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I few weeks ago.. well months really we arranged a regular social team event. Namely goto the local (to work) curry emporium (The Copperpot) for a team curry. Turns out the currys (by my reconning are rather nice), the service is pleasant and the establishment is clean and well looked after.

Food is good, you get a complimentary glass of wine (I imagine its nothing amazing, but its nice) and the bill comes with after eights and brandy

After weeks of training, building my curry-foo, tonight was the night I was going for it, I was going to have a Vindaloo. Having only ever heard the hype of the Vindaloo I was a little worried but egged myself on due to Ade claiming he would match me curry for curry.

I think both myself and Ade were a little concered with what we had done as we finished off the popadums and sauce tray. Thankfully when our lamb Vindaloos arrived, they were not as hot as we had (or my youth had told me) expected. There was deffinately potency there, hopefully it was my training allowing me to tase it, but it was full of flavour and had heat on my whole tongue and a little at the back of the throat. Both myself and Ade finished it all without issue. So my 1st ever Vindaloo, sorted. I can now start to roam the rest of the rather large menu they have at the Copperpot.

(yeah I want a chufty badge, I ate a vindaloo )

PLEASE!

Some of us have to get to work!

Took me far too long to get to work, and whilst bored and sat in the traffic I snapped this pic of what my car had to say about the state of the roads :

Click the pics for some other snow covered Rochdale pics from my office window.

Yeah almost a week out of date, but I have (and still am) busy. Will try and rattle this off quick smart as I have things to do, but wanted to get this down before I forget any of it

Wednesday the 15th of October 2008, going to be a date I avoid in future I think, possibly in another country, in a padded room, asleep.

It started badly when Monkey was taken to hospital at around 01:00 with a very bad cough (he was barking more than the family dog) combined with his asthma, not good. The ambulance and paramedic that turned up from the Wirral after a few minutes (we live not more than 200yrds from the main hospital in Warrington, and only a mile or two from the ambulance station). So the 20 minute wait was a bit stressful. Thankfully the person on the phone stayed on and helped stop Kerry loosing it completely.

Monkey off with his mum to the hospital, I crashed in his bed in case Froo stirred, she didn’t bless, but I didn’t sleep much, partly due to a tiny hard bed full of action figures and partly due to trying to be aware of the phone and Froo. Around 03:30 the call came to go get Monkey and Mum, so I got my mum to come and sit with Froo, whilst I went to pickup Monkey and Kerry. The hospital has changed its layout some, so I ended up playing with one way systems bleary eyed. Eventually gets them home and mum back home and back to bed for me. That 08:00 lie in is seeming less of a lie in now.

08:00 comes round all too quickly and with a woolly head from the broken sleep, I contemplated getting a later train down to London for Storage Expo, thinking on it I decided to just snooze on the train if I needed.

I got to the station around 08:30 ish, and unable to find a free parking space in the tiny station car park, or any markings on the large town car park telling me of closing times, I decided to leave my car on a roadway near the station where plenty of other cars were parked. Train was delayed a few minutes, but I got on no problems. My seat was mostly not taken by someone taking the piss, just their bags (overhead perhaps m8?) So I finally got my seat and got comfy, glad I only had my small bag and some books with me. I did notice the rather cute young lady on the seat in front of me as I boarded, wondering why I never end up sat next to the hotties on such trips, ah well, such is life.

Next stop down and there is a bit of an argument. Seems the hottie is in the seat of some toff, there are some rather blunt and rude comments made by the toff, which were not taken lightly by the lass, who gave as good as she got. Turns out the young woman had been miss directed to that seat by one of the train staff, another came along and put things right, seems she WAS meant to be sat with me.. win! today is looking up (in a small way).

On the journey down not much was said between me and my new travel companion, other than she had no idea what platform her next train would be on at Watford Junction. I mentioned I was changing there myself and would help as best I could (damsel in distress, a cute one at that, who wouldn’t! ). So Up comes Watford, its announced we get up, move down the carriage, only to be blocked by some doddering old bloke, who faffs so much for the 60 seconds the train pauses at the station for that it pulls away as we try and get off it. Brilliant.

A brief chat with the train manager, followed by my green with worry looking traveling companion and we have an alternate travel itinerary, through subway and various bits of London (looks like the later train would have been faster :/ ). The train manager was very helpful and as we were going the same way (and she possibly also noticed how worried the young lass was) suggested she follow me, which seemed to calm her a bit. Me with all my experience of London travel.. heh.. not.. Pleasantries were exchanged her name being Terri.

So, off we go through London, From Euston to Victoria, from there to Clapham, from there to Kensington Olympia, and at West Brompton, Terri was to take her train south. As all the interconnects were slow trains it took me until about 13:30 to get to Storage Expo anyway! So the later train would have been just as fast, but without the nice company, so I didn’t mind.

Spent a fair bit of time nattering on the train, turns out Terri was down here for an interview with a couple of modeling agencies after her appearance in ‘Nuts’ magazine. She showed me a pic from her portfolio (Very nice ), amazing the people you can meet on the train these days I asked if I may take a pic myself and she said I could.. obvioulsy nothing like her portfolio :

Before going our separate ways and explaining her route back north I gave her my mobile number, so if she got stuck she could give me a call, and off I went to the expo.

The expo was as expected, a few interesting chats with vendors, some bumf acquired, and dolly birds gawked at. Whilst I was catching up with John at NCE I received a text from Terri saying she was back on her way to Watford Junction. I sent one back saying I was heading back myself and she hung around. Seems she was a little nervous about traveling alone We both thought it would be ace to get home a bit earlier than originally planned. I had a new WoW patch to play with for starters and a nice warm bed to go back too

Alas things were not so simple, we had joked on the way to London that the trip back would at least be easier. How wrong. As we had jumped on an earlier train, turns out our off peak tickets were not valid, and either pay up £83 each, or get off. We chose get off, again an alternate itinerary was provided. This time, Lichfield to Birmingham New Street, Birmingham New Street to Crewe, Crewe to home.

Yay more random interconnects. When we finally got on the homeward train, we figured it was the train we had tickets for in the 1st place anyway! Well I spose changing trains left right and centre was more interesting than simply siting on a platform for 2-3 hours.

Arriving back in Warrington at 22:00 I looked forward to getting home saying hello and testing out the new patch for an hour before bed. Relieved I saw my car was still there, complete with windows and wheels. As I went to get in the drivers door I heard a clunk, then turning to look I saw the bright yellow sticker on the door telling me I had been clamed!!!! Oh joy. £60 release, only payable in cash, and lo it begins to rain. Not overly impressed given the woman on the phone was a judgmental unhelpful cow, I had to walk in the rain at night into town to get £60 out of a cash machine or my car would be towed. The signage where I was parked was there, about 2 foot below the surface of the road, on a fence at the bottom of the banking the road was on, behind some shrubs. It was a yellow card sign with small (32pt) faded writing on.

£60 down, tired, wet, and very fed-up I got home at around 23:00

I got a quick look at wow after recounting my day to Kerry, before going to bed, up again at 06:20 for work. I think I will just avoid that date in future.

Finally finished my slides for my training (IE *I* am giving training!!).. all ready to go, notes written, just got to make some handouts for the attendees. So off I go to print the slides in handout mode. Now some of these slides have animations, they are being used to illustrate interactions, not add whizz and zoom.. I am not marketing.

PowerPoint it seems has no way of letting you select a frame of an animation from which to print. No, instead it prints out the slide as you would see it from the design view! so slides full of a jumble of objects! How not very useful. All the official docs seem to ignore the concept of printing animations completely!

The solution. Hacky, but it works. View the slideshow, and when you get the animation how you want it, screen shot it. Copy the image into a new slide and bin the animation one (obviously on a second copy of the presentation). Now you have a powerpoint file which you can print handouts from.. Lucky you..

To me feels very much like they rushed release before all features were complete.

Oh and for some reason collate.. just doesn’t seem to be something it wants to do when printing. I ended up printing to PDF and then using OSX to print it properly. And people wonder why I have issues with MicroSoft products.

Zen has a nice new building (sure I posted this earlier, but meh).. and Friday after work was the usual Zen excuse for a party

Started with the traditional Lion Dance to bless the building followed by Chinese buffet (YUM), music and booze. Closing the night of with some very impressive fireworks! Nice one.

Was great to just sit and chat to people I work with in a none work atmosphere. Easy enough to do at work, but there is always that feeling of ‘you should be working you slacker!’ to add pressure to the conversation. Plus the addition of none Zen staff in the way of partners and the like and a few old Zen faces.. It was good evening, and I hope I didn’t worry any of those support people I ended up chatting too… oh well

Mr Simpson, hope the Jaw is OK hope to be able to throw a link to that pic soon (hint hint)

Not posted here for a while due to just being stressed mostly. After all the fun at work, (which is still on going but progressing). I have had my own colo fail in a strange way which stresses me further as it hosts mail for other people.

So not been having too much fun in computer land atm, they all seem to hate me at the moe :/

Not posted for a while, thought it wise not to as I doubt I would have had many pleasant things to say. It’s been somewhat stressful time for me at work, and axed a whole weekend of downtime with ++stress. Followed by things that didn’t sit well with my stress addled brain the following week, so less than plussed me there was.

Got things straight, and have taken 2 days holiday to augment this weekend (so added the previous weekend I missed to this), so nicely recouped now I hope. Lots still to do and the aftermath of stuff to get on with but hopefully some doc writing will be theraputic and help get me some peace.

So Weekend of stress relief. Well the big 20ft+ tree that obscured our front door has gone, man with a chainsaw saw to that, neighbour took away the logs (which I suspect we will be smelling as he probably plans to burn em in his wood powered garden heater.. joy), and I managed to get the reminants (branches) into the back of my Estate (on the most part), need a 2nd trip to finish off fully. Leaves us sans tree and a huge chunk of light more in the front, really opens it out!

There was a party, and I got to drink.

Much fun to be had on WoW, guild I think is really coming together now as a guild and a collection of friends, there is still some conflicts of interest, but heh we’re all different. Very lucky to have such a nice bunch to hang out with online.

Then Yesterday (Monday) morning, the enevitable happened. I have had a shafted tooth for a while now (more than a year), and occasionaly it aches a little due to stuff getting stuck in it, a quick suck and all well again. Monday morning however the quick suck brought on massive shooting pain and me not feeling too clever.. arses. So I did the dreaded deed and booked in at the dentist. Kerry had already registered me but I had put off the initial checkup not been a dentist since I was 9 (So about 22 years say ). I rang up for an emergency apointment for the potential agony I faced. 1st offer Friday… I reitterated ‘emergency’ and got Tuesday.. odd that.. slackers..

So I arrive early for my appontment at my alloted time, read all the posters about them not liking you missing appointments or being late etc etc, filled in the badly done medical history form, and waited, and waited. Eventually got in and met my dentist, who thankfully was a cute Indian lady, alas complete with Indian accent I could hardly understand, especially given my mind running away with it’s big book of medical phobias.. cheers grey stuff.

SO the emergency “stop my mouth being a maw of pain and terror” became “Lets give you a quick look over”, nothing done, but apparently all I need is 1 filling and captain crunch removing.. which may (given my fun phobias) require a stint in the big grey building of death, so they can knock me out… fine in my book, if I don’t have to be there it’s a win.

Got an appointment next week for the general polish and possibly the filling as they want to break me back into dentisty gentle (wonder if I get a wolly pop? )

So bye bye one stress, hello one I can’t really avoid.. joy.