pmsumner

So in a shocker, I'm here sat at home with a cold. I was in bed last night at half past eight, which is so unlike me. Half past midnight is more my style. And I've been feeling rough all day - not badbadbadhorriblenastygoingtodie bad, just ugh. Thinking is a challenge. I've taken advantage of the time I took off work to catalogue our DVD collection (again).

This time I've been using a tool called "My Movies". This is quite incredibly handy. It's using a sledgehammer to crack a very small nut, as the tool has an MS SQL Server backend, however it's brilliant for my purposes. You stick in the barcode (or allegedly scan it with your webcam) and it comes back with all the relevant details. They appear to have their own database of these things which is huge - out of 205 DVDs I catalogued today only two weren't in there.

This way of doing things also allows them to easily put a catalogue of your DVDs online. Because they have a web catalogue of everything, they only need the list of your DVDs, all the details (cast, crew, pictures) are stored online! See http://c.mymovies.dk/pmsumner for ours.

Following on from my last post about "Sushi for Valentines", the Sushi Bar in Chester is back open again, hurrah! We should go along - love it. Jane had a good birthday and we still haven't received one of her presents, almost 2 weeks after the event.

My work is carrying on apace, though I have had a few interesting tidbits recently. I was tasked with the unenviable task of reinstalling Windows Server 2003 on a Dell Poweredge server.

This worked fine up until the point I realised it had installed onto a drive it identified as E: rather than C: - probably not a problem but this being one of HBOS' servers (they don't like us at the moment), I'm sure they'd rather not have that to deal with. In the end I tried a registry hackdoobrything to change drives which broke it again, so needed installing yet again. I'm glad it was a fast machine I was doing it on ;)

Interestingly, I have since found that the whole problem I was reinstalling this all for has been caused because someone's not used standard Java libraries in their code, and changing the region (specifically date format) from US->UK breaks it completely. FFS. We've spent HOURS trying to sort this out.

Also been dealing (on the side) with some stuff coming from the Middle East region. They have a bank customer who is trying to get us to "lend" them 100 320GB hard drives for an unspecified period because (as far as we can tell) they've ballsed something up. Spoke briefly to the director dealing with it the other day who said (and I quote) "they can sod off!".

I really should go to bed soon, my head has given up on me and is in total fail mode. It's going to explode... I do have more to say but this has taken me 20 minutes to write already :)

Since Saturday evening I've been feeling a bit off, and come Monday I was whispering hoarsely instead of speaking. I thoroughly blame ginny4harry, who definitely sounded ill when she arrived :) Both her and buckbeakbabie arrived on Thursday and stayed until Monday.

Friday evening we went for late night bowling, and lo it was great fun. I sucked more than I am used to doing, I am trying to persuade myself that it's purely because I am so out of practice, or that it was really late for me (for the past few weeks I've been in bed for no later than half ten at night, and this session started at half ten!).

So since I can't speak I've been off work, though I've been trying to check emails and respond to things as best I can given the crappy remote access facilities we've got. I think I even managed to tell somebody something completely wrong, though it was picked up on quickly. I resorted to using LogMeIn (we have it on a PC at work for some reason) to try and get some information. See, nobody can say I've not been doing anything :)

I still haven't decided if I should go back in tomorrow. I do feel bad for being away, but that's kinda set off against the "I don't care" attitude and being able to at least prove I have been doing something while away.

There was a read/sing-through of The Secret Garden act I the other night at OMTC which went pretty well, as far as I can tell. Some people (some of who admittedly have a hell of a lot more to do than me) didn't seem to have even looked at the script/score but it's early enough, though makes one question why one bothered! :)

This week's going to be a bit mad, with Rehearsal Monday/Thursday, then it's OMTC committee meeting on Wednesday. This was silly of me.

I've been unwell since Thursday morning, with a sore throat developing and a head getting steadily worse. I spent a few hours on Thursday evening in bed and struggled to even wander round Chester.

I think judicious application of wine and whisky last night may have killed it off because this morning I feel a lot better. Throat's still scratchy and head's not quite right, but definitely much happier.

I am sucking down water like an elephant though, feel so dehydrated.