J's Journal | Entries

Yesterday in summary: drive, work, drive, run, game. Slow progress (but at least it is progress) at work; a thirty minute run, trying to get back into it as I feel better so far this week; and playing Half-Life 2, as I was determined not to leave such a long gap this time ;)

Today: drive, read, work, karate, drive, read. At work, I seem to be accumulating managers at a frightening rate. Karate training, apart from a quick run through our basics and kicks (including some of the jump kicks we don't often do), was mostly kata practice - I was pleased that I made very few mistakes, but it doesn't feel strong or sharp enough. I'm really pleased to have done so much reading today, though, as I've lost most of my regular reading time since we got the car. Before work and during lunchtime, I read Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" short story in "Legends II", which I enjoyed much more than I expected and now I want to re-read the book. Then since getting home this evening, I've been reading the new issue of Carbon Nation, the Porcupine Tree fanzine (thoroughly recommended to the PT fans reading this).

This all feels a bit scattered, but that's what you get from my mid-week, tired and frazzled brain.

Saturday was a lazy day - we stayed at home for most of it, had freshly-made soup and bread for lunch, and I caught up with a few software updates on our server. Later, we drove out to the out of town PC World (which was boring) and Tesco, partly to stock up and partly for some driving practice in some of the busier parts of town. We finished the day with a nice takeaway curry and (for me) an episode of The X-Files.

We'd planned to go out on a long drive on Sunday, but I wasn't feeling very well (my head hurt whenever I went from sitting to standing, for starters) so we scaled things back a bit. After a lazy morning, and a soak in a hot bath, I felt a bit better, so we did later venture out - we drove to Shingle Street, which is on the coast between Felixstowe and Aldeburgh, and must be the bleakest place I've been in years. A long, high shingle beach, with a few isolated and seemingly deserted houses. We found out later that it's the site of a supposed German landing attempt during World War 2, although that's disputed.

I resumed my sporadic Half-Life 2 playing in the evening - after another several-week gap, it again took me a little while to remember what I'd been doing, but I soon picked things up again. The part of the game I reached towards the end of playing was quite tense, so I stopped a while before bedtime just to relax.

Back to work today, and I got the kick up the arse that I needed to get stuck into the work I've been procrastinating about for the last week or so, and it feels good to be making some progress with it. Karate afterwards, with our usual instructor once more, wasn't nearly so good - I still don't feel 100%, and while I kept up with everyone else, I was left feeling like I'm just not very good at it. Especially at the sparring, which we did for the last twenty minutes or so - I felt short of ideas, too slow when I did have ideas, and I kept losing my nerve when sparring with one of the black belts, and turning away when attacked.

I did something yesterday that I never thought I'd do again - had a driving lesson! My first for eleven years. I was quite disappointed with myself at first, as due to a combination of nervousness and it being such a different car, my driving felt really rough - but it settled down as I relaxed, and got used to the car, and from then on went okay. I specifically booked it as a refresher lesson, and it was definitely useful - I've got a few things to think about and work on, mostly relating to general awareness (especially looking further into the distance, regularly) and lane discipline at roundabouts. I've booked another in a couple of weeks, and I think I'll keep doing it for as long as I feel it's making me a safer driver.

(The car really was very different, though; it was the first time I'd driven a car with power steering, and while not huge, it was the biggest car I think I've ever driven. And somehow all the controls felt much less ... direct than the cars I've driven.)

We had a low turnout for karate, and an odd mix of grades - four students at my grade and above, and four white belts. We worked through all our basics, did some freestyle combinations, and then went through our kicks - some of which I'd not done for a while, which is terrible really; I should be practicing in my own time. I struggled a bit right through the class, though, partly from not feeling very well, partly because I hurt my back again. I hope that clears up soon.

Monday: I had to scrape ice off a car for the first time in my life. Twice. The novelty wore off quickly ;) Karate training was taken by one of the black belts, as our instructor is away this week - drilled basics, practiced kicks in pairs, and then did a few rounds of sparring.

Tuesday: I spent almost all day trying, and failing, to get U2 tickets from the online fanclub pre-sale. Incredibly frustrating, having been excited about this for months. I didn't go running in the evening as I felt awful, though maybe it was just a tension headache. Sulked for much of the evening, instead.

Wednesday: Finally got the U2 tickets I wanted - YAY! Phoned people to let them know, and was generally excited and relieved at them. The rest of the day passed as a blur apart from karate training, which was taken by another of the black belts, and was mostly useful kata practice.

Today: We discovered that our car had been subjected to petty vandalism for the second time in two and a half weeks - someone ripped the passenger-side wing mirror off overnight. I'm surprised to find that again I mostly feel disappointed rather than angry (but that too). I wasn't able to put it back on, so I found somewhere near work to repair it, and it was sorted out by lunchtime.

Since getting home - which took twice as long as usual, as the road from work to home was basically one long queue - I've been for a half-hour run, stretched, and now caught up with this. Indian takeaway awaits ... :)

Finally! I'd almost given up, but I have U2 tickets for their Manchester show in June :)

Today, I've driven for around a hundred and thirty miles, and run for around two and a half ;)

The driving took up most of the day. We fairly randomly decided to head for Thetford Forest for this week's adventure, mostly on the basis of it being a bit more than twice as far away as we went last weekend, but also because in a lot of ways it was the opposite sort of place.

Once we got to Thetford, we took the one-way toll road that runs into the forest, taking it easy and enjoying the scenery. We stopped at the visitors centre for a brief bit of retail therapy, then spent a pleasant hour exploring on foot, seeing carved trees and sculptures, and ending up in the 'Squirrel Maze' which winds about through a fairly dense pine wood. I grew up playing in plantation pine woods, and while I hadn't realised I'd missed it, walking here made me feel both deeply content and a little giddy ;)

We did of course take a few photos as we went along:



Back in the car, we drove around the outside of the forest, hoping to find a nice pub to have lunch in. I'm not sure where they hide the pubs in this part of the world, but we were at least amused by the road signs warning us about a series of potential hazards - horses, deer, cows, wild fowl, and troops (!) crossing. We crossed our fingers and hoped the cows weren't army-trained. (And we did eventually find somewhere to have lunch, just when we got to the point of giving up.)

Overall, I got lots of useful driving practice; the A14 was a faster and scarier road than I'd been on up to now (or ever?), we went through the centre of several small towns and villages, the roads around the forest were surprisingly straight and fast, and I got to park in a variety of situations. I found getting back in to Ipswich itself quite stressful, due to a combination of not knowing the roads and meeting some quite inconsiderate drivers, so I'll have to make sure I get more practice at that part.

Running? Not a lot to say about it, but I went for another thirty minute run this evening. I'm finding it surprisingly hard to motivate myself to go at the moment - I'm not sure if it's because I'm not driving towards any particular goal, or because it's so close to the limits of what I can do that it's simply daunting - but I did, and it was tough, but I completed it. I made especially sure to stretch afterwards, this time, so hopefully I won't be nearly so sore tomorrow as I was on Friday.

Now I think I'll crack open series 9 of The X-Files, before bedtime.

We've put up a gallery of pictures of Aldeburgh, taken during our visit last weekend:



I very rarely do any tweaking of digital photos, but apparently I was having trouble holding the camera straight last weekend, so a couple of these have been rotated slightly ;)

Another day of support work, as a series of problems and questions came up - mostly just being a sounding-board for things, really, but I had to delve deeply into the source code at one point to remind myself how something worked.

Over the course of the afternoon I started to feel sore from last night's run - I don't know if it's because the run was hard, or because I didn't stretch afterwards - and it meant I struggled a bit at karate training. For most of the class the instructor concentrated on just two of us, calling us up in turns to do katas individually, after which I helped out by doing a little teaching, and then we finished with a few rounds of sparring. The class itself went okay, but my legs were tired and stiff, so lots of movements and kicks weren't as good as I want or need them to be, and I didn't really feel satisfied with anything I tried to do.

Haven't really done anything since getting home - but I've been hugged, and fed, and the world seems to be an alright sort of place after all :)

A fairly productive day at work today; dealt with most of the remainder of the backlog of user emails this morning, caught up via IM with one of the operational staff I support at lunchtime, and learned about a new release of ACE/Server this afternoon.

After getting home, I went for a run - fourteen minutes away from home the heavens opened, soaking me through three layers of clothes, and it rained steadily from then until I got home again. It was quite horrible - yet at the same time, it left me feeling very alive. Overall, though, it was the hardest run I've done so far, and it was a real test of willpower to complete it.

Since then, chores and Chinese/Thai takeaway, with Noodles of Fire.

Other than running, the main event in my day yesterday was my quarterly review. I went into it expecting it to go okay, but not really feeling like I'd achieved a lot this quarter - but it was actually very positive, so that was a pleasant surprise. In a way, due to the reorganisation that we're in the middle of, this marked the end of a working relationship with my current manager of nearly seven years (although he's only been managing me for the last year or so), which feels rather strange.

I spent quite a large chunk of today working on catching up with replying to a backlog of feedback and problem reports emailed in by users - I'm not really supposed to be doing this anymore, but it finally hit my threshold of discomfort about how long some of these mails had been waiting for a reply, and besides, no-one else is really in a position to deal with them at the moment. It did at least give me a stream of separate small problems to solve, which is what I needed today.

This evening's karate class was a mix of things - drilling through basics, practicing kicks in pairs (with a second dan black belt; I was ever so careful not to kick him in the head!), teaching, and doing a few katas. The teaching part involved taking twenty or so of the lower grades through some basic block and counter exercises in pairs, and was quite a challenge - it was the largest group I think I've taught, and a lot of them were young children who were ... difficult to manage. I think it went pretty well, but it was definitely a relief when someone else took over again.

I just completed a thirty minute continuous run, for the first time in my life!
(And that completes the programme I've been following ...)

The second half of last week can't have been terribly memorable, or at least it all seems to be something of a blur now. Discovering that the car had been scratched stands out, but I've whined about that already, and of course driving to work and back each day has been a mixture of fun, interesting and slightly scary as I work on getting used to it all again after such a long gap. I've been going in a little early and coming home late to avoid the peak traffic, which I'm sure is a good idea but it's making the days feel long.

Work-wise, I spent a few days re-learning how HTML forms work and some associated stuff, occasionally punctuated by helping my tech lead work out problems in some C code (which has been far more interesting). I still feel like I'm drifting along, a bit, but I'm starting to get somewhere with it.

I did plenty of exercise, at least. Karate on Wednesday and Friday both involved lots of kata practice; on Wednesday I helped one of the other 2nd kyus learn palgue pal jang, which is a great way of testing your own knowledge, while Friday was lots and lots of practicing kata, mostly, although the instructor stepped through it with us and I picked up quite a few small details that I'd not been getting quite right. Oh, and that I've been doing horse stance wrong, although it turns out I wasn't alone in that (I was right to be trying keep my back flat, but wrong to be trying to keep it vertical). And on Thursday I went for another run with mcurtains, running for twelve minutes then walking for one, twice.

The weekend was better, time to relax and just spend time together. Saturday was back to our regular routine of going into town for lunch and shopping, although we also bought an assortment of car related things in Halfords, and booked a refresher driving lesson for me later in month. On Sunday we went on an adventure, visiting Aldeburgh, which is a small and lovely town on the Suffolk coast - partly for driving practice (it's a bit further afield), partly to see the sea, partly to go somewhere new, and partly to try the fish'n'chips, which were as good as I'd heard. The driving went pretty well, on the whole - M said I'd noticeably improved since last weekend, and we even had music on in the car for the first time so far.

After we got back, I went for a run - by myself, as I failed to get in touch with mcurtains, so back up to the fifteen minute runs. I wasn't looking forward to it at all, but it went pretty well, so I suppose I should be trying for the next (and last) step in our programme sometime soon.

All the time in the gaps was taken up with watching extras from the Lord of the Rings DVD sets. I especially enjoyed the sound documentaries on The Two Towers; I'd never really thought about how much work goes into the sound production, and how almost everything you hear is constructed after the filming is done. There's a great feature on there which lets you loop a clip from the Helm's Deep battle, selecting between the various elements of the overall soundscape to hear what's going on.

Today - back to work and back into the routine, although I've spent almost the whole day trying to prepare for my quarterly review tomorrow, struggling to think of things to fill in the paperwork with. Part of me wants to shrug it off, but I know it's relatively important this time as I'm being assigned to a new manager soon and this stuff will probably form part of their first impression of me.

By the end of the day, I was looking forward to karate for a change of pace, but I really struggled tonight. Somehow I felt like someone had taken me apart during the night, and not quite put me together again right - I felt tired, and sore, and stiff. The class itself was good though; drilling through basics, practicing a few combinations, kata practice, and a quick round of sparring (without pads, which felt really odd).

As I already mentioned, last Sunday we took a walk through Ipswich docks, taking a few photos as we went:



We've put a small gallery online, if you want to see a few more pictures.

We've only had the car in Ipswich for five days, and somebody's already deliberately scratched it.

The rest of Monday was pretty quiet. I spent the whole day dealing with the support issue that came up on Friday, finding all sorts of possible solutions, but it ended up being fixed by the first simple thing we'd thought of.

There was some great news at karate training; one of the class had gone to Dagenham at the weekend to compete for a place in the English team for the European championships in February, and he got it! I'm really pleased for him. The class itself was drilling through basics and then lots of kata practice, as a group - starting to feel a little less rusty now (it's surprising how much difference the short Christmas break seemed to make). The instructor commented at one point that he'd like to see those of us at my grade go for our black stripes in March, and aim for our first dan in December - the first part was already my goal/plan, but the latter part is terrifying, to be honest.

I drove home afterwards, and that felt like the weirdest thing so far; I've been getting a lift home from most of the classes from the same guy for years, and we always talk over the class on the way home, so it felt very strange just to say 'bye' and go our separate ways instead.

Yesterday I worked at home, so that we could have a BT engineer visit to sort out the problems with our phone line (it's been very crackly over the last week, and even dropped out completely a couple of times). It took him a while to track it down - it turned out to be an almost completely corroded connection in the cabinet further up the street - but the line is crystal clear now.

I went for a run with mcurtains in the evening, our first run together this year. We did twelve minute runs, so that was much more comfortable than the runs I'd been doing most recently, and then stretched when we got back to the house. I'm hoping we can get back up to the fifteen minute runs soon.

I watched 'making of' features from the Return Of The King DVDs for the rest of the evening, as I've been doing in much of my spare time over the last few days. I think the most surprising thing is just how much of what you see isn't really there and never was; obviously you know it's a very effects-laden film, but it's so convincing that I find take most of it for granted.

It's been a busy few days ...

On Thursday we went to see Jeniferever play at The Ferryboat in Norwich, with Ed. The venue turned out to be basically the back room in a pub, but it was clearly built for this sort of thing, and was a decent size, and we actually ended up seeing three acts. First up was Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly., which was one guy, his acoustic guitar, and his Apple laptop - good songs and an interesting sound, so I'm looking forward to whatever he releases. Next up was The Search, a six-piece band who clearly have a lot of Cure in their record collection - the live vocals were weak (which might have been the mix), but apart from that I enjoyed their set, I liked the music underneath. And last but not least, Jeniferever were the band we'd come to see - a five-piece band playing music I'm not sure how to describe, but Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor! would be references, although they're a little more obviously guitar-based. So an evening of great music was had for four pounds!

It meant a late night, though, so I was pretty tired right through Friday. I managed okay through work - had trouble getting going, but a difficult support issue came up in the afternoon, giving me the kick in the arse I needed - but I really felt it at karate, physically tiring quickly. I did my first teaching of the year, giving two boys their first introduction to the basic stance and punches that we use - that felt like quite a responsibility! They were both interested and they listened, which made it a pleasure, though.

Later we went out to our first Furry of the year, where we were joined by sagima for the first time in aaages (along with his friend Matt). Ed had got hold of the new albums by Bloc Party and Death From Above 1979, so was playing lots of tracks from those during the first hour I'm especially looking forward to the DFA1979 one - and the place filled up pretty quickly after that. Lots of good music, including a short dancier set and a classics set, so we got everything from Kings of Leon to Razorlight to The Libertines to The Chemical Brothers to David Bowie to The Beatles. Later in the evening we danced quite a lot, and it turned into a bit of an old-school Furry, with The Cure and Sugar and Pixies and Mint Royale, and just us left on the dancefloor for the last song ;)

I think it might have been the only Furry we've been to in Ipswich where we didn't drink any alcohol, but we still had a great evening.

On Saturday my Dad came down to visit us, primarily to bring us a car, but it was good to see him. The rest of the day was quite lazy, mostly just letting Dad relax after the drive down, with lots of talking about car stuff (including sorting out some insurance), watching darts on TV, fish and chips, and more TV (an interesting yet cynical programme about Salisbury cathedral). We were all tired, so got an early night.

Yesterday morning we caught a taxi to the station and saw Dad safely in his way home, then walked back home via the docks - I'd never been along there, but it was a pleasant walk with lots to see, from disused warehouses to refurbished apartments, from the 19th century customs house to a flock of swans. We took lots of photos, so hopefully I'll put a small gallery of those up soon.

We spent a lot of the rest of the day getting in some driving practice. We drove to where I work, first, then went a bit further up the A12 before turning off to explore a random stretch of Suffolk roads. After lunch, we went back out, driving to work and back again a couple of times, during which it started to both rain and get dark, so I got experience of a variety of conditions ;) Overall it went pretty well, better than I'd expected, although there were a few fraught moments, and I'd done about 52 miles by the time we stopped for the day. It doesn't quite feel real yet that we actually have a car here in Ipswich, and are independently mobile.

In the evening I went for a run (fifteen minutes run then one minute walk, twice - tough), then stretched, and then was rewarded with a tasty roast chicken dinner. We finished off the day snuggled up on the couch, watching an episode of "Monarchy" which covered the conquest of 1066 and the subsequent Norman kings.

This morning I drove to work, for the first time in my life! I was quite nervous about it, it was the first time in a very long time that I'd been in a car by myself, but the practice yesterday paid off and it went smoothly despite there being a bit more traffic.