…of my break away from purgatory, otherwise known as working at Derrys has come, the first few days of the holiday went slowly, but this second week has disappeared shockingly fast, and now I really don’t want to go back to work. It’s been a holiday that has been a very welcome break, but its been one that hasn’t been great at the same time, with the Phoenix closing down and falling out with one of my oldest friends over something silly really, but that has been sorted, I stand by what I said at the time, but that’s in the past, so we’ve agreed to disagree. But the Phoenix closing has made a massive impact on me, both from a personal point of view, as it was pretty much my second home, and from a financial point of view, I am already feeling the knock on effect of losing the extra income from my sound engineering exploits. Also during my holiday, I was left disappointed by the girl I liked in work, who didn’t reply to any of my texts about going out for a drink which she eluded to on the day I started my holiday. I thought that maybe she didn’t have any credit, so I called her instead on several occasions, but no answer each time, so I am as confused about the situation as ever. And finally I have blown £191.75 (just checked my online banking) on alcohol in two weeks, not good at all, although quite a lot of that was the last two days at the Phoenix, both nights I was seriously hammered! So in many ways it’s good to get back to work, get back into the routine again, and have a relatively normal life, I won’t be wanting to go out and spend money so freely as I had done over the last couple of weeks; after work I am usually knackered and just want to chill out for the evening. One good thing that happened is that I found a solution to my dark 3D games problem outlined previously thanks to ‘danswan’ on the PCFF. Not a fix as such, but he pointed me to some third party software that has better profile management than ATI’s Catalyst Control Panel, and allows for adjustment of gamma levels via ‘hotkeys’ which works really well. The software is called Powerstrip and worked flawlessly, at least in a Windows XP environment, which most people have anyway, so it’s recommended if you are having problems with dark displays!
At least things are looking up in my sports interests; Plymouth Argyle secured a deserved win against Brighton at Home Park on Saturday afternoon. French midfielder Lilian Nalis scored his first goal in an Argyle shirt, capitalising on a mistake by Brighton keeper Wayne Henderson, the Frenchman kept his composure to poke the ball into the back of the net after a goal line scramble. Not the most exhilarating of goals, but it’s a goal non-the-less, and it meant that the Pilgrims walked away from the game with all three points, which was nothing less than was deserved. The visitors never really looked like they were going to equalise, if anything Plymouth looks more likely to extend their lead with Paul Wotton and Micky Evans going close, but a 1 – 0 win will do me nicely. This result means that Argyle have moved up another place to 13th in the league just 8 points off 8th position which is current occupied by Wolves, but more importantly, 14 points away from the relegation zone, so survival is almost assured given that Plymouth don’t make a complete hash of the last ten games of the season, five of which are at home. Even better news is that the new F1 season kicks off in Bahrain next weekend, although I am likely to be working, so I will have to use that archaic device called a ‘video recorder’ so I can watch it when I get home. Luckily there aren’t any F1 fans in work other than myself, so the chances of hearing the result are unlikely. I would like to take the day off, but I need to work Sunday’s now because of the loss of income from the Phoenix. Anyway, I am quite excited about this new F1 season as the new regulations have thrown a curve ball into the F1 hierarchy, I am hoping that teams like Honda F1 (formerly BAR) and Red Bull Racing will be at the sharp end of the grid, for obvious reasons as it’s the only two teams with Brits racing for them, but mostly I would love to see Jenson Button get his maiden win, and pre season testing looks promising for the Brit, but seasoned F1 fans know that you can’t read too much into that!