Of kittens and kobudo

Hmmm, long time, no post, so I suppose I'd better catch up.

It's been a funny old week on the whole. It started with one of the best support calls I've ever dealt with where one of the home workers had her kitten run over the keyboard, altering her settings for Outlook in the process. Easily dealt with, and something I could sympathise with. In the case of Daisy, I have to get up at the crack of six otherwise she decides to start biting my face until I feed her. It's a good job she's so anerable and prosh ...

Unfortunately the working week went sort of down hill from there where we hit a major bug in the deferred income report that crashed the accounts system everytime it was run. I spent far too many hours sending backups to the software suppliers, trawling through the sql database to see if there was anything awry there and generally mopping the fevered brows of various pointy haired accounting types. By close of play on Thursday, we finally twigged that there was a limitation in the period calendar table with a cap of 100 entries. WTF? Why? Our maintenance income stream goes forward five years (or sixty periods) and we've got live contracts going back at least three or four years. Trimming some entries from the table allowed us to squeak the report through, but it's a real irritation to put in mildly.

Oh well, at least I managed to mostly catch up on stuff by Friday, and then play some serious Halo 3 over the weekend. I think that my run through of the single player campaign with Jamie is shaping up to be one of my all time top gaming experiences, and the online stuff manages to be equally good as well. I've not managed to meet up with anybody from ugvm yet, but I'm sure it will happen. I've not neglected Bioshock either - Fort Frolic to tackle next ... note to self, don't play any more slot machines in the casino lobby ...

A fantastic sunny day today, and a chance to go back to bed for a snooze after feeding the cats and walking the dog (torch required now). I kicked around the house for most of the day, watching the clock until it was time to set off for the kobudo grading. I wasn't quite as nervous as the last grading, but a few of the proverbial butterflies kept me focussed. Sensei Elliot took me and Rachel through our paces at a fair speed, and I managed the throws that I had been dreading with no problems. I made the doofus error of mentioning that we only demonstrated the circular parry from one punch and asking if he wanted to see it from the other side as well - doh! Anyhoo, after our grading we had the chance to play with some lovely ju-jitsu arm and wrist locks to keep us busy. Rachel had her ju-jitsu grading to go through as well, but everything was finished in reasonable time for us all to get back into lines and wait for our results ... pass with credit for both of us, hurrah!

Home now for Top Gear, BEER, spaghetti and a chance to relax. Phew.