Niall’s virtual diary archives – March 2001

Saturday 3rd March 2001: 10.11pm. Well, these are the first few hours of my latest computer upgrade. The computer locked up about half an hour ago and I'm hoping very much it won't do this again cos I'm in the middle of downloading lots of new drivers. And nearly 1500 emails - that's a week's email for me BTW.

Anyway, I am thankfully able to rest easy now I have the new hard drive installed and all 48Gb of the important stuff copied over. I will have to dispense with my old installation because my RAID controller won't let me redefine an array - only delete and create ones. Also, it turns out that my new hard disc is actually more than twice as fast as the old ones, so there's no point making a new RAID. Technology eh? - never stops making stuff obsolete.

My new graphics card (ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder) however is extremely unlikely to become obsolete. It's got MPEG2 encoding and decoding built in along with a Dolby surround sound decoder, TV tuner and even a god-damn Teletext system. The 3D side of things is wicked too, I've only tried Homeworld which ran quite happily at a silly 1280x1024 in 32 bit colour. Games get to run so fast nowadays even on my little 400Mhz system. And oh, I can now play DVD's - only takes half the processor time usually, though Braveheart makes it peak at 85% or so during the action scenes. Very good graphics card this. Just pity the Windows 2000 drivers are so buggy. Ones on the CD just don't work - at all - you need to reinstall Windows if you forget to install the new ones before reboot. Hmm ...

Ok, nuff computer talk, what else has been happening? Well, nothing actually. Absolutely nothing. I have nothing even remotely interesting to say. No intrepid thoughts. Not even much depression to speak of. Just been getting on with things. And that's that.

ADSL should get put in this week - I got a nice new splitter box off Telefonica on Thursday. So I'll finally have my high-speed internet access - expect an extremely overdue complete website overhaul soon.

Right, now I really have nothing else to say - other than be happy (especially Mel!) - and I'll see you all again soon. With high-speed always-on internet access. Mmmm ...

Sunday 25th March 2001: 10.03pm. Sorry for the wait in updating, I've had my ADSL put in but to be honest I didn't want to add an entry until I properly overhauled the site. Well, I've done the absolute minimum which is barely anything. I can fully blame Yahoo audiobooks for losing me my weekend - I've just laid on the couch drinking and listening to them. Getting nothing done at all. Bad.

So what's happened in these three weeks? Well, I rang Ruth and said I had the beginnings of why this is happening to me, and with her assistance she could speed up my recuperation considerably. She was in quite a bad state when I rang, but, you know, human. Not like the cold ice queen she has been. Anyway, she said that following weekend was out due to her going to a concert in Bilbao. Fine I said, make it next weekend.

Next weekend came. I got thrown by a movie on Spanish TV about this fellow who reaches 28 without finding love and returns to his childhood home to think hard about marrying his girlfriend, a lovely girl who loves him but he does not love her. It was called Beautiful Girls I think.

Anyway, there was a lot more in this movie than just this, but for me the most important parts were the thirteen year old girl next door who the central character finds himself strongly attracted to. She has everything - intelligence, wit, sexiness, all of it. But she does not have availability. In this, she represents the woman that the central character has always aspired for but has always been unable to get. And now, at twenty-eight years, he has run out of time. If he doesn't get on the bus very soon, he will miss it forever. So, he has to make a choice: continue waiting for his dreams, or resign to accept and marry this very nice girl he cares about but does not love.

In the end, he gives up his dreams. There is more to life than love and passion. I am learning this now. In the end, I don't think I'll ever get them, so I'm slowly on the path of destroying my romanticism. I would make the same choice in that fellow's situation.

But between now and then, I'll be giving it my all to make sure I give it the best shot I can. Then, when it comes to that crunch decision, I'll know I tried my best so I can continue my life without constant regret and self-doubt. It'll be the only way to keep the relationship and ensuing family from being torn apart by me.

Anyway, I'm getting too futuristic again. Back to now. I got thrown by said movie, got quite depressed about shit I'm doing so far, and then got quite drunk. So hence I rang Saturday afternoon to cancel Sunday. Shortly thereafter, I got horrendously angry at myself for backing out and set to work writing down what I would have said to her come the following day. And surprisingly, I was a fountain of productivity, producing some seven pages of A4 in MS Word. Hence, that Saturday night, I rang her again to say meeting back on. She accused me of playing with her, but agreed. I noted she had returned to her cold demeanour, that wall of outer strength hiding the weakness inside (because truly strong people are never cold, they have no need to be - what is there to protect?).

I woke Sunday morning, firm in my resolve and mind. About half an hour before she was due to come, she rang to say a mysterious family engagement had magically appeared which would require the entire day. "Now who's playing with who?", I thought. Ruth keeps doing this over and over, she says she'll do something and then something always magically comes up to prevent it. She has always let me down since I arrived in Spain. Maybe she always did, and I never knew. Doesn't matter anymore really.

Anyway, I took the view that she doesn't get the choice in helping my recuperation. I still care about her, but she's second place to me now and I am going to take what I want from her whether she likes it or not. So, I printed the letter and posted it. As I learned post-Laura, I don't need the opposite party's active involvement to effect resolution. All they need to do, in the end, is receive information from me. If they reply, they do. If not, then not. I prefer greatly the former, but if the latter is all that's available, so be it.

So it's gone, and I've heard nothing since. I sent a small email tonight, but to be honest I don't expect anything. If she understood my letter, I think she'll just run away and hide. Exactly the actions through which she put me in this situation. She just keeps running away. Pity.

So, that's three more weeks. One more week and I'll have been here for six months now. All those friends who said they'd come visit haven't, but then who'd blame them, I'm hardly much company. My father however assures me he will come for Easter break. I had been contemplating a visit to Hull for Easter, but I think I'll not now. Also no point. I'll try just pre-end of year, and after that almost everyone I know in Hull will have moved on. I will then no longer have friends in one fixed location, only spread out across the world.

This is the beginning of the rest of your life Niall. You would do well to mark well its beginning. Consider it done my fellow! Be happy all, hope to see you all again soon ...