monaco

Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

I'm hoping that it will be a good race.  Monaco is notorious for being difficult to overtake at, but it might also reduce the gap between Mercedes and the other teams so it could be a good race.  Or it could be quite processional.

The BBC only has highlights, but I'll listen on the radio too.

It's also a Bank Holiday weekend.  My only real plan for the day off is to do the final prep for Canada - I need to work out what I'm going to take and buy any last bits.

I'll also try to watch some of the backlog of stuff I've recorded so that there'll be enough space on my PVR for when I'm away.  I think I might need a new PVR - I've had this one a long time and it is quite full of stuff, but even bearing that in mind its behaviour is quite erratic.

It's also not HD and with the BT box having been a bust in terms of HD I think it's probably time I upgraded to a HD box.

that's yer lot

I'm just going to do the one post this week.

Yesterday I was snowed under with stuff and tomorrow is my last day for the week, as I've mentioned before.  It's actually two people's last day at the office tomorrow, so I'm sure we'll be going to the pub, which will probably eat up what spare time I have where I might write a blog post.

One of these leavings is not a surprise as he is retiring, but the other came as a bit of a shock, as I was given the person's leaving card to sign yesterday and that was the first I'd heard about it!

For such a small company, communication is terrible here.

Weirdly, I actually had an offer of a job interview for on the Thursday - I'm still looking to move on, of course, but have put everything on hold for a few months until after Canada so I declined.  To be honest, they've also not filled me with confidence given they've taken so long to contact me and finally did so only 4 days before the interview, which is miles away in Bristol.  I'd rather not have another depressing waste of my time where I'm just making up the interview numbers and it's costing me a fortune to attend.

Anyway, I'm going to use some of my couple of days off to buy the stuff I know I will need for Canada, both in terms of online and in the real world.  Obviously the disappointment here is that my grand plans about losing a few stone have not borne fruit, so the clothes I will be buying will be big size stuff.

Speaking of which, I'd dropped 2 pounds on Sunday's weigh in.  I can't say I was surprised by this as such - I don't think it represented a genuine loss, as such, more the reflection of the fact that I was weighing myself after a more "regular" week, as opposed to after the weirdness of the Easter weekend.  I therefore now weigh 20 stone 11 pounds.

short week

Well, it's the end of the week already.

I've actually got a strong of short weeks at the moment, as I'm taking Thursday and Friday off next week for my birthday.  So my weeks will go:

• 4 day week (last week)
• 4 day week (this week)
• 3 day week (next week)
• 4 day week (week after)

Which is nice.

I'm going to clean the flat this weekend, though I'm intending to do a spring clean over the 5 day weekend I've got next week.  I always do a big clean at Christmas, but I like to do a spring clean as well.  In particular, I need to clean and defrost the fridge freezer.  I didn't do this at Christmas as I knackered myself doing the other cleaning and it's pretty thick with ice.  The fridge is also rather dirty.

It's a big pain defrosting the freezer, as it's a really old, knackered unit, so it gets really thick ice.  Ice also often forms in the door as it has a hole in it, so it takes ages to all melt and is pretty messy, dripping everywhere.

The other reason I didn't defrost it at Christmas was I ended up with quite a bit of food in the freezer.  I've got a small "beer can" fridge thing I use to keep some stuff cold, but it is obviously a lot smaller than the freezer compartment, so I have to be sure to empty it before defrosting it.  I've done well here, as I've literally only some frozen peas, a few pints of milk and some random slices of bread, which I'll probably either finish off for the weekend or will easily fit in the small fridge.

Anyway, I'll give the flat a bit of clean this weekend - I may try to do a few things I would normally leave to the spring clean so that it's less of a chore, but odds are I'll probably spend time playing Civ 5 that I shouldn't :/.

Easter was a bit of a let down if I'm honest - or rather, I let myself down.  I did the full back up, whcih took bloody ages, as usual, but other than that, I kinda failed to do much of anything.  as I say, I did go out drinking, so it was kinda nice to let off steam in that regard, but then that completely destroyed Sunday, when I was hung over, and Monday when I still felt knackered.

Indeed, I did so little across Sunday and Monday that I actually struggled to sleep on Monday night, as I just wasn't tired at all.  I've noticed this problem before - I seem to do enough regular walking nowadays that if I then don't walk for any reason I don't feel tired at night.

easter

Well, last day of the working week today as it's Easter.

I must say it's kinda snuck up on me this year.  I think a big part of that is because of the weather - it feels like it's rained continuously for almost an entire year, and the seasons have virtually disappeared, so it's almost weird now that it's actually spring-like.  It feels kinda sudden, somehow.

The training thing yesterday was horrendous.

Not because it was badly done (though the food at the venue was horrible - rather dried out and sorry looking), but because they'd crammed what should have been two days of stuff into a day - less than a day, actually, as it ended at 3:30.  It was in London so it was a very long day as well.  And then I couldn't get to sleep until quite late, so I'm pretty knackered today.

Oddly, it's the Chinese grand prix this weekend.  I say oddly because usually they time the grand prix so that they don't land on "other" days.

China is usually a good race and I think the new engines will suit it so I'm hoping it will be as good as Bahrain.  Unfortunately the BBC is only showing highlights on the TV again, but I'll listen on the radio.

My other plans for Easter are pretty minimal as I'm trying to save pennies for Canada.

I'll probably do a bit of a swap around with some stuff that's out in the shed - if the nice weather continues I'll need to get my shorts out and put away jumpers and stuff.  I'll also probably do a full back-up (I keep all the drives out in the shed too).  These aren't quite as firm as my landlord recently told me he is actually going away a few weeks after Easter and it's usually easier to mess about in the shed when he's away.  However, the weekend that this covers I'm also booked to go and see a friend.

canadian gp 2014

So the big reveal of the thing I kept alluding to last week is that I'm going (with my family) to the Canadian Grand Prix this year!

I'm really looking forward to it, though as I was mentioning it's caused me some issues in terms of plans.

I mentioned in the blog before that I'm back looking for a job.  I'm also not sure that I mentioned I want to move - the two are linked, obviously in that I would like have to move for the job, but I wanted to move more immediately as I really don't like where I like anymore and want to move on.

This has been particularly brought to a head due to the break-in and the fact my rent has gone up by 5%, making it less economical.  This is made worse by the fact the electricity pre-pay meter rate recently went up (I blogged about how they decided to charge me for a non-existent debt - that got sorted, but it doesn't change the fact the cost of it went up) and the laundrette up the road recently put up their prices (again). So I'd be much better off financially living in the town where I work and also from a piece of mind point of view.

However, both of these become particularly difficult with the Canada trip, which is in early June.

For one thing I need a good ten days of leave, so I can't really use random days to go on interviews or to move.  Also, Canada will not be cheap - I will need around £1,000 to spend.  Canada is quite expensive anyway, but also I obviously want to have a good time.

Add in that clothes is one of the biggest areas of my life where I have "economised" so will need to buy stuff for the holiday and need some new bits if I'm to look smart for interviews and you can see I'm going to have some big drains on my purse over the next few months.  This makes it difficult to see how I can afford to pay for petrol to travel to interviews, but also how I could afford 2 months (or whatever) deposit to move - plus I'd need to overlap the rents so I'd have time to transfer all my stuff.

So as you can see I'm left in two minds quite what to do - do I keep going with the job hunting and start looking for somewhere to live?  If I do I don't know quite how it would work.  If I don't I am adding in a huge delay - more than 6 months before I even re-start.

rest of christmas

So what did I do over the rest of christmas, then?

Not much.

I had quite a short to do list:

• Couple of friends to see.
• Do my file back-ups.
• Sort my gaming machine - it had developed some problem where it crashed constantly.
• Try to make a dent in all the recorded stuff on my PVR.
• Watch some anime - preferably downloaded fansubs in order to clear the hard-drive I use, which is full.
• My traditional New Year's "full clean" of the bedsit.
• Do plenty of walking.
• Work out plans for next year.

I did most of these, though not fully in most cases.

I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads.  The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously.  I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.

I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one.  this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install.  This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.

I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff.  I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch.  I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left.  Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.

I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs.  If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got.  However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc).  I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.

I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year.  It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen.  After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day.  This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.

The "plans for next year" was the really big failure.  I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.

So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.

There was also some unpleasant stuff.  My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%.  This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year.  I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb.  There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.

christmas

I thought I'd give a bit of a wrap-up of the Christmas holiday.

We had the company christmas lunch quite late this year, but then the positioning of Christmas Day is a little unusual, so it wasn't as late as it seemed in terms fo the acual date.  If I hadn't had quite so much leave left over I'd have had to work some odd random days or bring them forward from next year.  I guess the flip-side was that I got over two weeks leave and have only used up 3 days of my 2014 leave.

I had so much leave left over for several reasons - one was that I carried a couple of days over from the previous year, but the other was that I kinda saved it up with the anticipation that I might be attending interviews, but in the end it was quite late before I properly went back on the job market and then had to effectively stop looking a long way before Christmas.  Anyway, I'm goign to need that leave this year, but more on that another day.

We used to spend Christmas at my Dads, down in Deveon, but he seems to have decided that he doesn't like doing this anymore, and my sister hosts.  I find this really quite unsatisfactory, particularly as she lives ina tiny flat, which she shares with her flatmate, so it also becomes a double-Christmas thing with the flat-mates family too.

I don't really like Christmas, and spending it with someone else's family makes it quite uninteresting.  The biggest problem is that they all know each other - the flatmate is a long term friend fo my sister, and my dad knows her and her family quite well as well.  This leads to long periods of them rabbitting on about people I don't know "Did you hear Fred has moved in with Brenda?" "I have no idea who Fred and Brenda are, and care even less."

It would be far easier if they just put the telly on and then I could watch that and they could natter.

It doesn't help - and I'll be upfront that this is not a nice thing - that they're not my sort of people.  I mean, I'm a nerd.  They're not.  I wouldn't have anything to talk to them about, even if they weren't twittering on about people I've never even heard of.

My hope is that by next year my life will be sorted out and I'll have moved somewhere where I can play host to my family.

Having said that, there is another less-outspoken reason why my sister hosts, which is that she's tight.  By hosting she doesn't have spend the petrol money to drive down.  Instead my Dad pays for a hotel for me and him (her place is too small for us all to stay and he knows I would refuse to pay for a hotel) and we both drive to her.  There's even a bizarre situation each year where he then takes her to one of her friends "on the way back" (it's nothign fo the sort as it's at least 100 miles out of his way).. and then a few days later drives her home again.

She kinda has him wrapped around her finger, as she's always been his favourite.  Note that I don't care as such, but ti woudl be nice if he at least realised she was doing it because she's tight - Indeed, I think he'd be pleased, as he's of the "careful with money" persuassion himself.

Well this wasn't so much a round-up of Christmas as a moan about the day itself!

I'll try to cover the rest in another post (if I can be arsed), although one thing just to note - the joruney down to my sister has been horrendous both years.  Last year it was because it was on Christmas morning and kinda poxed up the day, but this time it was because of the horrible weather.

The A31 was closed on one part as a river had burst its banks, so they sent us down a diversion to rejoin it about 2 miles further down.  This distance took me 3 hours.  The whole journey took me 5 and a half hours.  Not fun.

happy new year... i guess

I'm finally back to work.

Big inhale... huge sigh.

I think I lulled myself into a bit of a false perception over the holiday period, which is to say the crappy bits seemed to dull and become less "urgent".  Of course as soon as I got back it all swam back into focus, which is to say that there's basically nothing but crappy bits.

This is partly why I stopped blogging towards the end of last year - I'm a bit stuck for anything to really say apart from how I'm really not enjoying work, and that's such a big part of any given day/week/month, it doesn't leave me with a lot else to talk about.  I was also getting a bit fatigued, so the idea of writing anything became a bit of a chore.

Actually, there was one specific thing with the work blog posts that gave me a bit of a scare (shock might be a better word) and was probably the main catalyst for stopping.  I posted a blog entry that let a few of the "cat's" out of the "bags" - in other words I gave a few specific details about things that previously I had only really skirted around or touched on.

You could possibly have worked some stuff out and certainly got the general feel from what I said, but this post was quite specific.  Now usually my posts get around 5-10 hits.  I take this to be one or two people who read the odd post or click on it via a google search and the rest to be bots crawling the blog for indexing.

I've had a couple of posts that got significant numbers of hits (there's one I've actually blogged about to do with BMI that's obviously ranked highly in a particular search as it has hundreds of hits), but this one posts had well over 100 hits in the space of two days.  This worried and puzzled me so much that I moved it into drafts - particularly as I can't see what about it might have caused it to get so many hits, but the content is a bit sensitive.  If/when I move on from here I'll take it back into normal circulation, but it was also a big part of why I cooled off with blogging.

Note, I'm not sure I'm going to start properly again, but I figured I should at least post a "happy new year" type post.

a month ago

So it's been a month since I last posted on the log.

Exactly a month, in fact - my pre-holiday post was on the 4th of October and today is the 4th of November.

The reasons for the long delay in posting are somewhat complicated.  The main issue was that I had planned to spend some time over my holiday writing some blog posts and that didn't happen.  I'd also particularly planned to write a bunch of the back-log of films reviews I've build up and was going to fill the weeks after the holiday with many of these.  Obviously this didn't happen either.

The reason this didn't happen was because the holiday was a lot messier than I'd intended.

Firstly, my plan wasn't a good one. My landlord needed the time I was away to install a new shower (not the actual shower, but the unit around it), so I couldn't be home at all.  However, I also couldn't stay with my dad for that entire period.

I therefore decided (badly, it turned out) to spend the Saturday night at a Travelodge, then go to my Dad's on Sunday, then stay at another Travelodge from Wednesday to the following Saturday, when I'd return home.  The following Monday was a recovery day.

However, this didn't work at all well - the Saturday at the Travelodge was okay, but it wasn't a "productive" thing to do - I spent a lot of time farting about and couldn't see the time productively.  The time at my dad's was okay, but then I had to change plan.

Basically, rather late before the holiday I was asked to attend an interview (I'm still job hunting).  I said I could do the Thursday, so it was booked in, but the place was in Essex.  Now that would be far away even if I was at home, but obviously I wasn't - I was in Devon, so it was a huge drive.

Having already booked the Travelodge for Wednesday to Saturday and gone with the "non-cancel" option to save money, I then had to also book a Travelodge near the interview.  That meant I ended up spending one night and a morning at one place, then driving all day, getting lost (the town had two exits off the main road, and I took the first where I should have taken the second), going to bed very late, not sleeping well, getting up very early (I wanted the interview in the afternoon, but they then had to change it last minute), going to the interview, then spending all day driving back to Devon again!

In other words, I spend half my holiday driving places, killing time while I waited for things or recovering.  So all my grand plans basically gone knackered.  Here's the things I was going to do and the progress I made:

•    Write some blog posts - didn't do any.
•    Write some film review blog posts - didn't do any.
•    Watch some stuff on crunchyroll - didn't watch any.
•    Watch some fansubs - watched some, but my plan was to clear out the past years shows, and I only watched about a quarter of them.
•    Lots of walking - there were only two days where I went for a walk.
•    Clear backlog of e-mails - didn't read any.

Of course I also spent a fortune in petrol and a room booking which was relatively late so was more expensive, as well as having to buy food at services, which is always more expensive.  None of which I could claim back, as I was told (I'm not 100% sure I believe the agent - more on that later) the company wouldn't refund travel expenses.

And of course I didn't get the job - more on that later as well.

The other factor in my not blogging is that I returned to a shit-load of work: I actually worked a bit of one of the weekends.

As "holidays" go, it's been pretty non-fun.

holidays

I'm away on holiday for the next week and a bit.

I'm going to see my dad for a bit of it, but the rest is basically just relaxing.  I'm going away, which has cost me more money, but unfortunately I was kinda forced into it because my landlord needs to replace the shower in the bedsit.  It's the enclosure, rather than the shower unit, but it's a pretty hefty job.  It also means he'll have to turn the water off to the bathroom.

I don't; mind too much as I could do with a bit of a change of scenery, even if it is going to be about as cheap a holiday as I can possibly achieve (so no days out anywhere).

I've taken the Monday off as well, even though I'll be back on Saturday.  This just gives me a bit of a chance to sort things out and get back into the groove before I'm back to work.  I generally don't like to come back to a full week anyway, as I find it a bit much after a holiday.

holiday - dad pc

So after the wedding I had two basic tasks for the rest of my holiday.

Firstly, I had to clear down my PVR a bit.  The PVR had basically gotten to 90% full, and given the last part of the holiday was going to be away from home I needed to clear it down or it would run out of space.

I did okay with this - I cleared off about 40% off, taking it down to 50% full.  If I’d been off the whole week I’d have taken it down further.  And if I hadn’t had the other task to do I would have made more progress too I think.

The other task was my Dad’s PC.

As mentioned before the holiday I made some poor decisions with the money he’d paid for it so I ended up having to split the purchases across multiple cards.  This was particularly annoying since I therefore had to pay multiple postage for everything that was then delivered at exactly the same time in the same van!

In the end I bought the full spec stuff I’d said I would (I could have gone cheaper) with two exceptions: I didn’t buy a separate CPU cooler and I only bought 16gb of the 32gb of RAM.

Both of these would be virtually undetectable to him, though I did own up, although I didn’t give the proper reason that I’d fucked up.  Instead I said I’d forgotten about the cooler and would get it later and that the RAM had been faulty so I’d had to return it.

I will get both of these, but it will be later when I have some money - probably for when I next see him, which will likely by in October or so.

Building the PC took me about a day all told.

I then went down to my Dad’s on Thursday, getting there in the early evening.  I therefore started the installation process on the Friday.  Well, there was a bit of an issue we had to fix first.

See, I was hoping we could re-use his DVD drive, which isn’t that old.  I’d expected the motherboard would have both connection types (SATA and I forget what the older one is called).  Unfortunately, the board only had SATA and it turned out his drive only had the older one.  We therefore popped to PC World and got a new drive (it was about £30 - probably the same as buying online, taking postage into account).  However, we also had to get a new keyboard, as it turned out the keyboard he had was PS/2 only - I’d guessed/assumed it was USB with an adapter, but it was just PS/2.

There was a bit of a cock up there as he actually had a USB mouse, but kinda forgot - I’d assumed it was part of the same thing (it’s wireless and the receiver was both and it used to be, but apparently he’d gotten a new mouse that was USB, but it was the same make - all very complicated).

Anyway, that afternoon I started and basically installed Windows7 plus all the millions of updates.

The Saturday I installed all the separate applications and the hardware, etc.  My dad was a bit of a pain on this day - it was weird actually, as if he wasn’t expecting it to take so long and was making a fuss to get my attention like a child whose parents are too busy so they start misbehaving to get attention.  He kept getting in the way and of course, ironically, that meant it took longer.

Anyway, Sunday we put the desk and all the bits back away and I gave him a quick tour of the machine.  He seemed pleased, particularly with the speed.  With the old machine he used to turn it on then take the dog for a walk and it would just be ready to log on when he got back.  Then he’d make a pot of tea while it logged on and was ready for him to actually do anything.

The new one you press power on and 10 seconds later (5 of which are the POST checks) it’s ready for you to log on.

holiday - wedding

I didn't blog last week as it was all a bit hectic.

I had a lot to catch up on having been away for a good chunk of my leave, and having not really paid much attention to things while I was here.

The holiday started with a friend’s wedding (I went to the reception only).  This was the friend whose stag do I went on a few months back.

I was determined not to spend as much money on the wedding as I did on the stag.  This meant booking into a cheap Travelodge that was further away than some of the more expensive hotels.  My intention was to get a taxi there but walk back.  This didn’t quite work.

The problems started with the journey up.  I live in Farnham, which is near Guildford and the wedding was in Chelmsford in Essex.  This meant I had to go around the M25.

I could have gone north.  This would be a lot further and would mean risking the M3 & M4 junctions.  I also know that that stretch is riddled with road works and bits where the speed is always limited.  And as I say, I wanted to save money so going the long way round isn’t a good idea given the cost of petrol.

I therefore went the south way.  This took me through the Dartford crossing.  I wasn’t aware that the cost of the toll had gone up so much - it’s now £2 for a car so any petrol money saved was probably cancelled out.

But the real issue was the time - I set off at 2:00PM.  I had to get some petrol, but the reception was due to start at 7:00PM - that gave me 5 hours and the journey was only 90miles.  Surely even with the tunnel I’d be ahead of rush hour so I’d be okay, right?  I mean 1.5 hours for 90 miles is a reasonable journey time, so double it to 3 hours just in case and that still gave me a 2 hour margin, right?  I could have a leisurely shower and shave and still be there early.

Er, no - it took me 6.5 hours to get there!

The A3 was really busy, the M25 was solid and then the road to Chelmsford (I forget the number) was rammed too.  I took me 5 hours to do 90 miles!  So I had to rush to have a shower and shave and get a taxi there.

The next thing that happened was that the taxi dropped me at the wrong place!  The problem was there are two venues with basically the same name.  When I got there the other issue was that there was another wedding going on, so the taxi driver said “is that them?” and I said “I guess” and got out and paid.

But of course they were just distant figures in wedding gear so it was only as I wandered up that I realised they weren’t my friends!  The actual venue was over a mile away up the road, and of course both were in the middle of nowhere so I had to walk!

When I did get there all the stress and lateness meant I bolted my drinks and got far drunker than I intended.

So then I had my plan of walking home.  This would have worked except for a few things: I’d already walked a mile and a bit.  I was drunker than I should have been.  It was absolutely freezing - having had lots of nice weather it had suddenly turned cold and it was a miserable walk after a while.

I therefore ended up hailing a taxi who took the main roads, so even though we were only about 2 miles from the hotel it cost me £10 (the journey there, which was obviously too short, cost £15) so I think overall I hardly saved anything at all.

I’ll continue with the holiday details later in the week.

holiday

I'm off on holiday from tomorrow.

I'm actually going to a wedding reception on the Friday (I'm not attending the wedding itself, just the reception afterwards).  They're having it in the middle of nowhere, and the Travelodge I'm staying at is a fair distance away, so I've a horrible feeling it could cost me a fortune in taxi fares, as well as being heavy on the wallet for the more obvious reasons.

Then the week after I'm building the PC, as mentioned yesterday.  I'm also hoping to get some stuff watched, both in terms of recorded programs so that I've a bit more of a cushion of free space and I'm not constantly watching stuff in a panic so that I don't run out of room, but also in terms of Blu Rays.

I've stacked up quite a pile of Blu Rays to watch and I don't have any means of ripping them so I can't sell them on until I've seen them.  There's a handful I think may be keepers, but mostly they're not things I'll want to hang on, but as I say, I can't sell them until I've watched them.

It's then my birthday and I'll be off down to my Dads to install the PC and also to see him as it's been ages since I have.  Not sure how long I'll stay, but I expect I'll come back on the Sunday or Monday - the Monday is the bank holiday, so I'll be back to work (and blogging) on the Tuesday.

tired

I always really struggle when the clocks change.

I have quite fixed routines and am very much a creature of habit.  I mean, I can do things as I need to - get up really early on stay up really late, it's just that I can't do these regularly and consistently without paying the consequences.  Heck, nowadays I pay some sort of consequence even if I just do these things once or twice.

Anyway, the point is that the change of going an hour forwards is pretty disruptive for me and I'll likely be really tired all week.

Easter was okay.

I'd obviously put together a to do list, though remarkably for me it was relatively light.  I'd therefore basically achieved everything on the list by Sunday morning, and that was without trying.

Actually, it turned out I'd made a bit of a cock-up and should actually have cleaned the flat over Easter (Grand Prix season is now in full swing and has gone for lots of double-headers again, so it buggers about with my usual pattern of cleaning very fortnight).  However, this cock up was actually that I shouldn't have cleaned wen the Malaysian Grand Prix was on and did, so it didn't matter.

Anyway, point was that Monday I did nothing except watch TV and a few Blu Rays.  I needed to catch up a bit with TV as my PVR was filling up quite badly so this isn't as decadent as it sounds.  It's now at about 50% full, down from about 80% full (I deleted a few bits as well since it turned out they were a bit rubbish).

One of the things I got quite far with was the George Orwell season that Radio 4 did a little while ago.  I'd recorded all of it and listened to about half of the programs (not half of the stuff - I mostly focused on the stuff they put out in small chunks).  It was quite interesting, though clearly of its era, so it had historical interest as well as political interest.

easter

Easter this weekend so this is the last post of the week.

I’ve no particular plans for this weekend other than to relax, given how busy these last couple of weeks have been.  I think the main challenge will be to stop myself from playing SimCity constantly.  Really it’s the perfect opportunity to catch-up on a lot of recorded TV and watch and read some other stuff - particularly since the weather is forecast to me more of this cold stuff.

One thing I didn’t mention from the last few weeks that I thought I should record in the blog was how I locked myself out of my car before the stag do.

Basically I went to the driving range (I haven’t played golf in 4 years and wanted to “warm up” and there’s a course with a range just up the road from work) and managed to lock the car with the keys on the dashboard.

I’ve done the same basic thing loads before - I sit in the driver’s seat with the door open to change my shoes, dumping the keys on the dashboard.  Once changed, I then close the door, obviously, walk around and get in the driver’s side.

Well I guess on this occasion I hit the lock button as I took the key out of my pocket (it was in my trouser pocket, where I usually put them in my jacket/coat pocket).  So when I closed the door that meant the car was locked and when I went round to the driver’s side I couldn’t get in.

Luckily I’d kept my phone in my jacket pocket, which I was wearing, so I was able to call work and explain and then call for help.  Basically I called the RAC and the guy came out fairly quickly.  The big problem was that the keys were clearly visible on the dashboard, so I couldn’t leave the car, which, even though he was still quick, it was a couple of hours before it was all sorted.

The RAC guy had the car open in about 10 minutes.  Basically he slotted some airbags into the car and slowly inflated them to create a wedge where he could slot a long pole with a hook on the end in and fished the keys off the dashboard.

It really did take him just 10 minutes.  Of course, it’s not something you could do without attracting attention, but it just goes to show you - it he’d used a stiffer rod he could have used it to pull the handle, which would unlock the door.

long time no see

Feels like months since I last blogged.

It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks.

So the first thing that happened was the stag do.  I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.  I was a little worried that there would be some uncomfortable stuff - you hear all sorts about stag dos, but there wasn't anything like that.

I mean, they gave the stag something of a hard time - they stole his clothes and he had to wear a skirt they bought him, for example - but nothings spectacularly bad or that made me feel uncomfortable.  The planned events were also good.

The stag was in Bristol and on the Friday we played golf.  This harked back to when we were kids (I’ve known him since school) and was a good idea, except for one thing - the Great British weather.  As I arrived at the course it started raining and got steadily worse.  Not only was it raining hard but it was windy and cold too so it was truly horrible to be out playing golf.

We ended up only actually playing 9 holes and calling it a day. We then ate at the clubhouse and found the house.  This was a mess - no-one knew where the house was and only some people had directions/sat nav.  I tried to follow someone and it worked okay for a while, but he was rubbish at it - he dashed through a red light and that was t, I was lost.

However, after a dozen phone calls for directions I eventually found the place.  And it was a weird place.

I mean, the building was a bit unusual - a huge mansion - but also it was oddly furnished in that it looked like some students lived there.  As in still lived there and they’d been murdered and buried in the back garden.  It was weird.

So we then got drunk - and I drank much more than was probably sensible for the first day.  On the second day we went clay pigeon shooting.  This in particular I was rather unsure about, but as I said, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I dunno - it’s difficult to explain, but I was rather nervous around the gun. I mean, that’s understandable - it’s a 12-guage shotgun, after all - but I dunno, I was really worried about doing something stupid.  And it didn’t help I was tired and it was cold and drizzling again.  But as I say, it was more enjoyable than I expected.

We then went out on the town.  As it happened it was the last game of the six nations (he decider between Wales and England - England deserved to loose) so we watched that and then went for a curry.  Then it was back to the house for more beers.

This second evening was a bit weird.  We got back fairly late and I started drinking, but suddenly it was 1AM and we had to be out of the house by 10AM so I went to bed.  I think quite a few sloped off to bed early - certainly I didn’t see as many people about as in the first night.

I drove back on the Sunday and it was the journey from hell.  I wouldn’t say I was hung over particularly, but I was extremely tired.  So I was shattered and when the weather played up - driving snow and all sorts.

I'd taken the Monday off to recover and should have used that stuff to do stuff like watch the Grand Prix and tidy the flat.  Unfortunately I basically just played SimCity solid.

I’ll continue with more about the intervening time tomorrow.

never bloody here!

Well, as mentioned earlier this week I am away tomorrow and next Monday.

Next week I am also attending a training course on Wednesday and Thursday.  I'm not sure if I will blog on the Tuesday and Friday.  I expect I will have stuff for a post or two, but whether I sit down and write that up next week or the week after I'm not sure.

The timing of this stag isn't the best if I'm honest.

Friday is actually comic relief.  I have no idea if we'll encounter it or not, but it could be a bit of a pain.  The Saturday there's a big rugby match on (it's the 6 nations, but I don't care so I haven't a clue what match it is).

It's also the first race of the new Grand Prix season.  Now that's sort of okay in that I'll be coming back on the Sunday so should be back in time to watch it on the BBC, except the race is in Australia so will actually be run very early on Sunday morning.  Normally I might therefore be able to avoid it (or record the Radio commentary and listen to that as soon as I get up) but I'm guessing I will be told or hear it on the radio or something.

Anyway, point is this is the last post of the week and I'm not sure I will post at all next week.  The week after is the one leading up to Easter so is only 4 days as well - it's a really weird month for me actually.

SimCity turned up on Tuesday and I've lost two evenings to it already, so I must be enjoying it.  However, I'm also finding it a bit frustrating.

I think I'll blog about it later - I'm actually kinda wondering if the stuff they've disabled due to the server issues (no cheetah speed and a lot of region stuff is essentially disabled) isn't part of the issue.  I suspect it's magnifying some of the bugs or making some things that are meant to cover the "asynchronous" region play seem like bugs.

piss poor timing

So SimCity didn't turn up at all over the weekend.

I'd taken Monday off and was hoping that the game would have arrived, but no sign of it.  This was a little mystifying I have to admit, since it was posted last Thursday and something that was posted last Friday did turn up on Monday.

To be totally fair their free delivery thing is within a 5 day window so it's not late or anything, just a bit puzzling that something sent afterwards has arrived first.  And I wouldn't want you to think I took the day off just to play the game - I was owed the day as time in lieu and I wanted to take it as soon as practical.  The alignment with SimCity's release was just a coincidence.

It would be nice if I was able to say that I'd "done loads" with my extra day off, but it didn't really work like that.  I mean, I did some stuff, but I wouldn't really say it was massively productive.  Most of the time was spent doing nothing in particular - I did a lot of lazing about with a bit of telly watching thrown in for good measure.

One thing I did do was go to the Sports Direct in Farnborough and buy some golf-related stuff.  I used to play Golf quite a bit but since starting my current job (where no-one has ever been a golfer) it has kinda withered on the vine.  Part of the problem was that the only cheap public course nearby has terrible drainage problems and I once played a bit of a round that basically destroyed half my gear.

I wasn't going to buy quite as much stuff as I did but they had a sale on that was really good value - everything I bought was 50% off so I got loads of bits including new golf shoes and a bag and it was less than £80!

So why am I buying this stuff now?

Well, obviously because I'm going to be playing golf next week.  The game is part of a stag weekend for an old friend of mine.  The golf game is on Friday (weather forecast up until now was that it would be bone-chillingly cold, but now is that it will piss down - hurrah!).  I'm sure there will be drinking that evening, and then we're going clay pigeon shooting on Saturday and more drinking that evening before heading home on Sunday.

As per usual I'm a bit trepidatious - I'm nervous and quiet around new people and there will be a lot of new people there (loads of his other friends I've never met before).  Hopefully it will be okay and at worst it's two days.

I'm not sure how I will be on Sunday but I've taken Monday off as well, just in case.

the rubbish continues

So as promised, here's the concluding stuff of the holiday.

As noted, Christmas day was good but then everything around it was rubbish.  When I eventually got home on Boxing Day I basically just watched TV for a bit and then went to bed.  I slept for about 14 hours if my maths is right and of course then I went to work for the next couple of days - still suffering with the cold and worried about my dad.

I had actually been planning to use these days to do some stuff that I've had to back-burner, but when I got in there was a big pile of stuff dumped on my desk I had to sort.  I wasn't best pleased, especially as stuff clearly could have been done with it on the Monday and there wasn't a lot I could practically do with it that others couldn't have done, particularly as my holiday was after New Years, which is when all the critical stuff on these things would actually need to happen.

I therefore wasted a good day and a half with what was essentially hand-turning that others should have already done or could really wait until after New Years when everyone was back.

However, I did manage to get some stuff done that I actually wanted to do, but I can't really say I enjoyed the days at work.  The problem really was there were other people there.  I've actually found that although rubbish on many levels I kinda enjoy coming in at the weekend - I can work whatever schedule I want and I can concentrate 100% as nobody else is there.

The real problem, though, was my landlord.  He wanted to sort out some mould that had developed in the corner of the kitchen and this was fine.  He said it might look a bit patchy, but I said that was not something I was worried about.

Now ideally (and this, I think, was the real source of my annoyance) he would have properly redecorated the kitchen.  I even made it very clear to him a long way ahead when I was away last Summer for him to use that time to do it.  However, like an idiot, he booked a foreign holiday at exactly the same time as when I was away, so he couldn't do it.

But, having mentioned I was working, he decided to take advantage - rather than just sort the mould he started redecorating as well.  Now as I say, no problem with him redecorating, but a) he was taking the piss by just launching into it and b) I was on leave (meaning at home) after New Years and he said there was no way he could complete it before then, so I had the prospect of a half decorated kitchen to cope with while I was on leave - yeah, great, thanks for that.

What also annoyed me is I basically didn't move any of the kitchen stuff out of the way when he started (as I say, he was just meant to sort a corner of the room) and so he'd just shoved it all randomly out of the way in a big pile.  I can't stand people touching my stuff or being in my rooms at the best of times, and this just wound me up.

Now I actually mentioned this to him when I got back from work on the second day and I also then properly moved my stuff out of the way for the last day I was at work before my leave.  I think because I'd implied it was a bit off for him to just launch into it without properly arranging it with me he actually worked hard on that last day and did two coats, so it was done.  I was relieved and it looks quite good, but it was still pretty disruptive.

Anyway, then there was New Years eve itself.

I'm not really a fan of New Years.  It's completely arbitrary, obviously, but also the problem is that everyone is out and about.  If you want to go for a few drinks you won't be able to get any because everywhere is so busy.  And otherwise it's normally just a really cold day where everywhere is too busy.

This year was no exception.  The plans I'd made didn't really happen and I ended up driving home stone cold sober at about 4:30 in the morning.

The holiday afterwards was okay - I got some stuff done I'd been meaning to do and relaxed a bit.  On the up side I watched loads of the stuff I'd recorded and not watched over the last year.  My PVR went from about 80% full to about 80% free.  I could probably have cleared it, but I find fatigue tends to set in when I watch too much TV in a row.

I'll leave it there I think - as I say, not the greatest time overall.  Certainly I've had better year ends.

worst. christmas. ever.

Back to work then, I guess.

As the title suggests it was a pretty rubbish Christmas period for me.

It started off poorly with a cold.  We had the company Christmas lunch quite late this year and unfortunately one of the work colleagues I sat next too brought a cold in.  It actually took me a couple of days for it to really kick in, so I guess there's the chance I got it from someone else, but if so, I don't know who that would be as I don't remember encountering anyone else with a cold then.

So the cold really kicked in on Friday, just in time for that first long weekend leading up into Christmas.  By Christmas day I was actually over the worst of it, but the weekend and the Monday I'd taken off weren't really all that fun, to be honest.

Although, as I say, I was over the worst of it fairly quickly, the tail end lasted ages and it was New Years day before I really felt it had started to clear up and the following week before it was properly gone, so that's three weeks total.

Christmas Day I went to my sisters.  This involved driving down on the day, which was rubbish for a couple of reasons.  Firstly it meant I had to get up early and couldn't really pootle - the journey was over 2 hours and I had to aim to get there a good while before lunch to be sure.  As you may remember the weather was pretty awful, with yet more flooding in the West Country and of course that's where I was heading.

I saw two accidents on the way down - it was pretty horrible weather for the first two thirds, but then weirdly (and I mean weirdly - it was like driving into another country) it suddenly brightened up and was actually fairly nice for the rest of the day.  As well as being poor weather it was also really busy - I mean, not rush hour stuff, but you wouldn't know it was Christmas Day.

The drive down was therefore quite tiring and I was already fairly knackered from the cold so I wasn't really very lively on the day itself.  My sister did a good job with the actual day itself - no complaints there - but next time we need to drive down the day before, though driving back on Boxing Day wasn't too bad, though I had to stop drinking quite early to make sure I'd be okay.

I saw about 5 accidents on the way back.  I'm assuming most were, if not caused by the weather, then it was a contributing factor.  This time of year some idiots drink and drive of course, so that may have been part of some of them.

The B&B was a bit naff - it clearly hadn't been decorated in decades (that or they're stuck in a 70s time warp) and the shower didn't work; she said they were getting the bathroom redone in a week.  It was well equipped, though - you could certainly use it as a base of operations if you were holidaying there, but it felt OTT for us just staying the night.

I was sharing with my Dad - something I'd rather have avoided and tried to do so, but as I think I've discussed the organisations side of it (or rather, the communication about the organisation) has not been great.  And it proved particularly problematic on this occasion, as my Dad was taken ill.

I won't go into too much detail, but essentially he was having some trouble and it meant he was constantly going to the toilet, which obviously didn't help with me getting to sleep (something I really struggle with anyway in unfamiliar surroundings).  At about 4AM I/we basically reached the conclusion he would need to go to hospital.  We're not talking life threatening, but medical assistance was needed as there was nothing we could do about the problem or the level of discomfort he was in without it.

Anyway, obviously neither of us know the local area, such as where hospitals are, so we tried NHS Direct.  They gave us the nearest one, but of course our cars were back at my sister, a good 20 minute walk away.  We therefore got dressed and headed off.

It became apparent during the journey that Dad would not be able to sit in my car (he couldn't sit at all, tbh) and also I pointed out Fay was still drinking quite late so she couldn't drive.  She could possibly direct me, but otherwise we would need to try to map read, which would likely make the journey longer than necessary.

Of course for my sister to direct we would need to wake her up, and with Dad not being able to sit we eventually decided to call an ambulance - I wanted to try directory enquiries and get the A&E but instead we used 999.

The ambulance actually arrived quite quickly and my sister went with him to hospital (I had a quiet word with her and explained I'd not slept at all and could barely see straight, let alone go to the hospital).  I therefore walked back to the B&B and tried to get some sleep.  Of course by then I was basically awake and only really had a small nap, which got me through the rest of the day as it was, but I felt awful.

Just to finish off - my Dad was essentially fine.  It wasn't really a life-threatening condition as such, it was just something he couldn't put up with and we had no way of sorting.