Today: I Read a Guardian Blog for the First Time

Long time no-blog!

Well after an eventful weekend in Spa Where new dislike and insults were added to the up and coming Sebastian Vettel, I was of course in a very grumpy mood!

I did infact write a 4-page blog (on Word as i was at work at the time!) Which unfortunately.... didn't get saved! So i did what any other student would do - i stropped and played playstation and went to visit my Mum.

So here is my general summary of the Spa weekend!

Red Bull had a great qualifying with Mark Webber on pole and Sebastain Vettel in 4th, with a strong showing from Lewis Hamilton and the blisteringly quick Renault of Robert Kubica between them, Jenson Buttin managed 5th, whilst the Ferrari's of Massa and Alonso could only manage 6th and 10th with season best qualifier for Barichello on his 300th GP in 8th.

The first lap was all but uneventful, Drizzle across half the track meant that the slicks sped through the dry and skidded through the drizzle! Barichello was an unfortunate victum of the Spa microclimate where he locked both wheels and skidded straight into Alonso, finishing his 300th GP before finishing the first lap. The general chaos from this bought out the safety car.

Few laps on and Vettel makes the move on the slower Button, and doesn't get it right. AT ALL. He manages to salvage his race and hobbles into the pitlane whilst Button is forced to retire, furious at the event that has just occured.

Skip to the pits and Kubica makes a mistake and is distracted whilst pulling into his pit box, totally overshooting it and taking out one of his mechanics in the process, Allowing the Terrible start Mark Webber had to be 'undone' as he took second position from Kubica.

Vettel had his drive through, puncture, and about 40 pitstops....

The race finished with the Brit Lewis Hamilton on the topstep, Mark Webber's salvaged second step was a relief after his poor start, and Kubica maintaining his 3rd place qualifier to take the third step.

Petrov and Schumacher drove crakers to make up 14 places each and kamoui Kobayashi made it into the points as well.

The next race is at Monza where RBR are said to struggle with the long straights whilst Mclaren and Force India are said to thrive. The Mercedes engine - which has more horsepower than the Renault engine- showed itself at Spa and teams with this engine are looking pretty smug!

The next big thing however is the WMSC on Wednesday this week, where the fate of the long standing Ferrari will be decided. General concensus from in the F1 camp is that they deserve a punishment, but won't get anything substantial after their $100,000 fine. The fans who feel robbed (Ferrari fans as well) want them to be banned - constructors points removed -driver points re-dished out from the race - Alonso to be made to wear a dress, you name it they want it.

Richard Williams posted a erm intersting article [here] on The Guardian about the up and coming WMSC defending Ferrari's actions, whilst it's all well and good saying that team orders have helped people in the past, most of these instances have been in the FINAL race of the season, where the other guy in your team has NO chance of winning the WDC. Nowadays team orders are against the rules. Just like KERS for the 2010 season, just like ride height, just like anyother rule in the book.

Ferrari broke this rule, and hence should be punished!

He goes on to say that team orders are in place for team principals to control their drivers. Then goes on to use RBR and Turkey as an example. Now at the time, as an RBR fan i was very very very annoyed. But then After i went to Germany to watch the GP and experienced first hand the 'team orders' debacle, i am glad to say that RBR crashed into each other. Woul i prefer it not to happen? Yes. Would i want to be robbed of a race? No. I feel i was robbed by Ferrari.

I dislike Alonso and i make no attempt to hide it, however if he had won fair and square by properly over taking Massa i would have been annoyed yes. But i wouldn't have felt the anger and dissapointment that Ferrari made me feel.

"Team orders that interfere with a race result are strictly forbidden"

This is the rule for the sport today. They aren't racing 50 years ago. Yes this is a buisiness, but we as the fans are the clients. You race to please us.

Today: A Summation and Prediction

This week i had to return back to my parents house on Wednesday, I was one of the few relatives in the country who could come back and make sure my Granny was ok and take her back and forth from the Hospital to see my Pops.

Thankfully he is now fast on the recovery track, just trying to get over a chest infection then he should be released within the next few days! Which means i'll be returning back to Cardiff on Monday.

I am also the now designated "amazing big sister" for my little brother, who is at Reading Festival this weekend, he's seems to be enjoying it, but, like most people there, was not impressed with Guns N Roses turning up an hour late to their set. I have also been sending him cricket updates, driving him back and forth to shower....

I think i have spent more time driving this weekend than anything else!!

Speaking of Driving, Today is RACE DAY!!! F1 is finally back and the grit himself Mark Webber grabbed pole in what is now the most confusing grid ever!

Alonso is down in 10th... and well the top 10 have pretty much remaind the same since qualifying, however everybody else has incurred penalties galore!  Engine and gearbox changes, 10 place grid drop for the 7 time world champion Michael Schumacher, and then just random penalties for people impeding each other, overtaking in a yellow flag, and causing general comotion. I would start talking about who is where, but there are about 4 versions of where people are.... so i won't put too much comment on!!

Big congratulations to Heikki Kovalinen and Timo Glock for making it to Q2, HK now in 13th and TG has been dropped to 20th... I think.

My predictions for the race?

• Alonso will have a really really good drive, but miss out on the Podium, Behind Massa

• Button will again be ignored by the BBC
• Red Bull will have the 1-2
• Petrov will drive so well he will finish in the top 10
• Michael Schumacher won't.
• Reubens Barichello may - hopefully - end up on the podium through sheer luck
• Hamilton won't make it to lap 10
• It will rain on half the track
• Somebody will run out of tyres
• "Spa has it's own Microclimate" will be said on numerous occasions
• Martin Whitmarsh will comment on how Red Bulls car is illegal. Again.

Well I'm just going to make a large cup of tea and grab my work, and settle down for one of the most unpredictable races of the season!!!

Today: A Day of Paper Aeroplanes

Well Monday was a typical start of the working week type day. People were picking up on stuff they had yet to finish from the week before and reluctantly trudging round trying to finish it before firs tea break. This if course meant i was chasing up and tidying up all the electrical waste and what was left from the inventory.

Last week we had managed to reduce the inventory (items over £7k) from 184 items down to just 24 items, all in 4 days, and we were left with the few difficult items left to find. NOW remember from one of my previous blogs we had reduced the inventory pretty well and that the items had less than useful item descriptions. WELL a couple of these things i happily got to write on "On a Satellite - Planck out in space" To be honest we should have noticed the big capital letters saying 'PLANCK' and taken that as a hint. ANYWAY, the few remaining items were about 4 inches long, had no label on them, and we had no idea what they looked like. So you can imagine the fun and games we had in locating them. Thankfully we had a couple of slaves (academics) who could locate some of the trickier ones!!

Monday i also found out more about my Pop's situation. He's currently in hospital with some of his small intestine removed after a pretty nasty hernia. (sad sad times) So i will be making an unplanned return home to try and do my part in looking after my granny and take her shopping and make her tea and stuff :). And also act as taxi to my little brother for his Reading Festival adventures.

Today being Tuesday, i got to finish adding MORE THINGS TO THE ELECTRICAL WASTE LIST. Which as you can probably tell i was thrilled about! Whilst also intermittently updating the inventory from various people. Who kept sending me e-mails about what was found by the Academics and de-soldering some random motherboard to save some componants.

Morning Tea couldn't have come at a better time!! Last night i went to my friends house where had a curry lots of wine and a gossip (I needed it!) So this morning i was feeling a little worse for wear, which was fixed at tea break by a nice big cuppa and a bacon and eg baguette :) OM NOM NOM NOM!

Myself and a collegue then went around testing the lecture room technology after lunch and afternoon tea break, where we obviously were playing loud music to test the sound system, Music such as Genesis - I Can't Dance.... LOUDLY. hehe. We were very popular on the third floor today! We also had an aeroplane competition, ie, we made papre aeroplanes and tried to see who could get their plane to the back of the lecture theatre. I won.

:)

Today: It's the End of the Weekend :(

This weekend was one of those where i just had to get the little things done.

Unlike previous weekends where i have just got up at about half 10 and done everything by 2, I spent the entirity of Saturday playing games. That is until it got to half past 4 ( i woke up at 11 see,) where i decided it would be a brilliant idea to tidy and hoover my room. Now i normally do this every couple of months - The BIG tidy, you know, the one that involves moving furniture and the like - But yesterday i just had the urge (i blame the kick i was drinking).
WELL. 15 spiders, 3 hours, 4 cups of tea, 3 civilisations destroyed (playing Civ 4 at the time), 4 pairs of shoes thrown out and 2 bin bags of rubbish and my room looks tidier :)

 Then generic make-up on, posh dress and shoes, and i performed to my mirror for several more hours before crashing out to sleep!

Sunday-TODAY. Woke up at 11:57, still morning i guess... Finished my Sims 3 stuff and was upset that it didn't work :( new driver updates and a system restore later and the injuries my laptop had suffered became apparent. The graphics card is officially dead, it can't cope with anything more graphic than BBC IPlayer and even that is a bit jittery :( so to sulk i had lots of chocolate and watched the BTCC final race on ITV4.

Pretty good i muat say! First BTCC race i have every watched and i found it exciting, compelling and highly competetive!! i think i'll be watching it again! As long as it doesn't clash with the F1 :)

Less than a week to go till Spa!!!! Christian Horner has been giving his usual "This could be our weakest track" speech whilst giving that little grin he gives whilst being interviewed! I'm sure that RBR will be doing great at Spa, and he'll be twitching his foot just to show us!

Closer to the time i think i'll post my pre-race blog up too. The one i put on the RBR community site, just to get it out there!

On the subject of F1, if you're a fan at all, check WTF1 out. it's the lighter side to the drama of F1!

Monday tomorrow, i hope it goes by quickly!

Today: I'm Glad it's Over!

Today we sorted the LAST of the Electrical waste. Sent it off. Then Settled in for morning tea break.


After the relaxation that was tea break- and the discussion about how many places Cardiff had accepted from UCAS and how many had been declined... - We got onto the Inventory. Everything over £7k had to be ticked off to make sure people hadn't nicked it and stuff. We got the usual responses to the rather uninformative item descriptions "O it's the bench we're looking for!" and "It's a program for the computer..." We got some rather surprising locations for the items, general ones like "O it's in my upstairs lab" and "I think i put it away in a cuboard..." Then we got ones like "I think we've sent that to Cambridge" and "We sold that crap to Exeter Uni" All the way too "Yeah... that's in Antartica..." and "That is currently in space at L2... beyond the Earth's orbit "

Pretty big extremes really!!!

After they had run out of stuff for us Junior technicians to do i cracked on with trying to construct a working traffic light system (where each light is operated by a switch and not by time delay... stupid Google) which resulted in me building something completely different, that didn't work (stupid PCB).

Anyway. The day got better as i had to drive to the post office to pick up my new clothes!!! They had been delivered when i wasn't in so i was treking to get them. Stupid Cardff traffic it took me half an hour to get half a mile!! So badly taking the short route i took on the way home!!!

BUT The clothes fit!!! ish. I still have a complex where i hate my body right now. Nothing seems to shift!!! i'm eating properly, gym Mondays, Swimming Wednesdays, on my feet walking about at work!!! I dunno what is going on :( I'm destined to remain fat.

On a brighter side the F1 is next weekend!! SPA!!!! Most tracks have been in Red Bull Racings favour and i see that continuing, Mark Webber's brilliant form and Seb Vettel's unlucky times are indicating a FANTASTIC race this coming week. Hopefully Alonso will crash out taking Schumacher with him in some hilarious and safe way... ie it's his fault completely!!!

Right must get back to enjoying my Friday night in by myself.

Today Was Electrical Waste Day

Today was electrical waste day.

After spending the last week  at work collecting everybodies electrical waste, removing all reminders of Cardiff University, recording the Inventory and Serial Numbers (which were always on the bottom of the really heavy objects) and putting all this information onto a nicely planned out spreadsheet - I got told that we had to organise it in a totally different way than what I had so carefully done over the last week.

SO myself and another super-star collegue, got the cardboard boxes, got the trolleys and got up to our elbows in sharp motherboards and heavy monitors. Re-recording what was in boxes (and mainly what was not) and ensuring nothing had been taken out of the lab they were being stored in (When this happened before I was allowed to be angry with the professor that did it.... but forgave him after). We then set about to the third floor for afternoon tea break.

Although this isn't what I did all day, it shadowed my acheivement from  earlier in the day and made it rather sad. Earlier in the day the inventory list had been reduced from 3 pages, to just under 4 pages! That was done in about an hour!

I am currently trying to build a 'traffic light system' where each LED is turned on by different voltages. However my attempts have lead to the destruction of 3 potentiometers, 2 resistors and resulting in my fingers being singed. Needless to say, I'm not allowed to use electrical componants until i build a working model on the computer. Using Multism, which doesn't always show you what will blow up/smoke/get hot/catch on fire.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day!
Friday Feeling and all that.