I changed the theme again. This one is much cleaner.
Month: April 2009
Successful day
The IT meet went very well. I think they just about have got the idea now, although they are still talking about ‘corporate measures’ that will change everything we do. I don’t think so. We are the largest income generating section within the Council, and if IT think they can jeopardise that, they are in for a massive wake-up call.
Eldest went out with Mrs H in my car today. It seems to have gone okay, but then his stupid head kicked in tonight. He wanted to drive to the village hall, but he had had a couple of drinks, so that was not going to happen. So he went off in a huff. I just don’t get him sometime. To cap it all, the youngest kicked off at 10:00pm tonight. It lasted about 20 minutes. It is getting really difficult to cope now.
Subject change……
A friend I’ve not chatted to for a while has logged onto MSN. I said ‘hi’, but she is away. Shame. I’ve not chatted to Mrs C for a few days. She doesn’t seem to be on MSN at the moment. I hope all is well there. I don’t really like chatting on facebook, and MySpace is a bit too longwinded and slow.
I’m not sure if I like my new theme. It does not look as sophisticated as the ‘Misty’ one. It may grow on me, but I just don’t like any of the others. They all look very sameish.
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Time for a change ….
I have been thinking about changing the theme for this blog. I will give this “Connections” theme a try for a while. I can always change it back.
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It’s still only Monday ……
Well, it has been a reasonable day, in parts, for a Monday (I think). I managed to get all the IT kit set up for Wednesday. The scanner is working, although I must remember which TWAIN drivers are best. ActiveSync 4.5 was already loaded, which came as a surprise. It is not usually preloaded with XP, unless BK did when setting up. It was unusual with the cameras though. The Panasonic is seen as a separate Windows drive, whereas the other camera (and for the life of me, I cannot remember the make) appears as a camera. I fully expected to have to install drivers. I will have to write down, the process for installing Enterprise Manager, or more to the point, registering the SQL server. I always forget.
Eldest is playing the “I’m grown up and know everything and can do everything myself” game. I know we were all the same at that age, but I now know what my Mum and Dad went through with me, when I was at that phase. I felt like a taxi driver this morning. When I dropped them off, I almost looked over my shoulder and asked for the fare !!! I don’t mind really, but it means that I don’t get to work until around nine and it really messes up my flexi-time.
I bought my new wheel trims today. I lost one somehow, but I don’t now where. I have an idea, it was either when I caught the kerb in the village, or when I caught the kerb down at East End Park. Either way, it’s gone. I looked at both locations, but it was not there. I have just reserved a couple of tribal graphics for my car. It says online, that they are only £1.00 each, but I thought they were a lot more that that. I’ll take the confirmation email, with the price on. They are side graphics, but I think I may put them on the bonnet. Mrs H does not approve !!!!
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Its the weekend !!
Where did the week go ? It’s been quite tedious at work. I’ve not had too much to do really, and because I’ve lost some jobs, I’m struggling some day to fill the hours. Never mind, next week should be better. I wonder who is coming from Northampton. I suppose it could be Martin or Paul. Either would be fine. Just so long as it is not Ian. I find him incredibly difficult to work with.
Eldest has been a bit off this weekend. He was a real ‘tw4t’ last night, and he wasn’t much better this morning. Could have been the drink. I think his girlfriend gave him a bit of a bollocking, because he came to apologise. I think he thinks we are trying too hard. He was much better this afternoon though.
We had some of my home grown salad leaves again tonight. They have really turn out to be quite good. The first four bowls I grew will last a good week and a half, and by that time the ones in the trough should be ready. That should give the bowls time to recover. Apparently, they should keep growing as you cut them. The leaf beet is growing steadily. From what I understand, I should get some small beets, when the leaves are done. That will be nice if it does. Fresh baby beetroot is supposed to be very good. Only just over half of my bedding dahlias have come through. There is still time for the rest to get going, but it is a little disappointing. They grew well the last time I grew them. It must be at least 16 years ago though.
I’ve to redesign the tickets for the play tomorrow. I’m struggling to work out how to get them bigger. I think I will have to 4 x 2, landscape so that I can keep the ratio correct. They want me to design a poster for the show, and he’s even mentioned designing the t-shirt. I’m not sure about the t-shirt, but the poster will be okay. I can see me ending up doing the programme too, although that has not been mentioned … yet !!! It will be quite a lot of printing, so I may need to stock up with ink. Paper is cheap enough, and I have some (hopefully enough) card. The quandary is, do I ask them to pay for some ink and paper ? I should get to hear about quantities tomorrow. That will help me decide on how I’m going to do this.
It will be a full week to work next week !!! But to compensate, the week after is only a 4 day week. It’s hard to believe that it is 1st May on Friday. Where’s it all gone.
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Tuesday all done and dusted….
Today started quite well (apart from the youngest being in a bad mood again) and it continues in that frame for the rest of the day. I had cakes to buy today. I spent about £9.00 I think, but I brought what was left home with me. They would have only been pinched by ‘persons unknown’. I could not believe Spike asking me if I was taking them home. Cheeky sod … he did not buy any last year.
All the work I needed to do got finished as planned, for which I am very pleased. We are now back in a position, that we should have been two years ago. We’ve finally caught up.
I started reading ‘Brideshead Revisited’ last week. It’s an interesting novel, but I think it will take me a chapter or two to really get into it. I need to get the TV series out of my head. From what I’ve read up to now, the TV version was very true to the novel.
I started to watch the DVD that the eldest bought me for my birthday. He got me Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’. I’ve not watched it for years. It’s possibly my 3rd favourite film of all time. He said he was in two minds whether to get that or ‘The Seven Samurai ’ (4th favourite).
The new DVD writer is a success. I have just to get my head around how to use the freeware authoring tool. It is not the most intuitive piece of software I’ve used, but I’ll get there. Which reminds me, I need to edit one of my previous posts. Stop it showing a ‘404’ on the hyperlink.
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Another day older and deeper in ………
I’ve had a good birthday. There were lots of nice presents and cards, and a surprising number of birthday messages on facebook. It’s really strange how I have taken to this ‘social networking’. Two years ago, I would not have touched any of this with a barge pole. Now look at me …… I’m on facebook, MySpace, Twitter, a blog on here, a Bebo account, Stumbleupon, an Orkut account that I’ve never used, an ID with what used to be Lycos Chat, and I think I have a login to Linked-In. It is a wonder I have time for anything else.
I dropped the eldest and his girlfriend in town this morning. It was very strange driving home from Leeds at 10:00am. The motorway is a completely different road at that time of day. It was very quiet.
We had a nice day out in Knaresborough. 
We’ve not been for some time. A nice walk and a coffee down by the river, then up into the town for a look around. We had a drink in ‘Blind Jack’s’ bar, which seems to be a very old pub. It had 7 or 8 fine ales on draught and 4 lagers. None of which were well known brand names, with the exception of Black Sheep. But then everyone has Black Sheep at some time. We then had a snack by the river before setting off back. We called in at the shopping park, and had a look in Matalan, where I got some new earrings. Fluorescent pink, yellow and green stars. My wife thinks I’m a little mad, but the eldest likes them.
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That is that week over then ….
This week went quite well. Better than expected at work, with no real problems that could not be dealt with. I had a problem with the Equita stuff on Thursday and Friday, but now we know what the problem is and have a work round, it should be okay.
Out for dinner with the in-laws on Friday evening. The Fox & Hounds at Walton. Very nice, only I would not have the 10oz beef burger again. The meat was tasty, but there was too much cheese on, so it did not melt properly, and as such, the burger became a little dry.
My new DVD re-writer arrived on Thursday. It was quite a bargain really. £16.99 from Play.com. Spent a good hour at work on Friday (don’t tell anyone) trying to find drivers and installation details, as there were none with the unit. I installed it Saturday morning. It took just over an hour to do, and that included giving the PC a good cleaning to get rid of all the dust. I have yet to try and create a DVD, as we no longer seem to have any blanks. Morrison’s has a 50 piece spindle for £14.99, but I have an idea, the Tesco may have then cheaper. I may blog my experience with the installation on another page (if I can workout how to do it). I think I may have to blog straight from WordPress.com rather than use Windows Live Writer.
That will do for now, going to look for some DVDs.
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Day 2 … the journey continues
Much the same today, work wise. Although more jobs to get through, the day went quite well. It did not start too good though. Youngest (bless!) was awake at 01:50am. He could have only been asleep for 2 hours. Give him his due though, he was very quiet, and I think he went back to sleep after a short while. The problem is, that you don’t sleep. You just doze gently, with an eye on the clock, listening for him moving around. Hoping, that he has gone off, but not daring to go and turn of the computer or television. Because you know that at that moment in time, he will wake up again.
Spike back today. I cannot believe, that it took him from 09:15, when he arrived, to 11:20 before he acknowledged that I was there. We had not spoken for 11 days. What kind of a manager is that !!!! Is there any wonder, that on a scale of 1 to 10, the respect for this guy is closer to 0 than to 1.
I forgot my medication this morning! I have to take a ‘pump inhibitor’, which basically stops stomach acid from burning away the lining of my oesophagus. The condition is called “Barrett’s Oesophagus”. I don’t know whether it was because of the lack of sleep or any other factor. I did seem to be running around a little more than usual. I did not realise until this afternoon, when I found I was getting a little indigestion. It was only then that I thought that I may have forgotten.
I have found a great freeware CD burning program. “Burnaware Free” it is called. It has a very small footprint, and is extremely fast. I have been using another piece of freeware software called CDBurnerXP, which is very very good. The only difference is that “Burnaware Free” is a great deal faster when loading the program, and loading the files to be burnt to disc. CDBurnerXP requires, I believe, the dot net framework to run, and that may be the problem. Anyway, for those who are interested, Burnaware Free can be downloaded from www.burnaware.com. and for the record CDBurnerXP is available form http://cdburnerxp.se/
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Survived…..
First day back, and not a problem in sight. Well that’s not entirely true. There were a couple of things to sort, but nothing major, and nothing like the type of thing I usually come back to.
DC seems to have got a handle on the Auto-prog, which is good. Although, he does seem to have his work cut out trying to show KEC. I can see where she may be coming from. PT is the supervisor after all, and he would run more than a mile if it was him being shown !!!!!!
Quiz nite was good, up to a point. We never win. Never even come close, but it is the taking part that counts (I suppose). Four quid on the footie card too, and another 2 quid on the bingo. All down the pan.
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Holiday …. all done
Well back to work tomorrow. In some respects, the week seems to have flown by. In others it dragged a little. The drive there was quite reasonable. It was all motorway, M1, M62, M60, M61, M6, M55 with a short distance on an a road at each end. I don’t mind the motorways. I don’t seem to get a frustrated on M roads. We only had one hold up. It lasted for about 40 minutes and was due to some kind of spillage on the M6. A couple of very stupid girls in the jam. Sat in the middle lane, music on full blast, bouncing up and down in their seats. Suddenly the passenger opened the car door and started dancing in the middle of the road. Stupid.
Weather was kind to us though, no rain to spea
k of until Friday, but quite windy. I caught a bit of sun on the the Thursday and Saturday. On Tuesday we did the walk from the lake at St Anne’s to Lytham which was nice. Wednesday saw us in the Blackpool Tower. We went to the circus, but it was not the youngest’s type of thing. He lasted an hour, which was not bad for him. It is not the same though. I was quite disappointed with the whole show. The clowns seemed to reply more on vocal humour than the slapstick. Mind you, no body can come close to Charlie Caroli, and I think was expecting too much. Thursday was a trip to Marton Mere. We saw the leaflet last time, but never got there. Interesting place. It seems it 
is a 10,000 year old lake. One of only two natural lakes in Lancashire, and it was remarkably clean and litter free, despite being next to a caravan site.
Saturday, saw us back up at Lytham/St Annes again. A different walk this time, and a lot less windy. Here comes the rant
… I get sick of seeing dogs everywhere. I worked it out, every third person/couple/family had a dog or dogs. They all seem to be on extremely long leads, when they are on leads at all. I never remember seeing as many dogs when I was a kid. And talking of kids (rant part two), why are they so noisy these days. Always screaming, and out of control. not like when I was young……… showing signs of age now.
One annoying thing though. I like to walk through the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. Very rarely go on any of the rides (too pricey these days), but I enjoy marvelling at the amazing 
attractions. Not any more …… there is now a £5.00 charge for people just to walk round. So that means, those who go with their kids, and look after the bags and prams, now have to pay for the privilege. An absolute disgrace, and I think may be a wrong move, as I think some people just won’t go.
Set off home on Sunday at around 10:00 (I like to get home early on the last day) and was home for 12:15. It could have been 11:30 if we had not stopped for coffee.
All my plants/seedlings were okay. Eldest had done quite well there. The house was okay, no problems there. Just one problem, but we talked it through, and I think he got the message.
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The holidays are on…..
Just a short one today. The packing is nearly done, just got to get the missus’s stuff pack
ed. I know…………
Been to the ‘Lion tonight. A very quiet evening in there. The usual crowd were in though Stuart, Phil, Andy etc. A bit like Tuesday without the quiz !!
Do you like the new pic ? It does not show, but I have blue mascara in my beard !!! No mutterings about ‘mid life crisis’……… I’ve gone beyond that.
That’s it. see you all in a weeks time.
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A little bit of this ….. a little bit of that …..
Saturday went well. Potted on some of my seedlings. They are looking quite good, fingers (and everything else) crossed, they will survive the holiday. No luck with the Lottery again. There should be a prize for nearly numbers. You know, where you nearly get the right numbers. Maybe get you money back if 4 or more numbers are near to the drawn numbers. For example the Lottery (funny how no-one calls it ‘Lotto’!!) draws say 1,21,22,35,6,47 and you have 2,20,34,7 and a couple of others. Because 4 of your numbers are within 1 number of the draw number, you get £1.00 or a free play. Worth a thought ??
The National was good. Poor start again though. We 
don’t really need two false starts. It’s the jockeys fault, they should be ready. When the starter calls them in, they should be ready to go. Not facing the wrong way. What’s that all about !! A 100:1 winner though,who would have thought of that. I bet only the groom and her partner had money on that one. The bookies are laughing all the way to he travel agents.
Packing to do tomorrow morning. Youngest will want some more YouTube downloads. I think there are another 2 lots of 26 to do, and then it should be done. I timed it this afternoon. To download 26 videos and convert them to .wmv format, takes around 1 hour 15 minutes. I had 3 lots to do today. What he is doing is collecting the American versions of the classic series. There are 9 DVD’s in the series at the moment, although I think there is another one either out now or in the very near future.
This may be that last blog for a week. No internet while I’m away. With any luck, I should still be able to get MSN on the phone, so I’ll still be able to chat to anyone who wants to.
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That’s me done for now …..
Well that’s it. On holiday for 10 days. I’m really glad this week is over. I knew the reports would not be right. They never are. It really angers me, because if the finance bods had done as they were asked, then they would have had the reports they needed. I would not have to suffer the stress of trying to explain (again) that I am not a report writer for the system. I wish I was !!!!! At the last time of querying, a Crystal Report writer was getting on average £400,00 per report/day. It’s probably even more now. I remember talking Karen at C***** who claimed her husband was getting £350.00 a day, and that was back in 2003 !!! Still, I can forget it all for now.
Twitter seems very quiet tonight. Bet they are all watching @wossy on the telly. It does not seem that stable sometimes. Only Tweet I have had in the past 2 hours is from Windows Live. An advert for a ‘free’ Windows Live Translation Service. Parts of it look very much like Yahoo’s Babel fish. The ‘to/from’ drop down box has all the same languages as Babel Fish.
Still no comments on here, except for spam. I know it’s not the most exciting blog in the world, but I though someone may have commented. Even if it’s only negative. At least it would prove that it’s being read. I’ve put the web address on Facebook, and Twitter gets updated if I ask it to. I’ll have a go at putting it on MySpace (for what it’s worth). I wonder if there is any way of harvesting all the posts, into a single text file. I know all the posts made through Windows Live Writer saved on my hard drive. I wonder if I could send them all to OneNote, without opening them. Interesting thought. I ought to try and work out how to use OneNote. Or even work out what the thing is for.
Talking of MySpace …… I’m not sure about this at all. Firstly, I sometimes have problems logging in the MySpace. Secondly … it seems to be very slow at doing anything and thirdly, I find it very difficult to use. It’s a bit like Bebo … I found that a bit of a pain too. I’ve lost my login details for Bebo also, which does not help.
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All done..sort of
Well the reports got done. I tried doing the ‘fiddly bits’, but I did not know what ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ actually wanted me to do. Juggling the spreadsheet about, using financial controls is not my kind of thing. So after consulting the boss, I left the job ‘unmolested’. Anyway, neither of the people for whom the report was for, was in this morning. So not really my fault. I got a couple of Spike’s reports done too. That shut him up. I don’t think he expected me to have them done. I’ll get the permit one done first thing tomorrow. I did learn how to create ‘Dynamic Ranges’ in Excel and how to create a User Defined Function, so not a wasted day then.
I’m getting really pissed off with that person I mentioned in an earlier post. I don’t know if they are getting worse, or if I’m just picking things up that I would normally not bother about. It was funny to watch her going though R***’s desk this morning, looking for things she can take when he leaves. Could wait until the guy’s gone at least.
Big man has got the Auto to do next week. He seems confident and he should be okay. I’ll make sure the Reg 10 copies are in plenty supply. He’ll have to make sure that only valid ones go. I reckon there could be a lot that get binned.
It’s dress down tomorrow. I really don’t know if I can be bothered with it. I am not comfortable wearing jeans and things at work. There is not that work/home separation when you don’t get changed at then end of the day.
Holidays next week. Sunny Blackpool here we come. It is strange to think that 
Blackpool is one of the most deprived towns in England. Where does all the tourist cash go ? Everything seems to be a little more expensive there than here, and the place will be heaving over the Easter Weekend. Saying that, when you look at some of the shops away from the promenade, it is very depressing.
It will be a strange feeling, without the eldest. We have been away without him once before, but not for a full week. He should be fine if he does not have any ‘emotional crisis’s’. We just hope everything will be okay, and that he will be sensible and mature. Fingers crossed then.
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A long day today ….. and another tomorrow
It was all going so well, until ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ said the bloody reports were wrong. What I forgot, was that the database had been updated when the system was upgraded. This meant that the reports needed to be updated. Bugger.
So now I need to get in for 07:00, to do the reports, and also do all the fiddly bits to make them work. I hope I remember what to do … ha ha.
From the keyboard of Tony 