2007 has been a particularly interesting year for me. It started on a high with my first full time job at Avox. (In fact it’s my first Avoxiversary tomorrow). The working year ended with a nice Christmas Dinner with the fellow Quality Assurance peeps and then a nice Bowling session with all.
As a result of said steady income, I was finally able to get a high end computer, which, right now, has decided to play silly buggers with the even newer Quad Core CPU I bought (more below). I’ve also been able to obtain a proper Mp3 player, a Creative Zen Vision:M, which seems to be built like a tank (it once fell off the dashboard out an open window on a mini-rounabout in town, and I still retrieved it unscathed). It’s also filled with all sorts of features. I’ve also gone through four digital cameras, starting with a medium-low end Olympus, then even further down to a shitey ViviCam (seriously, wtf?) 5660, then up to a top of the range (for a compact, and at the time) Samsung NV11, and now finally onto a Nikon D40 DSLR camera. Hurray! Apart from that I’ve bought practically every new well anticipated game this year that isn’t still held in a box by the publishers.
I’ve also attended the TT-Forums meeting in Birmingham which was really fun, for a pub, and then there was Gran Canaria, which, while hot and sticky (I hate hot weather, give me cold, while perfect visibility), was also extremely seedy and tacky. Seriously, even the cheaply obtained goods try to sell you things. “YOU’VE WON A FREE HOLIDAY HOUSE JUST BY MAKING EYE CONTACT” – Gah, please, I’d rather France. Everyone just doesn’t care there, and that’s all you need.
Then there was also the incident involving my car and the other car and the damage incurred. Well, I’ve gotten most of the damaged bodywork off now, and everything underneath is looking quite unscathed. I only need the new radiator and light to get it on the move. But gah, really, they just don’t seem to be arriving. >:( If I can’t get my car fixed soon I’ll just stop caring and buy a new car.
Here’s to 2008, may it be an even better year, assuming I don’t die or the apocalypse happens. (I’m an optimist, me.)
Now, my computer. The CPU. I had this problem while installing it, it was just a case of reseating the CPU and heat sink to make it work. The only problem is that the current Intel heat sinks are so shitty to install correctly, it gets really frustrating. What made it even more frustrating yesterday was that after I’d put the old, surplus heat sink on quite simply and quickly (even thought it’s identical to the current one), I realised there was no thermal paste on it and didn’t want to risk anything so resorted to the newer one again. I finally got the newer one on after much pressure and worrying that I’d break the motherboard, only to find that reseating it didn’t work. I’ll try again later, after I have something to remove stray particles in the actual CPU socket.