Category: General

The Christmas work do was on last Friday. I had a half day so I went home and then got the bus back in with Niamh and Rob. Went to “The Forum” bar on Dame St. first of all and then headed on to the “The Castle Inn” which is at the back of Christchurch. We then had dinner and drinks with cabaret, Neil Diamond impersonator and then a DJ until 2.30am. 🙂 Was great craic and whoever had the office digital camera certainly made use of it by taking in excess of 120 shots. Some classic photos which I have to sort out after Christmas.

Getting home was a bit of a nightmare as town was absolutely jammed. I’ve never seen it that busy and there could have been serious issues with crowd control on Westmoreland St as everyone was waiting for the nitelink. 😯 Eventually got a 67N cos Niamh and Rob were going to Celbridge. Turned out I was the only guy getting off in Lucan so I got some slagging from punters standing downstairs. 😆 All in all, a good nite.

Well its two weeks since I’ve posted and it’s also just under two weeks to Christmas. Can’t believe it’s approaching this fast to be honest. Plenty to do so I’m going to be up to my eyes over the next while. Went to a party for Helen’s fiancé, Eamonn, who’s back from Liberia on the 4th. Good to see him back and they’re looking forward to the wedding in February.

Ordered some gifts online at the start of last week. Just hoping that they arrive on time as there seems to be some sort of delay in postage of parcels over the past month or so. Haven’t seen any films of late, there hasn’t been much on to be honest and the prospect of seeing a crap Christmas movie doesnt excite me at all. 🙂 Planning on taking a couple of days off work soon to get the last bits of shopping done too.

Here’s something which I quite enjoyed and dug up from my bookmarks: Stand up and be counted: Edinburgh’s 50 best jokes

Went and purchased the standard retail edition of Half-Life 2 yesterday from Smyths on Jervis Street. Didn’t think €45 euros was too bad a price to pay and I can always get Half-Life:Source and DOD:Source from Steam. I was all :mrgreen:………until I got home that night. Trying to register the damn thing was an absolute and utter nightmare. I spent from 8 till 10 o’clock just trying to get Steam to work. It worked once and then seemed to disconnect after I registered the CD key. Valve knew that there would be a massive hit on the servers on the day of launch but failed to compensate for it with additional bandwidth.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more frustrated at a game. 👿 I had the game installed on my hard disk but couldn’t play it! Crazy situation when you think about it. Anyway I gave up at about 10 and went and watched tele. Will be trying it again tonight and I really hope it works this time. 😐

Last weekend was hectic. Aidan (a mate from college) came up to Dublin for Gamecon 5. It’s basically a bunch of blokes getting together to play games for 24-hours. All the PCs are connected so you can play multiplayer team based games. I took a half day on the Friday and a few of the lads (Darren, Paddy and John) came over for beers etc. Gamecon started at 9am on Saturday but we didn’t get there till 11 but it didn’t matter as I had prepaid with the credit card.

It was a great event, well organised and a fair amount of people there (~100). Knackered the next day and we had to go over to Glasnevin to drop off a few books to Aidan’s mate. Hit Eddie Rockets while we were over there and, despite intitial protests from Aidan, he agreed we made the right choice instead of McDonalds. Saw Hero on Sunday night and it is by all accounts a beautiful film. Excellent use of colours and imagery combined with a solid story and special effects. Thumbs up.

Went to the Halo 2 Launch Party in the Metropolitan Bar this evening. Won a ticket from the lads who run Gamecon (hat tip: Jermaine aka Jazz). Twas a smashing night by all accounts, got to play Halo 2 before its official release and also enjoyed a free bar courtesy of Mr Gates. Cheers Bill!