I’m out on the road this week.  Covering for a workmate because he’s just become a daddy (awwww). I’m equipped with a rental car, some servers and some UPS’s and rack mount kits.  The UPS’s weigh a bloody tonne! – especially when you’ve got to carry one up stairs and through a good hundred meters or so worth of classrooms.  I managed to get on site about 30 minutes early which is a good job, it turns out that the guys had to be off for around 3:30 as the place gets locked up fairly sharpish by the caretakers (how I miss working in schools during the 6 week holidays).

Its great to get out from behind the desk and meet the customers face to face – its something I really enjoy doing and I’ve always liked delivering training (I almost went down that route of technical training and I still think from time to time about the possibility of getting into teaching IT), passing on information, knowledge is satisfying.  There’s nothing quite like it.

So my rental car – a white Vauxhall Astra Estate.  It’s not bad, it’s taking a bit of time to get used to driving a petrol engine again.  I can’t believe how fast the tank seems to be emptying – I can see myself filling the thing up 2-3 times this week (I might fill it up tomorrow night when I get home just to be on the safe side as I’ve already used 1/4 of a tank of fuel).  Today was the first time I’ve really driven anywhere on my own – especially for work.  I’ve driven back from Bridlington a few times and from York plenty of times.  This was pretty much a complete first for me though.  I really enjoyed it. Aside from my arms hurting (damn that UPS was heavy).  It’s amazing just how tiring it is driving from place to place too – it takes a lot of concentration and it can feel quite draining.  I’m more tired tonight than I have been for a while.  Don’t think I’ll be having all that late a night to be honest.

I’m sat in the Premier Inn now, or rather I’m lying on my bed, propped up with pillows (the chair by the desk isn’t really all that comfortable).  It’s only about 1hr 45 from home but since I have another installation less than 3 miles away from here tomorrow it seemed silly to do another 170 miles home and back on top of what I did to get here when for the sake of a hotel room cost I can save some fuel (and some time).  I can’t believe how many times I’ve stopped in a hotel with work since the start of the year – it’s fun but its not something I could do week in, week out.  It’s nice to know that work have the confidence to send me out to customers to do installs too – it’s also good for them to know that if it comes to it and we need someone to go somewhere in a hurry, I can go.

Today didn’t go too badly, aside from not being able to get something working when it really should have done.  I spent a little too much time trying to troubleshoot it rather than just leaving it for us to sort out remotely.  Problem is a lot of what I was planning on doing training wise hinged on getting this thing to work.  It became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to get the thing up and running so I had to call it in to support.  I then overcompensated by going too deeply into a few bits and pieces but most importantly I left with the customer feeling happy and satisfied with the job.

The hotel is connected to a Beefeater, breakfast tomorrow morning is paid for but Dinner tonight I have to pay for and claim back on expenses.  “Table for one?” came the question as I waited patiently by the “wait here to be seated” board.  I expressed my embarrassment at having a table for one but she told me they regularly had tables for 1.  The glamorous life of a travelling businessmen, eh?  Fillet steak was very “meh”.  I should have gone for the rack of ribs or the mixed grill, maybe even the burger.  Still at least I’m far away enough from the pub for any noise to not reach up here.  I mentioned in a tweet it was rather strange to be sat in this restaurant by myself.  I kept expecting Sue to walk back in from the toilet or somewhere but she never appeared.  I guess I’m used to chatting and making small talk over a meal and when its not there I feel a bit strange.  It’s like eating food on my knee at home in front of the TV without the TV and in a large empty restaurant…..so not very like that at all I guess.

I’m glad the install tomorrow is at 9:00 – it gives me plenty of time to get everything working and explain the system to the customer.  As long as I don’t encounter any problems tomorrow, things should flow a little more smoothly too.  Depending on what time I finish I’ll either head back to the office or head straight back home.  I need to pop in either tomorrow afternoon or very early (pre 7:30) Wednesday morning to pick up the gear for the install on Wednesday.  The customer has asked for as early a start as possible from around 9:30 so I’m going to aim to get there in good time so we can get started.

The install on Thursday isn’t too far away although theres the potential for a lot of driving as I head down to Birmingham for that installation on Friday.  Busy week.  Just hope my back holds out with all this lifting and driving :p

Its made me realise just how weird this sort of a job can be in relation to an 8:30-5pm job.  As soon as I parked up in the school car park I wolfed down my sandwiches I’d packed this morning and went out to the school.  I was about 30 minutes early but I’m glad I was since I encountered a few problems.  I didn’t stop until 3:30 and then I drove to the hotel.  Makes you realise how lucky you are to have things like lunch breaks in the office and stuff – out here you’re at the mercy of the installations diary and you have to work around that.  If you encounter problems it means you might miss lunch, you might not be getting home until later, much later.

I was planning on doing some coding but I just don’t think I have it in me tonight.  I just want to lie down and watch a movie – I’ll see if theres anything decent on freeview in a bit, if not I have ghostbusters 1/2 and the back to the future trilogy on my laptop to keep me going.

To sum up – I’m having fun, but sometimes I think this should be a 2-person job (especially with the weight of some of the kit!), though probably more so I have someone to talk to over dinner.  Still, I guess the flipside to the table for 1 scenario is the waitress thinking that you and your installation buddy are a couple…..

I don’t mind the places, it’s fun to have a look around, I just hate them when they’re full of people.  Inconsiderate, rude people who hit you with their trolleys and stand in the middle of the aisles.  Anyway, I digress, we went fairly late on and it was nice and quiet.  Which is great, except there were a couple of bits and pieces that we wanted that were out of stock.  Balls.

Spent £120 to the penny – how we did that god only knows, bet we couldn’t do it again.  Not a single ready meal in sight and as far as snacks go, the worst thing in the trolley was a pack of snack size mars bars at 3 ww points a go.  Not too shabby at all. 

Anyway, I do this every time we go to the supermarket, I have a look on the dessert aisle to see if I can find something I remember having as a kid. 

Basically, imagine angel delight, only warm with a crumble topping (as in apple crumble without the fruit).  I think there was a chocolate one too. 

So there you are, that’s my description of it – anyone else remember having this or just me?

Morrisons also used to do some fantastic potato triangles along with cheese buttons, they don’t do these anymore.  There’s also those crisps that were wheels, made from corn-type stuff.  Monster munch used to be bigger (they brought mega monster munch back as OLD) and I’m sure that Wagon Wheels were bigger too. 

Lion’s have been replaced in the hanging bags with substandard maynards variants (original recipe lions stuff still available from the cash and carry in 3kg weigh out boxes). 

This was probably one of those posts I could post on either my main blog or the WL blog, I figured this one has been getting neglected of late

Does anyone else remember things you used to be able to get hold of but can’t anymore?

I was sat on the sofa, sorting through about 10 years worth of backup cdrs, cdrs with anti virus and spyware solutions that I’d done to take round to people’s houses to sort their pc’s (and never labelled) and lots of loose original PC games.  Whilst not exactly the most glamorous of jobs I could have been doing, it was a necessity and something that only I can do. 

Sue was cooking tea, we had steak slice (pastry for the first time in three weeks ftw!), potato waffles (they’re waffly versatile) and beans (see the advert said they went with beans).

She’d just brought tea up at about 6:30, was pouring me out some coke and turned around to go back to the other sofa and pour herself some coke when she fell over.  Proper big style fall, not a stumble.  She went straight down and almost into the coffee table.  No idea what happened.  Her toe was bleeding quite badly and her arm hurt.  Other than that she’s fine (thank god).

Problem being, she had most of a 2l bottle of Coke Zero in her hand and her laptop was sat in front of her sofa. 

The keyboard was covered, the laptop was still on.  I flew over there, killed the power, unplugged everything (we’re still trying to find the USB mouse dongle), pulled the battery and got the thing on the floor.  There must have been around half a pint of coke in there.  It being  a HP, getting the keyboard out didn’t seem like the easiest thing to do.  I tried to get most of the bezel off from around the top but the screws weren’t having it.  Found out the top bezel screws were in the battery compartment.  Eventually got them out and got the keyboard out.

There were one or two small puddles of coke below the keyboard, I mopped these up.  The mobo seemed to be dry. 

Found a new keyboard on ebay at £12.50 and bought it just in case. 

Looked at the keyboard and the underside was covered in sticky back plastic.  There were mass puddles of coke under there.  Took the keyboard downstairs and ran it under the cold tap, couldn’t shift the stuff from the underside so had to break the stuff and pull it off.  Gave it a really good clean, shook as much water out as I could.  Put the heating on and then put the keyboard on the radiator.  Flipped it every 5-10 mins and after 30 mins it was bone dry. 

Put the laptop back together, ran some tests, tested the keyboard.  Everything seems okay. 

It probably helped being Coke Zero – no sugar, no sticky.  Still liquidy which is bad for laptops. 

Phew.

That was probably the scariest moment I’ve ever had (Sue, not the laptop silly).  If anything had happened to her I’m not sure what I would have done. 

This morning she tells me that she hadn’t had anything to eat yesterday and she’d last eaten at about 1am at work.  Giving her around 17 hours of non-foodage.  Couple that with not sleeping yesterday morning very well and she probably fainted from exhaustion and lack of energy. 

Eek.

So yeah, last night wasn’t fun.  I’m just glad Sue is okay.  I’m also glad the laptop is okay because that would have cost me money to fix. 

I hope tonight is nice and quiet and we can just both chill out.

It’s been a long couple of days, Sue has been working Long Days so I’ve been getting up at around 6:20am to get her to work and then going straight to work myself.  I guess I could have gone to the gym but god only knows what sort of a state I’d be in now if I had.  Spent just under three hours on the phone today.  As far as support calls go, that isn’t too bad, especially when you consider there was only me today.  Still - one more day left and then I get to go down to London to go to the BETT conference. 

The buzz in the office over the last few days has been fantastic.  I’m really looking forward to it.  Everyone is so psyched up about Frog 3.0 – we’re really excited.  It’s a fantastic product and I think the customers are going to be amazed with it. 

Had a bit of a headache this morning before I managed to get out for lunch, seemed to clear up this afternoon which is always good.  Headaches are bad enough on their own, couple that with concentration and phone time and you’re not having a good day at all. 

I’ve got more than enough points saved up already this week from exercise (walking to town and back from work) and saving points every day that I’ll be able to have the main course I’m thinking of on Thursday night without actually using up any of my allocated points for the day.  I might even be able to stretch to a potato skins starter or something.  Pudding I’m not sure about.  If I’m full, I’ll leave it. 

I’m not planning on drinking much (if at all) whilst I’m doing there.  Going to stick to the diet drinks (maybe diet coke and vodka – that’d work.  Looks like there is 1point per shot of vodka, which is less than a bottle of bud at 1.5 points). 

Fingers crossed that when it comes to Saturday morning and weigh in time that I’ll have still lost something or at least not gained anymore.  I’m quietly confident that I’ll see a reduction again this week though. 

Very hungry tonight, got 4 points left that will go to waste if I don’t use them (can only save 4).  Might have a small bag of maltesers or haribo later on, we’ll see.

Time to go and stick the chips in

Basically if you have so many points that you’re “allowed” a day – if you’re feeling satisfied and full, it’s getting late and you still have 5 points left for the day – bank em.  If you don’t use them by the end of the week, thats 5 points you’ve not used.  Great stuff. 

You’ll lose weight steadily on WW if you eat up to your points limit.  Mine is around 1900 calories a day I believe.  Theres some formula about it being 50 calories for each point plus a load of other stuff that it takes into consideration. 

Anyway, the point (heh) is that it works both ways.  In the eating out guide it states that if you go out for a meal, you don’t make sensible choices, you have a rough night and you go over your points limit, chalk it up to experience and start again the next day. 

The progress you make over a month means that it doesn’t matter if you have a burger every once in a while.  It all balances out, if you can plan and make room for the burger, then great.  At the same time, it doesn’t matter so much if you have a moment of weakness. 

As I’ve said before, the minute you make a food forbidden, you’ll want nothing but that food.  That’s the way your mind works. 

Stupid brain. 

So I guess the point of this post is to remind myself that if I don’t use all of my points for the day, no biggie.  At the same time if I really am hungry and I go over my points for that day – it isn’t the end of the world.

I had a brisk walk to Sainsburys and back today – 15 minutes each way.  That gave me 3 bonus points.  Super.  Won’t be using them though.  That’ll take my total saved up this week so far to 8 and that’s if I don’t have any to save at the end of the day.

That’s almost enough for a Big Mac

I love this stuff, and it’s point free.  Lovely cinnamon.

Now I need to find a mortar and pestle.  Hmmmmmm