Andrew's diary

Saturday, 30 November 2002

Family meal in a nice new Italian restaurant in Disley, various bits of socialising and then back to the guest flat at Grandad's.

Friday, 29 November 2002

John Humphries was interviewing a Labour councillor from Norfolk County Council on the Today Programme who was moaning about the image Alan Partridge portrays of people who live in Norfolk:

"...but people who think that's what you're really like are daft, aren't they? You don't want to pay any attention to what they think."

Well, it made me laugh.

Fun drive up to Stockton through traffic which was bad enough to be annoying and slow, but not bad enough to find another route.

Thursday, 28 November 2002

Web site came back up mid-afternoon. Wrote lots of fun documentation on vhost; and even found proof it's been a lab requirement for over 2 years.

Also found out that the department is planning to relaunch itself, but they didn't talk to the one person with comms experience until close to the launch - they seem to be making lots of relatively obvious mistakes (like logos which won't integrate nicely into existing communications media etc.). Fun.

Wednesday, 27 November 2002

Got a new email address for Nicky, so now she knows about the engagement. Also did further research into a new mobile phone - for once the Nokia 6210 from work goes.

Lithium, the machine hosting www.bleb.org died, early evening - according to Phil, "Some div's unplugged it. Back up tomorrow."

Monday, 25 November 2002

Allen's booked the function room for our engagement "do" (for family) - we need to sort out the party for friends now.

Xlcus's Crazy Sytes is quite cool.

Sunday, 17 November 2002

Replaced the light fittings in the lounge and found one of them was only blu-tacked onto the wall. Suffice to say that we've removed that.

Saturday, 16 November 2002

Parents came down: Dad and I pulled the tiles up from the kitchen floor (the least said about the handyman who laid them the better) whilst Mum and Mel finished the painting in the den.

Treated ourselves to a meal at The Hatch for all the hard work.

Thursday, 14 November 2002

Went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Basingstoke's new cinema: mostly empty - which is a shame, as the cinema's quite good; film's OK - but they had to cut loads from the book (including something called characterisation) to fit it into a reasonable time frame. Dunno how they'll get The Prisoner of Azkabahn or The Goblet of Fire into any form of sensible film.

Tuesday, 12 November 2002

The firemen are striking, so to avoid chaos on the Tube, I walked from Bloomsbury Square to Waterloo - now I can do the return journey when necessary. I also didn't fancy the Tube with a bad head; the walk was surprisingly pleasant.

Lots more fuss on the news and in the papers about the Monarchy and Paul Burrell - is anyone actually interested in any of this?

Booked tickets to see Harry Potter 2 (The Wizards Strike Back?) for Thursday. The cinema allows you to even choose your exact seats on the web site.

Monday, 11 November 2002

Start of "Developing servlets and JSPs with WSAD", same place (even same room!) as the last course, which means commuting each day this week.

Saturday, 09 November 2002

Mel's aunt's birthday so she threw a party - smaller than last time but still good fun.

Friday, 08 November 2002

Had the afternoon off work so we could drive down to Folkestone and, gulp, tell her parents the good news. Fortunately, they were pleased :-)

As were my grandparents when I rang them to tell them.

Wednesday, 06 November 2002

Checked all the door fronts and the grand total is:

Not too bad, eh?

Tuesday, 05 November 2002

Worked at home in the afternoon whilst the kitchen was delivered - unfortunately, the stroppy delivery men basically dumped it as short a distance within the house as they could and additional items were missing which should be delivered next week.

Monday, 04 November 2002

Back to work and, once again, problems start whilst I'm away but sort themselves out (with a little kicking) when I get back. Hopefully, whilst I'm on the course next week things will be a little more stable.

Sunday, 03 November 2002

Invited ourselves to Mel's parents next weekend - didn't give any clues.

Saturday, 02 November 2002

Up and out early and headed for the ferry port since we had nothing else to do. Arrived a couple of hours before we were due to depart and found our ferry had been cancelled. The next couple of minutes were spent worrying about getting back in a reasonable time when we were told that we'd been transferred to Stena's HSS from Dun Laoghaire which was departing in an hour. One quick drive across Dublin later and we were checked in and ready to leave on a bigger, faster, earlier ferry.

Got into Holyhead about 1pm and rang ahead to my parents to tell them to put some champagne in the fridge as we had some news. Then drove down through Snowdonia along the A5 into Shrewsbury and onto the M6 with the weather getting torrential.

When we told my family they were, to say the least, very pleased (despite Mel's paranoia!) and a good evening was had.

Friday, 01 November 2002

Left the hotel as the weather worsened and headed out on the long (and I mean long) drive to Dublin. After checking into the hotel mid-afternoon we went into the city centre for a wander and, of course, more ring shopping.

This time, however, we actually found one which we both liked and they could have ready for us that evening. After a seemingly interminable wait we got it and Mel was muchly pleased.

Now we had to find somewhere to eat and after wandering back towards the car we found a nice little Italian restaurant and had a very pleasant dinner.