Despite the huge number of trips I’ve made to Bluewater over the years, I never noticed that our very own hometime was represented on the big Thames/Thames Estuary map on the floor. Well, it is, and here’s the proof!

During my little blog hiatus we have actually been out and about a bit. Back in January we braved the arctic conditions and went to look at the animal enclosures at Howletts. Some of the enclosures had animals in, but in the main the beasts were showing their superiority by staying in out of the wind and rain. We were last there in August 2004 (blog), and although not much has changed, it’s still a great day out. Highlights this time round were the elephants (no mention of the fifth leg, please, we’re British), and the new family of Langurs. They were facinated by the small people on the other side of their glass, allowing for nice close up views.

Click the thumbnails for bigger versions, or there’s a whole album in the gallery.

Yep, I’m back, and this time I mean business. Or something…

It’s been a while, mostly due to the fact that blogging without comments is no fun, (thanks, spammers), but I’m sure everyone who knows Mary and me will understand a certain reluctance to share thoughts in the past month or two.

Work is interesting at the moment (as in that old curse: ‘may you live in interesting times’). Gist’s parent company, BOC, has all-but been bought by the German company Linde. The rumour mills are running at full speed, but the clever money is on Gist and BOC’s other ‘sidelines’ being sold off pretty soon after the deal goes through. Where that will leave Gist’s faithful servants remains to be seen, but everyone is understandably a bit fidgety.

Down at the coal-face though, things are actually pretty good. The project we’ve been working on for what seems like years (but is actually only a few months) is starting to come together, with files being processed, databases being updated, MQSeries messages flying around and being responded to, and all that good stuff. Our second iteration goes into system test tomorrow, whilst us code monkies start applying spit and polish for the third and final iteration. The interesting thing about this project is that we’ve had the time and freedom to actually think about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. The upshot is that we have a much better development environment, with a new tool (BEA WebLogic Workshop) and new processes (including a proper automated build using Ant, JUnit and CruiseControl). It’s all good fun, and, for the moment, everything seems to be hanging together. Obviously it’ll all come crashing down round our ears any time now, but it was nice whilst it lasted

Finally, my last bit of news is something that hopefully will have otherwise passed you by. I’ve moved my site from Movable Type to WordPress. Hopefully this means we’ll have less of that Comment Spam rubbish, and more uptime all round. The behind-the-scenes stuff is substantially different (and quite refreshing after MT), but hopefully you interweb peeps won’t notice much difference – except for the missing ‘Older Stuff’ link, I’ll reinstate that just as soon as I figure out how…

[Edit - oh look, there it is!]

My track record with cars seems to be safely intact.

For the record, I crashed my first car after owning it for about 36 hours. It was completely my fault, and after being told that most people make the same driving mistakes over and over again, I’m now quite careful when turning left onto a main road. Especially if it’s at a 5-way junction, and especially if there are Fiestas in the way. When I got my second car, I had a slight fracas with an Escort after about a day, and had to replace the driver side wing mirror. I’m not sure if that was entirely my fault, but I’m willing to take at least half the blame.

Well, I picked up my 3rd car last Wednesday, a nice shiny 3 year-old Audi A4.

And it broke down on Thursday night. Fantastic. The engine cut out in the outside lane of the Thanet Way. I brought the car to a stop at the first sensible place, and called the cavalry. The nice man from the RAC turned up an hour later, and, since the local Audi dealer were closed by that time, towed me and my stricken car home (all of 1.2 miles, fact-fans). In the morning, Audi dispatched a ‘skilled technician’ who had me up and running again in a few minutes. An ignition coil had failed, melted part of the connecting loom, and blown a fuse. A new ignition coil was installed, and I was on my way.

The next day, the Audi boys came and collected the car, leaving me a nice nearly-new A4 to get around in.

Finally, last night, I went to collect my car. Again. I am glad to say that it has, so far, successfully taken me on two journeys without so much as a splutter. Which is nice.

It was disappointing for something like this to happen within 36 hours of picking up my new car, but I am impressed with the way Audi dealt with the problem. There was never any hesitation about what they were doing, with the number one priority being to get me on the road again with the least disturbance possible. We are just waiting to see what they say about warranty periods, and exactly how happy they want to make me.

Happy new year, everyone. Our night was a relatively quiet affair, with Chinese food, beer (for those of us lucky enough to not be on call) and tea and fruit juice for the not quite so lucky ones (i.e. me). We did top it off with a nice drop of bubbly though (but sshh, don’t tell my boss ;o) )

Did you see the fireworks in London? They were quite amazing – somewhat akin to that national anthem (Brazillian maybe?) that keeps starting again when by all rights it should have finished already. Is the London Eye still due to be dismantled and taken away at some point? It would be a shame as it does seem to make the perfect focal point for lots and lots of coloured explosives. I suppose they could use something like the Millenium Bridge? Or how about the Houses Of Parliament, assuming all precautions would be taken to ensure there were no ‘Gunpowder-plot’ accidents…

And now we are back to work. We have a demo to a potential client coming up, which I’m sure will see my spitting feathers at Excel, but right now I’m working through a couple of 360° reviews – those things where your boss and peers are asked to give frank and full feedback on your performance. They’re grrrrrreat. Honest

Anyhoo, I should get back to them…

It’s a sad day when your TV bites the bullet. You’re left with an empty space where the bogglebox used to be. You sit on the sofa staring at the curtains. It’s a sad tale of woe.

So I’m sorry to announce that our telly is on its way out. I noticed last night that it was continually showing bad pictures (see below), and emitting the most awful noises. Does anyone know how to fix this?

EDIT – ah, it’s ok – it turns out “Er Indoors” had stolen the remote… (oh my sides)

…so you’d best get ready to slaughter thousands of Turkeys!

Many thanks to one of my esteemed colleagues for sending me a link to an auction for a Complete Turkey Processing Facility.

If you’re a vegetarian already, there’s probably no need to click. If, however, you want to have a close look at how all those birds are prepared for your Christmas pleasures, then there you go. You’ll probably want to look at the PDF brochure for all the gory details. Phrases like ‘Foot Cutter’, ‘Neck Skinner’, ‘Liver Washer’, ‘Gizzard Peeler’ and ‘Leg Crusher’ don’t get enough use in common parlance, in my opinion )

(Also, don’t those things sound like wrestling moves? “Oooh, he’s got him in a lethal Foot Cutter, and here comes the Gizzard Peeler! He’s out!”)

Well well well… I have been slack. The whole of August and September have slipped by without a single entry. In my defence I’d like to point out that I was on holiday for half of August, and away on courses for half of September. (We’ll leave out the fact that the hotel in September had free wifi access, shall we?) It’s the first time I’ve had such a gap in journalling my banal existence since I started this thing two layout-changes ago in early 2002.

Anyhoo, on with the news…

First things first… the rumours are true. In truly unromantic fashion, I asked the lovely Mary to be my wife whilst we were away in Turkey, and the mad fool said yes. No dates as yet – rest assured that I’ll be blogging like normal when we do so it shall make front page news… promise

And… well, I have other stuff to report but I reckon that’s enough for now )

Ooh, except TiddyWiki. I was introduced to this funky little thing by the instructor of one of my courses. It’s very handy for taking notes and the like. Give it a whirl…

We braved ‘Plannit Fannit’ yesterday for the Thanet Air Show. An enjoyable day was had – it was surprisingly well organised, considering it was the first one they’d held there, with a Park & Ride scheme that actually worked, and a nice varied set of aircraft on display (Red Arrows, Sea King, Battle Of Britian Memorial Flight, Navy Lynx, to name a few). It was really refreshing to head back to the car on an open top bus, get into the car, and just drive home – no hassle, no diversions, no traffic jams. Roll on next year.

(Although, if I were to be picky, could we have more shaded areas to sit, please?)

More pictures are in the gallery.