Raith Against The Machine

My pal who I mentioned yesterday, who got the train back to Edinburgh for one day playing it, managed to get himself up to 200th in the world at one point. I'm still plugging away at the old Playstation emulator. Cannae whack a bit of Crash Bandicoot.

£500 quid from the taxpayer last week, and I'm in three hours. Booyah!

Does anybody know if Parcelforce still have a VAT exempt status? They definitely did as recently as 2005, because they're part of the Royal Mail group, but I can't find anything that says they lost that status, or anything that confirms they still have it. Thanks

Two out of my eight flatmates last year didn't know that the Tories were the Conservatives. One of them is doing a Politics degree.

If you just google "word count" and then copy and paste your stuff into the text box on the first website that comes up, it tells you.

Open "My Computer" (if it still exists) and right click on the disc drive your using (probably D:, but maybe another letter. The disc name should be there anyway) and there should be an option on the dropdown list like "Autorun". If there isn't, click "Open" and look in the next folder for something like "Autorun" or "Setup".

I don't want to steal your thunder here, Wilson, but I'm a massive House geek. I've seen all of the episodes up to the current season at least 2 or 3 times each. Frankly, I think I'm either going to need one of those things where they wait and see if the liquid from my back is clear or milky, or a big needle stabbed through my eye while I'm still awake. Maybe you'll laugh at the Pittsburgh Steelers' Mike Tomlin as much as I did...

I'm having some sort of odd man flu at the moment. It's only affecting me one symptom at a time. The night before last I was having some ridiculous coughing fits, then they subsided and were replaced by feeling really quite sick. That disappeared, only for last night to be one long headache. I can't wait to see what wonders tonight brings. (I'd like to make it clear that I'm not a big jessie, and I'm not greeting about this. It just seems odd to me. I'm battling through it by being manly and playing Smackdown 2 while watching King of the Hill.) I also have a 5000 word group assignment on Parcelforce to contribute to, but that's not going to be difficult once I actually get started. After dinner. Or tomorrow.

It's shite scary when you have that "Oh, BOLLOCKS!" moment, especially when you know it's 100% your fault. The closest I've ever come to a proper accident was because I did something ridiculous that was just completely unnecessary. I was sitting behind a woman doing about 20mph in a 30 (in Dalgety Bay, where the roads are wide and straight, it's not like it was a tight twisty road) and we came up behind a bus that was stopped, as she overtook it and returned to the left, I just kept my foot down to blast right past, but then it clicked in my mind that she'd never cancelled her right indicator and that she was about to turn into the street on the right hand side. Thankfully, she was as slow to turn as she was going in a straight line, and checked her mirror, so we both hit the brakes and ended up side by side in the road. Honestly, I'm so stupid at times, it scares me shitless!

Yeh, my flatmate went to Game in Stirling at midnight last night to buy it, then got a train back to Edinburgh at 11 this morning so he could play it, and he's getting the train back tomorrow morning for classes. Just wait til the weekend!

Why's it cold? The sun's shining, but I'm not feeling it's warmth? Why not?

It seems that doing my first bit of work of the year is harder than I thought. I just can't be bothered. IT'S ONLY 500 WORDS!

Boxers annoy me. Why are they always so smug and arrogant? It's not like Wrestling, where you have to have a persona because it's part of the core aspect of the entertainment. Just say "Yeah, I'm looking forward to the fight because he's a decent opponent and it'll be a tough test for me." not "I'm going to beat him, and his children, and his children's children, and his impotent children's children's adopted children." And all this squaring up at the weigh-in. You're both only wearing pants! If you start scrapping now you're going to look like that film I accidentally downloaded.

I wholeheartedly agree.

MSN Messenger is now telling me that I can't sign in until I update to whatever new piece of shit version they're pushing these days. Fuck off! I don't even speak to anybody on it any more, I just like the wee pop up box when I get an e-mail. I don't need fancy colours, moving pictures, or friends who's names have arabic letters in them so that it says "Graham" in an unusual way. "Live" Messenger? WTF is this shit? It's MSN! I don't have a fucking clue what it stands for, but at least it makes sense. "Live" Messenger!? I know it's live. If it was fucking recorded, it wouldn't be a conversation now, would it, it'd be a TV programme on Dave. Please, Microsoft, leave me alone with my out of date, defunct messenger which still has two little rotating green chess pieces. Oh, and don't give me this "Thank you for choosing Microsoft!" bollocks. It's like thanking me for choosing to have eyes. I don't have a fucking choice, I'd rather do without them - it'd be more peaceful, but it makes it fucking difficult to find out who's trying to sell me Viagra if I don't.

Muchos pettiness: One of my flatmates has started going out with a guy named Duncan. Fuck off, that's my name! Get your own!

Yup. My Uncle had a heart attack driving back from Aberdeen and didn't realise until he went to the doctor a fortnight later.

Correct. Shut up. I had two tests for the same subject before mid-semester, and they were supposed to be of equal difficulty. For the second one, I got a 1C. For the first, I managed a 4. FFS. I didn't revise for either of them, they were just ridiculously different.

"Right, so that's a chicken pakora, two garlic nans, a lamb bhuna and a chicken tikka achari ghorst. £36.48, or £6.08 a month for the next 12 months." I realise he said Mexican, but I'm sticking with Indian...

Is the Irn-Bru question not related to the water used, rather than the actual ingredients? Water from one place tastes different from water in another, and if there are separate bottling plants for glass and plastic Irn-Bru, in different areas, I imagine that's where you get the difference.

Why do they make such a big deal over new films opening day takings, like this new Michael Jackson one. If it's the opening day, nobody's seen the film yet. Just because it's taken $20m doesn't mean it was any good. You have to pay before you go in... it could be the worst film ever, it just means it's been hyped up massively.

At Primary School, did anyone else refer to a packed lunch as a "Packy". It was pretty much compulsory at my school, absolutely everyone called it a "packy". Saying "Packed lunch" was just odd. Phrases such as "Are you having a school dinner? I've got a packy" or "I can't wait to eat my packy" were commonplace. Nobody saw anything wrong with this, and the possible double meaning didn't even occur to me until very recently. It wasn't like we were hiding it, I'm very surprised that the teachers either didn't notice, or didn't bother doing anything about it. So... just my school?

Grey squirrels hide in the shadows like ninjas, only to jump out and boot the reds in the nuts.

Fine by me! The black fella looks like the other one's carer!

I don't have any dead friends for Facebook to tell me to reconnect with, so I can't be outraged