January 2008 Archives

Spent last night at Our Mutual Friend's January 2008 Beer Festival. And yet another corking selection of beers to be had, as well as the usual good entertainment, and excellent food, mmmm pork pies

Church End Irish Coffee, which really did taste like a good, creamy Irish coffee Leeds Brewery's Winter Spark was another, as well as Wear Valley Midly Grand. But my favourite, and the one I settled on having a pint, was Saltaire's Hazelnut Coffee Porter. It was like a pint of Nutella chocolate spread, mmmmmm

In Paris once more, with work. Meetings tomorrow, and then back on the Eurostar to Blighty early evening. Best bit is finding another hotel with WiFi

Had a late night last night, celebrating someone's birthday, well, when I always thought it was, demolishing a few of the single malts collected over Christmas (hmm, Burns night soon ). Jerry Mcguire was on UK Living, I know, unusual for that channel to be showing films. It's another one I'm sure I've seen, but there was bits I didn't remember.

It's a film I've added to my Must get on DVD list, for birthday and Christmas ideas when I get asked. And it had a whole load of meanings to come away with.

For example, life is really all your own. You make the choices and decisions, no-one else can be blamed. Make sure the choice is the right choice, and not the right now choice. Everyone has friends, but you only have a few true friends. What looks right, now, might not be what's right for ever. But don't get all het up about making a right now choice, just make sure all concerned are clear that it's a moment, and not the future or for the rest of your life.

I know I've been going on about the Airfix Nimrod, but when you see Airfix's new HS/BAe Nimrod, by Spencer Pollard, on Hyperscale, you've got to agree, it DOES look good, doesn't it?

Now, where's my credit card, I'm off to Hannants

Just gotten in, having spent the last 3 hours or so running through the usual start of year resource changes in Primavera. It's done globally, rather than by each individual area. And one day I'll get the chance to run it as a fully working API-based change. Which reminds me, I need to get the test environment up and running soon.

It happens every January, we adjust the company charging rates, and to add to the confusion, add and remove a few departments at the same time. This year though, some of the rates have dropped considerably, so I'm expecting most of the teams to be calling tomorrow once they've had chance to run their pre and post analysis. They'll all want an explanation of why the costs have dropped!

Well, its the end of a second day without any network drive. And today the problem developed further, such that I couldn't even copy any files off

Will wait and see what the morning brings, might just pack up and go home

After the network update on Saturday, it was expected there'd be some problems coming back today. So, it was a little surprise to find that just about all my files had disappeared Worse still, the backup on the laptop seems to have been wipped too

IT are busy working out what the problem is. In the meantime I'm frantically copying over what I can find so I can work off line. Doesn't look like the Primavera update will be happening tonight tho.

Ah the joys of IT, don't you just love it

The car's done, all the bits and bobs needed for the MoT, and those that weren't but needed doing anyway. Boot leak's gone, the speedo works all the time (ok, it's worked non-stop for 2 weeks now), and the back end stands firm and not wallowing all over the road.

Fingers crossed it passes

The online music project that is Pandora is no more, at least outside the USA

After Ian had given me the link, I've been listening to it pretty much every day. It's great, I've found lots and lots of music I'd never have thought of listening to, simply from putting in my favourites and Pandora making suggestions in return.

I do hope they resolve the licencing issues, as it's opened my ears to lots of new artists I would never have bought music from, if not for Pandora.

So the economy for 2008 will crash into a huge credit mess. Or so more and more experts seem to be saying.

News today that the UK Festive sales are 'at three-year low'. This comes on yesterday's news that Sainsbury's shares are falling

But, interestingly, no mention of whether these figures include online sales. Domino's report a surge in online orders, which makes me wonder if the drop in retail high street sales is more an indication of a shift in where we shop, rather than another indicator that the economy is crashing. Which it isn't

The Golf's MoT is due end of this week, so rather than do the usual and let it run out and then not have time to sort the problems out, I've got it booked in early. Today to be exact. Having spent the weekend checking it all over, and fixing all those niggles that I've just not gotten round to doing anything about. So I'm pretty confident it'll fail, there now being a small hole on the passenger side rear wing, just like there was last year on the drivers side It's surprising how little rot there is on the car, to be honest, and how easy some of the trim has come off.

Should know by the end of today what else might need doing, and when I can get it booked in for the welding. Fingers crossed

So, we're going to get snow tomorrow. Better go dust off my snow chains, NOT And besides, everyone knows it snows around my birthday, which is at the end of the month, 1st Feb, just in case, dear reader, you've forgotten