yawns

I was knackered last night.

I think it was because I've been pushing quite hard to watch some anime, but also I've been pretty busy at work.

The work I've been doing should have been really simple, because the idea is that there's some tools that have been built where you just click the button and it pretty much does what you want.

Unfortunately, while these did some of what was needed, they didn't work properly for all of it. And to make things more complicated the person who built the tools no longer works for RED. Plus he wrote them in a stats language that only he knows, so they're effectively unfixable by me.

This meant that I had to build some workaround tools that did the missing parts of the process. Now normally I quite enjoy this sort of problem solving, but I've been quite aware that the deadline for the week was "as soon as possible" and I don't like working to that sort of deadline, because it means you make mistakes because you're rushing.

So yeah, I went to bed pretty early last night.

I'm planning to call my Dad this weekend, but now that he has broadband I thought I'd e-mail him and let him know.

It's weird communicating with my dad via e-mail. It's like he has a completely different online personality.

It's difficult to explain - I guess it's because I know him as my dad, rather than as a person? That doesn't make much sense does it? But it's like when he communicates via e-mail he does so as him, the person, rather than him, my dad, whereas when I talk to him or see him, he's in dad mode.

I guess part of it is that he really does have a "dad mode". This might be a bit deep considering how frivolous this blog is, but my dad's dad mode involves a lot of telling you what to do.

I don't mean he's an authoritarian, but you know how you can have a conversation about stuff with a normal person and maybe if they've had a similar experience, they might offer some advice or just there thoughts? Well, when I talk to my dad he always comes at things from a "here's what you do" slant.

There's an old Harry Enfield character that had the catchphrase "you don't want to do it like that, you want to do it like this..." and my dad is a lot like that character. It's the difference between offering advice, or telling you what happened to them, compared to giving you instruction.

My dad always gives instruction, he never offers advice.

Or that is to say, that's what he does in dad mode. When communicating via e-mail he doesn't do that, and it's a bit disconcerting.