I forgot to say yesterday that the radiator went. I removed it last saturday and stuck it outside the bay window in the hope somebody would bugger off with it, took less than a week, God bless the pikey scrap dealers. Woke up late, actually woke up at 5AM, but got breakfast or three rather late. Read the paper. Still have quite a bad cold, so reading was as erotic as I got. Got up eventually. Took the lounge door off. Painted the door frame, then you name it, everyman and his fucking dog turned up. A courier came delivering my wine, whichI’d specifically put down for a delivery date of Monday, Sasha came bounding down the stairs, I shoved he in the kitchen, of course the lounge no longer had a door on. See goes careering under the ladder, knocks the paint pot over and gets it all over her paws. I go ape shit. She now run away. I spend the next half-hour shouting my head off walking round with a large vat of white spirit. Went out and did a home check for some cats, picked up a hi-fi rack thing to stick the consoles on. Bought some pet tat. Came back and did a load of wiring in the trunking. Not much more to do now, bit more wiring and a bit more painting, more of a cleaning up operation. So can have a fairly relaxing day tomorrow finishing and tidying up.

So not a bad nights sleep, mainly induced by wine. So woke up with a blocked nose and a headache. Cracked on with work though, got a hell of a lot done today considering. Walked Sasha, cold but dry. Didn’t venture out, wasn’t up for the gym or Pump, so back to that next week. We did walk to Aldi though and picked up a heated buffet server thing, it was very cheap. Had a bath. Just put the pizza in and went through the drawer. Everyone keeps asking what I want for Christmas and one thing I’ve been meaning to ask for for years, is a new wooden spoon, mine seems to be bent at a thirty degree angle. So now I’m going to no doubt get about ten.

Not a bad nights sleep, the wine helped. Work was all about profiling buffer formats, some interesting results. Have to use one format on one console and the other one has a different one. PC is so bloody quick you can use what you want. All thats done now, some bugs to fix and a couple of new bits to add. Horrible cold day. Walked Sasha in the rain. Did manage to go out for a short five mile run, it was cold but dry, also a good way to clear my cold, get the blood running through the veins. Spent the evening cutting up the covers for the trunking. All done now, need to plan the cable layouts next and mount the network switch. While doing that I watched ‘8 Mile’, which is a film I’d been meaning to watch for probably about ten years, it was actually very good, battle rap with M&M, did you know rap stood for rhythm and poetry? There you go, educational as well as dull.

So spent all night awake and coughing. Jamie was draped over me which didn’t help my temperature control. I remember the firewall rebooting, so that was 5AM. I did get some sleep in the end. Started work very late with the intention of not working much. Nine hours later I finished. Did walk Sasha briefly, but that was the only time I left the house. Didn’t go to gym, just wasn’t up for it. Had a bath and drank vast amounts of wine, hopefully that will get me to sleep.

So had a great nights sleep, woke up at 5AM for a pee and that’s about it. Been feeling fairly shitty all day though, bit of a cold thing. I’m using all my usual array of powerful drugs so it shouldn’t hang around long. Spent the day mainly changing buffer formats and compiling shaders, not very exciting stuff. Another nice but cold day, took Sasha on a long walk. Ended up working quite late, was in two minds about having a bath or going for a run, the latter run out and did just shy of an hour. Feel better for it I guess. Will probably have an early night with the Camomile tea, but this time without the pills.

Oddly for a Monday I did a reasonable amount of work. Didn’t exactly start early though. Had an email from a video card vendor about a bug we filed long ago, apparently the issue was in one of our own shaders. After a fair amount of digging I managed to find it, so were setting a multi-sampled texture to a non-multi-sampled texture slot. Nasty things happened. Sad thing was that it was a fairly silly bug that should have been sorted long ago.

It was a lovely day today actually, so took Sasha for a nice long walk. Walked to the gym, did Combat, walked home, did a bit more work and then started on the red, that’s now all in the bucket warming up, I’ll add the yeast tomorrow.

So woke up this morning in some sort of moral dilemma for some reason, couldn’t decide if I wanted to fit a radiator or overdose on pills. After about an hour I decided that although I hated plumbing, it was the lesser of the two evils so finally got up and fed everyone. Jamie had vanished that morning to work at 4AM. Cracked on and measured it all up. To be honest, apart from the massive eight it wasn’t too bad. Got all the brackets mounted and got the bloody thing on the wall. Then it was just a case of the pipework, again, wasn’t that much of a big deal after I’d managed to get the system vacuum sealed so it stopped leaking. Made quite a nice job of it all in the end. Silicone sealed the window. Put some sealant on the fireplace, I’m not overly happy with that, bit messy to be honest. Put all the trunking up. So the blinds are being fitted on Wednesday, so get everything else done. I reckon two solid weekends and it will all be finally done. At the end of today I syphoned off the first of the whites and then bottled it. It made twenty-seven bottles and one large glass. I had the glass in the bath, it was very good.

So last night was good fun, much Karaoke was sung. I got bored of people asking me if ‘I’d bought a helicopter yet’, so in the end just said that I bought two Jet Rangers as I couldn’t decide on the colour. Drove back this morning, dropped off some network programmer at the station (no idea of his name, he was from Malaga). There was a burnt out coach on the motorway, very strange.

So got straight back into the lounge, removed the radiator and now have all that painted up. So just the new radiator to fit tomorrow and seal the window with new silicone. That should be that side nearly finished then with the blinds being fitted next week.

Spent the day finishing off what are basically prerequisites for the next stage. Its all very complex and mostly very dull, but I’ve got some really fun work coming up in the next few weeks. Horrible bloody weather again. Walked Sasha and it stayed dry. Tried to go for a run later and it kept with a mild drizzle for about twenty minutes and then hammered down. Sterilised thirty bottles ready for bottling, probably on Sunday. There’s an issue with the other wine, my sorbate isn’t dissolving properly, so gave it a good stir, I think it just needs a bit more time. I’d like to get the red on by the end of the week, or it’ll never be done for Christmas. I’ve got a new colour calibrator, my old one was starting to give weird readings. I set it all up with the software and started calibrating, it promptly crashed and gave weird results. I was about to pack it up and send it back when I realised that it was in two parts and you split it to reveal the sensor. So rubber band in place around the monitor holding it on and two hours later I have a monitor which can support 100% of the srgb colour gamut, which is quite impressive. I need to do the iMac, the iMacAir, the telly and most importantly the projector at some point.

So off to Windsor tomorrow for the office Christmas party. What happens in Windsor, stays in Windsor…..but Vitt will no doubt have his bloody camera.

Spent the bulk of the day changing string parameter gets at runtime to basically not runtime. Takes bloody ages, almost done now though. Very chilly again. Walked Sasha. Drove to Pump as we seem to be in a continuous state of drizzle and high winds. Came back and Jamie had put up some Christmas lights. I’m not in any kind of Christmas mood at the moment, the living room is still a half finished mess, far too much work still needs doing. I have the bulk of the trunking sorted out now, but still need to silicone the window, change the radiator and paint the bay. Hopefully most of that will be done this weekend, but I’m quickly running out of weekends.