APRIL 23
PLANET MUT'S home hasn't quite kicked the bucket yet but that didn't stop me from getting a new PC just in case it does. Thanks to Flynn's sage advice and needless abuse I'm now the proud owner of an Intel Core 2 Quad-Core. I don't really know what that is but I do know I can play Half-Life 2: Episode 2 with the graphics all the way up, so I'm happy.
I'm also getting used to to Vista, the Home Premium Edition to be precise. I'd heard that it was annoying, bloated and overdone but to be honest I was pleasantly surprised. I certainly didn't have the problems my mate Jon did when he bought a Vista laptop.
Vista installed easily enough (although I'm thoroughly pissed off that I got one of those bloody "restore CDs" instead of the full Vista CD - which I'm entitled to given I paid the Microsoft Tax) and I was away! Yes, I was free to spend hours copying thousands of mp3s and photos, free to spend ages reinstalling all the software, free to pray that Ev's documents, contacts and music files made it over and, most of all, free to lose my rag when the sodding thing asked me "Do you really want to do that?" for the 200th time.
Ah, the beloved User Account Control warnings that I've read so much about. If you're not on Vista yet let me tell you that the UAC warnings are a pain in the arse on a par with driving a bulldozer up your own rectum. After installing Firefox, AVG, and a firewall I headed to Google to find out how to turn the UAC warnings off. It's pretty easy to stop them popping up but bloody Vista then nags you about the fact they're off.
The only major downside to the changeover was that iTunes imported everything in my music library twice, meaning I'll have to go through it and delete the doubles. But as that would waste valuable Half-Life time it might be a while until I get around to it.
APRIL 19
ON THURSDAY morning I opened Outlook to find this in my inbox:
Thought id let you know ive found a MySpace page hotlinking to about 15-20 of your pictures. It took the page 2 minutes to load and my bandwidth monitor reports it was 8MB in size!!!
myspace.com/dirtbikingisforeva
I would love to see the finished design placed on the "MySpace sucks" section, his whole page will be covered in turds :P
Bleary-eyed (after all it was 11.30am) I followed the link and was confronted with this:
"Blimey," I thought, which was pretty much an understatement given I was dealing with a case that had transcended mere hotlinking and was currently applying to become one of stalking. Scrolling further down the page revealed whoever was doing this had linked to all my hi-res wallpapers:
Then I noticed this:
In case you can't make it out (I took the shot after blocking the images) it says:
About me:
WHOEVER HACKED MY ACCOUNT AND PUT PICTURES OF SHIT IN PLACE IT WASNT FUNNY!!!
Right then, the stupid WANKER who hosts my pictures keeps changing them into pictures of cat shit. I am going to hot link every one of your 500KB+ pictures to this page, then laugh as YOUR bandwidth is wasted!!!
Wait... what? Now I was awake. "Hacked your account"? "Hosts" "your" pictures? What the feck are you talking about? The only photos I can replace are mine, meaning they weren't yours in the first place you ignorant twat. More to the point, who the hell is this guy? I've been through all my MySpace Sucks pages and he's not one of them. I can't understand why he's having a pop at me when I've never swapped his pics. So on the offchance this utter plank reads this (or, as is more likely, gets someone to read it to him), let me make one thing clear: Whoever replaced "your" photos with poo, it wasn't me.
Until now, that is. Luckily my host has just upgraded its control panel allowing me to not only block hotlinkers but to specify an image to use in response to an attempt. Let's all congratulate "Bigelow" on becoming the first victim.
IN OTHER news, it could be the end of Planet Mut's home for the past 3½ years. Thanks to an overheating processor my PC (pictured above in all its glory) is shutting itself down at random moments, usually when I'm trying to play Quake II. Taking the side off seems to have helped a bit but it could be a case of having to get a new one. Obviously having to go out and buy a quad-core gaming machine with a 22" plasma monitor and more memory than Mr Memory the Memory Man is the last thing I want to do so let's all hope my e-mail to Flynn is rewarded with his usual sage advice and needless abuse.
APRIL 16
THE SCENE: My parents' house. I am in the kitchen making tea; Ev, mum and dad are in the living room watching the news. The protests in Tibet come on.
DAD: "He's Welsh."
EV & MUM: "Who?"
DAD: "The Dai Lama."
After receiving a number of emails from Americans who don't get this, I think I should point out that "Dai" is the Welsh version of David. ("A number" in this case being more than one but less than three. In other words, two).
APRIL 14
FINALLY some bloody content! So there I am checking my stats as I usually do late at night, and a MySpace page is listed. "Great," I thought, "not only do I have another victim, but I can actually do a bloody update so at least it looks like I'm bothering this month".
This one is a tad ironic; someone's used the image of Steve-O's page post-Emric to comment on a post by some French tart.
It's much easier to see without all those confusing words in the way.
APRIL 11
SOME dickhead in the apartment block next to ours is throwing a party and is playing The Smiths really loud on their stereo. "That Joke Isn't Funny Any More" has just finished and the first few bars of "What Difference Does It Make" are currently wafting across the gap between buildings. While I would normally agree with such excellent musical taste, the fact that it's TWO FIFTEEN IN THE SODDING MORNING is rather pissing me off. Rant over, back to bed.
APRIL 4
I HAVE to offer both of you an apology - in looking through my photos I realise that this year I failed to get a shot of someone's arse cleavage. If you don't mind waiting for just over a year I'll try to get a photo of some on our 2009 visit.
