Have been working tonight on some changes and updates for my sites. Mainly installing a few new plugins for WordPress, but also looking at new themes. I am hoping that all of my sites will get a makeover over the next few months, but if you look very hard you will notice a few changes immediately, with more due soon. Exciting eh!
I know 😉
I’m still not really listening to music, and it is getting towards the two year mark now. I just found something better, i.e. podcasts. When I say not really, I do sometimes stick on mixes of my collection in the evening, or listen to the occasional track on the ipod, but it is just that, occasional. I can manage sometimes 3 or more hours of podcast per working day, just seem to prefer the spoken word now. Seems like, especially looking at the charts at the moment, that I really have heard it all before. Bar my blessed electronic music of various guises.
Well, we got a few things organised, most of all, got ourselves new bikes. This is Mrsfb’s:
and this is mine:
I am never drawn to bikes by fancy things like suspension or disc brakes, noooooo. It was fun riding them home, as Mrsfb hadn’t cycled for about 13 years, and in her own words “the last time I did I went on the wrong side of the road, and was quite indignant at all the drivers honking their horns at me until I realised”. So she was a little nervous, but got back into it very quickly, and is now quite enthusiastic about getting out for a little ride somewhere this week. I can’t wait too, will be great to be able to go off on a long cycle ride together when it gets warmer.
We also managed a meal out at Loch Fyne, gorgeous fish restaurant in Jericho. I had kippers followed by pan-baked bream with watercress pesto, mrsfb had an assortment of herrings, followed by crab cakes. One of the advantages of giving up smoking appears to be having money left over at the end of the month for meals out and buying bikes.
Well I am definitely on the mend now, in far less pain, although I have to be careful when coughing or yawning. Otherwise I get psychadelic levels of pain. In general though, I am utterly peachy compared to last week.
A nice relaxing weekend planned, meal out tonight at a nice fish-based restaurant, then a little walk tomorrow down by the river (and the first chance for me to use my new camera outdoors properly). Plus a spot of mild DIY, and some planning for our major holiday this year (NYC here we come). I’m being ultr-organised, tracking down our passports, and actually checking them now to see they are in date, rather than panicking in 6 months time. This is a hitherto unknown level of organisation for me.
Also hopefully watching The Devil Wears Prada on DVD, and some good long lie-ins too.
I wonder often if being an Olympic Ski-Jumper was the destiny that was chosen for me, and by some bizarre twist of fate I ended up being born in England, doomed never to have the appropriate advantages in life to help me achieve that goal. I love the concept of flying unaided. I happily watch hours of ski-jumping on the hallowed channel that is Eurosport. Yet I cannot fly. Seems a shame.
Okay, it has taken me two days to give them money. I wanted to add a service to my phone, which means I will pay them a little more money each month. You would hope this would be easy. It isn’t. I have an account set up on their site, which is meant to allow me to manage my mobile phone account. At present, it is taking about 10-15 minutes to get into my account. I’ve got decent broadband, so it isn’t that. Their site is stupidly slow and unresponsive. When I finally got to where I wanted, it offered me a package to add, I selected it, and it accepted. Fine. About 20 minutes to do this. Most sane people have given up already.
I then get the text confirmation about an hour later that the package has been added. Except it hasn’t. I am not allowed it on my account. So I phone them. I spend 5 minutes going through key choices, a recorded message telling me they are very busy (at 11:30 at night) then another recorded message to let me know they are shut after 10pm. If you’d let me know that at the start…
So I called back today. I have to wait 20 minutes on the phone, listening to god-awful music that at one point distorts and hurts my ears (it wasn’t the track, I prefer far nastier sounding music normally). I finally get through to a call centre in India. The chap on the other end of the phone has a bit of trouble understanding me. Not because of his English, which is fine, but because of the quality of the phone line (Orange customer calling their own call-centre direct from his mobile, so the problem again is with them). I ask if I can have the package, he says yes, and puts it on my account.
How much hassle is that? I’ve lost an hour of my life trying to give them a bit more money every month. How many people a month must just give up? IDIOTS.
And relax.
back. coffee. battery. pipes. notebook. cheese. database.
ache. present. reading.
camera. nano. testbed.
prawn. spice. blossom.
Bit in the wars at the moment, had a few weeks of getting over smoking, have now moved on to suffering a nasty but thankfully quite recoverable back injury. The main downsides of which are sheer stabbing pain, and taking about 30 seconds to get up from a chair. Which isn’t very helpful.
This is thus a slight explanation for my general malaise with regards to the blog for a bit, although I do like the list of links that are generated from what I save at del.icio.us. Anyway, more soon.
Well, it is supposed to really snow here in a few hours time. All the weather services have warned us all to expect snow. Serious snow. Not your bog standard little bit of snow that I have endured since I grew up. Old Skool Snow. Seventies Snow. Drifts, Blizzards, enough snow to genuinely call snow. I’ll be at home, watching it out of the window whilst I work at home, waiting to see if the predictions are true or not.
Oh, and happy birthday to me 🙂 I officially got my new camera for it, so I am very happy.