30 Apr 2007 (Monday) 

After I'd finished lunch this afternoon, the following ditty came into my head. To the tune of All Out Of Love, by Air Supply...

I'm all out of lunch, Yet still I'm so hungry. Can it be to late, to pop to the shops again... ooh... will they have pasties left ? ahh-ahh... will they have cakes as well ? what can I eat instead ? ahh-ahh... anything with bread will do... I'm all out of lunch, And yet I'm so hungry. I'm going to die, I think I'll eat my leg. [ I'm All Out Of Lunch, by Me ]

I spent quite a while this evening talking to Sue about a few things. She's really nice to chat to when I'm feeling crappy.

Simon came home early this evening, upset. So... I'm not sure what's going on there, but he'll talk when he's feeling up to it I'm sure.

I've found out what it is that's making an annoying hum in my room now. It's the bass speaker. It's really really annoying now that I know.

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29 Apr 2007 (Sunday) 

Simon got in today and then popped straight back out to Heather's. For some reason that defies... um... reason... they like to watch East Enders. It takes all sorts I suppose. So I've done not a lot again today except try to be reasonably relaxed. My toe's not so tender today and my leg's less sore.

I did remember, when I woke up this morning, that I stepped down two steps last night thinking it was one, giving myself a little scare. That may be why my leg's sore .

I spent an age on the phone to Andrew today; with subjects as far ranging as the new job, the state of the NHS, Marillion albums, Caroline, weeding, and the state of the world in general. "It's good to talk!"

I've also written a tiny little bit of perl to process CDDB files more generically. Because I've had a semi-working version for a bit, but it's never been quite right. So I've re-written it from scratch. Hopefully it'll be more suitable now.

I've just finished making tea for tomorrow and stuck it in the fridge, so I think I'll go to bed in a few minutes. I think I'm hungry. I should probably buy something or other that I can nibble on when I'm hungry like this. Something like the bourbon creams that I've got sitting in a box beside me. Hmm.

Somehow, during making lunch today, I managed to take a lump of skin off my arm. Not sure if it was a burn or just catching it on something, but it doesn't half hurt.

"Microsoft has been unable to contact the manufacturer and has no further information available at this time." These are the words written on the Microsoft error reporting page for a crash I just had. Microsoft recommends that I contact the manufacturer and handily gives me their website address. Now, let's be completely clear about this. Microsoft - a pretty huge company - tried to contact the Valve Corporation - a reasonably large company - and claims to have been unsuccessful. I for one feel that this is an outright lie. If Microsoft can't get any response from Valve then I'm a headless chicken. But, let's for a second assume that I am indeed poultry with a disassociated head problem. If we assume this then their recommendation that I, myself - a solitary user - may be able to get a fix from Valve where they - the huge corporation with a reasonable amount of clout - have failed. It seems... unbelievable.

Last day of the month tomorrow. Which means I'll have been working here for a whole month. It's quite exciting really. It's not like it's truely important, but it's fun, I get stuff done and in general it seems to be working out.

Right. Bed time now.

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28 Apr 2007 (Saturday) 

It's a Saturday, so I've had a lazy day. I wandered into town and bought myself a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, 'cos I'd finished Order of the Phoenix last night.

Now I've got home I've got a sore leg. Which reminds me that I've got a sore toe. It's been a little sore and swollen (not much, just tender) for a couple of days and I think I must have dropped something on it at some point - I don't remember, but that doesn't mean much because my memory's poor. But the fact that my leg's sore draws my attention to it. I don't reckon they're related - it's probably because I don't do a lot of walking, and with my toe being a little sore I'm walking a little awkwardly which makes my leg hurt. Plus, I've just been watching House, which never helps when you know something's sore .

Spoke to mum this evening; they're back from holiday now. She was a little surprised that I had a picture of Barry Manilow on my diary - it's all automatic; I make a quote from an artist's album and I get the album cover stuck beside it. I think it looks quite cool really.

Oh, and I made myself a new WeeMee. Now I want to be clear that this is all Caroline's fault, because she wanted me to have a smile on my picture. Only thing is that I've now lost my teddy. I couldn't find a teddy anywhere on the WeeMee site at all. Oh well. I even had to install Flash to create it. So now I'l have to uninstall flash to get back to a sane Internet.

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27 Apr 2007 (Friday) 

A tiny bit of research this morning implies that Mandy, by Barry Manilow was a cover of a track called Brandy, by Scott English. Amusing.

There was a lovely crash at the crossroad at the end of our street. Two cars appear to have tried to cross at the same time and crashed right in the middle of the junction. When I got there, there were two policemen directing traffic and two other police cars just arriving. It looked a little bit 'fun'. Then, when I was crossing the road further down the street one of the vans waiting at the lights revved his engine a lot and scared the hell out of me.

Apparently at Caroline's work today they're having a Harry Potter day and people are all dressed up in costume and stuff. How cool .

All the memories that lead to isolation All the time we didn't share When we set adrift half-forgotten lies Will the madness still be there? Who of all you now will ride the lows and highs? Whose hands are these that come to pray? [ Came Down, from Ever, by IQ ]

Still got no idea what to do at the weekend, but... well, no matter. I'll just have to do nothing I guess.

All this frustration All this frustration Who put brown owl eyes on the butterfly's wings ? All this frustration All this frustration Who gave the leopards spots and taught the birds to sing ? [ Born Of Frustration, from The Best Of, by James ]

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26 Apr 2007 (Thursday) 

I woke up a little late this morning. I blame Harry Potter. Not me. No, it's not my fault for not getting up straight away. No. It's a fictional character's fault. Yeah, that's right.

It's not helped that I still tend to wake up feeling annoyed. Grr.

As I was sitting in work, staring into space... sorry, concentrating intently whilst the 5 minute build did its job... it occurred to me that it's quite understandable that I tend to feel frustrated. I'm fighting a constant battle between what I want and ... well, reality, basically. And since they're diametricly opposing, it's obviously going to be a problem.

Oh no! A few days ago I had a track in my head and I didn't know what it was. The only thing I could remember from it was 'you came and you gave without taking' but that was it. I discovered this evening that it's a Westlife track called Mandy. That shamed me. I mentioned it to Simon and he told me it was a cover. Momentarily I was quite happy. Then he told me it was a Barry Manilow track originally. I'm pretty sure that's better than it just being Westlife, but not by much. That said, I've listened to it (the original) a few times tonight and I do still like it.

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there She would merengue and do the cha-cha But while she tried to be a star, Tony always tended bar [ Copacabana, from The Essential Barry Manilow, by Barry Manilow ]

Oh dear. I tried listening to All Out Of Love, by Westlife. It's... no... it's got Delta Goodrem singing with them which is neat, and although it still makes me sad, it's not the same. But worse, I tried to listen to Total Eclipse Of The Heart, by Westlife and it's just so wrong. There is only the Bonnie Tyler version, I'm afraid.

Turn around, every now and then I know there's no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you Turn around, every now and then I know there's nothing any better and there's nothing I just wouldn't do [ Total Eclipse Of The Heart, from Super Hits, by Bonnie Tyler ]

Je tourne en rond Tu sais que quelques fois je me sens seule et perdue Est ce que tu me reviendras [ Si Demain, from Simply Believe, by Bonnie Tyler ]

Little heavy on the music tonight. On the plus side I've discovered that 'oe-ligature' isn't actually part of ISO-8859-1 - blame Bonnie Tyler's french version, above, and Opera for that. I noticed that 'coeur' (with the oe-ligature) wasn't displayed properly, despite the page being declared as that character set. Turns out it's not actually part of the official set. So I've expanded it now.

It don't do me any good It's just a waste of time What use is it to you What's on my mind? [ Things I'll Never Say, from Let Go, by Avril Lavigne ]

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25 Apr 2007 (Wednesday) 

Too tired to think about anything much today. Might write more tomorrow. Something about APIs, maybe, as that's what Chris and I were talking about this evening.

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24 Apr 2007 (Tuesday) 

All the memories that lead to isolation All the time we didn't share When we set adrift half-forgotten lies Will the madness still be there? Who of all you now will ride the lows and highs? Whose hands are these that come to pray? [ Came Down, from Ever, by IQ ]

Nothing much to say today; I tried to call Caroline, but she's not around. Oh well. Oooh... she rang me back and said she might try to ring when she got home. Whee!

Spoke to Julian this evening, too, which was nice - I've not spoken to him in ages it seems. And I got to chat to Sue this evening as well. It's been a quite talky evening . I was just getting in to bed after chatting to Caroline and Sue turned up on Skype so I had a chat to her as well.

Damn; I've just remembered I'd promised Caroline that I'd change my little picture of myself on Skype, at least so that I had a smile. I'm not really that sure I can put a smile on just yet.

There's a party going on next door. Either that or they just like their music really loud. There's been a few things playing that I kinda recognise, but I definitely recognise bits of Pet Shop Boys now.

Damn, I was going to suggest that Caroline might like to pop over this way as she's nearby. I'd have doubted she'd have been able to, as it's still a reasonable distance and she'd no doubt want to get home, but still... Oh well.

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23 Apr 2007 (Monday) 

I was dreaming last night about being tested on something or other. Against another group we had to stay hidden from those doing the testing. We were in the fens, so we grabbed a boat, turned it upside down and covered it in camouflage and then set ourselves adrift in the water. And then decided that was a silly idea because we'd still be seen from the air and decided that the best idea was to check in to a hotel instead. It was a little odd.

Great, now Build Me Up Buttercup, by The Foundations is floating around my head.

Nothing much to say about today. I think it's been an ok day all told. I've got this vague foreboding feeling, but nothing I can quite put my finger on right now. Not feeling quite so frustrated today, which is good. At least, not in the same way.

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22 Apr 2007 (Sunday) 

Haven't achieved much at all today. Nope. Not a lot to say.

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21 Apr 2007 (Saturday) 

I've been quite a lazy person today. Just washing stuff and watching a film. I saw "Night At The Museum". Simon said it could be quite awful, but I thought that the tiny, tiny, tiny amount that I knew about it meant it could be fun. It was really good and I'd watch it again some other time, definitely. There will now be a short musical interlude.

And I knew there was something weird about him, 'cos when I turned around he was pulling a big palmtree right up out of the ground and swatting those Charlie's with it, from here to Kingdom Come. [ Camouflage, by Stan Ridgway ]

There's armored cars and tanks and jeeps 'n' rigs of ev'ry size Yeah, them chicken coops was full of bears And choppers filled the skies Well, we shot the line, we went for broke With a thousand screamin' trucks And eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus. [ Convoy, by C W McCall ]

Do you remember when you were 15? And the kids at school called you a fool 'cos you took the chance to dream In the time that's past and the one thing that lasts Is that same old song that we played along and made my daddy cry [ Innocent Eyes, from Innocent Eyes, by Delta Goodrem ]

You know, I'm wondering now if I even own a CD copy of Innocent Eyes. Ooh, yes I do. Happy, happy, joy, joy. I had forgotten how much I like that album.

Spoke very briefly to Caroline earlier. Fortunately I was in a good mood, so I had a quite fun chat in olde-english (ish). It might not be that great, but it was fun at the time .

If we ever say we'll never be together and we ended with goodbye Don't know what I'd do ... I'm lost without you [ Lost Without You, from Innocent Eyes, by Delta Goodrem ]

I can't help it; I love the first of those lines. The rhythm is lovely.

Simon's out tonight seeing Heather, so I'm on my own again. However, that said, I'm going to bed soon so it won't really matter that much.

I've just had another chat with Caroline this evening, so I feel quite nice going to bed now.

Helen's doing the Marathon tomorrow, so I wish her all the best. Keep on running, girl .

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20 Apr 2007 (Friday) 

I was dreaming about walking along the beach, with Caroline last night. The tide was coming in quickly, and we nearly got trapped.

I shouldn't be annoyed today, but I am. It's just not right. Oh well.

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19 Apr 2007 (Thursday) 

Quotes taken out of context are always amusing.

Frogs are not parallel lines. [ Frogs; Ian; Talker ]

Infinity is a lovely concept, but is, frankly, horseshit [ Infinity; Heds; Talker ]

Dammit. I thought fractals had a Hasselhoff dimension. It's actually Hausdorff [ Fractals; Mnem; Talker ]

I had a nice chance to talk to Caroline earlier today, which was surprisingly fun. I'd woken up this morning with the same sort of annoyances in my head as when I went to sleep. But she cheered me up a bit anyhow.

It being Thursday, I now have to decide what I'm doing for the weekend - because otherwise it'll get to the weekend and I'll have nothing decided. So I've got to decide what I want to do with myself. Like, set myself a task. Not sure what. Mum and dad are away; so it's not like I could pop home. I'm still not sure what, so I'll just hope that I think of something before then.

I've managed to bite one of my nails rather a lot today. Mainly from being frustrated over stuff. It's just a little bit of a readjustment, that's all. One that's never been easy to do, but I really - yeah, really - need to do.

Watching telly this evening with Simon, though, triggered something of a dream. I was visiting someone in a quite strange town - not somewhere I knew, but in the dream it was all quite familiar. I was staying at a small hotel down a side street, and went out for some food with friends to a little restaurant which was hidden away down another street. It was a lovelly little place, and we had a lovely time. The next day I went back on my own, because I was meeting someone there. They never turned up, and I was on my own for a long time. I went back to the hotel and went to bed. That's about all I remember.

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18 Apr 2007 (Wednesday) 

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. It was only a few seconds before I remembered the previous night and felt a bit worse. I felt less ill than I did yesterday, which is a huge bonus. I got out of the shower having sort of drifted towards the conclusion that I should just cut my losses and give up. Whatever else I may think, it seems to be the most logical thing to do. Logic, however, tends to take a holiday when I'm feeling bad, so I'm going to defer any sort of thinking on those lines until I'm feeling a bit better.

Walking home, I began to wonder what the big deal was with that comment, this morning. But it is a big deal really, even when I'm feeling a bit better, I can still see that. Let's see how things look in a few days.

I'm tired now, 'cos I'm getting angry at things. I should go to bed.

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17 Apr 2007 (Tuesday) 

I feel like... something bad. I hate being ill. I've not slept today; other than the couple of hours sleep I managed between my alarm going off and waking up and thinking 'Damn, I should be in work'.

When I'm ill I start asking silly questions. Like 'why am I here ?' and 'why am I not doing what I want ?'. Those kind of questions just have no useful answer; or rather they have no answer which is any more clear than the justifications I've offered myself in the past. Plus the questions always seem to be circular. Fortunately, as I write this, I'm feeling quite a bit better this evening, so I won't go off on rants about such things. Still, there were a lot of them today, and they make me sad.

Actually I think I'm feeling a lot better now because I'm not sure I can even remember how the thoughts went over the last couple of days. Things are never quite rational you're half-awake, and might sound a little odd - hopefully I've not disturbed Simon too much if I've said anything odd .

Of course there's always the frustrating thoughts that you're merely counting out the days until you die, and that's really not a comforting thought when you're feeling rotten anyhow.

I rang Caroline a few minutes ago, and feel a little better from talking to her. Fortunately it seems that I didn't send anything to her on Sunday night, so I must have been imagining it in my half-waking state. Which is probably a really good thing, because I probably wouldn't have come off well. There are good reasons why I don't just call here whenever I want to .

Now I'm going to go to bed, determined to feel good about the fact that I've spoken to Caroline and not bad about the fact that I'm not now speaking to Caroline . And obviously trying not to feel ill. That'd be good too.

Actually, thinking about it (and clearly I'm not thinking quite rationally because this should have been top of the list) I probably ought to be determined to sleep, given the lack that I've had recently.

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16 Apr 2007 (Monday) 

I've got an awful cold today; I managed to get about an hour and a half's sleep last night. I think I remember sending an SMS to Caroline at about 3am, which, given how fuzzy my head was at the time, might be a little bit embarassing. Of course, I might have just dreamt that. The many, many times I was waking up last night the only thing that filled my mind was I'll be there for you, by Bon Jovi.

When I'm tired and brain addled (not sure that's a phrase but it'll do) I tend to say or think stuff that I'd usually not, so I being unwell isn't all that good for my sanity.

My eyes are stinging like mad tonight. Simon's been really nice this evening. Not that he's not usually, but it's appreciated anyhow.

We had the guy in from Standard Life to organise company pensions at work today. So that's quite nice.

What else today ? I can't really find the energy to do much, so I'm just sitting in bed now. Oh, and the new phones arrived, so we can now have a phone in each room. Whee. It's nearly 9pm and I'm knackered so I may sleep.

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15 Apr 2007 (Sunday) 

Helen's going to be running in the London marathon next week as a big blue stress ball thing. Sponsor her, and feel good about yourself. Or something

I've got a little bit of a cold today. I reckon that my body heard me saying that I didn't know what to do with myself and decided 'I know, I can be ill'. Bah.

Mmmm... Sweets.

Coo. It looks like last Friday was Friday the 13th. And I didn't even notice. Heh.

I meant to only read the first chapter of Order Of The Phoenix last night. I ended up reading about 100 pages, 'cos it was so good. Bah.

I dreamt a lot last night, or maybe I just remember bits because I was waking up regularly feeling bad. I remember dreaming initially that Voldemort had captured Harry and was tormenting him in a strange room in an old house, and everyone that came to visit him at the Dursley's were transported to the room and thought that everything was normal. Voldemort was just testing Harry to see what his reactions would be to certain things, so that he could better react to them. Very odd.

The second one was only a small snippet that I remember. Just sitting upstairs and falling asleep watching something on the telly with Caroline there. Aww.

Must sleep now; still feeling pretty full of cold and icky. Might try to read a little more of Order, but certainly not as much as last night.

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14 Apr 2007 (Saturday) 

I decided to do a Debian update today and noticed that there's a whole lot of updated components - because they've upped stable to the next version along ('Etch', from 'Sarge'). So I decided to try the upgrade. Not too bad, only it didn't upgrade my Kernel, so I had to do this manually. I wouldn't have bothered, except that Squid won't run on a 2.4 kernel as supplied by Debian, because they don't support 2.4 kernels . Upgrading to 2.6 kernel was reasonably painless and everything worked - except for the SpeedTouch modem driver, which couldn't find the firmware drivers. That made things a little tricky, because I couldn't make the firmware work without the Internet. In the end I plugged the modem into the laptop and used that to get the necessary firmware creation tool. A lot of faffing to get things to work.

After all that, I went out to town to buy myself a copy of The Order Of The Phoenix - surprisingly, they didn't have a copy at Smiths. Waterstones had a copy, though. So, I start on that tonight. Might take me a while.

Please take a walk with me, Let me know - am I to blame ? [ The Same River, from Out Of Myself, by Riverside ]

Whilst walking through The Oracle for the past couple of weeks, I've had the above lyric floating around my head - quite apart from liking the track itself. The lyrics start around 7 minutes into the track (it's a multi-part track, like they do ), so it was actually hard to find just now. But I realised whilst I was wandering around HMV trying to find the album, that the whole reason the it comes to me unbidden (yeah, I just wanted to use that word) is that there's signs for 'Riverside' around the place, because that's the region outside the Oracle. Silly that I hadn't realised that before.

So jump in the river and learn to swim God's gonna wash away all your sins. And if you still can't see the light God's gonna buy you a satellite. [ Satellite, by The Hooters ]

Whilst wandering home, the main riff from Satellite, by The Hooters came into my head and I couldn't remember what it was from - obviously I found out after I got home. I remember the track from years ago, and I said to Simon that I thought it was from around the time I was at Uni, like around '95-'98. My reasoning was that I didn't think it was from when I was at Sixth form, because I'd remember it more as a strong association with that period, and it didn't feel like it was older than that. And it felt like I would have heard it whilst at University. However, I was wong. By quite a bit - it's from '87 apparently. Which means that I'd have been 9. A year before my first diary entry, even - I would have been in Mrs Wild's class at primary school, I think.

Now the thing that's bothering me is that I'm not sure whether the track's meant ironicly, or in earnest. The lyrics are really quite neat either way around. Although it's actually quite a strong track, the lyrics are definitely leaning toward an anti-evangelist stance. If you skipped out (or changed) two or three lines, though, it could easily just be a regular pro-religous track. The guy who wrote it, Eric Bazilian, wrote lots of things for lots of people, most notably to me, Kiss The Rain, from Growing, Pains, by Billie Myers.

Also whilst wandering home I had a mild ponder over the 'not doing stuff because it turns out bad' attitude that I tend to have. Didn't come to any particular insight, or have anything major to say about it, but it amused me for a bit. In the sense that I obviously don't like that sort of thing and really want to be able to just do stuff impulsively. Ish. But not if it's going to go wrong. So I don't want to do things impulsively right now. That said, I was being quite extravagent for me, a few days ago, when I was trying to plan stuff 13 years ahead. Well, not particularly sane stuff, but still.

A few days ago - and I no longer remember why, although it's possible it was whilst I was chatting to Chris - I remembered a track that I heard once, long ago. I don't think I ever heard it more than once, but it stuck in my mind every and every once in a while surfaced. The track is No Charge, by J J Barrie, and it's a bit sickly sweet, but that doesn't mean it's not actually quite good.

And finally, whilst I remember, I was dreaming last night that Caroline was shouting at someone. I don't think it was me - I hope it wasn't anyhow - but I'm not sure who it was, or what it was. It's rare that she's ever angry in my dreams, so it was a little bothersome this morning.

Overall today, I still didn't know what to do with myself, but I seem to have used up the whole day anyhow.

One other thing before I toddle off to bed. Ian mentioned a route from Anchorage to Athens on Google Maps. In particular, items of interest are item 8 and 57. In case the route is changed in the future, item 8 is 'Continue straight on to Alaska Hwy - 1,169 miles', which is reasonably amusing for its length. Item 57 knocks that into a cocked hat (a lovely phrase that I really hope I've used right).

For item 57 you leave the United States and travel to Europe. Its description ? "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean - 3,462 miles". Now which is more bogglesome - that it suggests you swim a body of water, or that the distance is over three thousand miles ?

I presume that it's all to do with the fact that it's got to have a connection between the two regions and we might as well do it with a swim - after all, there's no sane reason that you'd ask for a route from one side of the world to the other (if you were really interested in doing it you'd know where you were going to go - you'd decide you were flying, or going by boat or whatever and determine your entry and exit points appropriately). So the link might as well be a short swim. It seems that this has been around for a while, but it's fun nonetheless.

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13 Apr 2007 (Friday) 

I finished Goblet Of Fire last night. I'm not sure that I should have, but I kept on going 'just another few pages', so it was about 2am before I got to sleep.

That's my first week done now. It's been ok, and I've survived, so that's good.

I spoke very briefly to Caroline this evening and she seems ok, so that's good too.

I've got no idea what to do with myself tomorrow or Sunday. I'm sure I'll work something out, but it's still a little strange.

Having just spoken to Caroline, I'm off to bed now. I've got nothing to do really, so I may as well sleep. Me and Sam are going to cuddle up and have a nice sleep. Or, more likely, I'm going to lie here unable to sleep for the next few hours. Either way, at least I'm in the right place.

Oh, and just before I forget, Friday was free lunch at work day, which was neat. And free doughnuts, too.

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12 Apr 2007 (Thursday) 

I'll be there till the stars don't shine till the heavens burst and the words don't rhyme. [ Always, from Crossroad - The Best Of Bon Jovi, by Bon Jovi ]

I woke up with a headache this morning and although it easiest through the day with tablets, it was back in full flow by 5pm and I decided to go home. It just hurts . Fortunately this evening it's gone.

Aside from a huge headache, I'm not sure there's much else to tell today. I'm a little worried about how tight money will be at the end of the month, but I think everything will be just fine. In fact I'm pretty sure that I'm being unnecessarily concerned, but still it's one of those things that tends to bother me.

I managed to read a tiny amount - about half a chapter - of Goblet of Fire last night before I just had to sleep. I don't think I'll be reading too much more than that tonight either. It's not that it's not fun, but I'm just tired at the moment. I think it's more the case that it's a different work pattern to being on my own that makes things seem more tiring.

I found myself doing a load of maths in my head a few days ago, trying to work out some long term plans and stuff. It's a little tricky, and a bit scary, even working with rough numbers. It's amusing though, even if it is just playing with numbers. Related to that, I was asking some friends what they use when they need to do calculations, 'cos I tend to use 'brandy' (a BBC BASIC interpreter). Apparently it's mainly bash or bc that people use.

Mobuzz TV is back today, it seems, but I've not felt like catching up with the last few days yet. Little bit of a new look, but most noticeably the RSS feeds have moved again.

Having only 20G of music at work is a problem. Only because it means that sometimes there just won't be the tracks I want to listen to there. Like today I wanted to listen to Crush, by Jennifer Paige because it runs on from Finally Woken, by Jem. Only I don't have it there. Oh well.

Oh, and I spoke to Angela this evening - finally getting a chance to wish her a happy birthday. She seems well, albeit a little bit anxious about the wedding coming up.

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11 Apr 2007 (Wednesday) 

I had a nice little dream about Caroline last night, visiting her in the somewhat stylised town that she lives in in my dreams. It was all kinda fun. We went to the sea-side.

I've bought myself some new headphones for work - my little in-the-ear headphones are just too short and don't really work well at my desk. So I've got some ok-ish ones that'll do me for a bit. At least until I get fed up with them and have to find some more.

It's been day 3 of my 'real work' today. It's all a little strange; trying to work through little bits so that I can see how things work and what to do. Plus it's an alien environment - I don't know Windows that well for development, so using it is a little strange. On the plus side, most things cross over from other systems pretty well - it's just finding the right way of doing things. I'm still doing simple things like getting the editor set up usefully. Not sure I like the editor I'm using, but not a huge deal.

"Eek", said Pooh, as MobuzzTV was down. Looks like it's been down for a bit, as I've not had any updates on the RSS feed since last week. Wonder what's happening.

Chris pointed out a very cool thing about Opera (the browser) yesterday. Say you want to make a specialist search keyword for a site you use a lot. You would usually go and edit the searches in the configuration and have to remember how to do that. Tedious. But there's an easier way. Right click on the text input field and select the 'Create Search' option. This will fill in the URL section automatically and all you have to do is give it a name and keyword. And this morning I mentioned this to Simon and he said "I wonder if Firefox does that"... so we checked, and it does indeed. So that's pretty damned cute really.

That dream last night quite like the incredibly real ones I've had before, but it's had it's moments today where I've been - for a moment - thinking that it was real. Oh well.

It's kinda strange this week. I only get to see Simon for about half an hour in the morning between hin getting in from work and my setting off for work, and then for about 2 hours between my getting in from work, and him setting off. I know we didn't see one another that much before, but still it's strange.

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10 Apr 2007 (Tuesday) 

I was dreaming this morning that I was spending Christmas with Caroline. I don't know why it was Christmas, but that's what it was. Now that I'm home from work, I don't remember anything at all else about it except that.

I've had a quite dull day today - first day of 'real' work, now that it's not a bank holiday.

Tired tonight; going to bed.

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9 Apr 2007 (Monday) 

Caroline got home safely last night, which is a relief.

All I want is - you're a little piece of heaven. [ All I want...; Me ]

I had a good first day at work today. Got through most of the things I needed to do quite easily. Had one or two problems with configuring things oddly, but mostly all was well. Nice people in the office and we went out for lunch to Pizza Express - it's a bank holiday here, so there weren't many people around at all. Went home just after 6ish, 'cos I was waiting for a couple of things to install and was distracted reading things.

I managed to upset Caroline this evening, but I think I settled things reasonably well with her. I'm not good at getting across what I mean to say to her. I'm honestly scared that she'll not want to talk to me if I say the wrong thing. It's all quite silly, but I'm quite a mess when it comes to talking to her . We did have a nice chat this evening though.

I've got a load of biscuits left over, because Caroline and Jessica didn't have any. So I may have to go off and eat some.

I'm going to go to bed. I'm tired tonight and I really want to feel awake for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll sleep.

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8 Apr 2007 (Sunday) 

Windows XP SP2 TCP connection throttling. If you think it's happening, check the System event logs for event ID 4226. If it's in the log around the time you're seeing problems, then that's what's happening.

I've just been checking my work email (actually getting Work email to work with Pine was fun, but not impossible) from home. Since Thursday 5pm, I've received 299 messages. 90 of them are actual real messages. All the rest are spam. That's really quite nuts.

Oooh! Caroline's visiting tonight, on the way back from her holiday. It's so exciting . Actually, I'm sure it'll not be anything much; we'll just chat and Jessica will be cute (she is) and then she'll go off home. And then I'll be sad, because she's gone. But that doesn't mean that I won't be glad she's come anyhow . Yay!

I ended up reading far more than I meant to last night. I'm working my way through The Goblet Of Fire. I'm just over half way through, and it's quite exciting . Just 'cos it's a kids book doesn't mean it can't be exciting.

Well, Caroline and Jessica have gone now. There's not a lot more to say. I feel awful, and she's got to drive the rest of the way home. I'll just curl up with Sam and try not to be too upset. That's all I get .

Should I be worried when someone from British Airports Authority starts searching for 'Justin Fletcher' ? Oh, who cares...

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7 Apr 2007 (Saturday) 

So... How's this for naff ? The KiSS DP-1500 player that I've got won't play some files. The files it fails on are MPEG-4 XviD files. However, not all MPEG-4 XviD files fail. The way that they fail is that on selecting such files the screen blanks and the counter stays at 00:00 forever.

By a lot of manual examination and messing around, it seems that files which contain the user data 'DivX503b1393p' fail. Those without this data, or with 'DivX999b000p' work fine. My solution ? Change the kissd server to check if we're serving the first 64K of the file. If so, check for the data containing that string. If so, replace the '503' with 'xxx'. That makes things work.

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6 Apr 2007 (Friday) 

Induction day 5 today. Actually half a day, really. We only did stuff up to about 12:15, when Pizza arrived. They have Pizza some Fridays (depending on stuff), and Curry on other Fridays. Apparently the office I'll be working at goes out for food on Fridays instead. Sounds cool to me. After pizza we went off to the airport - Storm gave myself and Francis a lift there, which was incredibly nice of him and not fun given the traffic being insane even on the short trip from the office to the airport. We got the plane with no problems, and then the bus back to reading, and... I'm home now. Got back here by 5, which was exactly what I was hoping for, really.

Overall the course's been good fun and I've enjoyed it. I'm actually unsure how much I'll remember when it comes to actually doing things, but I believe that having seen the general process I shouldn't be too scared by the general principles. Storm reminds me a lot of Mr McKay who taught me for Computer Science at Downham Sixth Form. As an aside, it appears that they no longer offer a Computer Science course. They offer an ICT course for A-Level, which appears - from the syllabus - to offer nothing special for people wanting to go in to computing proper.

Vanilla skies White picket fences in your eyes A vision of you and me [ Crush, from Jennifer Paige, by Jennifer Paige ]

In the hotel restaurant there were a few songs being played that I recognised - Crush, from Jennifer Paige, by Jennifer Paige, and Just A Ride, from Jem, by Jem immediately spring to mind. There were a few other tracks that I'd have liked to know what they were, but for now I'll just live in ignorance.

I'm now about half way through 'The Goblet Of Fire', now. It's good, but it's hard going because I'm only reading it at night (except when I was flying, when I could read it whilst on the plane, etc). I must admit to being surprised that Hermione didn't go to the dance with Ron, or that Harry didn't go with Ginny. But, there you go, I guess. I do think that the author has something of a problem with the press, though .

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5 Apr 2007 (Thursday) 

Day 4 of induction today. This is going to be the quite technical, but I reckon it'll just be a case of remembering things - I've had a look at some of the documentation already and it seems reasonably sane.

It occurred to me this morning that it was now Thursday and I've not actually listened to any music since around Sunday afternoon - with the exception of the music in the restaurants. It's a little strange. But fortunately I've not actually been all that bothered.

I spoke, for a little while, to Caroline last night; she and Jessica are having a lovely time on holiday and it seems the weather's been very kind to them so far. Looking at the forecast for the next few days it seems like it might be about the same. Apparently they're panning for gold tomorrow - I wanted to do that when we went down there, but nobody else did, so we didn't. Bah.

Done with the day, now. We've had a very busy day finishing off exercises and having the coding standard explained. It's been really fun. Yeah, really. Exercises to re-inforce the things we've been talking about and having someone who's very knowledgeable about the subject matter (or at least makes it seem like they are) makes a big difference. I've made quite a few comments on things this week, and I hope that the guy who's been taking the course hasn't been too annoyed by me - I know I can come over a little bit arrogant at times.

Jogu has given me some 'Crunky' bars today, too. I've tried one of them and they're quite yummy. I think.

I've been chatting to Phil this evening; which is really strange - I've not spoken to him for a few months. He's been incredibly busy with things recently and it certainly looks like he's going up in the world (well, he's always been way above me anyhow).

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4 Apr 2007 (Wednesday) 

Induction day 3 is over and, even with the interruptions we've had for little things, there's been a lot to remember today. I've got no doubt that I'll forget a lot of it, but at least it'll give me an idea about how things are and when I see them for real I'll know what I'm doing.

I'm still a bit confused on some things, but I'm going to ask a few more questions tomorrow and maybe things will be clear.

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3 Apr 2007 (Tuesday) 

Today's my second day of induction. I've really enjoyed things so far. The guy running the course is pretty interesting, even when the material's not his. I do really get the feeling that things are done for good reasons and aren't just for the sake of doing things that way - there seem to be good reasons for things with real justifications. That's the sort of thing that helps me to understand things more clearly. Tomorrow we're doing some fun things - particularly we're doing IPR issues, which is going to be very interesting I think.

For lunch we went off to the shopping centre for something to eat and had something at Pizza Hut, which was really nice - there were 5 of us from the course, which worked quite well.

After we were done with induction for the day, I gave Ian a call and we met up and with Joseph and Alex went off for food. Amusingly I asked Alex where Chris (not Johns or Williams) (who started last month) was sitting and he said 'across from me' which made me feel like a fool for not saying 'hello' when I saw him. It's strange when you've spent so long chatting to people over the Internet and you have no idea what they actually look like . I'll say hello tomorrow .

I've got a login and email and stuff like that set up now, as well, so I'll be able to do real stuff. It's all kinda new still, but I've no doubt I'll get use to it pretty quickly.

Caroline rang just as I was going out in the Evening, to see if she could come visit on Sunday instead. So she'll be coming then, rather than Saturday. She was worried that I'd find that a problem .

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2 Apr 2007 (Monday) 

I've had my first day of induction today. It's actually been quite fun. It seems that they'd like to use nick-names in the company, so I've decided that if I'm going to be known by a name to people, it may as well be 'gerph'. Hey, it'll be fun.

Apparently I've been given the user name 'justin', though, which is quite nice as well. Obviously the name is nice, but it's nice too because it's the same login I had before.

Just before lunch, the guy taking the induction was giving a very useful warning about crossing the road when going to the shopping centre and how you should be really careful because you might die. I just couldn't stop laughing - not because it seems so strange but because of the number of times I got across the road and thought "Dear God, I nearly died, there!".

I'm going to have to go in a mo, 'cos there isn't much battery left in the laptop. So far, I've survived!

[Written later on the laptop]

I dropped Caroline a message to say I was doing ok and the day was good, but I got the feeling from her reply that she wasn't too bothered and would rather just meet up on Saturday.

I had a nice meal this evening, with two of the guys on the Induction - Andy and Francis. Francis is going to be working in the same office as I am, and Andy's working in a new office they're setting up. It was really quite a nice evening all around. Oh, and I got to use the 'net in the hotel foyer, so that was good as well - I could update the diary with Startling News From My Life. Um. Yeah.

I've still got no nails, but I'm calmed a lot. They're only getting bitten in small amounts now.

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1 Apr 2007 (Sunday) 

I'm nearly ready to go now. Almost everything's packed and I'm sort of calmed down.

I'm trying to think of a present to get Jessica. It's difficult because a) I'm not used to buying things for 5-year-old's, b) I'm not used to buying Easter presents, and c) I'm not sure if it's appropriate. So I'm going to follow the line that if I see something that seems cool and appopriate, I'll get it.

As I was walking home a few days ago I was pondering on how silly I can be at times. In particular, how I tend to think that I won't get to talk to Caroline ever again, after most times that I do. It's funny, I know, that I still think like that. It's treating it as being so fragile as to be broken very easily by the slightest of things. No, that's not funny, that's quite sad, isn't it ?

I'm not sure exactly where I was going with that.

Ooh, Simon's alarm has just gone off. It sounds like Walking On Sunshine, by Katrina And The Waves. I'm a little amused because that's far too bouncey for me to wake up to, I think. I'm really quite happy with having Stolen Car, from Central Reservation, by Beth Orton. The only thing is that that kind of thing reminds me of a West Wing episode. Toby's trying to propose to Andy in the house he's bought her and wants to know why she won't re-marry him. Her answer that Toby's 'just too sad' bothers me, because I think I'm probably just a little too sad like that. Although probably worrying about that kind of thing makes me more odd than other things .

Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. [ Backups; Linus Torvalds ]

Yeah, it's an old quote, but drobe and I were talking about backups this afternoon and it seemed appropriate.

[Written later that evening, in the hotel]

Today I got myself on a coach, got on a plane, got to a hotel and had my tea. I'm currently 'relaxing' in my room. Sadly, despite there being T-mobile wireless Internet access here, my room seems to be too far away to get a decent signal. At one point I could just about get to the login screen, but I can't seem to get it now. I met another guy who's starting induction with the company tomorrow as well. Tomorrow will be the first day so I'm hoping things go well.

I ended up getting to the airport really early, so had loads of time - and that was made worse by having done an online checkin (which I'd not done before) so I only had to queue for around 5 minutes (if that) before being done. I did get a pat-down check at security which was really strange. Plus, the security checks included removing shoes. Clearly shoes are a typical place to hide weapons.

Sitting on the plane I was wondering about my whole 'ways to blow up a plane by swallowing stuff' idea and trying to work out if there was more reliable timing system. The problem with my idea - as Chris and someone else pointed out - was that if the flight was delayed, that doesn't stop the stomach acid eating the delivery system. Because of this the reaction may happen in the airport instead of in the plane. Now, strictly if you're wanting to cause chaos, it seems that it might be more sensible to blow yourself up in the airport than in the plane in some random location. But since the goal of the exercise is the thwart the security process, I'll ignore that for now.

My solution to this timing problem involves fruit pastels. Or something similar. It's common to eat sweets on the plane 'cos of the effects of pressure changes on your ears. But if the chemicals in the sweet (or facsimile thereof) can be made to react with the delivery system and/or the stomach acid to cause the reaction then that's even better. That way, you just swallow your catalyst sweet some time once you're in the air and after a short period it does its job and you explode.

Oddly I didn't mention any of this to the security personnel.

I was going to read a little more of my book or watch some of Doctor Who from Friday, but... I ended up watching telly instead. Austin Powers' Goldmember was on. I've not seen it - it never really grabbed me (neither of the Austin Powers did), but I was amused by who was in it. Not by Seth Green, or by Michael Caine (although I obviously recognised them) but by two people who I'm almost certain I recognised. I'm sure that the guy who plays Hiro Nakamura (the Japanese guy that bends time and space) in Heroes appeared very briefly in one section, and the guy who plays Matt Parkman (the cop who reads thoughts) appeared similarly briefly shortly afterward.

I think I'm done for the night now, though. Tomorrow I get the joy of meeting people and stuff like that. Scary, too.

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