Thursday Update

Today a colleague came to me and asked me if I wanted to visit the pub at lunchtime. The prospect of spending an hour sitting in the sunshine supping a pint of Old Speckled Hen was rather tempting, so I said yes.

Ten minutes later another colleague reminded me that I'd agreed to give a talk on Relational Databases at lunchtime as part of our "Lunch and Learn" series. Damn. So instead I spent the time clutching a whiteboard pen, explaining databases to a few of our software engineers. Still, there's always tommorow for the pub, and I get a few brownie points for doing the talk. I have to do another one in a couple of weeks on T-SQL. Yippee.

Apparantly the Chinese are engaged in an attempt at corporate espionage and are targeting "the company" with specific viruses designed to steal our technology. Sounds exciting, probably isn't. Of course we already have a joint-venture with the Chinese, and they have copies of a lot of source code anyway.

We sold the Rover on the weekend as well. The money will now be used to pay off the new video-camera, and to go on holiday. We've found a place that says we can book a nice place in Devon for a ridiculously cheap price. We tried to book it and it says they'll get back to us within 2 days. Fingers crossed, cos it is a fantastic deal. A week in a nice-looking lodge in a holiday park for £216. I really hope we get it.

I've started my first Java application as well. The difference between nice, easy course examples and a real-life app are fairly startling. Not least all the engineering guidelines and conventions we have to follow. Plenty of experienced people for me to ask stupid questions though, so I'll get there in the end I'm sure.

-Neil

Yay! A quiet week!

Finally, a week that wasn't too hectic. And with a bit of luck the weekend will be fairly normal too.

Jessica had her filming on Saturday and Sunday, She did quite a lot on Saturday but not so much on Sunday, where she got quite bored. Mind you, she had to be there at 8am which for a Sunday is frankly ridiculous. What was really annoying was that I'd eaten breakfast before I went and only when I got there did I discover the free catering van serving all sorts of fried delights. Humph.

Ele's Aunt and two cousins came down from Leicester on Saturday, so we spent it sitting on the patio at her mums flat. We even put the paddling pool out with a bit of water in it for Joe and Anise (Don't tell the water company! That inch of water could have hydrated a hundred familes for a week!). We lent her pregnant cousin a load of baby stuff (Joe's old car seat, his Bumbo seat, tons of clothes and some other bits and pieces). They were just sitting in our eves doing nothing so it's good that somebody else can get some use out of them.

Work has been fairly quiet too. I'm about to start a new project with my new-found Java skills which will be interesting. It's only at the planning and analysis stages (think drawing lots of diagrams on a whiteboard), but it's not a big project so this won't take too long.

Apart from that, it's been fairly quiet really, although Joe has developed a habit of waking at 4:30. He has now got 2 teeth though, so this is probably the reason. He went till 5:30 this morning, so a bit of an improvement.

Tonight our friends Caroline & Ian are coming over for dinner, which is nice. The weekend is fairly empty, apart from Sunday which will be the normal rush of Stagecoach/Tesco's/Lunch, with the added bonus of England vs Equador. I've been saving my new "England" t-shirt (fathers day pressie) for that day!

-Neil

Yet another busy week

Another fairly busy week has now flown by.

For the first three days I joined the posse of crazed individuals known as "London Commuters", and had to drag myself up to Lancaster Gate (by Hyde Park) for 9am. This meant getting on public transport with the rest of the common people. Ugh. Actually, it wasn't so bad going up every day (apart from the early starts). I tended to get straight onto a bus to Morden, straight onto a waiting tube, which would depart within 30 seconds of me getting on (and, this being the end/beginning of the line, I'd always get a seat) and straight onto another tube at Tottenham Court Road. Mind you, it costs £1.50 to get a bus now. Incredible.

The journey home was never as good, particularly in the sweltering heat that the London Underground generates. Every other country in the world would install air conditioning, but England is the only country that can't cope with a) Too much heat, or b) Too little heat. Plus of course c) Too little rain, d) Too much rain, e) Any kind of snow ever.

Anyway, the reason for the commute was I was attending a course on Java Programming run by a man we shall call "Robo-Instructor". He was devoid of any enthusiasm, humour, and ability to explain concepts in terms that mere mortals might understand. If it weren't for my prior knowledge of object-oriented programming, I would have struggled a bit. Indeed, the rest of the group (one work colleague and three others) did for a while. We all quickly learnt that we had to ask very specific questions and request specific examples to get him to explain things in way that might make a bit of sense to a beginner in the Java language. Still, in the end I did learn quite a lot and work are intending to drop us straight into creating some stuff in Java, which is the best way to go about it.

Tonight we are going to our friend Xiong's house for a BBQ, and on the weekend Jessica has a second (and possibly third) day of filming for the TV show she is an extra in. I think Ele's aunt and cousin are coming down from Leicester on the weekend too, so I'm not sure how that'll fit in with the filming yet.

-Neil

My Birthday Surprise

It's been about a week now since i got my trampoline, it's really fun i go on it almost every single day for at least 15 minutes. My mum, dad, Auntie Saffron, Uncle Alan, Lauren, my cousin Anise and my bro Joe have all been on my trampoline. It's GREAT!

Weekend Update

The weekend was fine and sunny, so we took the opportunity to go Geocaching. For those who don't know what this, it's a kind of global treasure hunt game played with GPS. People hide a "cache", (typically an ammo box or a tupperware container or similar) in a nice location and publish the co-ordinates on the Geocaching website (www.geocaching.com). You then enter the co-ordinates into your GPS receiver and off you go! The cache will usually contain a few little trinkets, with the idea being you take one out and put something else in.

The one we did was in nearby Morden Park, which we've driven past hundreds of times but never actually knew it was there. It's a really big nice park which was almost deserted (although later we realied it might have been because of the England v Jamaica football friendly which we missed as a result. Humph.). Jessica took control of the GPS and led us to the right place. We started hunting for the cache and Jessica found it, which was nice for her. She was very pleased with herself!

It's the first cache I've done for ages, and Ele and Jess have never been before. They (and Benji!) loved it so we'll be doing more now the weather is good. In September we're planning a "foxhunt" with a bunch of geocaching friends in memory of my friend and ex-colleague Bob. I'll explain this nearer the time!

After that we went shopping in Sutton and bought a lot of stuff for Joe from Tchibo as they had a lot of baby stuff in.

In the evening we had a nice mexican dinner of Nachos and Tortillas, although Jessi managed to send the salsa flying! We enjoyed it so much we bought the same thing to have next weekend.

Sunday we didn't do much interesting. Jessi went to Stagecoach, Ele and I went to Tesco's, then we went to sunday lunch at my mums. The evening was spent doing housework, before watching Top Gear and 24, possibly the two best shows on TV at the moment (apart from The Amazing Race, of course).

-Neil

Quick Update & Moan

Hi everyone,

Time for a quick update, as work is a bit slow today!

Jess did her shoot yesterday in Twickenham. She seemed to enjoy it. It airs next year I think (it's called Little Devils) so look out for her in a playground scene!

We built the trampoline - it's huge! It really is a bit big for our garden and looks a little silly really, but Jess loves it which is the main thing. We don't use the garden for much else anyway. If we want to kick a football about we've got the park at the back. We picked her up from cub camp (which she had a great time at, although she got a bit sunburnt and I think has a touch of sunstroke now) and told her we had a suprise for her at home. We then blindfolded her and led her into the garden.

I went into a Sainsburys garage this morning to buy a newspaper, and there was a sign saying the car-wash was closed because of the drought order (we are lucky to live in a Sutton & East Surrey Water area, which is obviously like living in the Sahara). I tried to goto the normal one on the weekend to wash the Rover but that was also closed. But a couple of miles away on the Purley Way there was one open, presumably because they are Thames Water instead. This segregation is stupid. If there is a drought in Sutton, how can there not be one in Croydon? Actually, I know why and there are two reasons. One is that Thames Water actually have resevoirs, whereas S&ES use underground aquifiers and only have one resevoir (solution - build some more resevoirs!), and Two - Thames Water is our sewage company, so they take away all the old water that S&ES supply us with. I doubt they give it back, I reckon they treat it and use it themselves. If they do give it back, then there must be connecting pipelines, so why can't S&ES buy surplus water from Thames Water? Crazy that we live in a rain-sodden island and have no water. The real kicker is that they expect us to pay the same amount! I mean, if you goto the butcher and ask for ten steaks but he only has five, he doesn't charge you for ten does he? Water companies get away with it though.

Anyway, rant over!

-Neil