Author: jane

I finished reading Life on Air by David Attenborough over the weekend. I don’t read many autobiographies but I really enjoyed this one – it’s really well written, and full of facts about the places, animals and people he’s spent time with. Thanks to Ash and Mitűl for recommending and then buying it for us.

Over Christmas I bought a 500ml bottle of Molton Brown Shower gel. Last week I started using it and dropped it, smashing the pump dispenser lid. Over the weekend I went into the Molton Brown shop and asked if I could buy a replacement dispenser. Unfortunately they don’t stock them for the big bottles, but the lady found a 500ml bottle from their stock room, took out the dispenser, washed it and gave it to me, all for no cost. Good customer service still lives.

Okay, so we’ve all seen the geek joke about upgrading girlfriend version 1.0 to wife version 1.0 etc, well an american has taken it one step further. His poor son appears to have been named Jon Blake Cusack 2.0. I’m kind of surprised that I can’t find a website announcing the upgrade although I’m sure it’s only time.

Over Christmas we recorded Iris when it was on the tv. Last night we got around to watching it. It’s a very, very good film, although it is pretty upsetting watching such a sharp mind deteriorate due to Alzheimers disease. The acting was very good, and Jim Broadbent totally deserved his oscar for it as his sense of frustration felt so real. One thing they didn’t do was give any indication of the timeline of her deterioration, but on further investigation it appears to have been 4 or 5 years. Dementia is such an awful disease, stripping away facets of personality leaving a barely recognisable shell, and as yet their is no cure – just treatments that delay the inevitable.

I bought Richard a snowboard controller for the PS2 for Christmas. Last night I used it to play SSX3 (rather than just use SSX in training mode and try and achieve a straight line which had been all I managed to date). I’m not sure how much, if any, it’ll help me when we go snowboarding later in the season, but my calf muscles ache so I guess it’ll strengthen them if nothing else.

  

”

This morning has been a photo editing marathon. I’ve worked through the photos of Calcutta and have started the sorting of the photos of Neela and Ste’s wedding.

I had 307 wedding photos (excluding video) and have reduced this to 79 so far – so still some more culling to go before I have them finished.

London is bidding for the 2012 olympics. Part of the plan (according to BBC News) involves using some of London’s famous landmarks as backdrops to events.

“Suggestions have included beach volleyball in Horse Guards Parade and diving in Trafalgar Square. “

I’ve learnt some technical stuff today which makes the installation of our product a lot easier:

1. you can tell MSDE to use mixed authentication mode by adding SECURITYMODE=SQL into the setup.ini file or as a parameter
2. you can start the SQL Server and SQL Agent services using “net start MSSqlServer” and “net start SqlServerAgent”
3. you can make a batch file call an external program and wait until its finished before doing the next thing by using “Start /w appname” (/w means wait)

Woohoo, I’m IT Employee of the Month for Glass’s for “Achieving a remarkable amount in her first few months at Glass’s and for going the extra mile in terms of hard work and commitment in difficult circumstances”. Apparently I get some gift vouchers as well so I just need to think of where to get them for.

One of the oddest evenings we spent in Calcutta was our last night. All the friends of the wedding party went out to a bar (Someplace Else) and club (Tantra) for a session (both part of the Park Hotel). In the bar we watched the Arsenal v Middlesborough premiership game, listened to lots of soft rock (Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams and the like) before Q.E.D., a canadian rock band, performed. We really could have been anywhere, except that the clientelle were a little different to UK bars/clubs.