Rob's Ego Trip!

Today I wasn't the best dad in the world. I didn't feel up to in and so didn't pay enough attention to Jon and wasn't especialy happy. Georgina kept reminding me how poor I was towards Jon too which has made me notice it more. Today wasn't an particularly bad day - I didn't lose my temper for instance. I also enjoyed Jon's bathtime, but I wasn't really "with the programme" for most of the day and didn't expecially want to do anything. I certainly wasn't able to give Jon the full complete attention that he really enjoys today. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Georgina made a really nice sponge pudding this evening for us to enjoy with our Bird's Custard. Very very nice and it was a "store cupboard" recipe which was supposed to mean that we'd have all the ingredients in stock...

Not us.

We didn't have any milk of all things... *sigh*

Received this today:

From: <admin@bankofengland.co.uk>
Subject: security notification
To: <robng@the-allens.net>

Dear customer,

The security of your personal and account information is extremely important to us. By practicing good security habits, you can help us ensure that your private information is protected. Please install our special software, that will remove all the keyloggers and backdoors from your computer.

And will help us to prevent credit card fraud in future.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Bank of England

[ An attachment, application/x-msdownload: antikeylog2004.exe : data size 3kb, was included here ]

Definitely more imagination than normal, still spam though and I won't be running their program!

We've been really busy today. The main goal of the day was to take a lot of the stuff in the garage down to the dump to get rid of it and we acheived it! I've also tidied up in the garage a bit, so that the mountain of boxes to unpack now looks more like a hillock...

We've been shopping in the sales and have bought a sofabed and matching chair for a smidgen under £900! Seems to be reasonable quality and does mean that we can have people to stay overnight now that we've lost the spare room. The spare room has to go as Jon needs a room and we want to use his current room as the nursery for BabyX, so a sofabed seemed the obvious solution. However as Georgina is very pregnant, our guests can sleep on the sofa!

We've just got back from a few days with Jacky and Sam. It was a nice Christmas all in all and Jon got lots of presents of which Dinosaurs were the best!

I got dabs.com to deliver one of Georgina's presents to my old place of work and it hasn't arrived there yet...

As we had work Christmas lunch on Friday, I left my car at work to collect over the weekend. When we went to pick it up on Sunday we discovered that they lock the gates to the car park...

As a result, Georgina and Jon gave me a lift to work this morning and got to see the office. Jon liked being at work and had to be bribed with the promise of a snack when he got home in order to persuade him to leave! I had a nasty shock when I left for home at the end of the day and discovered that the car wouldn't start. A little bit of thought meant that I was sure the battery was ok (radio worked, along with headlights). I decided it was probably the immobiliser, and so I spent 5 mins opening and closing the car central locking with the radio buttons which seemed to work! *phew*

We don't have a lot in the way of Christmas traditions here in the-allens household. One we do have is that we watch The Muppets Christmas Carol every year which marks the start of Christmas for us.

This year, Jon watched with us and seemed to enjoy the bits he paid attention to. Rather oddly he found the jolly giant Ghost of Christmas Present to be quite scary whilst he took the intimidating Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in his stride.

Odd child.

is really hard to buy "interesting" presents for!

Company Christmas Lunch today and we had a good time! As I think I've mentioned, it's not a big company, so there was 7 of us for lunch at the Monsoon restaurant. We had a good time though and worked our way through a sensible amount of drinks :)

A bad note today was that Georgina fainted whilst in town. Hopefully it's a one-off like last time she was pregnant.

What's up? The roads were empty on my way to work this morning! Has everyone but me gone on holiday for Christmas already?

So Ian Huntley is guilty of the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. I'm glad that he didn't get away with it. Given the news reports it seemed obvious that he was guilty, but it took the jury 4 days to decide. Clearly the evidence wasn't as clear cut as the media seemed to be suggesting. In some ways, I'm glad that the jury took their time. It means that they weren't swayed by media reporting and it can be seen that they made their own minds up. Good for them. Let's hope that Mr Huntley isn't let out of prison for a very very long time... his history would suggest that it would be bad.

Today was probably my most productive day so far at my new job.

Go me!

Finally Saddam has been captured. This must be a huge relief to everyone involved in trying to bring stability and peace back to Iraq. With a speedy handover of power to the Iraqis themsleves, I can see that things might just become better for the "ordinary man on the street" in Iraq.

It's official, Christmas is coming to the Allen household! Today was the day we put up the Christmas tree. Jon was really excited and really enjoyed himself helping Georgina to decorate it.

Picture coming when we get around to uploading it :)

My parents were up last night and so we took advantage of the free babysitting and went out for a meal. We went to the Copcut near Droitwich. It was a really nice meal with excellent service. I was a little cruel to Georgina as I had paté which she can't have at the moment. It was very nice, as was the steak that followed!

Definitely back in the swing of work today! The morning went very quickly as I successfully got an app up and running much easier than I thought. The afternoon didn't go so well. All our apps have been developed and deployed on Linux servers, but today we needed it running on a Windows box... hmm... did it work first time? of course not! does it work yet? of course not...

Guess what I'll be working on tomorrow?

Seems that Gordon didn't count properly... what's the betting that we'll be the ones providing the extra money to pay for the Government's overspend...

I really can't get over how badly Ministers of Her Majesty's Government come over on radio. There was the Roads Minister on the Today program this morning who was spouting rubbish. Yes we know that speed cameras save lives, what we actually want to know is why targets are being set for how many motorists to fine per year. The minister's statement that the best speed camera is one that generates no tickets is completely at odds with setting prosecution targets. You are really going to have to go a long way to convince me that cameras aren't being placed in the most lucrative spots anyway. Setting revenue targets for the people who run them reinforces this view.

Wasn't it great to see a lot of English sports fans in one place and no trouble!

We spent today with Jacky & Sam and had a good time. They took us out to lunch and the local pub. It was a nice lunch and I've no doubt we'll eat there again, but it did bring home to me how good Georgina's Sunday roasts are! I don't know about you, but no matter how "home cooked" a pub lunch is claimed to be, it just doesn't compare to one cooked personally for your family.

We all had a nap this afternoon! Jon usually has a nap after nursery as he's so tired after all the excitement. I gather that Georgina also usually has forty winks around the same time.

I dont.

The company wouldn't appreciated it! However today, I put Jon to bed for his nap and sat on the sofa and had a little bit of shut-eye... I was most upset when Georgina woke me at ten to six to make dinner!

So, the first week is over and it's gone really well. I've learnt a lot about the systems in place and am ready to start contributing in earnest :)

Lots of learning done, along with lots of work!

3 days in the job and I've just received my first bit of spam to my new email account...


*sigh*


At least Thunderbird has a decent junk mail system!

We watched The Shawshank Redemption on DVD last night. Everyone who'd mentioned the film to me had said that it was an excellent prision movie. I now know what they mean and agree. It's very good and gives a lot of food for thought too.

of the new job and it went pretty much as expected. I spent most of the day learning systems and installing software on my PC to make it usable for me. The people seem to be ok and they made me cups of tea, so that's good too!