There must be some sort of magnetic effect, vortex or crossing of the lines where our house is located because it feels as though every other day I’m having an encounter of some sort:
If this continues, I think I might have to change my name to Alistair “Mr Fauna” Lattimore.
In May, I realised that over the course of the last few years some of my so called geek status might have been fading, as I lamented that I hadn’t taken the side panel off my computer for over 2 years. Over the last fortnight, I can confirm that I have been quietly re-estabilshing my geek-fu with the following hardware acquisitions:
At the same time, I have installed Windows Vista Business, which was a pretty seamless exercise. After using it for the last fortnight, Windows Vista is certainly a visual upgrade from Windows XP Professional however there are a few things that keep getting in my road. Once I’ve fixed those and the Vista driver problems I’ve been having, I’ll reevaluate whether it is worth downgrading to Windows XP Professional.
Besides those few little problems I’ve had with Vista and driver support, the new computer components sure do hammer. I’ve been playing Counter Strike:Source, Team Fortress 2 and a few other games with the highest settings I can manage and it isn’t missing a beat.
For those that are interested, the Vista performance information for that above hardware is:
I chuckled when my slowest component was my 3.0Ghz CPU!
Last weekend while weeding the garden, I found out with crystal clear clarity that paper wasps do not take kindly to being disturbed. Yesterday afternoon I was back in the garden and had another run in with some sort of critter. After the fact, I went back to investigate exactly what I’d been bitten/stung by to find out that it was in fact another wasp. This time however, they were black and orange/yellow instead of black and grey like last weekend. I was only stung once this time, however it really packed a punch and my left hand looks similar to what you’d see on the Hulk or Hellboy.
Last weekend I needed to rid the back door of our home of some paper wasps. Not knowing of a sure fire way to safely get rid of them, I turned to a trusty bottle of Mortein. As it turns out, paper wasps really don’t enjoy getting dosed with Mortein. In fact, as soon as I sprayed the paper wasp nest – they immediately reacted by flying around furiously looking for something to lay into. Expecting that they were going to go berserk, I was able to get away without getting stung.
Today, I was weeding in the back yard and I unfortunately chanced upon another paper wasp nest in an unlikely position. Worst though, is that I had no idea it was there until I felt the crisp, sharp pain of a paper wasp stinging my thumb! Initially, I thought I’d just brushed it against something sharp and didn’t think anything of it until it happened again, at which point I could see the paper wasps swarming away from their nest. I was pretty lucky in the end, there were about a dozen paper wasps and I was only stung twice on the thumb and it didn’t swell that much. That said, its about six hours since I was stung and I still can’t bend my thumb completely pain free.
Moral of the story, only get close to live paper wasps and their nests if you’re packing a bit fat bottle of Mortein.
I was recently laying down on the carpet stretching and massaging my back muscles with the use of a Bak Ball and Princess thought she would keep me company.
As I have mentioned previously, Princess isn’t all that normal in the laying down department, so instead of just sitting near me like a normal cat – she laid on her back.
I didn’t notice her there at first and then Claire pointed it out – it does make a funny photo.