Odd Thomas Odd Blog

After the events of last week and the rather late night at work on Friday*, I figured on pretty much sleeping the whole of last weekend.  My body, on the other hand, had other ideas and decided to wake me at the unhealthy hour of 9:30am, my bladder nagging at me to shift my backside in the same way women nag their men: incessantly. With my body still not quite in gear, I headed back to bed, scooping up my not-so-white-any-more MacBook on the way so I could log on to see who was online.  Since it looked like the weather was going to be the best so far this year, it was time to make an effort to get out somewhere, even if I was supposed to be on call**.  Luckily, my mate Foshie was online, in the middle of getting ready for heading down to Brighton and invited me along.  Bingo! Despite this being a great photo opportunity, I was really keen on just chilling out, so pocketed my funky little camcorder, the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA9 : Photo from the VPC-CA9 product page...

After the frustrations of work this week - and every other week since the beginning of March, if I were to be completely honest - taking Friday off for a day trip to London was a very much needed break. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment trip as I can do that any weekend.  This was a trip with my cousin to the London Diving Chamber down at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, St John's Wood, in order to undergo our Fit to Dive medicals as we both suffer with asthma , and ready for returning to diving this year along with an intended trip back to Sharm El Sheikh with Emperor Divers in October - Icelandic volcanic ash permitting! * As per the medical back in 2008, it was a general discussion about our asthma and a few tests, such as spirometry tests , pee tests and nervous tests, the last of these being to ensure I have no problems with musculature control, not to see how I react to the doc shouting "Boo!" at me from various angles.  In case you were wondering...

When I first announced back in February that I had gotten through the general ballot for this year's Great North Run , the first question I was asked - with distinct undertones of irony - was when I would start training.  Still bouyed by getting through the ballot and raring to go, my immediate response was, "Next month!" Hmmmm.  I guess the person who asked the question knows me better than I thought as the next month came and went in a bit of a blur and the most I was able to do was repeat, "Next month" to myself whenever I thought about starting. Well, April is the next month and I finally took the opportunity provided by the Easter break to crack open the new Nike+ kit and don my rather grubby trainers* for the calibration run.  I figured a nice one mile run followed by a 500 metre walk would sort the new kit out.  Well, it did, but it nearly sorted me into the back of an ambulance at the same time. It's been two years since I last ran anything mo...

Don't you think?

About 1.5 weeks ago, I started working at another customer location, leaving my friends and colleagues behind for a new adventure; unfortunately, the work seems to be following me, even if the people aren't! During this time, I think I have learned some pretty valuable lessons... 'Teamwork' is insular Up until now, I've had development environments all to myself.  Being the only Immediacy and .NET developer in my previous position meant that I could work on any code/project without impacting on anyone else's work, or vice versa. I was King of my domain ... alas no more :-( Now, it's more like a civilised playgroup, where the 'kids' play with the things that keep them happy which ends up annoying others who, instead of showing their frustration by bashing the culprits round the head with plastic toys (which you have to admit would be fun to watch), instead express themselves with various sighs, grunts and gestures that would make a Neaderthal feel a...

It seems I have quite the knack for causing confusion. Due to changes at work and having to get up so early in the morning to get to the office before the major traffic hits, I had decided not to head down to sunny Somerset to visit the parents, as the return journey would likely be postponed due to watching Come Dine With Me and any other program that would take my mind off the long drive ahead. However, my inability to prepare anything in advance led to an urgent shopping spree on Saturday for some appropriate presents and the decision that I should really show my face.  Which is exactly what I did, much to the shock of my parents! As usual, I was late leaving so perhaps went a little faster down the M4 than I should have, though certainly slower than those around me.  Not that that would make any difference to the police chap sat in an unmarked car just outside Swindon, with his speed gun glued to his face like a Picasso-style Borg implant (something along the lines ...

My Dad always said that life gets faster the older you get and he wasn't wrong! With everything that has been happening these past few months, it seems there has barely been time to breathe, let alone bash out any ramblings in this blog ... the only reason I am doing so now is that crunch time is coming and I need to ramble  :-) Currently, I work on a customer site in Watford on a contract that replaced the one we had at our previous employment.  Unfortunately, as there has been no project work forthcoming (presumably since the customer has now realised they have to pay for work and, therefore, actually think about what they want ), these past five months have been filled with HUUUUUGE amounts of documentation, otherwise known as TEE-DEE-UM! However, on the plus side, it's been a long time that I enjoyed working with any group of people this much: KitKat is a constant source of amusement and a much-needed distraction from the daily grind, whilst DJ Flip-U ( ergophonic ) and...