You shouldn't be allowed near computers...

I got home today to quite a surprise. As soon as I entered the house, the first thing I saw was my brother laughing. A moment later, he was telling me the reason why.

Apparently, Bertha has taken his computer to bits because of what I'd done to it about a week ago. I'd edited a file on his computer that would redirect Facebook and Interpals to a gay porn site and a general porn site. Now, he's dismantled the computer in an attempt to fix this. Why? The problem will remain the same when he puts the computer back together because it's a software problem, not a hardware problem. Dismantling the computer isn't going to do anything!

This whole thing shows that some people should NOT be allowed around computers.

Question: what will he do after he puts the computer back together? Is he going to end up saying that the computer is a piece of crap and try to buy another one?

I think this whole thing is the bullshit he was talking about yesterday. Bertha told me he'd received a call from Microsoft about some hackers on Interpals. He was apparently talking to this Microsoft employee for 45 minutes. Now, if this call DID happen, it would not have lasted 45 minutes because if Microsoft were talking to people about hackers, they'd want to be quick about it since there are billions of users of Windows. They wouldn't have time to waste like that.

Bertha should give up on computers.

Tree felling? Chest pains?

I think I upset Richard once again today.

As soon as I arrived at the project, I was introduced to a new youth, Aaron, who was joining us for the week after punching someone in school. I'm not entirely sure why, but he was suspended because he has a "gang of people" with him. Those people just followed him, though, and it wasn't something he wanted.

I had to go to the land with Aaron and work on three tasks. All of these tasks were challenging. Of the three, I'm unsure if the tree felling or moving things up to the top of the shed was the hardest. Probably the shed. We got a few items up to the top of the shed, but that didn't last long because it was a mess up there when we began. There wasn't any room to put anything. It needs clearing up, but I'd hate to go ahead and do it, then find out we moved something around up there that shouldn't have been moved.

Task 2 involved felling a couple of trees. I ended up hurting my chest during this task. I got most of the way through one of the trunks, and as Aaron and I pushed on the tree, it suddenly fell off of the stump, and I smashed chest first into the stump, which is still hurting. After some shifting of the tree, we got it to fall in the correct direction, missing the phone wire and anything else that could've been damaged, so that went well.

The second tree took a little more time to get through, and we had to pull that one in the correct direction using a rope. I was the one pulling the rope, so I had to move quickly when it started falling so it didn't land on me. That one fell just as Richard came up to the land to see how we were doing.

I had to explain that the third task, digging a rather deep hole, wouldn't be possible. The ground is rather solid. Even with about 20 minutes of swinging a pick axe, we barely got down 6 inches, and it wasn't that wide of a hole either. I think the actual width he wants is about...15-20 inches, and about that deep down. We managed to get about a 6-inch deep hole about 6 inches wide in 20 minutes or so. We need a digger to do it because it'll take forever with a pick axe and a shovel.

After cutting the two trees into logs, we put the tools and all away, then returned to the Hotel. I went into the toilets to wash the mud off my hands, then went into the room where we usually sat. Richard did not look impressed that the two of us had turned up there. It made me wonder if we should've just stayed out at the field and just done nothing.

It was nice to get back to the Hotel, though, because it seems that Richard was getting some lessons in C from a guy in California. He's going to be getting those lessons for an hour every day this week. Sadly, I think I will have to miss out on these lessons. I'd love to learn more about C, though.

I think I'm going to have to try to teach myself while I'm at home...see if I can get any further with understanding C that way. It will take a lot of work to do it that way, though. But if it's all you've got, it's what you're going to have to deal with.

Tomorrow, I think I will remain at the field until 15:30ish, then head back to the train station. I hoped that this week, Richard, Erik and I would be trying to learn and understand more about C. That will only happen if I work on it alone at home.

Public transport letdowns

There are times when relying on public transport is a complete and utter nightmare. Today is one of those days.

I arrived at the train station as usual, only to discover that the track was flooded and that the trains for this morning had been cancelled. I was told that a bus would take everyone waiting for the train to Liskeard. However, after almost an hour of waiting, everybody had given up, myself included.

Even if the bus DID turn up, we would have all missed our trains from Liskeard to...wherever.

After giving up, I headed back into town. I purchased some phone credit so that I could call Richard and let him know I wouldn't be in today due to the tracks being flooded and that fucking bus not showing up. What happened to the fucking thing? Were we all lied to? Was there a bus coming, or was it to get our hopes up?

Either way, I'm pissed off currently because I wanted to see how much further we could get with the simple Yahtzee project that we're writing in C. How far will they get in the project today? Sadly, I'm not there to see...

Coding problems

I got a little bit of a surprise when I arrived at the project today. Across the road from the Hotel was a smashed-up car. I do not know what happened, but when I mentioned it to Richard, he said it'd been there for about two hours. A car crash, apparently. What happened to the other car supposedly involved in the whole thing? I only saw the one car.

We were working on programming our little game of Yahtzee again today. We appear to have gotten a lot further but are still encountering several problems. A main problem we're having is storing player names and recalling those names before each roll. We discovered that we can store names via the following command - char playerName[10][100]. The [10] should allow us to store up to 10 player names, and [100] will allow up to 100 characters; at least...that's the theory. If the names ARE being stored, how do we go about recalling stored data from the [10] within our program?

If anyone is interested in just how our program is looking and could help at all, check out this thread on Cprogramming.com. Any help on this whole thing would be much appreciated.

When I got home, I was told that an older man had fallen to his death from a window at the old people's home across the road from where I live. Out of curiosity, I decided to search Google for any news about the event. Here is what I found.

Hillcrest House care home fined for Looe window fall death

The owners of a care home in Cornwall must pay £135,000 after a resident fell to his death from a faulty window.

Michael and Sharon Cotton who run Hillcrest House on Barbican Road, Looe admitted failing to ensure the safety of residents.

Truro Crown Court heard that Reginald Gibbings, 89, fell 12ft (3.6m) out of a window due to a faulty catch.

The couple were fined £40,000 and must pay £95,963 for Mr Gibbings' funeral and Health and Safety Executive costs.

The court heard that Mr Gibbings, who died in 2008, had Alzheimer's disease and had moved into the care home five days before his death.

He fell through a ground-floor bedroom window, suffering multiple injuries and died two days later.

Prosecutor Kate Brunner said the windows at the home had restrictors to prevent them being opened more than 10cm (4ins) but that a screw had not been tightened sufficiently and the window opened too far.

Judge Philip Wassall said the restrictor was used contrary to its design and there was no procedure to ensure that staff were instructed how to use it.

He said the system was defective but not significantly so.

That was such a surprise to find out about. The guy had only moved into the place about five days before he died. It sounds like he may have been safer just living wherever he was living before this all happened.

Hotel 626

Yesterday, I heard about a free horror game called Hotel 626, apparently made by Doritos. After seeing YouTube user PewDiePie play it a little bit, I thought I'd try it out because it looked interesting. The sad thing is that the game doesn't seem to exist online anymore. I've tried a few sites to find it, and no sites let me play it. Does this mean the game is gone for good?

If anyone knows where you can play the game, please let me know.

You can't be THAT stupid!

I...really give up hope of Mom ever learning from her mistakes.

I got home not too long ago, and my sister came upstairs to talk to me, so I joked about Bertha's computer not working. After a bit of whispered conversation about that, she'd told me, "You know he's moved back in, right? Why do you think he's here all the time?". I sighed at this because...it's basically true. If he's not officially moved back in, he's damn close to moving back in.

On Saturday, I saw him unloading his broken piece of shit computer from Mom's car, as well as a bag of clothes. At that point, I thought, "Oh great...he's moving back in whether I'm still here or not." I didn't want to believe that was possible, but I guess it is now. The family aren't going to be happy to hear about that if he's officially living here again. Honestly, I hope Mom is prepared to lose some family...or even a lot of family because of her fucking idiotic choice. It's extremely idiotic because he's not even a loyal person! What will happen is that Mom will lose family, Bertha will eventually find someone else he likes, he'll walk out on her, and Mom is going to be left with no fucking dickhead boyfriend and very little family. Well, I guess it's her fucking choice.

I've got to work on getting myself moved out because I think I'll get driven insane if I live here with him. I think that was proven when I told Bertha, "It's not because of sugar...it's because you won't SHUT THE FUCK UP!" when he told me I have mood swings because of having too much sugar.

What I will have to do later, if I can drag Mom away from Bertha, is ask her if Bertha has seriously moved back in with her. I talked about him with her this morning when she took me to town to catch the train. She admitted she was stupid for loving him...and there was some more to that line, but I forget what it is now. The question now is, just HOW stupidly in love with him is she? Are you stupid enough to risk the loss of family? I hope not because that's going to be the most REGRETFUL thing she'll ever do.

I'll post here again once I find out what is happening.

No Hope Left?

I read some of the stupidest rumours yesterday when looking for information on the upcoming Resident Evil 6 (released tomorrow!).

According to some rumours, Capcom plans to kill off either Leon, Chris, or possibly both. Would a company like Capcom really be so stupid as to do that?

Sites like Amazon have in the Product Description put "...sees series favourites, Chris and Leon...". That's exactly what they are - favourites. If you kill the fan-favourite characters, what do you think that will do to your series? It would pretty much kill the series because no one will be interested anymore. The reason for these rumours is that Capcom wants to reboot the series. Are you saying they can't reboot the series unless they kill off peoples' favourite characters?

If that rumour is true, then the Resident Evil 6 tagline "No Hope Left" will be accurate. There will be no hope left for the series. It will be over.

I'm hoping that they aren't that stupid. I understand the want for a reboot since a lot of people don't like the direction the series has been going since Resident Evil 4. Still, a reboot doesn't mean you must kill off characters everybody likes.