Another week bites the dust

Yesterday was the funeral of Veronica, the wife of my very good friend. I read the eulogy in the church. Oddly I found this incredibly nerve wracking. Not sure why as I am quite a confident public speaker generally. I tried to strike a balance of somberness with some humour from her life to lighten the atmosphere a little. It seemed to go down OK.

RIP Veronica.



For me the weekend starts tonight, when we go out with Nick's mum and dad and sister and family for dinner. Not sure where, or whether it's going to be any good, but it's Nick's dad's and sister's birthdays - so this is their treat. We'll enjoy it and have a nice time.

Tomorrow kicks off early as a man is supposed to be coming at 8am to put a new windscreen in the car. To be honest, I'm slightly doubtful that he will arrive before lunchtime, and even more doubtful that he will have the right windscreen with him. Why am I so cynical about these skilled tradespeople? Experience perhaps.

A Weekend away

A busy few days - the death of the wife of a very good friend and weekend away in the caravan.

I've been busy working on the Eulogy for my friend's wife- and that's left me with little time to write on here.

We did have a weekend away in the caravan - in Worksop. Not the first holiday destination you would normally have in mind, but as a base for us to explore the norther part of the Peak District it was OK. I wouldn't particularly recommend Worksop to anyone but it was OK.

Two lovely sunny days - then Sunday - heavy snow for the tow home, which I was worried about. I've never towed a caravan in snow before!

Buy the way - if you click on the photo's it (should) will take you to Flickr where you can see the originals, plus all my other stuff.




But we saw some nice things.



Some sign of spring?



Some beautiful villages.




And some wildlife!

Back in the grind

Monday rolls around only too quickly again.

A nice weekend though - Man turned up as planned to pick up the item he won on eBay and away he went, apparently happy. Result.

I cooked Nicky a nice meal last night for Valentines day - not sure it was as nice as I intended, but it was OK.

Disty is now sampling solid food, and has been having something called baby rice and doing OK with it, so I bought her some Banana and Apple flavoured porridge - as a change, and she's mad for it - polishing off 3 helpings in one sitting yesterday afternoon. It was lovely to see her so keen - leaning forwards each time I took the spoon out of her mouth to scoop some more on! She polished it off then had a little nap - which was good as she wont normally have a nap of an afternoon, but that means she is very tired in the evening and a bit crabby! Last night she was less crabby and was good as gold - off to bed at 7 and slept through to 7:30 this morning.

Bless her!

It's nearly here...

The wekend that is.

Have a chap coming tomorrow to pick up one of the items I sold, and the other has already paid and gone. So that's a result.

I've been agonising for the last couple of days about what to do about/with the server at home. It's sitting in the garage chewing up power and not doing a lot at the moment. OK it's got a couple of terrabytes of data it serves up as and when needed, backups of all my pictures, DVD's/Films and music plus all our documents for the company and personal one. But it's no longer running Exchange, so it's a bit of an over kill I think.

So I've been looking at NAS's - the DROBO with DROBOSHARE looks good, and I have had positive things about them from someone who's got one. But they are a lot of money - even shopping around, by the time you've put some disks in you are looking at the thick end of 600 quid...

I'm sure they are a Rolls Royce solution, but blimey. £600 is a bit steep - for something that will be obsolete in a year. SSD's will get bigger and cheaper and probably be the right answer in a year or two...

So, stuck for the best solution at the moment. All thoughts gratefully received.

Have a good weekend - and don't forget it's Valentines Day on Sunday or you will be in trouble... Despite what they say about it not mattering.

Is that the weekend I can see in the distance?

Just about. Thank $Deity - I really need a break i think, but am not planning on having one this side of April - for lots of reasons - one is that I have too much to do at work (as always) and the other is that the weather is rotten and who wants time off when it's cold and grey?

Picking up a cold at the moment too - a rotten cough - not too bad yet but very productive (as my medical collegues say). Lovely.

Looking for photography courses to book myself on at the moment - once you start researching this it looks like every photographer in the country, at some point, stops taking pictures and starts charging a couple of hundred quid a day for lessons. Some of them seem to make no bones about it - and advertise it as a day walking around outside (wherever they are based - so either countryside or architecture) taking pics and having a pub lunch...

I am after some detailed time in a proper studio - I want to learn more about lighting and posing models than I do about pub lunches or starting your own business. Some of these courses are no more than thinly disguised ways of selling franchises - they even say in the blurb that they prefer people with no experience behind a camera at all and no skill or artistic flair required... Dodgy devils.

Bloomin eBay!

Well - both items sold for decent amounts. But one item suddenly shot up 25% in the last couple of seconds - a bidder with zero feedback and based in the Caymen Islands! Oh joy.

Cancelled the bids from him - (it was for a canal boat) and sold to second chance offer second highest bidder. More messing about than I'd like, but still - it's done and dusted.

Another day, another dollar...

Looks like my sales on eBay are going well - both items have a few hours left and are both already many times whatr I had expected to get for them. Result.

Shame it's so cold outside - bitingly cold, the sort of cold that makes you cold just thinking about it. I would have liked to go somewhere in the caravan this weekend, but I don't think it's going to be possible. There's a good chance the eBay buyers will want to collect a the weekend anyway I suppose. C'est la vie.

Still - spring is coming - it's a way off still, but the snowdrops in the garden are looking beautiful. Hope is in the air.

Just got to keep focussed on finding a new contract for April when this one ends or I'll be penniless!

A busy weekend

Selling a few bits and bobs that I don't think I'll be using for a while on eBay - so I suppose it means I wont ever be using them again if I think about it...

Anyway - I am always amazed at how much things can make on eBay - as long as there is a good write up - in half decent English and not all written in capital letter or mobile 'phone txt spk. So, I am pleased, at the moment, anyway that my things are selling for more than I expected them to.

I'm feeling a bit pressured financially at the moment - current contract is coming to an end soon, and I need to make sure I go straight into another one, and I really can't afford to be lazing around at home when I could be out working. Also need to start really pushing the photography now.

There must be ways of making a bit of money without killing yourself in the process - but I am not sure I have found it if there is.

Any ideas gratefully received!

A lazy ordinary bloke called Simes

Well, despite my best intentions to write something (almost) every day, here we are, weeks having gone by and nothing. This blog has been left in the corner, ignored by me, like a toy the day after boxing day when the first set of batteries has gone flat. I would chastise myself, but, in mitigation, it's been a busy first few weeks of the year.

There was the Lorenzo stuff to finish off - and a jolly good PID etc was created (if I do say so myself), but that's all being left to languish in a dark filing cabinet for the time being (like this blog eh? - A pattern of my life is emerging).

Then, I treated myself to a nice shiney new iPhone, and jolly good it is too - and I've been engrossed in how it works and what jolly apps I can play with on it since I got it. Apparently it makes phone calls too. I rather like it, but the battery life is rubbish. It will do a full day OK - just about. Luckily it's easy to charge, any PC can act as a charger, as can my car etc etc. I bought myself a spiffy new clock radio for beside the bed and that's an iPhone dock too, so it charges through the night - as long as I put it into airline mode when I hook it up to stop the constant buzzing of push emails arriving.

The push email thing is jolly good, emails just arrive as they are sent. But, also jolly annoying. I can't ignore them if I am doing something else - I mean it might be life or death mightn't it? I'm not sure if emails following me everywhere and instantly available for reading and replying is enabling, or slavery.

I have also swapped my email and diary infrastructure over to the cloud! That sounds rather better than admitting I broke my Exchange server system at home setting it up to sync push emails to the iPhone and took the easy option of setting up Google apps for us to use instead.



Then, last weekend we picked up the new caravan - new to us anyway. it's a 2008 vintage Sterling Europa 620 - which for those in the know is a great big (26 feet long) twin axle thing with a fixed bed and rear washroom. Jolly nice it is too - we went to Leamington Spa in it last weekend, as a shake-down run to see how it all worked and it was fine. Apart from the awning - that I felt let it down somewhat, being old and shabby. So that's been eBayed and replaced with a nice new Dorema in Burgundy.

So now, I'm back in the grind working hard to make the money to pay for it all... Let's hope the recession is over before this contract ends in April (hahahahaha).

The Photography business has been a bit quiet since Christmas, but I've now got a couple of weddings to do this year - which is nice.

Little Elizabeth is doing really well - she had her first 'solid' food last night. I fed her, from a spoon, some ghastly looking mix of rice and milk. But she seemed to enjoy it and understood the whole swallowing something different thing. I'm so proud of her! Nicky took some pics of the whole thing, so i'll try to post them soonish.