So, tad extreme weather for London this week!

Sunday we noticed it looked like snow and sure enough, it started in the early evening. But when we woke up in the morning on Monday it was incredible the amount of snow that had fallen! So I didn't make it to Leeds as planned on Monday, but did eventually make it on Tuesday. The reason? South West Trains...

On Monday, SWT basically closed Wimbledon down as the didn't run any trains. As a result, all the shops were shut. I mean all of them (bar Tesco, which I think would open in a nuclear winter if there was money in it). It was really spooky! This was about 4 in the afternoon, so maybe they had been open before that, I don't know, but it felt like January 1st all over again. Anyway, this meant I couldn't get out of Wimbledon, so stayed at home for travel on Tuesday.

Tuesday comes, and SWT are still only running a skeleton service...I do eventually get one, but it doesn't stop where I need to so then have great fun on the underground. Then the east coast line train. the first two were cancelled, so I had to sit in Kings X for an hour. Well, I say sit, there isn't actually ANYWHERE to sit in Kings X. No coffee shop, no bar, no nothing where you can sit. So I went to St Pancras for a wander and was amazed by the place. It's stunning.

The train left on time, but it was old slam door which I didn't think they ran on the east coast main line anymore!

Anyway, here's a photo of the snow on the back of my car:

Another day, another long day. Had to cancel my train, and as i should have been getting home now, I'm still about 90 minutes away from home, and bed.

Good week though, we've achieved more than I thought was possible in the last two weeks, and as a project team we are being rewarded for our efforts better than I have been in years and I've only been here two weeks. It makes a real difference to the morale of a team if your efforts are correctly rewarded, and I think some projects forget that and people become a number on a bottom line. Which may well be the case, but that doesn't make it right.

I live by the rule of treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. Obviously, I reserve the right to over-rule that in certain unnamed cases! The guy who tripped me up end effectively ended my hockey playing for one by the resulting damage to my knee.

Also heard today that one of my friends is going to be made redundant, and another friend work has started consultation procedures. Not nice.

OK, no update for a while but here's a quick one before my cab arrives.

I'm in Leeds. It's cold and miserable. I'm still at work having done 10 hours in the office. For the third day running. I'm hungry, tired and would quite like to see my wife soon.

On the upside, I'm going to the pub in a minute. God bless the German beer makers....

Well, that's been a looong week so far.

Yesterday saw me go to York for a meeting. After getting the train from Leeds I walked to the office as I'd noted it wasn't that far away and I had a little bit of time. I needed the air to just get my head clear of one client and ready for the next one. As it turned out, it's going to be an interesting challenge, and I do wonder sometimes how people come to certain decisions. On getting back to Leeds I met up with my uncle who I'd not seen since the wedding in April last year. We went to Hansa's, a veggie curry house which was absolutely superb, followed by a beer in the pub next door which served loads of Belgium beers. Nice way to end the evening of chat about UNIX system admin, e-type Jags, cameras, and most of the night, bikes. He has a bit of a thing about bikes, in particular currently he's into Italian hand built titanium track bikes, coming in at over £3000 for the frame alone...

Today I've been in Peterlee, near Durham. It's not somewhere I'll be rushing back to for a holiday but it's been an interesting experience in understanding the current systems. However, the train has been delayed due to some clown commiting suicide on the line which I could do without. On the move now, just need to convince the guard that I don't need to change in York to get to Leeds to get a train to London as I've missed my Leeds train now. Best smile at the ready...

So, my first experience of Leeds is a japanese restaurant called Little Tokyo. It was a fantastic little place, food was excellent and the staff spot on. I can see it becoming a favourite.

The hotel is great as well. No need to bribe the staff with chocolates to get a suite here - I got one on my first visit! Nice decorated and quiet, and in the middle of the city you can't get any better. And it's cheaper than the hotels in Worcester, it really reminds you what a con Worcester hotels are!

Off out again tonight, think a curry is in order, though I'm going to have another tomorrow with my uncle who is desperate to go to a vegetarian curry house, and I'll be honest - I'm game!

Off to York for the afternoon and then onto Durham on Thursday, so lots of travel in the next few days. Next week doesn't look any better either, but at least it's mostly on the train (and in 1st class too ;-))

Long day...I suspect this place does long days, as most people are still here at 7 with no intention of leaving. Not fun, my eyes are glazing over.

Off to the hotel soon, will see what that's like. After 3 years in Worcester, and in a big city, you'd hope for better than Worcester offers!

So this is what modern train life is like - free wireless ;-)

Still didn't stop the usual chaos of the getting a seat. I'd pre-booked, but that all seemed to go out the window when the earlier train had been cancelled, thus trying to get two trains worth onto one. Never fun...

Busy but satisfying few days.

In preparation of someone wanting to buy the flat, we've been sorting stuff out. This has meant discovering stuff I didn't know we owned. Which included a foam axe. Bit random, and neither of us remembers buying it. Anyway, we've been quite successful so far, with wardrobe space being reclaimed and cupboards cleared. The study has never been as organised, which is always nice!

Went out for a walk in the afternoon round Richmond Park while the viewings were on. This turned out to be shorter than planned as it was freezing! It was -2 when we got out, and -3 when we got back to the car. People were being a bit stupid and were on the ice on the ponds, right in the middle, where it doesn't take a genius to work out that if it goes there they are in big trouble, but what can you do. Looked very wintery, so we retired home for a cup of tea which was most welcome.

Popped to Kingston this morning for a few bits and pieces. Bought some new work shirts, which Katy disputes I need, but could not argue with the sale prices :-)

Off to Leeds tomorrow, which should be good. Arranged to meet my Uncle for a curry and as I've not seen him since the wedding last year, it'll be great to catch up, discuss work (he designs Solaris systems), whisky, beer, curry and bikes. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to get him to build me one of his designs for road cycling. These things take time to design and build, and will be costly I suspect, but will be worth it. I know roughly what I want but I've no idea about colour yet. Will see what I fancy closer to the time, there is a lot of welding to be done first!

And so here we are in 2009! Happy New Year to you all.

So what are the thoughts of this year already? Well, it now seems a bloody long time ago since the millennium! I spent time 10 years ago trying to patch everything in site in case all the dates failed. Not that we thought it would, but that's what everybody thought would happen. But i look back and wonder just what has changed in that time, and it's a lot, but you would expect that in 9 years I guess. What has surprised me is that it is 9 years!

I mean, in that time I've bought and sold my first property, bought another and still trying to sell it, moved house a fair few times and moved to a new country (I treat England as separate, after all I still get treated as a foreigner at times, though people now mostly complain about the Poles and the SA). Work has been varied and interesting, with good progression through the ranks. I've got married, seen my brother get married and most of my good friends (mainly in the last year!) and will no doubt see them all with kids soon before the decade is out.

Time flies...

Smugness

Well, it's the traditional time of year where I'm running about like an idiot finishing shopping, be it food or presents. Not this year though...

I made a decision in November that I'd be organised this year. And so I have been! I bought the last parcel last Sunday, and although I'd gone to Kingston, I went first thing and was home by 12. This was a good plan, as it meant that most people were still in bed when I went. In fact, I'd almost call it pleasant.

Yesterday, we had to pop to the supermarket. Knowing that the large Sainsburys Savacentre would be mad, we opted to just get a few bits in the Tesco and M&S in Wimbledon, which means a 5 minute walk (it's one aspect to Wimbledon I'll miss when we leave - everything is so close!) It was chaos, people barging into each other, generally winding each other up. As such, we got what we needed and legged it to the gym. The gym has a massive glass window where you can watch the main shopping street in Wimbledon from the 1st floor while on an exercise bike, and this led to much amusement watching the chaos and thinking - if you could all see yourselves, would you do it again?

In the afternoon, we went to Richmond Park for a bit of a wander. I love Richmond Park, and when it's open in the early morning I cut through it when I need to drive out of London. So after admiring the view from the top of the hill, we'd taken a few shots on the camera, mainly of crazy old log patterns and a few deer, we wandered back to the car and went home for a mince pie and some dodgy Christmas tunes ;-)

Well, it's taken 2 hours, but I think I've managed to help alleviate the skipping in iTunes on the PC. Lot's of tweaking...

So, I've uninstalled a lot of old software, which made no real difference other than freeing up some much needed hard drive space. I then updated the relevant drivers for the soundcard (a rather excellent Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer edition (essentially, the same card as their more expensive card, but you pay a third of the price), but I've left iTunes at v7 as it's relatively stable and iTunes just seems to bloat every edition you go up. Next up was some tweaks for quicktime, forcing it to use my soundcard to do the processing it thinks it should do - this made a bit of a difference actually. I checked the page file was ok, and also turned off the fancy visuals you get in Windows, so the desktop doesn't look so good but hey, it just uses up resources. Finally, I reviewed the services list so only the stuff I used was starting automatically, and removed some apps from my startup. This seems to have cured all my ills, I now have a non-skipping iTunes and have a processor that is no longer hitting maximum usage all the time.

Talking of processor usage, I've been using Process Tamer for a year or so on the work laptop and found it to be very useful, but am trialling Process Lasso on the home PC, which is a bit more configurable and less intrusive than Process Tamer.

So the PC is definitely struggling, as with the latest version of iTunes running it now skips a lot. Nightmare. Will just have to wait for the new year though.

Interesting experience on return to the rented cottage we have last night. There are 16 cottages in a rectangular cul-de-sac. They are all pretty old and we have one tucked away at the end. Turns out the guy next door to us owns the little lane we use to access the three cottages at this end and also owns the garages at the end of the road. He wants to build flats there and it's been refused due to the limited emergency access. So he'd tried to buy some of land the cottage gardens sit on, but everyone refused it. So I arrive last night to find a new gate and some metal bollards, which means I cannot get the car anywhere near the place. He's done it out of spite and it's not legal. However, the lawyers are about to come down on this prize cock very swiftly and access should be resumed shortly.

Some people are idiots.

Well, I think my PC is struggling.

With the holidays coming, I thought I'd take the opportunity to rip some of my DVDs for use on the ipod. Trouble is, while the results are very good, it takes AGES on my nearly 4 year old steed. So I think a new PC will need to be sussed out in the new year. Some of the new Dell Studio gear looks appealing and some of it is incredibly cheap at the moment - who'd have thought you'd get a quad fully built, with 3GB of RAM, for 650 quid? Will be keeping an eye on that one! The aim is to get the new PC and then at some point a new screen - something nice, big and wide ;-)

For those interested, here is the link

Great pictures on ZDNet showing some examples of when Christmas decorations go wrong...

LINK

Why is it that you plan to buy a smaller Christmas tree than the year before, and yet when you actually get there you decide to buy one that is much bigger than you'd planned? It's currently drying out in the hallway, ready to be installed in the lounge tomorrow morning.

We need to venture out in the wilds tonight (literally!) to our friends in Kent to are having a Champagne party. Fortunately, our friends who live near us have decided to drive, so we'll get a lift home. Always nice ;-)

We've been getting very good at late at planning the shopping we need so we minimize the lack waste food we have. It takes a lot of effort to do it while managing two homes (one for the project, one we own) but it's satisfying to do it, plus it means your less likely to weaken and get a takeaway!

Heading home today, which is always welcome. It's been a long week away from home this week, even taking into account that we have a cottage we stay in during the week, but there is nothing like your own bed. Only downside will be the ever present traffic on the M25 on the drive home, but you can't have everything.

Another day, another bun fight. Fortunately, I wasn't in this meeting, and I really appreciate the team here and the work they've done around it to keep me out of it!

It seems though, that my time here is almost at an end. It will be a shame to go, I've made some good friends and the work is interesting. However, this is an absolutely horrible time to change projects as nobody is doing anything in December, so that's probably next years utilization screwed before it's even begun. Deep joy.

What with everything else that's going on just now, it doesn't exactly leave me in the happiest place, but there you go - that's the so called joy of services work. You do the job, your expendable. You go into this with your eyes open though so you know it can and will happen, but after 3 years it still smarts a bit.

One of the joys of using Firefox is the add-ons you can get. There are lots of clever ones out there, but one I really like is called property-bee. Now, if your not buying or selling a house just now, this will not interest you very much, however what you do is install the little add-on and then visit rightmove, which is the biggest property website going. The little add-on is viewed in the left hand toolbar, and shows you all the details of the property listed with the changes that have happened to them, such as when it went on, what has changed in the description, and most importantly, the differences in the prices between when it went on and what it's at now. This is vital information in the current market!

At the very least, it's interesting to see which massive 5 bedroom pile has lost the most money ;-)

I've recently discovered, via the medium of the Freeview box, BBC 6 Music. Now, I like listening to radio, you don't have a choice when you spend a s much time in the car as I do! So, Radio 1, 2, 4 and XFM (when in London) all get listened to. However 6 Music is different to all of them. They play superb music, I'm listening to it now and it's all 70's and 80's classic (good classic stuff!) like the Clash, The Beat, Elastica and the like. Awesome stuff. Now, I've not listened to it during the week, but will definitely give it a try.

The other music source I discovered was Last.FM. You type in the type of music you want to listen to, or an artist, and it streams similar stuff to you. Some are better than others, but overall, very good - essential when you forget your ipod in the office! You can also "scrobble" music when you sync your ipod, so it learns the type of stuff you've been listening to and plays tracks your more likely to like. Impressive stuff, and the best bit? It's all free ;-)

You have to love the internet!

To compound my pain after yesterdays drive to work, the drive home wasn't much better! We'd gone to my wives sisters house to drop off Fizz Wizz that we'd bought in the local sweet shop in the village (it's fantastic btw - everything you can imagine from your childhood available in little bags!) as it's the nieces birthday tomorrow. As such, she wanted to let the kids experience Fizz Wizz, which has also been called Space Dust, but essentially pops like crazy in your mouth. So this route back home took us via Woking. This bit was fine, but then from there you drive past Brooklands and Weybridge to get to the A3 at Chobham. This is where the problems lay, as the M25 was closed between Weybridge and the A3, so all the 4 lanes of M25 traffic was trying to use the same bit of road...

Absolute hell. And with the prospect of a weekend trip to Yorkshire, complete with snow, it doesn't look like my driving pleasure will increase anytime soon! In saying that, we drove back to London after seeing Coldplay this week. Now, even though it was pretty late, the roads were quiet and the car was a dream. I mean, it looks good, it's massive inside, it's pretty quick and it eats motorways. What more can you ask for late at night for a 150 mile run? That made me almost as happy as the soon to happen trip round Scotland for a wee driving jaunt. Cannot wait...