My Yuki's Fan Club's Journal

1:33pm: In a couple of debate comms, people are using "disinterested" when they mean "uninterested"... I'm reminded of the film Wilt every time :-)

4:08am: I'm up at 4am. I'm out of my tree. (It's not my tree.)

Was finishing up a bit of moving stuff out of spare room at Assa's, stopped for a few minutes, started reading a couple of community posts and the rest is history...

Spider solitare doesn't help either!

Going to get a snack, finally finish off in here and get a couple of hours sleep before heading home. I miss my Ian lots & it's been just over a day!

1:03pm: Went shopping :-)

All in newborn or 0-3 month sizes:

12 babygros
9 vests (with the poppers under the nappy)
5 cute tops
2 trousers
1 pair denim dungarees
2 cardigans
1 knitted jacket.

All for around £18.

Quite chuffed :-)

Also got Lizzie's birthday presents and paid for her party. It's going to be great! As she's the new kid at school, we thought it was best that she didn't start picking & choosing who to invite so early, so the whole class is getting an invite... then there are the old friends & cousins, so I'm expecting a litle bit of organised mayhem :-)

We're getting her a game called kamisado from Peter. She saw it at Dragonmeet before Christmas and loved it; we tried to get it for christmas but it couldn't be ordered in time. I'm expecting that she will love it!

Asda was running a special offer over the weekend that didn't turn out quite as good as it could have been. On Friday night, the "welcomer" was handing out coupons that let you get £5 off if you spent £50 and £10 if you spent £100. Just been paid, so stocking up on a lot of dried, tinned & jarred food, cleaning stuff and cat litter and buying baby stuff that we had our eye on all in one go seemed a good idea!

Unfortunately, at the till, we weren't allowed to use them both on one transaction... and then they said that the ones the Asda employee had been handing out weren't valid, because they hadn't come from a newspaper!

Ended up we got the £10 off (not the £15) because the lady at the till had a few clipped from newspaper going spare, but that was pretty bad to give out coupons and then decide within 24 hours not to accept them!

Ah well, at least cupboards are stocked!

Lizzie's grandma has been wonderful - was going to buy us a car seat, but when we mentioned that we were looking at buying a travel system from mothercare that included the car seat, has given us money towards that! My mother is putting pennies towards the pram part, as she was going to buy us a buggy, and I've been told that work are going to get me mothercare vouchers when I leave, so we're getting the pram we really want :-) (The My3 from mothercare - it's great. Has the bits we really wanted; large wheels, pushchair mode can have baby facing you, and nice solid carrycot.)

Only 2 weeks left at work now!

1:55pm: Happy Birthday unifex !!! Have a great day :-)

12:26pm: Lots going on in head at the moment!

First things first... weekend was great. We went to the first Age of Wonder OWoD mage game. lots of fun, worked out a theory of how to fix things from a scarf with pompoms, promptly forgot it in a history re-write (arg!) and I *think* we put St Paul's back roughly how the minority of the world remembered it... although if 10 people out of the whole world remember things being different, should we try to fix it to their memories? Answer to that moral dilemna basically was "which do we like better?"... with a few additions like "well, if there is a change then it must have been worth someone's while to make the change... so it's probable the evil technocs made the world we don't like, so it's OK to reset it to what hardly any of us remember".

Also for a short period of time my PC was one of the most powerful diplomats in the UK and could get pretty much anything she wanted done! My already stupidly high influences (guess where freebiew went!) were doubled! Going to be interesting having the let-down from that :-)

One of smaller fun parts was talking to etherites & VAs about how their paradigms could be seen in terms of the OoH outlook... much funness!

Saw lots of people haven't seen for too long, which was great. I'm still so tempted to come to next game (which will be within a week of Peter's due date) but I'm going to be sensible! (Probably... ;-) )

Work has changed seating around. This means I'm not next to all the people that I generally talk to the most when working out problems, which isn't ideal, but can live with.

The main thing that is a problem though is that they have moved some of the test kits to the back wall bench. This is a high-up one, about the height of a bar or a little higher. They have higher chairs to reach them, which are uncomfortable and gave me a backache before they stopped using that bench last time, and that was pre-peter... now I can't get into the seats.

I've sent an email to my manager & her manager pointing out that from a H&S point of view having the PCs so high that I can't use them isn't the cleverest plan in the world, but haven't heard back yet. Have a meeting with manager's manager later today about one of the cases, so will talk to him then. One of other testers has been standing most of the morning as he was working over there.

11:17pm: Hafd fun moment at school, talking to head of board of governors... he was giving an example of what sort of things they decide, and mentioned that they have just started a new handwriting scheme... actually on older one that they felt was good. I mentioned that I'd seen the sheet Lizzie brought home, and it looked like the Nelson scheeme, which was good... he looked surprised that I'd recognised it, and confirmed that yes, it was Nelson!

*grin*

1:15pm: Checking out some stuff for work, found this gem on an NHS site....

"Around one in ten people living in Scotland visit a community pharmacy every day."

1:56pm: This is ridiculous.

It occurred that at some point I'm probably going to want to take Lizzie & Peter over to Arran for a holiday.

Now I'm terrified of going on the ferry in case Peter falls in.

I was a little nervous last summer when it was jsut Lizzie and Michael (9 & 15 years) but I could have a reasonable expectation that they'd be sensible, and keeping an eye on them was OK.

I'm having visions of trying to carry Peter and dropping him over the rail.

Which got me really upset a couple of nights ago, and then when I told Ian about it yesterday, ended up with my crying about it.

I know it's probably just being over-emotional at this stage of the pregnancy, but it did upset me a lot!

9:57am: For Edinburgh & surrounding with kids and/or love of Burns....
http://www.booksfromscotland.com/News/Edinburgh-Events/Blackwell-Storytelling-Burns

'Tis going to be great.

Alastair is very talented and is great with storytelling for weans!

(PS yes, I may be more than a little proud of my brother :-) )

2:49pm: Cats needing rehomed
HI,

friend of a friend is looking to rehome two 7 year old indoor cats, currently in Cardiff area.

Details here

http://vashti.livejournal.com/346937.html

1:21pm: Booked holiday for tomorrow for Lizzie's first day at non-shite school. This is good; I'm really looking forward to it. She's so excited, and can't wait to start.

Need to get her new tights as she's put holes in all of hers!

It's also good because I am so tired today - it was the same yesterday. I don't think I'm getting enough sleep as I'm finding it hard to get to sleep at a decent time, but it will work out I'm sure.

Need to work out when I'm going to start maternity leave. Which means getting it confirmed if I'm having a section, and if so, when.

I'm currently thinking of finishing a couple of weeks in advance rather than the few days I was originally planning as I'm getting very big and tired!

11:46pm: Got back on Saturday. OK, Sunday morning. Glasgow was great, somewhat frustrating in parts, and snow was pretty... Lizzie got to go on the ice in George Square not only in open air with all the lights around her but also while it was snowing! She loved it, and is still raving about the huge hot chocolates we gor :-)

Travel was not easy for the whole trip... ( Read more... )
So, all safe and well, but travel can be stressful!

7:22pm: Still not in Glasgow...

Yesterday was spent being sick, calling NHS direct & going to docs. Probably just as well we hadn't been able to book tickets due to weather!

Plan now is to get a train from Reading at 1111 which will get into Glasgow at 1715. I can't wait! Needs to breathe in Glasgow again.

I've put some favourite christmas songs on the puter at the moment and enjoying that lots. Mind you, Slade & Wizard are on my playlist on my phone for listening to on way to work all year round :-)

Packing tonight, drop off keys with catsitter tomorrow morning and head for train is plan at moment.

1:13pm: It's snowing at my work... don't know about Reading though. It wasn't snowing there when I headed this morning. I'll need to check the trains tonight!

Had anaesthetist appointment this morning. Went fairly well; ( Read more... )

In other news... Glasgow soon! YAY! Last day of work this Friday. It will be so good to get a couple of weeks off, let alone be north of the border with family. May got to SJP for Christmas day with my Granda, which would be very nice, but travel could be an issue.

My dad has seen a box.

Seeing mother tonight - she's coming to Reading before she heads up to Lockerbie next week. We may pop down there for the day as well when in Scotland.

Tree is so shiny!

5:08pm: Back from school fair - was tiring, but did get some good Lizzie pressies. One of them she saw my getting unfortunately, so just gave it to her then & there (one of the fairy book series she likes).

I saw a lovely purple bead necklace I thought she would love, so bought it... a few minutes later, she gave me an "early christmas present" - a red version of the same necklace! It was very sweet, and I'm wearing it now.

Bought a toy for Peter as well... he won't be into it for at least a year! It's a wooden toy clock with the numbers on blocks that fit into the clock face. I'm expecting he'll build with/chew on them for a wheil before he gets the idea of playing with them as a clock, but so what :-) he'll have fun with them.

That's 2 I've got for him so far... I am trying to be good and not buy every baby toy I think looks fun!

Took a picture of the tree with my phone, and it's not come out too badly. If I can get the phone-PC link working again I will put it on flickr so everyone can see how brilliant it is.

1:22pm: Set fire to toast this morning. Oops! Too easily distracted these days! Kyo didn't help by getting under my feet when I was running back into the kitchen - stupid cat! I growled at him and he fled.

It's looking like a lovely day today, which is good, as we're going to Lizzie's school fair today. It started at 1pm, but she was at theatretrain this morning, which ends at 1; she'll be a lottle late, but she isn't involved in running anything, she's just going as a customer, so it will all be fine.

She got lucky :-) She was originally given the choice of going to the funfair/extravaganza at her Grandma's on Friday, or staying home & going to the school fair on Saturday. She chose the school fair, but did want to go to the other event as well, so we arranged with Grandma that she would take her for Friday night, not the whole weekend, drop her at Theatretrain, from where we'd pick her up at 1pm and take her to school fair. So she's got to do it all.

Did I mention I love the tree?

1:14pm: Still bouncing about the tree :-) the baubles Ian got came with the strings separate, so Lizzie and I had to put them on ourselves (we were starting the decorating when Ian was out on Wednesday). It turned out to be a really great time as we were just chatting away & stringing baubles. I tied the strings into loops, and she attached them.

Then we finished decorating the tree (by which time Ian was back).

It is wonderful!

It's about 1.5m and is standing on a sideboard in front of the window. The star almst touches the ceiling, so it's a perfect height. I got 200 coloured lights for it, and with the baubles and tinsel, when the tree lights are on and the other lights are off, it looks completely magical.

I've mentioned to Ian more than once how much I love it!

1:30pm: 5 years!
Had a wonderful weekend.

Ian and I reached our 5 year anniversary of going out together. We can actually pinpoint it exactly :-)

Cam/Anarch ended in November 2004.

On Saturday 4th December 2004, vilenspotens ran a wonderful game "Once more with feeling" - any cam PC that had died (which by then included all vampires) could play, and it was a musical game.

It was brilliant :-)

That night, I was crashing at Ian's, and we ended up getting together at around 3-4 in the morning.

So we know that our anniversary is the 5th December by checking what was the first saturday/sunday after gehenna hit :-)

This weekend, we decided to be a bit extravagent for the anniversary. We were going to game 0 of the age of wonder mage larp in London, and decided to get a hotel for the Friday & Saturday nights.

It ended up being well worth it - we had a lovely time, and it was nice to be together with no distractions for a change!

Game was also wonderful; it wasn't a game so much as getting people together & talking aboutu PCs, gettting IC links and sorting out sheets. There are two Reading people that are having this as their first MET-type larp, and they seemed to be really enthusiastic by the end.

There were so many wonderful people that I haven't seen since the end of WOD1!!!

Sunday night was my table-top mage game. A couple of people didn't make it, which was a shame. For those of you who remember old game - yes, I am re-using a couple of plot ideas - Mr No-Balls lost his nuts again, but this lot killed him as well!

1:34pm: NaNo is not going to be won by me this year - not by a long shot. On the positive side though, I have done a lot more planning out what is going to be happening, and one part that was getting me very bogged down (the investigation of the murder that is kind of central to the story) is beginning to fall into place again.

Ian pointed out that it possibly wasn't the best story to attempt for this, because there in no way I could finish this story in 50,000 words!

Part of it has been other things on mind, part of it has been a lack of discipline in doing the writing, part of it has been not wanting to hog the PC all the time.

But in general... I've written most of the final scene, and I like that. I've written the bit where Kisa and Andrew meet, and like it too. And I've written other bits & pieces, have done a lot of planning, and think I actually have a plot for the murder investigation, which is good. It started off as the thing that had to happen for the actual story to work, but now it's working out in my head, to a certain extent, in its own right.

In other news, my mother called last night and I'm feeling stressed about it. She reckons she might have someone to buy the flat as it is, and wanted to know how much I wanted for it. I need to do some research on that. But the whole conversation made me wish I hadn't involved her in this at all. i don't like her being in my life to this extent, and I really don't want her to be overly involved in Peter's life.

1:01pm: Emailed Naz Sarkar - hopefully the new Reading West MP taking over from the very wonderful Martin Salter) to see if I can help... time to get involved in politics again!

12:51pm: Slight rant
One of the developers is driving me up the wall. This morning he was talking about his set-up & issues with his tenants at home. (He rents & sublets spare rooms).

He doesn't let the tenants have a key to the back door in case they don't lock it all the time.

One of the tenants persuaded him to give a back door key. After a few weeks, the back door was found to be unlocked (while tenant was in the house) and now developer is complaining that he has to spend £25 getting the locks changed so that the tenant no longer has a back door key.

I pointed out that not being able to unlock a door is a fire hazard.

He said that isn't an issue because he isn't going to have a fire.

Aparently everything in his house is completely safe, and it is not possible to have a fire there. Obviously the tenants' rooms don't have anything in them either.

So I asked - OK, say you can control it all that much (which I didn't accept) - what if someone in the flat next to you leaves a chip pan on?

"That's their problem not mine."

Then he explained that I had to understand that when you go into his house, it's a whole different set of rules, and that normal Earth laws don't apply there; he is in control. No, he wasn't kidding.

We ended up with my saying that earth laws probably would apply if he got done for manslaughter...

At the moment I'm wondering how legal this is and how I find out where he lives so I can encourage his tenants to complain to the fire brigade!

Later on...

There's a case that's been re-opened that he was working on. It was a little contentious at the time it was first done, because we disagreed on how the report should give the figures (long story short, I thought they should be correct, he thought that they would "do") - I ended up going to the on-site pharmacist and the BAs and writing up & getting approved proper requirements for this report with worked examples, and refused to pass the bug until the report matched the requirements. I think he got irritated at the time at what he regarded as my being overly stubborn & unyeilding. Especially when it took about 6+ tries to get it to a stage that I would accept.

One of the issues on which I failed it the first time was that, under certain circumstances, the report will fail to be produced at all. This got fixed.

It's now broken again after another fix to this report (making it SQL2008 compliant).

There was a separate bug raised for the failure, but talking to the Test Lead, it was decided to re-open the original as well, so that it didn't get lost, and close them both off when it was fixed. (One reason for this, by the way, is that any time anything is done to this report I want to test the WHOLE thing again 'cos it's fairly fragile.)

So the developer is pissed that I've re-opened it. I explained that it doesn't need any work done to it apart from the related fix, and they will both be closed at the same time.

He didn't agree.

It ended up with his saying "So we'll close that one then."

"No - it needs to stay open until it's all fixed."

He completely ignored what I had said, walked back round to his desk, and said "So are you closing it then?"

"No."

"OK... so do you want to do it, or will I close it?"

"No."

I think he was surprised - and irritated - that I just refused to have it closed.

Gah... he's gone through how supermarkets are deliberately causing waste so as to get people to buy more (theory - if the food is sold as close to the best before/useby/sell by date as possible, then it will go off in the home, therefore people will have to buy more to replace the wastage, therefore supermarkets keep the fresh stuff in the store-room for as long as possible so that they can sell stuff that will go off before it's eaten & increase their profits) to people on the dole...

One quote (talking about soap powder):

"Anyone who sells me a product and tells me how much to use each time is ripping me off."

I usually try not to engage!

12:26pm: Jobs at mine
Software testers (CLOSING DATE ON MONDAY!)

( Read more... )

Systems Architect

( Read more... )

Chief architect
( Read more... )

Database Developer
( Read more... )

1:29pm: Oh yeah... and speaking of Peter, little bugger decided to give me a fright this morning and didn't move about for ages! All ok now, but wishing he had chosen a less scary time to have a long nap!

1:22pm: Novel is not going well - lots of planning, lots of working out where plot is going, only 2167 words actually written.

Part of me is thinking that this year might not have been the best to start with Peter on way and working overtime for the past couple of weeks (which should now be over). On the other hand, the majority of my actual word count was done yesterday, and if I can increase it a bit & keep going, it might still work out!

At the very least, I'll have a good basis to continue with it. And I love the story - it's gone from very simple to ludicrously complex to somewhere in the middle. I've been playing with the idea for some time now, and worked out the perfect ending a couple of months ag which made me very excited about it. Now I just need to get to the end :-) I have it pretty much written in my head.

Maybe I will write the ending next. It should flow fairly easily.

I haven't decided whether to put in an epilogue or not :-) it would be nice, but then again it might be better to leave some things assumed.

I'm going to finish off the part where two of the main characters meet and fall in love, and considering posting it here. Part of me doesn't want to because I think that it would be embarrassing for anyone to read it, but then I think that that is kind of the point of writing a book? I think I may have to publish (if I get that far) under a pen name so no-one knows it was me!

How's everyone else who's doing it going?

12:41pm: NaNoWriMo
Not going as well as I'd hoped. Overtime at work & generally being knackered has not helped, but going to be doing a lot more over the next few days!

I've finally decided on a name for one of the major characters, Andrew. My original name for him, Fergus, has now been given to his best friend (or at least, they start out as friends!).

Interestingly, when I was trying to flesh him out - I knew him very well, but not what he did for a living - it occurred to make him an architect.

All of a sudden he looks like Henry Fonda!

(No, I'm not giving him the surname Davis... but having a character with the name Davis/David McCardle is very tempting!)

Ooh... actually, I think I know who could get that name... one of the police that get involved...