Not good so far this week...

My ADSL Wireless modem has yet to arrive. should have been here Monday or Tuesday... I have e-mailed BT to chase it

HALO has arrived, but the controls are awfull... I need to spend some time setting that up....

My FM Recorder has gone faulty, and it's out of it's 30 warrantee - It's going to cost me £55 + post to the USA to repair. The charging circuit seems to have failed, and it can't switch on.

I did my first Body Pump class yesterday, I really enjoyed it - me and 5 women! Was a little stiff in the legs yesterday afternoon - nothing too serious. But this morning - My arms!! OH MY GOD... My biceps seem to want to be permanantly contracted! Ouch.

I was intending to swim today at lunch, but it looks like I will have to walk into town for the Post Office.

On the Plus side - Man United beat Leeds 3-2 AET in the Carling Cup! We have West Brom at the Hawthorns in the next round.

We seem to have got to the bottom of the Clock Change failure on a number of systems - now we just need a fix from Nortel. This morning will be a ball-ache - I have 5 escalations for Call-Pilot to raise!

First visit to the Gym this morning... not quite early enough for the BodyPump class at 07:15, but have a better idea of timing to enable me to make it on Wednesday. The plan is BodyPump Monday and Wednesday morning, swimming Thursday and Friday lunchtime, and some weeks (but possible not every week) a relax in the sauna/steam room after work.

I had a steady aerobic workout this morning, 10 mins on the Rowing machine (2000 M) and 5 mins on the Stepper (15 Floors), and some light resistance weights. Even so I am aching a little this evening.

Not managed to get very much done at work today, there seem to be quite a few problems associated with the clock change again this year... Nothing we can put a finger on, but there have been more reports than normal today! And to top it all, those nice people at Stratus have upgraded their web site, and seem to have locked all the users of it out!

I'm off to bed... good night

Oh yes,

Man United got stuffed 3-1 by Fulham yesterday, but at least Arsenal only got a draw against Charton. Still only two points covering the top 3.

I have also won my first ebay auction - A copy of Halo for the PC - £24.50 Have already been looking for cheats etc...

And finally for today, I have changed the template I use, and I think that Archives now work. These have been changed to monthly rather than weekly...

Yesterday was a long day, out the house at 09:30 to head up to vanessa's dad's farm. That's where Amy got changed and had her makeup done. We then headed over to the church for the wedding. The wedding went fine, but the weather was lousy... all the photo's had to be done inside the church.

The problem with that is, the flash on the Minolta f300 is rubbish! never mind, lots of tweaking in Photoshop recovered most of them. You can see my efforts here.

We then had a 30 minute plus run to Weston Hall for the Wedding Breakfast. That started badly... I turned the wrong way out of the church! Never mind, thanks to the trust map book, we managed to get there with only one argument!

Once there the photographer spent another hour, taking outdoor pictures (the rain had stopped, but not for long). By the time we sat down to eat, everyone was starving... The food was superb, and the service was good, but very slow. It must have been getting on for 18:30 by the time we finished.

The bestman's speech was one of the best I have ever heard. "Big Stuart" is an absolute natural public speaker. It lasted about 30 minutes, and he hardly refered to his notes at all!

By 21:00, both Amanda and the Kids were getting tired, so we made our excuses and left, arriving home a little before 22:00.

Guess who forgot to put the clocks back last night... I got up an hour early this morning... Good job Amanda realised!

Alex has had his second football 'Lesson', 6 players this time. His main problem at the moment is that he doesn't understand the concept of 'Teams' and chases after anyone with the ball regardless of which colour bid they are wearing!!

Most of the afternoon was spent 'Photoshopping' the wedding pictures, whilst Amanda took the kids out Shoe Shopping.

Watched "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc" tonight - Amy loved it. Anyway, I am shattered so an early night - I am going to the Gym in the morning...!

Not been keeping upto date this week, mainly I havn't had time... But to recap the last few days :

On Wednesday I joined the healthclub next door to where I work : Livingwell. Bt have negotiated an improved corporate deal - £40 per month, if paid 6 months in advance. On Thursday lunchtime I did 10 lengths of the pool to gently re-introduce my body to exercise.

On Thursday evening, the auction closed on the Fuji Finepix : £320.13 + £10 P&P. Payment was by PayPal, so today I was off to the Post Office to dispatch the camera to it's new owner (In Cornwall, so it should get plenty of use)

Today, I ordered a "BT VOYAGER 2000 WIRELESS ADSL Modem" (£140) and a "BT VOYAGER 1010 USB ADAPTER" (£45). My PC will connect into the LAN port, and the USB adaptor will be connected to Amy's PC upstairs. I will then install Norton Security suite, with the parental control and allow Amy to access the internet on her own PC.

I have recieved my Black 'Third' man Utd top. Long sleeves and 18 Scholes on the back. My DVD box set for "Indiana Jones" should be here real soon - the only problem with CD-WOW is the long delivery times...

I have also ordered a case (MCSDG200 : Minolta Leather Case For F100/F200/F300 £12.76) and an additional memory card (LSD256 : Lexar 256MB Secure Digital £51.06) from fotosense.co.uk. If you add the cost of these accessories to the £240 I paid for the camera, it just comes to the price I got for the Fuji... I just lost out on the Fee's. Even so, changing your 2 year old camera for a new (higher pixel rating) model, and it only costing £30 is not too shabby....

I took a few pictures of Birmingham with the Minolta at lunchtime, I will stick them into a web album later on tonight...

Tommorow will be a long day, Stuart & Vanessa are getting married (it was his stag do, the other weekend) and Amy is the bridesmaid. Not sure who most excited.. Vanessa, Amy or Amanda!! We need to get to Vanessa's dad's farm for about 10:00 am to make sure that Amy has enough time to get ready for the 12:30 wedding. By the time we get home after the evening reception, we will all be shattered!! I can try out my new camera in anger...

Finally get around to trying to get the archives online.... Made some changes, not sure if it works yet tho'

What a good day Sunday was...

Alex had his first football training session. Got took out for a very nice meal by the mother in law on the evening. The best bit, however, was shopping round Merry Hill.... Yes Shopping...!

The first good deal was "Matrix Reloaded" for £15.90 from Asda - £1 cheaper than Play.com. Next was a pair of 'hiking' trainers - List price £69.50, on sale in 'The Officers Club' for £19.50...

The best deal was at Debenhams... a 'Minolta f300 indigo' for £240 !!!!! The next best price I have seen is £311....

At least it was quiet at work today, only a few calls, and they were pretty simple. Even better - No Calls At All between kick off and final whistle on the Rugby match between England and South Africa.

Another bid received on the 6900, £205 now - still quite a way to go there....!

Man United also won today, 1-0 against Leeds - unfortunately Arsenal beat Chelsea, I would have prefered a draw.

"Today Matthew, I will be very boring"...

1/2 day traing course in Chester today, nice weather, nice ride out on the bike. 150 mile round trip took about 2 hours each way. decided against the motorway, so went up the A41. It was a little bit chilly this morning (42 F - 5 C), but was very pleasant and sunny on the return journey (58 F 15C).

Tickets have arrived for Eric Clapton at the NEC next April. One of these will be placed in the father-in-laws birthday card next month...

My topbox has arrived at streetbike, and is now firmly fitted to the back of the bike. It does look pretty darn good!

No movement yet on the Fuji Finepix on eBay, but there are still 6 days to go.

Busy day at work today, mostly web updates, patching updates etc but it kept me busy... I have been having another think about digital cameras. The DiMage is starting to feel like the favourite, but not 100% convinced yet. It seems that Comet are offering it at £311.99 online (£380 instore!) hmmmmmm tempting...

Well, the headache is still there, but a second coat of paint has now been applied, and it is looking good. If I was a perfectionist, and had another litre of paint, I would go for a third coat... But I'm not, so I won't!

Popped over to my mom's this afternoon - got a right telling off - its been 4 weeks since I last visited! Whoooops!!

It seems that someone at work has been busy. They have negotiated a special discount rate at the health club (Livingwell) next door to our office. It should be £51, we can have it for £40 - well for the next 6 months. If 45 new members have joined from BT in that time, the rate stays. I may well take them up on that offer, the one thing that became painfully obvious during the Paintball on Saturday, is that I am really out of condition.

I will be glad to get back into the office tommorow, for the rest! I am exhausted after another 3 days decorating. Mind you, I am out again on Friday - back up to ITEL at Chester for a 1 day top-up course, before being in again on Saturday.

I have been looking at digital cameras today. The Olympus C750 was excellent on paper (screen?), but when I held a real one, it was just too bulky. I now have a new shortlist:

Minolta DiMage F300 - 5 Megapixel (2560 x 1920) - Very clever autofocus etc. £325

Pentax Optio 450 - 4 Megapixel ( 2288 x 1712) - 5 times optical zoom £380

First coat of gloss has been applied, and I have a bad headache to prove it. This paint is very difficult to apply, and looks pretty rubbish after the 1st coat, but the second one should be easier and it does make it look a lot better. That's a job for tommorow.

I collected my Givi rack this morning, and fitted it this afternoon. It only took 1/2 hour and looks pretty good. I have also ordered a top box from Streetbike. That should be here by the end of the week. I have just recorded the engine on the Moto Guzzi with my FM Recorder, just click on the bike picture.

Ok, first bid has been recieved for the Fuji, not at reserve yet, but there are 9 days left. Three of these cameras have sold this week for £300-£310, I would be more than happy at that.

I finished "Sword of the Shannara" last night, and will be starting "Elfstones of the Shannara" very soon. I have also finally realised that there are two 'N's in Shannara!!

I have just had a phone call from Speedaway Motor Cycles, my Givi rack has finally arrived. I will collect that later today.

I had a lie in this morning, and managed another chapter of Harry Potter, and then found that Chapter 19 was also missing the start. I had better fix that one soon, as I will be listening whilst painting today. Yep, the decorating plan has changed again, I really cannot take another day of rubbing down just yet, so I will gloss the woodwork I prepared yesterday - ready to second coat it tommorow. At least it will look completed downstairs then.

Well, I've done it... My Fuji 6900 is up for save on eBay hopefully I can get £300 for it, and then the hard part... Which camera do I get next..?

I have been listening to my Harry Potter Audio book whilst decorating today, and have discovered that my MP3 conversions were not without problems. Two chapters have been completely recreated and 1 chapter had a minute misssing in the middle, this has been corrected. I can start again tommorow from Chapter 18 - Dumbledore's Army. I have only a couple of chapters left on Sword of the Shanara, I am going to see if I can't get that finished tonight - before Stargate...

OK, I am now done decorating for today... I have managed to rub down and prime the complete banister, posts, spindles and sides of the stairs. Tommorow the four upstairs panelled doors, and Wednesday, first coat glossing.

I have just ordered an upgrade to Sky+, £200 including fitting and no additional subscription fee's. I could have had it October 20th, but have had to put it back to Saturday Nov 1st, to find a day when somebody will actually be in the house!

Sitting here trying to work up the enthusiasm to start rubbing down paintwork again, I have found that Eric Clapton is to play the NEC on April 30th 2004. I was right on the phone, and am now the proud owner of two tickets, thats also sorted out the problem of what to get the Father-in-Law for his birthday.

I have also ordered 4 Adult tickets for Old Trafford, ManU v Blackburn on Sat Nov 22nd, now just have to wait to see if I get them. So far this season, I have applied for 6 sets, got 2, failed 3, waiting on 1. Not too shabby.

Well, I really can't put it off any longer.....

Well, back home and a little bruised and battered... The Painball was good fun. I have three very nice bright red marks on my back and a very sore lump on my head where I was hit. The team we played against were mostly regulars - we got hammered.
The final game was the most fun, well to everyone except Groom and Best Man! They were given bright red flack jackets, and deemed invincible. They were then given a head start, and the pack was let loose. Both Stuarts got a severe spatting, and the bruises to prove it.

The evening was pretty tame, and it generally petered out by 11:30, so the remaing four of us carried on drinking at one of the local lads houses till 02:00. The end result - I am shattered today, and it took a couple of cups of strong coffee to keep me awake for the return journey.

Our host Ian has a new toy, a Caterham 7 with a Honda Blackbird engine!! the acceleration was quite amazing, and the road holding superb. very nice, damn good fun, but i'll stick to the bike thanks.

Ahh well, lets get a reasonably early night - its decorating again tommorow :-(

Well, none of the jobs that I intended to do, or any of the ones that I should have done were completed yesterday... instead I spent most of the morning investigating MS03-40, and does it need to be installed on Symposium Servers, and most of the afternoon on a conference call discussing SNMP traps from our new Stratus server...

Today, however is different... For one thing it's the weekend, and I am not in work. Also today is my mate Stuart's Stag do. Starting with paintball at Hotshots (Newbury, Berkshire), lunch is at 12pm, the games will start at 1pm and should be over by 4:30pm That means we need to leave the house by 08:30 to get down there in time...

The evening venue is the Assam Indian & Nepalese Restaurant in Wokingham, moving on to 'The Ship'.

Fortunately, it is the birthday weekend of Lilly Thornton (3 year old daughter of Julie & Ian) who live in reading, and we have been invited down for the weekend. I will miss the party, but at least have somewhere local to sleep tonight...

Ok, I am now officially exhausted. Out of the house at 06:30, got back at 18:15 with 3.5 hours driving up and down the M40 in heavy(ish) traffic, and in-between several hours of lectures on the latest version of Symposium Web Client Server 4.5. Now I need to get two heavy folders into work tomorrow in my rucksack!

The driving was shorter than I expected, and I am only just starting Chapter 14. The Astra was quite comfortable to drive, but my neck and shoulders are really still and sore now - I hate motorway driving.

I really should have filled the car back up with fuel, but I was only just back in time for Amanda to go out... So National will just have to fill it and charge a ridiculus 90p per litre. The advantage from my point of view is - Just one bill to claim back the money for.

Back in the office tommorow, and if I get time - I have a PC to rebuild with XP, and a Windows 2000 PC to 'Hand Over' to a user, neither of which is part of my 'Proper' job - but if I don't do it, no-one else will. I also have some more bits to tidy up on the Web server, as I am off again for three days next week. Decorating here we come again...

Glad to get home today, work has seemed to last forever... I have just rebuilt a PC witha Windows 2000 'Gold Build' over the network, that was OK, but no-one can tell me the Admin password and domain users can't install software, so the build won't complete. Eventually got one of the Network administrators to access it remotely and reset the password.

Finally got a copy of my DPR (Development and Performance Review) for this year (It was due in August) - It is last years with two words changed! OK, so the scores are OK, but have I really made so little progress during the year? Or is my manager just lazy?

Finally managed to book my hire-car this afternoon. I booked it online with National Car Rental - A group U (Astra 1.5 estate or similar) at about 14:15. They delivered a 1.6 Astra car to my home address at 15:30 - Quite impressive.

Checked my e-mails when I got home, the iPod has arrived safe and sound in London :-)

I have now got towards the end of "Sword of the Shanara" so I may spend an hour or two tonight in an attempt to finish it. Tomorrow I have a two hour (each way) drive to Maidenhead to deal with, so I think it will be 4 chapters of Harry Potter on Audio Book... That should get me to Chapter 15 - The Hogwarts High Inquisitor...

Was pleasantly suppressed last night, I have received payment by PayPal already... So I have boxed up the iPod and it has been sent by special delivery just 20 minutes ago... It should reach the buyer by 12:00 tomorrow.

well, Auction closed and the iPod has gone for £280, which means it cost me £120 to own it for 10 weeks. Not to impressed by that, but at least it's not a £400 write-off! Just need to wait now to ensure that I actually get some cash before I post it off.

It was a 'catch up' day at work today, no real work just e-mails, updating the website with the latest downloads etc. The one interesting thing I needed to do today was make sure that pcAnywhere version 11 was backwards compatible with versions 8, 9.2 10 and 10.5. It seems to be so far.

Still didn't book the hire car, really must do that tommorow.

Been playing "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004" today, after 2 practice rounds I am now consistently getting 5 to 6 under at Royal St Andrews... Impressive eh! (Well not too impressive, I am still on the 'Novice' setting.

The good bit is that it has been a quite weekend on-call (So far - touch wood)

Ah well, back to work tommorow - Must remember to book a hire car for Thursday for a training course in Maidenhead (Well you didn't expect me to put in a five day week did you?)

After re-discovering the convience of the compact form factor in Digital Cameras on Saturday, I am considering getting a new one myself. Amy's is easy to carry about, but the quality is rubbish and it has no zoom - not to mention a menu structure that makes deleting too easy Grrrrrr! I have seen a couple of favourable reviews of the Olympus C750 - a 4 Megapixel camera with a 10, yes 10!, times optical zoom

Here's an example of just what that means (Using two pictures borrowed from the above review)...
At Wide-Angle setting:


The red square is the area covered by this shot at full telephoto:


And to give a better idea of how close that is, this is a
small segment of the telephoto picture at 100% scale:


I shall give that some more thought over the coming weeks... There may be a Fuji 6900 Zoom going on e-bay before too long. Talking of which, less that 24 hours till the end of the auction for the ipod... bidding at £240 at the moment. Lets see how that goes.

This is the view we had from our seats for the Birmingham City game :



Seat 157, Row 12 Fam207 in the West Stand.

Yesterday was a busy day for me, Second coat of paint on the ceiling (With a bit more tint - looking better), then at 11:45 - collected Pete and Matthew and headed North.

We avoided the M5/M6 junction, choosing to go to Walsall to join the Motorway... Comming down the slip road there was bizarre - There was not another car in sight Northbound (Southbound was stationary, but that's normal!). We made really good time up to Stoke, but as we reached J15, traffic was coming to a halt - There had been an accident by J18 earlier...

We than collected Arthur, and headed up the A50, which is a really nice road that runs parallel to the M6. Once we reached the outskirts of Manchester things slowed down a bit - LOTS of traffic. Got to Cricket ground and parked up, from there a short walk to Old Trafford. Crowd was huge (as normal), but was a bit dissapointed to see some trouble between fans on Sir Matt Busby way... Police were in there quick, but it was a bit too close to us for comfort.

Got into the ground, and in our seats at 15:02, fortunatley kick off was delayed till 15:05. The view from our seats was great, we were the closest to the pitch we had ever been - Strettford (West) end, between the 6 and 18 yard box lines. When United got a Penalty I took out Amy's digital camera and timed the click to perfection - The ball was just hitting the back of the net!!! I was almost as happy with the photo as the goal! Trouble is, I stared to try and zoom in, clicked the wrong button (not familiar with this camera) and deleted it :-(

Final score 3-0 to United, no problem with getting back to the car... getting off the carpark took 45 minutes, traffic fine - Back down the A50 (Motorway was still looking slow). Dropped Arthur off, and arrived back at Pete's for 20:20. There Jackie had prepared a very nice Balti, and Amanda was there with the kids.

The top three in Fame academy turn out pretty much as expected, Alex first, Alister second and Carolynne third. No problems with that, but I personally thought Ali's performance on the night was the best of the three.

Fed and watered we got back home at about 10:30. Watched the highlights of the game on TV before finally getting to bed at about 11:30.

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Only 1/2 a day today, mostly performance monitoring etc..... Yaaawwwwwnnnnn! Nice lunch at the pizza place again today, Tagliatelli with Chilli & Garlic....mmmmmmmmm

The instructor left us with a list of usefull 'Geek' sites before we left :
http://www.annoyances.org/
http://www.labmice.net/
http://www.sysinternals.com/
http://about.com/
http://www.flashpeak.com/
http://www.omnibooksuk.co.uk/
http://www.megabytebooks.com/
http://www.happyhacker.org/

Gave the hall ceiling a quick once over with emulsion this afternoon, I still think the colour is too light, AND it's almost identical to the existing paint. If it wasn't so streaky in places it would be hard to tell it had been touched. I think I will mix the contents of a Matchpot to just 'Tint' it before doing a second coat.

I have successfully arranged cover for my on-call tommorow, so I can go to the football without having to worry about the phone ringing. Thanks Lee...

Had a nice e-mail via the Website Feedback form, a guy called Lawrence who said : "hello Mark, I like your new bike, but I just bought one too, it was the grey demonstrator you tried at speedaway (hope you didn't thrash it)" - Small world isn't it....?

Ok, so a 2-1 loss was not too good, still enjoyed the game tho'...

Another spectacularly unproductive XP training day, lot of remote desktop, working with group policies on a w2k domain etc. There was very nice Chilli & Rice lunch involved at "the Garden House".... :-)

Slight problem with my own PC tonight, loaded Partition Magic 8 to have a look at it, and it informed me that there was a major problem with the partitioning on my second drive. Tonight's mission was to backup the D,M and P drives to the 80GB 'Backup' partition (Cunningly named eh!) - wipe the drive, re-partition it, re-Format it and restore the data. All done and working OK now.

Starting my week on call - one call already tonight at 5:30, couldn't really help the guy, but he managed to get agreement to leave it till tomorrow morning... Phhhhew.

Ok, I am now off to bed, good night all.

Not much to report from the XP training today, lots of practice with "Remote Assistance" and a couple of hours on TCP/IP theory as related to DNS and DHCP. Not much new to learn, but really difficult to stay awake through.

It was the "Quattro Formaggi" today, and very nice it was too.

Man United on Sky Sports 2 tonight against the current Bundesliga leaders - Stuttgart, potentially a very testing game, I think a draw would be a good result, but you always hope for a win....!

How bloggers game Google: "How bloggers game Google

Or is Google dumbing down blogdom
by feeding their drivel back to them?
And what happens when that drivel is fed to you? "

Quiet day yesterday, second day of the XP course - Nothing much new there. We spent quite some time on the 'Encrypted Filing System' and Troubleshhoting the boot sequence...! It was a very nice lunch at "The Garden House" pub however - Gammon and chips, Apple crumble and Custard.

Not a lot on TV last night, watched Arsenal's 0-0 with L.Moscow and then had an hour reading 'Sword of the Shanara' then went to bed early (10pm and listened to 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' on audio book.

I did check with the bike shop, and my Givi rack still hasn't arrived from Italy - Doh!!

Ah well, lets get ready to take on the might of XP again today and see what joys we have in store.