||: Install ... Uninstall :||

My job, at present, seems to be just repeatedly installing and uninstalling the same application all day long; I'm about ready to snap.

I showed the new lens for my camera to someone from work today -- he's also getting into photography -- and now he wants to get the equivalent lens for his Nikon camera. He was also amazed by how light my camera is in comparison to his, what with his being digital and mine being 35mm.

Today's picture, "Chilly", was taken with the kit lens that my camera came to me with. The film was a nice contrasty colour reversal film, so the trees come out as black and white depending on whether they're in shadow or sunlight, and the sky came out a glorious blue colour (seems the film was quite blue-sensitive). Sadly there was a bit of grain, presumably from the age of the film, but also possibly from the airport baggage scanners. They can supposedly cause additional grain on film. The worst thing is that the film scanner that Jessops use appears to add noise to the image, too. Still, I'm quite proud of the shot.

Happy New Year

Well it's been a long while since I last blogged. Again. Since then we have been on our Hamymoon. Sorry, that should be Honeymoon. We went to France where we couldn't find much in the way of vegetarian food, as the french seem to feel the need to put ham in everything, even the bread. We were out there over christmas and new year, so here's a shot from New Year's day, taken only a few minutes into 2007.

I'll probably be boring you all with loads of pictures from now on ... I'm enjoying my photography again, I've even paid for a Flickr Pro account to keep me motivated, and I'm attempting to fill one roll of film every two weeks. Eventually I want to start developing my own film, but I've plenty of other bits and pieces to worry about before that happens.

Oh, and vanilla flavoured tea is fantastic. Rush out and buy some right now.

1...2...1,2...Testing...

Please note: LoweyBlog and indeed Lowey himself are not dead: They are merely hibernating in a small leaf-lined hole under a hedgerow. Please stand by for further instructions. LoweyBlog will be adding meaning to your pathetic lives once again some time in the near future.

You may now return to whatever it was you were doing.

SatNav and a new hot water tank

I've been considering it for a while now: SatNav. I'm sure it will help prevent arguments on the road, so I had a look around to see what was available. I've tried out the TomTom in Manchester and, while it was okay, I wasn't exactly blown away by it either. I felt like it was trying to tell me too much at any time, so I ignored a lot of the clutter on the display and just read the map. It's handy having the map there ready to be glanced at when you're unsure where you're going, but I wasn't a fan of the voice alerts or the other information on the screen.

So having decided it's time to get a SatNav I started looking at what's available. I decided against TomTom, partly on the grounds that I felt it was over-complicated, and partly on price. Liz and I had agreed to "go halves" on the unit, and I didn't want my half to be more than £100. In fact, I wanted it to be considerably less than that.

After much searching I stumbled across a Garmin product that does everything TomTom does plus a whole lot more but with a considerably smaller price tag. It looked good, but I felt like it was overkill. I don't really need an MP3 player, video player SatNav. I just want the map functionality really. But I was impressed, so I had a look to see what else Garmin had on offer.

It was then I stumbled across the Garmin Streetpilot i3. It's small (very important when removing from the car -- another black mark against TomTom I'm afraid) and it's simple. It focuses on the map and only minimal additional information is displayed on the screen. Perfect. Plus, and this is the important part, it's a fraction of the cost of most GPS devices. Out came the switch and today it arrived.

As with any new toy I couldn't keep my hands off it and so it was straight out of the box and straight into the car for some playing. On the whole it's great. It does what I want it to do and that's about it. It has lots of places of interest pre-loaded onto its memory, and I paid £2 to download a list of speed camera locations which I augmented to its memory. Plus I found a nice site which allows you to download business locations and add them to your Garmin product (you have to rename the .ASC file to .CSV for the upload software to work though. Took me a while to figure that out) and so I now have a list of campsites, zoos and vegetarian restaurants in the device too.

But not only can the device mark the location of speed cameras, campsites, zoos and vegetarian restaurants, but it can also tell you if you're approaching them too fast. Although I suspect that feature is more for cameras than anything else. When approaching a speed camera too fast the device will provide an audible warning as well as showing the location of the camera. Very swish. While I was testing this by driving too fast towards speed cameras (that's a joke, by the way) I noticed the device can also detect when you're about to enter a new speed limit and warn you accordingly. I was driving at 40 approaching a 30 zone and it beeped at me until I slowed down. Very clever stuff, and not something I was expecting for the price I paid.

It even knows where my ex-boss lives and can give directions accordingly, so I won't get lost on Friday when I drive to his house to stay there for the weekend for my stag do.

Anyway I could drivel on about it all night. But I won't.

I also had a fit today when the plumbers finished installing a new hot water tank for us. He totalled it all up, and I proceeded to have an asthma attack as I read it. As I couldn't find my cheque book I had to pay by credit card. Ouch.

Pay Review

I just had a meeting with three managers to say why I think I deserve a pay rise. If you ever find yourself in the position where you're thinking to yourself "Should I apply for a pay rise, or should I just jump ship?" then might I suggest just jumping ship. The review was, basically, a waste of time and extremely stressful. However I did get to show them I mean business. At one point I was told my pay was based on my experience. I said "the market rate for someone with 2 years of industry experience is £30k, wouldn't you say?" To which they said no. I then handed them a piece of paper with a number of examples of jobs for people with 2 years experience offering 30k or more.

I think I made my point. I'll be continuing to monitor the job market seeing as Fujitsu aren't keen to pay me what I'm worth.

I'm So Busy My Head Is Spinning

We went to Manchester for the weekend to be with Liz's family following the death of Liz's Gran. We got up at 2:30am on Saturday and left Newbury at 3:00am. Driving through the night, we arrived at 7am. I think the visit was a success in that Liz's Mum seemed a lot better when we left than when we arrived. Or maybe she was just glad we were going? ;) Despite the unpleasant reason for the visit it was a good weekend with the only really unpleasant part being when we went for a walk and a large dog decided to try and mate with my leg.

Now I'm trying to plan when everything is happening over the next few months and am looking at my calendar in disbelief at the amount of stuff that needs doing between now and the wedding. I'll be lucky to survive without having a heart attack the way it's looking at the moment.

I've also been considering trying cycling to work and back, but I doubt that'll happen. Instead I might just get a scooter and do that instead: I could be paying about a quarter of the amount I am currently paying per month in petrol costs, simply by using a scooter. In fact the savings would pay for the scooter within a year for a new scooter, or within 3-4 months for a second-hand one. Can't say fairer than that really. Plus you can ride on L-plates for two years once you've done your compulsory basic training so I don't even have to worry about the test any time in the near future (I might not ever bother unless I get a motorbike, it's just an added hassle).

Remember, my stag-do is on Saturday the 30th of September in Aberystwyth, drinking starts around 20:00 (8pm). Ring me on the night to find out where we all are. Email me before then if you've not got my number. I am going to try and book us some pool/snooker tables at the snooker club on the pier, if they will let me. After-all, very few of us (1 person?) are members.

Pay Rise

I've decided to put together a case to try and get a pay rise. I don't think my pay accurately reflects my level of responsibility, my competency, knowledge or skillsets anymore. So I'm going to give Fujitsu a chance to pay me what I deserve before I start looking for a new job. It's got to be worth a go, right?

RIP Zippy

As I mentioned at the end of my last blog, we took Zippy to the vets for the last time last night. One of his eyes had turned a milky white colour and he clearly couldn't see out of it. At first she thought it was probably an ulcer and was going to prescribe antibiotic drops, but while we were there I noticed it looked as though his other eye was going the same way. She was also concerned that his stomach had become very bloated despite him not eating a great deal anymore and concluded there had to be something more serious going on that could cause the fat stomach, the cloudy eyes and the itchy skin, so she went to get a second opinion from one of the more senior vets who has seen Zippy many times before.

When she returned she said they'd discussed it and they both agreed it was almost certainly an enlarged liver, meaning liver disease. The problem with his eye would already be very painful for him, they said, and it would only get worse with the other eye going the same way. Plus he had the constant itchiness which he'd lived with for the past 6 months, and his stomach seemed sore to the touch as he would spin around to protect himself every time we tried to stroke his fur. They both agreed the kindest thing to do was simply put him to sleep and asked for our consent.

We knew it was the only option. He'd have not got better, keeping him alive any longer would not have been fair on him so we agreed, but it was a very hard thing to agree to. If he'd been hardly moving and clearly not got long left anyway then it would have been much easier, but he was still running around, admittedly in obvious discomfort but running around nevertheless, so it was hard not to feel like judge, jury and executioner.

They gave us five minutes with him to say goodbye during which I paid (I didn't want to hang around after they'd done the job) and then they took him into the back room. Because of health and safety we couldn't be with him when they finally put him under because the gas they use is also a human anaesthetic, so we went and sat in the car and they brought him back out to us after. We took him down to the allotment and buried him in the wasted land behind our allotment, next to Bungle and George. The last of the rainbow trio.

He was a brave little guy, he had a lot to put up with over the last 6 months with all the medicines and creams he had to have but he always remained a lovely, friendly little thing.

It's hard to believe all three of them have gone, it doesn't seem that long since we brought them back from the pet shop and put them in their cage, sat back and watched them explore their new home. All three of them were full of fun, we couldn't have asked for better pets. I can't even hope to describe here how great they were. We'll miss them all.

Summer Sundae Weekender

We did the Summer Sundae weekender again this year. We left on Thursday night and got back around 16:00 on Monday having had approximately 5 minutes of sleep during that time. Well okay it was probably a bit more than 5 minutes, but it certainly wasn't as much as I really needed. I'm utterly exhausted now.

We took a £10 tent from Lidl. The first night we got there we got shown to where we were to set up our tent. The security bloke who had shown us there asked "will this be enough space?" to which I replied "I dunno, I've never put the tent up before. It's only a 2-man tent so it should be fine." He hung around a while to make sure it was okay.

Now being a man I can't simply take the tent out of its bag and unfold it. NO! It has to be taken out, placed on the floor while still rolled and, with one smooth motion, held with one hand and unrolled at speed with the other. The tent will unroll its length and the person doing the unrolling will look very cool. Or so I thought.

I stood there, confidently holding it with one hand and, with one smooth movement unrolled it across the floor with the other. But it didn't unroll over a distance as expected. No, it stopped at about the size of a single airbed matress, its garish blue and yellow colours shining back at us even in the dusky light. "Holy SHIT it's small" were the words I used, if I remember correctly. You know that phrase "you get what you pay for"? Well I'd paid for £10 of tent and I'd got £10 of tent.

It took some time to put it up properly too, as the instructions left rather a lot to be desired. One end of the tent was designed to be simply propped up with a single stick which, unsurprisingly, didn't stay in place for very long. There was barely space for both sleeping bags inside, and we had to push the bags down to the bottom as there was nowhere to keep them other than inside the tent. As far as I can tell it didn't rain that night, but the tent was wet in the morning (presumably from dew) and because it was impossible not to to touch the sides while inside the tent, most of what was outside the tent ended up inside. Plus the stupid prop thing had fallen over and so the ends of the tent were on the sleeping bags.

In the end we borrowed Ricey's 3-man tent which proved to be rather a lot drier and just a tad more spacious. We kept the bags etc inside even though there was storage space for the bags at the ends of the tent and there was still tonnes more space.

Anyway this is the first time I've been camping in years and I've really missed it. It's put me in the mood for some serious camping, but we'll need a new tent first. This looks quite good, and I can get an additional 20% off bringing the total down to £78.39 (or £39.20 each). Bargain.

The festival itself wasn't as good this year as the two previous years in my opinion. The Delays were good, and The Proclaimers were quite good (although I slept through most of their gig as it was very warm and dry and I was very cold and tired). Other than that we spent most of our time in the new Cabaret tent which was all comedy acts. Plus they've made the festival bigger and sold more tickets and so has lost a lot of the charm it had in previous years.

I'm not saying it was shit, just not as good as it has been in the past.

Camping at the festival was a nice experience too. We may very well do that all the time in the future. The only down-sides are the parking and the drunk twats coming back from the festival sitting around shouting all night. Having to regularly feed money into the parking machine is a right royal pain in the bum and getting no sleep is bloody annoying.

Anyway that's enough about that. I suspect I'm not going to have happy news tonight as Zippy (our one remaining mouse) is going to the vets and I suspect they're going to tell us that the only kind thing to do now is put him to sleep. So as you can imagine I'm in a wonderful mood today.

You Have To Be Having A Laugh

As I am now working as a Linux bod, it is very important that I have a beard. Well actually, I had the beard before I became a Linux bod: Mainly through laziness. It possibly contributed to me getting the new role. But anyway, as it was looking a little untidy and as my old shaver has all but packed up on me I have been meaning to buy a new one. With going to Argos last night to buy a mummy bag for camping, I decided that it would be a good opportunity to pick up a beard trimmer. I made my choices and bought them. It took forever (both till staff seemed determined to give full blown sales advise on which of two similar items the customer should buy). I eventually got the items home and, running my hand over my chin, decided that the sooner I got the shaver sorted out the better.

So I unpacked the shaver from its box. Strangely it had been shrink-wrapped, so I had to get a knife to open it. Once I had the shaver out of its casing I noticed several deep scratches in it. I thought I'd been careful and felt bad that I'd managed to make such a mess of a brand new item in opening it. Then I noticed that the length dial window was very dirty. Then I noticed the shaver itself was covered in scuff marks as if from months of use... I looked into the head of the shaver and was disgusted to find the sorry remains of someone else's beard.

I flicked the on button and nothing happened. Most items ship with a small charge in the battery to stop them breaking down and leaking, so I was surprised this shaver seemed to have no charge. I opened the instruction manual which reaked of smoke, which stated the unit needs charging for 14 hours on first use. I tried plugging it in and the charging light didn't illuminate. So clearly the product had been bought by someone, used for some time and then it had failed. On failing the product had been returned to Remmington who, rather than refurbishing it and selling cheap, had simply left it in its broken and unclean state, repackaged it and sent it back out, complete with beard remnants.

Livid, I rang the Argos store I bought it from. No answer. So I stuck my postcode into the Argos site to see what the opening hours were. It had closed half an hour earlier. DAMN! I needed a shave and I needed it fast. Luckily the other Argos was still open, so I drove out to that site.

At the customer services desk the woman asked why I was returning it. "Because it's clearly not new," I stated, "It has bits of someone else's beard in it." She withdrew slightly in disgust at this statement.

"That is really quite grim." She said in a calm, level voice as she peered into the head of the offending item.

She exchanged the product (even allowing me to open it and check it before doing the exchange) and gave me £5 off for the hassle. So fair play to Argos Extra in Newbury, but the small Argos in Newbury is shit. Also, Remmington need taking down a peg or two for trying to get away with that.

The new one works and doesn't stink. I now have a neatly trimmed beard.