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.

So I woke up to the news that a friend of mine’s dog had been put down. That put me in a great mood for the day. I didn’t even know the bloody dog, only five. I just couldn’t get into work at all, I’ve really lost the will to live as far as GPU optimisation goes, shaving one hundred microseconds off a shader is tedious and boring.

I’m getting very pissed off with plumbers who fail to contact you, can’t understand simple fucking instructions or questions and produce quotes that are mostly meaningless. Then want to charge you three hundred quid for installing an extractor fan. I just really can’t be arsed with it anymore.

Went to the gym for Pump, Laverne seems to have Ebola so is coughing and spluttering over everyone. I’m sure she has flu, which is fine as I’ve had a jab. She should have too as she’s about ninety.

Came back and actually did some useful work. I’ve got flying on Sunday, not sure I can really be arsed with that either. I’ve seem to have spent the last ten hours doing emergencies in the circuit, which may look great on edited video but it does get very boring after a while. You just go round and round doing the same fucking thing at three hundred odd quid an hour. I’m tempted just to do the solo so I can tick off the bucket list, ‘I’ve flown a helicopter by myself’ and then just can it all. I’m not sure I can be assed to shall out another seven grand and take a load more exams. It’s coming up to Christmas, I hate fucking Christmas. I wish everyone would just fuck off.

So today I was staring tarmac mainly. Well ground shaders in general. Today was very cold. I walked the dogs, it was still very cold. Booked flying for Sunday. Quote arrived from second plumber. Now it’s a bit confusing as I can’t work out if he’s supplying a granite worktop or not. If he is then he is only seven hundred quid over the other quote and it would probably be worth it, if it doesn’t then we are back to plumber number one, he seems to be a bit thick as regards what I keep telling him and now apparently I have 80% of my walls prepared. Still, he’s over a grand cheaper. So I’ll wait to hear back from him anyway, see if we can negotiate. In the meantime I will continue doing what I was planning to do, which is skim over the missing plaster and flatten off the side of the window. I’ll then tidy it all up and remove the rubbish so at least we can use the loo again.

As it was freezing and blowing a gale I went to spin for the first time in months. It was supposed to be with Laverne, but she was ill so Kate did it. It was fine.

It’s been an odd week. But now it’s time for torture porn.

Woke up at 6:30 and took Dillon to daycare. Went back to bed. Phone rang at 8:30, didn’t answer it. Picked up the message at about 11. It was from daycare. Apparently Dillon had been fighting and getting up on his heckles and attacking other dogs. They wondered if he had been in conflict recently. Well apart from a tour of Afghanistan he’d pretty much slept all the time. No idea what was up with him. She called me later and said he’d had to be put in a cage as he was getting nasty.

Working on clouds yet again. Finished converting triangle lists to quads, getting of index buffers and stuff. Made some progress on it. Eventually we cut down on quads to stop pixel shader arbitration issues. Oh what fun that was. Picked up Dillon. Apparently he settled down later on and was playing nicely again. Went to Pump. Worked on my arms. Did a bit more work. Not that many fireworks around considering. Wine is beginning to clear again. Hopefully ready by Friday, if not it will probably have to wait until next week. Not sure about flying this weekend, not really feeling it at the moment.