So I'm off to Ireland...

This time tomorrow, I'll be back in Ireland. Back in Belfast, the town where I grew up. Yey.

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I'm going so that the family has a chance to meet Oscar and Lana, it's probably overdue. I'd like to see some of my old friends, but we'll only be there for a couple of days so this seems unlikely to happen (if any of you are reading this, rest assured I'm not trying to avoid anyone). Hopefully it wont be too cringe-worthy seeing the place again.

I attribute a lot of my teenage angst to simply living where I did. There was nothing to do that interested me, getting gadgets and gizmo's delivered there was an exercise in frustration (you'd be surprised at the number of online stores that charge extra - a lot extra, simply to deliver to N. Ireland), I lived near a flash point, it was just miserable. Maybe it's because I was young and generally quite angsty, but I know as soon as I moved away from the place I began to feel a lot better about myself. To this day, if someone offered me a job there at double the wage I get now, I'd still refuse to go.

There is one good thing about going, though - I get to see my kitty!

It has been years since I last seen the fat, little ginger legend. I hope he still remembers me, because I'll never forget him for the rest of my life. I know, that's quite sad, but I couldn't possibly overstate how much of a fantastic pet he is. We've had numerous cats over time, but he is something else.

Of course, Hera is pretty gorgeous, too.

Anyhoo, off to bed, to Ireland tomorrow!

Regular update attempt number 1...

After I went through all that turmoil trying to switch from LJ to Blogger, I made a conscious decision to try and blog a bit more to make the effort worthwhile. So here I go - will the next update be in a reasonable time frame, or will I have another "OMFG I have a blog?!!" post a year or so from now? Only time will tell!

Tonight, I decided to buy a new laptop. After spending the last year wrestling with my existing one to get it to not randomly shut down, I have given up. I'm pissed off at it because I spent quite a bit of money on it a couple of years ago with the idea that it'll last - and by today's standards, it's still a very nice machine with a lot of nice features. The problem is a hardware defect that miraculously only seems to materialise about 6 months after the warranty expires. HP weren't helpful, they want nearly £300 to "fix" it by putting in a new motherboard, knowing full well that the issue will happen again except the fix only comes with a 3-month warranty! I was so pleased with it when I got it and was singing HP's praises for making such a great little machine, but now they can fuck off as I'll never buy another product from them ever again. I can't even properly sell the fucking thing because it's essentially irreparable. RIP Odo.

So, I needed a new laptop. We only have one computer and she keeps hogging it to play Neopets. That's right, Neopets for fuck's sake! Frankly, I feel dirty just using it.
The new one will be slightly bigger than the old one (15.6" vs 12.1") however I'm hoping it's still somewhat portable. It's certainly no netbook, but it shouldn't be too hard to, for example, carry onto a plane or even take to work on occasion. It'll definitely fit into my backpack, so transportation won't be an issue. Then again, the now-old laptop very rarely left the house, 99% of the time it was permanently plugged in.
It's not going to be a slouch, either, here's the specs -

CPU Intel Core™ i7-740QM 1.73GHz Processor
OS Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
Chipset Intel PM55
Memory 6GB DDR3 1066 MHz
LCD Size 15.6" FHD 1920*1080 TFT-LCD Display (LED Backlight)
Graphics ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5870M
Graphics VRAM GDDR5 1GB
HDD 2x500GB in RAID 0 SATA
Optical Drive Super-Multi DVDRW
Audio 2 Theater Class Speakers +1 Subwoofer

- HD Webcam
- Card Reader XD/SD/MMC/MS
- LAN 10/100/1000
- Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth V2.0EDR
- D-Sub (VGA)
- HDMI
- 2x USB 2.0 port
- 2x USB 3.0 port
- eSATA
- 120W AC Adapter
- 9 cell Battery

Uhh...yeah. It might be a gaming laptop. Possibly. It might even be more powerful than Oriax, my current quad-core desktop PC....but I promise to use it for programming and stuff! I want to actually finish a personal project or two, something I've been meaning to do for years but just never seemed to have the time or willpower.
I thought that after programming all day, I'd be bored of it and want to just relax when I got home, but the opposite happened - it made me want to program some of my own stuff. All day I look at code and it seems to inspire me to want to go off and write something myself, so hopefully it'll be the motivation I need to actually get stuff done. And if not, well, I've still got a pretty kick-arse machine. Assuming it arrives on Friday, that is.

While trying to find specifications for my old-old laptop (Hiromi), I've just been reading over some old entries that I don't remember writing at all. Two things I can gleam from the past - one, I was a teeny bit emo as a teenager. Just a teeny bit!
And two - Kathleen is an utter, utter bitch. I already knew this, but years of not having to speak to her on a regular basis had diluted my dislike for the cow. That's just brought it all rushing back. Did I mention that we're going over to Ireland next week? Oh yes, only for a couple of days, a long weekend as it were, but we're going none the less. I'll have to actually...talk to her in person. She still hasn't apologised for that Christmas and I'm standing firm that I have no intention of being in any way nice to her until she does. Next week is going to be fun, but don't worry, we're staying at a hotel so Steve-BQFH time should be at a minimum, assuming I see her at all.

Anyway, it's getting late, I should probably go to bed before I put myself in a foul mood thinking about her. I shall think about shiny new laptop instead! Yeeeey!

Also - I'll need a name for it. All my computers have names. Except my phone, which is probably the computer I use the most (oddly enough). Ok, I need two names! One for the laptop and one for the Phone (A HTC Desire, if that's any help)! I think the phone's current Bluetooth name is "I love rape and AIDS!", but that's a bit of a mouthful, so give me names names names!

The first decent Computer I owned was "Uber", then came "Oriax".
The first laptop I had was "Hiromi", named after the poor Japanese girl I accidentally added to MSN and struggled to communicate with. Then came Odo, named so because it shape-shifted into a tablet and now we have.....