurgitate them on the apartment floor afterwards...

I was lucky enough to be conceptually nearby (i.e. by telephone via his then-girlfriend) when he decided he couldn't handle the Plant-Eating Fuzzybutt Monster any more. I immediately said I'd take him and find him a new home: it's rather difficult to find a home for a fully-grown cat, as opposed to a kitten, and I never succeeded. Of course, this turned out even better than I could have hoped, since he now lives here and we're both very happy with that arrangement. Indeed, I sometimes wonder how I managed to be content without the furry guy around.

In the past, I've bought cat-grass for him to munch on, which he loves. However, he still enjoys wandering out into the stairwell and chewing on a few leaves of the plant which resides there. Every time he does this, he looks at me with these big, scared eyes, waiting for me to punish him for it. I laugh: as long as he doesn't destroy the plant (and to be honest, it's actually growing better since he arrived here!), I have no problem with it. Cleaning up cat-vomit is a part of ownership anyway, particularly since they always have fur balls.

More recently, I've wanted to get him a plant to chew on inside the apartment. He has a little window-ledge which is chicken-wired off so he can lie out there in the sun when he wants to. The wire is, in fact, to stop him jumping down onto the pharmacy's roof thingy and from there into the street - not through a desire to trap him, but because there would be no way back up.

Just a few weeks ago, I finally did it: he now has a sort of ivy plant (I have no idea what it is, since I bought it in French... and my knowledge of plants in my mother tongue of English isn't even that good!). So he now has a plant out on his balcony and he loves it. He's out there right now, settled in the shade, sniffing the leaves in an attempt to find a tasty one. What a little sweetie.

Beware! The Plant-Eating Fuzzybutt Monster is back!

I've stopped reading most blogs these days, due to a lack of time. Of course, I still visit those I personally enjoy. They know who they are, since they get comments every now and again - not that I consider my patronage of their sites that important to them! It's nice to see the goings-on in other places, to be a fly on the wall in a job or a life that I would never consider.

On the other hand, I've stopped reading others because they have either stopped posting, are manically posting absolute nonsense in a desperate bid to have content every day or have turned into mentally deranged idiots who have a desperate need for affirmation via blog comments.

I hope I never fall into the last category.

Actually, I hate that expression. "Sup, man?" meaning "What's up?", which in turn is some kind of greeting, even though it sounds more like a query regarding someone's mental state, to be honest.

Regardless, I thought I'd do a quick recap of what's going on, partly because it might keep your eyes open for a couple more seconds (or alternatively lull you off to sleep) and partly because I can't remember everything I should be doing unless I write it down!

Firstly, I should explain the awful mess that is my flat. As you can see from the webcam pic (which actually isn't too out of date, for once), there's stuff all over the place. Beyond the blue square, which is the top of Pie's cat-tree, is a huge box in which the 'new' server was sent. On top of that is another box which had... er... something in it. I can't remember for the life of me what it was, but I'm sure it was useful.

The black thing on the left there is my computer chair, upon which much fur is deposited by Pie when he steals my place. He enjoys doing that: he waits until I get up to go to the kitchen or somewhere, then nips in quick and settles down to sleep. Cheeky monkey!

Over on the right, you might just be able to see an edge of my second monitor: this one is currently being shared between the 'new' server and my 'old' PC, which I now have set up as a gateway server. After months (or more) of not being able to get it to work for more than a few minutes, I sat and dismantled most of it at the weekend, read the motherboard manual and set it back up again. Surprisingly, it works and is still running after three or four days, non-stop. I hadn't set the BIOS stuff properly before: it's a Duron 800MHz and was running at 533, which was making it terribly unstable. Switching the dodgy HDD out of its primary position also helped.

On Thursday or Friday, I should receive some network cables to connect the two server PCs to the hub at the same time as my primary PC and also to connect my work laptop if it's at home. Finally, a working network. There will also be an 80Gb HDD to go in the gateway server, since it's rather tight for space at the moment. I decided to treat myself, since I'm usually paying for everyone else.

At work, I'm currently in the middle of a career crossroads. The old application that I have been running for the last four or five years is on the way out, so I shall be working on new things. The problem is I'm not passionate about any of those new things: they're vaguely interesting and I'll happily work on them to the best of my limited abilities... but they're just not my thing. Trouble is, I don't know what is my thing (and no, Scary Ross, I don't need your suggestions on that one, thank you!). Ah, well. It'll sort itself out in the end.

Psycho also appears to be fast approaching a junction in her life: from what I can gather, something major is coming soon (emotionally, not physically) and everything's going to hell in a handbasket. Or some other such cliché that describes how my days are going to feel like I'm being drawn and quartered.

I think that covers most of what's going on right now. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my taking a permanent position here (no, I wouldn't have noticed - my boss sent an email to congratulate me and thank me for the 'first year' of service). Woooo.

Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. I think I have found the lining on the current heatwave: a lot of telephones are not working properly.

Of course, the cloud is the fact that it's still unbearably hot (even more so today) and that, this week alone, over fifty people have died in this region alone from heat-related problems. This is quite astoundingly high: a good example was a hospital in Toulouse (OK, so it's a long way from here...), where last week one year ago they had one death - from a car accident. This year they had ten: all from the heat.

Electricity will also soon become a problem, since France relies on nuclear plants quite heavily. These, in turn, rely on water as coolant. The water is hotter, therefore they can use it less often and for shorter durations. Nightmare.

The silver lining, however, is the phones. I dislike phones: I always have and I always will. They're annoying things at the best of times and especially at work. Ringing all the time, with silly people on the other end asking for things that they should be doing themselves. Add to this a mobile phone that I have to carry and leave on 24/7 and you can understand my distaste for the technology. Gah. Twice today, however, people have tried to call me and have failed: the phone system is naffed. This suits me: we do our meetings via instant messenger instead, and I'm much more comfortable with that.

The wonders of modern technology, eh?

In keeping with this ridiculous heatwave we're having (38+ degrees celsius) I installed my new CD burner last night. For some time, the old one had been unreliable and, more recently, had scratched more CDs than it wrote. So I had a hunt around and ended up planting for a Plextor model that burns at 48x. This is rather different to my old one which only ran up to 8x and, given that I always run burners at a speed slightly slower than their maximum, the new one's going to feel supercharged!

Of course, this morning when I tried burning a couple of big files off to a CD, the drive reported an error. It was, in fact, an error in the ASPI layer which was causing my problems, it seems, and not the burner.

D'oh.

In one of my many conversations with Scary Ross, we momentarily touched on the difference between a 'Nerd' and a 'Geek'. I've had this discussion with other people, too, trying to find how we see the two terms and whether they are different.

Looking up the two words on Dictionary.com, I find that they both have much the same definition:

a. A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
b. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.

The word 'Geek', however, has a third connotation... albeit a rather odd and not-particularly-appropriate one!

c. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.

So what's the difference between the two? From chatting to several people about it (yes, I really am that sad), it seems that it's a measure either of intelligence or of how deep the technical nature runs.

Basically, for me, anyone who is not very intelligent or does not spend inordinate amounts of time studying or working on their subject would be classed as a Nerd. The elite of the Nerds are the Geeks: those who have either reached a level of understanding that demands respect (despite their supposed lack of social graces) or spend so much time immersed in their subject of choice that they have little life outside of it.

I don't honestly know which I am. Scary Ross says I'm a geek, because (quote): "I remember being behind a German truck going in to [work] one morning [...]. I was looking at the back of the truck and you said, 'Are you looking at that bit that says "IDE" and thinking "hard disk"?'