Waark!com – A self sufficientish blog

This is neither a self-sufficiency post or a green post.

I don’t tend to play a lot of computer games any more.  My main gaming age was between the years of 8-16.  After that I started going out, meeting girls etc though I still did a bit of gaming at university, but it was social gaming, it was the years of the LAN (local area network) and now these days with high speed broadband access we’ve moved into the WAN gaming years – that’s Xbox live and the playstation equivilant.

As an ex-computer scientist (got the degree as proof) I loathe computers.  It’s a bit like if your mother catches you smoking and makes you smoke a whole packet (I’ve never smoked, but this is a metaphor).  I like computers, so where should my education take me but into computing, or more specific computer science.  It killed my love of computer games really, but recently Modern Warefare 2 came out, and my wife now claims to be a MW2 widow.

It’s a short lived fad I know, because I’ll loose interest like I usually do in games like this, but what has really got my goat and what this post is all about is problems.  I bought a console because I didn’t want problems.  I wanted to switch on a dedicated device, it would run, open the game, let me kill a few friends and then I can switch it off and watch some TV.  Which it has done rather sucessfully for a number of weeks.

Until now.

Now when I’m playing Mw2 at my first startup the game crashes outright when searching for a random game against random people.  I then reset (this is a repeatable error) and this time round I can connect to other random people.  Except my friends I want to play.  The ones I don’t want to play still work fine…

Xbox live support have so far had me testing my network connection (yes I’ve done that), check my ports (yes I do know what a network port is, I have a computer science degree dontcha know) then it _must_ be my network connection (no, it works the same on other peoples connection).  So last but not least I’m removing my online profile and reinstating it.   The problem persists and I ran out of time.  Aparently now it’s not my problem but all my friends problems! So they’ve got to delete their profile and reinstate it if they want to play me!  So I’ve asked nicely if they’ll do that and a couple will.  Hurrah.  But I bet it doesn’t change the problem.

My next issue is to completely delete my profile and reinstating it back where I started over a month ago.  That would annoy me beyond compare and quite frankly I’d never buy another xbox product ever again, so here’s hoping they can transfer my progress if it comes to that.  I’ll update this post just in case someone else is experiencing problems.

 Yet again it seems the temperance movement are back biting at drinkers heals.  Ignore the fact we are massively over taxed on alcohol and currently we’ve got people whinging about how cheap a unit of alcohol is.

Alcohol problems are a big issue we shouldn’t ignore, but increasing prices don’t ever seem to have achieved anything apart from line the pockets of the government.

Apparently the old argument of giving children alcohol is bad.  This is not as clear cut as it sounds.  Give two situations 1.) little Johnny sitting down for a sunday lunch with a small glass of wine 2.) little Johnnys parents giving him a pack of alcopops and letting him go down the local park.

Ignoring the issue of responsible drinking, which is responsible parenting?  The root cause is not the drink, but the parenting and not the price of cheap alcohol.  Granted the issues in the south are not the same as those up north and it’ll be impossible to make one law for all, but the point is normalising kids to alcohol removes the mystery and stops them from overdoing it later in life.  It worked for my friends and I, but when the kids at university who’d never had the opportunity to have a drink at home were let off the leash, they were the first comotose on the floor and their friends (not far off it) were the ones who’d never seen a paraletic student and were the first on the phone to the ambulances that were needlessly called out.

Pricing alcohol has historically never had the required effect, it takes a social attitude change which is long term – not a quick fix to line the governments pockets.

Meanwhile my homebrew gets cheaper…

So did you free yourself from consumerism on Saturday the 28th?  A few people told me it was the 27th (a friday) which I thought was pretty pointless and I didn’t bother to check the details.

I was a naughty person, I went out on Friday and spent money in full knowledge it was ‘buy nothing day’.  What a consumerist I am.

I went to the local market, I bought duck eggs, bacon, black pudding and a burger in a bun from a local pig farmer whom has organic and free range produce from her own farm, which she sells raw or cooked on her stall for you.  Where did my money go? Into local industry and direct to the supplier.  On the way home I bought tools from a local DIY shop which stopped me throwing out a broken item and allows me to start refurbishing my kitchen which needs doing before I sell my house.

On Saturday I was even naughtier going to a local resturant, buying a curry, tipping 15% into a business that might actually be sending money out of the country.  This was mainly because my kitchen was in pieces in the aformentioned refurbishment.

I don’t think money is the root cause of all evil, it’s a necessary evil.  I can’t imagine a world without money.  What would happen if whilst doing my job (just for the love of it) I needed some food.  Without my job, the engineering work on the railways would be less efficient, I’m a very small cog in a big machine.  What do I barter with the woman for the next days breakfast or even todays lunch?  I doubt she needs my planning skills and I doubt I have anything to offer her.

Sense of community has not been destroyed by money, it’s been put on hold whilst us English build our castles and do our best ignoring our neighbours.  Just look at the ideas of fences or ownership of property/space.  Silly really whilst fellow humans starve or die of thirst.

Even so, the buy nothing day is really about concentrating on whether you actually need something.  I couldn’t have breakfast without buying the food.  I couldn’t do my DIY without the consumables I needed – I did borrow a steamer to get my wallpaper off, so all is not lost.