yesterday's meeting

I was away all day yesterday for a work meeting. It wasn't the most productive. I thought I'd laid quite a good groundwork for a suggestion I made, but when it came down to it the customer didn't really seem at all keen.

I was told to give it a go, but as a 'redo' so that she could compare it to the existing one. So I've now got to do that, but I think I need to make it somewhat funky so that it's more impressive than I would otherwise have done and so wins the point.

Anyway I was a bit disheartened by that result to the meeting, so I was edging towards a bad mood. Then, when I was driving home the traffic was horrendous.

A while back some signs went up saying that they were going to be some roadwork's at the traffic lights that are just down the road from me. When the date came the workmen appeared, but the roadwork's actually seemed fairly minor.

However, I now suspect that was due to the extremely cold weather and they've only now started properly.

It's an absolute nightmare - they've turned the normal lights off and put temporary ones it. But of course the temporary ones have a completely different timing to the normal ones so that traffic quickly backs up and I got trapped in it yesterday.

I've had a look on multimap as I've always know there are some rat-run type minor roads that connect the main roads. I think I've identified an alternative route.

It kinda depends on the queue not reaching biblical proportions - if it spills all the way back on the A31 there's little I can do - but otherwise I should be able to muddle my way through.

This last weekend was a bit of an odd one. I sort of dashed around on Friday and Saturday like a blue-arsed fly. I was trying to get stuff done so I clear the decks and spend all Sunday scanning staff but I think I actually burnt myself out a bit so I only did a bit of scanning (well, it was a fair bit, but not quite what I'd planned).

Anyway, I watched some of the last stuff from the October '08 season:

• Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy) was, if I'm honest, dull. It's sort of set in England from around the Edwardian or Victorian era somewhere, though only nominally - loads of it is inaccurate/fictionalised. It's also clearly aimed at girls with a pretty boy male lead who the girl is falling in love with but he's a bit of a bad boy rogue type... blah, blah, dull.
• Inazuma Eleven was okay, I guess. It's a kid's show and as those sorts of things go it was reasonable enough. It was sort of about a football (soccer) team, but it was quickly apparent this was more fantasy than actual football.
• Mouryou no Hako was really good. It was a bit on the weird side - there seems to be a lot of hidden mystery and quite a complex plot, but then those are never bad things :).

There are only one or two more shows to go, which is quite good timing as the half-season January '09 shows are just starting to get fansubbed.

Interestingly, though, quite a few appear to be now featuring on Crunchyroll. I have mixed feelings about that, as I'm not a fan of the crunchyroll site, but it's good to see that it's starting to happen.