So we may be expanding the family

I can’t honestly remember a lot about yesterday, which in a way is probably a good thing. It means it was dull, ordinary and no one died. Every now and then a day like that is appreciated.

Today however was somewhat more eventful. Work was fine, got a few things done early morning, after taking madam to daycare. Oddly on the way back I almost saw a wonderful collision caused by a woman pulling out of a driveway half asleep and not looking where she was going. Thankfully the driver coming the other way had obviously had his morning coffee so just stopped and looked at her in disbelief.

Anyway, had to vanish mid morning to sort out a few things which I’m not going into here as they relate to someone else. But while we were out we took the opportunity to visits Flynn at Holly Hedge again, but this time without Sasha. When we went to his kennel he was just chilling by the inner door, he came straight over to us and his tail never stopped wagging. We got him out and into the exercise yard. Certainly without the distraction of Sasha he was very attentive and playful, he hasn’t quite got the hang of what to do after he’s chased the ball yet, but we’ll teach him that. I almost managed to teach him sit in about ten minutes. Anyway we had a good play with him, he’s great on a tug toy, if we can get Sasha on the other end of it we’ll be sorted. We took him for a short walk where he pulled like hell and peed on everything, again, nothing we haven’t experienced before. So we popped him back in his kennel and said good bye. I’m pretty sure his name was not actually ‘Flynn’ as I know the signage system they use. We will change his name anyway. We said we will go back on Sunday with Sasha and providing they don’t eat each other then we’ll take him home.

Came back and did more work. Then I went for a run, really needed it as I was feeling somewhat fat (and also looking somewhat fat). Actually really enjoyed it. Came back, had a shower, then we went to Pet’s are Us or whatever it’s called and picked up a bowl, a collar and a name tag, just on the off chance we take the dog…

Came back and did more work. It’s been a day of lots of work chunks, but actually great progress. Time for tea now, may be a little wine and some telly. Tomorrow hopefully will be one of those boring days.

To Flynn or not to Flynn

Cracked on with today’s joyous work, which was renderer code again. Not very eventful.

We decided to go and have a look at a dog in Hollyhedge called ‘Flynn’, he is a nine month old Husky-Staffy cross. Nice looking dog, got on okay with Sasha, well I say got on okay, he did spend most of his time trying to hump her. She didn’t have a go at him, I thought she tolerated him quite well. Flynn didn’t seem too interested in me though. We have a reserve on him. I think we need to go back and play with him without Sasha.

Came back and worked well into the night, punctuated with Body Combat, which I gave all to and slept very well.

Retro BBQ and mass Geocache haul

Started off yesterday with an early breakfast and dog walk. We only had limited time so she had just over an hour, but to her disappointment we never quite made it to her favourite field. I loaded up the car with larger and off I trotted up to ‘Tring’, which is somewhere by London. Uneventful journey right up until about the last five miles where sat-nav did what all sat-navs do and start sending you down really tiny roads. Anyway after turning the wrong direction on the final road and doing a quick town tour I made it to the hotel. Found Mark already there, he’d come from Newcastle, so about twice as far as me. Checked in when they found someone for reception. Hotel and room is uninteresting, unspectacular but overall cheap.

We gave Andy a call and twenty minutes later this 1970 something white Ford Escort turned up. We loaded in, the rear seats had me and the beer on it. This is pre seat-belt days. I was going to regret this when we got close to Andy’s house, when he demonstrated how light it was on the back end and good for sliding…this was on a roundabout on an ‘A’ road. I’d always wanted to go round it sideways, but probably in a roll-cage, not while clutching on to twenty pints of Foster’s. We made it.

Whole afternoon was pretty fun, there were quite a few of us there. Lots of children playing on the trampoline thing and dog tied up under it. Much beer and wine was consumed by all. I stayed on the beer as it was going to be a fairly long day and I can drink that almost constantly and still stand up. Andy has an amazing house, he’s taken the alternative approach to me….loads of debt to have everything, where I have no debt but still quite a lot. I don’t have a swimming pool or a hot-tub though. But he only had a gas BBQ, if you have one of those you may as well just cook in a bloody oven. Anyway, he also has the most amazing play room, with all these old arcade cabinets in (well they are mame emulators, but just as good). Plus the biggest collection of retro computers I’ve ever seen. There were various games throughout the day, mainly with two overgrown ‘boys’ trying to get the highest ‘Donkey Kong’ scores. I played ‘Space Harrier’ which I haven’t played for about twenty-years, and completed it, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. It wasn’t a bad attempt after about ten pints. Andy’s wife vanished, I think was down to a bottle of Prosecco. Some other people were getting there. Mark and I were pretty much fine, he’s a Northerner and stuck to cider and I can drink my own body weight in larger. It was a good job two as we had about a half hour journey back in the taxi as every main road the driver tried to take was closed. He got us there though and it wasn’t too pricey.

Mark took his key with him which was a good move. I waited by reception for over twenty minutes for someone to come. There was a wedding party there but bugger all staff. I even phoned them several times and got no answer. It wasn’t like it was 4AM, it was about 10:30PM. In the end I stood there, drank another can of larger (yes, I took the remainder back with me) then dived behind the reception desk and retrieved the key. I had a shower, a cup of tea and watched some telly, not a very good nights sleep, the room was very hot and I could hear some fucker snoring all night. Still, it was cheap.

So this morning I got a text from Mark to say he’d woken up early and had breakfast and was going, so I lade in bed for a bit then went down to breakfast, which I can only describe as unorganised chaos. There was no where to sit which wasn’t a table for fifty, I ended up sharing a quaint table for two with an Australian bloke, we made pointless small talk about tea pots. I went to get toast, there wasn’t any bread, I went to get cereal, there wasn’t any bowls. Coffee, no cups. You get the general idea. I managed to obtain toast, cereal and coffee within about twenty minutes. Still, it was cheap.

So I’d already loaded up the GPS with about 400 caches within 10Km of Tring. What I should have down was put in the location as the hotel, if I’d down this I wouldn’t have had a twenty minute walk before I found the first one. Still, started at about ten-thirty and then finished when the GPS finally run out of juice. I found 15 with 3 DNF’s. I dropped off the ‘Good luck tiki’ travel bug and also stored my own ‘teddy bear’ (In dedication to Natalie Govier (Nee Green) travel bug. It’s mission is to try and get over to Martin in Sophia, Bulgaria.

So as the battery gave up I was on the home stretch back to the hotel. Put the air-con on as it was boiling (I’d been pretty luck with the weather, only a few spots and it was baking). Then started the drive back home, managed to avoid really tiny lanes this time. Again the journey was thankfully uneventful, other than for an accident on the M4. I was using the car GPS which has the traffic management thing in so managed to avoid it by it sending my through Reading. I was going to divert to ‘Westonbirt Arboretum’, but the heavens opened so I carried on home.

The dog was pleased to see me, she probably stands a chance of being fed now. So updated Facebook, updated Geoccahing.com, uploaded yet more Gromit’s from last week. Now it’s time to do the accounts. Will probably go for a bath and the Hungarian Grand Prix later. Overall, a nice weekend after all the calamity of last week.

Someone will draw a cock on it

VPN worked fine today, which was good as I wasn’t really in the mood for another battle with it. Still working on renderer code. All going fine I guess. Ventured out to Tesco’s and stocked up on cash and petrol for tomorrow.

There was an odd post by Dan (Nat’s husband), saying he’s going to get an all white coffin and supply marker pens. Someone will draw a cock on it for sure (i’ll try not to), it’ll all be very odd. Won’t be for a couple of weeks yet though.

Went to Body Pump, finished off work. Quick bath, phone mother then try and get to bed earlier as I have to walk woof first thing, then drive up to London.

Thank you VPN, you’ve officially driven me insane

Got up, PC powered down just as I sat down to it, it’s been running a virus scan all night. Started it up again, twiddled about. Then tried to log into the VPN. Timeout. Great. Uninstalled it, re-installed it. Timeout. Great. Tried VPN on the iMac, timeout. Started shouting at the pfSense firewall. Timeout. Twiddled with pfSense, timeout. Powered off main machine. iMac now connects no problem. Powered on main machine, timeout. Tried iMac, timeout. Powered off main machine, iMac can connect again. Got notebook out, installed Cisco VPN client, connected. Powered on main machine, tried notebook again, timeout. Okay, this was getting weird, something on main machine was causing the VPN to not connect. Powered on main machine, uninstalled and re-installed VPN client. Connected. Notebook, connected. iMac, connected. Open IE, now nothing connects. Restarted main machine, connect to VPN no problem. Opened mail, tried to reconnect, all dead. Hmmm….What’s changed since yesterday, well nothing….except. My old mail server SSL certificates have expired, I never got round to installing the new ones for courier. So finally installed an updated courier.pem file on the mail server, restarted imapd. Flushed the SSL cache, restarted PC. Opened mail, opened IE, connect VPN all fine. So somehow an outdated SSL certificate was causing some authentication error and completely buggered up tunneling on pfSense for all machines. Very very odd, drove me bloody nuts.

Walked the dog.

Ate a sandwich.

Then ended up working solid till gone nine to make up for this mornings problems. Still, got quite a lot done.

Torture porn night, although I think I’ll end up watching Luther.

Bugger, didn’t win my controller thing

Took dog to daycare at 6:30, went back to bed. Then awoken by the cleaners at 9:30, they said apparently the phones are down round here so they couldn’t phone. Which is a feeble excuse considering they only have my mobile number, couldn’t be assed is a better excuse.

Still working on renderer stuff, all fine, should have the bulk of it finished by the end of next week I reckon. I’ve been keeping an eye on a flight sim controller on ebay for a few days, it was originally over a grand. I thought it was probably worth about a ton, but it went for just over £650! The daft thing is, the joystick it’s based on I can pick up on ebay for about a tenner. So I think I’ll get one of those and have a bash at the hardware myself, will make for an interesting project.

Walked over towards the gym, where there was a puzzle geocache I’ve been working on, looks like I have the wrong coordinates though. Walked over to Sarah’s and watered her plants, walked home, just in time for it to then piss down.

Still no date for funeral yet.

Woman gives birth

Considering, I had a fairly normal day. Still working on renderer code, going fine, slowly all coming together. Didn’t really go anywhere except to the doctors to pick up my happy pill prescription. Ended up spending the evening solving a Suduko puzzle which points to the location of a cache. It’s been a long long time since I solved one of those. Anyway, now have the coords, will try and get to it.

Nothing else really done, I’m still fairly much in limbo as it were.

Oh, apparently some royal popped out a sprog, it’s major news, I really couldn’t give a shit.

Happy birthday blog. Although celebrations are a bit of a damp squib.

This morning started with a hangover. I didn’t start work until about 11, I just wasn’t in the mood. Had breakfast and fed the dog. Then finally did make a start. The VPN decided to not let me in so had to fart around with that. When I finally did get on with work though it was quite a productive day. Lots of renderer code, going back over the ‘todo’s’ and doing them. Quite pleased with progress although my heart wasn’t really in it, I was happy with the distraction.

Walked the dog, because of the heat she was as enthusiastic as I was, so we kept it sort. I did drag myself to the gym and do Combat, which I was quite pleased with. I enjoyed it. There was a fairly reasonable looking new guy at the back who had the coordination of a pissed giraffe. Came back did some more work, then went over to Sarah’s and watered her plants, although it’s fairly academic as it looks like it will piss down soon. Still, there’s a limit to how much I want dying this week.

Came back and did yet more work. Fucked up a couple of checkins, although they looked fine originally, brain not firing on all cylinders. Anyway, may sit down and watch a film now, in the mood for that, not much else. Need to go to doctors and pick up my prescription as I’m out of happy pills. Now in that very strange ‘limbo time’, between death and funeral. I’ll write an obituary at some point, just not right now.

Oh yes, the blog is one year old. Jamie said I’d never keep it up. I kept the paper diary up for twenty-four years. There’s been a new entry near enough everyday, you try and come up with something witty to say.

If there is a god in heaven then today he was a bit of a cunt

This morning I woke up, which oddly to discover someone else didn’t. I had breakfast and a coffee and then gently dozed. It wasn’t until about mid-day when I checked my email, and then face book. At 5:45 this morning was a message posted to me, from Karen Green, Natalie Green’s mother. It simply read, ‘Natalie is at peace x’. The world suddenly stopped turning, I lost all coherence, I didn’t really have a clue where I was for a few minuets. The girl who I had loved and been with for about six years had gone, she was no more, in her own words she would have said ‘I am an ex parrot’. So sudden, I only had a message the other day that she was ill in Cheddar Hospital and that they had found a ‘mass’ on her stomach, I was planning on visiting next week, I never expected this to happen so quickly. She was about thirty-five, had never done any harm to anyone, she has two small children. Now she is gone. The last time I saw her was at my wedding last year, she made our wedding cake. I only recently sent her a couple of dolls I’d picked up in Japan for her kids. Now she’s gone, she’s never going to pop on on face book again and seek legal advice or bitch about the world in general. It’s very strange.

We did eventually get up. I ate eggs, we visited the mall and I managed to get three more Gromits. Came back and got the BBQ going. Jamie’s mother was coming over. We actually had quite a good time, she slightly overdid the wine and was a bit legless. That took my mind of things for a bit.

I have a feeling I may be dwelling on my thoughts a bit too much this week. At some point soon I will have to meet her family again and I really just don’t know what to say.

RIP Natalie, may your god go with you.

No you can’t can’t have my bloody t-shirt

Started this morning with two cups of coffee to boot the system. Doing about two hours of walking, Body Pump and nine hours of work yesterday was not a good combination. I didn’t even hear Jamie leave for work this morning. I thought the dog probably needed to go out but the patio door was already open, good job as I doubt I would have heard her any way. Got her her breakfast and I had mine. Read the paper. Then we ventured out on are ‘usual’ Saturday walk over to the field in Almondsbury, where she can have a good run off lead.

Came back and had lunch. Then ventured out to find more Gromits. On the way into a town I got stopped by some random guy and asked where I got my t-shirt from, I said it was from a shop in Yokohama. He then got quite pissed off with his girlfriend and ranted that he needed to go to Japan. Incidentally I was wearing my purple ‘Team Rocket’ shirt.

Found ten more Gromits, I think I’m around fifty-eight mark now. Visited mother, where she listed her usual amount of things that needed doing. I fitted her tumble dryer in. I got a fruit cake, fair exchange. Watered Sarah’s plants. Then ventured into Tesco to get a couple of bits for tomorrows family BBQ. Yes, It’s been at least a fortnight since the last one.

Right, bath time, then I’m cooking something with ham, not too keen on that idea.