Despite a fairly successful preseason I'm still quite worried about my beloved Aston Villa and how they'll cope when the 05/06 season kicks off in two weeks time. The squad was too small last season, so why then, have they sold five players and bought in just four? And where's all this money that was promised? Hmm.
D.C. United on the other hand have been playing very well indeed. A 3-0 win against San Jose, and - thanks to a superb goal from Freddy Adu - a 1-0 win away against the Galaxy (making United the first team to beat Galaxy at home this season) and a 1-1 tie with the Kansas City has lifted them to 3rd in the East.
And how can I forget the NHL? The 05/06 schedules were released last week (the Caps start the season at home against Columbus), and yesterday the 2005 NHL Entry Draft was held. The Penguins won the Draft Lottery last week and (unsurprisingly) selected hockey phenom Sidney Crosby 1st overall.
As for the Caps, although I was willing their ball to come out first, they were drawn 14th in the Draft Lottery. You can't have all the luck, eh? Besides, the Caps have a power forward of their own - Alexander Ovechkin - last years 1st overall pick. This year, the Caps drafted seven - five defensemen, one forward and a goalie.
The weather here has been pretty awful of late, but I don't think anyone expected that tornado this afternoon! Thankfully, it was nowhere near as powerful as the ones in the U.S., but it still did a fair amount of damage. Sadly, although it passed close, it didn't do any real damage to a certain hated football teams ground.
After replacing the fan on my Zalman CPU cooler, only to find it made no difference whatsoever (what a waste of time that was), I finally isolated the cause of the buzzing sound my PC has been making today - it's the NB1 chipset fan on my IC7-G motherboard! I've contacted Abit to see if I can obtain a replacement one.
I went to see House of Wax at the cinema ages and ages ago (but forgot to mention it here) and it was better than I expected. More recently (Friday night to be precise) I went to see Dark Water and really, really enjoyed it. It wasn't scary, but it was very chilling indeed and it had a super (if a little upsetting) ending.
I finally managed to get my hands on the paperback edition of Harlan Coben's 6th Myron Bolitar novel, The Final Detail, last week - and what a corker it was. I gobbled it all up within a week - can you say 'unputdownable'? I'm now reading Tom Clancy's first (and highly acclaimed) novel The Hunt For Red October.
They tried it again but this time failed. Bastards.
The latest versions of the best web browser on the web, Mozilla Firefox, and the best e-mail client on the web, Mozilla Thunderbird, have recently been released. They contain various security updates and are essential upgrades for all 1.0.x users. If you've not given either a try yet, I highly recommend you do!
Woohoo! The NHL and NHL Players' Association have finally reached an agreement (pending ratification) on a new six-year collective bargaining agreement that - if approved by the NHL board of governors and the rank and file membership of the NHLPA - will officially end the stalemate on Thursday July 21st. Game on!
Remember the eight e-mails I received last week who's attachments I suspected contained some kind of new virus or worm? Well, it turns out they were all harmless! They were, however, caused by a worm - the W32.Mytob.DF@MM worm to be exact. The attachments just weren't infected this time.
I don't believe it! I just don't believe it! We Belong Together by Mariah Carey only made it to No. 2 on the UK Top 40 Singles Chart. That's the closest Mariah has come to a UK No. 1 for ages! I'm absolutely gutted. It's the best track on The Emancipation of Mimi by far. The rest of the album is rather good, too, though!
The photos I took whilst in Inverness in June are now online. I've had to brighten each one of them up, though, as they came out a little dark! I don't think they're particularly interesting, but due to my working nights (and sleeping most of the day) and the weather being poor, I just took snaps of what I could when I could. Enjoy!
I've been a little lax with my D.C. United updates over the past two months, but I'm not going to list all their results since the last time I mentioned them here, as a miserable record of 2-4-2 in their last eight games (which includes yesterdays 1-0 defeat by Kansas) says it all really! United are currently 4th in the East.
If the events of Thursday morning in London were a little too close to home, the events in Birmingham on Saturday night are practically on my doorstep! Thankfully, although there was a "fairly specific and credible" threat, nothing has come of it. The press release on the West Midlands Police website has more info.
The NHL should end fairly soon and I can't wait! As you could probably tell by the gradual lessening of posts, I got bored of the AHL after a while, and with the Pirates being too inconsistent (and eventually failing to make the playoffs) I lost track of it. And speaking of the playoffs, the Philadelphia Phantoms won those.
Besides, the Pirates aren't even the Caps' official AHL affiliate anymore - that changed a while back towards the end of April. The Caps' new AHL affiliates are the Hershey Bears, who are based in Pittsburgh (which is a lot closer to D.C. than Portland ever was). The Pirates are now affiliated with the Mighty Ducks.
It's my birthday! I'm 24 today. Thank you to everyone who sent me presents and cards and best wishes via e-mail, SMS etc. I've had today and the rest of the week off work to celebrate and chill out. Today is also the birthday of President George W. Bush. Oh, and earlier, London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics!
I suspect that the attachments in the eight e-mails that arrived in my inbox today contain a virus. They certainly look untrustworthy don't they? I can't say for certain, though, as Norton didn't detected anything when it scanned them. I've sent one of the attachments off to Symantec for them to take a look at.
Happy 4th July to any American visitors reading this!
Can you believe it's July already? Over half the year gone! It's my 24th birthday on Wednesday, so although I've left mentioning this until today, you still have all day today and all day tomorrow to get me a card and present! If you're stuck for ideas you can always take a look at my Amazon Wish List for inspiration...
At long last it looks like the NHL lockout is finally coming to an end. About time, too. The most annoying thing about this whole debacle (for me anyway) is that the deal the players are going to get now is a lot worse that the one they were offered a while back to end this sorry mess. What a total waste of time, eh?
More updates (and, hopefully, my Inverness photos) later.
