Rob's Ego Trip!

Maybe next year will be Tim's year? I doubt it somehow...

Went to Fareham to pick up our hacked server and take it to the office. I phoned yesterday to sort out what I had to do to get access and followed the procedure giving 12 hours notice etc. I get there and discover that they need some id... *why* didn't anyone tell me?! It's not like I didn't ask what I needed to do!

Fortunately, the nice lady at the data centre, took my credit card as id. Not sure what it proved to her, but I got the server. So today, I spent 5 and half hours in the car and was at the data center for 10 mins!

The "dodgy" server at work got hacked again :( cue stressful day at work... culminating in a decision to go to the data centre (in Southampton!) tomorrow. sigh.

My mum hosted a family "do" for Dad's side of the family today, so we packed up the kids and headed for London. It's hard work getting two kids anywhere isn't it ?! We had a good time though, especially Jon who got to play with Leah and Jack.

One thing that was interesting was noting how we have not settled completely into Worcester and the "not in London" way of life. It was most noticable yesterday when we took the kids into town. Worcester is certainly not geared up for pushchairs in the same way Croydon is and the whole trip was that much more stressful as a result.

Anyone want to head hunt me? Any salary over £120K considered :)

We've just got the Red Dwarf IV DVD... it's the best season!


(until Red Dwarf V comes out...)

I've recently got a new book about design patterns. It's really interesting and I've now got plans to completely redesign the back end systems at work :) I'm new in the job still (only six months!) and so inherited the mess that I'm currently working with. The current system will become unmaintainable in the next year ish without some sort of surgery, so the knack is to have the replacement come online before that happenss...

4-2!

I'm gutted that I missed the second half as Ben decided to wake up and I had to go settle him. Great result though! Ben had better sleep through the final stages games...

I received a Monty Python CD and a book providing ideas about what to do whilst waiting for my computer to crash. I also got a box decorated by Jon with stickers along with a nice poem. Jon was as excited as I was; it turned out that he wanted to "help" me to open the presents. Apparently, helping from Jon's point of view means that I watched whilst he opened! He was terribly disappointed when he discovered that there wasn't a toy for him in the presents. Apparently, he hasn't yet grasped the concept that other people receive presents that he can't play with...

Of course, the good humour didn't last. A little later, Georgina suggested to Jon that he should be very nice to me and give me lots of hugs and kisses as it was my special day. That went down like a lead ballon and let to a pantomime-esq situation of Georgina saying "oh yes it is!" and Jon saying "no it isn't!" I have a three year old son who would rather do anything else other than give me a hug and kiss...

My new G5 is here! Now all I need to do is work out what all the buttons do...

Update: Here's a picture of Ben taken with it :)

I'm glad it's the weekend. This is the week that we discovered that one of our live servers had been hacked. It's now been secured, but still needs reinstalling. As a result a new server is stitting on my desk patching. When it's finished, we'll be taking it to the datacentre and moving all the sites form the compromised server to it.

All in all, not the best of weeks.

3 - 0!

I've bought a new Canon G5 from A Small Life. Can someone tell me why in this day and age it takes 3 days to transfer money electronically from my internet bank to his ?

How cool is this?!

Jon's just discovered the concept of running into his room and slamming his door...

We're still obsessed about sleep. Well.. about Ben's sleep. He's not getting much at all and as a result is very miserable all evening. This is making us less than our usual sunny selves. Last night was not good as Ben didn't settle for his night time sleep which meant that we didn't either and we don't know why. The main issue is that he can't seem to get himself to sleep without being on the breast/sucking a dummy. However as soon as he's asleep and the breast/dummy is removed/falls out, then he wakes up. At least it's the weekend!

A Small Life

Voted today. For the local council there were three names on the ballot paper: 2 Tory and one Labour. I had to choose two...

Remind me again why we thought 2 children would be a good idea?! It's soooo tiring! Ben went to the Cranial Osteopath again today who was pleased with his progress. I'm hopeful that Ben'll be able settle easier over the next weeks. In the last couple of days, Jon has actually slept through the night again which is a great relief. Ben's been waking too often though and so we aren't getting a run of at least 4 hours sleep every night yet. When that happens, I think it'll be much easier.

In other news, I bought a pair of jeans from tesco for less than half the price of a jumper for Jon... Either something's wrong with them or childrens' clothes are overpriced!

Ben was weighed yesterday by the health visitor and is now 7lb 7.5oz. This is more than his birth weight, so he's doing okay in my book. The health visitor isn't 100% happy (of course) as he's not on the same percentile line that he was one when he was born, but who cares about that?!

We had the Ben & Jon double act last night and I've been awake since 2:45...

I've been improving my Firefox experience with a few new extensions.

My current list is now:
Cute Menus
Last Tab (ctrl-tab change)
miniT (Tab Enhancements)
Single Window Mode
Undo Close Tab
Web Developer

The Extension Room is a good place to find more.

Of the ones I have installed, I'm really liking miniT for the ability to drag and drop the tabs to re-order them. Also Single Window Mode is cool as it puts links that normally open in a new window into a new tab in the same window :)

According to The Register, the EQ commission has gone against the EU Parliament and handed over passenger data to the US regardless of whether that breaches Europrean privacy law. It makes me terribly sad that the EU parliment really is useless and the whole EU system is completely unaccountable and left in the hands of beaurocrats.

No wonder that no one votes in European elections, they are meaningless.