24Randomthoughts.com

I hate writing a moany post but at the moment its how I feel.  Its been a bit of crazy few weeks, Katie and I have been out and about and about which has meant that the gym has gone by the by and I’m quite conscious of this, because this is how the weight start to goes back on quite quickly.  At the start of this week I wanted to get back into the routine and today is currently Wednesday and so far this week I have tried to go to the gym on Monday and Tuesday evening.  Virgin Train’s however have seen fit to ruin my plans and cause obstructions on the line Monday which delayed my departure from Coventry and thus made me too late to go to the gym.  Tuesday I spent 2 hours sitting in Birmingham International concourse because of a broken down train on the line.

I understand that none of these are Virgin’s faults but its just frustrating when you want to go and things conspire against you!  Today I have no brought my gym stuff (its a big bag to carry everyday to work) with me and surprise surprise its going fine and I’m not late.  Which makes me even more annoyed that I couldn’t go on the other days.  Bloody trains!

So this weekend Katie, her Dad (Gez), Mum (Angela) and myself are off down to Brighton as Gez and Katie are going sailing over the weekend (weather permitting).  Angela and myself have two pairs of binoculars (one each) so that we can watch them but as I imagine they are going to be quite far away I’m planning to bring the MacBook and hopefully a video camera to film (plus it means I can use iMovie) to film them but hopefully have a bit of a wander around Brighton having never done so by myself before.  If the weather holds it should a lovely weekend break to what will be a busy week when I’m back at work on the Tuesday.

Sorry for the shortage of posts of late, I’m currently writing some posts for my new blog IGotAMacBook. Its all new posts about my experiences figuring out how to use my macbook.  Having used a PC since forever, I am now making the move over to Apple.  I tried finding a blog/resource about moving over but I couldn’t find one.  So I decided to write my own (slowly), I will always be posting to 24randomthoughts.com but while I generate content for my new blog it’ll possibly be a while before I start on this one again.

I’m currently stuck in Edingburgh Airport (I have been here since 11am this morning) and we can’t get a flight until 20:20 this evening.  I thought I would share with you my view from where I’m sitting, which thankfully has a full free wi-fi signal

UPDATE: The time I finally got home was 2am this morning, Friday 27th June 2008.  I’m working from home today.  It turned out that there were server delays with the aircraft and technical problems and people on from previous flights who had not got home and replacement aircraft which seemed to the cause the delay.  To be honest I am just glad I got home.  Flybe didn’t even make an anonucement over the tanoid system they only told a select number of people, it was only when the plane landed in Edinburgh that they started to make announcements.  Best of all was when we landed and we were waiting for our luggage, the machine broke which brings up the bags and then had to half an hour an hour for that to be fixed.  When that happened the whole mood of the place got very bad indeed.

Yes world, today I am 29.  My last year in my twenties!

Today has really been an excellent day for me.  I woke up and headed off to the gym and did a 45min run in which I covered 7km of which I’m dead proud of.  Katie and I then headed off into town for some breakfast where I opened some presents (I actually now have fancy pants, both Becca and Richard can firm this) and I got very excited.  As I had the day off I wandered into town and picked up a space invaders tshirt from next and headed home.  Now because it was such nice weather I sat outside in the garden, read some of my book, had a beer and a little nap (heaven).  To round the evening off Bob, Becca, Richard and myself headed off to Las Iguanas in the arcadian for some mexican style food and cocktails.  Karl popped in and said hello and everyone had some goodtime.  Highlights include the photo caption game and also my mini birthday cake.

While we were drinking, Katie got a call from Andy who had received my macBook and dropped it off at Katie’s work so after dinner we dashed back to Symphony Hall so I could play with before I had to leave early the next morning for Scotland.  Also to enjoy with my geek out session I got a monster sized Jolt Cola from Bob and a sweet WiFi detection t-shirt from Gary.  Special thanks has to go to Becca for complete history of RSS which she performed while I was drink my Cuba Libre cocktail, awesome

Thanks guys a really had a great day, as always photos can be found here

Today it was our turn to really have some, we both headed off to Debenhams to create our wedding list.  Now sadly sense prevailed, I was unable to add either the 40inch HD Sony Bravia telly or the Krupps coffee machine because people might that we really want them and instead of people buying the various kitchenware (and there was a lot of kitchen ware items added) they might all club together to and buy us them instead *humbug*

Katie I must admit really enjoyed running around with a barcode scanner, scanning stuff.  In fact I think that she enjoyed it a little too much but we both had a really great day it was fun picking stuff we would ask people to buy for us.  I did have to take a break at one point to grab some doughnuts, not for myself but for work tomorrow.  I ended up getting 3 boxes of twelve, and walking around the bullring with that many doughnuts by your side can make you feel like quite a bloatter.  By the end of the day we were both really pleased by what we had put on.  You can follow the link here and just enter Katie’s and my surname on the right to be taken to our list or you can go into the store.

Well for all of those people who are just as geeky as me should know that today is download day for firefox 3. Now from doing a little reseach its avalible from today at 5pm UTC which as it turns out is 5pm GMT, I think the time works out to be 10am in America (I’m not sure which time zone that applies to). So rememeber to do your bit and break the Guinness World Record and download it today….after 5pm, I know I will. Well me and at least one other person I know so thats only 999,998 downloads to go.

Update: What a surprise, the servers are being hit really hard so stay tunned.

MIT, have a of their site devoted called MIT OpenCourseWare to as they put it “Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds” by providing free lecture note, exams and tutorials for their courses. All the courses are available from their site without the need to register and can be used either online or off. I have been thinking for a while of doing a few courses before what ever is left of my ability to learn has dried up and since these are way, way cheaper than the open university option I think I will investigate these and let you know how I get on.