Andrew's diary

Friday, 20 December 2002

An engineer is coming to look at the microwave in a week. This means, we'll have to use the old one over Christmas - doh!

A bigger problem is that the dishwasher seems to keep about 2cm of water at the bottom - and doesn't actually ever finish the wash programmes (it does finish the pre-rinse but still leaves the water). From some rudimentary research on dishwashers it would seem that they expell water two ways: through a syphon and through a pump. Given it's always the same amount of water left and it doesn't fill up & overflow the drainage itself must be OK. Syphoning is kinda easy and so should be working, so that just leaves the pump. Still waiting for a phone call from the people who sold it.

Hacked Stuart Tyrell's SerialMse (a serial mouse drive for RISC OS) as the middle button on my Logitech wheel mouse sent a different sequence of bytes than the one it was accepting. Then proceeded to play Monaco and Magic Mushrooms :-)

Thursday, 19 December 2002

Been trying to get hold of someone to take charge of our microwave. Didn't get called back when promised by Caroline at EveryAppliance.co.uk and today is there last day of trading before Christmas. Fscking sodding arse-burgers.

Mel not feeling very well at all, either.

Wednesday, 18 December 2002

The kitchen's finished! Much yayness.

Went out to Wetherspoons for tea though to, erm, let the grout dry. Mel suggested that I needed a bad head in the morning so I could test the new microwave - so, of course, I woke up at 5am with a bad head. I stumbled downstairs to use the new microwave: set the power level, set the timer, pressed start and the countdown started. Unfortunately, the turntable and the microwave-bit didn't.

Tuesday, 17 December 2002

Lots more work done on the kitchen - the worktops and sink look very nice.

Got fed up with having "Home" in Mozilla at home not working, so finished MyHome. Allows different homepages from different locations without reconfiguring your browser. Comments are, as ever, welcome.

Monday, 16 December 2002

Kitchen started - and they got a lot done. Unfortunately they had the power off for an hour today, and probably more regularly until they finish. Which means that flegg.org and Jaffa Software's web sites will be up and down, which is a shame as I've added online ordering for PICsuite (complete with shopping basket, oooh) and there's been quite a bit of interest in WimpWorks in csa.programmer.

They do, however, think they'll be finished by Wednesday night. I can't believe how excited I am over getting a dishwasher ;-)

Sunday, 15 December 2002

A weekend of tidying the house for the new kitchen being fitted tomorrow. Unfortunately, I woke up with a bad head which I just couldn't shake, so Mel ended up doing most of the work :-(

Saturday, 14 December 2002

Watched Beauty & The Beast (which I bought Mel on DVD for her birthday) - quite good really, but given it's a classic fairy tale rather predictable.

Friday, 13 December 2002

Christmas lunch for the team: nice food folllowed by an early home. Set up online ordering for WimpWorks and announced the 32-bit compatible version.

Thursday, 12 December 2002

Noticed some odd referrers in the access log: someone is referring to me as the "real Harry Potter". Mel found this hilarious. I didn't.

Monday, 09 December 2002

More furore in a media-inspired frenzy about Cherie Blair: yes, she's stupid; yes, Downing Street lied but noone cares. We already know this Government is inept, do we need more proof?!

Watched Outbreak - forgot it had an "all-star cast, together at least". Mel wondered what else Marcel the Monkey had been in (above and beyond Friends) and it turned out it was in Showgirls. However, out of all the Friends cast who've made films, the monkey's has been the most successful with Outbreak ;-)

Sunday, 08 December 2002

Went out to try and find tiles for our new kitchen and almost conclusively failed. We certainly didn't succeed. Checked another light switch in the house for any form of life-threatening deadliness and then finally connected the Linux box under the stairs to the stereo, making the music server I'd written actually useful!

After an impressive Scrapheap Challenge (the trebuchet should've won, but it was still pretty spectacular!) Mel put up the Christmas tree whilst I, erm, spodded.

Saturday, 07 December 2002

Both our parents came down to us for Mel's birthday and we went out for a meal at The Portsmouth Arms - which we went to with Glen and Sprow after our housewarming.

Friday, 06 December 2002

He's making a list,
They're checking it twice,
They're gonna find out if Saddam's naughty or nice,
Global-thermonuclear-war's coming to town.

Left work at lunchtime to receive our dishwasher. Fought with the VPN software trying to work from home, so bit the bullet and installed the Linux version. Which worked first time - and installed easily.

Wednesday, 04 December 2002

Woke up at about 5ish with a bad head: stumbled downstairs to take some paracodol and an Imigran. Felt somewhat better when Mel woke me up at about 7 to open my presents. Bond DVDs, pyjamas, socks and a book about living together from Robert :-). Didn't think I was up to driving into work so worked from home - after struggling with the VPN software and managing to actually get a network connection.

Tuesday, 03 December 2002

Allen came to stay the night as he has a seminar in Winchester tomorrow. He took us out to Wetherspoons and it had to be done: mmm, mixed grill.

Sunday, 01 December 2002

Stopped in at Stella and Malcolm's pub in the middle of nowhere on the way home - nice and cosy: can see the attraction.