Forgot to say that I will try and sort some pics of the house etc out this week. The river is all muddy because of the flooding, but I want to take some pics anyway. Watch this space.

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This is the third time I am typing this in.... found out that there is a thumb button on my new mouse (more on that later) but for now let's just say I'm not impressed with having a 'BACK' button there. Aaanyway, it's the day after my 30th Birthday and I'm not hungover! Had a good night last night at the Bell, Book & Candle - it's a theme pub with a spooky, Dr Frankenstein's lab feel to it. The best thing is the toilets hidden behind fake book cases... Cindi hired it out so loads of her friends came, I gave Russ a ring and he showed up after work looking quite amusing, he has got some new trendy glasses and they make him look like he belongs in a 70s B movie - add to that the full-on beard he is now sporting and the camoflage jacket. Ho ho...We walked from the pub, oh a good 100 metres, to the luxury apartment that Cindi had blagged for us - what a result! Cindi's boyfriend made a tit of himself later on, showing everyone his pubes etc. Nobody was impresssed, he was a bit more subdued this morning. Heh. We came back into Reading this afternoon, had a Nando's then did a little bit of shopping.

Came back to play with my Birthday pressies - I got a new MS Intellimouse (grrrrr..) and Unreal Tournament 2003 from Mum & Dad, a book and a funky CD from my Brother, a Lambretta top from my Sister, a Schott jacket from Candi and a No Fear fleece from Cindi. Quite pleased with everything really, I don't like Birthdays much and when I get (really) old I can see me being one of these people that keeps it a secret and doesn't tell anyone.

Just getting to grips with Unreal Tournament this afternoon - I haven't played a PC game since Quake 2 and it's pretty similar, except it is much better. I'm whipping the computer's ass but I'm still not brave enough to go online to play other people.... More practice required! The graphics.... what can I say but they are pretty incredible. I'm playing at 1024x768x32bpp and I've got all the detail settings way up, the PC isn't complaining. Try doing that on a console!

The river is really high at the moment. When we first moved here there was a drop of at least 6 feet at the weir, right now it is closer to 2. The 'pond' at the end of our road has risen so much the pontoon is underwater. There are trees sticking out of the middle... A few more feet and I will be wading to work. Hope the rain holds off! Either that or I will get a canoe! When we were at the Oracle this afternoon you could see where the river had breached the channel, washing a load of mud and stuff up onto the steps.

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Got a nice surprise today, one of my friends mailed to say he had been keeping up with my "continuing adventures" via this website. He said it was like one of those reality TV programmes, but with someone you know....I suppose I am a bit flattered, I never expected this site to be read by anyone except me... so HI - you know who you are!

A while ago I bought a Panasonic SV-SD75 (supposedly for Candi but I secretly wanted it too!). It was on special offer in the Panasonic shop in town - �90 including a 64Mb SD card - the card alone retails for �60, so it was a steal. I got it home and I was getting all sorts of errors, even after installing the Panasonic W2k / XP / RealOne patches. Panasonic customer support were useless, I waited about 3 weeks for a reply and when the answer eventually did come back it was a wishy-washy "we don't know" kind of thing.Anyway, I eventually managed to get it working with the really nasty supplied software (modified RealJukebox), in the end I had to dual-boot my W2K laptop with Win98, which wasn't the ideal solution(!) but it worked ok. Now I have this spanky new PC I really don't want to go down that route again. Apparently you can fix the problem by accepting the default install path - how crap is that? Anyway, I'm about to give that a go this evening.

Candi is at college until late tonight (9pm) so I have been to M&S and got some tarty/lazy food as I can't cook. I'll have it all nicely ready for when she comes in, wine chilled and everything....
She is still enjoying college although she's been getting a bit pissed off with a couple of people on the course. She spoke to her course tutor today and apparently it's all been sorted so she's much happier now.

I'm just listening to my MP3 of the last ever Solid Steel on the BBC - check out this competition question:

What do you call a judge with no thumbs?
a) Justice Neverserved
b) Justice Isanicerapper
c) Justice Fingers

Nice one Mr More!

I've been meaning to take some photos of the new house etc since I moved in, but never got round to it. I'll try and remember to take my camera with me tomorrow on the way to work and snap some ducks or something. I'll stick them up here once I have them. Should give you an idea of how lucky we are to live where we do.

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So I got blown out tonight. My meeting with my old school chum got cancelled - too much work on, apparently. I'm not pissed off or anything, that sort of thing happens when you work in London. We're supposed to be meeting up next week.

Did the visit to our old office in London - it was weird. Everyone has been moved to new offices so the building was completely empty apart from security guards, cleaners, movers, that sort of thing. Funny to see a building that used to house over 1500 people almost completely empty. Spooky, almost. So we went in armed with only a screwdriver and stripped 2 x 42U racks bare in about an hour. All that remains is a big pile of gear with labels on, awaiting the couriers. End of an era, really, so we went to the old haunt (The Square) to have a couple of beers, just for old times' sake, natch.

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Start of another week and I'm knackered already. I am working quite hard at the moment - every day I go in early with the intention of leaving early but day after day I am one of the first ones in and one of the last to leave. It's not like I enjoy it or I don't have anything better to do, far from it, but I am just soooo busy that I never seem to run out of work. Even quiet days can turn into mad-arsed runarounds. Take today, for example. There were a couple of problems, I had to deal with a couple of issues for IT Security, a bit of planning for a visit to London tomorrow, a bit of arranging for a visit to our datacentre later in the week, a couple of meetings and I'm late home. And I still didn't actually manage to accomplish anything I set out to do at 8am this morning, the other stuff just gets in the way. That's why I love working from home so much - you have nothing to distract you so you can finish what you set out to do.

Watched The Jackal earlier. I was going to write a bit of a review here, but bob the moo said everything I was going to - it's uncanny! It really pisses me off when Hollywood sends out dumb messages or tries to change history (see U-571, Saving Private Ryan or The Devil's Own). Almost as bad as that is when they get an American to play someone of another nationality (Northern Irish in this instance) and they just can't get the accent right. Richard Gere - my hat goes off to you. That surely must be the worst Irish accent this side of Snatch.

Unrelated - this office prank made me laugh.

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