Rob's Ego Trip!

The Almera has had a slow puncture for a little while now and today I organised getting down to Kwik-Fit and getting it sorted. The local Worcester Kwik-Fit is staffed by some nice people and is always very busy. As a result, it took over an hour before they were able to look at the car. Once they did, they repaired the tyre quickly and with a low charge. I was quite impressed as I was expecting to be told that I needed a new tyre.

As it's Saturday today, we did homework. For Ben, this turned out to be his activity bag which had a farm animals theme. He liked the matching pairs games and the fuzzy felt best. Jon also went to guitar lesson today and seems to be getting on okay, even though he found today's lesson quite hard.

We've got key fobs that open the car park gate now, but they don't work from inside the car! A fairly standard day at work, but I did get to go for a walk over towards the Symphony Hall where I took this photo:



There's something about photos with reflections in them that I really like.

Today, one of our clients went bust. They didn't owe us a lot of money, but it was still a bit of a downer first thing in the morning. As a result, I didn't work on a project specification for them and cleared a hundred or so emails from my inbox instead.

At lunch, I went to find a Post Office and found one in the Jewellery Quarter. Whilst there, I took a photo of this cafe:



Hard to know what to say really!

Every Monday I write a report about all the ongoing projects we have for one of our key clients. The main reason we do this is that they have a lot going on and usually, there's 40 to 60 items on the list. The best bit for me is that once per week, I can make sure that I'm on top of everything and that there's nothing that's stalled due to lack of action on our part.

As a result I get very little else done, so I took a still-life picture this evening:

A lazy Sunday today with a very nice fish pie for dinner.

I've had a busy Saturday today and have managed to get stuff done. Jon went to guitar lessons with Georgina, so I helped Ben with his homework. I then did ironing and put on the next load of washing. When Jon was back, I took out another bush from the front garden. Only two left now, but one is a conifer, so it going to be difficult!

This afternoon, I took Jon to town to purchase trainers for outdoor PE lessons at school and rounded off the day by cooking a fry-up for dinner :)

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I managed to cross off precisely two items on my to-do list today. Fortunately they were big ones, so a fairly productive day. Also, one of our clients complimented me on my management of her projects this week, so clearly I'm on top of things from her point of view!

I went for a walk around Victoria Square in Birmingham today. Rather obviously, but I didn't realise it, there's a statue of Queen Victoria there, so I took her picture.

On the way to school, Ben managed to walk into the barriers they put in the middle of paths to deter cyclists.

Ouch.

As a result he's got a massive bruise on his forehead. Oh well...

In other news, I wrote an article that was published in the php|architect magazine. I received my copy today!

It rained all day. I didn't get much walking done as a result. Did manage to tick off the main items on my todo list at work though!

We did some more painting with the kits that the kids got for Christmas. Then we played on the Wii :)

I also spent time today taking photos in Manual mode, so I have started to understand the meter built into the camera.

I bought Georgina a copy of Fallout 3 this morning and then took the kids to The Engine House at the Severn Valley Railway this afternoon, whilst she played her game. We enjoyed ourselves as there were few people there, so I didn't have to worry about how noisy the kids were :)

I ordered some DS cases from Game's website and they arrived yesterday. When we got one out, they were much to big and very generic, so they had to go back. Fortunately, Game have a sane returns policy, so I was able to take them back the branch in Birmingham and get a refund. Whilst I was there I checked out the cases they had in stock and found a much smaller one that was more suitable. It was even in the sale, so I saved money :)

This is a photo of the man who holds the Subway sign. He's always on the phone!

Today both kids managed to be rude to their mother and I shouted. The day didn't improve at work where I managed to be very unproductive all day and didn't get half the stuff done that I wanted to. To cap it off, it rained all the time during my walk around Birmingham at lunchtime.

Hopefully tomorrow will go better.

As a result of the rain, today's photo was taken indoors with my new flash and I quite like it, even if I did have to take 73 pictures to get this one!

I managed a brisk walk to the centre of Birmingham and back today at lunchtime. Whilst in town, I returned some clothes that I had bought Georgina. Turns out that I'm not that good at choosing clothes for her :)

I also discovered a statue of Nelson near the Bullring!

It snowed! Not a lot, but nice to see snow in January rather than April like last year. Today was a work day, so I was in Birmingham. We spent the day writing a client for a web service. The main thing we learnt is that "interoperable" doesn't means "just works".

It's cold.

It's very cold.

It's so cold that the ice on the car didn't melt all day.

We stayed in and took the Christmas decorations down.

The first half of today was taken up with the start of the "clearing out the garage" project. I did fairly well and removed a car's worth of stuff to the tip. I also put 5 items up on Freecyle to give them new homes rather than put them in landfill. One of the items is Georgina's old Biorb aquarium and we had a little confusion with the first person who wanted it as they only wanted the air pump for their current aquarium, but it's the wrong type. Hopefully a few people will turn up tomorrow and collect.

In the afternoon, Scott and Megan visited us. The boys got over-excited as usual! Scott in particular was a champ this visit and played hide and seek with them for a good while. Jon and Ben also shown them their new DSs, played new board games and we also got out the marble run which was great fun. I took lots of photos with my new flash too :)

Today was the first day back at work and we all worked from home. Of course, as a result, we couldn't access our job control system which is served from the office as the ADSL router at the office crashed. Nevertheless, a fair amount of work was done, even if it wasn't the most productive of days.

We've had a relaxing day at home as it's so cold that we wimped out of going to the zoo. Instead we went out for a meal at the Three Pears and it was excellent. I do like how well they treat children there and the food is good too.

In the afternoon we played on the Wii and Jon and Ben have been enjoying their new DSs too. I also managed to get up the Christmas photos.