My sister is usually pretty good when it comes to buying me gifts, but like the rest of my family and friends, few of them try to satisfy my nerdy tendencies, so it was a real surprise when she got me this late birthday gift...

An old 1975 Star Trek annual in almost perfect condition. As customary with these old annuals, it has been autographed by the previous owner. Sorry Ashley House, but I own your book now!

What's that? You want a sneak peak inside? Well sure!

Moving on...

My PS3 is off being repaired and so far Sony have failed to contact me (as promised) to say they've received it. I'll have to assume it has either been

a) Lost in transit
b) Stolen by the weird looking Australia Post dude
c) Sony did get it and haven't contacted me because they've been super busy

To fill the PS3 gaming gap, I went and got Borderlands for the 360 last week. I've been playing it a bit over the weekend and so far it has been quite impressive. The RPG elements have been the drawing card for me.

To wrap things up, I guess G013M is ticked off with me over something and took it out on me by tagging me with one of those annoying blog things. So here it goes, 5 things you probably didn't (or want to) know about me:

1) My Maths scores in school were very ordinary, yet I'm now a bank manager and studying physicist (By the way, I've lost your money and my calculations for this nuclear weapon will kill us all)
2) I was recently very happy to discover that my Blackberry will hold its charge longer than a day. All I had to do was turn off the twitter program. So sorry all, no more tweets from me. (You can stop cheering now)
3) I let my wife buy $10 boxes of blueberries for the damn guinea pig every few days. Soon she'll want to take the cats out fine dining.
4) I recently acquired an autographed copy of Ashley House's cIassic book from 1975. (if you don't know what I'm on about, it's your own fault for not reading my blog in full)
5) I have holidays in 4 weeks time but only have 4 days. I'm thinking a few nights at the casino with some dining and shopping.

That's all from me. Take it easy.

Last month my ageing 360 passed away and I decided it was time to upgrade to a later model with a HDMI and bigger HDD. I waited a couple of weeks for the price drop and picked up an Elite at a decent price. The old 360 is sitting in the garage open and exposed hoping that the electronics part of my uni physics course I did 3 years ago taught me enough to fix a console (I doubt it).

Apparently the drive killing disease that infected the 360 was contageous and spread to the PS3. Last night I had happily kicked off a session of a new game when it froze. Upon rebooting I discovered that it no longer wanted to detect any type of disk. When the 360 died I had just started Batman and ODST. Last week I had just started Demon's Soul and Uncharted 2...life is not fair.

My interest in consoles has been waning lately. They are a huge investment money wise and time wise. I've been finding that the handhelds are satisfying my game craving. This generation of consoles has been dissapointing as far as reliability goes. I only hope that what ever comes out next gets a little more attention to its workmanship so it lasts longer that a day over the warranty period.

Everyone usually has one of those times during the year where everyone's birthday, anniversary or some kind of event falls due within a short space of time. The end of September is that time for me. Multiple birthdays and functions are just around the corner and my wife and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary last night. Nothing overly special this year though, I got her some jewelery and we spent a nice evening out for dinner.

A couple of weeks ago my 360 gave up on me. I opted for a replacement as it was out of warranty and the hard drive had a mere few mb to spare. I picked that up last week and also a copy of Batman. I had no real interest in the game, but as usual I gave into the hype. I'm only 2% in, but it seems like a solid title so far. I look forward to unlocking some more of the special moves which I'm keen to give a try.

Finally, I'm going to use this last part of my blog to give a plug to the awesome Astronomy Union. Whether you are a pro star gazer or have an keen interest in the planets, stars and other celestial wonders, the Astronomy Union is the place to discuss it all!