I hear  you Dark regarding the quiet part... it's been about 8 months now since I graduated and nothing really has happened except playing games (I'm actually going to get fsx, flight simulator soon whenever I get my thumb out my ass to deal with steam)

My internet data finally reset, after dealing with about 25 Days of agonisingly slow internet the new month has finally arrived giving me Another 40 gb of data which I shall try to consume less greedily than last month... I did a rather huge download at the start of january about 20 gb of stuff ... then I thought let's use my data sparingly
... but nope. Three Days later, it was gone and I could only play redspot and browse the forum (and  hardly that)
It drove me nearly insane without having Music and Another kind of ... Entertainment *cough cough I know*
And  Aircraft documentaries of course
Fortunately I had some 100 gb or so of Music on my hard drive but I'm Always out looking for new Music so that was kinda boring not being able to do that.

I've started rereading the iron druid cronacles, I guess the Drezden files are next ... but it was the best I could do in  between redspot and ... redspot lol.
Do you have any recommendation for other series in the same light as those mentioned previously?

Oh and I've got to finish the hunger game series, read 50 shades of Grey (so I can put that aside and be done with "shitty literature" for now) and Marley and me, love and Life with the world's worst dog, recommended to me by a former friend of mine (the story is long as to why this person isn't my friend anymore)

hmm, what else? Life goes on I guess. I'm now saving up to go on a vacation with someone, though I don't know who and I don't know where but preferably someone hot, to some Place hot

@Lord Lundin, I confess my life troubles at the moment are more that I'm waiting for my second viva to see how my phd submission goes, and wondering what next when I've finally finished with all the messing around that gets me the thing. Actually i suppose they are relatively similar, albeit defferred over a good few years since once I'm officially a doctor I've gone pretty much as far as it's possible to go academically, but I don't really see myself teaching or researching though I might write some academic papers in the future. Combine this with the fact that I'm also trying to work out what Mrs. Dark and I are going to do post mariage, about a house (being as my flat is a trifle small for two people and two dogs), and things are a little up in the air at the moment.

As regards series similar to dresden etc, urban fantasy I confess isn't as much my thing, or at least I've not really read much by way of urban fantasy that has really grabbed my attention, despite the fact that I am enjoying watching through buffy the vampire slayer at the moment (I'll be starting series 2 of Angel next week).

I have recently enjoyed Seanon mcguires october day series, about a half fae private i, which I've read the first two books of and reviewed. The first was pretty good, the second a little standard, albeit I suspect things will kick off in the third.
You can find the reviews over on www.fantasybookreview.co.uk. Btw, they also have a system where if you look up a book on there it'll offer you similar titles, which is a good way to find recommendations, though i'd suggest steering clear of Richard Cadry's Sandman slim series, a brainless action fest with an absolute arse hole as a main character which worked waaaay too hard at trying to be dark and trendy for my liking.

@Cae, I'll be interested to get your thoughts on the nfb.

Well as for me, yesterday we went to a pub for a rather huge pub meal in honour of one of my mum's friends' birthdays. It was pretty fun, albeit not exactly the sort of social occasion my lady and I find particularly easy to deal with. Still, after we've wished my godmother happy birthday today we'll be back at my flat tomorrow which will be nice since while it's good to see my parents, it's nice to get home.

@cae, I'll be interested to see your thoughts on the lcb when you write them up.

Lol Lord Lundin, no problem with the meladrama, at least about missing friends and dogs, ironically my first dog was a bull terrier called Jessy who was with me for 14 years. Mrs. Dark's dog died on boxing day unexpectedly so we very much know what you mean.
As to sandman slim, well I did read the first four but I found the series simply annoying, very much trying to hard to be grim and cool and not really filling in the plot. Okay if you want an action fest but personally I like a little more behind the action to actually give me a reason to care about whether the protagonist gets squished or not, in sandman slim, half of the time I was rooting for the badguys to do in James Stark just because I found him so dam annoying! .

As to me, well we're back at our flat now, and both feeling a bit shattered as last night was my godmother's birthday which was worth going to support my godmother, but bloody annoying because there was a kaly band who weren't bad, but whoever did their sound needed shooting because the vocalists' mike was turned up so high it rattled my ear bones! not the instruments oddly enough, just the guys mike, which makes me think someone did a booboo with the sound.
Still, three hours of sitting around unable to converse with anyone and not willing to attempt dances that are only demonstrated visually, (besides I can't stand dancing anyway), was not a fun evening.

Either way in better news, I submitted a review for Lear's daughters, which was a really! awesome sf and should be turning up soon on fantasybookreview.co.uk. I've also arranged for my friend to come and assist with connecting up my new windows 10 machine, which will definitely be worth doing I think.

Game wise, I confess I'm feeling a little lazy right now so haven't gone back to any of the muds I've been trying, then again it's nice to have a miner gaming break for a while, and ssince I tend to checkout the gate and  restart manamon once my pc is setup (I won't have to pinch my wife's machine for that), I'l be very busy with games soon.

As for me, not much has been happening after the trip to Florida. However, I did find a very interesting NSF. For those who don't know, NSF is a chip format mostly used on the NES, Nintendo Entertainment System. Basically, on the FDS chip,, one of several that the NSF format supports, there is a feature that can be enabled called FDS Write Protect, which protects certain memory addresses from being written to. Interestingly, the writer of this particular NSF checks if FDS Write Protection is enabled, and, if it is not, will use the chip itself to tell you to enable it. Yes, the actual FDS will talk, in a very strange voice but you can understand it. That's very innovative because usually, NSF'S will usually just play, and having something that checks like that is very rare. As far as I know, the author would have had to code this on their own, in assembly. And, when FDS Write Protection is enabled, an entire song plays, and that song is interesting as well. Well, that's all for now turtles I mean folks. In other news, as I was posting that, the forum asked me a stop bots question. I won't post the question or answer here, lest the bots check and find out the answer

I can't speak for living in Florida, but I absolutely loved my trip to Orlando in 2015. I made many, many memories. It blows the UK out of the water in terms of theme park stuff, everything has a story. In the UK you just get on a ride and go round. No pre-shows or audio that much. While we were in Orlando as well, there was a friend who had a house so we got to go there a couple of times as well, outside the theme park bubble.

yupp sounds like I found my vacation spot!

Well interesting things happening today.
We're meeting some friends for lunch, after which a friend of mine is going to give me a hand connecting up my new windows 10 machine. Assuming we don't suddenly find we need some extra wires, this should presumably mean I'll be at least starting the process of sorting things out this afternoon.

I've checked the dolphin site and found out some useful info such as windows 10 keyboard shortcuts, they also have some basic tutorials for things like outlook 2013, office, etc which should be useful (albeit I'd like to avoid using outlook if I can), though I do wish dolphin had the sorts of generalized tutorials on the actual interface they used to have for xp which directly explained windows itself, what was where, what menu was for what etc, particularly since I imagine as i tend to be someone who likes to organize things I'll be doing a lot of messing around interface wise. At least since dolphin have run the confiig options most of the major setup should already be done and I presumably can begin with things like installing what needs to be installed, sticking my favourites and documents back in,poking around the interface, installing some of the basic programs I like such as Vlc media player, vipmud and probably winamp, fixing up my preferde sapi voice,  trying different applications etc.

I'm not sure about sn16, since some of the features, such as instant ocr sound really useful, others like an in built media tab with stuff like access to radio and podcasts I'm not sure about, but we'll see, as with anything it's going to be a case of use the useful bits and discard the none useful bits, and on the plus side compatibility with windows 10 sounds pretty good, other than with Edge.

Ah, sleep pattern mode. I'm always awake late at night too, indeed I think it's a common struggle many blind people share. However I think it is often misunderstood as, say, somebody using a computer too much and the misinformation spreads everywhere. however, yeah, definitely I can relate to being up at 4:00 AM and trying to get food.

And to you Miriaespino, though I have to say yesterday was probably the least romantic occasion imaginable, even considering it's our first  valentine's  day married.

Well Slender is correct since I'm back again at five in the morning, although yesterday I got a lot of things done.

So, remember those towels I mentioned? well of course we put them in the washing machine, only to find said washer decided to immitate a British crickit match and go on strike due to flooding. Yes, the motor went crunk and we had water all over the flaw.

So I ring the council, or at least the random housing association who are now my landlords in place of the council since the was originally given me by them, and very appropriately they washed their hands of the thing.
Okay then, I ring curries, regular regional electronics place who have a shop and could deliver, provided we can find a washing machine that actualy has knobs not a none usable digital display. On the down side, curries local isn't actually possible to get to without paying about ten quid per trip for a taxi, however in an era of instant communication where I can talk to anyone across the globe in secondds, talking to someone about 15 miles away should be absolutely fine right? wrong! they planely misunderstand the meaning of the word "local" since it's physically impossible to speak to anyone in the shop itself, I was put through to somewhere in India, and when I explained to said Indian lady that no, I didn't want to order a model I needed to talk to someone in the actual shop to physically ask about the controls, she said she understood, offered to put me through to their stock department, and finally stuck me on an answer machine that cut me off.

I was therefore left with two choices, paying cash for a taxi and hoping to find a helpful shop assistant, or doing something I don't like doing, and asking my parents to go in to their local curries and find a usable washing machine. I took the latter option, much as I didn't like to.
If people were wondering why I didn't just ask a friend to go with me, the simple answer is that this is pretty urgent. Our bath tub is full of semi clean laundry, including a cover, which we only have one of, (indeed I wonder if part of the reason I'm awake so early is due to the fact that my wife and I had to share a very small single quilt which can be rather chilly.

To compound things, it seems Reever might be ill, which really isn't good either and is yet more things to deal with, particularly since my lady is a bit stuck due to not really having finished her cane training sufficiently to get into town yet.

So, combine this with my Nvda experiments and need to get office, install things like Vipmud continue learning more about nvda, and I'm pretty busy at the moment.

I also finished Cell by steven king and  will be writing a review, since fortunately now I do have an email program to send it, even if it'll have to be written in wordpad rather than ms word for the time being.

To calm things down though, and because it's a book I've not read since the age of around 15, I am rereading david eddings mallorean, since sI reread the belgariad recently.
Quite surprised how much I enjoyed those, since they're just so fun! also, since they have enough praise they're books I don't need to review.

Hi Maria.
Btw, where in the world are you actually from? You don't have to fill in your location information, though I am wondering, since your Hispanic.

I'm of course in the gloomy and desolate reaches of north England, not far from the Scottish boarder, though that being said yesterday actually started to look like spring with nice sunshine, flowers etc, something my lady is looking forward to since she's not enjoyed the winter .

Well the washing machine saga continues.
The guys turn up to install the machine, ---- extremely nice guys I have to say. they go through all the controls about what does what and how to set what, and indeed the machine has some very useful buttons.
Then however they go to pull out the old one and find apparently there is a hotwater tap as well as a cold water one, so if they install the new one they'll have to leave the hot tap open and we'll have another major flood!
They said we needed a plumber to come and tap off the hot tap, and regretfully left the new washing machine looming in the corner of our living room!

On the plus side, the housing association people are! willing to sort out the taps since it's part of the basic flat's fixtures that they own, and odds are the nice plumber will install the new machine while he's about it.
On the down side, that can't happen until Monday.

So, we've had to hang semi clean laundry until it's at least  enough to store, and hopefully it'll be fixed by Monday.

I also got a lovely email the other day saying the re submission of my thesis has been delayed again. In fairness I think this is because one of the professors is ill, but it's still a major painus in the anus since it means I can't start anything else yet.

So today continues to be busy, with more sorting out my windows 10 machine doing things like installing vipmud, maybe adding the gate to the database now I've played the thing, and of course writing my review of cell!

Well I'm not sure on brecksit, but as far as graceless goes, I have the series but haven't listened to it yet.
Worlds indeed was a giant promo, but I was just downright disappointed  with the ending. To have three promising a huge confrontation with interstellar evil and basically to find their last spaceship with a flat tire was down right irritating! then again, this isn't the first time that doctor who has promised and not delivered in the epic department, though I do find it disappointing when it happens in the audios since generally I expect better writing quality than that.

I enjoyed the first three series of graceless, so we'll see where four goes. I thought the principle of two ditsy ladies with nearly ultimate power having random sister bitching sessions about the same dude across all of space and time was both amusing and a good story, though I don't really know how their going to write themselves out of series three's good ending.

summerfield isn't my favourite bf series, mostly because so much relies on continuity with the novels it's hard to get into or who half of the cast are, and things suddenly change for no reason.

Iris Wildthyme is sort of hit and miss. When it's on it's really funny, when it's off it can be irritating as sand paper underpants. Sadly the first pilot series one they did was very much the latter, but seasons 2 nd 3 improved things no end. Four however basically retconned the near total destruction of the universe in season 3, and also had no pander dam it!

I also have to say Iris, or rather pander  responsible for one of my favourite phrases, namely the idea of giving someone a punch up the hooter! .

Well yessterdan I utterly failed to do the stuff I said I'd do, but on the plus side I did get to play a lot of crazy party and had a great evening with one of my friends, albeit both mrs. dark and I crashed rather early due to unexpectedly strong cocktails and a very large Mexican meal .

I will say it seems odd going back to a place where they know meby name and where I've been roughly once a year or so for the last fourteen years where I first went as a student, now going with my wife of all things.

Really, the thought of me having a wife still seems totally bizarre, bizarre! heck, the shear unlikeliness of us getting together and the amount of romantic clichés we went through, it feels like my life has become  an extremely! shlocky film .

Well that's enough of that, especially at four in the morning.

Dark, to answer your question about where I live I live in Texas. It's pretty warm now but tomorrow through around Monday it's going to rain a lot. Right now I was listening to the legend of Zelda  Twilight princess  English dub.