Black Screen (KSOD) Vista Solutions

19 Jun 2010 at 21:34

Robert

all posts, tech

4 Comments

Before I get started, some resources:

I’m looking at a friend’s laptop for him. It boots, gets past the progress bar, but before login or a desktop, the screen goes black with a cursor present which can be moved. There are multitudes of threads and posts about this issue over the internet, ranging as far back as 2006 and as recently as last month (May 1010). Although the symptoms are similar, from what I can see there are several causes each with different fixes.

For example, if the login screen comes up and there is a black screen after, it may be possible to hit Ctrl+Shit+Esc together to bring up Task Manager, from there do File->New Task (Run…), explorer.exe. This will bring up the desktop etcaetera, from where you can run other tools to repair the issue.

Advanced Startup Options Menu

Hit F8 while the computer is booting to bring up this menu. It has a number of potentially useful options, and is probably the easiest and lowest-impact to try first. The following options from that menu have been reported to work for some:

  • Safe Mode (with Networking / Command Prompt)
  • Enable low-resolution video (seems to help with nVidia driver update issues)
  • Last Known Good Configuration
  • Disable Driver Signature Enforcement (helps with some other driver errors in HP laptops, if I remember correctly)

It may also help to choose the Enable Boot Logging option, which should create a file called ntbtlog.txt containing info that might point to the driver or component that is causing issues.

Using the Windows System Recovery tool

The first option on the advanced startup menu listed above is “Repair your computer”. This starts a graphical interface with a number of options which may help.

System Restore

You should try to do a system restore first, if it is enabled. If it isn’t enabled, make sure to enable it when you fix the problem! Click the “System Restore” option on the menu (second item) and choose a restore point from when you believe your computer was previously functional.

Registry Fix

It may be a registry issue. In some cases, it would appear the Shell entry is corrupted. You can sort it by doing the following:

  1. Turn on the computer
  2. As it boots, press F8 to bring up the advanced boot options menu
  3. Select “Repair Your Computer”
  4. From there, login to an admin account (eg Administrator)
  5. Select the bottom option to launch a command prompt
  6. type regedit and hit enter
  7. Navigate through the following keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current\Winlogon
  8. One you are at Winlogon, there should be an item on the right panel that says “Shell“. Right click this, and select edit.
  9. Change the value to explorer.exe. If this is already present, this is not your issue!

NOTE: If you try this from the “Repair Windows” option on a Windows Vista install DVD or recovery DVD it won’t work, as that seems to edit the registry on the disc (you will see cmd.exe /k start cmd.exe or similar for the Shell key). For me the “load hive” option was greyed out, if isn’t for you, you can open C:\Windows\system32\config and edit the local registry).

Startup Repair

It might be a long shot, but the startup repair option might help. It is the first option on the System Recovery menu.

Memory

It is unlikely that your RAM is causing this problem, but it is useful to know that Vista does have a tool to check memory, and it can be accessed through the System Recovery tool. I didn’t know this until today, having previously used memtest+ x86 included on Ubuntu LiveCDs.

Chkdsk / SFC (Updated 2011-07-16)

From the command prompt provided by the System Recovery tool, you can also try running chkdsk /r C: to run a disk check. Running sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=C:\windows should do a verification of ‘critical windows files and components’, but I could not get this to run as it complained about needing to reboot with an active recovery ongoing – I guess it can’t be run via the system recovery tool.

Renaming Event Viewer Log Folder / Prefetch Folder

(See the good post by ubman on technet here)

There are reports that a problem with the event viewer service can cause this black screen on login. To work around this, start up a command prompt through the recovery tool as above. Then execute:

C:
cd \windows\system32\winevt
ren Logs LogsBad
mkdir Logs

Another report claims PreFetch can cause the issue. Now, the folder for PreFetch can be deleted as Windows will recreate its contents as needed. However, should you wish to keep a backup, start p a command prompt as above and run:

C:
cd \windows\
ren Prefetch PrefetchBad
mkdir Prefetch

Other Options

Apologies for the brevity here, these items I quickly jotted down but I am not able to try some of them myself.

Also on technet, zorglub1789 claims broken file permissions were the cause of his woes. Using icacls to fix these apparently worked. He booted to the recovery console and ran:

icacls C:\* /grant builtin\users:(RX) /T

to grant read and execute permissions to all users.

If you can start safe mode, it may be worthwhile temporarily disabling UAC. If the security centre won’t run in safe mode from the control panel, I think it is accessible via the management console. Hold the windows key + R, then type in mmc. I think you may need to add the Group Policy plugin / manager to MMC.

Another file to check on is C:\wialog.txt. This may contain useful information for troubleshooting what is causing the problem.

Again, if safe mode works, msconfig may prove useful. Hold windows key + R, and type msconfig. Then try disabling services, startup options and so forth until you get a working startup. From there you can work back to the cause of the problem. Apparently one to try is “Low Graphics Boot” (or similar), although I don’t know if there is a difference between this and the advanced startup (F8) option.

Tools

Basic Command-line Backup

If you have an external hard drive, and want to back up the C:\ drive, the following command will do that from a command prompt (see above for how to get a command prompt).
xcopy /h /i /c /k /e /r /y C: E:\backup

Where E: is the drive letter for your external hard drive.

Reset Administrator or other Windows Passwords

There is a tool at http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/ which is very handy for resetting Windows passwords should you not know them. I had to do it in this case as there was no documentation on the default password for this laptop (an Acer), and I can vouch for its utility. Note that you don’t need to know the password for this tool to work.

Connect to a WPA/WPA2 Secured Network In Linux

19 May 2010 at 02:02

Robert

all posts, life, linux, ubuntu

1 Comment

This turned out to be dead easy, although it took a bit of futzing around due to my own slowness. The situation arose during an a failed upgrade of my dad’s machine to Ubuntu 10.04 (aka Lucid Lynx). I’m sensing a pattern here; I don’t think there has been an upgrade that has gone smoothly on that machine. To be fair I think there may be problems with just about every component apart from the hard drive, but you think I would realise that upgrading that machine is a Bad Idea. Anyway, the solution:

A combination of wpa_supplicant and wpa_passphrase will do the trick.

  1. Get a root prompt. Either sudo su, or boot to single user (recovery) mode. Just don’t do that, select netroot, then get bored and hit Alt-F1 for a console 1. For some reason, that makes the machine very unhappy and so your wireless hardware probably will complain about device busy in step 2. So don’t do that.
  2. Run iwlist scanning, and check your card can see the wireless network in question
  3. If it can, run wpa_passphrase [your-wireless-network-name] > wpa.conf
    (eg wpa_passphrase pegasus > wpa.conf). The prompt will wait for you to enter a passphrase. Do this and hit enter.
  4. Run wpa_supplicant. Replace wext with the correct wireless driver (which is probably wext, but run wpa_supplicant --help to check) and wlan0 with your wireless interface
  5. wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/root/wpa.conf
  6. If that works, you should see text to the effect of “successfully associated”. If not, try again with a different driver, make sure your passphrase is correct, and make sure your wireless interface is working properly.
  7. Hit Ctrl+c, then the up arrow, then add a -B (for background) onto the end of the last command, thus: wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/root/wpa.conf -B
  8. Run dhclient -r to release any DHCP leases you have.
  9. Run dhclient wlan0 to get a new IP address. Substitute wlan0 for your wireless interface, of course.

You should now be connected. This is a handy trick for any Linux user unaccustomed to connecting to wireless networks from the command line – let’s face it, network-manager has spoiled us rotten. But when an upgrade fails and won’t leave you with a functioning graphics driver (grr) and you need some packages, this is the way to do it.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Upgrade Problem Fixed (mountall/init)

24 Mar 2010 at 00:29

Robert

all posts, linux, software, ubuntu

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(Jump to the bonus section on sorting a removed Gnome panel)

I finally got round to doing the Jaunty->Karmic upgrade on a troublesome machine. Well, re-doing. I made an abortive attempt to install it on this particular exhibit of electronic arthritis back before I left for Barcelona, which ended in me reinstalling 9.04.

Anyway, for one reason or another the upgrade failed or was interrupted and so I was left with a machine that would not boot. Well, it would do a good chunk of the boot process, but fail at an init item (init_bottom, I think). mountall was exiting with code 127, complaining:

process mountall (787) exited with code 127:
undefined symbol: udev_monitor_filter_add_match_subsystem_devtype *

Quite a mouthful, in other words. Even booting into “recovery mode” didn’t give me a working console. Next step: try a liveCD. The same problem was reported by niroht of the ubutuforums here. However, his explanation is a bit brief, and misses out a couple gotchas.

So, you’ve got a problem with mountall, and you’ve also got a 9.10 liveCD. Here’s how to sort it:

  1. Boot from the livecd
  2. Call up a terminal (gnome-terminal or xterm).
  3. Chroot your usual install partition. GParted, under “Administration” can help you determine what this is. Mine was /dev/sda3. What I did was:
    • sudo su
    • mkdir /newroot
    • mount /newroot /dev/sda3
    • chroot /newroot <- chrooting my install parition
    • mount /proc <- important! not mounting /proc causes all sorts of problems.

    Now you’re chrooted and ready to continue. I have a separate /boot partition as well, but I updated this later to save faffing at this stage.

  4. Sort the botched upgrade! I ran first dpkg --configure -a, then to be sure, apt-get -f install. Finally, I ran apt-get dist-upgrade, which upgraded a *lot* of packages (~700 I think).

Now, if your /boot prtition resides on the same partition, you’re done here. If not, you have to mount it and copy the new kernel images and updated menu.lst. Strictly speaking, this should be possible to set up when doing the chroot above, but I couldn’t remember how to do it at the time. Make sure if you are merging the menu.lst that the contents are correct – check the UUIDs or partition references are correct!

Bonus! Restore the default gnome-panel if you accidentally delete

So once I was done with the fixed upgrade I booted, and got a slightly messed up top Gnome panel. Two volume icons, and no network icon. In my attempt to sort it, I clicked cack-handedly and removed the entire panel. Rather than repopulate it manually, I followed the advice of another ubuntuforums thread:

gconftool-2 --shutdown
rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
pkill gnome-panel

And that was the panel restored to default!

* (Previously listed as “undev_mknitor_filter_add_match_sebsystem_devtype”, as it appeared on the screen. Part of the electronic arthritis is (I think) in the graphics card, which causes all sorts of odd things to happen to the pre-boot text. Must photo it sometime.)

Little Rocket Man / Get Some Grub

24 Nov 2009 at 21:30

Robert

all posts, games, valve games

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A6BQXSMBXD9S [for Technorati, please ignore]

If, like me, you are looking to round off your Half Life 2 Episode 2 achievements, you’ll want to have a look at the following two guides:

Get Some Grub

Not tricky, just time consuming. Have a look at Nibbles’ guide on GameFAQs (link), which painstakingly walks you through all 333 of the grubs. My advice is to save regularly on different slots, and if the number you have doesn’t match what the guide says you should have, reload. It just saves on headaches further down the road. Should only take you about 3 hours, and that’s if you’re carriny the gnome with you…

…which brings me nicely to:

Little Rocket Man

This one is time consuming as well, but not particularly difficult. Just set him down when fighting and carry him with you the whole way. The tricky parts are the car segments, as the gnome tends to slide out. I would recommend wedging him in the back window; this way he doesn’t slide out while you are driving (unless you hit something, which releases the ‘wedge’. Or you can put him under the steering column and drive slowly.

This is all fine, until you get to the bit with the gunship. Oh, the gunship. It will fire at you and knock the gnome out your hands, hurt you plenty (even on easy), and if it could sspeak I’m pretty sure it would taunt you all the while. What I ended up doing was driving for say 300 metres, getting out, picking up the gnome, carrying him from behind cover (eg under trains), wedging him in, driving for another short bit, leaping out and getting him again, and so forth. The key is cover.

Have a look at Tommy Gun’s guide at Cracked Rabbit Gaming. It gives more useful info, like where you can safely leave the gnome for certain segments.

Linux Saves The Day

16 Nov 2009 at 23:47

Robert

Uncategorized

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For those of you who don;t follow my other blog, I’m in Barcelona at the moment. I’m here to learn Spanish and chew bubblegum. And I’m all out of bubblegum, etc.

Anyway, Linux let me get in touch with my dad. The short story is (if you want long walls of text, read my bit on the TV license, or any of the recent posts on my other blog), basically my dad had been sending emails from a semi-defunct email address. It could send, but not receive. So my replies were being blackholed.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the thought of my parents thinking I’ve cut off communication with them while I’m alone in a strange country was enough to make getting back in touch important. I should point out that while only one email address of his was defunct, I didn’t know that at this stage. So, email is cut off – what do I use? Phone. Tried a few times, but it went to answerphone each time. My mum likes to talk to a good friend of hers a lot – the line can be occupied for hours. I managed to exhaust my PAYG phone credit in this manner. Even phoning someone else back home didn’t work.

Right. Mail – out. Phone – out. So, what did I do? SSH into my dad’s machine, install tightvncsever, telnet into the router, add a port forwarding rule (after unsuccessfully trying to convince the webmin page to authenticate remotely), VNC in, type a message in gedit. Done!

For bonus points, I sorted the mail client out to use a working address, resent the emails that were lost to some hungry /dev/null somewhere, then verified their arrival.

Note: I’m not trying to claim this is a special use of Linux, in fact it’s pretty mundane, but to be able to get in touch over several hundred miles thanks to knowing how to go about things? Priceless.

Addendum – example code for setting up VNC port forwarding via telnet on my router, a SpeedTouch 585.

nat mapadd intf=RoutedEthoA type=napt outside_addr=0.0.0.0 ins
ide_addr=192.168.1.10 protocol=tcp outside_port=5900 inside_port=5900 mode=auto

Replace 192.168.1.10 with the internal IP, and the ports with whatever port you chose to run VNC on, and you’re good to go.

One Week

16 Nov 2009 at 18:47

Robert

life, spanish adventure

1 Comment

So, as of yesterday evening, I’ve been here for a week. Since my last post I have moved out of the guest house. I’m grateful for this, the room was dark all day around (or light, if you put the single flourescent light on). It was adequate, but no more.

I am currently staying with a friend (who is technically a friend of a friend, but they are so friendly and helpful it would be an insult to call them that now). A big thank you to Sabela for letting me crash here while I find a place, and for translating things from and to Spanish. ‘Big help’ would be an understatement.

Flat hunting is a monumental task, twice ior three times so in a foreign language. I’ve gone through hundreds of listings on loquo.com and culled a (long) shortlist of 30ish places to view. I have organised them by priority, so I (hopefully) won’t have to work my way though them all! I’ve seen a few… more on that later.

I met my contact who I got in contact with thanks to a friend at the amnesty group I’m a part of (thanks David). She was (brutally) honest about my chances of finding employment here. The fact that I’m Scottish will work in my favour in an Irish bar (close enough, apparently), but even still I’ll be very lucky to get a job. I’ll still pursue the teaching Spanish angle, but even that is less hopeful than I had initially hoped. Might have to burn a bit of money unfortunately!

Flats and the hunting thereof

I. Hate. Flathunting. At least, I hate doing it in a language in which I am not competent. More specifically, I hate speaking on the phone in a language which I am not competent and – to a lesser extent – talking to people in person in a language in which I’m not competent.

Perfectionist, or just a craven coward?

As far as I’m concerned, the main thing for me is that I just don’t have all the words to convey what I mean. This in itself isn’t a nice feeling. I now have a much greater empathy for people who suffer this problem. The other problem is, well… I don’t want to say something unless I’m going to say it right. The fact that I might stuff it up or forget words/phrases creates a whole bunch of anxiety for me, which I something I’m not so familiar with any more. It’s a bit of a ridiculous viewpoint, looking at it coldly and logically, but unfortunately cold logic can;t snap me out of it. I’ve tried.

I mean, trying (and perhaps failing) to speak another language is much better than taking refuge in my own language; and people aren’t going to hate me if I sound silly. On paper (or on a blog) it’s all very straightforward, but see when I go to dial a number for a flat, or even get through to someone, the panic is paralysing.

What I’m going to do is try a fun little technique. When I decide I need to phone someone, I’m going to do it as quickly as possible, suppressing all other thought and hopefully I’ll be able to sneak past myself and have the phone call before I realise what’s going on. Either that or have a couple of beers to take the edge off first…

Serendipity

(ramble, feel free to skip!)

I went to view a flat today. It was one from the top of the pile, so it was one I was quite keen on. €310/350 a month (two rooms available).

So anyway I walk there for 2PM in shorts an a t shirt, which I mention only to gloat about how blissfully warm it is here. I get there, check the number, ring tthe buzzer. No response. Again. And a third time. I get a rather irked voice telling me that I had the wrong place, I think. He has speaking fast and I was expecting to be buzzed in, so I was a bit overwhelmed. So anyway I figure I could phone one of the two people I had a number for, but I figured I should check I had the right street first. I did.

When I got back to the place, there was someone with a piece of paper and who was getting the same treatment from the now-presumably-even-more-irked man. I ventured an “Hola” and stuttered my way through asking if we were looking for the same place… which eventually amounted to just pointing to my corresponding piece of paper. She agreed we had the same place. In English, I should add. It turns out she had booked a viewing for the same place at the same time. She phoned the contacts. Y didn’t answer, but A did. We were told to press the buzzer that we had been pressing all along, so we did again just for the sake of the thing. Nada. My fellow-flathunter (M) phoned Y again and we told that the place had been rented. Most curious.

M didn’t have another viewing till 4, so I suggested a coffee over which we could compare notes, so to speak, on flats. M said she was here from Paris to look for flats for January, when she will be coming to start her PhD. No easy task – I think all the flats I have seen on loquo have been entry 1) now 2) a week or 3) December. Anyway, potentially mutually useful came of it – M had seen a flat she liked, but was unable to take it as they wanted her to enter in December, which of course would mean paying for a month unnecessarily; so she offered me the details and so I may have a place to stay till December. While it is lovely of Sabela to continue to let me crash here, I don’t want to wear out my welcome. We shall see! I did my best to be helpful by furnishing M with the details of a place with 2 smokers, which would suit her better than non-smoking places.

As an aside, it is surprising how many places are listed on loquo as ‘non-smokers only’; it seems (seems!) like there are a lot more smokers here than in Glasgow. Even if that isn’t true, there are a lot more pedal bikes, motorbikes, and scooters.

So I have several places to view tomorrow, and many many more to phone. Good luck to me! I have rambled enough, if I think of anything that needs added, I will below.

Second Day

09 Nov 2009 at 14:20

Robert

all posts, life

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Another after-the-fact post. This is written at about 1420 on the 9th of November.

Right. So after sleeping in this morning (my room has no external light and my phone had no charge) I went down to the nearest movistar shop to get a SIM card. Once again, I found the place mostly through luck (I didn’t even know what it was called). It took me about 2 hours in total to go, go the phone and get back. 2 hours! Also, i seem to have ended up with 2 phones instead of the single SIM card. Why? BEcause they didn’t have any SIMs alone in stock, a single cheapo phone was €26, while *two* cheapo phones were €20. Mine’s not to reason why.

So I’ve gotten in touch with home to let them know I’m alive, etc etc; and contacted my contact to let them know I am here, and I’m still waiting to hear back from them. they themselves may be en-route back here but who knows.

I also discovered that my Wifi switch was off and there is in fact a LOT of wireless acess points in range. Sadly, all are encrypted. Even *more* sadly, the strongest wignal is WEP encrypted which means if I hbad been able to install Linux before I left I could have had a shot at, ah, decrypting the signal. For funsies, of course. Sadly my drives are in a RAID that I couldn’t get the standard or alternate Ubuntu 9.10 installer to like, so it was not to be. the alt. installer did see the RAID, to be fair, but it only would let me partition the whole disk when I had already partitioned the space. Sigh. I didn’t want to risk it and install anyway as I’ve had bad experiences with that recently.

(For those that are interested: I decided to upgrade my dad’s machine from 9.04 to 9.10. It seemed to work okay at first, in fact I went away while it was downloading the packages and came back and it was sitting at a 9.10 desktop. Sadly, after a cold boot things went bad. It refused to mount /tmp for some reason (I think) and I couldn;t see a quick way of fixing it (this was on Saturday morning when I had to leave in a couple of hours). So I decided to reinstall 9.10. Still no luck. So I decided to go back to 9.04. it then decided there was a problem reading form the CD or hard drive (it wasn’t specific) and refused to install. It did this three times, before a firm reboot got it to co-operate. This was with literally about 15 minutes to go before my train arrived. Needless to say, it added to my stress somewhat.)

Anyway, time for me to have a wander around this place to see if there is a notice up regarding wifi passwords in here. If not, I’ll pop round to the (do doubt extortionate) internet cafe a couple blocks away.

ADDENDUM: No, not that I can see. No-one to ask either. Oh well, time to start contacting people about flats…

Arrival

08 Nov 2009 at 21:42

Robert

all posts, life

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This post is retroactively posted as there’s no wifi at the place I’m staying. It’s 2242 local time (so 2142 UK time), and by now I’ve arrived, checked in (kinda, more on that later) and eaten. Getting here was, well, interesting.

Firstly, I saw Eddie Izzard at the MEN arena last night. He was pretty damn funny from where I was sitting anyway – and I was in a pretty good seat. Some good jokes, although a lot of callbacks to his old material. Not too much I suppose, but a couple of them felt more for the audience’s sake than because it was funny in and of itself. Anyway, I hold Eddie to impeccably high standards, so it’s natural that I find a small fault which probably only existed in my mind. If you can, go and see him.

Getting to Manchester Airport was a dawdle, thanks to the airport rail link. I really do hope Glasgow does get it’s airport link, it makes so much sense.

Checking in, etc, was fine. Although I think airports generate ‘stupid fields’ as my IQ definitely slipped a few points going through there. The flight itself was fine, at a short 1 hr 40 min. I fall asleep so easily on flights. Like, there’s something about the engine droning that just sends my brain straight into delta waves. Or something. i’m going to try to recreate that when I go to sleep at the end of this post.

The temperature was 12°C on touchdown, which is a very pleasant temperature. Once I got off the plane, things started to get interesting.

Barcelona airport is member of the “Brotherhood of Airports that Generate ‘stupid fields’”. I say this as I went and stood in the non-EU citizen line at first, and wondered why it wasn’t moving. D’oh. Sorted myself in the right line, got trhough and started looking for baggage claim. Well, it wasn’t by the place we came out of. Apparently we had to go out of the exit and get it from another part of the airport. Another terminal, in fact. So, confused me went a-wandering through the airport, through more security (where the ‘stupid field’ intensifies and is compounded by the language barrier), and eventually found the correct baggage claim, partly through luck. Got my bag whchi by now had a broken strap – thankfully non-critical.

So I went to find some transport. My initial plan had been to find a taxi, but having looked at a map, I found that the place I was staying in was pretty central, probably a 5 or 10 minute walk from where the bus terminated. What’s more, the bus probably costs about a tenth of what the taxi does. So, getting a bus was now my plan. Then I met an Irishman with a Scouse accent.

Yes, an Irish man with an accent that wouldn’t sound a bit out of place in an episode of Brookside. He was ranting and raving about Ryanair buggering him about (i’ll spare you the grisly details) but he recommended I get the train into the city, reasoning that a T10 card works on both the train and the metro and is fairly cheap. Fair enough said I. So I wandered back through the airport to find the train station, which I did eventually. The trains left every half hour, so of course I arrived 5 minutes after one had left. Sigh.

I eventually got on the train, and as it pulled away at the station at high speed (Spanish trains don’t run on electricity, they run on pure WIN) I realised I hadn’t the foggiest idea which station I was meant to get off at. Oh dear. So I sat on my seat, alternating between vaguely terrified and a Twoflower-esque calmness as I reasoned that I could sort it out eventually, even if I did end up in Valencia. This was a real worry, as there are trains to Manchester airport from Glasgow, so there was a real possibility I’d end up in another city hundreds of miles away.

I got off at a station that had metro signs up (phew). I wandered upstairs and found a map and realised that the place where I wanted to be was only 4 or 5 (or somewhere up to 8, the map was imprecise) blocks away. Did I decide to walk it? For a change I was sensible and decided not to, reasoning I had nealy 17kg on my bag and another bag that was around 10 kilos. So I got a metro train instead. The Barcelona metro is a wondderful thing. I’ve always supported the simple Glasgow circle, but seriously we could learna thing or two from these guys. Oddly enough, it was curiously reminiscent of the Newcastle metro, and I mean no disrespect by that.

I got off at Place Catalunya, which seems to be the Barcelona equivalent of Times Square. On reaching ground level the first person I encountered tried to sell me drugs (told you it was like Times Square). Anyway, after a quick look around I realised that although this place was undoubtedly close to where I wanted to be, I didn’t actually know where that was. Bugger. I set off in what seemed like an appropriate direction until I came to a map. I would say that it wasn’t a very clear or helpful map, but it did get me going in the general direction I wanted to go, although I claim some of the credit. I walked up the big road which I forget the name of (big, wide, apparently famous street), and after a block or two another realisation hit me. I was on the right road (hurray), but I had no idea if I was going in the right direction. I decided to hedge my bets and kept going in the direction I was already heading in, hoping I’d find the street that crossed it soonish.

After a couple of crossroads of not recognising street names I must confess my hope was dwindling (and my back and shoulders were killing me) and I stopped and asked for directions in a smallish hotel. The rather nice chap informed me that iwas indeed going the right way and had only another block to go till I hit the correct street! So I found the street (hurrah!), and then promptly failed to find the guest house (horroo.). I found the correct number, but there was no facade, and no sign to indicate there was a guest house there. In fact it just looked like a residential block.

It is hard to convey the sinking feeling I had at that moment, without involving the Titanic or quicksand or other things of that nature. I could see things unravelling, spiralling out of control… But wait! First I decided to get a damn good grip on myself and make a quick enquiry in the restaurant beside the place. The buy at the bar knew what I wanted to ask before I had asked it, bless him. Apparently the guest house was where I was trying, I just had to puch the right buzzer. Hmm. I got it on the second try and after some strainedshoew conversation I was buzzed in.

I showed the nice-if-rather-confused lad my booking confirmation. You see, the proprietor (Vincent, if memory serves) was not there and so they didn’t know I was meant to be staying there. He and the person helping him out (who seems to be English, but hasn’t said “God bless the Queen” yet to confirm) agreed that I had thew right place, and I should probably come in. I was shown to a rather small room and asked if I wanted it. I answered yes, of course, as I figured my alternative was to say no and leave, and my neck and shoulders would just not have put up with that by then.

I gave myself a rinse and a change of t-shirt (walking while burdened is hot work) and went out to get some food. I must confess that I opted for a Burger King that I espied on Placa Catalunya> I was not in the mood for adventure. Also, I figured if language was a problem I could grunt and point at the pictures. I wasn’t lowering myself to McDonalds though (I passed two on the way to BK). I do have *some* standards. After a BK Doble Cheese Bacon (with chips and water) I felt a lot better and headed back to the guest house. I had to buzz twice to be let in (they had no spare keys to furnish me with). I was on my way in when the buzzer was answered (the street door was ajar and I figured I could hammer on the internal door) which was momentarily confusing.

So anyway I went for a wash of the face and to put some aqueous cream on my face. My skin has been quite dry and itchy lately; I have removed part of one of my eyebrows with scratching. It’ll regrow. I know this from experience, sadly. All I’m saying is don’t eat a LOT of vodka jelly in the company of some poeople you do not know. My aqueous cream seemed to have been opened by inspectors (joy). I don’t know what they did, but it seems to have been diluted. It’s now a proper sloshing liquid instead of a viscous cream. Most peculiar.

Right. Bedtime. First I must go ask for some water (I’m hilariously thirsty… no, deliriously thirsty) from one of the other residents. I know they’re awake as I can hear music playing. So goes my first night.

ADDENDUM: I’m told the tap water in this place isn’t good to drink. It has cement in it (?!). Fuckery.

Leaving Today…

07 Nov 2009 at 00:08

Robert

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Well, I’m actually leaving tomorrow… which is technically today. Actually, Sunday if you mean the country. But still the strains of the Divine Comedy’s mournful leaving song echo in my ears. My work got me a going away card + cake(s) + present, which was jolly nice of them. The card was especially lovely:
Going Away Card

Aww.

Anyway, as I travel tomorrow I should round off my packing. I’ll leaving you with a short joke I came up with while writing this. The idea’s been done before in different forms, but I think my version’s timing works best:

I suggested to my swimmer friend that he should shave all over. He looked surprised.

Thank you, and goodnight.

More Fail from the DM

03 Nov 2009 at 14:12

Robert

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I’m referring chiefly to this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1224858/Yes-scientists-good-But-country-run-arrogant-gods-certainty-truly-hell-earth.html, which even had a picture of Hitler (now removed, but not forgotten) to go along with the comparison of Prof Nutt to Nazi scientists.

I’m also referring to this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1224578/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Fatuous-dangerous-utterly-irresponsible–Nutty-professor-whos-distorting-truth-drugs.html, in which Confused Spice Mel P (Melanie Phillips) says Prof Nutt is being unscientific.

So you know what? I’m going to take my cue from HIGNFY of 30/10/09 (I think, David Mitchell hosting) and ignore it. Normally I wouldn’t; I don’t think ignoring ignorance helps, and similarly burying your head in the sand is equally unhelpful. But really, in this case I don’t even know where to start. I’d be here all afternoon, and I have better things to do than correct such flagrant errors.

Look, if you don’t want drugs reclassified for personal reasons, or it goes against your gut feeling, or whatever, just say that. Comparing people to scientists under the Nazi regime is just tasteless, even for the Daily Mail.

Edit: Have the image anyway.
Daily Fail

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