A slow week

I've been a bit miserable this week. I've missed alot of people in London and wished that I could just go out for a quick beer. Hey Ho - I'm going back on the weekend of 28th July for 4 days, so that'll be good.

Obviously I went back to London on the weekend of 9th June and I had a pretty damn fine time all in all. I rushed around and saw a lot of people. It was totally great to hook up with everyone, even if it was only for a few hours sometimes, but it was a bloody great time.

So there we go.

Thoughts apart from that:

Reading: Debugging Applications for .NET and Windows (well re-reading some of it in truth)
Meaning to also re-read: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance – its been a while
Meaning to lookup: is there a new Douglas coupland novel out? Its been ages since I read any fiction, its just been tech tech tech for past 3 months
Apart from: Guardian Weekly, and a copy of the “real” guardian I got at central station during the week – G2 heaven – I do miss it.

Thinking: Cycling to work – brilliant
Exercising: see above + swimming in lakes, and more swimming in lakes – nice!! And a few weights at home since my shoulders are feeling almost fixed…..

Working: SQL Performance issues mostly this week, and fixing next door neighbours PCs – well trying to anyway, I always find it hard to say no to request like this, but then you just know what you’re going to find – a mirriad of half installed half removed malware internet downloaded hardware conflicting device crunching driver corrupting application hanging type of crap. If it was mine I’d wipe it clean and start again!!

Drooling over: New Lego Mindstorms NXT , due out in 6 weeks to general release – I need to try this I think. I definately need to build some robots. My neighbour has one of those robotic lawnmowers. I watch it trundle around the garden. In terms of lawnmowings, its utterly inefficient, it takes about 3 hours to cut a tiny 10 sq metres lawn, but its dead good to watch.....(insert your own comment about how sad I am here!)

pictures of the new house

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Originally uploaded by pcgxk.

uploaded to flickr at long last - see previous post - I'm sitting on that terrace now, as I write this.

No web access at home

So here we are – it must be about 3 weeks or more since I managed to post something. My lack of internet connection at home is beginning to become tiresome. Here’s the thing, I’ve moved house (check out the pictures on flickr) and its f’ing amazing, but its taking an age for the internet to be enable at the exchange its just like UK really in that regard, there is the ex state run monopoly fixed line provider who has all the infrastructure, and my ISP, who has sold me a lovely deal of 24MB connection with first 3 months free, is being delayed in enabling my connection. Anyway, only about another 2 weeks to wait now hopefully, but its quite frustrating.

OBVIOUSLY, I can use the web at work, but for reasons to long to write here I haven’t – well not for much personal stuff anyway. A simple point would be to say that during the days I’ve been too busy to blog and upload photos etc, and in the evenings I haven’t been in the mood to stay in the office and do personal things.

Both mums were here for a week and Emma is here now, so its not been a good time to geek out at the office, when I ought to be at home socialising. Suffice to say I have much web withdrawal symtoms, so the girls have gone into town today and I’ve been walking round the garden outdoors, trying to find the optimal spot to connect to my neighbours unsecured wireless connection.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, as he said I was welcome to share it its just that I can’t get a good signal anywhere. So I’m now sitting on his terrace, at his garden table – uploading my flickr and writing this. He’s away in the archipelago anyway, with the rest of Stockholm for midsummer weekend, so I have the place to myself – its just not the most ergonomic of desks!! I may actually go into the office later to use their connection as it might be easier.

There are about 4 other wireless signals in sight of here, but unfortunately all are encrypted…..