Older blog entries for MikeGTN (starting at number 47)

OU

Al: just finished my ECA for T171 too. Agreed it was drawn-out, and for financial reasons I only too one course this year - leading to me being complacent and lazy. Likewise, I'm not proud of my ECA submission, so I'm relying on good grades earlier in the course. Next year - Microprocessor Controlled Systems and some basic maths

Work

Its over a week since our controversial move. It's made the papers, and a thick fug of negativity still hangs over the new temporary offices. The threat of industrial action is still present, and people expect me to *enjoy* this because of my political past. Interestingly, most people in our office don't appear to realise that you don't get paid when you are on strike!

27 Sep 2001 (updated 27 Sep 2001 at 20:46 UTC) »

Phoon

I've lived with TMJ syndrome for most of my life. I sympathise, but must confess that as I've aged, its become less painful less often - or perhaps my joints are just wearing out?

Work

Today we moved our office from the abandoned residential home they sold out from under us to a portakabin on a vehicle depot. There is no room for most of our secure and confidential data to be with us, and general things were badly planned and even the management didn't know what was happening. Spent an afternoon showing various top people around the new accomodation, and shockingly they displayed total horror and seem to be doing something about it.

Nevertheless, the trade unions are involved and at 8am tomorrow there will be a protest and possibly industrial action. It's been a long while since I've stood on a picket line (actually it was 1995 when I was arrested for fly-picketing a postal depot!).

Code

The shoddy mess which is gtkdial escaped into the world last weekend, and has been well received in general. I want to totally rewrite things next. My ISP is extremely unhappy with the bandwidth consumed by downloads - imagine how upset they'd have been if I hadn't doltishly misspelled the URL in the download link?

Music

My interest in music has been rekindled lately - partly by the new Kingsbury Manx LP, which I love very much. Looking forward to the UK release of A Silver Mount Zion's next effort...

22 Sep 2001 (updated 22 Sep 2001 at 22:50 UTC) »

Work

Preparing to move office to a woefully inadequate portacabin on an industrial estate. Still, remaining philosophical here. I could still be working in dodgy circumstances in central Bristol

Gtkdial

...and gwvedit are currently with translators awaiting 0.4.0 releases. Plans for 1.0 are finally afoot.

The Rest...

I've refrained from comment about events, since I'm almost certain to upset people. However, someone using the World Trade Center tragedy to justify our move to bad accomodation seemed undignified and wrong. Why do people assume it's theirs to use as they will? I suppose I can be smug - me, and everyone who is important to me is living, walking, talking etc.

Pizza

Finally tried it last Monday, and yes, I liked it a lot. To everyone who wrote to me expressing surprise and dismay, you have no idea what life is like when you're convinced cheese is horrid! Still, now I have another reason for getting even fatter!

9 Sep 2001 (updated 9 Sep 2001 at 19:19 UTC) »
Actually did some work...

The last-ditch run for the finish line with kabalak's latest release of gtranslator must have inspired me, because I ended up spending time working on both gtkdial and gwvedit today, rendering them both almost release ready!

Real life

Visited parents, saw their soon to be new car, cleaned my house, prepared for some time off work next week where I have several 'special missions' to complete.

Pizza Virginity

This was to be the weekend when I tasted pizza for the first ever time - however, the offer of a good home made effort instead of what would likely have been a dreadful store-bought frozen effort has persuaded me to postpone this seminal moment.

Another long, entry-free period.

Skipping happily from one funding crisis to another at work. It's what I'm good at, and what six years of Public Service work has equipped me for! My colleagues are vaguely amazed at how chipper I remain when they're practically rationing pencils, but I guess I've been here lots of times before.

Managing to squeeze in useful activity too - have been planning work on gtkdial2 and working with kabalak on packaging gtranslator.

18 Aug 2001 (updated 19 Aug 2001 at 10:52 UTC) »

I've disappeared lately, mainly due to brooding for a while, and then deciding to have a social life for a week or so.

Things are refreshingly stable here. Work is nice and calm - middle of a Local Government budget crisis, but I'm almost comfortable with that,

Principia doing OK - some sales, some money made. Some faith restored.

Finally replaced reposessed notebook yesterday. New Compaq Armada seems to work fine - X out of the box, modem via Lucent Winmodem driver. Generally a good economy purchase!

No entry for a long time, in the main because I've done little of note for some time. Its been a period of consolidation and settling into my new work routine. Getting used to having money to spend again, and trying to reassemble some sort of life.

Herd following....

...as ever. Also joined the EFF this morning in a bleary-eyed state of indignance before work. Nevertheless, its a worthy and sensible thing to do.

Life

Its good to be working a sensible distance from home again, and walking home along the seafront is still a pleasure rather than a chore. Having to mess around with NT is something of an education, and makes the precious moments spent in front of my machine at home all the more pleasant. Literally weeks after taking a vow to 'not get involved with the politics' I find myself absorbed by the complexities of North Somerset becoming the UK's first 'Care Trust'. I think I need to find a new job to protect my sanity....

gwvedit

... is remarkably frozen for translation! It works (OK, for a *subset* of possible wvdial.conf options - but that's what GUI's do, right?), seems stable, and might even prove useful for some hapless folks out there...

A new release of Gtkdial (aka. my nasty little vanity GNOME app) brings 70mb worth of downloads today from my ISP server, and a stern warning about consuming valuable bandwidth! Amusing really, considering that my puny website was previously of little interest to anyone!

Spent a lot of time trawling through my music collection these past few days, ending up with a big Galaxie 500 focus for some reason. I feel like I'm 16 again!

My new job presents lots of opportunities to be productive, but provides only NT and MS Office. Its not an ideological thing, I'm just not *used* to these apps. I ruefully remember Jim Gettys' dire warnings about staying current with competitors during GUADEC (more accurately in the middle of Darin's keynote, but I guess Jim can get away with such things!).

A bloody weird day!

The first week of my job has passed relatively uneventfully. Met a lot of old friends - and I'm amazed that people remember me considering all the changes, office moves and general hot-desking that seems to go on within Social Services these days.

Gtkdial is frozen for a release at last, and has gained some new translations. Got some feedback from a guy who uses it to select from 50+ local ISP numbers, so I figure that concerns about scalability are unfounded!

Lambchop played in Bristol during the week. They were incredible - very quiet, and they even managed to get a grand piano onto the stage!

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