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7:30pm: geekiness
I cheered up at work a bit today, since I found an interesting task to work on. I'm writing a small test app to try the J2EE security features on iPlanet and JBoss - we want our app to be portable between the two since we don't know what it will be deployed on if we sell it to new clients, but these give a good balance - JBoss is strictly standards compliant but also fairly cutting edge, whereas iPlanet is less strict about compliance, but less flexible.
Our current system has its own security implementation, but the new design has more security requirements so now is a good time to start using the features the appservers give us. It looks fairly straightforward with JBoss, since it has a choice of security implementations - we can just pick the database one since that's closest to what we already have. On iPlanet it's a bit more tricky, since it can only use LDAP for user information, so this will require an extra layer of code to manage users from the application.
I have to stop being geeky now though, since we're off on holiday to Dublin tomorrow :-)
8:55am: no sleep for the wicked
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tired
I feel like I was tossing and turning all night. The only conclusion I can draw is that I'm stressed about going on holiday, which is a bit sad really. Makes you wonder why I bother, I mean.
8:46pm: Monopoly
I found that you can play Monopoly online at
Games.com, which I like. Would you like to play sometime? You can either register on the site or play as a guest, but I've registered as 'jaqdraco'.
12:34pm: exploring
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annoyed
I went for a walk this morning, and as I left, realised that despite frequently wandering round the island, I've only seen the southern end. So this time I went and explored the east and north sides. There are a lot more houses up there than I realised; this really is quite a large development. Then I went and wandered round a path I haven't followed before through Rammey Marsh. It's sad, I probably walked for about an hour, and my legs are tingley now, which suggests I am not as fit as I was.
1As I mentioned yesterday I bought a new CD-RW, since I thought the old one was broken. But I tried installing it when I got back this morning, and it seemed to be having the same problems as before. So now I'm wondering if it's actually the IDE controller that's broken (not sure what else it could be), and feeling like an idiot for spending more on bits I probably didn't need. Might try fiddlign with it again later though, just to check I tried the right settings.
1I gave a few people a surprise though, since I was wearing sandals - they're my most comfortable shoes - and my toenails are silver ;-)
8:50pm: boring
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lazy
I had a lazy day today, but I made a bit of a start on tidying up, which I'm feeling encouraged to do now because
middleman is visiting on Wednesday. This morning I did the essential local shopping - food in Sainsburys, new CD-RW in PC World (not to mention a can of air, thanks to
vento for suggesting that one). While in PC World I saw a
Microsoft Strategic Commander, which got me thinking again about alternative controls for the PC - this combined with a demo game I downloaded recently which I couldn't play on Evian because my
choice of keyboard was lacking some of the keys it needed, so I was wondering if I could use another device to add them.
1:29pm: games
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tired
I spent most of yesterday playing games (
full details here if you like that sort of thing). It was a bit disappointing gaming-wise, but otherwise nice to spend a day hanging around with the games club people. I also bought some models for the new
MechWarrior game, since I could obviously do with trying something different. The club has bought in a case at trade price so we can buy them cheaper than the shops, and still give a bit of profit to club funds.
As usual I was completely exhausted after the event, so I just slumped in front of the telly when I got home. I managed to find enough energy to have a nice chat with
jurasmum though. Not that that's an effort. Um. You know what I mean.
9:23am: We Will Rock You
Current Mood: gorgeous
Current Music: Enchant - Paint the Picture
Last night I went to see '
We Will Rock You' with some people from work.
It was good fun. The plot was a rather lame excuse to hang the songs together, but I don't think anyone really cared. There were plenty of typically Ben Elton jokes thrown in, and a lot of quoting old song titles.
What we were really there for were the Queen songs though, and most of the singers had great voices, which made it work nicely. By the end everyone was singing along.
8:38am: coffee
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sad
So, it turns out the burnt equipment smell and burble of conversation round the kitchen yesterday was due to the coffee machine breaking. How am I going to survive?
(Current drink: diet coke)
[
Update:] it's ok, someone's provided a replacement filter machine.
12:24pm: deja vu
I'm sure there wasn't a Starbucks there last time I walked that way...
11:04am: bookmarks
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amused
Current Music: Dream Theater - Misunderstood
I blame
marble for asking how to save bookmarks as HTML from IE.
( my current set of bookmarks )
In case you think it's suspicious there isn't anything particularly dodgy in there, that's because it's my work computer.
9:35am: club
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blah
Went to games club last night, but I didn't get a game, so just watched some others and chatted for a while then came home.
This morning I feel like I'm getting a cold.
5:49pm: windows
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confused
Surely when I get phoned by someone trying to sell me double-glazing it's supposed to be me that hangs up, not them?
11:18am: noise
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annoyed
Current Music: Symphony X - V
I haven't booted Ethelred for ages, but decided to today to install new stuff on it. Anyway it is being rather noisy, I suspect one of the fans is not well, but I don't really know. Any suggestions?
1:20pm: IDEs
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annoyed
I got a bit cheesed off this morning. I thought I'd take some time to check out some new Java IDEs. First was
Eclipse, since it was recommended by some of the people I was on the course with last week. It failed my 'sniff' test though, since I spent half an hour trying to get started and still couldn't work out how to do the first thing I wanted (which was to use the existing CVS checkouts I have for my project).
I also tried to get the newest version (3.4) of
NetBeans, which one of my colleagues recommended, but the windows installer wouldn't run for some reason I don't understand, and I couldn't work out how to upgrade and keep my current settings when using the zipped version.
Now I have fixes to get on with, so I'm back using my familiar NetBeans 3.3.2 (which is still the current stable version after all).
11:49am: quotes
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amused
Current Music: random
I created a new account
jaq_quotes for posting quotations that strike me. Actually I made it a community, that's mainly for ease of posting without logging out etc. but if anyone else wants to join in it's open.
9:35am: resemblance
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embarrassed
Current Music: Geoff Tate
I don't want to sound rude, but the photo of
Geoff Tate on the cover of his album reminds me of
bouncycath.
7:27pm: TV
I couldn't cope without endless Simpsons repeats any more, so I got my cable package upgraded to include Sky One.
5:40pm: 'work'
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lazy
Current Music: Opeth - Blackwater Park
Here are some rather poor photos of what I've been working on this weekend. Complete with exciting paint-pot backdrop.
( pictures inside )
11:11am: icon round-up
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silly
Current Music: Yngwie Malmsteen - Fire and Ice
Can't remember if I've done this before, a description of my current icon set. (So this'll be screwed up if you read it in some future where I've changed icons, but I don't do that very often).
( warning, introspection )
9:47am: intentions
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restless
I watched
Cruel Intentions last night, since it was on TV. I got kind of drawn into it and unthinkingly mapped the characters onto people I know - myself as Sebastian of course. I don't think I am actually like him, but it made it more poignant as I considered my own relationships alongside those in the film.
Last night was too hot, and this morning must be too hot as well, since I'm sat here comfortable in just a pair of shorts. I didn't sleep well, and keep getting flashbacks of my hand dripping with
'blood'.
As far as my objectives for the weekend go, I finished painting my small troops squad yesterday - by using a very simple colour scheme, but they look ok, and did the base colours on the bikers. So I just have to finish detailing the bikers today and the army is 'finished' (i.e. until I've played some more games with it and decide to change some units for something else).
3:57pm: oops
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embarrassed
Current Music: free playlist CD from HMV
Oh dear, I just spilled my blood red ink, and it looks like I've had a particularly violent accident, or have been scooping someone's insides out with my bare hands.
1:42pm: shop
Current Mood: flustered
Current Music: Geoff Tate
I went to Enfield this morning. First thing I noticed was although I left reasonably early, it was already too hot. I went to the post office to send a little something, then went to HMV.
In HMV I bought Geoff Tate's solo album (as recommended by
sh0kr0k, thanks). It made me wonder though, because having listened to it, I wouldn't call it 'metal' music, but it was in the 'metal' section of the shop obviously because Geoff was in Queensryche. I had a similar experience buying the last Skyclad album - they aren't really metal any more, but they used to be; and the Enchant albums, on the other hand, I found in the 'rock and pop' section of the shop, and they sound as metal as some of the other bands I listen to, to me.
I wandered back through the town, but didn't feel the urge to look in any other shops, so just went straight to Games Workshop. Luckily a couple of people running our
club tournament next weekend were there, as I wanted to talk about arrangements. Then I hung around and chatted to the staff, but amazingly didn't buy anything (but perhaps just because I didn't see the things I was thinking about buying ;-).
Did my Tescos shopping, and when I came out I was rather annoyed to discovered some builder had parked his truck right up close to my car, and had pulled in at an angle so I couldn't back straight out. I got rather flustered trying to get out, especially when a couple of other cars pulled up and sat waiting right behind me.
Now I have a headache.
9:00am: final day
Yesterday was the last day of our course. We had finished the design patterns themselves, so covered some software architecture patterns, idioms and coding standards. At the end the trainer went through several example system requirements so we could discuss what design patterns might be relevant.
We finished early so I came home and drank shandy. Meanwhile I finished painting my Chaos Terminators, started painting my next troops squad, and
chatted to nice people.
6:44pm: course day 4
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happy
Current Music: Faith No More - King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime
I was too excited to get to sleep last night, so felt tired today. Lots of caffeine kept me going though. Today we covered more Structural patterns, Facade, Adapter and Proxy, and designed the rest of our 'security system'. I've used Facade a lot on projects already, and the other two are fairly simple, so I probably wasn't working so hard today. We touched on Mediator, Command and Bridge as well, so I'll do some reading up on those.
I got home to find a (long!) letter from
lines, which was quite a surprise; she hasn't been able to get online since moving so it was nice to hear they're getting on alright.
9:41pm: fruity
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happy
Current Music: Cecil - Bombar Diddlah
I gave in and started my strawberry vodka this evening. It's a nice deep red, and it has this kind of slightly bitter rich fruityness to it. Yum. It also makes a nice drink mixed with lemonade, pink and summery.
7:24pm: course day 2
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exhausted
My brain is tired, which, together with the trains home being totally screwed up, is my excuse for not going to games club tonight. This is a good sign though, since it suggests I'm doing some thinking at the course - I have been worried at some points that I knew quite a bit of it already.
( details, as much to help me remember )
8:35pm: sunday
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amused
Current Music: Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down
Yesterday I went to Reading so I could be nosy at
trextobes new flat. Rather nice it was too.
middleman came to look too, and having looked we all went into town, along with Trextobes flatmate JP.
We shopped for a while, but Middleman was the only one who found something he wanted. We then settled down for a well-deserved lunch in the Slug and Lettuce. The food there was rather tasty (as was the waitress), but the service was somewhere worse than rather slow.
The cinema was just across the river, so we wandered over and watched 'Austin Powers In Goldmember' - which had us laughing out loud all the way. After the film we needed to chill out, so went to 'The Brewery Tap' and found some soft sofas. But then it was hometime.
9:35am: course
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curious
Just in training place, waiting for course to begin... more from me later :-)
12:45pm: captain's log, stardate whenever it is
Current Mood: dozy
Current Music: Fates Warning - A Pleasant Shade of Gray
Friday evening - watched TV and spodded, but that's ok when there's nice people around to talk to.
This morning - woke up late (8.30 ish is late for me) feeling a bit crappy. Eventually I dragged myself out to Sainburys. I must have been feeling bad because I didn't go to Games Workshop: I couldn't face the traffic into Enfield town, and didn't want to have to take supermarket shopping on the bus.
The bulb in my bedside lamp blew earlier in the week, so I went to Homebase for a replacement. I took the old bulb, but couldn't find any that matched it, so I ended up buying a new lamp, which seemed a bit silly.
This afternoon I am doing a bit of figure painting. I have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks, so I have to decide whether I'm going to be able to finish painting my new Chaos army by then or take one of my older armies. To finish it I have about 10 normal infantry, 5 terminators and 5 bikes still to paint.
3:39pm: Skid Row
Current Mood: reminiscent
Current Music: Skid Row - Wasted Time
For some reason I find it strange that a huge voice can come out of such a pretty face. In my opinion (and I'm entitled to it), Skid Row only recorded four songs that particularly stuck out, the rest were fodder. The four I'd pick are '18 and Life', 'Youth Gone Wild', 'In a Darkened Room' and 'Wasted Time'.
7:17am: dream
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confused
I dreamt about test-driving some sort of sports car, which is really not me...
12:56pm: retail therapy?
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Enchant - Blink of an Eye
Went to HMV at lunch and bought 'Skyclad - No Daylights Nor Heeltaps' because
middleman sent me a copy and I liked it, and 'Enchant - Blink of an Eye' because it's new and I like their previous album.
1:52pm: sleepy
Current Mood: dizzy
Current Music: Moonspell - Darkness and Hope
I am feeling very tired today, almost to the point where I'd phone in sick, if I wasn't at home anyway. Of course even though I turned off my alarm last night so I could try and get a lie-in this morning, I still woke up shortly before the alarm would have gone off. Stupid body.
9:10am: bookmarks
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amused
When I start reading a book, I tend to grab the nearest flat thing to use as a bookmark. When I finish reading a book, I tend to leave the bookmark in it when I put it on the shelf. Picking out older books from my shelves can be quite an interesting experience! Though a lot of them have till receipts or train tickets in, I find other things...