Well, it's been a slow couple of months lately. With the car in Spain for two and a half months (lent it to my father so he wouldn't have to take the company car abroad) there was little point in continuing on the hardware side of the deal, and without a decent Linux desktop to act as a development machine there was little chance of getting anything done on the software side either. Oh, don't get me wrong; my main desktop is Linux alright, but coding a GUI application on a 1024x768 laptop just doesn't feel comfortable. Call me spoiled.
I did however try to collect the rest of the hardware needed for this project. But things didn't turn out all that well. Bought a Lilliput 7" screen off eBay, some guy in the UK had one for sale in good condition. Fucker set me up though, the thing never arrived. Now I'm out of €212 and still without a screen. The project starts off as some sort of expensive joke already. Maybe eBay will refund at least part of the cash, but I'd still be losing around €60. Still, better than losing all of the money, so let's hope eBay comes through.
I also lost the hard drive. Nope, I didn't misplace it or anything, I lent it to a colleague at work whose laptop hard drive recently died. I really should stop being the nice guy and just tell people to fuck off. I'm not doubting I'll get the hard disk back, trust me on this one. If I have to go down to his house and hunt that kid down, I will. No, it's just the way he goes about it.
He first borrows my hard drive for a couple of days, couple at weeks most. He'll be leaving the company at the end of the week, but that's OK because he has my contact info. I got nothing on him though. But hey, I worked with this guy for like a year or so. Not best pals or blood brothers or anything, we didn't even exactly work "together" but rather had some occasional contact when something I was working on had impact on the stuff he was doing. But hey, after knowing them for a year you think you have a reason to start trusting people, right? Right???
Right...
So anyway, time passes, and I hear nothing. Some more time passes, I start to get a little concerned, but still no word from him. Another colleague who lent him some DVDs and is also waiting for his gear back passes me along his phone number. So after a couple more days pass I decided to send him a text message asking me what's up with my drive. No reply. I wait it out, see if he finally decides to contact me on his own accord, nothing. I then ring him up, of course he doesn't pick up the phone. I leave a message on his voice mail, getting a little annoyed now... Well, it's been a couple of weeks, and again no reply.
Now I wonder what exactly must that kid be thinking... If I don't call back, he might forget he lent me a 100GB laptop hard drive? Really, you think I'd forget I lent you something that would cost me around €185 to replace? You really think? Heck, you do, don't you? Well, think again! Or maybe he figures if he never picks up the phone I might believe to have gotten the wrong number, and just give up. Sure I will. It's not like I got more than two brain cells. Recognizing the voice on your voice mail becomes an insurmountable task requiring vast amounts of mental power, certainly more than I possess... If only I'd have finished all my veggies back when I was in kindergarten...
Seriously though, why some people feel the need to screw their ex workmates over over such a small trinket is beyond me. Pile this on top of all the other shit I've been getting this last year, and you realize I'm about inches away from snapping. Fortunately for the world, I have until now always remained inches away from snapping. So yeah, chances of me closing that gap this time are pretty slim considering the statistical evidence gathered up till now. I'd like to entertain the thought I'm a lot less stable and hence more dangerous than I really am though, so just allow me to fantasize a little... ;)
With the days till I got the car back diminishing however, I started to get this nagging feeling I should really start doing something on the project again. Even if it's just an update on the site to let my visitors (yes, all three of you) know nothing happened. It might, you know, not be clear from the lack of updates alone or something... Bugger if I know. But I just kept putting it off. I always made a start and even made it to the "create new content" page a couple of times, but something always came up and I put it off for another day or two.
So anyway, yesterday the old man comes back from Spain with my car, right? One of the first things he asks me: "so how's that thing you're making for the car coming along?"... Yeah, when even the old man who never showed any interest starts to ask... You know you been sitting on your ass for too long.
This could not be allowed!!! Something had to be done! Something heroic, nay epic even! So yeah, I wrote another lame update... I'm getting pretty good at the "nothing happened", "some more nothing happened" and even "surprisingly, much contrary to everyone's expectations, a big deal of nothing happened" posts, maybe I should rent out my talents to other websites and make a living off of this...
