Books

Was interested to here the other day that HMV are looking to buy Ottakars stores. HMV already own Waterstones, which I like, so I'm hoping that our Ottakars in Burton is changed to a Waterstones. Also there are some terror suspects being held in Burton. It is one of the few stations in the UK that can hold terror suspects.

Managed to improve the code a lot of the F&G system yesterday so hopefully I can step away from that project entirely and enjoy my trip to Germany next week.

Ready for my meeting

I intend to listen to one of my new found brainwave tracks before my meeting, but I also found this article about managing your boss through life hacker, and also found a UK life tools site. Catching up on the news (I don't read a paper regularly) always seems a bit of a chore to me, but now the Guardian have a news podcast.

Relaxed and focussed!

Despite the traumas of today with the Wormington project (none my doing but bad none-the-less), I have indulged in a little bit of brain wave generation following my earlier blog, not tried the sexual profiles yet, but I'll let you know - there were some comments left about these on lifehacker. Whilst compiling has been taking some time, I've done a GTD purge on my tags in MyWeb, and got the total count down a bit. Developed a "daily" tab, which should help me get a bit more organised with my browsing.

UPDATE:

Have just tried out the "sexual simulation" track. The track is 10 minutes long, and I checked out the first minute or so. I tried to relax and closed my eyes. Within a minute my heart rate had increased and I had an uncontrollable grin on my face. I may need to complete my experiments when I have more "private time"!!!!!

Sleep deeply with sexual stimulation

Found this on the daily trawl. We did a similar experiment when we were at college, trying to put our minds in a deep relax state and hopefully take in more revision. Will made a noise generator that did a similar thing.

Long days

Working long days on Wormington at the moment, but at least I can do it from home. The more I get into it the more I realise how much is left to be completed. Spoken to Adrian who is doing the hardware setup down in Winchester today. There is a PDM work shop running at Winchester today for the Wormington team, which Adrian has been told he can't go on!! Madness.

Got my bronze award for blood donation yesterday, which is a good "feel good" factor. As a result missed out on circuits last night, but will probably go down to the one tonight.

The Wormington noose is around my neck

Well I've now been drfated fully into the Wormington team. Confirmation that I have been moved from the Centrica SIL workshop team and placed on the Worminton team came on Friday. I have 1 week to try and get the software for the F&G system in place. Things went quite well on Friday, but over the weekend I came across several sections, which don't seemed to have been worked out very well.

Friday - curry night. First time we have visited Jee-Ja-Jess for ages - and we made up for it, with a great feast. Obviously, most of the weekend was spent doing Mother's day things of one kind or another. After ballet on Saturday, Mum came round (Dad was too ill to come), and in the evening - watched AVP in the evening, which was better than I thought it was going to be. Sunday was busy (for me), as Florence had promised Tasha I'd be her slave for the day! Tried a full meal from our Bill's Food book, which turned out very well indeed. In the afternoon headed out for a mooch around the shops, and bought some shoes. Nate had got up early and with the daylight saving hour lost everyone was really tired. A mountain of ironing to do, but it kept me awake for West Wing and 24.

CAT poo!

The latest releash of our CAT drive was released and installed this morning. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have been tested very well and takes away all of our admin rights!! So I can't do much work at all today ~ good job we are in a meeting.

Much rumblings about the engineers in Winchester being able to decide whether they work on a project or not (i.e. Johnsons) at present there seems to be a lot of bad feeling.

Nailed!

Out on the bike again tonight. Unfortunatelt got a puncture about 7km away from home. Luckily it was on a reasonably well lit part (had it been a couple of km sooner I'd have been on a tow path in the pitch black!) I was of course serenaded by the less cultured burton folk laughing and jeering from there lowered & noisy novas. It did make me chuckle when one of them was so busy laughing at me that they ploughed onto the roundabout and nearly crashed!

Another busy weekend. Florence out all day on Saturday, ballet practice then to Lucy's. On Sunday, Florence had 2 dance exams, and Nate & I went swimming. A rarity for us, but we actually has a Sunday lunch (at dinner time) which was lovely.

The bimbo was flapping today, as it seems he had promised Geoff & I as a resource to the Wormington crew, but Centrica are coming this week, so he went into a spin when he realised that he was down a couple of blokes. I've got 2 hours to train Dave tomorrow on WinCC Flexible, then he's on his own (nice), and then I'm down to Winchester to join Adrian on Friday to help set up. We might both have to go back on Monday too. There is nothing like good organisation.

Intel Mac

Thats all well and good, but why (apart from £8000) - what about the other way, give me my intel based mac install

Books

Continuing to have great sucess selling books on Amazon, and have also had some luck with items on eBay recently. Also, started reading Stuart's Lance Armstong book - which is pretty inspiring. Hope to get out on the bike again tonight - although it looks like there is going to be some pretty nasty weather.

Working at home today, after a good tech specialist clinic yesterday. Not many hours to do this week as I'm on a flat one. Hopefully completely done by lunchtime, with a late start this morning.

The awning arrived at 0815, so had that out of the boxes and into the bags. Not sure I'll every be able to fold it that neatly again so that it fits in!!!

Good news that Mark's BP is down, even though he must be in a pretty stressful place at the moment in the closing stages of Wormington.

Booked some flights for Karlsruhe yesterday - hopefully see him there!

Another North Sea Fire

There has been another fire in the North Sea, this time on a Shell oil platform. Seems to be an electrical fire (and not sure of the extent of the damage yet).

Had a long meeting with Stirling yesterday, a good gossip catchup and a little bit of work stuff. Today we are having another PCS7 clinic with a demo of the SIMIT project. It seems that work on my project will be put on hold quite soon, unless the customer becomes available (but this is unlikely). It has already been mentioned that Geoff and I will be dragged into the Wormington machine to help out with last minute config and setup of equipment for testing.

Tasha presented her risk assessment last night - need to find out how it was received!

Visiting an old friend

It been ages since I took a look at rion

Bike

The bike came out for the first time this year last night. Really cold evening and my fingers were freezing when I got back, but getting the first outting out of the way was good. Only did 11km but its a start. The chain work I did at the weekend seemed to been running sweet.

Got home and plonked down next to Tasha who was watching the "dreamy" Smallville.

Tasha is going on a NODA course in May (when we were due to go to Pembrokeshire), so we decided that we'd go somewhere a little nearer so that she can get back a day early to go. I think we have decided on Chester - so checked out a few venues last night.

Got the drivers working on my "leisure" drive last night after the new one arrived last Friday.

Noticed on the Guardian site that Google maps has gone the next step - other planets! The new mission impossible III trailer is out (but I can't view it at work!)

My ebay purchases are going quite well too

Chocolate Bingo

Went to the chocolate bingo, raising funds for the pre-school on Saturday afternoon. An excellent turn out, with nearly 150 people turning up. This year out table was quite sucessful (apart from poor Nate who didn't win). Tasha out with the girls, for a belated Birthday evening, to Pastiche - but they had awful service and the evening went a bit flat and they all came home early.

Sunday, went swimming - Florence is now 35 on the waiting list, but saw that there was a woman doing private lessons. This got Tasha thinking, so we are going to get some information so that Tasha can jog her memory on when she did her swimming instructors course.

Went to Mum & Dad's in the afternoon, and they seemed to be in quite high spirits.

Chess

We went to see chess at the landau forte theatre last night. The production was really professional with fantastic voices and great full orchestra music. Came back had had a chilli with Jane and Nigel. Productive afternoon after spending the morning having a coffee with Tasha (hopefully the first of many now that Nate goes to play-group solo). The early evening was spent finding yet more items to put onto eBay - major life laundry happening now!

v3 of tashascakes.com gallery is now posted

Interest in knackered iPod

Well, the new Nano arrived safely, and I managed to get all my old iPod stuff on eBay. There has been a surprising interest in it, although no firm bids yet.

Ready to tak the car in today, hoping its not too expensive to sort out. I'm always really wary of garages that they can pull the wool over my eyes, because I know naff all about cars.

Emissions

A little light came on in the car the other day to say that there was something wrong with our exhaust emissions. Expensive was my first thought. We've booked it in for a diagnostic check tomorrow, just to make sure its nothing serious - but GJ has suggested buying some diesel additive, and giving that a try too. It might be that the turbo just needs a good blow, so with any luck the light will go out when we drive it into Derby. The diagnostics check costs £35.

My iPod nano has been despatched so with any luck that will arrive today, although, due to my normal bad luck will be tomorrow when we are out with the car - hopefully get Alison to keep an eye out if thats the case though.

Reasonable productive day yesterday, and we got a few things set up in turbo lister last night ready to blast onto eBay today as its a 10p listing day!

Nano

Did a bit of trawling yesterday, and I think I've managed to get a good price (from Amazon) . The delivery wasn'y too bad either. Got a dodgy price from currys using a perkz code that wasn't supposed to be valid, but seemed to knock £20 off the price. The delivery was another £12, and the earliest it could be was next Tuesday - and unfortunately that was an online price only. Had my second "used" item from Amazon, I think its a pretty good way of getting books, and I've listed some myself now. Its a lot less hassle than ebay, and the item doesn't need to be re-listed all the time. Some more items are queueing up for eBay now (and tomorrow is a cheap ad day too)

Working from home for the rest of the week, so got my little work station set up.

Used the power of Google Chat yesterday and caught up with Mark who is working out of Germany again this week.

Announcement email

Yesterday saw a slightly criptic email, that was very long, but didn't say very much - about the delayed reorganisation plans. There wasn't really much gossip about the whole thing though.

I got the results of my CFSE exam and I FAILED (by only 3 marks) bit of a bummer, but hey what the hell.

Adrian has been seconded to the manufacturing group for a 6 week stint at Johnsons, as expected that didn't go down very well, especially when he pointed out that right in the middle of that time, he is due to go to Karlsruhe for a workshop.

SIL session cancelled this week, due to people being mobilised offshore for the investigation (glad its not me) - so may work the rest of the week at home.

Another great weekend away

Had another great weekend away. The weather was great and it snowed after we arrived on Friday night. Woke up to quite a thick blanket of snow, but beautiful clear blue skies. Some great walking and exploring in the Churnet valley.