Gotta Love Mondays

I knew there was a reason I don’t get into the office at 8am any more…. besides the pain of getting up at 6.30. I’m normally still there 10 hours later which is exactly what happened today.  Attempted to leave at 4pm but got caught up in emails.

Still, I can’t complain too much.  The day flew by and I’m now one day closer to the three day weekend I’ve decided to take next weekend.  It’s going to be a busy week so I think I deserve an extra day off at the end of it.  If I’m lucky the rest of the week will be just like it.

A Family Saturday

While July 4th means no fireworks for us here in the UK, what it does mean for me is a lot of family birthdays all rolled up into a short space of time.

Hence after a looooong (and what I think was a well deserved after a hard working week) lay in everyone (including some cousins I haven’t seen in 5 or so years!) pitched up at the pub for a family meal. It was good to see everyone sat around the same table because it doesn’t happen that often these days now we’re all off living our own lives. Plus the food wasn’t bad either! It’s been ages since I last had waffles but these were good! Wish more restaurants/pubs in the UK served them.  Actually there’s a lot of American food I wish was served in the UK but I think that’s for another post entirely some day.

Didn’t get up to anything too exciting in the evening. Catching up with podcasts (I’m about six months behind) and watching CSI. Problem is with the weekends is that they fly by all too quickly.

Another Week Gone

Next week is going to be a complete nightmare for me. The start of the new financial quarter means endless reports needing to be written regarding the quarter just gone.

I had psyched myself up to spend the beginning of next week running around like a crazy person as the deadlines loom for everyone to input their data into the system I support. I thought I was going to experience a quiet Friday… the calm before the storm.

Seems everyone else had other ideas though and for the first time in living memory they all decided their data had to be entered before the deadline. My quiet Friday disappeared very quickly… although luckily everyone only had minor queries and nothing went horribly wrong.  In the end I managed to drag myself into the weekend without too much hassle.  Finished up the week by seeing Ice Age 3 (see last post) and am now going to take the next couple of days to relax before things get crazy again.

Enjoy the weekend and finally Happy Independence Day to everyone in the US Enjoy your holiday weekend and your fireworks and if you’re working just make sure you don’t work too hard!

Review: Ice Age 3 – 3D

Went with the group last night to see Ice Age 3, which despite all the blockbusters our this summer was the only film so far this year that I have actually had to queue to get into.

What was good about it was that they didn’t overdo with 3D stuff.  Occasionally when you get movies like this they go all out with the effects and are using the technology more to show off. In this film though it seemed they were using it to enhance the graphics which were definitely the best I have ever seen in an animated film.

Overall the story line was good and the movie was funny. Simon Pegg did an awesome job with the character ‘Buck.’ I don’t feel like I wasted my money on this one like I did with ‘Year One’ last week.

Oh and the specs made everyone look really fashionable too!

An Anniversary… Just a Little Late

I only just realised today that this blog is over a year old. I started (if you can call it that) writing in it back in June 2008.

It’s probably been a bit neglected since then but hopefully I’m changing that. It’s really weird how time speeds by. It really doesn’t seem that long ago.

Becoming Cooler

Hopefully the hot weather the UK has been experiencing (I’m ignoring the laughter of my Texan friends at the moment) will be coming to an end tomorrow to be replaced by the all too familiar sight of British rain.  I have no idea what the temp was today but it definitely felt crazy hot as soon as I stepped out the front door today, and that was before 9am.

Luckily the heat didn’t seem to go to my head and the work day passed without any kind of incident.  I’m still a bit confused though as to why my mornings pass much quicker than my afternoons. Still, one more day and then it’s the weekend.  I’m looking forward to a lay in, in a room that hopefully isn’t at a temperature of 30C.

No plans at the moment except a trip to see Ice Age 3 tomorrow night. Not sure what to expect from it.

Getting Back Into It

I said I would try and start writing again and after some procrastination and some gentle pushing from some people I’m actually sitting down to write a full post again. Go me!  This would have been yesterday but sitting in the office until 7pm put pay to that idea as it sucked away all my free time for the evening.

The UK is currently in the middle of a heatwave.  Temperatures are pushing 30C which for a lot of the world is a hot spring day. For us it’s somewhat of a crisis since the British don’t cope with heat well.  The awesome thunderstorms this causes make it almost worth it but they have been somewhat lacking around MK recently.

Work is going well.  We’ve been busy recently but it’s slowly winding down for the summer when people are traditionally on leave and the office is a little quieter. I’m pushing for promotion (and the pay rise it brings) and have some work to complete in order to achieve that and prove my worthyness.  Hopefully I can have that done by the time Autumn comes around because….

…. In other news I am currently going through the process of buying a house.  The pay rise would come in handy for making the mortgage easier to pay.  So far the process hasn’t been too bad. There’s obviously been the inevitable drain on the bank account for legal fees etc and plenty of forms to fill in but nothing horribly complicated.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it continues like that. I would hate for anything to fall through right now.

I think I may now go and complain about the heat some more…. however as a cooling final thought, July 1st means we’re halfway to Christmas

If…

If I forget to write in this thing tomorrow you have my permission to yell at me.

I really must get around to it…

I Will Write in My Blog…

I will write in my blog

I will write in my blog

I will write in my blog

Really I will. I just need kicking sometimes.

Day in Review – Wednesday 20th May 2009

Didn’t wake up in the best mood today.  It didn’t help that the first email I read was about our stupid government screwing students again.  I don’t want to use this post to go on a political rant but I can’t wait to kick their lying fat arses our of government.  The sooner an election is called the better.

Work today was fairly standard.  Again working on Drupal and getting completely confused by the views feature.  I think I managed to come up with something before I left though.  Left half hour early today to make up for the extra time I did yesterday so no one can accuse me of working too hard today.

I’m winding up today by watching the UEFA Cup final. I’m trying to hang on to what football there is left because in a couple of weeks there will be none for the remainder of the summer.  No NFL, no NHL, no EPL… what sport is there to keep me going?! I don’t mind watching the odd game of baseball but it hasn’t really got the same level of excitment as the others.

As for cricket….. just no.

Day in Review – Tuesday 19th May 2009

My workload is insane at the moment.  Therefore I don’t really appreciate spending my morning wasting my time looking at a problem with a major application at work, only to find it’s been accidentally wrecked by a collegue who wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing the day before.  How do you accidentally cut and paste a folder?! Some people are a danger to technology!

Rest of my day wasn’t too exciting. Currently working with Drupal to evaluate whether we can use it to replace our commerical content management systems (did I just lose a load of readers there?).  Somehow managed to get sucked into that so much during the afternoon that I ended up leaving the office an hour late…. oops. I really must try to stop that considering my flexi time is a little on the high side at the moment.

The plan tomorrow? Much of the same!

Writing Again

I should really try and start writing again.

Maybe a day where I’ve been glued to a computer screen for 10 hours trying to fix a problem at work isn’t the best time to start.

Maybe tomorrow?

Sick Day

I never made it to my desk as intended today. After the illnesses of the weekend I decided to stay away for just one more day. If nothing else, to save those I work with from catching whatever it was that knocked me out for the best part of the weekend.

As a result my highly exciting tasks of the day have relvolved around eating something for the first time (Yay!), taking pictures of the surprise snow we got today (that I didn’t know about until someone the other side of the world told me it was there!) and photo editing.

I was then caught off guard when the groceries were delivered half hour early which meant I needed to go outside in bare feet.  Wasn’t fun!

Still, it’s more than likely back to work tomorrow. I have a feeling it’ll be a long week!

Good Luck Katie

My favourite non-traditional-student is starting an amazing new job tomorrow which she’ll totally rock!

I just wanted to use this to wish her luck because at the time I’ll be slaving away at my own desk. (or at home ill)

Have a great time!

New Year, New Effort

I’ve really neglected this thing recently haven’t I?  Nothing written since the end of November!

I guess a new year is a good time to try and revive it? If not only for my own benefit but maybe for the people I won’t get to talk to as often now the new year is taking people in new directions.

I wish I could say 2009 has started brightly but it really hasn’t. Especially today. I try not to be negative but sometimes it can’t be helped.  So far today’s woes have so far included:

1. Everyone around me (family, friends & work colleagues) have been ill over the past few weeks. I rarely get ill. I haven’t had a day off sick from work in over three years.  But this morning it caught up with me.  It’s been trying for a few days. New Years Eve I briefly woke up with a sore throat but it seemed to disappear within a few hours.  However today I woke up with a headache, feeling sick and with very little energy. After managing to just about take an aspirin I passed out again resulting in:
2. Me missing a phone call I really wish I had taken!
3. In fact I’m coming to the realisation that I don’t give enough time to my friends. All of them. I really need to change this. I will change this.
4. The Colts lost.  I don’t know how or by what score. I haven’t been able to bring myself to check yet. But one message not long after the game went into overtime told me all I needed to know.  I’ve followed NFL in the past loosely but this is the first season I have really been into it and the first season I’ve dedicated myself to following a team. I’m bitterly disappointed. Especially after a 9 game unbeaten run.
5. I’m guessing this is as a result of 1. But I just cannot warm up today! I’ve been told by people in the know that the secret to surviving this is layers (although I’m not convinced hairstyles has anything to do with it). I’m wearing several tops including my Colts jersey (in mourning, and technically (due to a 1.30am kick off) today is still game day in the UK) and I’ve not stopped shivering all morning.
6. Providing I wake up in some semi-fit state tomorrow work starts again. I’ve worked only a handful of days over the past couple of weeks so I’ve got myself in a relaxed state.  A five day week does not strike me as a whole lot of fun.
7. Again work related. January marks the start of the fourth financial quarter at work.  Which means every man, woman and child (well maybe not the kids) will want reports on what happened in the third quarter.  As the company’s resident dimensional modelling expert (it’s a posh term for meaning I can do clever stuff with data and numbers) that means in a couple of weeks i’ll be wanting to hang myself… well that or question if I am in the right job.  If that happens I’ll try and make a point of writing about it.  I need to keep telling myself that it’s just a job and I should leave those issues at the door. But sometimes people can be really unreasonable.

So I guess it’s safe to say I have some issues today.  I suspect I’m just feeling sorry for myself because of being ill. With any luck I’ll wake up tomorrow and this will all be gone.

Trying to Survive

I’ve felt horrible all day.  I hope i’m not coming down with something! I have too much work to do.

I awoke insanely early (for a Saturday) and after getting convinced to go back to sleep (from halfway around the world!) I somehow managed to end up asleep until mid-afternoon.

I got up for a few hours but i’ve now given up again and gone back to bed. I’m not winning today!

Holidays are Coming!!

I may be a little bit behind the times but today was the first time this year I saw the Coca-Cola ‘Holidays are Coming’ ad.

It’s officially Christmas!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Shit! I missed the Thanksgiving NFL. I completely forgot it was on and I missed the entire first game! I was watching the stupid UEFA cup instead!

During my rant earlier I forgot to say Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans reading this!

I hope you’re all having a great weekend

Christmas

Borrowed from my favourite non-traditional student.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Gift bags! I’m useless at wrapping.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
Normally artificial as our dog would hit the tree with her tail and send bits everywhere! This is the first Xmas without her so we might go for real

3. When do you put up the tree?
Around the start of December

4. When do you take the tree down?
Around my Mum’s birthday which is Jan 6th

5. Do you like eggnog?
I haven’t tried it.

6. Favourite gift received as a child?
The one that sticks in my mind was my first mountain bike

7. Hardest person to buy for?
Everyone! I am useless at this present buying thing.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
Probably my brother

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
No

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Cards. If it has to be email it will actually be a typed message

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Hmm. A torch?

12. Favourite Christmas Movie?
I don’t really have one…

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
I haven’t yet. I need to get my act together and come up with some ideas!

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Not that I remember

15. Favourite thing to eat at Christmas?
My Mum’s amazing dinner. Pringles. Chocolate. Everything basically! Since we don’t have Thanksgiving over here it’s really our one time of the year to go all out food crazy.

16. Lights on the tree?
At least two sets

17. Favourite Christmas song?
Fairytale in New York

18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home?
I much prefer to be at home

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixon, Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? (And no I didn’t look it up!) (Is it cheating if I leave Katie’s answers here?)

20. Angel on the tree top or star?
Star

21. Open presents Christmas Eve or in the morning?
Always in the morning

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
The insane amount of people going shopping

23. Favourite ornament theme or colour?
White lights and silver.

24. Favourite Christmas dinner?
Turkey. Again we don’t have Thanksgiving so this is the time of year it appears.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
Everyone keeps asking me and I don’t have an ideas to give them. I think I may be getting a Colts jersey though!

26. Who is most likely to respond to this?
Whoever wants to

It took me forever to take out all the strange American spellings in this!

No Power

The power in our house tripped during the middle of the night.

No idea what caused it but the end result is the power supply unit (PSU) of my main desktop PC now being non functioning.

This really doesn’t amuse me much. It’s about the only part on a PC I have no experience of replacing!

Meh.  Today was going so well too.

Learning News

So now we all know what the secret meetings yesterday were about.

In an IT department of about 30 people roughly a third are being made redundant. They are asking for volunteers but if no one comes forward they will be forced to pick.

Most other people will have to reapply for their jobs, with the exception of about 5 people… including me. I somehow escaped.

It’s fair to say that everyone was a little distracted and that not much work got done today. Everything should fall into place in January so then we will know who is going.

Other than that it’s not been a very exciting day. I have another big project that I am working on at the moment so that has recently taken off and is now taking up the majority of my days. How successful it will be with all the upheaval that is happening remains to be seen.

Back to Work

I wasn’t happy when my alarm went off at 6.30am this morning.  I was more away than I thought I would be, but it’s still a good four hours earlier than I have been waking up for the past week.

I had 37 emails this morning when I arrived at work. Not too bad I thought by normal standards. By the time I had worked through them I was left with 9 that actually needed me to do anything about them.  Managed to get that down to about 2 emails by the time I left for the day but I think I would have finished if I hadn’t had to spend all afternoon in a freezing meeting room talking about things I already know about.  I hate pointless meetings.

Something is going down at work and I can’t quite work out what. A lot of meetings are going on between staff and HR and no one is allowed to talk about what they contain. As far as I know I am one of the few people (I only know of one other) not involved in these meetings. I haven’t quite decided whether or not this is a good or bad thing.  I’m currently working on the theory it’s probably nothing to do with me so I should quit thinking about it. Still, it’s no fun not knowing!

People at work also annoy me. When i’ve been off work for a week it’s quite important that I sit down and read my emails and see if there’s anything urgent that needs my attention. Therefore I would appreciate it if you fucked off and stop asking me to do stuff right after I get back!

Someone told me that complaining that your feet were cold when not wearing socks is like complaining about the government and then not voting.  I don’t much care today… i’m not wearing socks and my feet are freezing!

And don’t get me started on the government!

Loss of Appetite

I had pizza for dinner last night.

My stomach hasn’t remained in one place since.

I’ve lost my appetite today.

A Week Away

It was really good to have a week off. I think this was my first full week since June and between now and then have been a stressful few weeks work wise with some big projects. I really should make the effort to take more time off work since I always end up carrying days over. That’s not going to happen this side of Xmas though due to other projects I have to get done. I know sometimes it sounds like I don’t like my job but I do (mostly). It just takes a lot out of me mentally sometimes… although that’s a thought that makes me feel guilty considering i’m just a programmer and there are other people out there doing way more important jobs.

It really was just a week of relaxation which is exactly what I enjoy from my holidays. I enjoy city breaks etc. (such as my trip to Vegas last new years) but there are times where I want to be extremely boring and spend my days laid back.

Luckily for me, that was how most of the days worked out. Rubbish TV, alcohol and food that was probably incredibly bad for me in a forest, near the mountains miles away from my office.

From what I can remember:

Monday – Chinese (Duck Spring Rolls)
Tuesday – Italian (Spaghetti Carbonara and Garlic Bread)
Wednesday – A Bit of Everything (Onion Bahji’s, Garlic Pizza Bread with Cheese and ribs in a honey glaze)
Thursday – Indian (Chicken Korma)

I’m thinking I need to continue that theme tonight with pizza before trying to make an effort to become healthy next week.

Regular trips out were made to get fresh air, buy more alcohol and buy more Pringles (BBQ FTW).  A bowling trip was also made midweek which I did win, although I was a little disappointed with my scores. I started OK, got a little better in the second game and then it all went downhill from there.  I’m out of practice! This is probably the first time I have bowled since March.

These things are always over too soon though. I’m always torn going away due to losing the home comforts but that’s measured by the getting away from work and everything that annoys me about everyday life. However two days and I’ll be back in the craziness that is our office. I just hope I can convince this weekend that it wants to go sloooowly.

6.30am on Monday is going to be painful.

Pictures will follow as soon as I am happy with the editing.

5 Random Things

I was tagged by Miss Devyl to write 5 fun/interesting facts about myself so here goes:

1) I am (well… was) a trained ear piercer.  I had a certificate and everything but haven’t actually put anything through anyone’s ears in about 5 years so it’s probably safe to say I am out of practice.

2) My previous jobs before getting into IT include bank cashier and a jeweller where I specialised in watches and diamonds.

3) I’m hopelessly addicted to technology. I am rarely more than a foot from my phone at any time. Being cut off from the internet wouldn’t amuse me

4) Foods/Drinks I HATE: Tomatoes, Mashed Potatoes, Mushrooms, Cola Drinks (e.g. Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper etc.) & Coffee

5) Sports Teams I Follow: Manchester Utd (Soccer), MK Dons (Soccer: My local team), Indianapolis Colts (NFL) and Detroit Red Wings (NHL).

Going Away

Spend yesterday evening travelling around the Midlands a bit. Yesterday was Top Gear Live at the NEC in Birmingham and after having such a great time last year I couldn’t wait to go again this year. The difference being this time I remembered to take my real camera and didn’t have to rely on a poor camera phone.

The photos aren’t great quality due to the lighting but are greatly improved on anything I managed last year:

From Top Gear Live – Nov 16th

Something strange happened to me yesterday. I forgot to eat. Usually when hungry my body lets me know and I attempt to find something in the kitchen. But yesterday I skipped breakfast (I rarely eat in the mornings anyway. It makes me ill), completely forgot about lunch and then missed getting something to eat in the evening due to seeing Top Gear. I’ll have to try and not do that again. 40 hour gaps between meals probably aren’t all that healthy.

After Top Gear I headed to Leicester for the weekly visit. I figured getting it out of the way yesterday would leave me the entirety of today to be lazy and think about packing for the trip I am leaving on tomorrow. Packing isn’t not something I am usually very good at so I need to give myself a good run at it. I did some this morning and I think I have it mostly covered.

Tomorrow I head up North for four days to get completely away from work. Thanks to the wonders of technology I may be able to post but commenting could be a bit tricky. Pictures and stories will follow next weekend.

Feeling Better

After spending most of yesterday just feeling horrible I felt a lot better today. I actually didn’t go into work feeling like complete crap.

Today was especially helped by the fact it was relaxed and I can’t remember my phone ringing once with any sort of problem. I like the days where I get away from the office on time. They seem to happen less often recently and I really need to sort that.

Past the half way point to the weekend now which hopefully means it’s all downhill until my week off. I shall be heading up towards Penrith for the week which is about as far away from work as I can get without leaving the country.

I’m looking forward to not having to deal with people for five days.

Illness

Like everyone else at this time of year I’ve suddenly contracted an illness.

As a result I’m feeling very sorry for myself today. I’ve dragged myself through a morning at work and after lunch will tackle some more. I hope of disappears before I go away next week

Recovery

After a traumatic Sunday morning I just about recovered during the course of the afternoon. Football can work wonders to take your mind off disturbing things.  I watched the first half of the Colts game before finally needing to get to sleep.

Today hasn’t been great as Mondays go. It’s probably punishment or something for the fact I have next week off.  5 days of pain before 5 days relaxing. It’s keeping the world in balance.

My 45 minute drive to work turned into nearly a two hour journey due to some stupid traffic census stopping all cars.  What kind of muppet plans a traffic census for 8am on a Monday morning? Their results will be totally screwed by the fact they held everyone up.

I arrived at the office feeling a little stressed after that and unfortunately it was one of those mornings where no one can leave you alone for 5 minutes. There were constant interruptions and my work probably suffered because of it.  I ended up leaving late due to the chaos getting to work.

Maybe I’ll sort these things out tomorrow.

Trapped

When you’re in a place you don’t want to be with no escape and very little to do what do you do? Blog in my case!

Friday was as quiet as could be expected in an empty office. For the first time in a few weeks I managed to be out of the door at 4pm. Normally something will go wrong and I end up being there until 6 or 7. I feel like I’m winding down for my week off beginning on the 17th. I’ll actually be able to refuse work this week as I won’t be able to fit it in until December.

I needed to get some small things like watch batteries done this weekend. Driving home on Friday night I suddenly found some motivation and got it out of the way there and then. I hate giving up my weekends to do that kind of thing. If I had left it until Saturday morning I would have struggled to find the energy to do it. Plus I would rather spend my weekends when I am not working with the people I care about and when that can’t happen within my own thoughts.

Sundays are not my favourite part of the weekend. It’s time to visit family which usually means being sat in the corner of the room being ignored. You know the one time I decide not to turn up though I’ll be moaned at. I’m not sure how I coped before the invention of the iPhone though. Writing posts like this, reading Twitter and Facebook just about keep me sane.

This kinda sums it up though…. everyone else just left the room and I’m now sat here on my own. I wonder if anyone will notice if I take a nap

Doing Battle

There were slightly more emails in my work inbox this morning than I was expecting after taking just one day off. Can they not actually cope without me?

In the end the emails got cleared fairly quickly.  I booked various meetings with people making sure the people who wrote nice emails got put at the front of the queue. Those who didn’t had to wait. It’s normally the same people too so I’ve come to expect it.

After a fairly successful morning of troubleshooting (only two people said thank you!) I had quite a frustrating afternoon which involved:

1) A fight with a firewall. It took a few hours but I won.

2) Someone arranging a meeting. And then asking me if it could wait a while when I turned up. Don’t arrange the meeting if you’re too busy!

Tomorrow is Friday and most people are off work.  This either means we’ll have a really quiet day, or I’ll spend all my time answering other people’s phones dealing with problems that don’t belong to me. Still, at least I’ll have the weekend to recover.

Some Political Stuff

I finally decided to get up.

Despite going to bed at somewhere around 4am after watching the election coverage I didn’t get much choice in the matter. We have builders ripping out our bathroom today and they never are the quietest of people.  I suspect at some point during the football this evening staying awake may become an issue. Someone kick me if I look like i’m falling asleep?

I spent last night watching the election results roll in. I’ll admit I didn’t manage to make it right to the end but after Obama won Ohio and sailed above 200 electoral college votes I took a chance and went to bed.  That may have been a sound decision

So I hope most Americans got what they wanted out of the election and get what they want out of the next four years.  I’m not going to say whether the right decision was made or not because i’m in no position to judge your taxes, your healthcare, your hospitals etc.  What I will say is there appears to be a lot of people smiling right now!

But for those of you who didn’t get what you wanted out of last night. Remember to vote for me next time

Zero Sleep

I got zero sleep last night.

Today could be a very long day

Lewis Wins the Championship

Wow. Did anyone see the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix?

They don’t really get any closer than that. Lewis won the championship literally on the final corner of race.

It was a great end to probably one of the best F1 seasons there has been in a while.  Roll on next year!

A Quiet Sunday

I woke up late this morning and wasn’t very with it for a few hours. I even managed to pull up to the wrong petrol pump when I went to fill up. I realised before I got out of my car and luckily the place was empty. I could fix that mistake with a quick bit of reversing.

Not planning on doing a great deal or the rest of the day. I thought about going to see the fireworks in the city tonight but I don’t entirely feel like it now. I’ll probably just catch the F1 this afternoon and then some NFL this evening.

Now October is out of the way I’m hoping for a quiet week. I have meetings most of the day tomorrow and nothing scheduled so far for Tuesday. Wednesday I have booked off because I think it might be quite an interesting news day and they don’t come around all that often.

It might be worth catching.

Ferrari to use Old Pit System

The BBC writes that Ferrari are to revert to using the more traditional “lollipop” method for releasing their cars back into the pit lane during a pit stop.  This replaces the semi-automated method they have been using previously this season.

This has to be a good thing. Too many mechanics have ended up on their ass this season due to mistakes. It was only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.

Traffic

There is nothing more annoying that I can think of than by starting your working day stuck in traffic and having to put up with all the ignorant drivers on the road

Too Fat to Model?

According to a story in today’s Daily Express (I don’t normally read tabloids but it’s all I have today) model Katie Green has given up modelling because “she’s been told she needs to lose two stone”.

Why?! She is nothing short of stunning!

No wonder no one likes the fashion industry any more!

Petrol Prices

On the way home from work last night I was listening to the radio where they were saying that due to the fear caused by the worldwide economic crisis everyone is scaling back on things like food and fuel. This reduction in demand had caused the price of oil to fall to under $90.

So why this morning on the way to work have I noticed BP putting their prices up?!

Facebook 2.0

I downloaded the Facebook v2.0 application onto my iPhone this lunch time.  While I haven’t had too long to play with it first impressions are VERY good.

This is a definite improvment and worth downloading!  Much of the functionality of the Facebook.com website has been added to the application which in v1.x was very basic and did not allow you to do much at all.

Highly recommended.

To The Users of Bluetooth

While users of bluetooth headsets may think they look good and while they are useful in vehicles they have to realise that using then while walking down the street does make them look crazy while talking to themselves

Resizing

Why is it so difficult to resize a picture? I have several photo editing applications on my PC and none of them have an obvious resizing option.  In fact the only way I managed to do it in the end was to use the export functionality in Picasa.  Things should be easier than this.

Exporting in Picasa

Tropical Storm Hanna

I’ve never really paid attention to tropical storms and hurricanes before but since this week has seen them become newsworthy as they line up over the Atlantic I thought I would check out the website of the US’s National Hurricane Centre.

I have no idea if this is normal or not but i’ve noticed that Tropical Storm Hanna will be paying a visit to the UK in the middle of next week…. Could be interesting.

Chrome

The never ending rain and the fact the past 7 days have been spent cat sitting mean I’ve had a while to play around with various bits of software and generally spend my time surfing the internet.  The most interesting thing to emerge over the past week though is Google Chrome.

While I can’t (I’m not a great writer) and won’t offer the most comprehensive of reviews I thought I would note down some of my own personal experiences of using the browser over the past few days.

The thing that strikes you first and foremost is speed.  Opening and closing the browser is on my machines quicker than Firefox 3.  There’s not much in it but there is a noticeable difference. Stability does not seem to be a major issue as I have yet to witness the browser crash.

The interface is clean and leaves a lot of room for the actual contents of the window keeping toolbars to a minimum.  I especially like how the status bar fades in and out depending on whether or not it has any useful information to show.

However there are a handful of issues that at this moment in time are stopping me from using the browser and keeping me tied to Firefox.  Scrolling appears to be one of the areas causing me problems.  So far as I’m away from home this week my sole machine has been my laptop.  Hence I’ve been using the track pad an awful lot to navigate the web.  But for some reason scrolling up on the track pad does not work at all.  Scrolling down works (although the scrolling speed is set much too fast and I end up missing loads of content) but considering I read a lot of blogs from the bottom upwards this is a bit of a show stopper.

My other main problem is ads.  Ad Block Plus on Firefox is a must have extension for me and it works so well I often forget it is there.  While using GMail in Chrome the ads just jumped right out at me and took up vital screen real estate.  Will Google ever fix this? Ad revenue is a significant part of their revenue stream.

So at the moment Chrome does look promising.  I just need those few bugs ironing out before I will actually consider making the jump.

Keeping Up With the News

I’m off work this week, and with my next trip away not until late Novemeber this means I have a lot of time to kill.

After getting some much needed exercise running around the countryside this morning I decided I would spend the rest of the day keeping up with news regarding Hurricane Gustav and the looming transfer deadline in the Premier League.  It’s been interesting keeping up with them both.

My method of choice for finding out the dealings in the transfer market has been a live blog on the BBC Sport website.  I also enjoy reading these, especially as they accept input from texters. It’s a great big conversation centred around the news.

Keeping up with Hurricane Gustav has been made slightly more difficult just because of the sheer number of sources of information to choose from.  In the end I resorted to Sky News on the TV while keeping half an eye on Twitter in the background, although Twitter seemed slightly more distracted by the goings on the Republican National Convention.

A few years ago I remember watching the news while Katrina struck New Orleans and the flooding began.  The level of information available was no where near on this scale.  I think this is definitely one of the ways the new media has made the world that little bit better…

WordPress App for iPhone

I’m currently testing WordPress’ new app for publishing from the iPhone.
I have to say too I’m impressed so far. I’ll continue to test to see what I can get out of it

Reliability

My Vista machine is normally pretty reliable.  I installed iTunes 7.7 on 11th July 2008. It has all be downhill from there…

Down for Maintenance?

The Fail Whale

Twitter is down for maintenance “for a couple of hours.”

I’ll be amazed if they’re back in under three!

Update: Credit where credit is due. They did it. Learnt their lesson from yesterday I think

Hopefully it’s the last time we’ll see the Fail Whale for a while.

iPhone 2.0 – One Week On

It’s been one week since I downloaded and installed the 2.0 software onto my 1st gen iPhone, and while the experience hasn’t been too painful I can’t help but feel a 2.0.1 is right around the corner.

On the plus side the phone seems relatively stable and there have been no major crashes to speak of, even in Safari which was also the more tempermental of the phones applications. The introduction of the third party apps via the app store has also made the device a lot more useful to me.

iPhone's gMap Stuck in Leicester

However there appears to have been a couple of bugs introduced that are beginning to get annoying.  The SMS and Contact apps have taken a performance hit and appear to lag quite significantly.  In fact the keyboard in the SMS app is so slow that sometimes you can be waiting 5-10 seconds for it to actually catch up with what you have been typing.  The location finder also appears to have been broken.  Introduced with the 1.1.4 software update, Google Maps was able to use wi-fi access points and cell towers to be able to locate the phone.  While not hugely accurate it was good enough.  At the moment though my phone seems to think it is in Leicester, over 50 miles away from my current location and nothing i’ve tried has managed to convince it otherwise.  This makes the location features of many of the new applications useless.

The apps I have been using on a daily basis so far are Facebook and Twitterific.  I’ve also installed Evernote and although it has not been used in anger yet I can see how it could be extremely useful if I suddently find myself unable to note down information quickly.  The experience using these has been good so far and I can only hope they get better as they are updated.

JS/Aseljo.k

Windows Live OneCare found what is a suspected trojan this morning: JS/Aseljo.k on one of my systems.

There seems to be very little information on what this actually is and the only mentions of it I can find on the internet occur after July 11th, meaning it must be a recent addition to the program’s signatures.

I can only assume it’s being served by banner ads on various websites.  So far OneCare has been able to remove it so I will keep an eye out and see if it reoccurs.