Monthly Archives: February 2011

When the chips are down

Sunday February 27th 2011

Last week, after over three years of flawless service, my PS3 developed the heat cycle fault that has ended the life of many of the original versions of the console. Luckily it wasn’t immediately terminal, so I managed to get the save data copied off of it in the short time it would stay on before powering down due to system failure.

That done, I had two options; pay £75 to get it repaired “professionally” or attempt to do it myself. The former came with a three month guarantee, the latter came free but with a chance I could do more harm than good. I decided it would be hard to trust a repaired system anyway, as it could go down again at any time, so decided that I’d crack it open and try to extend the life of it long enough to do a system migration.

playstation, postaweek, PS3

Back off the ladder

Sunday February 20th 2011

It’s almost six years since we bought our house in Liverpool, possibly paying above the odds but content we’d got what we wanted despite being so late to climb onto the property ladder. The feeling of opening the door of your own house for the first time is electric, and it was made all the more special by the card and bottle of wine left for us by the previous owner.

Nice of her to do that, but then she had made £45,000 on it in just four years due to the boom. Being realistic we knew the property market had already levelled out by the time we bought, but figured it would still be a good long term investment. Property always is, they tell you.

house, liverpool, mortgage, postaweek, property

Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!

Sunday February 13th 2011

Last night marked my second go at addressing the haggis at a local Burns Supper. I’d been called upon by Crazy Uncle John a few weeks back to perform the duty again, after he’d been asked to recite a couple of poems at the Colgrain Bowling Club.

The 12th of February is a little bit late for a Burns Supper, but it did give me few weeks to brush up. I was actually surprised that it only took me an hour or so of going through the poem in my head before I could do it from memory again. Considering it had been a year since I really thought about it I can only marvel at the capacity of the human brain for deep learning through repetition!

Even so, I printed the words out and kept them under my monitor on my desk at work, just to make sure I wasn’t being cavalier in my approach. I did, after all, miss a line out when I addressed the haggis at the Rosslea Hall Hotel last year, so I was mindful that I couldn’t practice enough.

address to a haggis, burns, crazy uncle john, helensburgh, postaweek