Nov 09 2006

Things Are Improving Again

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 3:07 pm

Got a new motherboard for Losha’s PC, installed it (whoever designed his PC case needs to be taken outside and slapped silly though), it is working fine, just finishing a few stress tests to make sure I’m not called out to fix it again :>
Losha is hopefully coming with us to the UK this Christmas, which I’m looking forward to.
Nick (my brother) and my Dad are hopefully coming to Kazakhstan with us, when we return from the UK. (Approx dates in UK 18-30 December, split 50/50 between Cheltenham and Swansea).
I’ve almost surpassed the $100 mark with my AdSense account.

[edit]
Looks like Losha won’t be coming now, never mind, maybe next time we go to the UK…

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 07 2006

Been A Bit Lax At Posting Recently

Category: Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 10:43 pm

Apologies. I’ve been a little distracted re-building a PC for a friend. I had everything just right, all working, and secure (he had stability & security issues that couldn’t be sorted out without a re-install of XP). The final update was to bring the BIOS up to date – it had had a few revisions in 14 months. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, I appear to have killed the BIOS whilst flashing it. The board is supposed to have a 2nd BIOS that gets used if the first is fried, but it hasn’t come into play, no amount of keypresses or floppy disks with binary images & flashing programs have helped. As I did the damage, I’m using up the last of my birthday money to replace the motherboard. Except, of course, that particular model isn’t stocked any more, so I’m trying to find a suitable upgrade for him.
On a more positive note, my brother and dad are hopefully coming over to visit us, around New Year time, and Losha, may be coming with us to the UK for Xmas 🙂

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Aug 28 2006

OK, Back To The Planned Blog

Category: Friends,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 1:03 am

It is Sunday, and we’ve just waved Natalya & Oleg (a different Oleg to the one previously mentioned on this site) off. They visited for a long weekend, to do some business and to say hello to some of Astana’s inhabitants. They stayed with us, and when not working, we went out for a few drinks.

We haven’t seen her for a few years, and it was good to catch up. It was also good to meet her friends. We played billiards, which I’ve not done for 5 years. If you’ve never seen it in person, imagine a snooker table with smaller pockets and the cushions have a square angle at the pocket, not bevelled.

Now imagine the balls being almost too big to fit in the pockets, and you start to see the way the game differs from pool and snooker. Luckily we played American Billiards, not the Russian version, which means you can use any of the balls still in play as a cue ball, and any ball can be pocketed, as long as it makes contact with at least one other ball. After a few vodkas, I managed to down a few of the balls.
Losha, Igor and his wife came round in the evening, which was cool, as we haven’t seen them in a few weeks. Lorsha is interested in PCs, and his English is really quite good.

Tags: , , , , , , ,