Andrew's diary

Sunday, 31 March 2002

The clocks go forwards so we're now in British Summer Time and the lovely, summer-like weather disappears to be replaced with grey skies and rain.

Saturday, 30 March 2002

I'm coming down with a cold and so that meant I had a bad head and an afternoon in bed. I wake up to find the Queen Mother has died. But at 101, she's had a good innings (as they say) - although it'll be obviously hard on the Queen, losing her sister and mother within a couple of weeks of each other. However, the level of TV coverage wasn't too bad (then again I was in bed for most of it) but there were lots of interviews featuring the Most Stupid Question in the World... Ever: "How do you feel?". It should probably be pointed out that tens of people are dying every day in growing hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians.

Thursday, 28 March 2002

Hmm - ITVD haven't responded to my email and the problem which fixed itself last month hasn't this time. A quick phone call got it sorted, though.

Wednesday, 27 March 2002

The lovely weather continues. Once again ITV-Digital cock-up the broadcast of the new encryption keys, leaving us with a load of blank channels - the same thing happened last month and so I'm blaming ineptitude rather than them being put into administration.

Also went and signed up at our local(ish) Makro. Unfortunately, they didn't have any Bush Internet Surf Sets left so I ordered and IBX-260 using a Nationwide £29.99 offer.

Tuesday, 26 March 2002

Drove home from Folkestone this morning and found emails from Julia and Graham to respond to: Graham's had a baby!

Monday, 25 March 2002

Rang the solicitors and got a status update before going to France to stock up on booze. Not a lot happening on the house front from our point of view. :-(

Saturday, 23 March 2002

Drove to Folkestone in time for the Rugby: why do the Welsh get a different song and the English "God Save The Queen"? It's the British National Anthem and so should either be played for both England or Wales; or, alternatively, the Welsh get their own song and the English do too ("Jerusalem" always seems to go down well).

Thursday, 21 March 2002

Rang the solicitor to try and hurry things along, we'll see if it works. Oh, and BT are contravening Oftel guidelines by publishing ex-directory phone numbers on their website as part of the special-offers exemption list. Very funny...

Saw a Zaurus today: nice screen & clever integration of a real keyboard but the battery life sucks.

Monday, 18 March 2002

No news on the house front - it's not stressful (particularly), it's just frustrating to be waiting. First proper day of work after Young Visisons flew by, which is surprising considering I had a bad head all day.

Sunday, 17 March 2002

An interesting debate on the Euro on BBC 1 this evening, which suggested a fairly even split of yes:no with 7% "don't know". A couple of times, though, it was mentioned that joining the Euro would mean that certain things (often wrong things, but let's assume interest rates) were dictated by a bunch of foreigners, even though we'd be a partner in Europe rather than an underling.

Saturday, 16 March 2002

A very lazy day, the climax of which was watching The Time Machine - the classic Rod Taylor version, rather than the new one, which I plan to see sometime.

Friday, 15 March 2002

Did most of the tidying up last night, after the last day of the event. Got down the pub at noon and had a lovely gammon steak. Mel picked me up at 5pm :-)

Also spoke to the estate agents (not a great idea after a couple of pints ;-)): they won't budge on the price, but we'll have a definite completion date as the people we're buying from are now buying a different house, the owners of which are moving into an empty property.

Wednesday, 13 March 2002

Second day of Young Visions complete, and a late night updating the website with photos from the first two days.

Monday, 11 March 2002

Setup day for Young Visions. A busy day with lots of manual labour. Enterprise was a little strange, people from the future no longer seem to have a temporal prime directive.

Saturday, 09 March 2002

Drove into Southampton to pick up my fingerprint scanner: it plugs into the parallel port and the keyboard port. All the work is done in the software so I may have to have a small Windows box in the house unless I can get it working under Linux.

Decided to go straight to the estate agents to try and sort things out. Mostly positive, but we'll see how capable they are of actually sorting things. I won't be holding my breath.

Went to bed after lunch with a bad head, but got up a couple of hours later. A good day for telly, though, Who Framed Roger Rabbit on in the evening and Tremors on after Parkinson.

Friday, 08 March 2002

Didn't exchange today as our vendor's solicitors seem even more disorganised than our own. Also found out that everyone involved in YV last year received an award, but I didn't: probably because of the managerial changes. Bloody annoyed, though.

Wednesday, 06 March 2002

Lots of work on Young Visions today and, probably, the rest of the week. Spent the afternoon tidying up the HTML produced by the newbies at the Innovation Centre for the new website. The design's good, but the HTML wasn't exactly "clean". Only fixed some of the more obvious stuff and decided I didn't have time to fix the <shudder> fixed-width tables.

It's also bonus day and lots of people at work were buying Zauruses - mine's going on house stuff, but I did splash out on a Compaq fingerprint scanner for 20 quid.

Went to see our solicitor in the evening to review all the documentation: he's definitely a bit wet and doesn't seem especially bothered about addressing our concerns.

Tuesday, 05 March 2002

Got a phone call from our solicitor: apparently the new offer wasn't accepted after all. But they had reduced their price to match the valuation.

Monday, 04 March 2002

I thought the politics at work was over, but it seemed it just took a hiatus. It seems that the type of person who attacks you personally for no real reason exists in the Real World, as well as school. Fortunately, I now know not only how to deal with them, but am well practised at ignoring them :-)

Sunday, 03 March 2002

Spent most of the day playing 3-way Carmageddon before coming home after a lovely roast lamb dinner. Came home to a letter from the solicitors which are acting as a proxy saying they've received a mortgage offer but have no idea what it's about. Something fun to sort out tomorrow, then.

Saturday, 02 March 2002

All of us (except Dad) went in to Rugby to look for beanbags for the "den" room. Didn't find any, but did get a Mother's Day card. More family-fun the rest of the day (including Mel and me beating Rob, Rob and David at Articulate).

Friday, 01 March 2002

Good day at work; with lots of people happy with my work :-)

Spoke to our solicitors, the revised offer on the house has been accepted and spoke to Scottish Widows about getting a smaller mortgage.

Left work slightly early so I could pick Mel up from school and arrived in Southam by 6pm. David gave us his presents and we ate, drank and felt merry.