The Book of Ashes

Sarah's party, breaking Bonnies computer. 1:13AM

On other the other side, Saturday was a bit of a quiet day. I don't think much was achieved but Bonnie and I managed to make it to Sarah's fairwell. I was a little dulled. Those there were a little quiter than usual for some reason. Still it was a good party. It was held upstairs at the Opera bar (Tom's favourite) which has an excellent layout and she put on some excellent food for us also. Tom and Sarah are both off very soon to Chile so its going to be quiet round here for a while.

Description of Stupidity

Being just a little hung over on Saturday I had undertaken to fix Bonnies monitor driver issue, not the best of ideas. Everything worked ok but moving windows around was very jerky. After playing round for a while I realised that it was using the default monitor (and graphics card) drivers and thought that getting rid of these and letting Windows auto detect and install the proper ones would fix things. In my not-entirely-awake state I managed to disable the default monitor driver. Now when windows started up it flicked to a blank screen where windows had started up fine but you couldn't see a damned thing. Thinking things were probably better this way I left it till the next day. Sunday didn't go much better. I took my graphics card from home round to Bonnies place and booted her computer up with that. Windows auto detected it and started up with a new driver. Sweet everything was working fine now except my card was in there and not Bonnie's. (I considered just leaving it at this and not telling Bonnie that my card was a GeForce2 and hers a GeForce4, no difference right?). So switching the cards back and rebooting once again the stupid thing couldn't pick up her card so it used the default one which was still disabled. I could fix this if only I could see the screen. So after many card swappings and rebootings and becoming thoughouly disheartened I had to give it up for the day once more as I was heading off to Palmy that night. I had tried changing (using my card) to the default monitor and enabling it (which it already was), no luck. Installing her GeForce4 drivers from CD and rebooting with her card, no luck. Nothing worked. So I drove away as far as I could, to Palmy, to avoid the shame, always consious of the dreaded cops...

Next day spent in drudgery working in Palmerston North. Then drove home.

Monday night after arriving home, watering the plants and heading round to Bonnie's for dessert, I gave it another go. Oh yeah, I forget, Sunday night I had tried to reinstall Windows over the current Windows (XP Pro) in the hope it would reset the default driver. This had ended badly as it reset itself during the install (never good). Monday night I spent a few hours trying to continue the intall. Finially nectar, the sweet stuff the Gods made and gave out free in small doses in flowers and the like. I had had to work hard for it but now windows was back up, running under Bonnie's graphics card and also detecting the correct driver. Graphcis were now sweet and all other drivers were also working. TGFT, turn off computer, step away, don't ever fiddle again, its not worth it ;)

So today I paid my $230 speeding ticket, my first ever. Suck to be my wallet (or its owner). Could have brought me a lot of pebbles with that kind of money. Also got the bill for the windscreen, $290 and the bill for my 10 minute surgery, $280. Owch. Very suck to be my wallet. Luckily money grows on trees, you just have to be tall enough to pick it. Apparently tall people are perceived as more successful (true) and probably get paid more. My brother probably earns proportionally more than me how much taller than me he is

The biggest 100 club yet! 12:53PM

So Friday worked out pretty well in the end. We had 25 people participating and more there to cheer on the masses and pass round the tea towels as the beer flowed.

Enter the 100 club

The venue was 107 Dixon street. Not a huge place but quite good for the situation required. We gave the bar staff a stamp and they stamped peoples hands for $20 a pop. $20 brought you a chance to enter the 100 club, a chance at fame and glory, a chance that most people would achieve. Damian came prepared with 60 odd shot glasses. I had brought the stamp, a whistle (to mark each minute) a couple of yellow buckets (puke on table preventatives, altho in the end this didn't work) and a number of tea towels. To start with I was quite nervous about it all but it all worked out OK.

Jamie (from work) was our designated sober camera-man as mine was still bust. His girlfriend was roped into being the official time-keeper and whistle blower. We knew the girls behind the bar so they just kept topping up pitchers of beer. These were relayed to the tables where the sober supporters filled glasses (and in one case a tea-pot) and the drunk punters filled thier shots from the glasses. It worked out quite well. As the pitchers became empty I helped relay them to the bar, returning with full ones some time soon after.

All up it was a great atmosphere. 25 eager people waiting for their chance to enter this elite club. Tom hadn't let us down either. He came dressed in a gorilla suit with Brook and Jackie wearing huge black afros. I was scarring Manson by telling him how, if you were going to spew, it usually came on quite fast and you shouldn't rely on your ability to make it to the bathroom, rather be safe and get a bucket close by, just in case. He was sweet in the end but I should have been telling someone else who made 99 before spewing...

The woman here were well represented. We had a good turn out, not just of those participating but also those setting records. Amoung them was Summer who made 110 shots (good one) without spewing or going toilet. Most excellent effort there Summer. Then there was Jackie who gets the most dedicated award for spewing on 99 (on the table no less) but catching up afterwards to make the 100. Or theres Dodgy Steve who convinenced me to do 110 then was later seen doing tequila shots in some bar down town (who was sober enough to remember where).

So the 100 shots was achieved. Only a few piked out or spewed on the way. It was our biggest gathering yet and a full write up will be coming soon with photos.