Almost there again

  I'm close to finishing up the latest piece of code development at work. I have it 90% working now with only two small things left to do. I think I can get both of those done tomorrow and the make sure all the small niggly things get taken care of afterwards. It always comes together so quickly at the end, progress at first was slow, lots of trial and error trying to find the cleanest way to code the design (contrary to popular opinion a design document is not the code but more the flow of the code, if you have code in your design document you've done it wrong).

  Still it is a relief to be this far. The schedule is to finish coding next week and go in to acceptance testing in 2 weeks. I think we will make it yet again, well I will I can't speak for the other development items going on. Some of the easy ones are already done and in (or those who started work on it at almost the beginning of this year when I only started a month or so ago) so I'm not the first but at this rate I won't be the last.

  Hopefully getting this finished in the next few work days will make it easier for me to pay attention to my currently poorly wife. I try to give her as much attention as I can when working from home but my mind gets so stuck in thinking about work it is hard to break out of it. The best I can do is let her know I love her and look after her in between getting work done. I love her.

Sweaty failure

  I think that aptly describes me right now. After finally bringing a whole bunch of logs from elsewhere on the property to shelter it was decided to cut down the small dead tree out front. I tried a simple saw (the tree being only 8 inches across) and got nowhere, a circular saw was tried and basically bounced off. Finally an axe was attempted and after barely making an inch dent in it failure was declared. This tree must have been dead for quite a while since the main trunk is as solid as rock. It is completely dried up and doesn't have any give in it. It is strong enough to keep the tree up but won't give way to cuts to bring it down. Le sigh.

  A chainsaw could have been attempted, it I had replaced the chain on my one, got some fuel for it and a ban on using chainsaws during the day wasn't in effect for fire prevention. I suppose at some point the tree will come down but not yet it seems.

  Makes me want to go lay back in my hammock that is now assembled on the downstairs back patio area. It made a good place to relax in the quiet after finishing working today. Definitely something I couldn't have done in the old house.

Missing

  Well I didn't do much work yesterday. There was a thunderstorm that came through the area and knocked out power to quite a lot of people through lightening strikes. We didn't lose power but our ISP did. As a result the internet connection went down and I couldn't work. It didn't come back until a couple of hours after I normally start work this morning. However nobody at work seems to have even noticed or at least commented on the fact that I was offline for a whole day. They saw no activity from me other than a brief bit in the morning meeting before the internet connection went dead. It is good to know people miss me so much :| .

  Being without internet access for a whole day is weird. My wife and I rely on it to keep us connected to various things and without it you feel strangely disconnected. Also there are too many games now that rely on the connection to work, for something that doesn't have to talk to servers being unable to play when there is no connection is a bad thing mkay. Even Borderlands 2, a game that is half around playing with other people cooperatively works with no internet connection.

  Anyway, poor game design decisions aside yet more delicious food was made and had yesterday. My wife went on a cooking binge and made two big lasagnas and a huge pot of chilli that portioned out to 11 servings for the pair of us. Having a freezer large enough to store all this is great, makes dinner time much easier on my wife from a cooking point of view. Loads of prepared yummy dinners. We even get home made tartar sauce with the fish and chips tonight (thus avoiding the soybean oil that causes my wife problems). Now my tummy is grumbling....

  Looks like the GPS map update is almost downloaded, 3.5 gigs of data that failed to download 5 times so far, this time it is at 96% after crapping out at 60% or so the previous times. I will get my new GPS properly updated....

Want for nothing

 I'm in a dilemma. I have a fair chunk of money to spend on amazon and can find nothing to buy. I mean if I really tried I still couldn't find something I want to spend the money on. I could get boring crap but since it is my birthday money it should be something I enjoy really. Looking around on amazon for almost 2 hours now I still can't find anything. It is a little frustrating but also slightly cool that I have so much stuff that when given the option there isn't anything really that is already available that I really really want.

  I could easily preorder a bunch of games and films but that won't spend the money now and some of that stuff won't come out for a couple of months. Kind of annoying when I was born that it doesn't line up with the availability of cool stuff. Being born in the summer when people generally don't make things available because most people go on holiday is a little frustrating. Give me what I want when I have a good excuse to get it please not when it will make you more money :| .

  So I'm going to give it another quick go and try and find something to buy right now otherwise it will be a case of looking around again tomorrow. I will successfully spend money eventually.

Another week gone

  I'm not sure where this work week went. It seems only yesterday that I was getting up and sitting down to work on stuff I have to do. Now here it is Friday afternoon, I've got stuff done but it is four and a half days later. Yikes. Another couple of days and my birthday will have been a week ago. Time really is just zooming by right now.

  At least this week has some achievements though. I got a fair bit of work done, both my wife and I got our hair cut, we cleaned up the house and got it presentable, I got a couple more trophies on Borderlands 2 including one that takes quite a bit of work, I got paid yet again (always a good thing to happen) and probably several more good things that all happened this week. Each on their own isn't always much but when you add them up and consider how much does happen and that none of it is bad I really can't complain much nowadays.

  Anyway, I'm off to enjoy my weekend. Not sure what is going to happen but no doubt it will be good. Living the non stressful life for the win.

Bits working

  I've been writing code for most of the last couple of weeks. I'm getting to the point where half of what I need to do (i.e. one of the two features I need to create) is working pretty much trouble free. It is always weird when I get to this point since from what I can see it works and I'm ready for other people to try it out and see if they can find something wrong. It is always a little daunting when you do that, handing off something you have created to other people to use. Did I do it right? Will it always work? All that fun stuff. Still at least that part is done, I just need to build something on top of this by the end of the month. I think I'll do the rough framework for that tomorrow and then fill in the details.

  Our first guests in the new house turn up tomorrow for a quick overnight stay. The house is presentable which isn't bad for a couple of months after moving in considering how long it takes some people to get stuff done after they move. Mind you someone coming to your house is always a motivator to get things ready and tidy. All those niggly little things that you never get around to finally get done.

  Now all I need to do is work out what to spend all my birthday money on, a surprisingly large amount. A couple of games are on my radar but other than that I have no freaking idea. Isn't it a shame when you have pretty much everything you want?

Cake coma

  Been quiet on here recently. I'll use my cake coma as an excuse, since starting eating the cake Saturday I've managed (with a little help from my wife) to eat about half of it. *huge burp* It is a delicious cake that is very chocolaty and covered in thick yummy icing. In fact on top of my bowl of cereal for breakfast this morning I had another slice of it. I'm not sure this cake is going to last a week.

Cake taunting

  There is currently a delicious chocolate cake taunting me in the kitchen. My wife made it for my birthday tomorrow and I got to lick the icing bowl clean. Talk about yummy, the cake smells great and the icing was a lovely chocolate flavour. Not long now until I can cut myself a big slice and scoff it down. Nom nom nom nom. *burp*

  Other than a few chores this morning I think today is going to be a lazy day. We are off out for my birthday tomorrow so today can be my relaxing day I think. Still need to chose somewhere to go for dinner tomorrow, I have no idea what I want or where to go for it. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get to eat something nice.

  No idea what to do now for the rest of the day. Any suggestions?

And another one

  Well yet another birthday is coming up this weekend. Seems strange that they roll around now, after passing 40 it really doesn't seem much. Although funnily enough I am spending this one in Oregon like I did my 40th. Cool how much has changed since then though with moving and everything.

  My brain has been stuck in a game playing mood at the moment. I keep playing Borderlands 2 for an hour or two before bed every night, trying to get my first character up to the highest level. It is getting to the point where things are getting hard as they should at the higher levels and I need to find some new weapons soon but so far I'm getting there. Not bad doing it all solo in a game that can be played as a 4 player coop game. There are some good games coming out at the end of this month and early september that I'm interested in so maybe I can get through the rest of this game before then.

  In other news not much else is happening. Life is carrying on as normal with no real drama, no real problems and just a quiet peaceful life (occasionally interrupted by mother in law Skye calls). Even the smoke from the fires is quite a bit less now so we can actually get some fresh air during the mornings. Sitting here at the desk by the window with the fresh air coming in is a great way to work.

Productive indoors

  Been pretty productive work wise this week, adding historical statistics support to various sub systems. I think I've done 5 so far and have another 3 to go. They all have worked well so far and it makes me hopeful I can get this part wrapped up quickly so I can get on with the slightly trickier part I have coming. Fortunately that doesn't have to be done until the end of the month but still until it is done there is always that thought in the back of your mind that something might not work or cause problems you didn't foresee.

  Way more smoke around here again, hence the indoors part of the title. It seems to be trapping people inside a lot more than usual, annoying for summer since it should be nice outside most of the time. Not that I mind, I can quite happily live indoors with my wife and our pets away from the rest of the world. I'm not sure how all the wild life we see outside during the day are dealing with it, it can't be fun or nice being out there all the time. Still at least the fires are being tackled and not left to run wild which would be more dangerous for the animals in the long run.

  Speaking of animals it is quite amusing how little attention the cats pay to the deers that walk by the window. A bird or insect or some other small animal they are all over. But these largish animals walking by eating the plants they basically ignore. I assume since the can't theoretically chase and catch them they don't care. Although watching Fudge or Lucy trying to catch a bird would be funny.

  Anyway, I'm done with work for another day so my 30 feet commute calls to me. Until whenever I get around to writing something more here.

Spare bedrooms

  We finished off redecorating the spare bedrooms this weekend. All the painting in both is done and furniture rearranged (or in the case of bookcases acquired via a 500 mile round trip to Ikea). All in all they both look really good, very livable in compared to the scarily coloured almost empty rooms they were before. It's nice to have things in this house our way, more and more of it is becoming that way now. Unfortunately now this means we can have people over to visit :| . At least the first use of them will go to an online friend of my wife's rather than the dreaded parents. All that and I only came away with one war wound, a blistered bit of skin in the middle of my palm from screwing in lots of joiny bits that Ikea furniture comes with. Now it is just a little flap of skin peeling off and healing over.

  In other good news the fires around here are getting under control, most especially the one nearest us. The biggest one still has a lot of work to go but is far enough away that it doesn't really affect us much other than a bit of smoke in the air, at least we can see the sky now though and there are actual shadows on the ground from the sun rather than a haze everywhere. What a fun first fire season here for us....

  Oh well, going to go and watch a bit of TV now. I've finished work for the day, got a reasonable amount done today with the interruptions from other people at work and things are looking good to get all my work done by mid September when things are scheduled to finish. It seems I'm pretty good at estimating how long to get things done after all these years.

Happy stuff

  Just watched Fudge, Daisy and Lucy all playing around with various things. It reminded me how happy they seem all the time. Boots is the only old and grumpy one although he is always happy to sit with you and cuddle up when he wants to the other three love running around, batting at toys and chasing them. Even Fudge loves it although he is quite a bit less energetic than the younger girls and generally just flops over and swipes at whatever toy he has.

  It all looks too energetic for me though. I would much rather relax on the sofa and play my games or watch some tv with my wife. Given me recent blood test results coming back ok it seems to be working for me. If I can keep this up for the rest of my life I will have done alright I think. Living with the woman I love, not having to work too hard, relaxing doing things we enjoy. Things that make me happy and give us a happy life just like we have managed to give our cats.