IKEA with a vengeance

There comes a time when we all have to simply cave in and knuckle under. Get simply get down on all four and really lick boot. No, I'm not talking about proposing to a future spouse, I'm talking about the Sunday Afternoon IKEA Meltdown. For the past few months the need has been ever increasing (or rather the sense of "let's get it over with") and today it reached critical mass. Now, IKEA on a Sunday afternoon is Battle of the Bulge Re-enacted at best but this Sunday afternoon was very fittingly preceded by a Sunday forenoon hangover of epic proportions which itself was preceded by a long night of hard drinking, hard farting sack of ugly muscle as a very good friend of min (yes, I do have them) turned her third decade which in turn was preceded by a fairly long, though both early and pleasant, Saturday of deconstructing Christmas. Now, normally I’d continued that sentence a bit just for the fun of it (it’s how I get my kicks), letting the early Saturday morning be preceded by an unusually late Friday night (early Saturday morning, really) of drinking, blogging and bitterness and in between mentioning how I cured this with a large amount of double espressos and chicken wraps, but since I’m only now sobering up (or rather, having pulled through the worst and am now gently easing the pain with half a bottle of Florio), I won’t.
Oh dear, I just did.

So there I am, hung over as a wolverine, battling not only the oversized, under-financed and sub-educated mothers from the inland outback as they get their monthly fix of the Big City while herding an almost obscene amount of snot-nosed, howling and kicking entities which I reluctantly call “kids” but only because they are (most of the time) bipeds, but also the pressing need to vent my stomach into the nearest shopping trolley, almost certainly belonging to one of the previously mentioned mothers. I’ve had two really bad “hung-overs” before, one when I was working as a paper boy and got the insanely bright idea to knock back an entire crate of brews and some whiskey to top it off just hours before my shift (thus earning me the questionable pleasure of drinking water through a garden hose as the job of a paperboy can sometimes be a thirsty one) and the other was when I was on a three-day visit to CERN and I and my fellow students of not only quantum physics but also the bottom of a bottle went on the hardest bender of my life. The present one might very well qualify for a bronze medal.

Improbable as it might seem, I’ll end this post on a bright note: After the visit I managed to, if not cure then at least nurse, the worst of it using plenty of double espressos and the possibly best grilled chicken sandwich I’ve ever had.

Computers, Motherboards and beyond

In the beginning of december my trustworthy computer broke down (hence my absence) and I had to have it serviced as it is on lease. Having previously owned nothing but self-assembled computers without any kind of service deals I thought it nice not having to worry when the screen eventually would turn up blank as the computer undoubtedly would crash as I would only have to call the leasing company and they'd have to fix it. I now see how badly I was mistaken.

Twofold is my misfortune: December 6 was a saturday and a day in december at that, meaning that the chance of anyone actually working on fixing the broken maching was all but zero. Little did I suspect the coming worries. It suffices to say that I currently have had to return the machine twice after it was supposed to be fixed, both times being preceded with promises of how great it would be working now.

At the first return I was told no hardware fault had been detected. The first thing I detected when I fired the poor machine up upon returning home was a catastrophic video card failure. Returning it the very same day I was promised that the issue would be fixed with hast and lo! and behold, they called me up two days later claiming to have fixed it. Having brought it home it took mere hours before I detected the next hardware failure: The motherboard had given up. Currently I'm waiting for the service company to recieve a new batch of mobos so that I may have my computer back. The only slight glimmer in this pit of darkness is that the original 7950 GX2 has been replaced with an 8800 GT. Something at least.