September 2008 Archives

Yeah, well, I've been away. Here's a quick overview of what we got up to.

Monday
Travelled to Norfolk, not leaving until almost 3pm. Cool by us - we couldn't arrive at the cottage until after 4:30pm. We arrived at the Cottage, unpacked, looked around. Very nice cottage, would most definately stay again.

In the evening, we had to get some food, and thus we ended up at The Lawns, for a very nice meal. We went back to said cottage, and eventually to bed.

Tuesday
Tuesday, we went on the North Norfolk Railway from Holt to Sheringham. It was a steam day, so we were hauled by a steam train. Sheringham is probably the strangest place I have ever been to. It is seriously weird.

Foodies that evening was pasta and butter, made by us, bought from a very overpriced Spar in Holt.

Wednesday
Wednesday we went to Titchwell Marsh. Did we see a varied number of birds? We saw a few, but it was the wrong time of the year - this is when they all migrate south. We did see a lot of geese, some Avocets and Oystercatchers. We also saw a lot of middle aged or really old people with huge digiscopes. I think that they outnumbered the birds.

For food this evening, I believe we ended up going to Wells-Next-The-Sea and attempting to get food. The first place we got to was fully booked. The second place we got to had stopped serving by 8pm. Yeah. Chock full of oldies, is Norfolk. Eventually we went to Tescos at Fakenham (about 25 miles from where we were staying) and got some food, as all other shops were closed too.

Thursday
Thursday didn't start off well. The Boss spent half of the day working remotely as there was a problem at work, and of course he was the only person who could fix it. It wasn't until almost midday that we left to go to the RADAR Museum. We had originally planned to go to the Norfolk Aviation Museum too, but we didn't have time.

Nom for Thursday evening was taken at The Red Lion in Stiffkey. No, that's not really "Stiffkey", it's actually pronounced "Stoo-key". I suppose it's a bit like "Haysborough", which is actually spelt "Happisburgh". Nom was on nom, as was the beer.

Friday
Leaving in the morning, we went to visit some friends in Lincolnshire. Got shown around that town, had a nice lunch with them, it was nice to see them. Then we had to go to Oxfordshire. We were a bit later than planned after some traffic delays, but we eventually arrived there a bit after 5pm.

Saturday
On Saturday we went to Legoland. I got very wet on a few of the rides. It was a good time out - shame that there had to be badly behaved children, and even worse parents there.

Sunday
And Sunday was taken up with a visit to the Cotswold Falconry and Bird of Prey Centre. We left to come home after 10pm. By the time we got home we had gone through 10 counties in 7 days.

We arrived home at about quarter to one this morning. Yeah. I was useful at work today. So much so that The Boss told me to come home and work from here instead. That I am kind of doing...

A bit of background.

I am waiting in for a parcel today. I was told it should arrive today. I did not go into work this morning. Instead, I spent the morning working on a website, from home. Yes, four hours to produce something that is probably 9,759,748 times simpler than the original. And, if the parcel does not arrive this afternoon, WTH do I do tomorrow? I can't possibly stay off another day - and I have a hospital appointment in the afternoon.

Here's a conversation that I had with The Boss about the situation. Names have been changed to protect the naughty innocent.

The Boss says:
did you take the bg picture @ home?

Clarice says:
Yes

Clarice says:
I don't think that they are standard library fare ;)

Clarice says:
I know how I want it to look in my brain, but my little brain doesn't seem interested in obliging and making it work.

Clarice says:
I don't know how you manage to code all day. This makes me want to slit my wrists because I am so mongy at it.

How do coders code all day? Do they not just becomes mongs by about midday? Do they not collapse into a heap of escaped slashes, ls -l, or

if
(wankface is talking);
then
(beat him with a tilde);
else
(beer);?

I am sure that The Boss will be pleased to know that I made that little bit up myself, after having watched him code for the past...four years. At the same time, I am sure he will correct it for me.

But seriously? How do coders not just flip and become some axe wielding murder when their code does not want to work for them? Or when they cannot translate into code, what they have in their heads? This is probably the first time in my life that I have wanted to do some ironing, just to get away from the code.

If the parcel does not arrive today, I think that I am too apathetic to actually care and get annoyed about it. Hey, at least I got some work done that I just couldn't do at work. Yeah, that's another thing - how do coders work with all the distraction? I feel guilty for distracting The Boss so much at work now. I appreciate that not all hardcore coders will be in an environment with screaming teenagers around, but surely they get distracted too?

The ironing board is calling me. The force is strong!

Funnily enough, about two minutes after posting this entry, the parcel turned up. What fun!
And, looking at that picture...don't your book choices say a lot about you? The three in the middle are for my course, but they are the kind of thing I probably would have read anyway.

Yeah, no - one asked me if it would be okay for me to double my working hours this week. Instead, I just did it. Loyal to the department, and The Boss, of course. In fact, one day I worked 10 hours, which is more than anyone should be working in a day around here. To think I am only contracted for 4 hours per day.

There was so much stuff to do. I feel as though my feet barely touched the ground this week. So many laptops that we fiddled with. Two of us shared the load, and by the time I left today, we had gone beyond the 100 numbered form. Good stuff? It was a good mix of Windows XP, Vista and Mac. I didn't do the Macs, but the XP and Vista machines were fine. I even found Vista quite palpable - at least on the machines where it ran quickly. Loads of kids said they wanted their machines sped up because they were "slow". Some kids were just expecting too much, as when we used them they were just fine. Others - well, there was a long list of lost causes because too many things were running at start up, and of course they were running Vista on a laptop with 1GB of memory. Ha! What do they expect?!

Our xBox came back, and it seems to be working. Whoop! That decides what we'll be doing this weekend then. I think the weather is meant to be pretty poor. Today was rather crap, I must say. The walk home was nasty enough to make me change my clothing when I got home.

You know, for having such a long week, I'm not in a bad mood. I've dealt with a good few dickheads this week, but I'm still cheerful. Something must be wrong with me.

Oh yes, my new course materials have arrived. They were very rapidly dumped on the sofa after opening, and haven't moved since. The course starts in just under a month. Got some holidaying to do before then. Whoop!

You know, all I want to do right now, is play. And I shall.

Happy weekend!