Month: April 2003
Sugar Cubes
Review of Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade
This review originally appeared on Amazon. See more reviews by Dan.
Use Windows XP Pro
The XP Suite of Operating Systems IS good, but why go for the Home edition? It’s fundamentally crippled. Most of the code remains the same as for the Professional edition, but the majority of the really useful features have been disabled.
Splash out a little more money and get the Professional edition.
Easter Break
I’m sitting doing some work on a web site for one of our clients, and Reb (you know, the ex-girlfriend) sends me another text message:
you around for easter? xx
As it happens, I won’t be. I could go visit my family for Easter, but this would result in two things happening:
- My family would eat lots of chocolate, and I wouldn’t, on account of the fact that if I did my head would explode and I would die horribley.
- I’d have to meet up with Reb.
I think I’ll stay in Aberystwyth. I’ve got heaps of work to do, anyway.
Kit and I ate at Burger King this evening, and each had one of their fantastic new special offer “Tex-Mex” burgers. They’re like their quarter-pounders, but with spicy cheese and spicy relish and… fresh jalapeno peppers instead of gherkins. Sweet.
Spent most of the evening playing the Alpha test of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates, which seems to occupy most of my time and probably my internet bandwidth at the moment. Ho hum.
Chasing The Paycheck
What with unavailable accountants and worse, I’ve not been able to get my paycheque until today – a week later than expected. I have £2.50, half a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, and a packet of super noodles to live on until my cheque is cashed. I don’t think that Sainsbury’s Recipe Finder quite understood me when I explained my situation, on account of it suggesting the following:
Cowboy Baked Beans
Prep and cook time: 30 mins to 1 hour
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients: 25g butter, 1 large onion, chopped finely, 1 clove garlic (optional), crushed, 2.5cm piece fresh root ginger, crushed, 1 each green and red pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped, 2 carrots, diced, 30ml vinegar, 60ml clear honey, 5ml Worcestershire sauce, 900g baked beans (hah! I only have a 450g can of baked beans anyway), 125g streaky bacon, sliced.If you want the full recipe, go visit Sainsbury’s Recipe Finder.
In the end, Kit and I celebrated my paycheck by buying a heap of interesting looking ingredients from Somerfield, and made ourselves some cheesy garlic bread, a smokey-mince and pork tomato sauce with pasta-thingy, and some cheesecake. Then ate most of it. Fab.
It’s amazing what a little money will do for you. Last night we ate corned beef on toast.
Claire Goes To Norfolk
My love, Claire, disappeared to Norfolk today. I won’t see her for a week. My horniness is going to be unmeasurable within days. Hmm… I wonder how much a prostitute costs around here?
A quick search on PunterNet UK (a prostitute review site) doesn’t find any ladies for hire in Aberystwyth. That’s disgraceful. I think I should write to the government and get a ‘job creation scheme’ underway here. Yet again this coast of Wales is left in a rut. Gutted.
Threw my hand on the bed and ***** it, instead.
A Message From Reb
I received an interesting text message from my ex-girlfriend Reb today. It read:
I was thinking, you know how you used to say i could have your diaries when you died. can i still? not that i wish you dead or anything, i was just wondering.
Yeh; sure – it sounds like you love me to pieces, my dear. This, interestingly, is the latest in a short string of text messages, including one that asked if I had any pornographic videos (I asked why she wanted to know, to which she didn’t respond), and one which asked if I ever missed talking to her (I responded to say “Rarely, and briefly.”).
And let’s just get this straight: “not that i wish you dead or anything”. What kind of person says something like that? I’m not sure whether I’m to be scared or amused!
What’s going on in her mind? Suggestions welcome.
April Fools Day
April Fools Day has always been an oppertunity for me to get back at the ineffective dickheads that are the management of Penbryn Hall at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. This year was no exception. Building upon the success of my last big prank, Penbryn-Hall.co.uk, a spoof ‘official’ site which almost got me expelled from the hall, this year I worked with Kit, Bryn and Claire in order to cause yet more chaos.
We had a plan in mind already, but when Penbryn sent out the following message on the internal e-mail system, we couldn’t help but pounce on an oppertunity:
From: Eiryls Evans <eee@aber.ac.uk>
Date: 28/03/2003 13:46
To: hall-penb-4@aber.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Maintenance ChecksDear Student
On Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd April, Mark and I will be doing a maintenance inspection in student rooms.
This will involve checking for repairs and lights which are not working.
We will be starting in Block 1 at 10.30 amIf you have any problems e.g. desk lamp not working and would like a new bulb, please call at Reception.
Margaret Woodliff
Deputy Manager
A few things immediatley stand out in this e-mail. One is that the name at the bottom is not the same name as the person it appears to come from. A second is that it is not provided in Welsh, and is therefore in contravention of the University’s billingual policy…
…the third, and stupidest of the lot, is that they arranged to do room inspections on the first of April.
So, we thought… all we have to do is spread some more convincing (not difficult, considering) counter-publicity, stating that this e-mail was actually a student prank, and that there will not be any room inspections after all. We could even go so far as to state that we suspect that this e-mail may be the prelude to an attempt to gain unauthorised access to student’s study bedrooms. Mayhem in the making.
We came up with a poster that expressed pretty much this, and stuck copies up all over the hall. And it worked! People were absolutely convinced that our posters were real and the real e-mail was the hoax. In the end, the management had to spend their Sunday walking round from room-to-room knocking on student’s doors and assuring them that the e-mail was the genuine article. Oh; how I laughed.
The poster is available to download as an Adobe Acrobat file, below.
Download The Poster
Adobe Acrobat (PDF); 22KB.
The actual poster which was put up around Penbryn Hall for April Fools Day 2003.