Want One

Want one of those. Would make a spiffing birthday / easter / valentine's day / christmas / friday / general gift. ;-)

In other news, I have changed roles within Fujitsu and am now working as part of the Atlas Consortium, helping create the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future). My new job title is the oh-so-exciting "Scripter", but I'm not complaining; I get to work on a high profile project and it's a step closer to actual solid development work. Plus it's in Reading so I don't spend all day driving to and from work.

Baby penguin search is 'ongoing'

BBC News' report on the missing penguin ... Bob, of the Weebl and Bob duo's advice on penguins from back in October 2002.

...if only they'd listened.

Some Bastard Broke Into My Car

When I got up on Friday morning and went to put my bag and laptop in the back of the car, I found that the passenger side door had been wrecked. The sod had smashed the lock right into the door, but this hadn't released the door so they then smashed the window. The car was full of glass and there wasn't a great deal I could do at the time as I had to go to work. Because the car is in need of other work too (welding on the floor panel and a new clutch) I've decided not to replace the door, and so ends the life of another car :( I'll be sending this one off for parts though, and the money from that will go towards my new car.

On Friday when I was on the way out to lunch I said "hello" to a colleague in the building and then randomly added a jokey "I don't suppose you have a car for sale, do you?" Imagine my surprise to find out that he had a car he wanted rid of and he didn't want any money for it. The catch? Well, it needs a fair bit of work doing on the engine due to the fact that a valve has gone, and it's been standing for 7 months or so, but other than that it's all good. It just needs a new battery and a few hundred pounds worth of work doing to the engine. The net cost will be far less than the cost of a similar car from a private trader. And yes, it has an alarm.

Hopefully in a week I will have a new car.

Data Centre

Yesterday I visited a data-centre to try and lend a helping hand to a team that's failing to meet its deadline. We couldn't really help much as there is a total lack of organisation on the site, but it was cool to see the data centre. I've never seen so many computers in one place.

Due to the sensitive nature of the building it is very heavily secured, it took us 45 minutes to get the relevant paperwork sent through to allow us onto the site, then another 30 minutes to get our fingerprints taken so that our visitor-cards could be activated to allow us through the doors in the building. Once we were in, however, we were free to do whatever we wanted. Silly really. I wouldn't mind working in that kind of environment, managing UNIX servers :)

Dublin

This weekend we went to Dublin for much drinking. :) I've never been before so it was a whole new experience for me. If you go then I suggest you steer clear of the Avondale B&B (40/41 Lower Gardiner Street) which is where we stayed. It's the worst B&B I've ever seen. O'Neill's is a must-see pub. I can't remember the name of the road it's on, it's ... somewhere off ... some road ... somewhere. Also while you're in that area, you have to visit Spaco's Ristorante. Yes it is pronounced that way. It's a very nice restaurant and very reasonably priced, plus they have both a vegetarian and a vegan option on their menu.

Aggressive?

Yesterday I got called to a meeting with my line manager and my "mentor" to discuss my aggression. According to them I've been to aggressive or slightly too abrupt with people at work and it's causing problems. Funny then that people always come to me for some help when they're stuck. Strange, too, that neither of them could give a good example of when I have done this or tell me who I've done this to. When I told my colleagues what I had been told they thought I was kidding with them... That's how much of a problem I've become within the workplace.

Bah.

In happier and less aggressive news, Liz and I are fucking off to Dublin tomorrow for what will hopefully be a splendid extra-long weekend. Oh, and I'm still liking this here new laptop. Shame I never have enough time to do much with it.

New Toy

This blog comes to you from my new 17", 2Ghz, 1 Gb RAM, 80 Gb HDD laptop. Well, I say laptop, it's not the sort of thing you'd want on your lap for too long. It's like having a cinema-screen on your knees. Now to work to give a presentation on the Windows NT Task Scheduler, Command Line and Batch Scripting.

PocketMod

I stumbled across this yesterday while looking for information on electronic organizers. I'd like to get myself a Palm at some point but I'm not sure I could justify the cost. The other alternative is to get a new phone (my current one is definitely on its last legs now) with a decent organizer built into it. But then that would present a whole set of problems in its own right - I'd have to go to an actual phone shop where they sell actual phones and put up with actual sales-people being actually pushy. But I digress...

Until I can afford some flashy piece of tech I shall have to make do with whatever I can lay my hands on. So when I discovered these here PocketMod things I was interested. They're a pain to fold (the instructions they give on the site are lame, watch the video instead) but I can see it being fairly useful.

So I've now set myself the simple task of using one for a month to see how I get on. Mine consists of the standard front page followed by 4 weekly planner pages, then a 2005 calendar and a 2006 calendar, then a conversion sheet on the back. If all goes well I may even create a LoweyProject to make a better piece of software for creating these things that interfaces with some calendar software to populate known dates etc.

Give 'em a go, they're kind of fun :)

Never Drive in London

Went to see The Woman In Black on Saturday and made the stupid mistake of choosing to drive there. That's one mistake I won't be making again. We definitely owe Asan a beer for giving us directions over the phone at silly o'clock.

Ben Elton

Last night we went to see Ben Elton in Reading. The show was brilliant, he was on form. :)

General

Work is starting to pick up a bit but I'm sick of all the bullshit we're expected to put up with. I've lost my desk and am now crammed in between two other guys, we're expected to wear suits for no reason at all... The 1 - 1.5 hour drive is starting to really do my head in. Ah well.

Another Day Another Dol- er, Pound

I've managed to completely overspend this month. I've got about £20 to last me until the end of the week, and I'm going to need to buy petrol before the week is done. Thank god it's pay-day on Friday.

I've just ordered a new laptop :) I don't strictly need one, but it's kind of a present to myself. The company runs a scheme where you "hire" a machine from them for 3 years, and then the company sell it to you at the machine's market value at the end of those 3 years (£60). ie You get a machine worth £1699 for a total of £901 at about £25 a month. I decided to take them up on the offer and will soon have a sweet 17", 2 Ghz laptop with 1Gb DDR II, 256 Mb nVidia GeForce and DVD+RW. Only problem is that it would be expensive to leave the company within the next 3 years, so I'll have to stay with them until I've finished paying for the machine.

Currently not doing much, wishing I had some work to do :-/