So after failing to have sex (I did say woo a lot and tweaked his nipple twice), I made breakfast and coffee. I didn’t have a paper so read more of that bloody comms manual thing. We eventually got up and walked the dogs. I then had a quick lunch and drove to Staverton. The aircraft had a governor failure so was waiting for a chap to have a look at it. Thankfully it was just a loose connector and a couple of cable ties later was fine. We did 1.3 hours and covered forced landings, steep turns, confined are landings, slopes, low power operations. All went fine, some bits were a bit dodgy. Booked my radiotelephony oral exam for next Sunday, so need to read up and study all that. Should be straightforward I guess. Although I have to do work in between plus everything else. It should all be over in a few more weeks though.

Must admit I’m somewhat puzzled, I go to the gym, lift 34Kg for five minutes over my head in Pump and don’t get any problems. Jamie wipes his ass and stands up and puts his back out. He’s half my age, and about double my weight. Really can’t fathom that. Work was a real pain in the ass, all to do with render target formats, probably the less said about that the better. Still, another lovely day. Took Sasha out for a nice long walk. Walked to the gym, did Pump, had sex with Laverne and then walked home, did more work. Swore lots. Now it’s time for pizza. Lots of flying again tomorrow, soon it will all be over.

So on Facebook this morning it came up with a ‘memory’ which was Sasha coming home. So we’ve now had her four years, she still jumps up at people and still can be funny around other dogs. Work wise, bit of a mix, doing lots of things which meant I got sod all done. Walked Sasha, when we got up to the Aztec roundabout a husky and a Jack Russell came running towards us. Wagged tail at Sasha and then promptly crossed the A38 over five lanes in front of all the traffic, thankfully it never got hit. A man running came up round the corner with a lead, he was actually the owner of Tia another husky, I thought it was his, but he was in a car and spotted it and had a spare lead so jumped out and got this one and picked up the Jack Russell, then a dog walker woman with a van parked up and took both dogs away. They had no identification, no idea where they came from. She was going to take them to the vet to get their chip read. All very strange. Walked to Iceland, the freezer centre, not the country. Picked up pizzas. Did a bit more work and then went for a nine mile run. Had a shower. Time for some porn.

Started work late as Jamie wouldn’t leave me alone, he had to clean up. Continued on tidying up the pipeline. I basically removed a load of stuff from the pipeline that did colour space conversions. I couldn’t believe how many actually occurred. It now just keeps it linear all the way through, so a texture is read, which if it’s 8 bit is stored in srgb, then that gets converted to linear. Everything then is written and read to either 10 bit targets or compressed floating point ones. Then at the final part of the pipe it gets converted from linear to srgb. This basically stops a load of pissing about in colour space. As it was yet another nice day, Dillon stayed in and Sasha got a nice walked. Walked to the gym, did Pump, need to increase my weights I think on Friday. Did a bit more work.

Started a bit later this morning, was really tired. On the hunt for qnan’s again first thing but didn’t get anywhere. Then spent the rest of the day trying to persuade PC to output 10 bit colour. In the end after a great amount of fiddling, everything worked and everything was in the correct colour space. It actually looks significantly better as well. Took Sasha on a nice long walk, given up taking Dillon, he can get old and fat for the moment. Went out early for a run. Had a shower and then did a bit more work. Tidied the kitchen as the cleaners are coming tomorrow. Must be time for another holiday, actually I have Monday off for Jamie’s birthday. He still hasn’t done any washing.

Today I was hunting numbers. Actually that’s not strictly true, I was hunting ‘not a number’ or qnan’s as they are known. I was getting several creeping in to a render target. All day it took to discover the cause, I only worked it out on the way to the gym. Walked Sasha, we went to see the ducks, Dillion couldn’t be arsed and neither could I. It was a beautiful day, so Sasha and I made the most of it. Walked to the gym, we did the Combat, I’m not overly keen.

So an interesting news article on the BBC web site, ‘In a fire, who would you rescue, your mother or your girlfriend?’ This was a question posed to Chinese students, in which case the correct answer to them was always ‘your mother’ as family always comes before love. Now, I’d have to think about this one very carefully. First, I’d have to become straight. Then I’d have to find a suitable girl. We’d have to date, and then become an item. It’s a very tall order during the duration of a fire, but considering the alternative I’d give it serious consideration.

So the morning started with the usual coffee and breakfast for three. Then it was a leisurely drive up to Staverton for the first of todays flights. I covered slopes, quick stops, run on landings and limited power stuff. During the intermission I did the radiotelephony paper, which I scored 100% on. Then I did the navigation paper which I hadn’t actually studied for (the test book is still in the post), and failed it by one question. I then took it again and only just passed. Got it was an ass. It didn’t help that there were screaming kids running up and down right outside the door. I went through a couple of the questions with the instructors, basically we all sat down with our ‘whizzy wheels’ and pens and worked through a couple of the questions, one of which took us almost twenty minutes. If the question is that hard, it really shouldn’t be there. Anyway, all eight ground examinations now passed. Just need to do the practical radio telephony test now. So two more flights next Saturday, I’ll may be do that test then as well. Apart from that not much happened, came back and went for a run. Then had a bath. Now cooking myself a curry.

So woke with the alarm at 8AM. Breakfast for three. Read the paper. Headed to Staverton for 10AM. James greeted me and complimented my haircut. Then said, “I’ve got meths”. I thought it really was a bit early for that. It was a bit of a long standing joke that when we were doing the nav exercises he never had anything to wipe out the marker pen with, now he opened a cupboard door and there was enough there to smash half the population. We had a good brief about forced landings and then we got airborne. We did about four forced landings, which are all a bit of a rush to be honest. From the word ‘Practice force landing – go’. You have to lower the collective, flare to 65 knots, raise the collection so it doesn’t over speed, turn into wind, which means raising the collective as the rotor speeds up due to the Coriolis effect, then when you roll out to have to lower it again to maintain rotor rpm, remember if it drops below 84% you are dead. Then when you’ve managed that you have to pick a landing site, then do a mayday call, then tell your passenger to brace, then kill the mixture, turn off the mags, turn off the master and turn off the fuel cut off valve. Then re-asses your landing site, get down to about 80ft, flare, level it then down to 8ft, raise the collective and land. The entire process takes about 70 seconds, and you have to be perfect, or you will die. I lived. We also did instrument flying, which is great fun, you wear a pair of ‘woggles’ which are like sunglasses, but you can’t see bugger all in front of you, so just the instruments. You then have to perform a 180 degree turn maintaining airspeed and level, I was oddly quite good at that. All those flight-sims as a kid finally paid off. We had a break and then I had another flight in the afternoon where we did ranged auto’s and confined area landings, which are great fun. Staverton was very busy today, we were told to wait outside the ATZ numerous times, which costs far too much money. Tomorrow I have two more flights to do. Drove home, walked the dogs, went for a run, did the accounts, had a bath. Will watch a bit of telly now and then have a fairly early night I think. Busy day again tomorrow. Not long now before my test.

Started off looking at cubes, colour cubes, I do live a fascinating life. Most of the day was taken up by that and some bug hunting on a certain console. Walked Sasha, she went for a nice long one round the duck pond. Dillon however decided he wasn’t going anywhere, growled and ate his harness. Stuck some fuel in the car for tomorrow. Walked to the gym, did Pump, no PT tonight as I’m still building back up again after the break, but will do it next week. Walked home. Did yet more work. So I’ve knocked up four hours overtime again this week. My tally is over fourteen hours over now. I must stop eating tortilla chip crisp things. I reckon I’ve eaton over twenty kilo’s of the things in the past couple of months. The only way to stop eating them is to just to make sure I don’t buy them, so I haven’t. Pizza time. Lots of flying tomorrow.

So today I didn’t work on fixing anyone else’s bugs, which made a nice change. I was actually implementing a couple of new normal map formats. Getting them to work was painless, getting them in the build pipeline is going to be somewhat more tricky. I surprised Dillon today by taking him for a walk first. However he was waiting under the bed by the time I got to the top of the stairs with his lead. He enjoyed it anyway, in the end. Went for a nine mile run. Came back and did some more work. I’m a little behind on my washing, haven’t done any from the holiday, I’ll start on that tomorrow, but it will have to go in after all this weeks gym kit. Jamie hasn’t washed anything other than a work shirt and trousers for about two months. No one has that many pairs of pants.