Call me mad, but I agreed to going to Merry Hill this morning.... OK, not so loud... We got there reasonably early (10:45) and mad directly for the Debenhams Restaurant for breakfast. Once that was out of the way, we wondered about aimlessly for a while before passing an almost empty Lunn Poly.

2 hours later we emerged, proud owners of a 1 week vacation to Paris, France in August. We are stopping in a hotel half way between Disneyland and Paris itself. We Fly out on one Saturday, return the Next, and have three-day passes for Disney.

All in, inc. Flights, Accomodation, booking fees, C/Card surcharge, Insurance and Disney passes etc. - £1200 for 2 adults and 2 kids. Mind you the deposit was over £600! The flights with Air France needed to paid, in full, in advance.

I have also booked the theatre & Train tickets for our trip to London to see "Phantom of the Opera" (for the 3rd time), so all in all a very expensive couple of days!

Christmas officialy started at 08:20 in the Bright houshold this year, that the time both kids woke up and came downstairs. For the next hour there was the usual mayhem of ripping wrapping paper, and cries of "Cool!" and "Wow"; meanwhile Amanda was trying to read the label, before total destruction, and I was writting it all down.

Amy was very happy with the GameBoy Advance SP + 2 games, and the Ticket to see Shania Twain in concert. Alex was really chuffed with his 120cm high crane, I am not so impressed on hearing the noise it generated at 08:00 this morning! Thank for that Stuart!

Well here we are Xmas eve, all set and ready to go. Kids getting excited, weather wet and miserable. Too tired to really enjoy it... Just a normal christmas.

I was rather suprised today, I walking into Birmingham city centre at lunchtime, expecting it to be a nightmare of packed short tempered shoppers - it was the quietest I have seen the town centre on any luchtime ever! I could even walk freely around the Bull Ring.

I did surcomb to temptation, and got a 5 pack of DVD-RW disks for use with the DVD burner in the laptop, and at £19 it was a bit expensive, but I want them now!

My cold finally appears to have cleared, still the occasional cough, and more blowing noses that would be considered normal, but I feel OK.

Yesterday I installed Publisher 2003 on my home PC & the laptop - it says I can in the EULA, what you mean you don't read them! - Shame on you.... It is actually rather good. I have got the first draft of the program for Amy's panto, cinderella, completed and printed out in under 1 hour. I now just need to find time to sit down with the powers that be, and agree the actual real content - and get the photographs of the cast members!

Well, I can't just sit here all night, I am going next door to a party soon, so I suppose I had better get washed and changed!

Merry Xmas everyone.

What a lousy night - I am so congested with this cold... I slept downstairs sat up in the chair from 03:00 to 08:00 this morning - I just can't breath when I lie down.

On a lighter note, My copy of office 2003 arrived this morning, £109 from Amazon. It is the Student edition, so technically it is Amy's copy but the box states that it is licenced for use of three PC's - Mine, Amy's and The Laptop...! There was an offer enclosed for a copy of One-Note and Access 2003 at reduced rate. £30 the pair - I have taken them up on that. I use Access occasionally, and have no idea what ONE-NOTE is about - so I'll give it a try.

All the xmas presents are wrapped up, I still need to get a pair of Trainers, for me - off Mike & Carol, but I will wait till after Xmas.

I still am getting used to this idea of total mobility with the laptop on the wireless network. , I am upstairs sitting on the edge of the bed entering this !

I successfully configured a network printer on the laptop, so I can now print from wherever I am in the house - As long as the Main PC is switched on!

Amanda has taken the kids out shopping with her - She has gone to Merry Hill... She must be mad, but at least I am left in peace and quite to feel sorry for myself... I am not good at being unwell!

Well, another day out of the office, but this time is a Rota day and I am feeling a lot better.

So I started the day off by going to the cinema - Lord of the Rings : Return of the King. A truley amazing film, not to close to the book, but an excellent film just the same. Mind you at 3 hours plus it was hard work on the bladder!

From there into town to tax the bike, just 6 months - I don't want to do it again next xmas!

When I got home, my new laptop had arrived! Switched it and charged it up, configured the wireless networking and I am on line in the lounge... The first couple of hours was downloading the updates and security hotfixes from Microsoft. Next was installing the supplied Norton Antivirus, followed by the obligitory updates! Finally drive image went on and the C drive was backed up.

The screen is amazing, 1400 * 1040... Thats a really wide display. The keyboard is good, or at least as good as any laptop keyboard is!

I now need to get some DVD - R discs to test out the DVD writer! How about configuring a network printer? uhmm I'll give it a go...

back again,

I am off work today, I have a very sore throat, and sound not unlike Barry White! It started on Saturday as just feeling a little "Under The Weather", increasing into a general feeling of "Urghhh" by Monday, before settling into my throat, and dropping my voice 2 octaves! Apart from the fact that I feel pretty awful, talking is a little painfull, and the thought of spending another day on the phone tipped the balance.

Well Xmas is almost here, everything brought, presents hid etc. Tree and decorations are up - Bring It ON...

My best present is one that I am buying myself - a new PC! In fact a laptop - The Acer 661LMi which I am buying from The Laptop Shop

I have added a little festive decoration to my "Localsite" website, and as yet have not really progressed with the mainsite revamp. It's still on my to-do list, but I really do not feel up to it at the moment.

I have almost finished the 2nd book in the "His dark Materials" series on BBC Audio Book. Not only is the book very readable and engaging, the BBC dramatisation of it is excellent. Well recommended.

Nothing much to report over the last couple of days, Amanda has been running around like a headless chicken : Drama, Xmas parties etc. so I have been doing the "Child Minding" thing.

Amy's Birthday was on Friday, but her party is this afternoon, that should be fun.

We went into Birmingham yesterday evening and had an hour around the German Market - it was brilliant. Lots of free samples of the food, interesting craft stalls and a really great atmosphere. I should have taken the camera!

I have started on re-vamping the website this morning... Nothing too major, more a cosmetic overhaul. The live site has had a "partial", that is the colour scheme has been changed in the CSS file, but there are a large number of inconsistencies where I have not used templates or Syle sheets! I have now made a copy, and am working my way thro' updateing the general feel. If I get it right, I should be able to change it much easier next time! Once it is fully CSS'd I may go for a more radical redesign... who knows?

After 3 days of a 230 mile round trip down the M40 to Maidenhead I am officialy knackered, even in a rather nice Rover 75 1.8L estate. Excellent drive on the motorway, but the seat was just *not quite* completely comfortable.

The bad side of it was - an accident on the Motorway on all three mornings causing quite a hold up in the traffic, and generally heavy rush hour traffic when you get back up to Birmingham. 230 miles was taking about 5 hours a day!

The good side was, I have finished "Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix", *AND* Northern Lights (Part one of 'His Dark Materials' by Phillip Pullman on Audio book, before getting three chapters into "The Subtle Knife" (Part Two of "His dark Materials")

Rockbox 2.1 is now released, and is now happily flashed onto my Archos FMR.

I have changed the Ink cartridges from the 'Inkrite' to the new 'ColorJet' ones and they are a big improvment, they actually print onto Photoquality paper... Also the Paper I purchased on Sunday : 200g/m2 'Ultra Photo Glossy' (£5.50 for 20 sheets) and 230g/m2 'Matt Coated - Both Sides' (£6.50 for 50 sheets) gave excellent results.

I can at least have a 'Lie In' tommorow - back in the office, so I don't need to get up till 07:00, I have been up at 06:00 for thr last three days to get to Maidenhead in time to start at 09:00!

Sunday I went to the Micromart computer fair at the NEC, I treated myself to a new video card - A Radeon 9600 128 MB one. That's now installed and performing rather well. I will have to load Unreal II back on and give it a good work out at some point. I also got a pack of 25 blank DVD +R's for £21, some good quality photopaper and another set of Ink cartridges for my Epson 950 (£30 for all 7 cartridges) - see if these (ColorJet) are any better than the last "Clone" one's I tried (Inkrite)

I finished off the cabling at outlaws, and installed my old Sky box - it worked fine, but without a viewing card it did not receive many of the "Free" channels. Barry has an unused box with a viewing card, so he has sent that up to me. I will put that in later in the week and see if we do indeed get a good range of channels.

I put their (6 week) old Freeview box in at Debs, and it worked a treat. All being well with the Sky box at Mike and Carols, she will be keeping that.

Monday was my first day back at work after a week off, and most of the day was spent getting up to date with my e-mails, the latest Nortel patches and updateing two PC's in the office with the latest set of MS Hotfixes.

Today, and for the next two days - I am at Nortels training centre in Maidenhead - travelling daily, so I am shattered - and I still have another two journeys to do...!