Ow, I think my muscles hurt - Saturday

Nothing blog worthy today, however, yesterday.... I got up at a good time, did some revision for my exam and went to the Exam. In a two minute period between me looking at my watch outside the exam hall and going in where I noticed my watch had died. I'm assuming it's a flat battery so I'll be finding a watch shop and weighing up the price offered. The exam was not nice, I don't like the subject but I think I passed, I certainly prayed about it so I don't think it'll be too bad. I didn't do much for the rest of the evening. Until that is, we had the lads night. About twelve of us went to Immanual baptist church where some people played PS2 games, I showed people a load of trailers on my computer and then we played some games. Hockey was good fun and after finding out that people really were not too fussed about rules I decided that rather than using my feet to stop me, I could use opposing team members. The puck is on the floor, run for it, shave valuable seconds off your time by not slowing down, there's a person there, they'll slow you down fine. As a result my back currently aches a lot as do my legs. We played hide and seek in the dark, Steve only found me by cheating and using a torch. The second time I hid with Steve but they knew someone would hide where we were so it failed. We ended by watching Gladiator quite loudly and then going home. I got home around 3am. I was very awake. So I watched Kingdom of Heaven which I'd borrowed from Lawrence. Subsequently I am a little tired.

Warble Warble Squark Squark - Thursday

Very boring day with nothing blogworthy happening. Facebook is finally working for me (it was refusing my email address for a while) and I'm happy to say it's somewhat better than myspace, the whole thing is laid out better and is more responsive.

Somewhat better - Wednesday

I got up, got to my exam quite on time and it went quite well. The stuff I revised a lot didn't come up and the stuff I revised less did come up, however, I answered all the questions and should have passed the unit (hopefully with a good mark). I walked home, played a little Wacraft 3 and my Parents arrived. Gethin was going for an open day at Portsmouth and so I was going to accompany him while my parents did something else. They brought Toffee Squares, infact, there are still a lot of Toffee Squares left and I'm not sure if I should find some people to share them with or eat them all myself. Currently the latter option is looking (and so far, tasting) the best. Anyway, the open day. It started with sitting around in a room full of people on lots of different tables. We sat next to a Gentleman I never got the name of and a Lady who's name tag said Abigail so I'm assuming that's her name. They had gotten there for 9 in the morning and already had their interview. They were really unsure about a load of things to do with Portsmouth and when they found out that I was a student there, they asked me a load of questions and seemed really happy to have met me. Normally on Open Days I'm one of the people in dark lilac t-shirts, as I was playing the role of guest it made me notice certain little things that my department might not be doing as well. First was a talk about the department and housing and finance. The talk on the department would have probably been semi-interesting if I were studying the course. The talks from finance and housing were not too bad but contained a lot of things prospective students don't care about (but parents do). Then there was a tour of the halls where we visited Harry Law and it conformed to every single tale of how horrible it was (okay, not all, just most, we never met the rugby team). We then sat down some more. We then had a coach tour which really told me very little about what I'd want to know if I were coming here. After Gethin went for an interview (and came back) my parents picked us up, dropped me home with some food and then left. I note that on the open day, the only student I saw was myself. I played a lot of Warcraft 3 with Coel and then went to bed. Today, I wore a smart shirt. My Dad said it might help me get freebies. It turns out that the "free food" budget for this department is somewhat less than that of the ECE one. What does this tell you about the ECE department?

Bleugh - Tuesday

I spent the day doing far less revision than I should have or even wanted to. I don't feel any better and for some reason feel worse. For the most part you'd not notice it in me, I just feel down and as if recovering from hearing someone close to me died (which to my knowledge nobody close to me died recently). I'm annoyed because there's no logical reason for this. Emma suggested I was homesick, I don't think this is the case but I'll see my parents tomorrow so you never know.

Better but not cured - Monday

I got up late as is always the case if I don't have a good reason to get up early. I played some Warcraft 3, WoAed and looked into Software Systems. Not only did Freya come to CU, she brought her housemate. I didn't go to the pub and instead went home. I just didn't feel like socialising tonight and I'm not sure why. I don't feel like I did yesterday, well, at least not as bad but it's still the same vague feeling.

Why so glum chum? - Sunday

I got up and went to call on Freya to see if she was going to come to Church, she had gone to work so I was only walking Siän today. This week we had a guest speaker and I'd asked to not be helping with Discoverers. Tim was our guest speaker and is from the Lawyers Christian Fellowship (yes, Christian Lawyers Fellowship makes more sense to me too). This morning he spoke from John 1 and about how a world in Darkness does not want to see the light, for they know what it brings. He used the example of some prisoners awaiting a death sentence, they didn't want to see the lantern as they knew it'd be held by their executioner. After the service the lot of us went to the Thatched House and had to wait some time for our meal but it wasn't too bad a wait. I was originally going to go for the "old reliable" that is the Half Roast chicken but due to not finding anybody else going for a similarly priced meal I upgraded to a Sunday Roast Dinner and partnered with Becca. It still involved a Half Roast Chicken but also included a load of other stuff. I even ate a lot of the vegetables. We had quite a lot of fun during our meal. Fi (Steve's Girlfriend) was down for the weekend and was sitting next to me, I'm probably not the best influence on her seeing as with my suggestion she threw a pea down Sarah's top and managed to embarrass herself another way (this was not my fault and not too related to me). After the meal I went over to Steve's house then collected Becca (but not Siän, she had work to do) and went to Church where Tim spoke on some of John 2, specifically the part where Jesus sorts out the people in the temple. Now, the best part of the message for me was not in itself the message. It was true and all but I learnt something new that was not the message but caused by it. I talked to Pauline Mitchell after the service about how Jesus says to turn the other cheek yet at the same time Jesus clearly acted in a physical way to the people who were being very unholy. He stuck up for his belief. My question was "If I am walking someone home and they're attacked, what do I do? Jesus says to turn the other cheek and yet I'm also told that violence is not the answer". It turns out that the turning of the other cheek is not actually to sit there and let someone get beaten up. It refers to insults and challenges, namely you would turn the other cheek and ignore the challenge/insult, however, it does not say to not defend people that need it. Of course, crippling someone is probably not needed so you have to apply some common sense and love your neighbor. I walked Becca home, walked back home myself and failed to get a game of Warcraft 3 running because of a problem with our Router and my computer (very irritating). I watched some Family Guy and for some reason, don't feel very happy. My day was great, one of the best Sunday's I've had in a while. Heck, recently I've been feeling slightly dead when it comes to my faith, I know it's real but I don't feel it. This is irritating. Today has helped a lot with it but for some reason I feel almost depressed and I can't figure out why. I currently hope it's because I might not have had enough sleep and that the problem will solve itself.

A Late and an Early night - Saturday

Friday involved a very nice lie in, then I got up, did some revision for an exam. The exam itself was very boring and everybody (I kid you not, everybody had their pen and paper on the desk) was done in ten minutes. So, I prayed for some of it and dozed for the rest. I walked home and relaxed. I played some Warcraft 3 and then went to a very late night Prayer Meeting that lasted until 0040 on Saturday, I was very tired when I got home. So, I got up very late today and spent the second half of the day playing Warcraft 3 with Peter. Peter has played a few games offline with myself and Gareth and today we rigged the router to allow me to host games, that meant we could play as we wished online. We played a map called DOTA. Each player has a hero and fights on the side of one of two teams. Each of the main teams creates units that they throw at the other. To win the game you have to destroy a specific structure of the enemy, there are many ways to get into a position where you are strong enough to do this. The first is to guard your troops and use them to support your assault on the base, the other is to kill their player characters so many times that you're just too powerful for them to stop. Usually it's a mix of both, though, I have several times seen people kill the other heroes so many times they can waltz all over the place. Today I saw the opposite. Myself and Pete died quite a few times, infact, it's a huge number of times and killed them only once. We still won. Yes, we worked as a team and stayed positive, they neglected to support their troops at key stages of the game and because of that and some clever tactics we won. Note, Pete got our kill, I never managed to do more than scratch one of their heroes. This pattern repeated itself throughout the day, most of the time with better hero-kill ratios for us. We lost one game, and that was against Coel and Zak. Here is the picture at the end of the game showing our scores at various things, myself and pete are on the left. If you're interested, note the difference in Creep Kills (they are the main source of gold normally) and also Total Kills (refers only to Heroes) where they outclass us quite well. Each Hero kill got them the equivalent of about 8 Creep kills and forced us to wait until we were resurrected, it also lost us gold. Here is the replay file, it was played on DOTA 6.40 which is available here.