BST & Sticky 360

British Summer Time. The three greatest words in the English language to me at the moment, I am unbelievably pleased that the clocks have gone. Our American neighbours might call it Daylight Savings, but to me it’s British Summer. Unfortunately that can mean months of damp, grey weather (which reminds me of an appalling joke – What’s Snoop Dogg’s favourite weather? Drizzle! ….. sorry), but I’m holding out hope that this year will be better, even though sometimes it feels like nothing ever changes. If you ask me there’s no greater gift for lifting your spirits and making you feel wholly better than being given an extra hour in the evening. I’ve already made the most of it; Murphy’s agility class moved to a Monday evening yesterday so I spent the whole evening outside running around a field after a very busy ginger dog and his friends.

Those that know me know I live for barbecues and the summer, and so it’ll probably come as no surprise to learn that I’ve already got one eye on charcoal and grills. In a way I feel a bit jealous of most people and am not looking forward to the big stores setting out their displays of barbecues and associated paraphernalia, just because I’m going to be very jealous of everybody with a house capable of hosting one. Work has ground to a halt on our place for the time being while nine inches of concrete goes off to create what will be our kitchen floor. I’ve still got one eye on the goal, but for the time being it still feels like I’m stood at the other end of the pitch. An uphill pitch. Once the walls start going up I think I’m going to start feeling much happier.

Today sees the official end of the company I work for, but not in as drastic a fashion as that might suggest. As the local councils merge, our old parent company changes to a new one, but it’s essentially just a change of name. I’ll still be sat at my desk, doing the same things tomorrow. In celebration of the ten years of its existence, and the leaving of our MD, we’ve booked a bar out in town and are all off there for a few drinks in the afternoon (with some of us staying on for a few hours for a few more drinks ;)). Not too many drinks mind, it’s a school night after all, but it’s a nice way to welcome in midweek – the official start of my weekends.

This place has gone quiet lately in terms of games talk, and it’s just because I’m in a bit of a lull at the moment. A few big games have been released, most notably Resident Evil 5, but I’m not really interested in it. When I can pick it up for under twenty quid I’ll be more interested, but not before. If anything I’ve been concentrating on making sure I can play the ones I have properly after a slight mishap a couple of weeks ago. I took some beers, games and pads around to a friend’s house for an evening in and had a great time. The next day I woke up and found a puddle of beer in the bottom of the bag which had my pads and games in. Not only did it ruin the inlay and instruction manual of one of the games, one of the pads was soaked in beer! I let it dry out and ignored it until last week when someone tried to use my recently infused gamepad, and found that half the buttons and triggers were either stuck or sticking. I bought myself the screwdriver needed to open the thing – or at least I thought I had, it turns out I’d bought a T10 driver and not the T8 necessary (360 pads use nuisance anti-tamper Torx screws). With enough pressure you can get the screws out with a T10, which I have done twice now. No matter how clean I’m sure everything is, the damn thing still has a sticky trigger and d-pad! It’s payday today so I might invest in a T8 and have a proper go soon. It’s nice to know that like its owner, its capable of absorbing a beer or two, but if you too have suffered similar misfortune there’s only two things you really need to remember: 1) get a T8 screwdriver and don’t try to make do with something else unless you want to wreck the screws, and 2) the seventh screw is under the battery compartment, directly behind the barcode on the sticker.