A week on, with a weekend to go ...

Yup, thats right, only a weekend to go before I can drink beer, but i'll get to that!

Its been an interesting week at work, everyone going a bit manic and everything needed to be done last week. Another bit which annoyed me was I went in early on Wednesday morning to do the final test release and then an hour later my client sent through their UAT results ... grrr!!

Ah well, thats life ...

On Sunday, Distribution Technology was ranked 40th in the Microsoft Tech Track 100. This is a big thing for my company and its a real achievement for all of us. Its a good time to be working for them and I'm really happy here, much better than my last place ... it really feels like family.

As for the beer, or lack of it ... the guys at work have come up with a cunning idea. Earlier in the summer I was said to be one of the better table football players we have in the dev department, but in the past week or so my game hasn't quite been at the top of its form. The guys think its due to the serious lack of beer in my system and my body is totally beer free and my game hasn't been great. So ... the idea is to see if when i start drinking beer again, the game ability goes back up to the same level.

However, this was potentially thrown out of the water when Russ and I won one of our dev play off games on thursday night and won all 3 of the games we played last night ... maybe I'll be even better when I have some nice cold Heiniken flowing through my body ;-)

Beer -Fu was strong (for a change)

This week was an interesting week in the life of me. From a work aspect I wasn't looking forward to it as I was being put on the project from hell and I could see a few late nights creeping in to finish bits off which I wasn't looking forward to. However, this was changed early on Monday morning and I was left on my other urgent project fixing defects which had been raised by the test team and that was a good thing.

During the rest of the week I managed to get to Body Combat twice *shock* which was awesome. It was a new release launch weekend last week and I was unable to get to either of them so it was good to get there on Monday. The new release is brilliant! I really enjoyed it and I will definatly make the effort to get to the class more over the next few months because of this new release.

Due to this gym visiting week, with a fixed car, I found myself not drinking any alcohol all week. Not even wine! This i feel is helping with the weight loss and will see how much on sunday when I weekly weigh in at the gym.

Something else which sneeked in this week was the change of the BDGA board after the annual AGM. I was asked to be the Director of Competitions by the leaving DoC and the National Director. I said I'd do it as long as the outgoing DoC organises the '08 tour as at the moment I don't have time to do it with organising my wedding, looking for a house etc. This will give me the opportunity to get involved in the sport I love so much and enable me to influence the shape of the sport in the UK.

So all in all it was an interesting week ... added to the fact that I'm still recovering from the groin strain which I picked up playing football a couple of weeks ago. Its pretty much done now, it just twinges every so often so will take it easy this week, carry on working out at the gym and attending BodyCombat and hopefully make it back to football next week.

BEER FREE IS SO HARD

When I gave up beer I thought that it would be pretty easy and going without it for a month would be ok ... i was wrong. I'm actually finding it pretty hard. Chocolate consumption has gone through the roof which isn't good for the loosing of the belly, but maybe once i get my car fixed i can get to the gym more.

On the car front, the MOT only failed today due to emissions, so that should be fixed tomorrow (hopefully). So that means the brakes are fine, but I will get them looked at as I like them to be more responsive. I know a ford fiesta isn't the most powerful car or requires serious performance, but I like a bit more of a response from the brakes.

So ... fingers crossed ... my car will be back up and operational (with a new handle) for not much money and I can get back to going to the gym reguarly etc to get rid of the belly.

Its all a big circle!

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

The day when you can say "Yar" and "Shiver me timbers" and people at work look at you funny, but you have an excuse ...

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

It maybe random, but you can be pretty sure there is a day for anything out there ... you just need to look for it ;-)

The Bourne Ultimatum

I've just seen The Bourne Ultimatum and thought it was pretty good.

I had some mixed reviews from people who had seen it and I wasn't expecting amazing stuff, but I thought it fitted in with the other two films brilliantly and rounded off the trilogy well ... and, just in case, left an opening for a 4th film. Which to be all honest, I hope they don't do because this film tied up many loose ends from the previous two.

At one point it was very reminiscent of X-Men 2 when wolferine goes back to where he had the operation to get his metal grafted on to his skeleton when Bourne goes back to the training facility where it all began ... but other than that, had some action, tense build up and lots of fighting which is what we've come to expect from a Bourne franchise film :-)

Lets just say it will be a box set trilogy which I will be adding to my DVD collection when its released!

Oh the woes of football!

And another incident with me and football resulted in pulling a muscle in my inner thigh! It needs to be added to the long list of accidents of me and the sport of football.

Its my own idiotness, but i've got to live with it!

Nevermind ...

The dangers of the GOTO statement ...

Clearing out my inbox and found another geek humour bit to post ...



:-)

No Water!

Get home from work and have no water ... booo!!

So, no water i decided that I'd go up the road and get KFC ... but noooooo ...

...

...

... no water anywhere in the road, so KFC is closed!

Booo!!!

Beer-fu was weak!

I was right, this weekend was going to be hard to be beer free, and it was ... so much so, that I couldn't do it ... d'oh!

I started off well, got to the resturant for Lau's bday bash and had a cocktail. It was very nice, but as normal cocktails are pretty expensive ... after a bit of um'ing and ah'ing I decided that i was going to drink Corona instead, generally nicer and cheaper!

So on the plus side, didn't drink any pints of beer, just a few bottles of Corona then went back to red bull, apple sourz and WKD in the club :-)

As for the night, it was very good. The food was good, the bar was good, the club was ok. Wasn't overly feeling the vibe in the club and didn't get my groove on properly, but it was good :-)

As for this week ... as i was weak over the weekend, I will be going alcohol free till friday.

Beer Free - Day #5

Today would have driven anyone to drink, it was a tad frustrating as the bit of work I was doing takes about 45mins - 1hr to execute everytime you make a change. At least I had my old machine kicking about this week to enable me to get on with other things while it was taking its time.

Anyway, the day went (eventually) and then it was 5-a-side football ... first evening of the season and boy were we all very unfit. I think cycling to work has increased my fitness, just not that type of fitness ... anyway, less of that ... we went to the pub after, and I was very good ... no beer for me!

Was offered, but said no ... my beer-fu is strong!

We shall see how strong, when at the weekend for Lau's birthday bash!

The #1 Programmer excuse for legitimately slacking off

All developers will appreciate this ...



... I got sent it at work, its an oldie but a goodie!

(Not sure where it came from originally, but if anyone has any complaints about it, please post a comment and let me know!)

PDGA Rating update...

On the 28th August there was another PDGA rating update. This took into account the last two events on the BDGA National Tour which I competed at. These events were the Quarry Park Open and the Whitcombe classic. My performance wasn't overly great at the Quarry Park Open, so much so that I managed to win the most OBs over the weekend award, but saying that still came 13th in the Am division.

I was a lot happier with my performance at Whitcombe. Saturday was solid play, but the round on Sunday morning was very good (+1 over par). I was very pleased with the play and came 7th in the Am division clicky.

My rating is now looking like it should and starting to reflect my ability (869). I'm not playing any more events this year, but the target is to get some good off season practice in and try and improve my rating next year ... and compete in a AM final :)

Day #1

Well as the end of day one of beer free comes to an end, I feel i should hit a few bit of stats, well one bit of stat ... the current size of the belly which is the target to get smaller. Having measured it earlier this evening, the starting size is 38 inchs.

To put this in perspective, my height is about 5'7, jeans size 32" 30" and weight is approx. 12stone 5 (ish).

So we shall see how this month pans out ...

Beer Free September '07

Its time I've decided that I'm going to try and get rid of my beer belly. I'm sure it'll be the first attempt of many before I get married to loose the belly, but this is the plan ...

... I'm going to go a whole month without drinking any sort of beer or lager or bottled beer or bottled lager. This isn't going to be an alcohol free month and there is no reason why i chose a shortish month, but those are the rules. So lets see if this will work or not ... ... ... could be interesting either way.

Car Trouble continues ...

After all the agro which I had the other week with my car I thought it was going to be over for a while and my car life sort itself out ... how wrong was I!

After finally getting my car road worthy, i went to use it yesterday evening to get some dinner only to find that some stupid chaffy street punk losers had tried to break into it ... while it was on my drive! They didn't get very far and gave up, but in the process they have managed to pretty much rip the drivers door handle off and completely screw up the central locking! Just what I want to happen just before going on holiday ... i'm supposed to be relaxing!!

This leads me on to the proper rant ... don't give up when things get tough! If loser chaff kids actually decided to break into a car, don't give up at the first attempt and just do damage ... actually take the bugger! This is the story of their lives, something hard comes along, they give up and start sucking the money out of hard working people and the government.

GET A PROPER JOB AND DON'T TRY BREAKING INTO 'N' REG CARS!!!

Car trouble

I've not had a ramble for a while as I've had loads of stuff on my plate, but I feel its time to have a rant about the stupid amount of money which garages charge for fixing cars!

About two weeks ago my car decided to start to break, I managed to get down to Beaminster (even though stone henge ... or should i say the drive by tourists tried to kill it then), it sat for a couple of days and driving home was fine. After a few crunching / scraping sounds coming from the brakes and some idiot making me do an emergency brake outside my house the sound was worse ... I had to take it to the garage.

I went to the garage round the corner from my house and explained i thought it was the front brakes. My car went in yesterday morning to have the work done ... only to find that a lot more needed to be done than previously thought and yup my savings were going to take a hit.

As for the rant ... how can garages, who kinda have a neish market, charge so much for labour?!?! I know they probably made some money off the parts anyway ... but seriously! They surely only need to cover the mechanic's wages, running costs and make a little money ... I can't believe it comes to so much!

Anyway, so glad my bonus is coming through at the end of the month. I'm not going to get much and all of it is pretty much going to paying for my car :-(

BDGA Tour #7 - Quarry Park

A great weekend of disc golf was enjoyed by all at the weekend. The weather was spot on and I even got a wee bit sun burnt.

I will post more when I have time, either at work or when my internet at home gets sorted. For a quick over view of the weekends joyness the results are below:

In Open Division
1 188 Derek Robins
2 200 Bruce Webber
3 204 Matt Cutler
4 209 Charlie Mead
5 214 Conor Davies

In Amateur
1 210 Andy Solomons
2 212 Angus Bruce
3 213 Jesse Denny
4 218 Richard Wood
5 224 Andy Cotgreave

Spirit Award Ivan Bromage

And the award for the most OB's over the weekend went to ...




... ME!!!

I won a t-shirt and mini disc which were donated by the chaps north of the boarder.

First thing I've ever won at a disc golf event, hopefully next time it'll be a bit better than most OB's ... but hey, got to start somewhere ;-)

Gotta Love the tinterweb!

You hear stories about how the internet is being used for bad things and illegal things, and sometimes you loose sight of the joys which the internet can bring ...

... but there are also very good things that the internet brings, not to mention things which couldn't be possible without it, which is why I'm posting. I am listening to internet radio, which is currently broadcasting a live DJ set from a night club in Japan! ( DJ SILVER FROM TOKYO - LIVE RIGHT NOW 3-JULY-07!!! on Di.FM).

How cool is that!!!

And the part which makes me smile is that i'm sitting in the office staring at my computer screen coding away ... and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of Japanese people raving away to the same music I'm listening to!

Gotta Love the internet :-)

PDGA Ratings Update

Yesterday the PDGA had its quarterly ratings update for all the events which had been submitted since the last update and the 12th (think) of June.

In this time frame I had two of my best results since starting in 2004. This included my first 900+ rated round score at Quarry Park (Tour Event #3).

My rating went up by 49 points, to a now reasonable (for now) score of 845.

Roll on QP open in just over a week ... we'll see what I can do then ;-)

A quality Bad joke ...

"A bloke starts his new job at the zoo and is given three tasks.

First is to clear the exotic fish pool of weeds. As he does, this huge fish jumps out and bites him. To show who is boss, he beats it to death with a spade. Realizing his new employers won't be best pleased he disposes of the fish by feeding it to the lions, because lions, he thinks to himself, will eat anything.

Moving on to the second job of clearing out the Chimp house, he is attacked by the chimps who pelt him with coconuts. He swipes at two chimps with a spade killing them both with one single blow. What can he do? Feed them to the lions, he says to himself, because lions will eat anything. He hurls the corpses into the lion enclosure.

He moves on to the last job, which is to collect honey from the South American Bees. As soon as he starts the bees attack him. He grabs the spade and smashes the bees to a pulp. By now he knows what to do and throws them into the lions cage because lions, as we all now know, will eat anything.

Later that day a new lion arrives at the zoo. He wanders up to another lion and says, "What's the food like around here mate?"


Any idea where this is going??? Go on take a guess........






The lions say: "It's brilliant, today we had Fish and Chimps with Mushy Bees…"

Welcome

Welcome to my ramblings. I've been meaning to setup a way to rant about stuff or post about cool stuff got a while, and I've finally got round to setting this up. I hope you enjoy it and come back for more random stuff in the future :-)

Cheers,
West