Life Laundry 2008
Seeing as I’m currently off work for the next few days, I have finally decided to tidy the absolute cess-pit which had became known as the room I occasionally sleep in, and type this blog from.
Since I redecorated it in 2003, I’ve never really tidied it. Although yes, I’ve been around and picked up the odd thing now and then, I’d never really gave it a proper going over. Yesterday, I decided that it was about to be completely cleaned.
First, I decided that it was time to get rid of all of the old computer junk that has been lying around for the past few years, namely a monitor and two computers. One of which was George, my first computer over 1Ghz. Obviously, it’s not much use now, and seeing as I’d gutted it for parts years ago, it was even less useful.
The monitor was a stupidly large (and faulty) 17″ monitor, which for whatever reason had began to turn pink (the screen colour that is, now the actual monitor). This, for the first time in about 8 years, leaves me with only one computer in my room.
However, moving the computer did leave me with an unexpected surprise… inside of George, still sealed in its anti-static bag, was the 160Gb SATA drive I’d bought, and then lost, back in 2006. Wahey!
After I’d got sick of tidying for the day, I thought I’d hook it up. I hope you don’t mind a bit of computer geekery at this point. (Well, Chad, the only person who ever whinged about my computer talk is away now for 6 months, so I assume it’s OK)
I hooked it up to Windowcam3, which is currently running Windows 2000. Aaaaand, it didn’t work. At all. I assumed that Win2000 wasn’t going to play ball with SATA, so I removed it. It was a bit of a tight fit in there, to be honest, as the case wasn’t designed for 3 hard drives, so I thought I’d try getting it working on Beastbits (my main machine). Now, this is where I get lost….
Next, comes Windows XP. Now, the plan was to replace the 120Gb IDE drive with this 160Gb SATA drive, by installing Windows XP on it from scratch. From past experience, you CANNOT install Windows XP onto a SATA drive unless you have the appropriate driver on a floppy disk.
Unfortunately, I don’t. In fact, I don’t even have a floppy drive. And, to make matters worse, my DVD drive doesn’t read CD disks.
The “solution” to both problems was (supposedly) to include the SATA drivers (Silicon Image 3112A) onto the disk, and then write it to a DVDRW so my drive could understand it. Don’t ask me how to do any of this, as I won’t tell you, but needless to say, it didn’t work. The disk booted, and STILL failed to find a hard drive. Back to square one, but that is, quite honestly, a project for another day.
I went to bed, with my room half tidied. In fact, not tidied at all. I was more concerned about getting that bloody hard drive in use.
This morning, I woke up and looked at the clock. 9AM. The sun was blazing in the sky, drying up the pavements. Of course, it was 9AM by the only clock in the house which hadn’t been put into British Summertime. It was really 10AM. Bugger.
I got dressed, and before I was even out of my bedroom, I was tidying. This was clearly going to be an all-day job.
It was. Believe me, it was.
When the day started, you couldn’t see the carpet. When it ended, I had even hoovered. In fact, for the first time in years, I can wheel my chair out into the middle of the floor and spin on it, without crushing anything. It’s a miracle.
I also found approximately 50 (no joke) coat hangers in this room.
It’s not quite finished, as there’s still the area behind the desk to do, but at least I can get to the door without feeling like I’m on the krypton factor. Still, at least I got a little bit of a bonus…
Approximately £6 in loose change picked up off the floor! Yay! Go me and my untidy ways! Ahem.
Talking about untidy, it looks as if the council (or someone) is beginning to spruce up The Marina again, or rather, Jacksons Landing.

Andy The Iridium Fan was down there yesterday, and was talking to the security guard. And, I quote from the comment he left…
“I went to ‘JL’ on Saturday 29th March 2008 only to find the car park all fenced off with a sign that read ‘DEMOLITION’-oh uh!, so I spoke to Dave the security man and asked him what was going on he said “a private firm is going to gut the building and clean it up but not not demolish it”
Interesting. Only time will tell to see what “tidy up” means. I’m sure Andy will keep me informed, but unfortunately I guess it means it’ll be the end of his explorations around there, mainly because there’ll be nothing left to see. Still, never mind, there’s always the photos to remember the place by.
EDIT: Before anyone asks for full panoramic shots of my tidying efforts, I won’t post any until I’m entirely satisfied with the cleanliness of this room, which may never happen, but meh!




