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Bad Things Come in Three's...

.. or so they say. Well this has been a week of bad luck for me with three annoying break downs. On Tuesday Lotro stopped working for me then on Wednesday my car broke down finally on Friday our washing machine stopped working. All three breakdowns proved to be non-trivial hard to fix issues and each in its own way has proved to be significant annoyance over the last few days.

In my household I am considered to be the fixer of electrical stuff which includes computers and washing machines. My attempts to kick start Lotro were frustratingly unsuccessful despite getting much help from the Codemasters tech support people.

The washing machine proved similarly intractable. For starters it is a built in appliance,well built in. It seemed like I had to dismantle half our kitchen to get at the thing. Then it turned out to have a solid outer shell with no obvious access panel. Eventually I had to turn it on its side in order to gain restricted entry from the base.

My repair skills do not stretch to automobiles so when my car rolled to a juddering halt on the side of a public road I had to call in a mechanic. Then I discovered that the mechanic who usually services my car is on holiday leaving me to contact someone I had never used before. This gentleman towed my car to his garage on Wednesday and it hasn't moved from there since. Last I heard (on Friday) the mechanic muttered something about timing belts and stripping down the engine. I am almost afraid to ring him on Monday to find out what happens next.

The good news is that washing machine and Lotro are now fixed. The washing machine had a clogged drain pump which needed dismantling and cleaning out. Lotro was not working because of a problem with Internet Explorer. I never use IE (I'm a Firefox man) so I didn't realise it wasn't working but apparently Lotro's launcher needs it. If problems come in threes then perhaps solutions come in threes also - fingers crossed I get good news on my car tomorrow.

On the gaming front Lotro being out of action allowed me to spend more time on Freespace 2 (much better than 1 even though the game play is almost identical - there is a blog post in this later about the relative importance of game play versus graphics). I also delved back into Guild Wars Nightfall. Despite my reservations about the world being lifeless I really began to enjoy it. Guild Wars does away with all the time wasting annoyances that plague most MMORPGs. If ever they figure out how to attach the guild wars mechanic onto a full world type MMORPG I don't think I play anything else ever again.

Oh and I've been indulging in a fair bit of Gladiatus too. Lord knows why - it is entirely pointless but I have worked my way up to 1300 in the Arena rankings. That is 1300th place in the lowest league of the arena. Fear me.

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