Today was all about SDK updates, which was all going fine until one of the last stages when all the shader binaries have altered. So that will need a shit load of testing before going any further. The bathroom ceiling is now annoying me, partly as I missed painting a bit of it. It’s tempting just to get the Artex off. I would steam it, but I’ve had enough of bloody steaming, so may just try a solvent. If that doesn’t work then I may just resort to skimming it. All quiet on the plumbers front. Went to gym, did Combat. After spending all weekend working with my arms doing that as well was a bit much, couldn’t really give it everything or I would have died. It’s cold, very cold.

So got up this morning without having sex, which is a shame as I was quite in the mood. Positioned the extractor fan an drilled into the ceiling. Then drilled down the stud wall for the isolation switch. Ended up putting that a bit high so had to chisel out a bit of the wood. Anyway, all fine and got the cables down for it. Then cleaned the ceiling with soapy water. Cleaned up the dog shit, had lunch. Painted the ceiling with two coats. Then fitted and wired in the extractor fan. All working fine. Cleaned and tidied everything, including scraping the windows. The only thing left now is to silicone the windows and then reinforce the unit for the marble top. I’ve made my choice of plumber and they have been informed, just waiting for them to respond now. Looks like probably the end of January due to the lead time on the marble top.

My server is having some serious DDOS issues, it’s getting very annoying as it keeps crashing the mail server side.

This morning started with Jamie having a hangover, as I’d managed to consume only three cans of lager I was fine. Had breakfast, then got on with the extractor fan positioning. By the time Shaun had arrived the pipe was already over the soffit waiting to be drilled. After some jolly fun with a ladder and plenty of cussing the exterior vent is now fitted. I’ve done the brackets for the fan so just need to install that tomorrow. I’m then left with some cleaning and painting, sealing the windows and reinforcing the vanity unit ready for the marble slab.

Then drove over to Cotham where we walked into town, failed to buy anything and then walked back again. Did the accounts. Installed a new plugin which apparently automatically handles SEO traffic and other stuff and uploads it to search engines. I’m sure it’s wonderful. Still haven’t heard from plumber number three, will make my final decision tomorrow evening.

Today work wise was a bit of a mess, trying to do an SDK update. Shopping arrived, then lots of issues. We vanished at lunchtime to the stone masons in Fishponds. Looked at marble, then went into the factory itself, wow, there was an absolute shit load of stone. Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of the stuff. We went to the marble store and looked at loads of the stuff until we found a piece which was exactly what we were looking for. And of course, we got to stroke it. All paid for, jest need to do the MDF template now. Came back and did work, then went to Pump. Laverne still seems to have ebola, so came back.

This evening we went to an anniversary party of a cuban lady Jamie works with. I ran out of larger. Ended up dancing with the host’s socks. It was a good evening. I like Cubans.

No dogs were slaughtered in my sleep. The only thing slaughtered was me, I drank the remains of the bucket of the California White last night and god was I shit faced this morning. Which was a good job as I had to debug network code this morning. It turned out to be multi resource locking issues when writing log files. Two cups of coffee and I had it all sorted. Then it was on to another SDK upgrade, this has highlighted a whole host of fun issues. Walked both dogs, Dillon was being a pain in the ass so I’ve ordered a proper ‘halti’ collar with a double ended lead. He’ll hate it. I was going to go to spin, but got round the corner and the traffic was horrendous and I’d brought the wrong shoes, so turned around and went back home. It was actually dry and quite mild, so did an eight mile run instead. Came back and bottled the Voignier, had a few drops, it’s very good. Then put the yeast in the other white and started the red off. Hopefully the white will be ready to transfer about Tuesday and the red on Thursday, these are quite quick kits.

Still haven’t heard from plumber number three, he’s got until the weekend.

Had a very odd dream where I was shouting at Jamie that ‘dog’s were only for meat’, I then chased Sasha down, grabbed her by the collar, pinned her down to the floor and then chopped her head off with a meat cleaver. Thankfully when the alarm went off, she came bounding along, complete with head. Dillon I’m not so sure about, if he was missing his head he would be just as stupid. Took Sasha to day care. Started work fairly early as I was expecting plumber number three. Turned up vaguely on time, if you only measure days in hours. Nice chap, would have issues with confined spaces. Seemed to be a good balance between buggering something up and going over the top. At least he got the point that there was only about ten minutes of plumbing and the rest was tiling. See what his quote is.

Work was quite dull looking at GUI stuff. Went to the gym and did Pump. I worked on my arms.

Came back and sterilised a load more bottles. Then a barrel and got the Chenin Blanc on the go. Should be able to bottle the other white tomorrow and can then get the red on. Timing wise, I reckon I could probably get in a couple more kits before Christmas.

Carried on from yesterday after a fairly tiring night. Spent most of the day looking at why two shaders were producing different results, it turned out to be a bizarre rounding error. All sorted and checked in now. Didn’t really get on to much else there. Stopped on time, was going for a run but it was pissing down, so decided to go to the gym to run on the treadmill, then remembered we actually have one. So did a 10Km here, in front of the telly. It only goes up to 12Km/h so I can easily outrun it. Transferred the Californian white into the bottling bucket and finally bottled twenty-eight bottles of the stuff. There was a bit left over in the bucket to stuck that in a glass in the wine fridge. Got an email from plumber number two, his quote includes fitting the extractor fan, full tanking and all tile trims, but doesn’t include the vanity top. So quite good materials and probably a good job, but still a grand dearer than plumber number one. Plumber number three coming tomorrow. I still hate plumbers.

So have another plumber visiting on Wednesday, he sounds fine, we shall see. Working on speeding up something which is quite intensive. It’s a pixel shader, but runs on a very small area, so it’s wavefront coverage is piss poor. What I’m trying to do is get it to run multiple wavefronts, but each one of these has to be on a different render target. This does actually seem to work, I was a bit worried it would run out of render contexts. Needs a bit more work though. All this to save about 200 microseconds. Walked both dogs, weather is shite again, looks worse tomorrow which will bugger running up, so may have to go to the gym or something. Went to Combat, we’re doing quite an old one, but it is a good one.

Plumber number one has got back to me and is now egging on for a booking. I’m going to wait for plumber number three to come round first, and see what he’s like. I really do hate plumbers.

So this morning started off with attaching a large wooden beam to the window wall. I tried sanding, that wasn’t going to happen. So I would have to manually scrape away the plaster to make it level. It was time to drive to Staverton, for some reason I was just full of negativity. Got there early. James was out with someone else in an R44. I was chatting to David for a while. Then I did have a bit of a pop at James saying that we’d been two flights away from solo for the past nine hours and I was getting very bored of doing auto’s in the circuit. I think then he caught on that he needed to do something more a bit proactive. So he checked my medical certificate and all the exam stuff. He even cleared the aircraft for solo student flight. We then did a couple of circuits and admittedly the first one was fairly awful then after that they were pretty much all perfect. We then did stuck pedal problems and governor failures. Got to the point where he actually said I was fully ready for solo. But just to be ironic we did finish with a couple of auto’s. So the next flight, depending on weather will be about a forty-five minute warm up, followed by one circuit, but that circuit will be by myself.

Drove home, picked up the petrol cans and got fuel. Then loaded up the car and went to the tip. Came back and had boiled eggs, picked up the dog shit. Then got on with grinding down plaster. This took a long time, but it’s now neigh on perfect. Then it was up into the loft trying to find the perfect position for the extractor fan. This required a lot of poking a screwdriver through the ceiling. A bit like battleships but with lots of rock wool lagging getting in my face. Found a good place eventually. That was enough for today.

Oh, I need a bathroom fitter not a plumber….these are about four times the price of a plumber, but generally just as stupid.

So decided to get up vaguely early and go down the electrical wholesalers and pick up an extractor fan. So that was done, called into B&Q on the way back and picked up some multi-finish. Took the dogs over to the vets to weigh them and realised why I never walk them together anymore. Came back and did the required plastering. The window is now straight going inwards, even if it’s out by about 5mm at the bottom, that can be made up with adhesive, the 15mm it was out before couldn’t. I could straighten it up some more, but I don’t think it’s really worth it when everything else is pretty much done. Added a few extra blocks to the end of the bath side so it doesn’t rattle so much. Filled in everything else that needed to be filled. Put some filler on the crack in the ceiling. Cleaned everything up. So now I have a bath full of crap to get rid of, but at least it’s all useable again for the time being.

Did the accounts. Now have to go and play the wicked uncle and check the nephew is behaving himself. So tomorrow it’s flying and then the extractor fan. I may stick a straight edge up against that window side as it will probably annoy me somewhat otherwise. May very well be the last time in a helicopter tomorrow, see how it goes.