| March 31st |
I'd ordered a solid state drive for my laptop, and that came in.
There's a move from 34nm to 25nm manufacturing, and that's speeding up the drives
but it seems that it's increasing the power consumption of them, too. I wanted the
best of both worlds, so I've got one of the drives that's not as fast as the new
ones, but is still a lot faster than the 5400rpm drive I had, but that uses less
power. I'm hoping it'll increase the battery life. Anyway, from pushing the "on"
button to the prompt is 65 seconds with the spinny drive, and is 31 seconds with the
solid state. The Windows Experience score has gone from a "meh" 5.3 for the hard
drive to 6.7. There's a bunch of tuning stuff that Windows has been doing now it's
noticed the drive, so that's probably helping. I then decided to repartition the
drive to lose the recovery partition (that probably won't work anyway), and ended
up having to copy everything over again, as the thing wouldn't even boot. I've
reduced the size of the partition in the clone software and called that good for
now. |
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| March 27th |
Another wet and miserable day, so I dinked around in
World of Warcraft
- I've decided to get my
warrior
all the way through Twilight Highlands to get all the best gear. I'll probably
look at doing that will all my toons so as to collect the stuff I need for their
professions.
We did some tree trimming, and filled the green waste bin again with pretty much
everything we can get to on the trees in the front garden and another lump off the
tree in the back garden. One lump left to go now, but that'll include the main
trunk, so it'll be a few weeks, when we have an empty green waste bin. Now the
trees are starting to sprout, we're pretty much done for this year. |
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|
| March 26th |
I dinked around in
World of Warcraft
and finished up all the Twilight Highlands quests with my
hunter.
I think I'll work on professions for a while now, so everybody can get topped out.
Gwen had bought some IKEA cabinets for her kitchen, so we met her for lunch, then
went over and put those together and installed them. I only managed to break a
glass that was on top of a cabinet next to where they were being installed. They
look pretty good :o) |
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| March 25th |
We woke up at around 4am, and ended up getting up and doing
things. Of course, I played some
World of Warcraft,
and ran a few daily quests to get my
hunter
up to level 84 so I could get into Twilight Highlands. I spent most of the day
playing, so I got up to level 85. |
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|
| March 24th |
We woke up at a pretty usual time, and
Tilly
was very happy to see us - maybe I'm so used to the otherwise over the top morning
greeting that nothing short of a full blown parade would seem right when we've been
away.
We wasted the day catching up on TV, unblocking the drains (it's been raining a lot)
and playing
World of Warcraft
- I got my
hunter
out of Deepholm. |
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|
| March 23rd |
We got up early and headed to the airport. Everything went
swimmingly, I watched
Tangled,
Due Date,
The Accidental Husband
and
Inside Job
before waiting over an hour to get through passport control. And then we went through
the pornoscope in the security check. Luckily our connecting flight was delayed, so
we got to the gate as it was boarding.
We got back to Sacramento, and Fred and Marsha picked us up. Gwen was still at the
house, so she handed over
Tilly
who was happy to see us. Not ecstatic, but happy. Meh. |
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| March 22nd |
We headed up to London to meet Jason for lunch, then we went to
see the
Dr Who Exhibition.
In the evening, we went to dinner with Mum and Dad before heading home to
pack. |
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| March 21st |
We went to Staines to buy chocolate, then Poke picked us up. We
saw their new house, went to dinner then met Paul in the Red Lion to talk and drink
the evening away. |
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| March 20th |
We got up and headed to Avebury to see the
stone circles,
Silbury Hill
and then on to
Stonehenge.
In the evening, we went to Jason and Fiona's for dinner and to watch the season opener of
the
MotoGP
season. Glad the poison dwarf didn't win :o) |
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| March 19th |
We went and saw the white horse at
Uffington,
and in the evening we met Sue for dinner and a chat. |
|
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| March 18th |
We went to
Birdworld,
which wasn't completely open for the summer yet, and in the evening we went to a Chinese
restaurant with Jason. |
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|
| March 17th |
Sam had a series of epileptic fits in the morning, but he seemed to
have settled down when Vic and I went to lunch with Caroline. He was just coming out of
a fit when we came in, so I helped Dad get him round to the vet so they can put him out
for a while to break the cycle. This isn't good, as it means the drugs need their doses
increased.
When all that drama was over and done with, Vic and I went to the pub to meet "people".
Phil showed up first, and we were having a good chat when Emma, Claire, Jason and Fiona
all arrived at the same time. I, at least, had a great time, and we even got to stop for
a kebab on the way home. |
|
|
| March 16th |
I went with Dad and Sam to their dog training class, then we all went
to
The Harrow,
a very old pub, for lunch, then on to a garden centre. Woo.
As we were having a quiet afternoon at home, I hopped into
World of Warcraft,
and got my
hunter
up to level 83 before we went to Pizza Hut for dinner. |
|
|
| March 15th |
We arrived at Heathrow, and met Mum and Dad. After spending the day
chilling out at home, we went to the chippie to get dinner, then met Jason and Fiona for
a drink in Staines. |
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|
| March 14th |
We got up and finished packing, then Fred and Marsha ran us to the
airport. Everything went swimmingly until we were on the plane in Houston waiting to head
off to Heathrow - the entertainment system was down, so they swapped it out. We got to
watch it boot into Linux on the in seat monitors, but apparently that didn't work either.
So we got to wait about an hour while they fixed it, which meant the people sitting next to
me had time to get in from their delayed flight in from Phoenix. That meant I had to get
all my junk off their seat :o( Still, we finally left and headed to the UK, with movies.
I got to watch
True Grit,
Hairy Potter
and
Megamind. |
|
|
| March 13th |
I played a little
World of Warcraft,
hoping the weather was going to get a little better, but it didn't. I went and changed
the clocks, per the time on my cellphone - that would be correct, right? Wrong - looking
at the atomic clock in the bedroom, the cellphone is about 3 minutes fast. I set my
watch per the atomic clock, then went back and changed everything to match that. This is
good, as it means I'll stand a chance of flying after work when we get back from the UK -
it seems like the best weather is during the week.
As it looked like it was going to rain, we went out into the front garden and trimmed
some more off the trees and cut the grass. It didn't look any better, so I went back
into Azeroth and got my
hunter
to level 82. Then I started tidying up the house and packing :o) |
|
|
| March 12th |
I started the day playing
World of Warcraft,
and got my
warlock
up to level 85. I then got my
hunter
into Hyjal, ready to start questing there.
I then went to
the airfield
and took the
Flightstar
out for just under an hour, and bashed circuits. It was pretty busy, and the weather
was quite bumpy, so I'm glad Vic didn't come. The guys were going to look through an
old woman's garage at stuff left by her dead husband, so I tagged along. If I'd been
building a Thorpe, it would have been great, but I'm not, so it was just dull, and
kind of sad, really.
As Vic was at a
SPCA
thing, Vince and I went to dinner before I went home to feed and play with
Tilly.
I went back into Azeroth and got my hunter up to level 81. It's crazy how much easier
everybody is to play than my
druid. |
|
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| March 11th |
After work, we sat and watched
Middle Men
it wasn't as funny as I'd expected, but it was a pretty good story nonetheless. |
|
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| March 9th |
Tilly
sleeps through the night, and is back on kibble. In
World of Warcraft,
I've got my
warlock
into Uldum. |
|
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| March 7th |
John was in Sacramento for work, so we went and met him for
dinner. |
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| March 6th |
Tilly
slept all the way through the night, so the chicken and rice would seem to be a winner.
It was cold and wet out, so I spent most of the day playing
World of Warcraft
and got my
warlock
into Deepholm and up to level 84. |
|
|
| March 5th |
Tilly
has some sort of stomach problem, in that she keeps getting me up at night to go out into
the garden and throw up. Great. Vic went to the store and bought rice and chicken to
try and nip this in the bud, as I've not had a proper night's sleep for a while :o(
It was forecast to be wet today, so when it was dry in the morning, I set out to do the
"outdoor" stuff first, then headed in to play
World of Warcraft,
getting my
warlock
up to level 83 in Vashj'ir. As the weather had turned cloudy, and even rained a bit, we
went to pick up a cactus from Vince, then all went to dinner. |
|
|
| March 4th |
I went and got my eyes tested for the first time in about 3 years.
As expected, they're getting worse, so it looks like I'll be getting new glasses. I'm
thinking I'll look at ordering some cheap spares, and I'll see if there's somewhere I
can donate my old glasses. |
|
|
| March 3rd |
After work, I got to spend a few hours modifying graphic files for
Russ. We'd talked about this a few months ago, but obviously he didn't look at anything
until the day before they absolutely had to be done. Obviously. |
|
|
| March 2nd |
While Vic watched American Idol, I spent a little time in
World of Warcraft
and got my
warlock
up to level 82. |
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