Not another day like yesterday...
Feb. 14th, 2002 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusHopefully today won't be as bad as yesterday. Yesterday was awful. If today goes that way too I am going to be a wreck by tonight. But lets go further back a bit first...
My last entry was about a week ago whinging about my neck and shoulders playing up again. They are a lot better now but I still have shoulders that ache all the time. I know it is because I am too tense because when they start really hurting I can make a conscious effort to relax them and feel them loosen up a bit at least. I think I need to work out what is causing this. I think it might be sitting hunched over a computer all day so I am currently trying to adopt a better posture and so on whilst working (and I am not playing on my computer a huge amount at home at the moment).
Other stuff that has been happening. I had a weekend a while back. Friday night I went to the pub crawl. Turned up a bit late due to getting evilly distracted by battlefaeries. I chatted to some people I hadn't seen for some time and then finished the pub crawl when everybody else stayed in the Magdalen Arms. I had friends who were going to be at the firkin so I headed up there to see them.
On friday I also received an amusing text messages from my housemates girlfriend. The message was along the lines of "Tell TFM that JFM just phoned and is upset because MFM has gone to cirencester with hugo..." I got the vague impression that tristam's sister had run off with some bloke... As it turns out it wasn't quite as bad as first impressions suggested and the vague story is that his sister had dropped out of school (lower sixth) to go do horse riding stuff in cirencester with her horse (hugo). She is then planning on doing a-levels again after that. All vaguely sensible really.
Saturday was quite cool. Went round to Templar's after lunch and sat talking to steve, steve and John whilst a silly computer game was played (Jak and Daxter?). Steve (P) was playing mostly but I took the occasional turn at the sticks to prove my ultimate computing prowess (two minigames steve couldn't do and I did first or second time - sometimes I think I play too many games).
Whilst there I collected one of the three things I expected from Steve (his old DVD drive which I replaced with a new one). He failed to bring the other two, one of which was a graphics card that we came to an arrangement with over my building his old computer (buggered if I can remember what the arrangement was any more though) and the other being my birthday (or is it christmas...) present that I am intrigued to see how belated it will get. :) On the plus side it will make it up to four people who gave me presents this year. :)
I left Templar's at about four or something like that to go home before heading down to london. Got home got ready, went out. TFM and I chatted on the way down to london and fell asleep near london. :)
We were down in london for a birthday meal. The birthday is for the domain earth.li which is now four years old (I think). Go see http://www.earth.li/ and I'm sure they have a bit more information on the domain and stuff. Basically though there were about 25 of us who met in a pub before going off to a restaurant for nice food and lots of wine. We all got very drunk and had a thoroughly pleasant evening. There is nothing in particular to tell of, just that there were nice people I don't see very often and it was great.
Sunday... I expect I did something on sunday but off the top of my head I forget what. I am fairly sure I watched some buffy and angel videos and finally got to teh end of season 5. I'm sure I must have done more than that but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Apologies if I spoke to anybody in particular or worse still went to see them and totally forgot.
The week started fairly easily. Tuesday it got more hectic as I discovered full system testing was due to start the next day (wednesday) and there were various things that needed implementing before then and I got to do some of them. I was very paniced and ended up working late trying to get somethind done despite the fact that I was meant to be at a friends house for 7:30. At about 7:00 (maybe a bit later) I left work and headed home. Stopped off for some food and then went out again. At about 8:30 I arrived at Matt's house to play on his computer games. I started off on the sill dance mat that he has on his playstation. Dancing along to the jungle book is a lot more fun than I ever gave it credit for and a lot harder than it looks.
I did this until I got my feet thoroughly tangled and I'm sure I looked like I was in some slapstick comedy with my legs going in all directions as I tried to do such a simple thing of pressing buttons with my feet. I was told I was better than most to start with and actually got high score on one of the levels so matt decided that wasn't on and put me on crazy level. This is more where the riverdance came in as I tried to hit both left and right at the same time followed by up and down and it all just went horribly wrong.
Bowing out and declaring myself not ready for that I watched Matt take a turn and was most thoroughly impressed. I think it helsp if you've done it before so know what is coming up but he did damned well.
After that we played the surreal game of Bishi Bashi Special. It is jsut a series of mini-games that you play against other people and the one with most points at the end wins. Doesn't sound too weird? Well just think Banzai but in computer game format (as I believe Krys described it). With fantastic games like "Uncle Launcher" and many others with equally silly names that I have forgotten. Its a weird game but very call. And Bishi Bashi is a very cool phrase and I have no idea what it means. :) Maybe I'll ask somebody later.
After an hour or so of games Krys came back from kung fu (karate if you want to be accurate but I don't) and after she showered and stuff we did the pancakes thing. Krys made the first round and then after that we all tried to take a crack. Matt's first one was a little darker than is normally expected but apparently edible. My first one got fed to the bin after being scraped off the bottom of the pan. My next worked though and was yummy. :) After a bit more chatting and stuff I went home and prepared for the next day at work.
I knew yesterday was going to start off hard because I had to finish the work I had been doing that was technically meant to be ready by first thing yesterday. I ended up working like a demon until about 11:00 when I finished it. Unfortunately on the first day of live testing *nothing* was working. Databases weren't being updated for no reason, files weren't being sent, you name it, it went wrong. I worked basically at top performance from 9AM until about 4:30 when all the urgent things were out the way and I was burnt out for the day. Low mental activity tasks went from there on in as I regained my sanity.
There were some things that still needed doing but they could wait. I went home absolutely shattered. I came in today and in short order got the question "are the stock files working?". A simple task I thought since all I had to do was activate the receiver. But of course they all went wrong. I blame a large part of things being bad on John who is my colleague in this stuff and is out on a training course. Alot of this stuff I can say "It was working before he did this" although to be fair I've found at least one thing that was me being a muppet and others where it is hard to pin the blame. :)
I am going to get back to work now though having written far too much and not even in my lunch break. I wanted to write this though and I've done a good lot of work already this morning.
My last entry was about a week ago whinging about my neck and shoulders playing up again. They are a lot better now but I still have shoulders that ache all the time. I know it is because I am too tense because when they start really hurting I can make a conscious effort to relax them and feel them loosen up a bit at least. I think I need to work out what is causing this. I think it might be sitting hunched over a computer all day so I am currently trying to adopt a better posture and so on whilst working (and I am not playing on my computer a huge amount at home at the moment).
Other stuff that has been happening. I had a weekend a while back. Friday night I went to the pub crawl. Turned up a bit late due to getting evilly distracted by battlefaeries. I chatted to some people I hadn't seen for some time and then finished the pub crawl when everybody else stayed in the Magdalen Arms. I had friends who were going to be at the firkin so I headed up there to see them.
On friday I also received an amusing text messages from my housemates girlfriend. The message was along the lines of "Tell TFM that JFM just phoned and is upset because MFM has gone to cirencester with hugo..." I got the vague impression that tristam's sister had run off with some bloke... As it turns out it wasn't quite as bad as first impressions suggested and the vague story is that his sister had dropped out of school (lower sixth) to go do horse riding stuff in cirencester with her horse (hugo). She is then planning on doing a-levels again after that. All vaguely sensible really.
Saturday was quite cool. Went round to Templar's after lunch and sat talking to steve, steve and John whilst a silly computer game was played (Jak and Daxter?). Steve (P) was playing mostly but I took the occasional turn at the sticks to prove my ultimate computing prowess (two minigames steve couldn't do and I did first or second time - sometimes I think I play too many games).
Whilst there I collected one of the three things I expected from Steve (his old DVD drive which I replaced with a new one). He failed to bring the other two, one of which was a graphics card that we came to an arrangement with over my building his old computer (buggered if I can remember what the arrangement was any more though) and the other being my birthday (or is it christmas...) present that I am intrigued to see how belated it will get. :) On the plus side it will make it up to four people who gave me presents this year. :)
I left Templar's at about four or something like that to go home before heading down to london. Got home got ready, went out. TFM and I chatted on the way down to london and fell asleep near london. :)
We were down in london for a birthday meal. The birthday is for the domain earth.li which is now four years old (I think). Go see http://www.earth.li/ and I'm sure they have a bit more information on the domain and stuff. Basically though there were about 25 of us who met in a pub before going off to a restaurant for nice food and lots of wine. We all got very drunk and had a thoroughly pleasant evening. There is nothing in particular to tell of, just that there were nice people I don't see very often and it was great.
Sunday... I expect I did something on sunday but off the top of my head I forget what. I am fairly sure I watched some buffy and angel videos and finally got to teh end of season 5. I'm sure I must have done more than that but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Apologies if I spoke to anybody in particular or worse still went to see them and totally forgot.
The week started fairly easily. Tuesday it got more hectic as I discovered full system testing was due to start the next day (wednesday) and there were various things that needed implementing before then and I got to do some of them. I was very paniced and ended up working late trying to get somethind done despite the fact that I was meant to be at a friends house for 7:30. At about 7:00 (maybe a bit later) I left work and headed home. Stopped off for some food and then went out again. At about 8:30 I arrived at Matt's house to play on his computer games. I started off on the sill dance mat that he has on his playstation. Dancing along to the jungle book is a lot more fun than I ever gave it credit for and a lot harder than it looks.
I did this until I got my feet thoroughly tangled and I'm sure I looked like I was in some slapstick comedy with my legs going in all directions as I tried to do such a simple thing of pressing buttons with my feet. I was told I was better than most to start with and actually got high score on one of the levels so matt decided that wasn't on and put me on crazy level. This is more where the riverdance came in as I tried to hit both left and right at the same time followed by up and down and it all just went horribly wrong.
Bowing out and declaring myself not ready for that I watched Matt take a turn and was most thoroughly impressed. I think it helsp if you've done it before so know what is coming up but he did damned well.
After that we played the surreal game of Bishi Bashi Special. It is jsut a series of mini-games that you play against other people and the one with most points at the end wins. Doesn't sound too weird? Well just think Banzai but in computer game format (as I believe Krys described it). With fantastic games like "Uncle Launcher" and many others with equally silly names that I have forgotten. Its a weird game but very call. And Bishi Bashi is a very cool phrase and I have no idea what it means. :) Maybe I'll ask somebody later.
After an hour or so of games Krys came back from kung fu (karate if you want to be accurate but I don't
I knew yesterday was going to start off hard because I had to finish the work I had been doing that was technically meant to be ready by first thing yesterday. I ended up working like a demon until about 11:00 when I finished it. Unfortunately on the first day of live testing *nothing* was working. Databases weren't being updated for no reason, files weren't being sent, you name it, it went wrong. I worked basically at top performance from 9AM until about 4:30 when all the urgent things were out the way and I was burnt out for the day. Low mental activity tasks went from there on in as I regained my sanity.
There were some things that still needed doing but they could wait. I went home absolutely shattered. I came in today and in short order got the question "are the stock files working?". A simple task I thought since all I had to do was activate the receiver. But of course they all went wrong. I blame a large part of things being bad on John who is my colleague in this stuff and is out on a training course. Alot of this stuff I can say "It was working before he did this" although to be fair I've found at least one thing that was me being a muppet and others where it is hard to pin the blame. :)
I am going to get back to work now though having written far too much and not even in my lunch break. I wanted to write this though and I've done a good lot of work already this morning.