A Good Friday

I’m glad it’s a long weekend. All is well in the world; I’ve got my man and time to ourselves and I want to enjoy that feeling as much as possible.

The last few days have been busy at work, some of the issues we’ve been having with our file archive really do tend to the farcical in how many times Murphy’s Law has snuck up to bite us on the ass. That said, today things did take a positive step forward, even though I spent a couple of hours in work to make it happen, so it isn’t all bad.

Last night Sid took most of the team bowling in Finsbury Park by way of celebrating his elevation to an Associate of the company. I ate way too much deep-fried food, drank shandy and proved once again that in some things (ten-pin bowling, for example) my hand-eye co-ordination still sucks big time. Even so, unlike many nights out with work, I had a really good time and didn’t wake up with a hangover!

Tomorrow night we’re off to see a musical that Brett has heard of called ‘Wolves in the Walls’. He tells me the clue is in the title, but I’ve no idea how you could make a young girl’s nightmares into a musical. I’ll let you know on Sunday, I suppose.

We’re having Rosie and Andy over for Sunday lunch; I get to practice my cooking again and eat my first decent hot meal in over a week (I’ve had something going on every night this week and so have been dining on sandwiches from ‘Eat’ at my desk each evening!) plus we get to see them both, which we’re not doing much of at the moment.

And that’s probably because we’re so busy rehearsing with the Chorus right now – and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better; I’ve just been putting the rehearsal schedule for the next six months in my diary and there are no less than seven distinct gigs we’re doing between now and September so there are a lot of extra rehearsals to get all the relevant new material learnt in time.

No rest for the wicked, so they say...

A Do-Over, Mr Darcy?

For many years, both my mother and my sister have been fans of ‘Historical Romances’. I think they’ve read every one of Georgette Heyer’s novels. If you are not sure what I mean, think of variations on the themes, situations and characters of Pride and Prejudice and you’re probably in the right area; the Regency era, men and women of different station, or different outlook, drawn together and overcoming great adversity as ultimately love triumphs over all.

I must admit that while I am happy they enjoy the books, I’ve always looked down on the genre somewhat as ‘not quite real’ writing; fairly standard plots which don’t exercise the brain too much and which always have a happy ending. Nothing like the grittier science fiction which I’ve always preferred, exploring paradoxes and obscure physics and where a happy-ending is by no-means guaranteed or, when one does happen, may not be as happy as you might expect.

Well, my dear mother and sister, should you be reading this, you may be interested to know that I have recently fallen from my high horse.

Not through the undoubted joys of the crinolined ladies and red-coated soldiers of the historical romance genre, but I have found my own equivalent online. ‘Do Over’ is an online novel about a gay guy, pretty much down on his luck, who tries to raise some money by volunteering for a pseudo-scientific experiment which results in his adult mind being sent back through time into his teenage body. (I know, I know! Already I can hear you cringing at the premise.) It’s fairly well written though and seems very well researched historically. The story deals with how the narrator/protagonist tries to improve the lot of both his family and the world in general, in the process finding friendship and love in the most unexpected places and ultimately goes on to do both great and terrible things. Anyone who’s ever thought much about the practical issues of time-travel will know of the quandaries that would be encountered and the possibilities that could be realised in such a situation. While there is beauty and love in abundance, it is also a cautionary tale!

While it’s a little bit wordy in places (but then who am I to complain about wordy writing!?) I found it absolutely captivating and must admit to several very late nights over the last few weeks, because I just had to find out what happened next.

What’s more, after the first story arc, there’s a follow up, ‘Do Over Redux’ which is just as fascinating. If you have time, read them – but keep in mind that each one is pretty much a full-length novel.

If you could go back and re-live your life from your high school years onwards, would you change anything about your life? Would you want to change history? If you did, how can you be sure that, on balance, it would work out for the best?

Who Shall We Nuke Today?

Okay, so I haven’t posted for a while, but to be honest, I’ve had nothing much to say; lunch with John on Thursday was pleasant, Brett came home on Friday and we snuggled lots, Saturday was an all-day rehearsal with the Chorus, which went very well, on Sunday we lazed the day away, Monday was back to work (Boo!) but was otherwise okay and ended with another good rehearsal. Then today was Tuesday!

Had a chuckle yesterday though; listening to the news on the radio about George Bush dismissing as ‘wild speculation’ reports that he is planning a nuclear attack on Iran. It just struck me that calling something ‘wild speculation’ doesn’t actually say anything about the truth of the claim. While I imagine that the tacticians at the Pentagon have got some kind of a plan for just about any eventuality, no matter how unlikely, filed away somewhere ready for a President to ask for it, I still find it rather worrying that President Bush couldn’t just come out and say “No, I’m not planning to nuke Iran.” It isn’t really that hard to say, even if you do like to ‘keep all the options on the table’, because surely only a madman would do such a thing. Surely! No?

Also been browsing some of my bookmarked blogs in search of some excitement and, sure enough, Mark Maness managed to provide some in his own inimitable style. If you have problems with your blood-pressure or any stress issues, I recommend you do not read his posting here about the causes of homosexuality…

Ennui

More domestrivia today. Didn’t do much; planned lunch with John W for tomorrow then went down to Wimbledon. Today's lunch was at Quiznos (the place in town that advertises a US free-phone number on its napkins for customer service – but then as Brett said; they probably don’t really care what we think anyway) where they do a rather tasty toasted club sandwich. Put my wristwatch in to get a new battery fitted and went and had a coffee and read while that was happening. (After a brief diversion with The Cuckoo’s Egg, I’m back working my way through my teenage library; at the moment it’s Neuromancer, the William Gibson cyberpunk classic)

This afternoon was more housework and some blog surfing. I added a couple of entries (1, 2) to my photoblog. I also had an entertaining diversion courtesy of Zefrog who introduced me to a new blog written by another member of the Chorus and then made me try and guess the identity of the writer. After a careful reading of said blog and some deductive reasoning, I attributed it to completely the wrong person. Ah well,

Tonight I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, with a persistent headache so have watched some TV and done some more reading. I think I’m getting tired of the ‘doing nothing all day’ holiday and will probably plan my remaining days a bit more thoroughly.

Eternal Flame

Oh dear; Tuesday already. Doesn’t time fly when you’re not paying attention!

Did a bit of everything yesterday; some housework, some Chorus stuff, some geeky stuff. The Chorus stuff started in the morning with two of our longer-standing members continuing a bitch-slapping session they had started online over the weekend. As they were doing it on a forum which is deliberately ‘un-moderated’ I let them go at it and, sure enough, over the course of the day the number of emails from ordinary members telling them to ‘get over it’ mounted up. I found it all rather entertaining to be honest. Today hasn’t seen a resumption of hostilities though so I can only assume that they are either going to pursue it more formally through the Chorus’ Code of Conduct, or perhaps this morning they have woken up to the remembrance that they are adults, rather than children in a playground. Who knows?

The Chorus rehearsal in the evening was great fun. Because I wasn’t at work, I got to Camden early enough to have dinner with John W, Rich C, David S & Paul L – a thing which was a regular occurrence before my hours changed. Tonight we were doing choreography for ‘Back in Business’ and it all went fairly smoothly; we got the whole thing in the bag before break. After break there was a twenty-minute discussion about the Choir of the Year competition. This resulted in the decision that we wouldn’t participate after all. Lots of people felt we should do it, but not nearly enough actually could/would do it. We rounded-off the night revising the choreography for the other two numbers; Keep it Gay and All Girl Band, both of which polished-up fairly quickly.

Today is the anniversary of Simon’s death, so I’ll be lighting a candle for him somewhere later on, but today is mostly going to be a continuation of yesterday’s geeky stuff; I’ve set up a virtual server on my desktop machine so that I can muck around with Release 2 of Windows Server 2003. I’ve been meaning to get around to evaluating it for weeks at work, but now I can spend all day at it (and all night if I wish!) After that I might try some of the security tools I picked up following the course I was on in January.

A Week To Come

Well, after a busy few days clearing my desk, I’m finally on leave for a week. Time to decompress a bit. Time to do stuff I want to do. No deadlines. No pressure.

Went to see Inside Man with Brett last night which was quite good. Today we had brunch with Ping at the Four Seasons in Canary Wharf, which has a marvellous buffet. Tonight we watched the Rent DVD that Brett bought me(?) for my birthday.

Tomorrow? Who knows.

Preparation is Everything

The Choir of the Year competition looks likes it’s going to be troublesome; I attended the polishing rehearsal on Thursday night along with only twenty others. It had to be one of the more productive rehearsals I’ve been to recently, but we really needed more people. The issue seems to be the topic of conversation in the Chorus at the moment; whether enough people will commit, whether there’s been enough notice for everyone, whether we should book a bus to get to the venue, whether we can be ready in time…

Well, there certainly hasn’t been enough notice or preparation for us to take part in a major competition. Two rehearsals, squeezed in separately from the main Monday night rehearsals? People have other commitments in their lives. An out of town venue, with no organised transport or expenses paid? Not everyone has a car or the means to travel. It’s a last-minute rushed job that certainly shouldn’t be.

I hope we can get a decent-sized group together. I hope we can get the sound together in time. But it shouldn’t be such a last-minute, burning-the-midnight-oil venture. There’s only so much you should have to give to your ‘hobby’!

There is a cherry tree at either end of our road. This morning they were just breaking into blossom; one pink and one white. And this evening I didn’t just leave work in the daylight, but it was still daylight when I got home! Spring is definitely in the air.

So what did I do with the first evening of spring?

Ahem. Well, actually I was on the sofa again; microwave meal, another episode of Bones, more online chat with Russell S and quite a bit more of The Cuckoo’s Egg – which is actually very engrossing reading! It’s pitched just right between a layman’s and a techie’s understanding and between a documentary report and a novel. I’d recommend it to anyone.

And now it’s nearly midnight again, so I should go to bed as I’m still not sleeping well…

Tuesday

Frantic morning at work. Sid was in late, delayed by a doctor’s appointment about an abscess on his leg, which left me to handle a meeting he’d set up with a security firm. I managed to wing it okay though as it was only a preliminary fact-finding affair. Got embroiled in the ongoing saga of our printer maintenance contract negotiations after that which kept my stress levels up right the way through to lunchtime.

Had lunch with Owen which was a nice decompression though as he usually does most of the talking. Today it was mostly about his new boyfriend – a relationship which seems to be gong reasonably well.

The afternoon was less stressful, but I was still very glad to get away at the end of it.

Spent the evening on the sofa again, having stocked up on microwave meals. Chatted online to John G (in Leeds) and Russell S (in Surrey) in between reading The Cuckoo’s Egg and watching Bones and Battlestar Galactica on Tivo.

Sleep Deprived

I slept dreadfully last night; first I couldn’t get to sleep, when I slept I dreamt (Unusually erotic!) and remembered it (Just unusual.) and then Brett’s alarm went off around 4am so I only really dozed after that.

I skipped Chorus tonight because I was feeling rough and spent the evening on the sofa instead.

And now I’ve just noticed it’s nearly 1am. Damn.

I can’t seriously believe that losing an hour can affect your body clock that badly – it’s not like you suffer from ‘jetlag’ after a weekend in Paris or Madrid! So what’s going on with my biorhythms??

Fond Farewell

Today started embarrassingly late; after reminding everyone last night to put their clocks forward as British Summer Time started today, we forgot to update ours. Consequently we were an hour late for breakfast – not that anyone thought/bothered to come and give us a knock to see what the delay was! So, after gulping-down breakfast and some rapid packing, we drove over to Helen’s where we were dropping off the parents with some of the rest of the walking group.

Many years ago, we would camp in the grounds of the farmhouse when we came up to the Lakes for our holidays. Nothing much has changed, except perhaps my greater appreciation for the scenery. Helen showed us around the farmhouse again, as she had suffered an electrical fire a couple of years ago and some of the woodwork had been redone and a lot of the interior redecorated.

It’s really like a step back in time; the smell of woodsmoke on the air, rough slate floors, dark oak beams and furniture, low ceilings, an ancient grandfather clock ticking away solemnly in the corner. The farmhouse dates from the early 1690’s, but it seems to have been built around a cabinet which is marked with the date 1688. According to Helen, who’s done the research into the history of the farm, the chest was probably the dowry of the original builder’s wife and the cottage would have been built after they were married as the conjugal home. They probably moved into it from the old barn, which predates the house to Jacobean or possibly Tudor times.

Helen is planning to sell soon though, which is both understandable and a shame. I would love to be able to buy it myself, as I’ve always dreamed of retiring to that kind of a place (suitably rigged-out with high-speed Internet access of course!) but alas, the time is not right and we very likely couldn’t afford either to buy or to maintain it on the salaries we could earn in the area. I expect I won’t be going back to Hollin Root again, so I took some photographs as Helen was showing us round, but alas very few of them were of a publishable quality as the spaces are quite confined.

After we left the parents with Helen, Frank and Margaret we said goodbye to Rosie & Andy and headed straight for the motorway. Brett valiantly did all the driving and we made it home around five o’clock, which gave us a relatively relaxed evening to unpack and for him to re-pack ready for the off to Copenhagen tomorrow.

Walking then Dinner

We got in quite late last night, so I was a fairly gruff animal this morning until breakfast began to seep its way into my system. Once we got sorted though, we had a good day on the hill. There wasn’t much sunshine and the lying snow tended to mess with the exposure levels on my camera so not so many nice shots as last time, but what decent photos there are can be found here.

Mum, Rosie & Andy weren’t up for hillwalking and had a leisurely day showing Andy around the area as this is the first time he’s been to the Lakes.

We were off the hill by late afternoon and had showers and a nap before we were expected in Threlkeld for dinner at the Horse and Farrier. This is part of the biannual ritual of these walks; dinner at the Farrier, a inn which has developed into a bit of a gastropub of late, followed by a sociable singsong. While some of the rest of the group seemed to have problems with the service (which, while leisurely, didn’t seem that bad to me) the food was very good (apart from my tuna which was overdone…) We stayed for a while after dinner as the instruments came out and the folk-singing began, but left a little before eleven as we were both fairly weary.

Tomorrow we’re going over to Helen’s farm in the morning, where our family spent several holidays when I was a teenager. It’s a sixteenth century farmhouse, with even older out-buildings, which I remember fondly and am looking forward to seeing again (assuming of course that Helen doesn’t stay up too late tonight with the singers in Threlkeld!)

View from the Penthouse

Somehow it took us eight hours to get to Keswick today. We set off around 1:30pm as Brett had needed to go to the Danish Embassy for his visa first and had then on to sign the contract for the venue for our concert on April 29^th. For reasons too complicated to explain, we ended up travelling through Central London and up the Edgeware Road to the M1 – which, as any Londoner will tell you, is not the fastest way to cross the city by car! Consequently we hit the beginning of the Friday rush-hour at the start of the motorway; we were nose-to-tail for a while and relatively slow moving all the way to Preston.

We eventually made it and had a quick pint in the local pub (some very nice Cumberland Ale!) before checking-in at the B&B. Rosie persuaded us to swap rooms with them as Andy was having difficulty with the stairs (he has a heart problem), so we are up in the attic room. One side benefit of this is that someone nearby has provided open wireless Internet access, something which I never detected while we were staying in the annexe…

Friends and Relations

For the first time in months, yesterday I left work while it was still light outside. Okay, it was only barely light, but it definitely wasn’t night yet. Since we’re a few days past the Spring Equinox, a rough approximation says I’ve been going home in the dark for six months. No wonder I could do with a break.

Luckily I’m going to have one at the end of next week! I’ve booked my final five days off for the year (our company’s holiday year ends at the start of May, for reasons which I’ve never discovered.) I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere special, although I may take a few days in Edinburgh, as Brett can’t get the time off with me – largely because he’s been taking lots of days of for driving lessons and suchlike. Even so, I think a few days of total laziness and a few days of doing whatever I want to do will probably perk me up a bit.

Had dinner over at Rosie’s last night. In the end Andy’s friend wasn’t there – which is probably just as well, as Rosie hadn’t got the lamb joint in the oven in time for it to be ready for us to eat, so we ended up ordering an Indian, which Brett and I ended up paying for! It was a good Indian though!

We also got a note from Russell E and his partner Ed the other day. We haven’t seen them for a while and it turns out this is because they are gearing up to stand for election to their local council. The note was a request for helpers for their campaign and, although I’m hardly a political activist, I think I may head along and help them to stuff some envelopes and do some catching up.

While I’m thinking politics, I saw this article the other day. It appears that Alan B’Stard has crossed the floor and is now a New Labour MP! That says it all about our beloved Prime Minister’s standing in the country…

Anyway, time for bed. We’re off to the Lakes tomorrow, along with my sister and Andy, joining us on the weekend jaunt for the first time. Sid, my boss, is also in the area over the weekend so we’re going to see if we can meet up for the top nosh on Saturday night.

Madcap Recap

Another busy week at work. Nothing spectacular to report though; just more backup problems, more meetings. Oh, and someone in Edinburgh going to add another connection to the network and inadvertently disconnecting the rest of the office while she was at it!

Chorus on Monday was fun; no choreography, but good music. Scott L seems to have gotten over his huff and Jamie P came and chatted to us during the break. Am missing seeing John and Rich though; John is off in India with work and Rich is at home getting over a minor operation.

Brett passed his driving test today (Yeay!) which means he can share the driving when we go up to the Lake District this weekend. We’re off to my sister’s tonight so she can cook us dinner and introduce us to one of Andy’s friends (for reasons which aren’t entirely clear…)

Saw a frightening article on the BBC yesterday about the schemes that Estate Agents get up to to wring the most money out of their clients: Sobering reading/watching when you are about to step into the Housing Market! I’d say that we’re going to steer clear of Foxtons, except I imagine that the same kind of practices will go on in any of the major high-street agencies. We’ll just have to be doubly-certain of what we want and what we want to spend before we actually set foot out there! Oh, and have no scruples about double-crossing even the most charming of Estate Agents…

I Joined an All-Girl Band

It was another one of those Chorus days. I got up and REALLY did not want to go to the all-day rehearsal. In the shower I was pretty much convinced that I was going to drop out of this show and have a break for a season. But then I went along anyway and I was sitting next to Jerry H who, for all that he looks like a total bully-boy, is such a gentle sweety and with a great sense of humour that I couldn’t stay grumpy.

Today was a choreography rehearsal too and Stuart, as ever, was hugely entertaining as he taught us his moves. Our rehearsals are inevitably peppered with innuendo, but today’s was especially well-seasoned in that regard. My personal favourite had to be the instruction to the Tenor sections to “go down and stay down on the Baritones’ do-do’s.” Priceless and, in context, totally proper!

By the time we got home this evening we were totally exhausted but very upbeat.

On a separate note, if you shared my childish pleasure at receiving a model of K-9 yesterday, you can see a photograph of him here.

Thirty-Seven

And so the calendar has clicked around again and I have clocked-up another year. No great revelations as to the meaning of life; it’s just another day.

Having said that, it was a lovely peaceful day; Brett did everything he could to make me feel special; let me sleep as long as I wanted, made me coffee, brought me lunch, cooked me dinner and watched whatever TV I wanted to watch. He also wrote the sweetest message in my birthday card. I spent this morning watching more episodes of Long Way Round. After lunch I gave my bike a wash down (which it desperately needed) and in the process confirmed that my back wheel is slightly buckled, so I dropped it into the Wimbledon Bike Shop for repair. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading (currently The Nonborn King) and then this evening we watched The Last Emperor.

I received several Happy Birthday messages through the day; the first from Owen (who seems to take perverse pleasure in sending such things at the stroke of midnight – presumably forgetting that some people leave their phone on overnight), Scott and Rich C. There were also an email from Ping and a phonecall from my mother.

Lots of presents, of course, and the one I seem most fond of is actually the smallest; a desperately cute die-cast model of K9 bought for me by my sister. It’s only five centimetres long, but I love it.

Another Day of Dining-Out

Another fairly good day at work; after the recent weeks of ‘firefighting’ I’ve been able to get back to doing some ‘fire-prevention’ work and planning some of the important-but-not-urgent work that we want to do. At lunchtime Sid and I were being treated to a meal by one of our suppliers, partly to seal a new deal with us and partly to apologise for some confusion with them over the last few weeks. We went down to Tas on the The Cut and ate Turkish – which was by no means a small meal! I struggled to stay awake through the rest of the afternoon

This evening also involved eating out: It being Kevin and Chris’ last night in town and the night before my birthday we’d organised a bit of a meal by way of celebration/farewell. It was a family affair, just us, the boys and Rosie and Andy. We ate at Claridges’ Reading Room. There had been some question about the venue; Chris was worried about the formality and Brett was unhappy with some condescending service we’d had last time. However by the time we considered trying a different venue, we were all too busy to choose one and book it, plus I kind of like Deco grandeur and couldn’t believe that the service we’d had was the normal standard of a five-star hotel.

Rosie had warned me they would be somewhat late, so Brett and I sat and ordered aperitifs with Kevin and Chris. They’d brought me a present and a couple of birthday cards. The present was a well-chosen book from my Amazon wishlist; The Cuckoo’s Egg which will be next on my reading list when I’ve finished the current re-visitation of Julian May’s Saga of the Exiles. Rosie and Andy weren’t actually that late in the end and we went on to order.

In the end I think it went very well. Our waiter did make a minor cock-up with the drinks at first, but otherwise service was smooth and fairly discreet. The food was just as good as I remember it (I had the Quail & Foie Gras Terrine, steak and then a soft rhubarb tartlet served with iced Bramley apple purée) as before it was beautifully presented and, although the portions look meagre, I came away feeling quite contentedly full without being over-stuffed.

Kevin and Chris had spent the day visiting the National Portrait Gallery and doing yet more shopping (I still find it hard to comprehend why someone from the States would come to the UK to shop for any but the most ‘British’ items!) There was talk of going home and what they had (and hadn’t) missed about home while away and about future holidays. They seem to have enjoyed themselves though. Andy is heading up to Leeds tomorrow with a truck full of equipment for what sounds like some company’s annual party.

We didn’t stay too late in the end. Rosie gave us a lift to Wimbledon, which was a nice way to round off the evening, saving us a long, dull and probably chilly tube/train ride. We were entertained along the way by the dozens of people staggering around the streets, drunk and wearing silly Guinness hats with green, shamrock brims; it looks like St. Patrick’s Day has done for Guinness what St. Valentine’s Day did for greeting card manufacturers…

Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs

A couple of asides that brightened my morning today;

First this article on the BBC showing how the desire to increase bicycle use hasn’t quite yet achieved the level of ‘joined-up’ thinking it needs. (A quick hat-tip to Slightly Lost for pointing me in the direction of the article.)

Secondly, this article, also on the BBC, about the Ig-Nobel awards for serious scientific papers that have made people laugh as well as think. Personally I can’t believe that anyone can write a paper called ‘The effect of Country Music on Suicide’ without having their tongue firmly in their cheek, but then I’m not into that particular branch of science… ‘An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces’ anyone?

No?

Okay.

Entertaining Americans

A very social day today; had lunch with Chris C as the brothers were off doing a show together. The Mulberry Bush wasn’t quite up to its usual standard as my Thai fishcakes starter and the goat’s cheese and spinach pie main course were both over cooked. He bemoaned the fact that there are no decent shopping opportunities left in Central London; Oxford Street is now largely chain stores and cheap tourist-tat souvenir shops and he wants stuff for Carter that doesn’t come from Baby Gap (which he could buy back in the States!)

Work was pretty productive. I finally nailed down a problem with some email accounts in Santiago, got the backups working in San Juan again and finally started making serious plans for a major re-jig in the Comms Room here in London; something which has been outstanding for months now.

This evening we were meeting Curtis for dinner as he is in town for a few days visiting friends. I’d booked the Laughing Gravy on Blackfriars Road again – we ate there the last time he was in town. Rod & Jess were already there when Brett and I arrived. Jess seems well recovered from her recent operation, has lost a lot of weight and, on the whole, looked very well. They had brought me an early birthday present too! Lovely!

Curtis arrived shortly after seven, somewhat flustered having rushed from dealing with a plumbing emergency at his hotel. He too is looking very well. He’s recently spent a week in Costa Rica and had lots of stories to tell about the beauty of the island. He also has promised to put pictures online, so I shall look forward to those.

Bruce and Rosie were both late, arriving within five minutes of each other from their respective pre-dinner appointments but it just meant we’d that much longer to catch up with Rod and Jess and Curtis.

He is planning a bit of a round the world trip with his mum in the autumn and wants to bring her to London so hopefully we’ll see him again soon – and I’ll get to meet his mother after fifteen years of hearing about her.

Bruce was at the far end of the table, so I didn’t get to talk to him really until we were on the train home and even then it was mostly wine and restaurants talk. He’s looking forward to a Diplomacy day, as are Rod and Jess, so we must get around to finally organising it!

There's Nowt as Queer as Folk

On Monday morning I had a rather rude awakening; a totally unexpected (and I would say uncalled for) email from Scott L, saying how he hadn’t enjoyed the evening because of something Ping had said and going on to attack Ping’s character and finally also criticising our choice of friends.

Initially I was quite gobsmacked, as Scott hadn’t said anything during the evening, although he had left early after having been very quiet. Brett didn’t recall Ping saying anything that might cause offence either so I resolved to talk to him at Chorus in the evening.

Kevin had wanted to come along to watch us rehearse, so he spent the evening sitting at the front of the hall, listening when we sang, but mostly doing logic puzzles. He actually looked like he was taking notes and my fellow Choristers were quite curious about who he was and what he might be doing. (My evil streak came to the fore and I said nothing and let them sweat.)

I’d been a bit worried that he wouldn’t really get a sense of our sound, as tonight we were starting three new songs, but it turned out that we had done a couple of them before and lots of people remembered enough that we got into it fairly quickly. In the end he was quite complimentary about how we sounded.

Scott was rather standoffish during the tea break and even when I approached him his manner said that he didn’t want to be talking to me. Apparently Ping had brought up the openness of his relationship with his boyfriend in front of my sister and Andy (who spend plenty of time with our gay friends and really aren’t that easily shocked!) and (allegedly) implied he was a slut (for which the Chorus has actually given him an award!) and then went on to expand on his views of Ping’s character.

I have to say during the day, my feelings had shifted from the initial upset that one of our friends had been so unhappy as our guest, to one of bemusement at why Brett and I seemed to be taking the brunt of a tiff between Scott and Ping. I came away from the conversation disappointed, angry and even a touch hurt myself I think.

Any decision to put the incident out of my mind though couldn’t last as, after the rehearsal, Brett and I accompanied Kevin back to his hotel, meeting Chris and Ping at the tube station en route (they had been occupying themselves around town while we rehearsed) to have a drink together. We ordered (hugely overpriced) drinks and (very tasty) (and hugely overpriced) club sandwiches and chatted for a while in the bijou bar, done up to resemble someone’s vision of an English Country Squire’s place; lots of studded green leather, dark wood panelling and oil paintings of men with horses.

I don’t actually recall much of what we talked about – they made nice daiquiris (that for once didn’t come with strawberry syrup by default!) so I enjoyed those while waiting for my food. Kevin declared his Club Sandwich to be the best he’d ever had. When the Scott issue came up though, Ping was horrified that he had given offence and Kevin and Chris seemed equally as bemused by it as Brett and me. Totally bizarre. We touched on shows a little and the fact that Kevin has never been to Paris but Chris has and refuses to go back (I’d suggested Paris would make a nice day trip for them, but apparently not…)

At the end of it all, Kevin signed for the drinks and donated towards a taxi home for Brett and I, which was incredibly generous of him and made our return journey much faster and more comfortable. I do hope he doesn’t regret it when he remembers the Dollar/Sterling exchange rate though…

Dinner for Kevin & Chris

What started off as ‘having a bit of a tidy-up’ turned into a weekend of Spring Cleaning.

After the washing-up and laundry, there was a series of odd-jobs that have been waiting around for a while that finally got done this weekend: For a while the house stank of warm vinegar, as I de-scaled water jugs, shower-heads and everything else in sight. I even contemplated cleaning up the crystal chandelier in the dining room (which SO badly needs it!) but in the end ran out of time. On the whole, a very productive weekend. All of this was primarily so that the house would be in top form for dinner on Sunday night.

Although we’ve lived here for nearly two years now, I don’t think we’ve ever properly hosted friends for dinner. We’ve had parties and laid out a buffet, we’ve even ordered take-out with friends, but never a sit-down at the table with napkins and silverware. The opportunity had my closeted ‘Bree Van de Kamp’ side elbowing its way to the fore as I tried to resist the urge to put on a big showpiece event!

In the end I stuck to the simple menu that Brett and I had planned. I made huge volumes of chilli and rice (although I really misjudged the amount of chilli powder and ended up with a tasty meat and bean stew) and had some rhubarb crumble and custard lined-up for dessert. I couldn’t resist throwing in a cheese course at the end, though, as it’s so easy to do…

Kevin and Chris arrived around five which meant we got a bit of a chance to chat to them before everyone else turned up in dribs and drabs closer to seven. Ping arrived first and hit it off immediately. Scott was next, but was rather quiet throughout the evening and I can’t tell whether he was feeling left out or whether that is just his nature in groups. Rosie and Andy completed the set and seemed to hold their own pretty well.

After dinner we sat down to a game of Trivial Pursuits which was quite closely fought and rounded off the evening nicely. Everyone departed shortly thereafter to make sure they got their trains and Brett and I headed straight to bed feeling that a good evening had been had by all.

Dan's Party

Dan’s party on Saturday night proved an enjoyable affair! His flat is a lovely size and recently refurbished I think (so we spent a fair amount of time appreciating all that.) The party was nominally for the Chorus’ Bass section. Brett got invited along as a former roommate of Dan’s and a former Bass and, as his partner, I rated an invitation too. On the whole we had a very nice evening. Brett did get cornered for a while by Martin K who wanted to talk Chorus politics, but I got to circulate and chatted to David M and met Jamie P and Marcus C-S and their respective boyfriends for the first time which was all very pleasant. Brett did manage to do the rounds as well though. In Dan's terribly organised fashion though, everything wound up around 11:30 and we wended our weary (and slightly sozzled) way home to bed.

Server Quotas and Hostly Duties

Well, what a week it’s been!

We seem to have exhausted our year’s quota of server failures in the first twelve weeks. The server in our San Juan office failed over the weekend, so about a third of my week has been spent on that – and it looks like a portion of the weekend too will be spent checking in on the restore process which is currently running.

As failures go, this one was a fairly regular one; a hard disk had expired and, thanks to Dell’s nanny-like pre-configuration of hardware, the server had been built with a single overlarge disk volume, rather than a smaller fault-tolerant one. Grrr. That’s why we usually build our own servers.

Wednesday was a bad day too. The server which supports two of our UK Project Offices (one of which is only a few weeks away from its final report!) died in a most peculiar fashion on Wednesday morning. This server did have a fault tolerant disk configuration, so Murphy’s Law required it to suffer from severe data corruption on its system partition. Strangely the corruption seemed to persist through several reinstalls of the Operating System on both halves of the fault-tolerant set of disks. In the end we got two new disks out of stock and started again. It was a somewhat longer recovery than I would have liked, but we got there in the end. Fortunately none of the project data on the server suffered from the corruption, which was a great relief.

Evenings have been few and far between this week. Monday was of course Chorus and it went fairly well. I think perhaps I am slowly coming around to this season’s repertoire… but then we start another tranche of new music next week: All pretty hectic.

Tuesday was fine up until about 4pm, when the fragile peace of my day was shattered by Steve B pushing a personal agenda through the Chorus’ mailing list. We’d had words about this previously (basically he’d been allowing unnecessary messages through to the main Chorus mailing list; something which I have been trying to stop for a long time now) so to have him do the same thing again, so soon after our previous run-in left me incandescent. As it happened, there was a meeting of the Steering Committee that night so I promptly stomped off to that to get them to reiterate the policy, which they duly did, and I went home mollified.

Wednesday night was yet another rehearsal, but because of the second server disaster I managed to miss half of it in fear of my job. When I arrived though, I bumped into Alistair W who had heard about a travel blog I wrote of the Chorus’ trip to North America in 2004 from his lawyer who had come across it while googling Alistair’s name. He didn’t seem too phased by it, more just surprised that my blog rated so highly in the Google results [Google actually own Blogger, I believe] Still, I was rather grateful that I give my friends some shade of anonymity on this blog…

Thursday evening was spent at home, luxuriating in being able to sit on a sofa and also celebrating the recovery of the Project Office server: We had dessert as well as dinner and then spent some time talking around the house-buying concept. I am still up for doing it sooner rather than later, but I think Brett is beginning to accept we can’t do it soon enough to complete within the life of our current lease, so we’ll have to extend by about six months.

Tonight is probably going to be spent being housewifely. Kevin & Chris (Brett’s brother and his partner) are in London on vacation from tomorrow. I suspect they want a fairly independent holiday as it’s their first away from the duties of parenting a toddler, but we have planned to see them at least a couple of times during their stay. The first is for dinner at our place on Sunday, so I am getting all house-proud and planning menus and thinking about all the little spring-cleaning jobs I’ve been putting off for months. I’m not sure why I’m having this sudden attack of domesticity – I am normally a fairly standard male of the species in this respect. Maybe I want to impress the family and this is the first chance I’ve had on my home territory. Hmm… maybe time to go see a shrink and get my subconscious reamed!

We may end up sitting in each other’s laps too; Ping wanted to meet Kevin and Chris, so he was invited, we thought it might be nice to invite Rosie & Andy as well (being my sibling and all) and then we added Scott to make up the numbers of Americans in case we end up playing Trivial Pursuit after dinner… but really there isn’t space in the dining room to seat eight for dinner. Tragedy! (Brett is already mentally rearranging the furniture.)

I may just collapse from exhaustion come Monday morning but, hey, my hostly duty will have been well and truly done.

Have a good weekend!

Kit Kat

I need a holiday.

When I find myself tired and with a short fuse all the time, I know it’s time to take a break.

…Now, when can I fit it in?

Hmm.

Sitting On A Train

So here I sit, almost exactly an hour out from London, twiddling my thumbs.

After my experience on the way up with a shortage of seats (I got one, but many people didn’t) I decided to avoid the issue on the way down and paid the small upgrade fee for ‘Weekend First.’ It turns out it was wasted money; Virgin Trains don’t have WiFi at all – let alone free WiFi in First Class – nor do they have a restaurant car or at-seat service from the buffet. My walk down to get a coffee from the ‘onboard shop’ also revealed that there were spare seats in Standard Class, so I could have saved myself £15 and still had a comfortable (if crowded) ride home.

Ah well.

It’s amazing how many people have laptops these days; there seems to be one on virtually every other table on this train – and those that don’t have laptops are all plumbed-in to their iPods or mini DVD-players.

Introverted Saturday

Lazy day today; Got up late to a very picturesque snowy morning. Got the PC Support that I’m ostensibly here to do over with (well, okay it took me until about 4pm, but I also rolled-in a little bit of work time too) and have spent the rest of the evening reading. (Currently four-fifths of the way through a nostalgic reading of The Belgariad.)

Am feeling somewhat slug-like this evening, having eaten several filling home-cooked meals and then slathered some mince pies in double cream for supper but, hey, isn’t that what coming home to mom and dad is all about??

The parents have invited friends around for brunch tomorrow morning though (it seems we started a fashion during my last visit!), so it looks like I am going to have to be a little bit social after all. Hmm.

To Buy or not To Buy

So here we are; Friday night again. Too much to do and too little time to do it in. The second half of the week was no less fulfilling than the first; I continued to struggle against intransigent backup software/hardware/media in Rav’s absence, while being virtually hounded by one of our suppliers, wanting our response to a proposal they’ve made to outsource some of our hardware.

It was all rounded off in appropriate style by a conversation with my boss where he finally really came to grips with the dire straits we are in with this backup business. I suspect we will be moving into a higher gear on Monday…

Away from work, my mind has been more on seeking accommodation for when our lease runs out in May. Somewhere along the line over the last couple of weeks, I seem to have come around to the idea that we might just be able to afford to buy a house, rather than rent for another six or twelve months. I am a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to this idea, as Brett has been espousing it for months, and even now I think it’s going to be a big stretch but the simple fact is that property isn’t getting any cheaper. The question in the housing market these days is of the second order, not the first; it’s not whether prices are going up or down, it’s about whether the rate of price increase is going up or down!

Even as I write this, though, I’m having second thoughts. Contemplating the amount of committed time both this month and next month, when are we going to have time to organise a last-minute house purchase? We are leaving it very late and I’m not sure I want to choose a house to buy just because we have to meet a deadline; that seems to be rather putting the cart before the horse…

Anyway, as I’m at my parent’s place this weekend, I suppose I’ll have some time to contemplate the decision before possibly plunging into the preliminaries of conveyancing next week.

Incidentally, I’ve finally seen some benefit out of this unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having; it had snowed just enough around Wigan and St. Helens this afternoon to make it all Christmas-card pretty, without making trouble on the roads. It was a lovely drive from the station to the parents’

Right, off to bed now, as it’s getting late and I am well tired after this week!

To Leeds and Back

Monday at work was frustrating; two of the team were off sick, so I spent a decent proportion of my day answering helpdesk calls. A lot of the rest of the day was spent looking at backups in our Leeds office. Rav had been up there on Friday to install an additional tape drive into the backup library so that we can run two jobs at once. Over the weekend though, all of the backup jobs had failed reporting errors with the tape transport robot. There is currently a problem too with the system that duplicates our head-office data to servers in Leeds which requires a bit of it to be restored from backup so, as Rav was one of those off sick, it fell to me to book passage to the frozen north to fix the problem.

As it turned out, the robot problem was easy enough to solve; the drive hadn’t been settled quite properly in its slot and the resulting difference (barely a millimetre!) was enough to upset the tape grabber. That was quickly fixed. It took me a further three or four very frustrating hours to get both of the drives showing as online and working reliably though. Despite the much vaunted plug-and-play abilities of modern computer Operating Systems, including Windows Server, seemingly they still aren’t able to allow you to change the settings on a SCSI^* device without then needing to reboot the whole computer to get it to recognise the change. It’s ridiculous. That was the main source of frustration; every time I tried something new, I had to go through a cycle of telling the office that their server was going to be rebooted, waiting fifteen minutes so they could save their work, downing the server and then checking all of the services when it came back up. Very intrusive to the users. Not an ideal way to work at all. Surely it should be possible to just reboot the affected component of the system, rather than the whole system! (If there are any SCSI experts out there who can tell me how to do this, I would be SO grateful.)

Other than that, not a lot has been happening; Chorus on Monday night was fine. I cycled there and back for the first time and that all went very smoothly thanks to Tomtom. An upside of going to Leeds yesterday is that I don’t have to spend an even longer day in Edinburgh today to switch them over to a new, faster Internet connection; Sid is going to do that instead. Hmm… and that’s it. Time to go to work now.

^* SCSI is the name for a way of connecting devices to server computers if they need to move a lot of data very quickly, like disk drives, tape drives and scanners. It’s quite an old technology but is still standard in most server devices.

Sidebar Update

I spent a little time revamping my sidebar this evening. In recent months, I’ve found myself reading fewer blogs as there have been more demands on my time and I wanted to adjust my own page to better reflect what I am actually reading these days.

Hence, I’ve moved the best-written of my previous favourites down to a section of ‘recommended reading’, as I still browse them from time to time just to see what’s happening. I’ve also removed the Left-Field Perspectives blog as, although I enjoy a good debate, I rarely have the time or the energy to prepare an informed comment on any of his posts these days – plus I recognise that until I can conclusively disprove the existence of God, I’m unlikely to make much progress in changing his worldview anyway. I still enjoy the writings of Charlie Foxtrot though and surf over in that direction from time to time, but alas his blog is a lot like mine and doesn’t really rate an entry on the recommended reading list.

So anyway, the new, leaner, meaner ‘Blogs I Read’ list now consists of just four entries. The first is Gay-Dad is written by my kind-of brother-in-law; he’s the partner of Brett’s brother and is a full-time house-husband, raising the child that he and Kevin (his partner, Brett’s brother) adopted in 2004.

The second is The Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog, written by Nicholas Ze Frog himself, another member of the Chorus who also runs our marketing activities.

The third entry is Slightly Lost in the World, a blog written by a partner in the Marsh and Malone design company who I first met last year when he attended a committee meeting I was at. When I learned sometime later that he had a blog, I started reading it and have never stopped…

Finally on the list we have the Virtual Bookshelf blog written by Jessica, a long-time friend, who runs an online bookshop.

Interestingly, but perhaps inevitable, given the pressures on my time, I notice my attention swinging away from entertaining blogs written by strangers, to more mundane daily journals written by the people in my life. Even more than email, reading about someone’s life in their blog is a great way to keep up with their life.

What is Smart?

In the end we had a great time last night. The enjoyment was presaged by a wardrobe crisis, though, as the invitation described the dress code as ‘smart’ and I wasn’t sure what counted as ‘smart’ to a modern gay man. Traditional etiquette has it that this means a lounge suit, but I think that in practice there are very few birthday parties where you would be expected to wear a suit these days – plus the fact that the only suit I have (that I would be seen in!) meant me wearing shoes which were at work, so unavailable. In the end I tried to go for the ‘trendy-casual’ smart look by putting a suit jacket on over jeans and a plain sweatshirt. I think the jacket was a tiny bit too formal for the look I was after, but it was close enough and all I had, so I went with it.

Brett was in a similar quandary but when I vetoed his stonewash jeans and shirt as ‘not quite smart enough’, he plumped for one of his work suits with an open-necked shirt. I think he looks hot in a suit though, so I wasn’t complaining…

David W had hired a small club venue off Picadilly for his fortieth birthday party. As we entered we were met by two tanned young guys in loincloths who were handing out the champagne (what a lovely meet-and-greet!) and we joined a group of other chorus members lounging on sofas by the bar while those who had been invited to the earlier meal finished their dinner. Once the tables had been cleared, the disco started up and there were plenty of gay anthems on offer. David even made an appearance done up as Elton John at his most outrageous and escorted onto stage by the two loinclothed waiters á la Graham Norton. He did a rather good performance of a few of Elton’s songs for us to much acclaim.

By the end of it all we were very merry and even having to endure a replacement bus service between Waterloo and Wimbledon on the way home didn’t spoil the evening for us.

Today has been one long social event. We were up around 9:30 as Ping was expected for brunch and we duly headed up to Café Rouge. We had rather poor service today from a new waiter and, as he wasn’t even French, he couldn’t even be said to add to the ambiance of the experience. Afterwards Ping and I had a walk around the gardens at Cannizaro House while Brett got on with organising his life. When we got back to the flat Brett said my sister had called and her and Andy were likely to be dropping by. I’d promised to show Ping the photographs I’d brought back from my parents a few weeks back, which he seemed to enjoy – even suggesting I show him some of the rest of my collection of memories from yesteryear!

Rosie and Andy arrived shortly thereafter though and in the end we all spent the afternoon playing Trivial Pursuit. On the whole, a lovely Sunday afternoon.

London Life

Well the week is over already. Come to that, so is half of the weekend! Where does the time go?

It’s been a fairly busy week at work; my new workstation finally arrived on Wednesday and I’ve spent most of the rest of the week setting up the virtual machines I need. It’s going to serve a dual purpose. As well as some of the machines being configured for penetration testing of our network, I’m setting up an entire test network which will emulate the main features of our corporate network. This means that, at long last, we can test out new software and new policies without running the risk of damaging the live network.

Also on Wednesday, my new TomTom arrived. I’d been talking about buying a SatNav unit ever since my nightmare journey up to Bedford a few weeks ago and, last weekend as I was in the depths of my technophilia, I sent an order through for the TomTom Rider – the version of the product designed for bikers; it’s waterproof, comes with a Bluetooth headset rather than an internal speaker and has a couple of extra bike-friendly routing features. The rationalisation for spending the money on it is two-fold: firstly, unless you know all of London VERY well, it’s just not possible to drive and navigate yourself effectively – even with a pre-planned route printed out beside you. Secondly, I’ve been cycling to work less and less in recent months because I so often have something on in the evening after work. Self-navigation is even harder on a bike, so I don’t want to ride to the event, which means either coming back to work after the event, getting changed and then cycling home (which typically adds an hour to the journey) or skipping the bike altogether and training it into work on a Travelcard. With SatNav on the handlebars, that isn’t really a problem any more; so long as I have some semi-decent clothes in my panniers that I can put on over my cycling gear (and some deodorant!) I can cycle wherever I need to be AND come home via the most direct route. Result!

So anyway, most of the week was mundane, but we had dinner with John G and Nick B from the Chorus last night, so that Brett and Nick could talk over some aspects of Chorus business they are sharing. It was a lovely meal in their lovely house (when I see their place, the desire to buy ourselves grows!) and it went on until the small hours. Something we must do more often!

Today we have been doing some metaphorical spring-cleaning. Brett, who is struggling to keep up with the workload of both his job and his various Chorus responsibilities (well, mostly Chorus stuff, actually) really needed to get organised and be a bit more efficient in his handling of paperwork, so it’s been a day of tidying desks, sorting through piles of paper (and binning large quantities of it!) and relocating the filing cabinet into the spare room, now that it is truly spare again. Brett still has a day or so’s work getting on top of the mound of his paperwork, but already the organisation feels good.

Tonight we’re off to party with another Chorine; David W’s 40^th birthday party is on at some fancy-sounding spot in Mayfair. Tomorrow we have brunch in Wimbledon planned with Ping and possibly even an afternoon of cycling with Jeremy F, who has recently bought himself a new bike. Should be a fun-packed day!

Title in Probate

Not a lot to blog about in my life at the moment. Was a bit under the weather yesterday with a nasty headache and grouched my way through the first half of Chorus. The second half perked me up though; some of it was taken up by the presentation of the Chorus’ new corporate ‘identity’ (which I actually rather like and is certainly more ‘us’ than the last one that was proposed.) I also briefly introduced myself to Slightly Lost who is one of the design partners who have been working on it.

After that we started learning a very upbeat number ‘All Girl Band’ (Oh, how we revel in our campness!) which cheered me up no end. I was still feeling worn-out when it was all over, but I managed to be civil all the way home.

Today was more of the same at work; still feeling productive. Tonight has been household chores – one has to make sure the place in a decent state for the cleaners, after all.

Finally, with such paltry pickings of my own, let me point you to this article [fairly ‘work-friendly’ but contains a number of prominent swear words!] which I picked up from The Register’s comment for your delight, delectation and, quite frankly, jaw-dropped incredulity.

Computer Overload

The weekend has rather gotten away from me…

Friday night Brett and I had dinner down in Wimbledon, which was a pleasant change from routine and gave us a chance to catch up after a week where we’ve barely seen each other beyond a kiss goodnight and the morning ablutions.

Saturday was a bit domestic, with laundry and dishes all getting washed, as well as me spending a lot of time being geeky; Brett has an HP computer which, while a little underpowered, is still a decent machine. I’ve been upgrading it this weekend so that it can run virtual machines for my penetration testing environment. That has required a couple of trips up to PC World for supplies, but we now have a very usable second desktop computer in the house. (OMG, I’ve just done a quick total and realised that there are currently seven computers in the house, of which only two are doorstops – all the other five are gainfully employed!)

Most of today has been spent scanning the photos I picked up from my parents last weekend. It’s a pretty tedious job, but satisfying now that I know I have backup copies of them. (Isn’t it funny how, ten years ago, before digital photography, it didn’t worry me that the negatives and only prints I had of photographs spanning decades was in a single cardboard folder, subject to random damage or destruction. Is it just because I am now wiser about the value of backups that I keep a separate copy of all my pictures away from the flat, or is it just because I can.)

Anyway, at some point in the future, I intend to put most of the photographs online along with a narrative. Until then, however, you can get a quick preview of the first batch here on my photoblog.

Best Laid Plans

The day in Leeds yesterday was a long one; I didn’t get home until 9pm, but it was a fairly successful day; 90% ‘Congratulations’ and only 10% ‘Whoops, should have thought of that!’. It was fairly intense work though – I bought sandwiches on the way up to the office from the station and basically didn’t stray further than ten yards from the IT room for the whole time I was there.

On the train journey in the morning, I got quite a bit of thinking done and roughed out a couple of project plans to work on later, so on the whole I felt pretty righteous.

Today actually started with a hospital appointment – it was the follow up with the dermatologist after my visit in November last year. A quick look at the mole and the photo from the file and we agreed that I would have to find something else to die from, as this clearly wasn’t anything to worry about. Jolly good.

Work was engaging, if a little annoying when I had to deal with a project manager casting around to find someone to blame for her lack of ability to properly scope and budget a project. I rather have the urge to have a quiet word with her boss, but then maybe better to let sleeping dogs lie. I’m sure she’ll think more carefully about infrastructure costs in the future…

The social calendar is in flux at the moment. Tomorrow is in the diary for a poker game, so tonight Brett and I needed to do some serious clearing up in the flat. I don’t think we’ve washed any dishes since the weekend because of a succession of late nights working on one thing or another for both of us. However, in the course of confirming who was going to be coming along, it turns out that pretty much no-one was going to be able to make it so, with a certain sense of relief, I cancelled the evening and am now looking forward to a nice relaxing Friday evening… albeit surrounded by dirty crockery.

The upside was that, not having to get home on time, I was able to accept a last-minute invite from Leeds’ John G for a drink after work. We’ve been trying to meet up for lunch for months, but between his schedule and my schedule we’ve never quite managed it. He was in Edinburgh yesterday when I was in Leeds, but today it turned out that his training course in London was actually a two-day thing, so he was unexpectedly in town for the evening. We met up in the Dogget’s Coat and Badge and had a pint. John M appeared too – I think they must have been introduced at the performance of You’ll Do For Now in July and subsequently kept in touch through Out – and after finishing our drinks we went for a bite to eat on Gabriel’s Wharf. All very pleasant – although I feel that I ought to not feel quite so light-headed after only two pints of lager, even on an empty stomach! What a lightweight!

Finally, on totally different note, I feel rather sorry for Dick Cheney at the moment. After his accidental shooting of a friend the other day I could see that the satirists would get some decent comedy mileage out of it, but seeing so many Democrats flocking around and wringing political points out of the unhappy situation is really rather sickening. No-one has suggested it was anything other than an accident on a private outing, so you’ve really got to be stretching things to link it with Cheney’s actions or obligations as Vice-President. Whatever I’ve got against Dick Cheney’s politics and policies, my heart goes out to him for having nearly killed his friend while they were supposed to be out enjoying themselves together. Give the guy a break. How would you feel!?

The only thing that needs to happen now to really make this an example of the New American Dream in action is for Harry Whittington to make a full recovery and then sue Cheney for millions. That is the American way, after all…

And I Love Him

I think it’s becoming a theme of my blog, maybe a signature line, but once again I have to say: it’s been a busy few days…

Work is feeling productive again – plus I have a new toy to play with, as my Network Security kit arrived yesterday. I’ve been busy configuring the virtual machines and additional tools in my spare time. I’ve also managed to successfully sort out our application for the new .eu Internet domains (although if I’d realised what a detailed set of rules I had to follow, I’d probably have passed it all to Marketing to deal with!) There’s the new mail server installed in Edinburgh which is going live tonight too; lots of positive stuff.

Tomorrow I’m in Leeds for the day (OMG, what an early start that involves!) to do several deeply geeky things as I was the one on the team with the earliest opening in his diary. Still it will give me a few uninterrupted hours on the train each way to spend as I will (the likely options are reading my current novel, doing more configuration on my Network Security kit or memorising Chorus music with my rehearsal MP3s.

Brett and I actually skipped out of the Chorus rehearsal at half-time last night. While the music is all very nice, I still really haven’t got any enthusiasm for it. I’m wondering whether I’m suffering LGMC Fatigue (a recently recognised malaise of people who have been in the Chorus for a few years who get drained and lose all enthusiasm as a result of the continual pressure to learn music and choreography to a deadline.) I may yet drop out of this concert and take a back seat for a season.

Today of course was Valentine’s Day and I was at my most Scrooge-like. Not quite crying out ‘Bah, Humbug!’ but I was certainly thinking it as I saw people in the streets with red balloons and bunches of roses (all specially overpriced for the special day) and the restaurants all cramming their tables-for-two tightly together to get the most out of their special (extra-pricey!) menu of slushily titled dishes. The whole thing is a barefaced exercise in crass commercialism and guilt and I will say no more about it.

Except perhaps to thank Ping for buying me the Long Way Round DVD as a Valentines Day present, which was very sweet of him.

A Weekend of Friends and Family

On Friday that trip up to the parents’ place was fairly smooth and we made it for mid-afternoon. We were swiftly out at PC World though, choosing them a new computer and some broadband gadgetry. Early Friday evening was spent configuring it, but later on I ended up on the sofa like a beached whale – probably as a result of the enormous dinner the parents had cooked for us. (“You’re still growing lads.” “Yes, father, but no longer in an attractive direction!”) As a result we ended up watching a couple of documentaries on English Folk Music which mum and dad were recording from BBC Four; not my normal choice of viewing, but we did spot that the Chorus’ rehearsal venue, Cecil Sharpe House in Camden, featured several times as a centre for the art.

Poor Brett was suffering from the cold a little bit, as my parents’ house has never been warm and, now that they have got two cats, the policy I was brought up with of always keeping doors shut to keep in the heat seems to have lapsed… I’ve promised him we can visit them in the summer next time…

Saturday morning Brett spent with his comics while I spent with the computers and then after lunch, Brett drove us down to North Wales to visit Phil & Sue C. He coped fairly well with me nagging him about his driving technique, following his first lesson with a qualified driving instructor last week…

On the whole, all was well with Phil & Sue, although Phil’s commitment was clearly failing with his current company; they have recently been taken over by an American conglomerate and have subsequently been through a succession of management changes which only seems to have achieved the virtual closure of a previously successful engineering company. Having fought for the survival of his branch and his team, Phil is now left wondering if it was worth it, as they don’t have the manpower to properly handle the contracts they have to fulfil and no clear corporate strategy to drive them forward.

Sue seemed to be in better shape, as the Deputy Head of her school, although it sounds like she has her own trials with a Headmaster waiting out the last twelve months to his retirement and a power-behind-the-throne school secretary jealous of her position…

Saturday evening we drove over to Leigh to hear the Haydock Male Voice Choir perform; this was a bit of a nostalgia trip for Brett as he had visited Haydock with his High School Choir back in 1980 and stayed with one of their members. (Kind of spooky to think that he visited so close to me twenty-five years before our paths actually crossed!) Anyway, the show was a good traditional Male Voice Choir performance and during the break Brett got chatting to some of the members who had sung with him all those years ago.

Sunday morning was brunch for friends; it seemed the best way of getting to see more of the people I wanted to see without having to visit them all individually, as we just didn’t have time in a weekend. Chris and Michelle called-off with food poisoning at the last minute, but that just meant there was more scoff for the rest of us (Chet, Pod & Jenny joined us.) It seems like not much has changed though; Pod has moved back to St. Helens and is now teaching at a RAF facility somewhere around Wolverhampton. There was an interesting ‘Year Book’ idea floated though, in preparation for the round of 40^th birthdays which will be on us in a few years. I’ll have to see if I can make some time to spend on developing it…

More mucking about with computers followed Brunch and then we were back on the road for the drive back to London. In fine London style, it took us three hours to drive the two hundred miles from St. Helens back to the M25 and then a further two and a half hours to drive the twenty miles across London itself (we got snarled up in some sewer works on the A4 which had traffic at a virtual standstill for ages!)

On the upside, I found ten wallets of photographs of my Long Haul travels with Saga that I’d forgotten I ever had, so there was a big hit of nostalgia this morning as I was looking through them. I’ll have to get them scanned and put up on my website for you. (Don’t hold your breath for them any time soon, though!) Right now, though, time to go to bed; a non-stop weekend means a tired Liam. Zzzzzzz….

The Educational Value of Disasters

It horrifies Brett, but I actually really enjoy watching the Air Crash Investigation shows on the Discovery Channel. Despite what I suspect he thinks, I don’t have a death wish; I actually find them reassuring. If you haven’t seen one of the programmes, they reconstruct a given ‘incident’ and the investigation which follows to find out what happened; perhaps not as thrilling as an episode of CSI, but fascinating nonetheless. Seeing how aircraft and pilots fail, it continually brings home how well engineered modern airliners are and how resourceful pilots can be when it all goes wrong. And in even the worst air crashes, there are usually some survivors (and those that don’t at least have the benefit of dying quickly!)

Nope, I find the show both reassuring and entertaining.

I mention this because watching Air Crash Investigations was pretty much what yesterday evening consisted of. Work had been long and hard and I didn’t fancy the trek up to Islington to Gay Gordons, so I went home instead while Brett went for drinks with one of his former colleagues who has just started work in the City.

Today we are driving north to the parents’ for the weekend. I have a couple of old mini-firewalls from work to take along. I am hoping that I’ll be able to set up a VPN tunnel between their computer and my own so that when the regular calls for support come in, I’ll have much more access to their which will certainly make things go more smoothly. We shall see.

Hyperactive Social Life

Too busy!

Spent last night organising a trip to the parents’ place, planned for this weekend. It was intended to be a chance to catch up with all the old school crowd but it’s now turning into the first of two PC Support visits as well, as the folks want a new computer and broadband. Tonight as well as keeping tabs on work, I’m trying to organise the week before my birthday. I think there must be cheap flights from the States on offer in March. Kevin & Chris (the brothers-in-law) are going to be here for the week and today I got an email from Curtis saying he was going to be in town from Chicago, Thursday through Saturday, so it looks like we’re dining out every night up to my birthday. Wehay!

Bizarrely, Curtis also happened to see our photo when he was leafing through a copy of the Pink Paper his friend had brought back from a recent London trip! It’s a small world sometimes!

The last few days have been busy at work as Monday evening, a repairman managed to totally trash our server in Santiago resulting in us having to restore everything on it from backups. A bit of a bind, as the machine in question serves as mail server for all of our South American offices too. Still, this evening things seem to be running smoothly again on that front.

Last night Chris C (the old school-friend, not the brother-in-law) was complaining that my blog had been a bit bland of late. He’s right… I still keep seeing news articles and posts on other blogs that I want to write about, but I just don’t have the time to do them justice. Think I need to scale-back the social life a little; I seem to have too much to do in too little time. Grrr.

Jack Kilby, 1959

After a couple of weeks of not achieving stuff at work and, in fact, hardly even being in the office, it was nice to have a really productive day today; feels like I’ve regained the initiative. One meeting left me slightly daunted though; there’s a very good chance that there is going to be an AWFUL lot of work to be done on our telecoms systems in the next three months.

On a side note, I finally – after about three weeks of trying to find time – got my hair cut today. Yeay!

Chorus this evening was pleasant enough, although I’m still not hooked on the repertoire…

Had a rather sad phonecall from Owen just before we went in, though; he has just been dumped by a guy he has been seeing for a while and is quite cut-up about it. One of those things that come out of the blue just when you feel everything is going so well. Looks like lunch on Wednesday is could be a bit heavier than usual…

Sunday in the Park

So Rich’s meal turned out well; everything I ate stayed down and didn’t give me any grief! It was good to catch up with people too; it’s been a while since I’ve spoken in depth to either Martin K or Jeremy F so we all did some catching up. Didn’t get much chance to chat to Rich himself, which rather reminded me that we haven’t seen much of them for a while.

Today has been good; late start, got bills paid, watched some TV then realised it was a really nice day, so we went out into the Village for lunch and had a stroll around Cannizaro Park afterwards. (Never been to Cannizaro before and it’s actually really lovely – we’ll have to go back in the summer when there are leaves on the trees and the bushes are in bloom!)

Early evening we went down to watch Memoirs of a Geisha which was very nicely detailed, visually beautiful, but a little overlong.

Nearly Human

It’s been a pretty weird few days.

I went into work on Thursday morning even though I was feeling a bit rough. By early afternoon I was sitting in a haze of fatigue and head pain so I came home and slept for a couple of hours on the sofa. (An added bonus was a speeding ticket lying on the mat when I got home. Damn!)

Friday morning I was feeling somewhat improved, which was good as I needed to accompany Brett to his driving test. The minimal driving that I ended up doing really took it out of me though and by the time he set off for the test, I was snuffling and full of cold again. When he got back from the test (he failed, but was sanguine about it) I just got him to drive us straight home and I fell asleep on the sofa again. Yesterday evening is a bit of a blur; I remember watching various TV shows but being definitely ready for bed at 10pm.

Today the cold seems to have cleared, in that I haven’t been sneezing and only occasionally coughing, but I had the sinus headache, dry mouth, queasy stomach, body-temperature control thing again. After suffering a little while first thing, I eventually found the migraine pills the doctor gave me last time and took one. I think it worked, although it took some time – probably because I hadn’t eaten anything all day – but the headache eased an hour or so later and while my appetite didn’t exactly return, at least the nausea passed and my head cleared somewhat so I’ve been a little more myself this afternoon.

I had to miss singing with the Chorus at their gig at the Museum of London today, which is annoying, but having eaten a little bit now and drunk quite a lot of tea, I’m feeling human enough to attempt to join Rich C for his birthday dinner down Brick Lane. I’m planning on taking it easy though, so small portions and no alcohol for me please…

Wish me luck!

Home at last

Not a bad day today – although the cough of yesterday gave way to sneezing and a very runny nose; not ideal in a classroom environment.

The course continued to be fascinating; today it was UNIX hacks and backdoors predominantly. (I can now say I’ve played with Back Orifice and several of it’s charmingly named add-ons!) I did excellently in the final exam, scoring 88% and received a distinction for it.

The trip home was far better than the one to the course. I followed a somewhat longer but simpler route home; following the North Circular around to the South Circular and thence to Wimbledon. An early night is called for I think, as I can’t really not go into work tomorrow. Hey ho.