Andrew's diary

Monday, 30 June 2003

Nice day off work. Got convinced that including Doom in Salvare might not be a great idea so removed it from the default build. The package is, however, still there if someone wanted to add it to their own version. Also laid down a roadmap to the 1.0.0 release.

Sunday, 29 June 2003

Christopher Reeve in Smallville! The first two bars of John William's film theme playing in the background! (Dur de de de durrr; dur dur dur) Clark sent to conquer Earth! (Interesting departure from the films or Lois & Clark, but kind of makes sense. Dunno how it fits with the comics though)

OK, I'm very sad. But at least I'll admit it: I think it was very cool. Certainly the best Smallville episode yet.

Saturday, 28 June 2003

Had a fun ride in Dad's Caterham 7 - didn't get to drive it though. Tsk.

Sunday, 29 June 2003

Early meeting with the lawyer where his first draft from last night was massively improved. Apparently they should be filed today.

Realised that the course I'm on next week, I've already done. Doh. Hastily rearranged to get Dave on it instead. Agreed with Adrian that I could now have Monday off and left early to have a few hours in bed.

At about 4pm was woken up by an SMS from Megan saying they'd been filed with the UK Patent Office and that both were entered for the Autonomic Computing Award. Woohoo :-)

Finally got up, packed the bag for the weekend and headed off to Mel's school's summer fête where I bought a book entitled "Writing Secure Code"... by Microsoft - for some reason it only cost 20p ;-)

Thursday, 26 June 2003

Megan and I were here until gone 10pm working on the patent. The lawyer helpfully informs us that there's now a deadline of tomorrow for the two patents, but we only got the first draft of the second one at 5.30pm.

Dinner was a microwaved curry from the canteen - slightly less exciting than the pub dinner last Thursday :-(

The late nights have also been catching up on me: I tried to organise tomorrow off, but couldn't. I then considered having Monday off before realising I'm on a course next week. I took the opportunity of being tired and irritable to let Adrian know I'm not particularly happy about the amount of communications work I'm doing for the upcoming audit.

Wednesday, 25 June 2003

Took three hours to get into work (via Basingstoke) and with six new(ish) dining room chairs clunking around in the back, it was a nice and noisy ride too.

Tuesday, 24 June 2003

Left work early to go and see Mum in hospital. The operation went well, but she was still very groggy a good few hours afterwards :-/

Dad asked an interesting question in the car on the way to see her: "what'd happen if SCO are right?" It's hard to believe given how careful IBM is regarding use on open source projects, but one side effect might be losing a lot of talented developers who may leave in disgust.

Thursday, 19 June 2003

Another late night, but I didn't feel so guilty about this one as Mel had an open evening at school. After working on the patent till about 18.30, Megan and I headed to the Old Forge for a bit of food. Where we discussed the patent some more ;-/. Was somewhat in trouble when I got home for not ringing; but I was probably more annoyed because my lovely mobile phone wouldn't pick up any signal :-(

Sun had a full page advert in today's Wall Street Journal, rather explicitly taking advantage of the SCO FUD.

Wednesday, 18 June 2003

"With the $1bn being put into Linux, how much was earmarked for probably specious lawsuits?"

Me - at an All Hands Meeting

Tuesday, 17 June 2003

Mum had a pre-op meeting for next week: to be honest, it's now getting rather worrying as we're realising how serious it is and what the risks are if something goes wrong.

BTW, another late night working on the patent with Megan. The lawyer promised a first draft by last Thursday, yet it still doesn't exist. Given the quality of his spelling, grammar and understanding I'm worried the more he produces the more we'll have to edit to make it "right"

Sunday, 15 June 2003

Caught two-thirds of Tremors 3: Back to Perfection on Sky - it's actually rather good, though not a classic like the first one. Nicely ties up some of the questions and features a surprisingly large number of the original cast.

Headed home by having to fight through rubber neckers on both sides of the M25 staring at a burnt out car being put on a truck on the hard shoulder. I'm sure that most people think "I've slowed down anyway, I might as well look" - so I make a point about paying attention to what's going on around me ;-)

Saturday, 14 June 2003

Down to Folkestone for Father's Day. Rather worryingly, Kelly was in hospital with the prospect of a long stay and the Caesarian brought forward. Fortunately, she was out by early evening.

Wednesday, 11 June 2003

Much shorter day today: at work from 8.30am to 6.30pm. The lawyer had an epiphany when he suddenly realised that our invention was novel, inventive and clever - he'd thought it was obvious and simple and was just "humouring us".

Maybe the long days are getting to me, but the fuss about David Beckham's alleged departure from Man U. is ridiculous - half the country claim to hate Manchester United anyway, so why should they care? He's only a dim-witted footballer with a wife who has the IQ of around 11 P.E. teachers and the voice of a strangled cat - there must be something more important happening in the world?

Tuesday, 10 June 2003

Long day: left home at 7am, got to work at 7.30am; left work at 7.30pm, got home at 8pm. Some interesting audit stuff in the middle of it all, and I'm deputising for Adrian for the rest of the week.

Monday, 09 June 2003

Bugger. Patent lawyer found some prior art which might scupper the whole idea. Fortunately, some frantic meetings revealed it might not be a disaster after all as it just proves that one small part of the idea is doable.

Megan and I were here until about 6.30pm meeting with the lawyer and agreed to get together at 7.30am to do some more work on it tomorrow morning.

Sunday, 08 June 2003

Managed to get the VideoCDs playing. Several new theories which reduce the number of plot holes presented themselves, however raised new questions. The editing, pace and plot don't plod along as much on a second viewing either - presumably because expectations are lower.

Another lovely roast dinner by Mel - David appreciated it, I think. Then we walked down to the ponds to feed the ducks. Unfortunately, we were too late as they were full already!

Saturday, 07 June 2003

The lawn definitely needs to be sorted: I've now bought a lawn mower. Reduced from 30 quid to only 20 in B&Q, it's a crappy Flymo - but at twenty quid you can't really go wrong. It's much easier whizzing over the few patches of grass with this in 30 seconds then spending 5 minutes with a pair of shears.

Attempted to watch The Matrix Reloaded on VideoCD - however our crappy DVD player started making very funny noises, so we watched Futurama instead (why it likes one but not the other, I've no idea).

Walked into town for dinner at Dexter's Steak & Grill. Sat outside and the food, when it arrived was great. The service however, was not. Oh well.

Friday, 06 June 2003

David down for the weekend. Mel cooked a lovely lasagne and with a few beers, a couple of sherries and a bottle of wine - it was a rather pleasant evening :-)

Thursday, 05 June 2003

As Moses said when he came down from the mountain with the tablets: "these aren't actually my slides."

David Chess

Incredibly relevant IBM quote - on both sides of the Atlantic it seems.

Wednesday, 04 June 2003

Two days working till 7pm in a row. Fun.

Tuesday, 03 June 2003

Lots of new work today - doing comms. Again.

Had an interesting chat with the manager of the Worldwide Technical Sales team for Business Integration Proof of Concepts. Basically, the team swoops into a customer site for no more than 2 weeks; proves that IBM technology can be integrated into whatever they've got and gets back out again - hopefully be more convincing than any competitors also bidding on the sale. This could be very good for a career, but sounds like awfully hard work.

Monday, 02 June 2003

The Government is being criticsied for not publicising the GM public consultation which starts tomorrow widely enough. Well, it's certainly started now. Michael Meacher says the consultation will "take account of what people feel about the issues" (my emphasis). Surely it should be what people think about the issues after taking time to understand the scientific nuances, and not react in an hysterical manner screaming "Franenstein Foods! Frankenstein Foods!"

Of course, given that the Home Office seems to be ignoring the majority of our responses to the ID Cards consultation, perhaps we should be glad that the GM one is more public (though I'd put money on the majority view of the populous being based on whatever the tat-wielding tabloids wheel out).