Geek @ Aalst – No crime being a geek!

New HP-DV8 1000EB

Yesterday the new toy for N. arrived, after a long struggle to get it but it’s here.

First remarks,
- 18″ laptop is really suitable as a desktop replacement.
- Screen quality is a very nice top notch, bright, clear, no dead pixels
- Speedwise, there is some room for improvement, wait till all bloatware is removed
- Aesthetics are fine, there are “Bubbles” on it…
- Weight means no lugging this around 24/7

Feature wise the device seems packed to the rafters with all the goodies you could expect from this type of machine, bluetooth, Wireless-N, card readers, touchpad, thumbprint reader, antec lansing speakers with extra subwoofer, touch sensitive controls for quite some options, nice feeling keyboard (I think, was only allowed to type like 9 letters on it)

N. definatly seems happy with it, which in turn makes me happy

N. had been looking into replacing her desktop for a laptop, for give or take a year now..
Being the tech savy people (cough) that we are, we started shopping around, never quite finding what we wanted, or always just have one component not to my liking..  (yeah i admit, i was very eagle eyed on the hardware of a laptop…)

Finally we ended up with two possible models that made the marks..  we are talking about the HP DV8, and the Toshiba Qosmio X500-10T…
initially, due to the price etc, we opted for the HP device, being as well they have quite a good reputation, and it did have the making of a solid desktop replacement unit.

there, the nightmare started… we ordered the machine, and accessoiries, and waited….waited….waited.. the machine never came on stock with the distributor…
Annoyed, beyond belief, we cancelled our order and changed it to the Toshiba, a bit more pricey, but a bit beter specs too..

Alas, it seems faith has cursed us!  About 1 week after we cancelled the DV8 order, they came on stock, but, not all was lost, the Qosmio was about to be brought to market…

Let us just say that in the meantime, we have re-ordered the HP DV8, and will normally be delivered tomorrow..

The reason?  Toshiba’s availability, product marketing, and account management for BeNeLux is nothing short of a joke…
Initial reply of Toshiba stated that the device would be brought to market early november.
November came, and I mailed them back, to ask where the device was…seeing how it was not even in the pre-order queu’s of the retailer..
The reply was quick, due to delays the machine would arrive halfway the month, again, we waited… november 20 came and went, and another email was sent to the support team at Toshiba..

The earliest would be, the start of the next month, or, very end of November.

At this point I was almost pulling out the few remaining hairs I have left on my head in frustration, seriously, just HOW hard can it be to give a solid delivery date?

Appearntly…very very hard.. the last mail that was recieved from Toshiba stated the following.
Due to it being such a special item, only 10 ( yes, you read this correct, TEN) devices were released to the BeNeLux market…
it was, perhaps, but doubtfull, possibly, that, a few more might come to market, somewhere mid Q1, of 2010..

Meanwhile, looking at our neighbouring countries, UK, FR, Germany, they all have ample supplies of Qosmio X500’s, yet, Belgium, seems to be trailing behind

Is this what belgium has become?  A place were evolution, progress, and IT related things were held once in high regard has become the laughing stock of Europe, or even the world, when it comes down to IT…

A very scary picture is being painted.. when people who WANT to spend their money, aren’t even allowed to…

Hello HP, goodbye Toshiba!

You won’t be forgotten by us, it would be hard to.. god knows we complained plenty of times, when you stole keys, underwear, a full handbag, socks while we were still wearing them..

Why am i writing this? I guess its my way of dealing with it. It started just a few days ago, when he lost his apetite and energy, he even stopped chasing the cats, but the more disturbing thing was that the cats stopped playing with him and just let him do his thing.
saturday and sunday came and passed, two more days where our little one didnt eat or drink… and barely moved anymore.

On monday, he didnt have the strenght anymore to crawl from my chest to my shoulder, and then inside, i already knew i guess, or at least part did…
I held him for about an hour before we went to the vet, and the pictures were conclusive… wide spread cancer in the abdomen, and no chance for surgery survival..
We didn’t want him to suffer..the vet asked if we wanted to take him home with us, to let him live out the remainder day, or days…but what kind of life would that have been? To suffer, to starve to death, no…not that
The only option left then, was the most gentle for him

So We said goodnight to Eliot, on monday, 9/11/2009, but not goodbye

What can I say, i guess i am a beast of habbit, and changes are not
something i enjoy.

Since i got onto a new project my mood has been a bit gloom and
downtrodden,  where i am used now to do technical things in my working
hours, the new assignment i am working at now is limited to testing,
testing, testing, and 90pct of time spend writing…

It became clear early on that this assignment is going to be zero
technical aspect, and this is kind of rubbing me the wrong way.
once you get labelled as a tester, its very hard to break this chain,
and quite frankly i am not feeling happy about this.

It is not who i am, and it is certainly not what i want to be
doing…but then again, i guess one can`t be too picky about what kind
of work he`s doing in the current economical situation…

just 11 more months and 2 weeks, and if all goes well hopefully i will
get back to where i belong, on the field as a technical person, not a
testing monkey….

So the painting is coming along, slow, but nicely i might say.

I promised some more updates so this is what I’ve been doing basically.

Basing…it’s amazing how much time crawls into getting a decent looking base, perhaps it might help if I describe the process I’m using right now for making my standard R&F bases for warhammer Empire.

Step 1. Clean the bases from any flash and mold lines that might creep up during spruce removing.
Step 2. Get the sides and the edges of the base painted in graveyard dirt, don’t worry if this doesn’t cover fully at this stage.
Step 3. Apply a good coating of watered down wood/pva glue to the top of the base, and dump them in a container filled with semi rough sand.
Step 4. Prepare a cup of tea or coffee and when that is done, remove the bases from the container, they should have dried up with the sand and glue by now.

Some people might stop here, but to make sand actually look like sand on a base, it needs a painting job…

Step 5. Take some water extender, water, and mix this with pva glue and a copious amount of Bestial Brown paint.
Step 6. Apply this self made wash to the sand on the base, the glue will help keep the sand down for further drybrushing.
Step 7. Drybrush the top of the bases with SnakeBite Leather brown, this will lighten up the general look of the base to a more dirt feeling base.
Step 8. Drybrush lighter this time, but use the colour Golden Yellow to pick up the tips of the sand grains…now we’re getting there, starting to look more like sand!
Step 9. Drybrush very lightly with sunburst Yellow, to pick up the very tops of the sand/dirt.
Step 10. Recoat the sides of the bases with graveyard earth to give a uniform coat.

At this stage, I find it’s best to finish your figurines, and get them stuck on the base, after this is done I’ll be posting some more pictures of the work in progress.  When the figs are painted and glued on their bases, I’ll be adding some small details like static grass and mixes of different kinds of flock to add character to the base, I’ll be taking care to create a few patches but nothing too overpowering, I want my empire army to look downtrodden and dirty, like any human army should look like!

Oh boy…Has it really been this long again?

i’ve taken up painting a bit again for my warhammer figurines.  There will be some bigger battles involving the empire forces of Imperius, and it’s only fitting then that most of this army would be painted….A daunting task, that i haven’t really maintained over the years, and as a result even figurines that are almost 10+ years old, had never seen the stroke of a brush.

As a result now, i’m having some really old models, that are getting some of the newer paint technique’s i’ve picked up over the years.. (no more flat colours!)

Just as a sample, below find Volkmar Esteemed Warrior Priest and Arch Lector of the church of Sigmar, who will smithe the evil to pieces! (once he gets finished)

It has become a habit of me, to not post any updates for several months i fear.

There have been a few things that have kept me away from blogging and writing in general, and i really have to point a blaming finger to my computer addiction, be it games, or movies and series.  One in particular was warhammer online, a damn fun game, but i tend to notice that the draw and the hype might have been too much for the game?  I’m not feeling the need to log in and play like i did the first few weeks, so let’s just say that i’ve calmed down and now it’s sinking in i can spend my time on other things.  which brings me to the next point!

 I’d already been looking for a few weeks now on how best to build a warhammer table to play battles, and let’s face it a table like this can be made as easy or complicated as you want (and as expensive or cheap as you want)

The big thing was for me to find a suitable ground cover for the wood i had cut to measure in the local “DIY” shop.  Several trips on websites later, and an i ntervention from a fellow warhammer player helped me find what i needed.

 The Battlemat’s from GamesWorkshop, at 25 euro the piece, are seemingly of a suprising good quality, cutting the chase and ordering two of them, T. dropped them off after his work the other day and i got to bussiness.  The result is starting to show now, i had help from LF (another hobiest) to position and glue the mats in place, one can of “spray glue” equals it seems, one mat, and not even completely.  Left over night to dry, i attached the sides earlier today and yesterday with regular contact glue.  This “should” be dry by tomorrow morning and i will get to cutting the sides hanging over the wood-panels tomorrow…Busy busy again it seems.

Pictures will be posted tomorrow below this post, and perhaps i’ll include some pictures of the scenery & regular painting i’ve been doing.

I promise to try to NOT wait this long again to make an update!

For special Occasions, special drinks are taken out of the fridge

 

Now, why would we be drinking bubbles, on a friday evening, with nothing special happening?
See that is where you are wrong, oh faithfull observer, for something special DID happen this evening.
At 20.00 we went to sign our compromis…..you heard it right, after several years of good living in the very center of town on our appartment, we have decided to strike out (not by much but…)

Over time, you’ll be able to find pictures here about the works and changes, the woe’s of moving and renovations, for now, let’s just say that our summer will be busy to ensure all goes as smooth as possible.

Well, it’s been quite a while again since I last updated this page I guess.
What all has happened since then? not overly much.
Last weekend we had the breeders come over from Babylon, who wanted to see how the little brat was doing.
I’d say, she’s still as spoiled as always, We have recieved tho, some baby pictures of Babylon, where it just show how quick they grow and how much they change from the first days to a few months old.

We’ll be putting them up online one of these days, probably later this week.
For the rest, the Project i’m working on at Volvo, is still going.
Even tho i’m getting the feeling that there is too much upstaffing for the work coming in, and the weird and unique cases still seem to find a way to the hands of the consultants… (perhaps it’s something to do, with the locals not wanting to take responsibilities…)

In between, when time allows, i’ve been following a video course from CBT nuggets, more specific for the Vista exam 620 preperation.  Those who don’t know this type of video’s, i’d highly recomend them.
They are not what you’d expect, not boring, contains usefull tidbits of knowledge to get your certification and they DO show you some features you’d otherwise not find on your own.
You might be asking, why in gods name do you want a vista certificate?  Like it or not, there are actualy companies already who are adapating early to the new windows OS, that also means that for my own company some contracts might be incoming as we have a prefered migration partnership with MS concerning these kind of projects.
So what i’m hoping for basicly, it’s to get away from Volvo without specificly asking for it, and, to replace it with a more challenging project.

Next friday i’ll be having a lunch meeting with my competence developer, where i’ll once again nag for the usual.
More training options for MS certification, both server & client systems, and also including the new technology exams.

Gamewise it’s been kind of quiet lately, I got my hands on Warhammer Mark of Chaos, which is entertaining for a RTS game, but lacks some of the turn based gaming of a real warhammer game….Sadly enough
but it’s entertaining for a few hours at least, besides that, there has been assassins creed, at first, this game does look awesome.
Graphic wise = huge boost
Gameplay = Easy to handle
Storyline = gripping.
Sadly enough, it does become a bit repetitive after playing it a longer time, it pretty much comes down to
Steal this, kill this, kill this, then steal that, run here, do that….don’t know personally if i’ll be continuing the game for much longer.
This week I’m going to force myself to occupy myself a bit more with my Warhammer.
Ana’s parents will be coming for Easter, and I got a dremmel tool to help in my scenery building which i have been neglecting a bit lately…I have an idea for my balsawood, to create a shack, to put up against the stone walling i’ve been creating.
I’ll see to post some pictures about this as well, to show how/where my armies are positioned for now!

So, after some carefull delibiration and thinking, we cut the knot and decided that after all this time Malcolm decided a new little playfriend…We had our hearths set on a little kitten that was available for us, from the maine coon breed.

She is going by the given name “Babylon” by the people who had been taking care of her for the last weeks as she was growing up.  It’s always a risk to introduce a new cat into the living environment of another one that’s been rusted into his traditions, so when we got home with the new addition to our family of furry friends, there was an expected reaction.
Hissing, growling, the typical anti-social behaviour we have come to expect (and love?) in our Malcolm.  Nothing bad in itself, as of course he is wondering what this “thing” was doing in “his” house.

Compared to Malcolm she is still small, but she has proven herself over the last 48 hours to be something of a circus artist.  Managing to jump up 3 shelves high, a feat that Malcolm is Unable to reproduce, unless we would buy him a gymnastic jumpingboard.
It was quite the tiresome Saturday, as it is advised when introducing a new furry friend to an existing territory that the first nights, you keep the beasty separate from the old animal….it didn’t quite go over this well as the little girl grew up in a house filled up with other cats, and humans, and was allowed to roam wherever she wanted.
It was several hours later, but in the morning hours, I gave up and got out of bed to open the door, after which she found apparently a comfy spot on the bed… 

More news upcoming in future coming updates!

Well, what the title says

It seems that kittens might be flying around.
Our “old grumf” malcolm, would definatly benifit from some company, not just to keep him active and fit (even if cats sleep more then 12hours a day) but perhaps also to educate him a bit and to socialize him….what would be good, a cat of the “gentle giant” race, or, beter known as Maine Coon.

For those who don’t know this specific breed of cat, it’s definatly worth it to check some online sites and pages both for info and pictures, as it’s listed as one of the biggest domesticated felines in the world, leaving only one other breed in front of it.
The gentle Giant points to their typical character of being ultra social, playable and friendly cats, who can grow to quite big proportions.

Just have a look around on internet, you’ll find plenty of beautifull examples there!

Time goes by, fast faster faster!
It’s been ages since I last updated this site but so much has been going on lately that it’s time to update?

First off, Carnival came, and went, and in general i would say i behaved, Ana didn’t try to kill me (or i don’t remember??)
Which, brings me to another interesting point.  A. has a certain habbit of making bets she’s end up to lose, and makes silly promises on them.
One of them being is….”I’ll go to carnival 3 days partying if i have a CDI as a TM”

*coughs* that is so going to hurt next year, for someone who’s not socially inclined, dislikes the dialect and carnival in general….But i’m NOT gonna let this slip
It’s not the first bet she loses like that and i’m not inclined to let those slip either.

If i’m not mistaken the main blog is no longer password protected, the reason for it was to ensure integrity and workethics but the situation now has changed such that it’s no more an issue.

For myself, end of the month the project at V.IT will be ending, my appreasal meeting for this project is comimng up soon but it’s not that i’m expecting any bad reviewing here.
for the rest, I have barely painted this last….Month? i have sworn to start painting and studying for my exam again, and the culpit for this is HGL…I don’ tknow, it’s not such a great game is it? it’s fun to frag a few minutes, but usually minutes turn into hours.
As a result both my evoker & marksman have gone to lvl 26, my blademaster is at lvl 17 and the marksmen is about to enter NM mode…DiablO2 style yeah baby!

On a more serious note, today after work, time to rush and shop as our cupboards are nearing depletion (sir, sir, out of resources, unable to build new structure)
Enough blabbering for now, i think a OD Clients case finally reached us…After passing the 3 other departments before! finally! work!!

Normally, i can take a whole lot of s*** when it comes down to B movies…But this is one, i have not even managed to view completely.
I did persist, to somewhere around 1 hr and 10 minutes or close to that and then i had to shut it down…i couldn’t stand it anymore.

If you are looking to totally numb your brain, destroy your braincells by stupidity, and badly crafted theatre…this is the movie you need.
Acting is a disaster, the special effects are none existing or at least, things i could reproduce myself with the help of a paintbrush and some fingerpaints.

What can i say, often i don’t even remotely believe the imdb references, but this is one of those times i regretted not to…
Let’s just say that this movie deserves the Capital in B movie, i would even go as far as saying the full thing is a B…Bombastic disaster!

Well, another long break between postings, it seems i’m making a habbit of this?
What has been going on, quite alot actually.  During christmasbreak, i took a part of my new dwarf army to the parents in law to start painting up, I wanted to take advantage of the “slow” moment to finish some things that else would take up way too much time.

Sadly enough that also means that i skipped out totally on studying for my MSCE exam, something i thought to be doing shortly after newyear, but, with the project i’m on at the moment at Volvo that doesn’t leave alot of time.
Talking about projects, it seems that at the end of the month i will be most likely moving to another project once again.

This time back direction brussels, for a semi-packaging mission at the Fortis bank this time around…I’m not a great fan of packaging, then again my first experience was not the best possible one either..So i’m hoping that if i do end up with Fortis, things’ll run beter then what i think of packaging now.

What else?  N. Still thinks there are some smelly things going on at work…With all things regarding, i’m not sure she’s correct but that we will know this coming week, for now, all I can hope is that i’m not gonna get sick like she is at the moment, stiffness, sore muscles…mix of the flue, cold and god knows what else.

I’m hoping that shortly (max 1 month now) i’ll be able to organize a few small battles to test the new warhammer rules, i’m anxious to try out the dwarfs in combat.
It’d provide a whole new way to battle then what i’m used too with empire, where my experiences have been limited to often the same opponent.  Things should be geting beter once we get this competition on the road.

Till next time!

Just a regular paint job i’m doing for a friend who gave me his Ogre Kingdoms hunter to muck up.
Still not happy with the result, so this remains a work in progress piece untill i can fix the bracers and the detailing on the equipment.
Still, any comments or suggestions are welcome!