Mostly Sunday

It has, for some time, been a matter of some contention (though not acrimonious) between the Fox and I that if I want to play EverQuest I need to travel back to Cureville to do it. Wouldn't it be nice, we thought, if I could play EQ in HA thus being within pester range ... hmm, suddenly this isn't sounding such a good idea. Anyway, I set about installing EQ on the Fox's PC and, for a time, it worked ... albeit slowly. However, no sooner do you turn your back but the Fox decides he needs to copy the files to CD because he needs the space and besides it was installed on the C: drive rather than the D: drive and ... well to be honest my mind kind of went blank at this point - there's only so much non-Star Trek related techno-babble I can cope with before going comatose. Suffice it to say that when I came to try putting EQ back on the machine, it was having none of it ... things were looking bleak. The the Fox mentioned that he had a partially built PC that only needed a hard drive. So on Friday I got a hard drive and a halfway decent graphics card (hooray for being paid again) and set off for HA with high hopes. The PC was built succesfully on Saturday and then we had a go at networking it, actually we spent the better part of Saturday trying to network it, all to no avail. Sunday dawns, and while the Fox is busy with his cables and trying to get the PCs to talk to each other, I give Fred (s'Kalion as was) a call, for he is wise in these matters. Fred tells me we should stop dicking about with cables and go get some network cards, and maybe a router and eventually I manage to convince the Fox that Fred may have a point ... so off we go to PC World to buy the necessary. Sure enough, we manage to get the PCs to talk to each other and (most importantly) the modem in fairly short order and then I get started on loading EQ. I shan't go over the whole, sorry process but suffice it to say that several installs later EQ still wasn't working (possibly because of the - now removed - Norton software, possibly because of the partitioning the Fox said was a 'good thing', possibly because I'd offended the gods somehow) and by 11pm I'd had enough and headed back to Cureville, leaving the relevant disks with the Fox to see if he has more luck than I. Only time will tell.

On a brighter note this afternoon, while I was buying my lunchtime soup from the Chinese restaurant across the road from my office, I was paid a very surprising compliment. One of the two gentlemen who works behind the counter at the restaurant said to me "I am always very happy when I see you. I think you are a noble man". As compliments go I think that was probably the finest I've ever received. I don't think for one moment that I am actually a noble man (I'm clearly not a nobleman - and I'm not sure I'd want to be one), but it strikes me as an extremely worthwhile quality to strive for.