Sunday, November 26, 2006

Abandonsleep..

Surprise surprise it's still raining. Can't complain too much, it's Seattle and you have to expect this. Still, this morning was nice, am loving new apartment because I woke up to a glorious vista of snow covered mountains and shiny skyscrapers, but then the drizzle arrived.


Now I need coffee, and probably more sleep. The darker geek in me discovered DosBox, which lead to a few experiments. Either I'm having an early midlife crisis, or my life is so dull I need to reclaim my youth, but for the past month or so I've been fiddling with Amiga emulators. In particular WinUAE, now I'd probably get this to work given effort but I'm running a beta of Windows Vista and the whole thing refuses to work. But yesterday I stumbled across Abandonia, this website was fan-flipping-tastic. After directing me to the previously mentioned DosBox to emulate ye olde DOS 6.x, I moved onto exploring their games lists, these are ancient games which have slipped beyond budget and into the ether of "abandonware", which basically means nobody can be bothered with them anymore. Some still require purchase, or simply arent available for various reasons, others are in the process of stunning remakes, like Cinemaware's "It Came From The Desert". Unfortunately my whole evening was taken over by Populous and Mega-lo-mania, two of my favourite games ever. God knows what will happen if I get Settlers 2 working (it works but it's too slow to be playable).


Obviously whenever you go back to a childhood dream at a sensible age there's always that risk that it wont be as good as you remember it will.. not the case this time.


Put it this way, I have a boxed Amiga 1200 sitting at my dad's house in the UK. It's now going to be on the shipping list for relocation... :)


Anybody who used to have an Amiga, or simply craves the older games which were actually more fun.. you'll find an abundance of point and click adventures, strategy games, and puzzle style things over at abandonia. Go... you owe it to your inner geek.. or something.


Now I need szzzbctts..

Saturday, November 25, 2006

My company hates me...


And if they could get away with it, my life would be a considerably more uncomfortable.


I left home on monday, planning plenty of extra time like the news said because of the thanksgiving holiday. There was me, paranoid and concerned about the hordes of fed up looking couples, wailling babies and unruly ankle-biters all milling around, I had visions of lines of people stretching from security into the drop off zone, being swatted by taxi's like.. umm... things that get swatted.. flies, that'll do. But, typical luck on my part.. the airport was deserted. Dodging the tumbleweed, I cleared security, and wandered straight to the gate. There's one thing about Seattle-Tacoma's internation "S" terminal.. and that's that it has only 2 shops. A newsagent, and a gift shop. Neither of which is interesting. I'd already stocked up on magazines and things. Which meant 3 hours of staring at my coffee. Fun. Not.


Eventually boarding time arrived, and I assumed the foetal position for the compulsory 9 hours to London Heathrow. Uneventful flight, save for a huge crowd of incredibly noisy french students which prevented me from sleeping. Just the thing to keep me in a good mood.


Got to London, useless BMI have delayed my flight, so took me almost 5 hours to get into Amsterdam. Bleurgh.


Worst to come, after finally escaping Amsterdam airport (which for anyone who's been there should know it's f*cking HUGE), got into a taxi and then headed to the hotel. Due to an accident on the motorway, this took over an hour.


2 days of meetings later, and im leaving.. Friday morning get to the airport nice and early, only to find none of the wirless providers there actually have service.. so I'm stuck staring at coffee again. Now for things to improve slightly.. upgrade on BA! 39K crossed out and 18D written back in.. result! Business class is oooh so comfortable. No babies, no students, no loud french types, just my noise cancelling headphones, good wine, and a few films. Incidentally dont bother with "my super ex girlfriend"... it's more pleasant just chewing on your own hand for a couple of hours.. and more rewarding.


Things took a bit of a nose dive on return to seattle though. US immigration is dreadfully intimidating at the best of times, this is by far the most paranoid nation on earth. Homeland security likely do a cracking job of keeping terrorists out of the country, but unfortunately they probably scare plenty of innocent business travellers in the process. Usually it's a very straightforward effort to get through them, fill in the green I-94, then the white customs form, stamp stamp, and off I go. This time the rather official with the "god help me I want to go home" expression, just tells me to do my fingerprints, then sticks this HUGE red card in my passport and tells me to follow the green line to somebody else. Unfortunately following the green line was a bit like walking the green mile.. they send you passed all the US citizens so all these people get to stare at you, with your massive red card, like you're some kind of lepper. Or in the case of these folks, like you're a terrorist. Turns out I've been flagged for not having a return flight, easily the behaviour of an international terrorist.. so, a fair amount of time passes with rigorous interviews on what I do, who I do it for, and why I do it (god knows I ask myself everyday).


Eventually escaped and made it to car rental.. where I get Clarence the trainee for National, who's on his own, and needs the lady from Alamo to show him how to rent me a car. Another hour later, and I have a Jeep "It's using all the gas but I dont seem to be going any faster".


Finally... after the whole sorry ordeal, I'm back safely in Bellevue.


One word for the whole week.


Bleurgh.