A tale of a Scotsman living in SW london...

Friday, November 14, 2008

I may not mention on here, but I love driving. I certainly used to enjoy it even more when I lived in Scotland. In Aberdeen you can be in some amazing roads in 10 minutes, although I didn't have the car to enjoy them then! Difficult to get the exact line in a clapped out 1.4 Escort Ghia... In Edinburgh though I did have the car and within 20 minutes from where I lived you could be on your way to the borders on the A702 and it's associated side roads. I remember one drive I ended up at the foot of a mountain, looking at the most amazing waterfall, having driven along one of the best bits of tarmac I've ever been on. My poor Cooper S didn't really know what had happened to it!

In London, you can't enjoy car ownership as your always worried about damage, and then to get a decent road that is quiet will involve driving to Wales. At least that's how it feels at times, though Yorkshire is also a good shout ;-)

Anyway, I know one thing. My multiple karting victories means I can drive a bit, but I know I can't drive like Ken Block. Amazing video.

LINK

Thursday, November 13, 2008

How does the old adage go?
Keep your enemies close, but your friends closer?


I know what they mean.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Quandary complete

So I completed my quandary. My colleagues in the main delivered the goods (well, 3 haven't as yet, but that's why I put down 7 people as I knew some were more reliable than others!). All feedback was sent to me by 4pm, and late last night the deed was done. So you can rest easy ;-) to those who did it, I thank you!

Last night was supposed to be about finishing the wedding album. This has been a trauma. I know it's supposed to be fun, but it's just not! We have 833 photos to chose from, and only 80 can go in the album. As such, 1 in 10 needs to be dropped. You'd think this would be easy but as our photographer was just so good it's not!

The cut down list is currently at 137. So it's getting there.

As she did such a good job, here's a link to Catherine so you can see why it's hard!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Quandary

It's a busy time for work, the annual deluge of reviews has started. They brought the date they need all the responses back forward this year and there hasn't been much notice. So you know, this means that we all had to tell the Big company who we wanted to review us early, they all get written to and asked to respond. Normally, you have about 4 weeks to do this which makes it much easier to plan around the usual work stuff that's going on. This year, it was a total of 2 weeks, including the time to prepare your own response. It's not a lot.

As such, I'm left in the situation where I need to complete my response by the end of today (it's already written, thanks to a bit of foresight) but I've not had any of my feedback requests back yet as nobody thinks it's urgent yet.

As such, the quandary of today - do I submit now and be on time (I'll bet a very small percentage do it today) without having any comments in it from people I work with, or wait until I have the comments, and do it them?

I'm swaying to the latter as so much rides on the review that I'm very unhappy to submit without comments.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Phew, what a busy weekend!

Friday was a catchup with the folks and my brother and his wife. This involved a late night and whisky. Enough said.

Saturday we all went to a fantastic little place called "Milton of Crathes", which is just outside of Banchory and opposite Crathes Castle. We didn't go to the castle this time but will need to go soon as it's an awesome place. However, the food at Milton was superb, regional and seasonal, and very reasonable. My wife was loving the craft shops, as she has got into these things since we got married - living life in the fast lane, eh?

We caught up with all the boys in the evening as one of the contingent has a new flat which is absolutely enormous! However this was an evening with a difference. Usually, when the boys get together, we get take away pizza and play Pro Evolution Soccer all night on Xbox. This has been the pattern since about 1996. This was different (and it's a reflection on the ladies in our lives I think!) that we had a proper sit down 3 course dinner, followed by Trivial Pursuit. Shocking! Still, had a good night. It highlighted one thing though - the complete impracticality of getting three people into an Audi TT. My mate has one and gave me a lift home, my head was behind the line of the rear window, and that was after I'd angled my head to the side as there is NO headroom in the back! Still, it was better than walking ;-)