Andrew's diary

Thursday, 31 January 2002

Mel's parents are now not coming down at the weekend, which is a shame. But, in happier news, the grief and hassle at work seems to have been resolved (for the time being). The website design I proposed which was "crap/not-what-we-want/silly/stupid/unprofessional" is now "wonderful/spot-on/great/fantastic". How did I achieve this miracle? Added another (bigger) link to something which was already linked to on the page and changed a couple of colours.

If it had been said: "this is good, but add another link and change the colours" it would have saved me a whole load of trouble and strife.

Wednesday, 30 January 2002

Mortgage application has (apparently) been received and is being processed, but they want to see the bank statements from our other accounts - fortunately, it's not holding up the application. Went into town and bought Mum's birthday present.

Tuesday, 29 January 2002

Not a lot of resolution at work, but did find out some more details on the third party in our chain.

Monday, 28 January 2002

Urgh - management seem to have a habit of commenting on work and then going off half-cocked, without reading the nice explanatory text (carefully written in words of one syllable). So now I'm feeling rather undervalued, unappreciated and - to be honest - pissed off.

However, in other news: the people who's house we're buying have found somewhere and the people who live their are buying a new house - so we've got a complete chain! :-). Now we just have to hope that it doesn't all fall through; that someone doesn't balls it up (given my luck recently, I'm not counting that out) and that the new house is finished at some point in the relatively near future.

Saturday, 26 January 2002

Awful weather, but went to Eastleigh to buy a new pair of shoes (discovered the last pair had a big slit in the bottom when it was pouring down in Winchester). Watched a lot of House Invaders on UK Style - apparently it's a whole weekend of one programme. Now I just need some power tools & a house and I'll be all set ;-)

Friday, 25 January 2002

Tried to set the record straight at work and, in the same email, hopefully explained why putting a whole website onto a single page is a Bad Thing. Didn't quite descend to having to explain the "Web" bit of "World Wide Web" and the "HT" of "HTML" - I'll save that for later ;-)

Thursday, 24 January 2002

Hang on, just removing the knives from my back. Found out that people were still going behind my back and slagging me off at the same time. Finally, got the solicitors sorted and so sent off the mortgage application.

Wednesday, 23 January 2002

Went on a school trip with Mel. Got headache. Head started getting better after escaping from the screaming children. Telly will be 3-4 weeks apparently. Still chasing up the solicitors: it's the only thing delaying our mortgage application.

Smallville once again featured villain-of-the-week-created-by-kryptonite. It's getting old, very quickly.

Tuesday, 22 January 2002

Worked from home producing mock-ups so people can understand what I'm going on about (if they can't use their imagination, perhaps they shouldn't criticise?). People came to pick up the telly; no new one from Unbeatable though.

Monday, 21 January 2002

Spoke to the people who were going behind my back and seemed to have sorted it out.

Saturday, 19 January 2002

Was checking over the application form for a Scottish Widows Professional mortgage and our solicitor (Hedley Visick & Co) for the conveyancing isn't usable due to it only having one practitioner, whereas Scottish Widows will only deal with firms having 2 or more partners. They'll "get back" to me.

Glen arrived and we had a good night out in Winchester. Wetherspoons were doing glasses of wine at 99p, mmmm.

Friday, 18 January 2002

Tesco want to replace my Wharfedale CTV-890 with an inferior Bush 6690D (I've got an ITV Digital subscription so I don't need an IDTV and I need more than one SCART socket). They said it was out of their hands. Took the money and ordered a Philips 28PW6006 from Unbeatable.

Wednesday, 16 January 2002

Hmm, the people who Just Don't Get It are now going behind my back. Fun. Shopped about for a mortgage.

Tuesday, 15 January 2002

Some people at work Just Don't Get It.

Went back to look at the house in daylight. Still looks good so put an offer in and then went to the estate agent to talk to their "independent" financial advisor. Whilst there, our offer was accepted! We're buying a house! (Quickly knocked up a diagram in Draw. Sorry for the crudity of the model: it's not to scale and I didn't have time to paint it. It's also isometric rather than perspective, so looks weird). The current owners, however, haven't yet started looking: so it may take a while.

Monday, 14 January 2002

Went to look at more houses in Basingstoke this evening, of which the third looks very nice. Parking could be an issue, but it's given us something to think about.

First "new" episode of Enterprise - was pretty good.

Sunday, 13 January 2002

Been looking at houses in Winchester, Eastleigh, Chandlers Ford and, today, Basingstoke. You've got to wonder how on earth people can expect to get the money they're asking and why they don't at least tidy their houses or even dust before putting them on the market.

Saturday, 12 January 2002

Used our voucher for free delivery with Sainsbury's online ordering. It was about as hard work as actually going to the shop itself, especially since most of the stuff you buy at a supermarket is based on what they look like: who can remember exactly which brand of rice they usually get?!

Monday, 07 January 2002

Played a bit with beta versions of RedSquirrel which was very impressive - especially if you've got a 1.1GHz CPU ;-).

Sad news for the Chancellor & his wife today as their new baby daughter died - however, the amount of news coverage of her birth (and now death) is a lot larger than you'd expect for a politician's baby. What about all the other babies which were either born or died this week? Why is Tony Blair saying that "a nation mourns"? If I was really cynical, I'd say the hoopla surrounding the birth was, at least in part, managed by the Labour spin-doctors to try and show Blair & Brown as friends sharing the birth of a child.

Enterprise started on Sky One - I'm really beginning to like the theme music, though without the words on the end credits it's very similar to the end credits on The West Wing.

Saturday, 05 January 2002

Went round estate agents in Eastleigh (at least they don't laugh us off the premises, like the ones in Winchester) and found some houses we could actually afford to buy (just). Not any we'd want to live in though :-(

Thursday, 03 January 2002

Busy morning at work and left early to go and see the bank man about a mortgage - even from my initial scouting about, banks are still uncompetitive. Also went in Thomas Cook to look at holidays, ending up booking a three-day trip to Rome :-)

Wednesday, 02 January 2002

Back at work and on the phone to FordInsure who, once again, have managed to balls up my insurance. I think I'll be renewing with Elephant and save £200.

Still lots of Euro stories on the news - I suspect that the acceptance of it will grow now that it's actually out there and a proper debate can be had on its merits/disadvantages without the jingoistic crap.

Tuesday, 01 January 2002

First day of twenty-oh-two... I wonder when people stopped saying "nineteen-hundred-and-two" and started referring to 1902 as "nineteen-oh-two", as "two-thousand-and-two" sounds awfully long winded. Spent the first sixteen hours of the year in bed with a bad had. Not a promising start :-(