Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Archive for November, 2009
Bonus Time
Nov 16th
Just got confirmation of a performance related bonus in work. It got me thinking though … when I got my last big bonus about three years ago, it caused a monumental upset at home.
I was very very drunk one night. I knew the bonus was on the horizon and under the heavy influence of alcohol I told Lucy that when it came through, I would buy an engagement ring and propose. I was drunk and to this day I have no memory of this conversation.
Fast forward a few weeks, the bonus comes through and I go buy a nice shiny laptop. Lucy cries for about a week solid. After a few days I get to the bottom of the issue, apologise etc but there isnt much consoling her. She had gotten her hopes up big time, and me, being the nasty bastard that I am, dashed those hopes.
I did get a ring and got down on one knee about 6 months later, she said yes and we married the following year, so all ended well. I also eventually sold the laptop as it symbolised a pretty shitty few weeks. I actually felt guilty when using it!
So, its bonus time again and my thoughts are already turning to what I can buy. Im stopping myself though ..much easier in the long run if I let Lucy decide what we do with it! Im proper under the thumb arent I?! 
iTunes Skipping
Nov 10th
I have recently had a problem with music skipping when played through iTunes on Windows. I’d play a tune and it would stop, skip etc and make the music virtually unlistenable!
After a bit of troubleshooting and a bit of googling I resolved the problem, but thought i’d blog it incase anyone else has the same issue.
- Close iTunes
- Goto Start>Control Panel>Quicktime
- Select the ‘Audio’ tab
- Amend ‘Play Audio Using’ to ‘Safe mode (waveOut only).
According to the various threads and pages I trawled through from google, this should solve the problem, however it didn’t for me. If it doesn’t for you, try the following in the same ‘Audio’ tab of Quicktime:
- Adjust ‘Audio Output Device Latency (msec)’ to a 66.000 (Default is 33.0000)
This was in Windows 7, but I have had the same problem in XP and Vista in the past. Figured if I blogged it at least I could come back and get the solution if I ever forgot (like I did today and ended up googling for ages!).
Marillion Weekend – Day 2
Nov 7th
I woke up in a grotty hotel in Amsterdam after approximately five hours of sleep/drunken unconsciousness. As I opened my eyes my thoughts immediately turned to how I was feeling. I had drunk a heck of a lot the night before and not had my traditional pre-emptive hangover cure (food!) at the end of the night. Surely I would be hanging?
However, I sat up and felt fine. I got up and felt fine. I took a shower, I felt fine! It was bloody brilliant!
Leigh, also as unaffected by last nights antics as myself, helped me rearrange the room back into it’s original ‘twin’ layout and we then met Ian & John downstairs for breakfast. When I say breakfast, I had a bread roll, some cold meat and a bit of cheese. I ended up slapping it all together and eating it like a sandwich. I hate continental breakfasts! I’d have a good old English fry up any day of the week!
We then sat around for about 30 minutes, drinking Orange Juice and Coffee, discussing the night before and deciding a plan of action for the coming day. We knew we had to be back at the airport to catch our bus for around midday, so decided we would take a tram into central Amsterdam and wander around.
Wandering around the murky backstreets was quite fun. We walked past lots of the establishments you would expect to find in Amsterdam such as the sex shops, cafes with the distinct smell of cannabis emanating from them, X rated cinemas, and Leigh’s personal favourite, a Pizza shop that miraculously had a smell of pizza coming from it! 
Domain Renewed
Nov 5th
I’ve been getting a lot of renewal notices for danlawrence.co.uk recently. I was actually contemplating not renewing at all as this blog is fairly stagnant these days and I could easily move it over to some free wordpress hosting with one of their .wordpress.com domain names … then it dawned on me…. both mine and Lucys email addresses run through this domain! doh!
So – renewed for another 2 years!
