Now this is getting silly ...

According to the last analysis report from our timesheet system that I've just run for September, I spent 22.07 days working and 6.29 days travelling. A quick look at the calendar shows that there were 22 working days in September. Hmmmm.

 

Down and out in Dudley and Sheffield

Two days down in Brum this week, and they didn't get off to the best of starts with a three hour trip on Tuesday morning. There are roadworks just off Junction 28 and traffic stacks back to Sheffield on most days. Ho hum.
 
Work has been heads down, no time to draw breath with setting up on the new purchase ordering system as well as the usual slew of support and analysis reports to run. I didn't leave until after half past six, and it's a good job that I checked my hotel booking because I found out that Expotel had booked me for next week, not this. I rang them up and they were able to get me into the hotel across the road rather than the Copthorne, so I didn't get a swim or any wifi access last night.
 
I was knackered as well. I had something to eat and a pint in the bar before going up to my room to watch tv, but I fell asleep on the bed straight away, woke up briefly to struggle into my jim jams and then asleep again until the hotel central heating woke me up at half past five.

After another busy day I left at a little after four for a two and half hour drive home, a trudge round the woods in the icy moonlight with Barney the dog and then sit down with an appropriately theatrical sigh … aaaaah!

I haev teh P0wer!

From Niles 

Good-Energy mention on their website that mobile phone chargers that are left plugged in are using electricity even when you’re not charging your phone. We’ve all known for some time that it’s better to unplug your telly overnight than leave it on stand-by for the same reason: appliances using power they don’t need to. Saving power is saving yourself money in leccy bills and prevents some unneccessary carbon dioxide from being released.

So here’s my meme: what’s plugged in on your desk? What doesn’t need to be on all the time? Blog your answers, and then tell me you’re now switching things off if you weren’t before.

 
Plugged in
 
Monitor
PC
Hub
Work Router
Work Laptop
Cordless phone basestation
Lamp
 
Not Plugged in
 
Tape Deck
PC (Windows 2000)
 
Of those, the work ones can be unplugged when I'm not actually working, the W2000 pc only gets plugged in when it is in use (and it's administered remotely so it doesn't need a monitor), the whole switchblock for the server could be switched off when that's not in use. Thinks ... the only thing that needs to plugged in all the time is the phone base station, so with a bit of juggling I can switch off all of the things that don't need a permanent supply from one point. As for other things round the house, we need to make sure that tvs aren't left on standby when not in use and switch lights off when not needed. I'd like to have more energy saving bulbs for places like the hallways and loos.  

Anybody else want to have a go?

Need for Speed

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than driving a Koenig CC round the Paris periphique at 235 mph whilst listening to Green Day cranked up loud? Midtown Madness 3 continues to be ACEBEST fun, particularly in multiplayer - here's hoping for a massively multiplayer MM4 on xbox360 at some point. Serious racing games have their place, but threading through traffic, avoiding the cops and bouncing off street furniture to get round tight corners is much more fun than turning left for 200 miles.

I left Jamie busily creating mayhem in Parisian underpasses and went to collect Alicia from her mum's. For one thing, I couldn't find my car key so I had to get the spare one out of the bits and bobs drawer, and for another herself started going on about money again. I should be giving Alicia the child benefit money she says. I am, says I. Ten pounds for bus and lunch money, five pounds pocket money, and the rest (a princely £1.85) is left over for little luxuries like clothes and food and a roof over her head. Grrrr.

I came back and spent a bit longer looking for my key card. I must have had it the previous day when we drove home from Meadowhall, but it wasn't in any of the places that I normally put it. Curiouser and curiouser. I went upstairs to download some pictures off the camera and noticed that the sound wasn't working on the server. I tried the usual round of resinstalling drivers and checking devices with no joy. In the end I gave up and went downstairs to watch the mighty Green Day playing live on Top of the Pops, and jolly good they were too. Time was, I would watch TotP every single week to see what was in the charts but I haven't watched it for years since they started mucking around with the simple format of playing new entries and climbers, one or two videos, doing the countdown and then finishing with the number one. The show is now on BBC2 on a Sunday and seems to have gone back to basics, so it might be worth watching again. After the last couple of years of the pop music scene being dominated by manufactured Boy/Girl/Whatever type bands there seem to be some interesting acts around at last - not least Green Day and the whole neo-punk scene.

We were all a bit giddy after that, so I put my Orbital DVD on and cranked up the 5.1 DTS mix of the Doctor Who theme and jumped around the living room like a loon for half an hour or so. At nine we watched 'Heads up with Richard Herrings' on some obscure poker channel (why are there so many poker channels now? When did that happen?) which was amusing, but full of dreadful and slightly seedy jargon. There were lots of references to men "holding 'em" and going "all in" on a "head's up" before ending up with a "flop". I now realise what I must sound like to somebody that is not computer literate when I start wibbling on. That was followed by the penultimate two episodes of 'Funland' on BBC3 - grim stuff, and I really don't know why they keep describing it as a comedy drama, but gripping and intriguing nonetheless.

This morning, I was on a roll. I found my key under a bag of apples on the work surface, fired up the server and after a little bit of detective work tracked down the sound problem to a missing driver for the plug and play software enumerator, and to cap things off found a set of Nvidia drivers that cured an odd texture mapping bug on the Ge-Force card so that we can now put Sims 2 back on for the kids. Oh, and I also compressed a video clip from 66Mb to 4Mb with no loss of quality. Yay me.

Right, now to go and delete lots and lots of unused contract codes from our accounts database, so that the code lookup in the purchase ordering system will run at a usable speed ...

My new icon

 

Make your own here …

 

TFI Friday

Blimey, it’s been a long week, and no mistake. Still, we’ve all made it to Friday night and it’s time to relax at last. Friday nights are part of the rhythm of our lives here – listen to the 6:30 comedy on the radio, maybe have a bath with a glass of G&T, play some games, eat pizza or other easy to prepare comfort type food, watch something funny on the tv and then fall asleep half way through the Friday night chat show. As Pop Larkin would say, perfick!

Games wise, Jamie seems to have developed a taste for racing games, so I dug out my old Sidewinder Force Feedback steering wheel and set it up on his pc. He has been mostly playing Need For Speed : Porsche 2000 – a fantasticly detailed game covering the entire history of the Porsche range from the early 356 Cabriolets right up to the modern day 911 Turbos and GTis – and he’s doing pretty well. He’s got the hang of cornering with a good racing line and coping with the notorious Porsche rear wheel drive. Last night I dug out Midtown Madness 3 for a bit of retro action and we had some fantastic Mini races through the back streets of Paris – I think we’ll have to get a DVD of The Italian Job next.

I watched a fascinating and enlightening documentary about the Gunpowder Plot last night. The political machinations of the era were fascinating, with some striking parallels to the present day with young members of a persecuted religious minority planning acts of terrorism. After reading Mary Gentle’s 1610:A Sundial in a Grave it was interesting to learn more about the spy master Robert Cecil and his methods. The plot was always pretty much doomed to fail, given the length of time required to keep it secret, and it seems that there was very little appetite for a full scale Catholic uprising at the time. Still, the simulation of what might have happened if the gunpowder had exploded was pretty dramatic, and the possibility of the simultaneous eradication of the heads of the state, government and most of the nobility in one act is a striking one. It would have been a pivotal moment in the history of England, if not the whole of Europe. Spare a thought for poor old Guido tonight …

Darkness

This time of year always leaves me feeling drained. The combined effects of the clocks going back, the weather being gloomy, being stupidly busy with a new business critical system at work (two journeys to brum this week, and another two next week) and feeling generally run down have all taken their toll. I know that I am likely to be snappy and irritable, at least until I can see some daylight at the weekend.

Every item on my to do list today (apart from my work items) has started with the letter F. What is this – am I living in a Sesame Street parallel universe?

• Freezer – defrost
• Fix cat Flap
• Flea drops for pets
• Floors – hoover and clean
• Fetch Jamie from school

Call of Cthulhu continues to be excellent. After a couple of hours exploring the town of Innsmouth (a bit like Royston Vasey by the sea) and gradually piecing together some of the history of the place, the whole game stepped up a gear with a frantic, nerve pounding escape from some murderous locals, exploring a sewer that is evidently home to something that disolves the skin off people and finally being holed up in a desecrated church with only the crucified corpse of the local vicar for company. Lovely.