The life and times

I have just got a new laptop from work, and it is awesome.  OK, so it’s not an Apple MacBook Pro or even a MacBook, but it is quite awesome.  It is an HP Compaq 8510w.  It has an incredicle screen.  The screen is WUXGA, which has a resolution of 1920×1200.  Obviously, you need to have reasonable eyesight to see it as it is quite detailed.  It also gives you a limiter for when you are tired, as you can’t see it clearly when your eyes start to blur a little.

The battery life is good.  Well, as good as my old laptop which had just had a new battery.  Somewhere around the 3 hour mark, depending on what I am doing. I guess that the 3GB of memory will also help the battery life as it stops the computer from hitting the 120GB hard drive quite as much.

I have been using this today for over an hour, and the bottom is barely warm.  The power supply can get quite toasty at times, but I guess that might come in handy in the winter.

Overall, I am very happy with this, even if it does get limited by the work build of XP.  Good job that there is enough space to re-partition the hard drive to allow me to put on a nice 40GB Ubuntu partition.

Started the site re-write today.  Don’t expect anything too quick as I don’t get a lot of spare time, but I need to look at this sooner rather than later.  Also, I am planning on a better integration of Wordpress, so maybe things will look up again.  Plenty to do anyway.

I have been looking at this site now, and think that it needs a bit of a redesign, so it is likely to change in a bit.  I also think I need to add some more content to the site, so I will try to work out what needs adding.

Blimey, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun.  It would appear that I have not written anything since the beginning of the year, and everything has been so full on that I have not had a lot of time for much at all.

I am sitting at home at the moment with a throat infection, so am off work with little else to do, or little inclination to do it even if there was (and there probably is).  Still things are going good for now.

We had an unfortunate incident involving a section of our ceiling falling on most of our expensive possessions.  Fortunately, our insurance company has been fantastic and I would recommend Direct Line to anyone.  Anyway, I had to get a load of stuff replaced.  The ceiling fell on my iMac, stereo, piano, camcorder and a number of peripherals.  Most of it was wrecked by the water and rubble that fell from the roof.  And it has all been replaced with great new stuff.  I am in new gadget heaven now.

So now I have one of these new Aluminium iMacs, and they are awesome.  Great screen.  Love the new keyboard too.  I have both the wired and wireless keyboard and am trying to work out which one I prefer and if I can live without the extra keys on the wireless one.

So there I am with a brand new, virgin iMac.  Fortunately, I have been running Time Machine which has been backing up to an external 500GB WD MyBook.  So, when I plugged the drive into the iMac via the FireWire 800 connection and booted up, it instantly recognised the backup and restored everything. et voila.

I don’t think the same as other people. That is now understood. But as to why I don’t, I am not really sure. There is now talk among certain people that I now exist on the Autistic Spectrum in some degree. This certainly would account for the disjointed nature of my thinking at time.

I struggle to understand sometimes how people get their opinions all the time. Every time something passes them, they neatly file it in their mind. Do they like it, or don’t they like it. Was it enjoyable or a horrible experience.

I don’t do that. I only file something against an emotion whenever I specifically need to. Did I like that piece of music that just played. No idea. I would have to listen to it again, or think hard and remember the piece of music playing back in my head to work out if I liked it or not, otherwise it just sits in my head as a piece of music. Neither liked or loathed. Sometimes this will happen though, which always surprises me. In fact, any time I have an opinion on something I am more often than not surprised that I do have one.

Food is another big one. Did I enjoy that meal? I generally can’t answer that. I didn’t throw up, so it couldn’t have tasted that bad (Although I can generally stomach some pretty horrendous crap. Fortunately, J is a good enough cook that I can just presume that everything is good and then believe that I actually enjoyed it). I don’t remember sensations, or maybe I just don’t have the sensations, because unless I am consciously looking for a reaction from myself, then it may as well not happen, or maybe it doesn’t).

With most people, this linked up thinking happens automatically. We went shopping for a new car yesterday, and a lot of cars fell into the grey area in the middle where I have no opinion on them. Most of the ones that didn’t were either horrific in some way (Fiat Multipla for example) or lit some kind of fire inside me (Mainly the sportier cars. Electric Blue Mondeo ST, Mazda RX8) and were completely out of my price range. Fortunately, one car did make me think that actually I quite liked it. And then J and I ended up deciding to buy it. So we are now the proud owned of a March 2005 Renault Scenic 1.9dci. It didn’t quite light the fire that some of the ‘out of my range’ cars did, which I never realistically entertained, but rather mentioned mainly to get a reaction from J, but it did not fade into the mediocrity of most of the others. J had a particular thing for the Citroen Xsara Picasso, but I just don’t think I could have brought myself to face that on a regular occurrence. As it is, the Renault is just quirky enough (mainly due to the “shake your ass” rear) and has just enough gadgets (Keyless entry, automatic wipers, automatic lights etc.) to get a reaction from me. At least it fell on my radar somewhere. And there is a part of me that knows that this is the sensible option that did not see me sulking about the Jag X-Type that I particularly liked.

Cars aside, the problem comes when people believe that you should have had an opinion on something. God knows, when I do have an opinion, it causes enough problems. People should be glad that I don’t have opinions on everything. And I think this is because I don’t choose to have an opinion on everything. It doesn’t happen naturally on most stuff, so most stuff doesn’t get it. Unless I need to, of course.

This is another work in progress though and is only my thoughts to this point in time. Maybe I just have a really juvenile opinion system which is not mature enough to calculate an opinion on most things unless the are in my face, or maybe my muted sense of being is so insensitive that unless it is screaming the opinion at me, I just can’t hear it. Either way, I don’t have an opinion on everything, so don’t get angry when I don’t care and consequently, when I do have an opinion, it means that I really really feel that way, so it is unlikely that anything you say will change it.

Well, trains ran OK today, and whilst at work, it was a bit of an odd day as my senior and boss were both out of the office. Strangely, I felt I got a lot more done. Still, I work from home on a Wednesday and these are typically a lot more productive than office days. We shall have to see what happens.

The WGA’s (Writers Guild of America’s) strike at the moment if edging me towards finding something other than my standard viewing to watch. Who knows, I may well get to the point of watching Lost from the start. It was always a series I wanted to watch, but with all the hype around it, I kind of lost the urge. Maybe this was their true meaning of the title. Anyway, I will eventually go back to it, like I have done with the Sopranos. Anyway, there is plenty of stuff out there to watch. Currently I am trawling my way through series 1 of Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural and Reaper. The last of which I was drawn to with my current increased interest in Kevin Smith due to reading his diary. I have always loved his films, and the way in which the dialogue and monologues wind themselves around a particular subject for which most of us would only use a cursory glance. It is also the arguments and counterpoints which interest me and lead the story somewhere you did not expect it to go. It also points out various things which don’t cross our minds in our usual viewing of films. Maybe this comes from Smith’s extensive film viewing, or maybe it is just the way that his brain works. I have also seem his stand-up or rather Q&A sessions. Now, admittedly he is running in his own playground here and all of the subject matter is him and his, posted by his fans, but I do like the way that he can take a simple yes/no question and make the answer wind somewhat erratically through a good 10-15 minutes, making you eventually question what was the original point.

Anyway, so Reaper has Smith’s name attached to it, so naturally, I enjoy it, as I have done with all of his films (although, admittedly I still have to see Jersey Girl).

So, tomorrow, 10 years ago, J and I first trod the path now so well trodden between us, but here is to hoping that the carpet has a good few years wear in it yet, eh? Still no plans for tomorrow, except that we are going to look at some cars, just to try to work out which ones we like. It would seem that J has already set her mind to what she wants, but for me, I really have no idea. This genuinely is probably the first time I will be going to buy a motor and not having already decided what I wanted. Admittedly, the Land Cruiser debacle was a point where I could have chosen more wisely, and I believe that this time I will be somewhat more selective in my choice, or at least, a little more adherent to my criteria.

Tonight though, I have a plan to contact a few of those people I have been meaning to call to arrange to get together. I am hopeless with regards to these socialisation events, and am usually pretty bad when it comes to calling people, but I vow that I will make a lot more of an effort with building relationships with people, especially seeing as we have met some very nice couples who J and I both say we would like to see more of, along with seeing more of those couples who we have already a relationship with. Looks like I need to get my arse in gear, phone in hand and winning grin on my face.

Today was mainly a mop up from over the weekend. Because I was so completely knackered leading into the weekend, I had my colleague back out all of the scripting changes that had led up to the weekend, thus meaning that all of the work was no longer active on the new machines. This didn’t mean that the work was lost or wasted, but rather that I took the path more easily trodden. I knew that the scripts worked on the old servers, if somewhat flakily, and this meant that I would not be called at all hours over the weekend to fix issues here and there and have my weekend completely wrecked. This now involves backing out all of the changes with change management, and having to re-submit all of the changes to the change board and get them re-authorised again. Not so much of a problem, just a major hassle with the time it takes to work your way through the Synergy system that we use to document and monitor the changes. Anyway, with that, and helping out a couple of my other colleagues, today was not massively productive. Well, it was, but just didn’t seem like it, because it was all running over old ground.

I did manage to book a half day on Wednesday which will be nice. J and I had tentatively arranged that we should maybe go trekking out to find a new car which we like. We have already decided on our budget for this, but I really want to keep that to a minimum. At least until I get myself back into contracting again, and the cash can flow a bit freer.

Also, Wednesday marks the 10 year anniversary of J and I being together. I had to be reminded of this the other day, as I had no idea. I tend not to remember a lot of anniversaries. I remember our wedding anniversary, and the major birthdays, but other anniversaries seem to slip me by. The day we got together, followed by the anniversary of the night we first slept together, The day we moved into our house, the anniversaries of the conception of our children and the purchasing of the vacuum cleaner; They all seem to slip me by unnoticed, which is apparently a major sin. Still, I’m going straight to hell, so I have no concerns on that point. Anyway, Wednesday is our decade of togetherness, so it would be nice to actually do something to celebrate that, even if it is just going out for a bite of lunch to eat. Again, nothing concrete, but there are a few ideas floating around in my head at the moment.

Just been trying to install the all new KDE4.  I want to learn some more Java, or at least to brush up on my somewhat semi-present skills.  This thing is kind of kicking my arse though at the moment.  Still, plenty of time for all that.

Java though, is somewhat more urgent.  I have proposals of a few jobs which involve Java on different levels.  Having a fundamental knowledge will improve things greatly.  I have extensive C++ and a smattering of C#, however, my Java is somewhat patchy.

On another subject, I’m not sure I have ever mentioned it, but I really hate trains.  I spent about 7 hours on them yesterday, and it has really knocked the shit out of me for this weekend.  Very tired indeed, but you gotta take your breaks where you get them.  I had planned to fix the car this weekend, ready for its MOT, however, after making a couple of phone calls, it turns out that the initial basic repairs would run somewhere in the vicinity of £600.  This is £600 which a) I don’t have and b) is a significant value above what the car is actually worth.  Seeing as the car has just pushed through 200,000 miles, J and I sat down and discussed it, only to decide that repairs on that car would be a fruitless waste of cash, seeing as it also has a leaking clutch master cylinder, blown head gasket and dodgy brake cylinder.  All in all, a massively expensive repair job to get it ready for the next year of motoring.  Having a reliable motor could be classed as a priority, considering the 3 kids.  I don’t particularly use the car myself, however, J does, and to save money, going to superstores is essential.  This requires automotive abilities.  So, the decision has been taken to purchase a new (well, used) motor to provide us with some motoring stability.  All we need to do now it to secure some financial backing (possibly in the form of a loan) and identify the vehicle we wish to purchase.  Maybe the next couple of weekends can be used to this purpose.

I also finished painting the bathroom today.  I thought I was going to run out of paint after covering only 2 walls.  I mentioned this to J and she chit chatted about me getting some more paint and the options which were available for it.  I decided that I would see just how far I could make the remaining paint go.  It was only then that I realised that I only had to go around the edge of the windows and and cover the ceiling.  The remaining walls were already tiled, so didn’t require the brush work.

Always more stuff to do, but I have at least ticked the painting off my list this weekend.

I really need to get myself a new job.  One which does not encroach into my personal life.  There I was today, looking forward to spending some cozy time with the wife this evening; sitting together watching some downloaded TV series (Battlestar Galactica Season 1 at the moment), but it appears that god has other ideas.

Work has been involved with moving scripts to a new server (or cluster rather, but that is all technical details that no one needs to or wants to know about).  Today I moved all of the SMS scripts, however, I was unaware that there was a fairly high profile footy match on, which means that numerous top level bods would be watching the SMS timings.  To add to this, the script move brought forward an issue that the scripts didn’t actually work properly.  It also highlighted the XML::DOM::XPath module, which is used to parse our XML in some of the scripts, is buggier that a very buggy thing indeed.  I already knew about a bug I found in this module regarding DOCTYPEs, but it now appears that the exists function does not work anymore.  I have contacted the maintainer, but they do not seem at all interested.  Anyway, TMobile eventually got all of their SMS’s, however, Vodafone only got two of theirs.  hey ho.  I’m sure there will be a whole blamestorming session tomorrow to work out who’s fault it was.  But the end result is that I didn’t get the evening I wanted.  Still, there is always tomorrow.

All I want is a job that pays a fortune which I can leave in the office when I walk out the door, and does not follow me home.

After somewhat of a layoff, everything is now back on track, so back to updating the journal.

Bathroom is still not finished, and the kitchen is not even started.  Best get these done soon.

Have started looking for a new job too.  Had a very positive response to the CV’s I have been putting out, so that is all good for now.  Fingers crossed that something will turn up.