So why break the silence on tefkas now?

Well, it's a slow start to this morning, because I've got an appointment with an orthopaedic consultant at 9, in town, to look at my leg/ankle, all as part of the ongoing insurance thing relating to this entry's tag.

And I decided it made sense to keep all the bike crash posts together on the same journal, should I ever need to refer back to things at a later date.

So how's things with the leg? Not bad, really - obviously, it helps that I've been walking 10 - 12 miles a day on it, and I do believe that the joint is getting freer, still, but there are certain things I still can't do (can't run, properly, can't twist the ankle in certain ways, it isn't happy with too much stress).

So we'll see what the consultant says.

23 months on, would I have another motorbike? Yes, I would - the crash didn't put me off the things, but I've got a dog in addition to being a weekend dad, and there's simply no time to make full use of such a machine (it'd literally be Sunday afternoons, only - very clichéd, 'tis true, but that's not sufficient usage to justify the expenditure. Not for me).

I'm going to take a break from LJ for a little while, I think, and see how it goes.

LJ's front page has the number of posts made in the last 24 hours: today it's reading at a smidgen under 184,000, whereas during the week that figure seems to hover somewhere around 250,000. Which is, of course, what you'd expect.

Except for the vague suspicion I have that, back when LJ was approaching 8m users, the post count per day was about 250,000, and that count hasn't upped even when the site passed 10m users.

Speaking of which, that 10m users mark was passed a little while back, but it's 'only' crept up to 10½m at the time of writing/typing (I'm reasonably certain that there was a spike in new registrations at c9.9m, as people tried to get the exact 10 millionth account, but even so, I have a feeling that growth's levelling off).

Network cables tend to work so much better if both ends of the cable are attached to something.

*ahem*

It's a beautiful day out there, so shame all the more than we're going to spend the best part of it inside a practically windowless room. When I say 'practically windowless', I don't mean it's got a teeny-tiny window: one side of the room has normal sized windows down its full length. Unfortunately, these are all glazed with translucent frosted glass, so we can't see a thing of the outside world, we just get this vague glow permeating the training room.

*slight pause as I try to remember my username/password combination for the t-mobile site*

*mild surprise - oh, it's that one. Weird*

Following on from yesterday's post, I suspect I need to find a water bowl for the doggin that's Even More Impossible to tip than the current 'Non-Tip' bowl ;-) I s'pose, strictly speaking/writing/typing, you don't normally come across degrees of impossibility, but Mali's 'Non-tip' bowl, er, isn't :-) (not a surprise - after all, I know that I have an extremely talented dog)

Anyway, it's Friday, and the last day of our course. It's given the week a weird flavour - being away from the desk, but still on-site all week has completely thrown my sense of what day it's been. It has, as a side issue, also meant that I've not been able to keep as close an eye on LJ as I might, normally, but I'll try and catch up with people as best I can.

No post yesterday - posting in the evenings wasn't working so well for me, so I've swapped back to morning updates. After, I have to confess, wrestling with the idea of not updating at all. But I think this place has too strong a hold on me for that.

Training seems to be going well - we're wading into ever deeper water at the moment, and the old trick of mapping new stuff onto existing knowledge is starting to prove more of a hinderance now, and it's way past the time I should be relying on those crutches. I've been reading Code Complete in the evenings - a slightly scary read, to be honest, because I'm currently reading the Requirements, Design and Architecture sections, which aren't actually areas the book addresses fully - but the level of detail of exactly what we're not currently doing is, um, intimidating.

Every day, recently, I go home at lunchtime to check on the Mali-dog, and every lunchtime, I discover that he's wrestled his water bowl, and it's lying upside down somewhere creative. And the hound is parched. Today he's got his 'non-tip' water bowl, which is 'impossible' to upturn. Oh yes. No more upended water bowls and parched dogs at lunchtimes for me from now on! :-)

I'm pondering swapping my electricity supplier to Ecotricity - they're an energy supplier that invests in renewable energy and the like. There's no actual cost (dis)advantage to making the switch, but their web site seems quite flaky, and I don't know much else about them. So I'm investigating.

Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to minimise energy consumption at home: I think I'm approaching minimal configuration, but I'm sure there's more I could do. So I'm using the PC, TV and HiFi less, and trying to be diligent about not leaving things in standby mode, either.

Training went well this evening. There were five dogs tonight, but I think the main reason that Mali's calmer is that the warmer weather makes him pace himself a little more sensibly.

I said 'a little'. :-P

Work wise, the training moved up a gear today, and we were doing a lot more work inside Visual Studio, and I think I'm getting my heard around the concepts of how it organises your work and stuff a little better now. Which is good - certainly, I can see myself actually managing to produce stuff™ therein, whereas previously the plethora of windows, toolbars and panes had been a little bit offputting compared to OpenROAD, which is the environment we currently work with.

Thanks, all, for participating in this morning's poll, which appears to have confirmed that I'm dead common, me: three rings on the keyring is the popular choice. FWIW, mine are:

• Front door key


• Car key


• Office key.

The above trio are kept company by a glow-in-the-dark blue, radioactive (no, I'm not joking: it's a very mild radioactivity, though) keyfob thingy. Mine's blue, partly because they were out of stock of green when I ordered it.

06/06/06 - it can only mean it's morganmuffle's birthday!!!! :D

Happy Birthday, morganmuffle - I hope the day lives up to its portents!

One of my colleagues opened the office door yesterday, and forgot to collect his keys when he wandered down the corridor to his own office. Which allowed me to marvel at the sheer weight of his key ring - there must at least a dozen keys on there, all told, and the thing weighs a tonne^*! Which got me wondering:

Poll #742804 The Key Question
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

How many keys do you have on your key-ring?

* - this is not intended to be a precise measurement.

That's 'cool' as in 'distinctly chilly', rather than 'unspeakably hip'.

As mentioned previously in these pages, the whole department (pretty much) is on a .NET/C# training course this week, so, obviously, it follows that today was the first day. Things didn't get off to a great start when I picked the only non-functioning PC in the room, and, to be honest, we didn't really use the machines until this afternoon, and even then, only briefly.

We're promised that the course gets more technical, and more hands-on, as the week progresses, but in the meantime I was sufficiently inspired by the trainers' plaudits for Code Complete, 2nd Edition that I nipped across to Waterstones at lunchtime to procure a copy. At £34, it wasn't exactly cheap, but then such tomes never are, are they?

And given that my career at this point seems pretty rooted in programming, it will probably serve me well to do some technical reading around the subject. There's been a pretty significant sea-change in the departmental attitude towards Micro$oft's products, and it seems that we're going to move away from Ingres and towards SQL Server as and when circumstances allow. Me, I'll code with whatever tools I'm given, but I have to confess that I'm a little disappointed we didn't go the Open Source route and embrace Java - but that's more personal politics getting in the way of business logic. For what we want, and need, to do, it seems like .NET is the best option.

Although today started off chilly (and after an excellent weekend), it warmed up (or else I got acclimatised to the training fridge, and everything seemed more or less tropical once we emerged/defrosted), and this evening's walk was in shirt sleeves. This does present problems, as at least with my jackets I have a multitude of pockets for dog treats, nappy liners (for cleaning up) and other bits and pieces, whereas when I'm just in jeans and t-shirt, you have to be a bit more strategic in how you stock up for the trip.

Anyway, Mali and I had two long walks this evening, which was good, although the second was slightly longer than planned, because we had to avoid a couple of aggressive dogs and so ended up doubling back on ourselves for a little while.

Whilst we were out, ex left a message on the mobile (which was in the kitchen, charging, since otherwise it would've been with me): they're having problems with their firewall and email. In theory, it should be straightforward to fix, but trying to talk such problems through over the phone is rarely successful - especially since they're on dial up, and will need to hang up to connect to test and then disconnect and ring back etc etc. So probably I'll talk them through the whole thing next time I'm up, because at least that way they should be better informed for the next time the firewall blocks something they want to use.

Really not much to relay this evening - Mali and I have just got in from walking up and down the Avenues. It's a bit chillier compared to the afternoon's sunshine, but most definitely summerish.

Workwise, we're all on a .NET/C# training course this coming week - rather weirdly, one of the trainers is a member of The House (the group of students I shared a house with waaaaaaaaay back at York). Anyway, that's probably going to keep us occupied (and, not un-notably, offline) for the most part, so I possibly might not keep quite on top of my flist as I might like. I'll try, though.

Gacked from aome, who appropriated it from hamsterwoman's LJ. Now, hamsterwoman nabbed it from hortensio, but then my trail of attribution goes cold.

( Eighteen questions )

...instead of doing my LJ posts first thing in the morning, I'm going to try posting in the evening, instead, and see how that goes. It seems sort of counter-intuitive, after all, to write up your journal at day-break.

( salt pr0n! )

( televisual woes )

( Hull now has DAB coverage. Allegedly )

Was up at ex's farm last night, to transfer the contents of the old PC's hard drive to the new one. Having pondered the situation, I'd decided that the safest option was to take the hard drive out of the old PC and put it into a 3½" USB enclosure, to make a mobile hard disk, rather than opening up the brand new PC and inserting it as a slave therein. So I picked up the enclosure last weekend, but last night was the first opportunity I got to take do the installation/transfer.

The drive was a, er, 'snug' fit in the box, but it works, and I've transferred across most of the files now. Unfortunately, we're going to have to reinstall the farm accounts programs, and I still need to sort out the old email for them. But overall, pretty successful, which was good. Also welcome were the four bars of Thornton's Marzipan that ex bought me. Yum! :D

It's a sunny morning - Mali was in a very obstinate mood during the walk, though, and pulled much more than usual. I hope this doesn't bode ill for the rest of the day: my shoulders ache already.

...but Microsoft seem to want you to be both. I left the home PC running overnight, crunching some DivX encoding. What I tend to do is queue up a series of files to be encoded, and then set them running overnight so that they're all done by morning and I can then shut the machine down.

Unfortunately, sometime between 2am and 4am, Windows Update applied its patches, and rebooted the machine - despite the fact that the DivX coder was midway through its queue. So Hendrix was left powered on for half the night, doing nothing. *sigh*

A post about the process I go through to rip episodes from DVD to disc and then encode will be forthcoming at some point. It's not particularly rocket science, but it's not wholly intuitive either.

In other, geekish news, The DKU-5 cable for the phone is proving troublesome/obstinate/broken. It can be a bit of a struggle getting the PC to recognise that the phone's been connected, and so I've given up on that idea, for now. Which means texting from work is a little more obvious once more, but I have a way around that, so all is not lost :-)

I met up with fastcub, Ex and ex's new(ish) daughter yesterday lunchtime, at the pub across the road. fastcub's on holiday with his step-grandparents now, in their caravan up near... Whitby, I think. He's with them either two or three nights, depending - unless the weather improves (June's not off to a flying start), I suspect it'll be the former.

It's not as cold this morning as it was yesterday - at least, I don't think so, but the cleaner was of the opposite opinion, so clearly the situation is open to different interpretations. Given that the longest day is just over three weeks away, it would seem that the weather has some catching up to do.

There were only four of us at dog training last night. Well, I say 'four', by which I mean four hounds - a Jack Russell (Patch), a Labrador Retriever (Ella), a Staffordshire Terrier (Rogan) and Mali. Patch and Mali each bring along a single owner each, whereas Ella and Rogan bring along two adults. The absences were presumably explained by the fact that it's half-term this weekend, so a lot of people are making the most of either that or the Bank Holiday and getting away for a few days.

Training itself went OK, although it always seems as though I'm never doing enough. Rather frustratingly, Mali will do anything to please the lead trainer, and so he's much better at picking things up with her than doing them with me. So I've invested in a Clicker (at said trainer's much stressed behest), and this week we're going to try and see if Mali can get the hang of that. And also to see if I can, too...

Before I forget, fi has created another faces quiz! Answers are promised on Thursday evening, so get those guesses in!

So it's the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday and, indeed, the Tuesday in half-term. So the world seems quiet, at the moment (8am).

Despite the brightness, the weather's surprisingly cool for the end of May - I'm sure it'll warm up as the day progresses, but sophie8 and I took the doggin up to Beverley Westwood yesterday afternoon, and discovered that the stiff breeze was making it colder than it looked. Mali had a great time, though, so that was good :-)

The week's already looking pretty busy: lunch is booked the next three days running (I see ex and fastcub tomorrow, to compensate for missing him this weekend) and Mali and I have dog training this evening. At some point I need to wander up to the farm to sort out the file transfer from the old PC to the new, so I'll check with ex whether or not that can wait until Sunday.

Dropped sophie8 off at the station last night, and I got a text much later on to confirm she'd arrived safely back.

I haven't been online much over the weekend - will attempt to catch up now...

On our daily perambulations up and down the Avenues, Mali gets most excited at the prospect of meeting all these cats that we see, who he's sure all just want to be his friends. Cue much tail wagging, lead-straining doggy antics.

For the squirrels, however, he goes absolutely mental.

In other news, having confirmed that my DVD player will play DivX discs, I've been catching up on Season 7 of The West Wing, which I feel, having been away from the series for a little while, is harking back to its roots just as it begins to wind down for good. Y'know, if I could, I'd have voted for Bartlett...

We also watched the first episode of Stargate: Atlantis. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that one, just yet, but I'm prepared to give it a few more episodes before coming to a firm conclusion. It seems a neat concept, but I suspect I may be missing out on some stuff, not having watched the TV series, only being familiar(ish) with the film.

Apparently, according to my fortune cookie from this evening's take-away, I will enjoy fortune in my personal affair.

I don't know which is more ominous: that 'affair' is singular, or that the dog ate the paper that the fortune was printed on...

sophie8's cookie was more encouraging: the greatest pleasure in life is doing what peole say you cannot do.

Gacked from linaelyn, who stole it from stephendann:

( Publicons.de meme spam )

Last night, Mali and I walked past one of the barbers I frequent when my coiffure is getting a bit too much, to check the opening times. I blinked, double checked and blinked again. Apparently the guy opens his shop at 6.45am on a Saturday.

Now that, thought I, is dedication.

'cept this morning there was no sign of the board outside his shop being there (we didn't bother walking actually past), so I suspect that it's actually 9.45 rather than 6. Which would make more sense.

Whichever, I'm aiming to get my hair attended to today before sophie8 arrives up from The Smoke for the (long) weekend.

Quick post, this one, but I must also wish cynthia_black, faeriegirl1, xtreame_sk8 and the as yet un-journalled Mr Black a good flight as they set out on their Inspection Tour of the Colonies!