Category Archives: Diary

Lets have fun with British Gas ‘advisers’, I’ll win

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Ok, so back doing mobile game AI and a few things to do with line of sight. Nothing exciting. Anyway, had a response for the boiler fitting job from a chap in Cardiff, did lots of research, he has a good profile and feedback. He’s going to pop in next week and have a look. I know there are certain things that will need altering, the gas pipe is the wrong diameter for a start, the boiler will also need moving to a different wall due to the vent, it needs wiring for the pump overrun…I did my research and I can smell bullshit from a mile away. Also getting him to give me a quote for the bathroom update.

Bought a carpet shampooer and hand steamer, it was Groupon, I was in the right mood, and it will look good sat in the box when I Ebay it in a few years time.

On the subject of ‘free no obligation quotations’, I decided to let British Gas give me a quote. Booked in for 7th November. Did my research on them as well, found some job ads for ‘advisers’, ‘high pressure sales environment’, ‘commission based’. I love dealing with these type of people, I give them 30 minutes want the quote written down and say it’s completely non-negotiable, if they phone or call again and say they can give me ‘special offers’ it void’s their quote, if they say they give me a discount if I sign today, it voids their quote. If they say I can sleep with their brother, then may be there’s some room for discussion. I like sales people who turn up, quote for the job and then fuck off. They are the ones I buy from every time. Mr. Wall insulation bloke, turned up, did the quote, was quite open when I asked him who he got his money from (commission from the products) and fucked off. He got his commission. Then you get the other type..man turned up to look at fuse box, talked for 29 minutes about how I need a re-wire as everything was too old. He didn’t get to the half hour mark due to me starting to play with kitchen knifes and asking him to leave. Incidentally I found a brilliant electrician afterwards ‘Automation Electric’, Paul Hayes, fantastic chap “Automation Electric”. Then there was ‘Anglian Windows’…back in the old house. They rang up on the morning of the appointment and asked ‘will the main decision maker and bill payer be present’, to which I answered, ‘yes, but if you think I’m going to listen to three hours of high pressure sales and be expected to sign immediately then don’t bother’. He did the decent thing and didn’t turn up…

Also got another quote on Monday from a cleaning company, I have a feeling they are going to be very expensive. I got their number from a van that is on my dog walk route, it’s there every Friday, at least I know they turn up.

Right enough waffle. Bath time. Jamie is going to buy me a pizza from the new ‘Domino’s’ place.

BDRThermea and Domestic and General, today’s people who’ve pissed me off

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Started with upgrading Perforce integration, and for once it worked and didn’t cause major problems. Then it was events, not the gig kind but the trigger-able kind. So added time outs and manual resets to them. For once the POSIX version wasn’t too much of a pain in the ass, but iOS of course has to be awkward so that had to convert from micro seconds to nano seconds just for the fun of it. Still all worked in the end. So made all my command queues use events, that all worked fine. Then had to do some header stripping and odd things to do with compiling without codec’s. Fixed a couple of odd bugs.

Had a phone call from Domestic and General from a person I could barely understand, asking me to contact BDRThermea about my complain about the boiler servicing. So he gave me the email address, to which I’ve now forwarded. I’m none to thrilled as Domestic and General being their agent they should really sort the problem out. So looking forward to a small war on that one.

Went to gym quite late so only did fifty four minutes. Walked the dog (that was lunch time, but who said anything about this ever being chronological). Now I’m finishing work at about eleven thirty so must be time for salad. More fun things to work on tomorrow.

Android and Eclipse, you are wank

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So today’s challenge was to get the Android dev back up and running. Problem being last time I installed it was over a year ago so everything has moved on a bit in terms of version numbers. Android NDK was fine, Cygwin wanted to install about 45 gigs of crap including Apache so that needed a good talking to. Then Eclipse, what a pile of wank. All it ever does is want to restart and clean and build and clean and build and still come up with countless errors. By the end of the day I did manage to get it all to build. Well got it to build Beaver, then eventually got it to build the audio test example. Found a couple of Android specific bugs in it so finally got that sorted. Did find I need to do a couple of extras though to properly compile out the codecs if required.

We can apparently start on the mobile game we were doing again, I got as far as making it compile with the current libs. I guess I better get on with that at some point.

Walked the dog. Went to the gym, ran for sixty eight minutes. Bought cheese, ate cheese, also bought crackers. Had salad, may have crackers, may not.

And don’t talk to me about cleaners….lets just say that’s another one gone before even starting, that must be a new record.

Audio is finally all done

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So today I had a few bits to tidy up on the audio lib and basically got them all done. Sorted out the new sample code test suite, fixed everything up on iOS, that’s basically it. So next it’s on to network libs.

Can’t really say anything interesting happened at all today. Weather was drizzly and dull, neither the dog or I could really be arsed to walk to long in it, we kind of went through the motions but I think both our minds were elsewhere.

New little carpet sweeper thing arrived, it’s quite cute.

Went to gym, did combat, then ran another few miles afterwards. Off to poo pills now so turds should turn back to normal, at the moment I’m firing out canon ball style peas from last nights dinner.

Added a few more movie reviews of stuff I watched last week, some good, some just bloody awful. “DIE” “The Collapsed” “Quarantine”

So now it’s time to do the dishes and eat salad. Oh, no cheese. New cleaner (well hopefully new cleaner) is going to visit tomorrow, she apparently only drinks decaf coffee though, so could be strange.

This morning we performed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. My ‘Puck’ was fantastic up against Jamie’s ‘Bottom’.

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So got up. In more ways than one. But had a coffee first. Oh I had breakfast before that and let the dog out for a pee. Anyway, started on the first manly task of the day, the gardening. So shoveled in a bit more soil and then completely cleared up the patio side of all the overhanging branches and all the crap growing up between the paving slabs. So two and a half hours of that. Oh, had to take the dog out for a quick spin first as she wouldn’t leave me alone.

Had lunch. It’s Sunday, I had eggs.

Then started on the second task of the day which was the continuation of the bathroom cleaning. So wiped off all the remaining mold off the ceiling and around the windows then sealed it all with some spray stuff. Let that dry while I washed down all the walls, door and skirting boards. I then painted the ceiling and the window sides, no mold to be seen anymore. So then got through half a bottle of Domestos cleaning the tiles. I must admit I made a pretty good job of it, the grout has now gone back to white in most places. I think it could probably do with a few more sessions, but not bad. Then hoovered it all. So that was three hours of bathroom cleaning.

Then looked at the new electric bill. Apparently I’m using 33% more electric a day than I was last year over the previous three months. So need to see where the power is going, it’s either the wine and beer fridges or the two PC’s jammed into the server cabinet. So I’ve ordered one of those plug in power monitor thingies to see where it’s all going. I think at the end of the day I’ll just blame it on Jamie and demand more money from him.

So that’s it for another day, but at least I got a few decent things done, it’s been a while since I’ve had a good DIY day. Listened to Kraftwerk while cleaning, kind of correct sort of music for it. Anyway, already on the wine, now time for a bath and then X-Factor no doubt.

Is two hours cleaning a toilet about an hour and forty five minutes too much?

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So woke up early, checked emails, let the dog out for a piss and went back to sleep again. By the time I woke up again Jamie was getting ready for work, to which I then announced “We’re not moving into that flat you you, there’s no where to put anything.”. I do like my Saturday morning dreams.

Walked the dog, met a few nice people on the way, including an elderly couple who I thought were going to be a real pain in the ass, but they absolutely loved Sasha. Can back and rang Holly Hedge, sadly now two dogs that I’ve done home checks for in the past three months have been returned. Sometimes these things just don’t work out, it’s sad for the owners and very stressful for the dogs.

I then had lunch, yes it had cheese. Then I rang a couple who I saw a few months ago to check how they were getting on with their new dog. So as it was getting a bit late I decided rather than walking into town when I didn’t really want anything, I’d clean the toilet. Two hours later it’s probably the most sparkling bowl in Britain. I not only cleaned the loo but all the pipework behind it and all the mould and everything under it. I also cleaned the glass shelves and all the mould on the window. Tomorrow if I get the urge after gardening I may spray the mouldy bits and paint it. But lets not get too eager.

I then went and visited the couple with the dog, they also had another new dog from a labradore rescue centre. It was really lovely to see both dogs being very well looked after and having a great time together. It is nice when it works out well.

Visited mother. Removed viruses off her laptop. Jamie said that if I got everything off his shopping list then we would have sex. I got everything, so I’ll bring this up later.

Done the accounts. Bought somemore t-shirts. Bowels are still working. Now unusually for a Saturday I think I’ll have a quick bath before dinner.

Ninety two pages of documentation later.

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So started off by waking early which is never a good sign, so went back to sleep. Last nights film was awful, will review it at some point.

So it was back on to documentation with a few interruptions from online people. We did have to abandon our efforts in the end as it turns out the 360’s need to directly communicate with each other and that means they have to port forward, which isn’t going to work if everyone is using a VPN with one public IP address. Anyway, it was quite interesting while it lasted.

Walked the dog. Then got back on with more documentation. Went to the gym, did Pump then ran for 32 minutes. Came back and more documentation. Then finally finished it. Ninety two pages of audio library docs, that no doubt no one will ever bloody read.

Bowel update. Seems to have a slight increase in pressure today. Only the weekend to go, then look forward to fairly solid turds again.

Right, bath and wine time.

“When shall I come round?”, “Sorry are you expecting me to administer an anaesthetic?”

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So started late as I didn’t sleep very well last night, hell of a stiff neck. That seems to be the only stiff thing at the moment. It’s either age or Jamie’s gone to an ugly phase.

Carried on with the documentation, which oddly I seemed to be in the mood for. So throughout the day I’ve managed to get through the bulk of it. If I have a clear day tomorrow I hope to finish it all off plus the example code and a couple of problems Al found.

Finally got the online person working with pfSense, although I think it would have been easier to get my sister to become a nun.

Walked the dog. Went to the gym, ran for sixty sixty minutes. I finally gave in and bought some cheese. I will weigh it though. But I’ve ran 36 miles this week, so a bit of cheese and crackers isn’t going to suddenly make me put on three stone. Eating it with a bottle of wine however may do.

Bowel update, nothing much to report, still pressurised at about three atmospheres. Don’t poke me or the outcome may not be pleasant.

Kyros Christian is coming to London at the end of October, I said to Jamie that I should go there for the week, he said no. May be I should just invite him here for a couple of days and show him the sights.

Oh new cleaner hopefully sorted out.

Cheese.

If there’s one thing I hate (which there isn’t, there are lots and lots) it’s documentation

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So still get this network thing to sort out. Couldn’t do much more on it until I got the destination IP addresses. So started on the audio lib documentation. I really do hate writing docs, it’s very dull and very repetitive and most of the time no one reads them anyway. Still made a decent start on it today.

Walked the dog. Had lunch. Came back to one of the online guys asking how to work out what IP addresses the 360 was trying to access. I’m surprised by this as online know all about routing, firewalls and what the hell what is trying to connect to what. Anyway, got him to get a copy of pfSense installed, then look at the firewall logs. It then took him all day to burn a copy of the pfSense CD. Sometimes I despair.

Arranged to do a re-check on a lovely dog called ‘Ben’, whose now called ‘Hooch’. Very nice lady and dog. Went to gym. Ran for sixty five minutes. Came home. Ate salad. No cheese.

Bowel update. Today it’s less like Mount Vesuvius and more like a chocolate fountain, although I wouldn’t want to dip a marshmallow in the stream.

No cheese.

Oh, reviews of a couple of films I’ve watched in the last few days. “388 Arletta Avenue” “Devil”

The women on the phone sounded as sorry as Hitler

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This morning was rudely interrupted by a phone call from the Baxi boiler women to tell me that she was cancelling the service call again, as the engineer who was coming to me last week no longer works for the company and no one told her, she sounded as sorry as Hitler. I wrote a fun email to Domestic and General. They will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Then on to work (after the first poo of the day). Today was all about networking, this is the tcp/ip kind, not the kind where you go to an uninteresting soiree with canopies and cheap sparkling wine, while the hostess is talking about how ‘plastics are going to be big’, while your busy staring down her cleavage. The task was quite simple, get a 360 to route all it’s traffic via a vpn. The solution however was far from simple. First as we have two vpn’s, one that works and another one which works on occasion. The one which works is a Cisco vpn client, unfortunately it isn’t compatible with internet connection sharing. So you have to connect Cisco vpn, then other vpn, then enable connection sharing, then hack the registry so it gives you an IP the same as your existing subnet, then block UDP port 67 to stop every other machine on your network trying to use it as a dhcp server. Then finally you can manually add all the routes in, which can only be done by destination.

Anyway on to bowels. So started taking this colon cleansing stuff. It makes your stomach feel a bit like a pressurised Soda Stream. The force of feces coming out of my arse and hitting the pan would make Felix Baumgartner hitting the deck without a parachute seem insignificant. I have a feeling that I could now eat a pea, wait ten seconds for it to regurgitate around the particle accelerator, then fire out my bum like a cannon. Anyway, on it for seven days, so should hopefully be ’empty’ by then.

I then get a text message from ‘Heat Team’ to rate their service. 1-poor 5-excellent. It sent me a text message back saying that it didn’t recognise ‘fucking shit’ and it also didn’t allow negative numbers, so had to settle with a ‘1’.

New cleaner says she can no longer do it as she can’t get child care. So on the search for yet another cleaner.

Went to gym, ran for 64 minutes. Now time for salad. Still no cheese.