It’s called Karma!

As we are now approaching 10/11 weeks until our little bubba is born we are starting to get in to the funny stage of the pregnancy.

Now when I say “funny stage”, there are those among us who do not agree. Me on the other hand am taking the opportunity to rip the proverbial out of my wife while I can.

At around 4 am yesterday I was woken up to the sound of someone moaning. I thought “well that’ll be Katie getting up” and I was indeed correct. A little muscle spasm thing called cramp had managed to get her out of bed faster than any alarm clock.

Being the concerned husband I enquired as to the problem she was having “I got cramp….ow wow wow” I heard, so being sympathetic I told her to “man up and stop being a pussy”. Then I fell back to sleep. My only concern was is the baby coming!

She has been through this child birth malarky before and I sure as hell know one thing child birth hurts a lot more. I can support this because when Katie had Evie all that screaming during the final stages did indeed hurt……..my ears!

All to often since we’ve been together I’ve had the odd scrape, bump, cut open my finger with a saw (she didn’t even stop yakking to her mum on the phone, whilst blood was gushing from my finger), rib injury, put a nail through my hand etc and although being a wonderful ambulance technician, Katie is not the most sympathetic person to have around if something happens. She will however find it funny!!

Karma is a funny old thing, but it certainly shows that what goes around, comes around

Grass – All but a distant memory!

When we moved in to our house 5 years ago we had lovely lush grass, but not anymore. Our Labrador has made it his number one mission to destroy a large part of it. Over the past year our lovely grass has slowly vanished.

Unfortunately Oscar likes not only digging but bathing in any muddy puddle and over the winter period he has had ample opportunity to do both due to the clay composition of our back garden. As a result he has virtually torn the grass out by its roots.

I have now started the slow process off revitalising the ground to give the grass seed the best chance to germinate. My intention is to reseed the entire garden to get a good healthy patch of grass.

 

This is what it did look like, just a bit patchy!

My poor mower is sitting in the shed wondering what it has done wrong, especially when it hears the other mowers out enjoying themselves in this early spring sunshine.

With a bit of help from mother nature and Oscar staying of the new patch I may just see the green grass of old (well new really )

If any of you green-fingered peeps have got any tips for me I would love to hear from you.

Not long to go now.

My wife is due to give birth to our second child around the first week in July and we really cannot wait to meet the new arrival.

Unfortunately we have had some ups and downs along the way, but that is all behind us now.

The excitement is growing with every day especially with our 4 year old daughter as she has now acknowledged that she is going to be a big sister. Numerous kisses of mummies large bump show that she really is going to enjoy her new baby. It is so sweet to see a 4 year old be so affectionate towards something she knows very little about.

Having a new baby in the house will always be a big deal, but this time it has turned our household around a bit. My office has started to transform from my technology hub to a nursery (sorry as your our 2nd child you get the smaller room).

After many a discussion with the boss we decided the most practical place to locate the desktop was in the kitchen. So after purchasing a new desk all has been stowed away although as many things in life a compromise was needed. No second monitor or big comfy chair……no space, so they’ll be looking for a new home

But least as my wife describes it “the computer is now in a more social area”, and I do agree. I was even contemplating selling my home server as I couldn’t see where it was going to be housed. Once again my wife stated she did not mind if it goes in the bedroom. I thought this baby has made her rational somehow!! So my server now hums away in the bedroom although some new fans will be required to quieten the sound a tad.

Next up will be the full transformation from office to baby den. This will entail a lick of paint, laminate flooring and baby furniture.

With summer just around the corner the pressure is on to get the bedroom sorted.

My blogs have not really been that regular since setting up this page but I intend to post at least once a week (time permitting) as the computer is now located in a more suitable place. This post has been written from the comfort of my bed on my Windows Phone, which is not ideal but I’ve found some quiet time.

Contacting technical support provides…Well support..Yeah right?

Having got to the point of annoyance with the lack of an update for my phone I thought I would go straight to the horses mouth to get an explanation.

So having sent Orange an email to query where my Windows 7.5 (mango) update was and how long the roll out would take? Bearing in mind that my wife had received her update 3 weeks earlier.

What I got back from Orange was a rather garbled message stating that “they had not started rolling out the update yet as when the original windows phone 7 update launched there had been problems on some phones” well that’s strange as windows phone 7 was a new OS on new hardware! and secondly how come my wife is sporting the new update on her Samsung Omnia 7 (same as mine).

As usual I have found a technical support department who actually know very little with what the wider company is up to.

I think there is probably a reason for the lack of update I just don’t think the technical support people know what!

Might try again to see if I get a different answer

Center Parcs

Having just spent four nights at Center Parcs Longleat I’ve had time to reflect on the experience.

The whole setup at Center Parcs is very relaxed. We had a lovely 2 bed lodge and although we were next to other lodges the way they are lined up we never saw our neighbour when we were home.

Also you’re never pressured in to paid activities within the resort meaning you can have as busy or relaxed a break you like.

Evie went swimming every day and was never bored due to a lack of activities.

Without wishing to sound posh the visitors were also what you would describe as respectable. No youths walking around swigging cans of beer and swearing. Just what a family break should be.

The only minor point i noted during our visit was the leaflets asking residents to respect the surrounding woodland. Er hello how many acres of woodland has been destroyed to accomodate Center Parcs!!

If you’ve never been there I can certainly recommend it.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

What Formula 1 really needs!

Having sat down on Sunday morning to watch the grand prix it struck me that we are all missing a trick with this sport.

Each year we hear the FIA say we need to cut costs in the sport, reduce speed blah blah blah and at the start of the season we see the cars are 2 seconds slower than last year. By the end of the year the cars are achieving new lap records as they have engineered out the performance loss.

Bernie Ecclestone has come up with some new ideas like watering the track during the race etc etc. These ideas are ok but not really radical.

My proposal would be to ban all testing period! No prediction modelling or wind tunnels. This removes some of the advantage of the big boys with no guarantees there design will work. Red Bull currently can’t get their KERS system to work which is just a dynamo with a battery. I can get one from Halfords that would work ok!

I think the sport would be more interesting if Jenson Button is flying down the pit straight in Malaysia when the engine explodes in such a catastrophic way the debris takes out other cars or the new front wing has a slight issue with uplift and the car risks flipping over so the driver has to back off before he takes off . Basically let them develop what they like but the race is the test. That comes down to engineering judgment, then we’ll see who is the better team.

While their at it they could rename it Holy-F1 to give a sense of danger.

Now I’ve just got to get the buy-in of the teams and then we have real racing.

Four Days to go

It is quite strange how life seems to go in circles as nearly eight years ago this week I was preparing to leave my employer under a TUPE transfer and start a new chapter in my working life.

Well its happening again and on the 1st April I transfer to my new employer again under TUPE. Come to think of it I am yet to leave a job in my career. Its not quite same job different wage slip but not far off.

I started my career in the water industry in 1995 but floated my way into bridge engineering in 2001 and progressed up the ladder to where I am now. I’ve always said if I did not enjoy my job I would look for a different challenge.

The beauty is I still enjoy everyday but on Friday a new challenge starts and I cant wait.

I’ve been a bit slack lately

Happy New Year

Wishing all a very happy 2011.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

1.5 Million sales of Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has finally broken it’s silence with regard to the number of handsets sold. The official figure is 1.5 million units sold in six weeks. This is described as sales between manufacturers and mobile carriers.

It will be interesting to see how this breaks down over the coming months into sales on the networks. This can then be compared against the likes of market leaders Apple and Android.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone