Andrew's diary

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Sunday, 30 November 2003

Tidied up the garden a little between the interminable bouts of constant drizzle (pardon the tautological oxymoron ;-)), however found a gash in the shed's felt roof from a tree in the garden. Cue one trip to Homebase on a busy Sunday afternoon. Decided to get some sealant tape rather than do a proper job - we can always re-felt the whole roof next spring - but it started raining again as I left the shop, so we ended up throwing a big plastic sheet over the roof of the shed and tacking it down with panel pins. Just hope it won't get too windy over the next few days.

Enterprise was better than it usually is, although the "people trying to steal starship" was done better in TNG's Starship Mine.

Saturday, 29 November 2003

Mum and Dad came down to deliver birthday presents for next week. They also helped us stuff info sheets into wedding invites and match them with Christmas cards. Officially launched the new wedding website with its lovely CSS-based design (even if I do say so myself ;-)).

Friday, 28 November 2003

Got a voicemail on my mobile (which I could only pick up on the way home at 5.30pm) from A1 Bathrooms saying they're going to start the bathroom on Wednesday rather than Monday now and that they hope this isn't too much of an inconvenience. So much for my nice long weekend :-(

Monday, 24 November 2003

Home late as got talking, semi-seriously, to Paul about half-baked ideas on world domination. Of course, the real reason I was there was helping them out^W^W^Whiding from people who may want to know exactly how I crashed two mail servers. Not my fault, guv'.

Sunday, 23 November 2003

Got Mel's Christmas present sorted in town (finally); finished printing the invites and started writing Christmas cards to send along with them.

Watched the BBC2 programme about the JFK assassination, very convincing 3D graphics but no real supporting evidence and very quick, and uncomprehensive, dismissals of the evidence suggesting something suspicious. If they'd spent some time showing in detail how they'd built up the 3D model and stopped stating opinions and theories as fact, then it'd've been much more convincing. 80 minutes was much too long though for the level of content they had.

Saturday, 22 November 2003

England beat Austalia to win the Rugby World Cup... just. Their play in the second half was dogged by persistent, but silly, mistakes. Nice and exciting match though :-)

Watched the first episode of the new BBCi Dr. Who adventure: Scream of the Shaka - not bad, animation pretty standard Flash-type by Cosgrove Hall(!), shame about Richard E. Grant's "acting" and the fact that the Doctor looks like a semi-decomposed vampire.

Friday, 21 November 2003

Woke up with a really bad head, managed to leave a message on the secretary's voicemail after my manager's phone just kept ringing. Chasing people up is not something fun to be doing when your head's pounding. Got up around 4pm and further recouperated in front of the telly with a cup of tea. A programme about the JFK assassination was on UK History which passed the time. Was quite interesting and presented all the reasons why the official investigation is suspicious, or just plain wrong, rather than pushing any one conspiracy theory.

Thursday, 20 November 2003

Finally had a meeting with my new manager, including a "welcome to the team"-type thing; he also apologised for the delay :-) Have noticed, though, that within the team we seem to get direction from about 4 different sources, and not all of them know what the others are doing, or what they themselves said only a couple of weeks earlier. How the team'll act when a deadline's approaching, I'm not sure.

Worked late on some pretty pictures for a new patent submission with Megan, unfortunately meant I was home at 21:15; Mel was still out with Sarah after parents' evening but it was all a bit rushed for me to have a bath and dinner. Watched Buffy recorded from earlier once Mel got in, though.

Tuesday, 18 November 2003

Found a pretty 3D rendering of the Tube on Tom's site. Last day of the CICS course, which means back to the JavaDoc tomorrow.

Got a response from our IFA - although he'd said that our remortgage would basically be free, it turns out he'd forgotten about some clauses in our current mortgage which say things like "you'll repay this free gift if you leave too soon..." - to be honest, so had we and we'll still save money in the long run. This is obviously one of those "live and learn" type things.

Monday, 17 November 2003

First day on "CICS Fundamentals" - I now know more on CICS then I ever wanted to, however do now know that although it deals with things called "transactions" what they actually mean by that is "task". Therefore, CICS is nothing like WebSphere MQ, but an application server like WAS - even down to having an EJB container if you want to use a modern language to program it, such as Java.

Sunday, 16 November 2003

Finished making the main parts of the invitations and got the supplementary "info sheet" largely finished as well. Oh, and Mel's got rather broody since we found out Claire's having another baby.

bleb.org came back after a firewall problem which Chris sorted out by going in to work despite feeling ill - is that dedication or what? ;-)

Saturday, 15 November 2003

Finally got around to watching Drop Dead Gorgeous on video: very funny in parts, but then poking fun at (small town) Americans seems to be the fashion these days...

Thursday, 13 November 2003

Mel's beginning to feel a bit better, which is good. Office still smells which is bad. Still no "welcome to the team" or even a "hello" from the new manager - which is fine, I'm quite happy getting on with my work (now that I can do it) without a welcome per se, but it seems a little off. I was thinking of making the first move, but given I've no immediate need to, it'll be interesting to see if/when he does come round. The job I'm now doing is going through the JavaDoc for the product's API - it's really rather shockingly bad both in English, grammar, consistency, spelling and object orientation.

Tuesday, 11 November 2003

Mel's been diagnosed with tonsillitus and prescribed a course of penicillin, so no work for her tomorrow either - although she did go in today.

Linux SIG's "InstallFest" went well, albeit a little disorganised to begin with.

Sat through Celebrity Wife Swap (more through boredom than anything else) and can't say it really improved the overall pool of knowledge of the human race.

Monday, 10 November 2003

Decided not to launch the Hursley version of Knoppix at the InstallFest tomorrow: we'll get it even better and then get someone to pay for a decent run with proper labels etc.

Mel was off work today, ill with a throat infection (at a guess) which really started yesterday as a sore throat :-(

Finally, my office has started smelling (or maybe I've just noticed it) - I think it's the bin. Eugh.

Saturday, 08 November 2003

Mel and I went to see the vicar and (eventually) sorted the order of service for the wedding: the hymns, readings and overall format have all been approved. Afterwards, with Mum and Robert, we went into Coventry shopping (decided against Birmingham's new Bullring at the last moment) and after traipsing around all afternoon finally found a suitable winter coat for me in a shop I didn't even know existed! Should've really explored the shops near the station when they were built: there's some interesting and useful shops down there... Even managed to use Robert's student discount for another 10% off :-)

Friday, 07 November 2003

Bathroom had its "technical survey" before I went to work, it seems that the dodgy construction of our house won't be a problem for them - which is a bit of a relief. They also said that in cutting down the soil pipe they'll also remove it from the roof, replacing a tile in the process. To say the least, that wasn't something we were expecting. We'll see if they actually do it, though...

Got to work to find the auditors being funny with website look & feel. Exactly what it's got to do with IT security and why it's a problem when it's the correct course of action for our users (who, most people would argue are the important people in all of this) is anybody's guess. Unfortunately, the strategy of rolling over and doing as we're told continues which, personally, I don't think gives a good impression to the auditors.

Up to Stockton for the weekend: going to see the vicar to sort out the order of service tomorrow.

Wednesday, 05 November 2003

Moved desks, got allocated some work and met most of the team. Still haven't seen my new manager yet, which is rather worrying.

For dinner went to Ciao Baby Cucina in Festival Place, it was - on the whole - a decent Italian with some nice wine. The atmosphere felt a little forced and the prices weren't exactly cheap, but we still had a good time. Met Dave, Linda et al in Lloyds No. 1 afterwards for a drink before The Matrix Revolutions. The film was very impressive: not just standalone, but also in redeeming the steaming putrid pile of crap which was the second film. It's certainly restored my faith in the Matrix franchise - however, the last line leaving open the possibility for further sequels was unnecessary. Two really cool little bits which stood out: Bain's voice inflections when possessed by Smith were spot on and the name of the character on the end credits which voiced the "swarm" was Deus ex Machina :-)