This morning started off rather loudly, thanks to being next to the service elevator. Anyway, went down to breakfast at about 9:30, met various people who were in various states of death. I think I had five things of coffee before I could even face toast. Left luggage at reception and then dived off into London to pick up a couple of things. Walked back to the hotel and picked up my luggage. Saw Simon there, who looked rough as hell, they had lost his jacket, he had lost the ticket.

I then had to lug this bloody Xbox all through the underground and back to Paddington. Again, not very exciting journey back, weather shit. Got back home. Jamie’s dad was here. I was dying for a shit but had to hang around and chat as Jamie was getting changed to do an extra shift at work.

When everyone had gone I booted up Dragon’s Lair on the arcade machine and after about five attempts managed to complete it. It’s been about 27 years since I last did that. After that I played around with the heli and gyro again. I just can’t get the damn thing working right, it just seems to pulse the rotors. I need to do some more research.

I then did the accounts, I’ve spent an obscene amount of money this month on finishing off the decorating, arcade machine and new years stuff. Still I’m sure it’s all worthy.

Then Jamie came back from work and we went to the new Nando’s. I had chicken and chips. The sauces weren’t as spicy as I thought they would be. The chips had way too much salt on them. But overall, yeah it was okay.

Came back and cooked eggs for my Salad next week. Then I think it’s time to jump in the bath. Christmas coming up, god I hate Christmas.

So the morning started off quite well, coffee, coffee, bran flakes, coffee, prozac. Walked the dogs fairly early. Checked train times, wasn’t really anything useful until early afternoon, so played with heli gyros for a bit. Packed up my bag and then drove to Parkway.

Uneventful train journey. Sat next to a guy with a Windows phone, saw it crash. Decided I’d get off at Marble Arch and walk down Oxford street. Well, that wasn’t busy. Found the hotel eventually. Had a room the size of a cupboard next to a service elevator.

Showered, shit and shaved. Changed into something a bit more formal, then descended to the party room. Where I was all alone, for about twenty minutes. Then people started drifting in. One guy caught my eye straight away, his name was Simon, an Australian who lives in German, so has rather a weird accent. Anyway, he’s posted lots of youtube videos of him mountain biking and other fun stuff. Anders came over and said “It’s Eero all over again….”. So we had great fun winding him up a lot. We were half cut before dinner was eventually served. It was fine but uninspiring. The wine was horrible. Soon we ventured to the gaming tables and played a bit of poker. I didn’t do too bad, considering I’d already drunk my own bodyweight in lager. It was then time for Karaoke, which is where I basically spent the rest of the night. Started with Frank, went through REM and a number of others which I just can’t remember.

Secret santa was done, I got an Ash hat. Prizes were given out, I won for best Karaoke, I think this was more due to my persistence rather than my singing talents. Anyway, won an XBox one. Ended up at the bar and had a few more drinks. I must have bought a round as I found the receipt in my wallet today, although I have no real recollection of it. I think I went to bed at about 2AM and fell asleep within seconds. A good night, had by all.

So today started with my Naked Wines order arriving, which was good. It was then followed by a couple of people from God, which wasn’t. Then followed by my shirt arriving and then by the shopping.

Got stuck into work. Basically I spent the next ten hours trying to find one flickering bug in the forward renderer, I found it in the end. A major pain in the arse.

Went to pump. Had bath. About to eat pizza. Tomorrow it’s off to London for the company Christmas do, that’ll be interesting.

I don’t think that I ever thought when I was 13 I would have a fully working ‘Dragon’s Lair’ machine at home. Okay, it’s an emulator, but that does mean it has the advantage that it doesn’t breakdown every ten minutes with a laserdisc player failure. It uses the original roms and plays the original images, it’s 100% accurate. Let’s not get on to ‘Space Harrier’, which I’ve now completed twice. There are another 4,000 odd games on the machine that I’ve yet to look at. Need to master ‘Dragon’s Lair’ again first though, it’s been 28 years, I’m a little rusty.

Not much else exciting happened today, lots of code testing, which has all gone horribly wrong, but hopefully all fixable after enough coffee.

Went to the gym and did Spin.

Attempted to get Jamie a PS4 from Tesco’s and failed.

So the morning started off very rudely at 6:45, normally it would have started at 6:30 but I’d set the alarm for 6:30PM after the power out, so a good job I woke up. Took Sasha to day care, Dillon howled. Went back to bed.

Delivery lorry arrived at 9AM promptly, and delivered the arcade cabinet on a normal 2M palette. It was all wrapped up fine, so got it as far as the driveway. There was no-way Jamie could help me lift it, so he gave ‘Game of Thrones’ boy a call. He tootled over in his pram. We had to take it in sideways as it wouldn’t fit through the door. But after some extreme manoeuvres it was finally in place. We unwrapped it. What a thing of beauty.

Really really pleased with it. I had to start work, so I let them play with it. It was already loaded with about 4,000 games. Has a steering wheel, pedals, light guns, the works. The most important thing was that it contained ‘Space Harrier’ & ‘Dragons Lair’. I went to work. Had lunch, picked up Sasha.

I even went to pump. Did a bit more work. Then finally sat down on the fancy new stools to play it. Had a great time, ate pizza, a few beers. Went to bed happy for once.

Think I’ll do the living room next….

This morning started with a rather odd facebook conversation with a couple of people, the exact details of which will remain private for now.

Cracked on with the dinning room. Cleaned up the patio door, then on with the electrics. Turned off the power and there was no beeping from upstairs, the UPS is fucked. Changed the sockets and powered it all back up again, all was fine. Need to buy new UPS. Changed the light switch. Refitted the PIR sensor and heating thermostat. Then did the network port.

Mother then arrived late and then sat there and talked while I put the curtain rail up. God, can she talk. She even got to the point of reading out every Tesco voucher she had. I really don’t give a shit if she gets five pee of a bloody tampon. She handed me the curtains and I threaded them on. They look fine to me, she isn’t happy with them.

I fitted the new light and that’s it, all done. Two years in the making.

Bottled the Californian White, had a glass in the bath, it’s very good.

Jamie has managed to whack up a hell of a bill on my credit card, including cancelled transactions, lovely. Hopefully it will all sort itself out.

Arcade cabinet arriving tomorrow. My sanity may depart.

So today started unlike a normal Monday, basically I wasn’t working. So had breakfast with the dogs, then cracked on moving stuff about, hopefully for the last time. Started on the beading after some more touching up. Got the chop saw out and made a start. It was actually fairly straightforward. Used a lot of ‘no nails’ type stuff, it works really well and holds beautifully. Walked Sasha, had lunch. Managed to finish it all before going to the gym.

Did combat. Came back. Started on the sealing, what a pain in the ass that was. The brown was fine, but both white caulks were broken. Luckily I had a spare one in the garage. Did the lot and touched everything up again. Okay, so if I spent god knows how much longer on it I could cut in finer, but considering none of the walls are even or level it’s a big ask. I’m pretty pleased with the overall result. Need to clean the patio door, then it’s all the sockets and light, as well as the curtain rail. Feel completely knackered now, and I have to do it all again tomorrow.

Oh one thing, I did managed to get a hand signed Dan & Phil poster, and a t-shirt. What a weird stalkery geek I am.

This morning started pretty much how I like Sunday mornings to start, well almost. I let the dogs out. Jamie eventually made me breakfast, but got confused by the coffee machine so I ended up with tea rather than coffee, and bran flakes served with the tinniest of spoons. I ate, drank and read the paper. Eventually I got up and got on with things. I popped the radiator off and got the skirting beading out. It was basically a big rotation between painting the beading, behind the radiator and touching up various bits. Eventually at the end of the day I got round to fitting the new radiator, unfortunately it’s slightly damaged at the top, but they took so bloody long to deliver it that I’ll live with it. I got Jamie down to give me a hand lifting it into position, but he got into a piss when I said don’t grab it from the top and stormed off. I then managed to finally get it all into position and hooked it up. It’s all fine and works well. I didn’t clean up everything as I’m at it again tomorrow.

Jumped in the bath, drank half a bottle of wine. My back is completely fucked. Jamie is now busy maxing out my credit card sorting out new years eve. It sounds like fun, but I’m sure I can wave goodbye to the best part of a grand. The fun thing is, I really don’t care that much about money any more. As Natalie proved, you can’t take it with you. I just know when I’m flying my little helicopter, she’s up there making sure I’m safe.

This brings me to a very very difficult point. How soon is too soon? Someone is married, the wife dies, how soon can the husband then have a new relationship? I really don’t know, it’s a very difficult question. One half of me thinks that the morning should continue quite a while, perhaps at least a year. Yet the other half says that may be for the sake of the children that a new relationship is ideal, and everyone could move on. I don’t know, it’s very difficult. I just have nagging feelings.

Tomorrow, more DIY, two days to go, and then it all must be finished. If my back holds up.

Tomorrow started with me and Dillon in bed. Unfortunately it was Dillon the dog, rather than Dillon Samuels. Work was re-writing that damn context stuff I was doing last night. Got it done and working in a couple of hours, reduces all low level renderer memory allocations to a very low number, well zero.

Then looking at another rather interesting problem. We use deferred rendering, so that has phase 1, which writes depth, normals and gloss, then phase 2 which does screen based lighting, then phase three that combines those two together with the textures to produce the final image. Problem is phase 1 and phase 3 take a long time to build the display lists. I already run them in parallel. But how to make it go quicker? Well, take it one stage further and divide the phases up into chunks, so phase 1 will be split and phase 3, these will then be split across multiple cores. Sometimes my job can be quite obscure, I spend all day staring at tuner profiles.

Walked Sasha, Dillon wasn’t interested. More stuff turned up from Amazon, but not all of it. Still waiting on brushes and tool for spreading caulking. However the chilli willy roulette turned up, secret Santa that one.

Went to Spin, it was fun. Did more work. Watched Danisnotonfire make a Thai Curry. So hopefully everything else will turn up tomorrow. Christmas is coming, must give it a thought at some point. Mother has finished curtains, she’s even said she’ll come here and iron them. She must be feeling guilty about something, may be my life.