Net Life

Ye, I suddenly realized I had been given a 2 weeks notice for renewing this domain. And that was like.. 9 days ago. My Visa card has been inactive for some time, and I wasn't able to renew it myself, since only a credit card could do it. Had put it off long enough, and it soon became apparent to me, that had I not in fact renewed it before Tuesday, I might very well lose it. And that wasn't a comforting thought, seing as I've had it since 2001.

I spoke to Rancor, and he agreed to renew it for me. But for some reason, the renewing process also required access to webbanking. Right, we tried from his box, but a technical error made it impossible to write the login information in the designated areas on the webbanking page. The textboxes were outside the pop up windows frame, and with no scrollbars, getting them in focus proved impossible.

I was getting somewhat desperate by this time. Then my brother, who happened to be visiting, offered to provide the service required. He had a different bank, one where the webbanking wasn't tied to one computer, and where the coding was sufficient enough to allow him to actually follow the payment through. I opted for a 5 year deal, for the lowly sum of USD 60, meaning this fucker won't expire til 15-01-2013. That's right, baby. 2k13. Howzabout that? Spiffing indeed.

So, now I'm off to do the final corrections on the webpage I just finished up, effectively allowing me to buy a new laptop. I'll be back with you guys in the not too distant future. Be good!

Got a job done with today, that's been hanging over my head for a long time. One of those that kept me with a bad conscious. I didn't particularly want to do it in the first place, but I agreed anyway, because I always try my best to help out. The job was creating a website, something I'm not particularly adept in when push comes to shove. Modify existing stuff, check. Creating stuff from scratch.. not cool. But I managed to pull it off after months of back and forth. And as payment, I get a new laptop. One I pick out for myself. Some people could argue that I don't really have anything special to use a laptop for, and while I sometimes agree with that statement, I must admit, having a laptop that is speedy and smooth does have advantages. I'm at work now, for example, and if the laptop I have with me was faster, I might be able to do more stuff on it than just blog, chat and surf. I'd like to anyway.

So that job is out of the way. Splendid. Got a few more annoying tasks I need to complete, then I'm almost back to status quo in terms of things hanging over my head. Looking forward to it. It was a load off completing this today. I'll need to do a little more when proof reading comes back, but it's done, designwise. And it's my last day in a 5 night working streak, with 4 days off in front of me. It's sweet, all in all.

New laptop tho... can you believe it? I'm looking quite forward to it. The fun I can have with a brand new piece of equipment. Marie tried to convince me to buy a macbook. I told her my needs differed from hers. 5 minutes and a lot of sexual innuendo later, I think she realized that our needs were indeed different. So she let the macbook go. I used to dislike macs just because they were macs. I'm not like that anymore. I know lots of the reasons people would use macs, and that's fine. I just don't think they will ever be my choice in computer hardware. I just don't dig it, kno' wut I'm sayin'? PC laptop with a dual boot of Winblows XP and Ubuntu will do me up quite nicely. mmmm new hardware... weeeeee

What follows may or may not be an incredibly dull and boring tale of how I bought, installed and set up a harddrive. Let me promise you this tho, it's not all technical data, seing as I did in fact have to leave my house and encounter other people in order to achieve the task of setting up my brand new hard disk. If you want to catch a glimpse into a gripping tale of lies, love, deceit and the transferring of megabytes, do click the below link.

I recently stumbled upon a blog of what appears to be an Irish senior citizen. I say appears to be, because of course I accept anything posted in the interweb at face value, and I'm ready to believe anything posted on any page. Or perhaps I just don't care if this is some little girl posting as a senior citizen just for the attention. Whatever may be the case, I found the stumbled article pretty nifty (it was about surviving the fine art of ordering a pint (a pint being synonym to a pint of Guiness) in an Irish pub, without being made as a tourist). Granted, I don't like Guiness much, but I sure was tempted to go to Ireland again, and give Guiness the benefit of doubt.

Anywho, I just now realized Google also has a decent RSS Aggregator, meaning I can load all the rss feeds into that, and it'll keep track of my feeds and allow me to access them from anywhere in the world. Rss feeds are what pages on the web use to send out information and/or headers when a new item is posted. I'm sure there's a more technical explanation, and I'm also sure somebody reading this could go "Omfg l0ser, that is what you newbs use rss aggregators for.. back in 1985 they were so much used for blah blah whatever". If you're a person thinking something along the lines of that, I'd urge you to eat hormone neutralizing pills, seing as no kid should grow up with you as a parent. ANYWAY.. I'm straying from the point here. So Google has this here rss reader, which is nifty, and I loaded in the rss feed for Head Rambles (the page), and happened to read a few articles I hadn't seen before.

This, in turn, made me think about some experiences I had with Ireland. It's not relevant to the prior article. But as always, when I say I'll do something later on tonight, it usually gets pushed off for various reasons. Point is, when I was in Ireland, I never really felt as if I was made out as a tourist. I'm sure I was, but I never quite felt like anybody noticed or cared. Of course, I refrained from wearing touristy things, like green tshirts or scarfs or anything else people from Japan might find inconspicuous. And no, I didn't just stay in Dublin, where most people appear to be from across some sort of body of water. I was out in the country side (so green it was), talking to the locals.. or at least observing them. This leads me to another event that took place right here in the home town of yours truly. I was wearing an Irish National Rugby shirt, I had bought while in Dublin (or my mum got it for me.. technicalities, but it's nice to have the facts straight, isn't it?) to a local subcultured club I went to with my brother. It's green and, I'll admit in all modesty, looks stunning on my large frame. So I'm standing in the lobby type thing, just getting away from the heat of the dancefloor and to clear my eyes from the flashing lights. In stumbles what appears to be an Irishman.

*Freeze frame*
<Dalif has a flashback>
Dalif: For as long as I can remember, I've always attracted the attention of randoms on the street and/or in shops. I can't count the number of times I've been asked where the milk is located or if we have any more of those cushions that were on sale last week, when going to supermarkets... and I'm always the one the drunk guy speaks to, when given the choice between 3-5 people on the street. I dunno what it is about me that just commends the need to speak out. I've often wondered... (dramatic pause).. or have I?
<Flashback comes to a premature end>
*Motion recommences*

He enters the door, and spots me straight away. Moves towards me, with that oh so special "Hey, don't move, I want to say something extremely witty and important to you" look upon his scarred and drunkard face. I briefly, as I always do, flash a number of possible ways out of the situation through my quick-thinking mind. I draw a blank, and stays motionless. What he actually ended up saying, I cannot remember clearly. But it was something to the effect of "So how about those Irish Rugby players"... and then something about it being to to see another irishman around here. I inform him of the fact that I'm not Irish, nor do I watch rugby. I merely happened to like the shirt. He looks befuddled, as if I had just told him his wife and kids died in a horrible boating accident. I shrug... I mean, I'm not really sorry. It's just the way life is. I pat him on the shoulder, and send him on his way.

Now this leads me to the final point of this entry, which, I'll admit, was written mostly because I like to see myself write stuff. The point is, that had I worn that shirt in Ireland, the bloke would've thought I was a filthy tourist being a nuisance and a general annoyance. But if I wear it in any other country in the world, bar Equatorial Guinea perhaps, I'll be marked as an Irishman straight off the bat, and honored for flying the green colors. I find that, if not hugely amusing, then at least a little nifty. You gotta give me a little credit for making that cool and interesting observation. Conclusively, I'd urge you to give Head Rambles a go. Grandad is a fairly amusing fella. And I'm sure he'd have a few fun stories to tell down the pub (if you could sneak past his foreigner-filters).

I've never been a huge fan of community sites, but a while back I was presented with the following dilemma by an old friend: Either you create a facebook profile, or I WILL create one for you.

What was I to do? Had to create a damned profile. So off I went. Now, while I can't say Facebook has changed my life, I was actually positively surprised at the amount of people using it. Amongst them, I found a few I hadn't spoken to in far too long. Old family from the states that I've been meaning to get back in tough with for some time, but just haven't been able to find mail addresses of etc. etc.

Anywho, since I'm like... the kind of hardcore geek who frowns upon virtual bling bling, I kept my profile dull and boring. Of course that garnered quite a lot of complaints from people who thought it was... well dull and boring. So I figured... there's no such way as the golden inbetween with things like this. So I went from dull and boring to all out bling bling hyped up coked up facebooking. It's basically me installing every god forsaken widget I can get my greasy little nerd fingers on.

Took a load of tests yesterday, and installed a bunch of crap. I'm going to be the facebook mastah of teh universe!