Rob's Ego Trip!

Another week has passed. Work-wise, I've been concentrating on getting a project completed and working on my processes. I have a very long list of stuff to get done and it can get quite hard to keep on top of it. I've started putting in place some systems that may help. Next week is Dawn's last week with us, so I've also been preparing for my new role as the main project manager for the company.

At home, I've been finishing off some indexing for the book along with answering questions from the copy editor. I've also made significant progress on my presentation, for next month's conference talk. I'm really slow with graphics though and have spent over 4 hours on a single image so far.

This is a picture I took on Thursday of the Birmingham Assay Office. I'm not totally happy with it, so will have to try again some day.

This weekend I finished taking out the dead bush at the side of the house by removing the stump and roots. It didn't take as long as I feared which was nice and I also got time to finish off the editing of the appendices of ZFiA and fix some indexing problems.

To celebrate being on up to date, I played World of Warcraft last night which was nice and relaxing. I need to play more often really.

Today, Nana came over to the great joy of the kids who wouldn't stop interrupting to tell her things! We had a very nice Sunday roast too!

It appears that if I don't take a photo, then I forget to write here!

This week has flown by and I've done loads of work and nearly caught up with my todo list which is nice. On the book front, I've only got AppendixA to look at, but there's a fair few chapters outstanding from my co-authors. No doubt, I'll have more indexing to do too!

I was in Birmingham today and took this photo:

A quiet day, as all Sundays should be. Jon had a free music lesson at one of the music shops in town. Georgina took him and thought that teaching a group of eight 7 to 9 year olds was too many kids in one lesson. It's hard to tell how keen he actually is to learn the guitar though. If he's keen, we'll see if we can find a more focussed teacher.

I've started thinking about how my talk in November will look and run. I started preparing the material a couple of weeks ago on an ad-hoc basis, but hope to start getting the talk together over the next week or so. I'm going to need lots of practice!

Today was a sunny day, so we took the opportunity to sort out the garden a little. I mowed the grass and then Georgina raked it over. I then punched holes all over it and scattered sand. I've no idea what it does for the grass, but it seems to improve it!

I also fixed the hedge trimmer so that it worked again. There was a break in the cable and so I rewired the cable. and all was better. I then chopped down the dead bush at the side of our house. There's much more space there now! We need to remove the stump yet though.

Today was a very quiet day as James called in sick so I was working in Birmingham on my own all day. It was also a bug fixing day and I spent all day fixing bugs and no time at all on project management. This is a pain as I'm now behind and will have to catch up tomorrow.

This evening Georgina and I played on the Wii which was great fun :)


As usual I went for a walk at lunchtime and took this shot. I can't quite get used to the new Debenhams though.

Today, I did pretty much zero coding and enjoyed it.

The first half of the day was spent understanding the visuals of property site that the client has signed off. Fortunately we can build what Andy has designed, however he is showing his lack of experience. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to have to train him up a bit!

Swimming went well again. Ben seemed to really enjoy being in the water during his second lesson. Jon is really doing well in his new class to and is doing "real" swimming now. I'm very pleased.

Another day of bug fixing. On the plus side, I now know what to do get this site sorted. As today has been such a busy day, I managed to not even eat a Wispa! I'll have to correct that tomorrow!

We had a client phone up that we thought had gone into liquidation wanting some changes... turns out that, like a phoenix, they have started a new company with a similar name and are trading under that one. Hmm...

A frustrating day at work as I spent most of it fixing bugs in recently written code. I wish people would take more care! I compensated this evening by buying some Wispas! I also added some more index entries to chapter 10 and am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel for this phase of the book.

And so another weekend comes to an end. It's been a quiet weekend as Ben's been very tired as a result of full time school. I finished trimming the hedges yesterday and managed to cut the cable of the hedge trimmer. We also played board games and the boys played Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

Today, I did some research into the Subversion version control system with the intention of migrating to it for work. I've done the bulk of the work, so may even try to migrate this week or next. I also put Georgina's new poster on the well. It's this WTD comic strip. It looks good on the wall!

The drive to Birmingham was good. I left at about 8:10 and made it by 8:55. So the journey was around the same as my trip to the main office. The journey home was over an hour though... so need to work out a better route home!

At lunchtime I went for a walk to New Street. Our office in the Jewellery Quarter, so it's about a 15 minute walk. I had a good workout as a result and I found the Apple store!

Today, I was in the main office which with James and Andy up in Birmingham was quieter. As a result, more tea was made and I was productive and improved my customer service by proactively dealing with a client :) I also got out at lunchtime and went to Haw Bridge, which crosses the Severn. It was much less interesting than I had hoped, so I'll have to find somewhere else to go next time!

This evening was Ben's first swimming lesson! He did really well though seemed a little scared of putting his entire body in the water. His teacher is really nice and handled him well. Afterwards, he commented that the water was cold, which when compared to a bath, I suppose it is!