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...!

Well Friday was a busy day... went to the outlaws new bungalow.

Started off with helping arrange the furniture in the lounge, then working out where the speakers for TV and Hi-Fi should go.

I then re-assembled the hi-fi (with temporary speaker cables) and tested it all worked OK.

Third stage, reconnect the Home Cinema system, and "FreeView" digibox. TV, DVD and video were fine, but the terestial picture quality is pants! The digibox only picks up BBC 1, 2, 3, News 24 and CBBC - not much use really.

Lots of trunking, new speaker cable and 6 hours of hard work and it's still not all connected up properly... Hope to get some more finished late on Sunday, when we go to collect the kids...

Yep, we have lost the kids for the weekend.... :-)

So, today we took a trip 100 miles up the M1 to "Meadow Hall" shopping centre in Sheffield. Lots of Xmas presents purchased, a very nice meal out, and a trip to the cinema to see "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" before a nice steady run back - arriving home at 22:00 - Well knackered!

Tommorow is the MicroMart computer fair at the NEC, a day out with Barry - The girls are going to the "Good Food Show" that's on at the same time.

What a busy day, run around like a headless chicken and seem to have done bugger all...

Started off well enough, Amanda's Birthday, so she had a cup of coffee in bed and got to open Cards, Gifts etc. and after getting the kids packed off to school, I took her to work at 10:15.

From there to Deb's - Ariel man was there, son once he was finished, paid him... Trip into Pensnett to get a timer for the boiler, non in stock but the really helpfull guy behind the counter pointed me to one of him competitors that had a Digital version in stock at 1/3rd the price of the original...! Result!

From There (Kingswinford) to Cosely to pick up some stuff from the Outlaws, back to Kingswinford to drop off at the new house, then back home just in time - to collect Amanda from work.

Fitted the new time clock in the boiler - works a treat... Hope this one lasts longer than the 3 or 4 year average of the mechanical ones...

OK, you ask, where were you for the last month?

I was here, but after an accident with my PC, I had lost the cached login information to the Blogger site, and the tech support link to get you details back was faulty... They have now fixed the page, and I am back on air.... Whoopeeee

Well whats happened in the last month... I have managed to spend two complete weeks in the office, but I am on leave again this week ;-)

Alex's Sunday morning football has failed to take off, only 4 to 5 kids most weeks, so not sure if that is going to continue.

England won the Rugby World Cup, but you already knew that...

I stll haven't finished decorating the hall...! 4 panelled doors upstairs to paint.

Have managed to go to BodyPump classes twice a week for 4 weeks now, have lost about 2 Kilo's, but about 1" off my waist.

I have informed the boss that I am no longer prepared to do "On-Call" - That's created a bit of a stink...

I am activelly looking for a new job (again) - I am just getting bored and need a new challange.

My Out-Laws have finally managed to sell their house, and are moving on Thursday - I have been roped in on Wednesday and Friday to dismantle the HiFi and Home Cinema systems and rebuild them at the new address...

I have changed the Sky box for a Sky+ box - Worth every penny - what a magnificent bit of kit.

Finally my Archos came back from repair - fully working again... and Rockbox is about to be Rls 2.1

That's it for today...

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"...