None

a quiet weekend, good weather again but i haven’t really taken advantage.
yesterday was largely spent doing tax. the downside of running your own company
is the amount of paperwork you have to look after, especially at the end of the
tax year. luckily i have to do less than most as dad prepares the accounts, vat, and paye.

i am also trying to keep my skills up to date. having thought that i would move
towards j2ee fairly quickly, things are
not working out like that (at least in the short term) and there is a need for
me to get up to speed on .net. so i
have bought the courseware to prepare for the mcsd exams.
it all seems a little more serious than the clp exams but as it is vb, which i know and
c# which is so like java it
isn’t funny, the whole process shouldn’t be too bad.

i just read that back… are there enough acronyms for you?

i have tried to keep my moaning about the trains down to a minimum recently but
last night was a new contender in the “worst journey on a train 2003” category.
rather amazingly, all four sets of lines came down on the tracks so no trains
left liverpool street until 17:00. even then it was only the commuter trains so
people were literally forcing themselves into the carriages, to the point where
you could only stand upright by leaning on those around you. it took around 90
minutes to get to shenfield (normally about 15 minutes) at which point we had
to get off the train and wait for a connection. one did turn up but there was
absolutely no chance of being able to get on it. same for the next two so in
the end four of us gave up and went on a bit of a search for a taxi.

one hundred pounds later and 2 hours late i picked up my car from the station
in ipswich. so not the longest journey ever but certainly the least
enjoyable… ladies and gentlemen i think we have a new champion.

the house is empty again now that simon, fiona, judith and matt have gone home.
it was great to see them all for the weekend. the barbie last night was a bit
charred but seemed to go down well for everyone. unfortunately it got a bit
nippy by 9pm so we ended up sat in the lounge. a very relaxing weekend all
round really but it looks like there might be some thunderstorms tonight as the
weather is pretyy humid now.

simon and fi have just headed off to cambridge for their rather posh garden
party while i am planning to watch the australia vs england rugby match this
morning. the weather today is absolutely stunning so this afternoon will be
minor preparations for a barbeque followed by much relaxing in the sun. not a
bad way to spend a summer saturday.

taken from this weeks popbitch…
powergen have taken over an italian electricity company you can visit their new
website on powergenitalia.com!

both ed and libby have been talking about all of the places they have
been in the world so i thought i would do the same. at 28, the list of countries is not too bad but not
being american my rather puny 9 states is not so impressive.

ntk had what looks to be an extremely useful
link for loads of javascript bookmarklets

the weather today is great. all in all a hugely relaxing day. england were playing rugby against new zealand in wellington so the kick off
was 08:00BST a rather good if tense way to start the day. we won but only just
but it does bode well for the upcoming world cup.

after nipping into town this morning ( a stupid thing to do but i had to go to
the bank) i have just been sat in the garden doing a bit of work and listening
to some new albums.

tomorrow is set aside for paper-work… mainly to do with a new mortgage
application which should make the old finances a lot more flexible should they
need to be (if and when work dries up at the end of the year).

back to work today. still feeling a little under the weather but i was getting
very bored sat at home. plus i heard there were some minor disasters at the
office while i was away.

disaster 1 – two ssl
certificates for a fairly large app we run expired. not something that
developers should normally worry about but our administrators are a little
unreliable so i am expecting a beating for it happening under my watch.

disaster 2 – another app which we have inherited is less than well designed,
the person who normally looks after it is away on holiday and we have had a
major bug reported on it so i am going to have to spend a few hours trying to
get up to speed and fix it.

disaster 3 – i have just found myself thinking about big brother which i ended up
watching in desperation yesterday.

god… i am still sick!

i rarely get sick, and it’s even rarer for me to take time off work (being
essentially greedy – i don’t get paid if i don’t go to work) but after getting
into the office early this morning i managed an hour before i had to give up
and come home. that’s twice in 6 months which has never happened before. not
sure what’s wrong but i just feel dreadful. so i am stuck at home with vast
amounts of work piling up in the office. suppose it’s better to recuperate so i
may well be stuck at home tomorrow also.