Return of the Sleepy One !

Yep. Been quiet for a bit ... I could have posted but I think my holiday from work broke up my blogging habit. Mind you, that breaking of the blogging habit could have been due to me visiting the parents for the weekend.

Had some things to think about last weekend. Among other things, I think I will have seen Goldie for the last time. He's been having more and more of a struggle to get around and even more of a struggle to summon up a tail wag. He still looked happy to see me when I opened the front door (at least when he managed to come say hello) but I could see the pain behind his eyes. I think mum and dad have already made the decision to let the poor old dog go gently. Ben will be devastated and I'm a bit choked up at the moment typing this.

Goldie's been a good friend over the 15 or so years we've had him. Unusually intelligent and extremely gentle, it's been a shame to see him struggle more and more with the problems with his back legs. Especially as he was a true athlete of a pooch in his youth. Everyone gets older over the years and it's very easy to forget that. It's a shame that our pets age so much quicker than we do. It's a bigger shame that the thing that Goldie enjoyed (his athletic nature) is the thing that he's struggling with.

Also in the news ! I've been spending money :-). I'm writing this post on the pooter known as Guilmon, which is getting very near to its retirement. I ordered some new bits on Monday and eventually got them through today. (Next day delivery ? Don't trust Overclockers UK to do that ...) Trouble is, Godzilla (new PC name) had a fair few teething troubles. I took my time building it and finished at about 5.30 today. I didn't have much time to fiddle as I needed to be in World of Warcraft for a raid starting at 7pm, that gave me about an hour of tinker time.

I hooked up the power, the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and hit the on switch. Ok - the fans are going around but the hamster ain't doing much more. Oh dear. Nothing from the screen, which should have been giving me those early pictures you'll get from any PC. Tried an old graphics card, tried disconnecting various peripherals, still no joy. So I went into the WoW raid rather distracted and not really concentrating. (Still think I did better than most in there though)

I think the time away from Godzilla did me good. The first thing I tried when having the second look proved to do the trick. The problem is in the memory, one of the matched pair of Ram sticks is bust, so Godzilla is currently only working with 1Gigabyte. It's got a heartbeat now and is currently formatting its brand spanking new hard disc. I've since gone through the forum procedure with Crucial and they've answered my "I gotta problem" post. Impressive, considering the very late time at which I posted it. I'll be testing the duff one in this machine (Guilmon) tomorrow morning before sending it back. Hopefully it will knock out this one too, which will prove the duff Ram stick theory.

Long post - kinda making up for missing so many days ! If you've got this far, please spare a thought for Goldie, a rare intelligent pooch with not just a golden coat but a heart of gold as well.