Two Badly Parked Volkswagons

The long walk home.....

2005-09-23T07:46:00.000+01:00

It's time to put the chairs on the tables,
Turn out the lights,
And leave Perth behind us.....

.....and in 21 hours we will be in London!

We survived the last 3 days....nothing crazy as we were way too tired from work to have the energy to get into any trouble!

Finished Back in the Brass Monkey we we started last week, though a much quietier affair.....thank god!

Now, here's something to ponder

What is Singapore.....a city or a country?

M

Bread and Water

2005-09-20T00:27:00.000+01:00

We went to an Italian resturant last night called Zaffarona's.....

.......Superb!
.......Bloody Expensive!!

I think we blew our entire budget for the week last night because this place must have been one of the most expensive resturants in Perth.....it's probably one of the nicest too though!!

Like I said, looks like we're on Bread and Water for the rest of the week to stand any chance of normalising the dinner expenses!!

I seen an ad on TV last night - 2 meals for 8 bucks in some dodgy chicken house......

now we've just got to find it........

[Now Playing: Third Eye Blind - Company (03:54)]

G' Day

2005-09-19T00:54:00.000+01:00

We landed in Perth on Friday afternoon so that we would have the weekend to recover from the journey and hit the office Monday.....perky

Well, it's Monday morning and I feel far from perky.....

Though I'm just glad I survived the weekend, here's the very abridged version....

Friday

Brass Monkey - Turbo Shandies - Stevie is evil
Rosie's - Crazy Irish Woman - F*ck Off and leave me alone

Saturday

Lucky Shag - Beer - Think I'm going to barf
Carnagies - Too Sober for this bar - Time to get out of dodge
Belgian Beer Cafe - Dodgy Chocolate Beer - Need to try something else
Belgian Beer Cafe - Dodgy Cheery Beer - Need to try something else
Belgian Beer Cafe - Dodgy Leiffe Beer - Need to try something else

Sunday

Lucky Shag - Man Utd v Liverpool - Fairly Dull game
Lucky Shag - Pool - I win 3 games to 2
Lucky Shag - Wrecked - Time for Bed

Last Orders.......

2005-09-09T21:00:00.000+01:00

Ciarraigh and the kids are home tomorrow night, which is great!! (just a couple of caveats)

Tonight is the last night I can have a few glasses of wine unmolested (by whom would be telling!!).....but I have a couple of bottles of really nice 96 Grand Reserve Rioja's, one of which is almost gone while the other is cowering in fear right now!!
Tomorrow I need to return the house to it's pre "Ciarraigh's on holiday" state, that's going to take most of the day........I'm going to miss dropping stuff at my arse!

But hey, I'm off to Australia on Thursday for a week to do some work stuff......

[Now Playing: In Me - Underdose (03:13)]

Tuesday.....So Far So Good

2005-09-06T20:28:00.000+01:00

Well there have been no major blow outs yet.....I think I peaked too early on Saturday, so I'm more savouring the moment rather than self destructing!!

I've done a shit load in the garden since the weather has been so good, and made a major dent in the book I've been trying to read for the last couple of months:

The Warrior Prophet by R. Scott Bakker

It's book two in what I'm assumming is a trilogy....it's like an adult Lord of the Rings.....substitute Hobbits with Prostitutes and you're getting there!

Anyway, that's all that's been happening in this action packed week......

[Now Playing: The Cult - Edie (Ciao Baby) (04:47)]

Scratching Me Ar*e.........

2005-09-04T19:52:00.000+01:00

Ciarraigh and the kids went to Spain yesterday for a week....leaving me home alone.....which one of us is on holiday right now??

To celebrate (drowning my sorrows if Ciarraigh's reading) I made a bit of a dent in the wine stocks last night, which I suffered for this morning......the big difference this morning was that I could lie in bed and sleep it off........ahhh bliss!!

When I did get up, I had nothing to do.....get the Sunday papers, make a big dirty fry and sit outside in the garden.......superb!

Spent the whole day in the garden, cutting the grass, decimating the ivy growing up the garage wall in between catching snippets of the Italian Grand Prix.....Knackered now!!

The one blight on my stress-free weekend has been the crazy blond kid from across the road. She saw Lauren off yesterday so knows Lauren is away for the week, yet she's called twice looking for her already.......spooky, going to have to hide from her for the rest of the week!!

Now, what will I do now.......

[Now Playing: Rush - Anagram (04:00)]

Car Trouble

2005-09-02T22:40:00.000+01:00

I like my car......it's a year old Audi A4 130 Sport in Mauritius blue.....it's the only new car I've owned in my life.....

I found out something new about it this week.....it has a motion sensor!!

We were on a ferry over Strangford Lough, it was a beautiful day so we were all up on the rails checking out the view and seal spotting......

.....Every other minute the car alarm went off.....with every swell....
......once that puppy is stationary, it's not keen on movement

.....I guess it was a long trip for those on the car deck!!

Then yesterday I went to pick it up from the work car park only to find that some ar*e had hit it sometime during the day.....bast*rd!

......seeing that they didn't bother to report it and have left me carrying the can.....I ain't happy

Security are now going through the tapes for the day to hopefully find out who hit it, that should be a laugh if they find them.....cos it's gonna hurt!!

Later

[Now Playing: Marillion - White Feather (02:25)]

It's been a While

2005-08-27T23:36:00.000+01:00

In short....I've been remiss, I started this blog initially because I just wanted to slag Brian and for him to know it was me.......

It then became a method for keeping in touch with friends who I don't see that much.....

It's been light in posts of late, mainly because I've been up to my eyes with work stuff....

.....but enough, got to get back on track.....time to Blog!

Brain was home from Seattle last week so we met up for lunch this week. Nothing dramatic, good feed in the Mandarin and good craig.....The funny thing was later on my drive home.....

I spotted Brian pulling a right past me at in a VW Beetle in a very dodgy shade of aqua blue??

...I flashed my lights at him but to now avail.....he drives like Stevie Wonder plays piano....

(Cheesy grin and rocking his head from side to side)

There was either great music or fab drugs going down in that car!

[Now Playing: Lifehouse - Blind (05:00)]

I'm F**ked............

2005-07-27T22:39:00.000+01:00

I nearly killed myself today, here are the reasons why.....

I left my circuits class on Monday feeling pretty good (for a change)...
I was determined to push myself harder in my circuits class (today)....

As they say......learn from your mistakes

[Now Playing: Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (12:02)]

Management Metaphors

2005-07-14T22:22:00.000+01:00

We had a bit of a slanging match today over dodgy management metaphors we had heard, or for some people, had actually used (I will not name names to protect those with families).....

Anyway, it all started with one I heard years ago whenever Dermot and myself worked for a consultancy firm....

......Shit or get off the toilet (a reference to being indecisive)

Back then we used to play lingo bingo on our palm pilots....there was so much verbal diarrhoea flying around!!

But Gerry came up with the best one.....

You're up to your knees in shit and don't have the wellies to get out of it!!

[Now Playing: Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name (07:13)]

Wireless Is Class!

2005-07-12T17:13:00.000+01:00

The wine is cold.....the barbeque is on.....

..... and I'm sitting under a parasol in the garden on the laptop using a wireless broadband connection.......yes....we're chilling nicely.....

It's the twelth of July were every god fearing orangeman is pounding the streets in 30 degree heat in bowler hats.....good luck to them....I'll take the wine and barbie any day!!

Things are pretty quiet, Ciarraigh's birthday was the other day '*3'....I got a card for Conor to give to her.....it read;

I'm smiling because you're my mummy......and laughing because there's nothing you can do about it!!

How apt!

How to Dismantle A House.......

2005-07-04T22:57:00.000+01:00

U2 tried it with an atomic bomb, but I have found the perfect foil for dismantling a house in a slow, possibly steady and most definitely relentless manner.....

........Conor Bell, Age 1 (and 2 weeks)

Conor is walking and has embarked on the systematic destruction of everything he can get his grubby little hands on.....Various ornaments, remote controls, DVDs and one sky viewing card are currently either toast or missing in action.....

.....Other items, the wine rack (the wine - not the rack), a contents of a bookshelf, all table lamps not considered expendable and a 5.1 theatre system have now been stored away until either.....

a) the toddler survives to an age were we might conceivably exert some influence over him (not holding out on that one)

b) we sponge together enough cash to buy an apartment that we keep secret from the kids and move all our good stuff into....and rough it in the "family" abode until they get to 18 and we can throw them out....

Option b is sounding pretty damn good at the moment.....

Later

[Now Playing: Rainbow - Lost in Hollywood (04:50)]

We're Back.........

2005-06-16T23:51:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while but we are eventually getting back to normal.

To recap everything that has happened since the Big Day.....

After the wedding which we managed to keep secret from everybody (the witnesses thought they were going to a pampering day at a hotel), we took off to the Crawfordsburn and set out to drink it dry of champagne. To get their own back, Mark and Marian (the witnesses) cancelled the evening dinner and booked us into Shanks instead, plus a limo to get us there....

Even better, they paid!

.....now you can't beat that, invite guests to your wedding and have them pick up the tab.....cheers guys!!

We stayed in the Crawfordsburn for a couple of days after which we picked up the kids and took off to Florida for two weeks. Bizarre place, one minute it's 35 degrees and you're getting baked, the next your in the middle of a tropical rainstorm and drowning.

Did Disney, and Disney, and Disney,...,...,...,...,..., and Disney......the kids loved it, we survived it, thank God it's over!

That's pretty much it, back home, jet lagged with two jet lagged kids (which is really tough) and just as we're getting back to normal, I need to go to Australia next week for a couple of weeks for work.......yeah, more jet lag!!

Marty

[Now Playing: Dream Theater - Sacrificed Sons (10:43)]

I've Lost My Girlfriend.........

2005-05-24T13:35:00.000+01:00

But I got a wife!

.......not a bad trade

M

Swimming with the Fishes......

2005-05-18T09:26:00.000+01:00

After hanging in there for another 10 days, the surviving goldfish gulped it's last gulp and checked out....

We're not exactly sure what is killing them......we're following the instructions.....maybe we're not pet people......definitely not goldfish people.....

Lauren didn't take it too bad, the only worrying development is that instead of wanting to replace the goldfish, she thinks it would be better to get a rabbit.....going by our track record with the goldfish, you can bet the rabbit wouldn't agree with this logic!

[Now Playing: Tool - Intolerance (04:53)]

Naked Chaos............

2005-05-04T14:04:00.000+01:00

Last night could only be described as slightly chaotic....

At the weekend, Ciarraigh got a couple of goldfish for Lauren and the "starter kit" that comes with them. So far so good, we got to Tuesday and they were still alive......

That changed last night.....we got home to one definitely dead and the other on it's way out.....don't ask me why but as of this morning, the second is still hanging in there, I'm not sure whether it was flip-flop or shoes that KO'd so we're calling this one "Jammy B*stard"! Anyway, how did this lead to a bizarre chain of events.............

Lauren wanted to stroke the afore mentioned deceased goldfish. OK, sounds safe enough......except 10 minutes later she breaks out in this rash all over her legs and back and all hell breaks loose. We get her creamed up after interrogating the baby sitter about what Lauren ate yesterday......it couldn't be the goldfish!!

So she's stripped and watching TV to keep her mind off the cream, Conor's casually stalking anything that can't get out of his way and trying to eat it and Ciarraigh decides it would a good time to try on her new bikini that she got for her holidays.........Queue the unexpected arrival of her mother and brother....

One semi-naked chick dashes into the kitchen.......One dashes to the front door.....Conor tries to eat the door

I can sense that my quiet night watching football has ended before it even began.....

[Now Playing: 3 Doors Down - Away from the Sun (03:53)]

Highway To Hell

2005-04-29T21:47:00.000+01:00

There's been some song playing on the radio recently that has a background riff ripped straight out of AC/DC's Highway To Hell. While I don't think much of the song on the radio, I dug out my copy of HTH and relieved the days when I had long hair, and Rocked!!!

It's such a great album with the cheesiest metaphors going......You can't listen to Touch Too Much and not laugh!!

Gems like...... "liking it medium rare" and "feeling like a hand in a velvet glove"......pure class!!!

[Now Playing: Days of the New - Bring Yourself (05:55)]

Well.....What's Your Thing??

2005-04-28T02:18:00.000+01:00

All I'm going to say is......

.......bar a dodgy SQL Server instance.....

.......Personalisation is in.....

..........and it Rocks!

[Now Playing: Cold - It's All Good (03:43)]

The old 2.0 step

2005-04-26T23:49:00.000+01:00

We are day two into our .NET 2.0 training, and so far nothing too shocking.....

Not being an actual Code Monkey by trade hopefully means that I can take an objective view of what's in store for us when we begin using this in anger. So far I can say that Generics looks really useful (Stevie looked liked he needed sedated during this.....), anonymous methods while simple could lead to code maintenance hell and code snippets / refactoring in Whidbey is fab.....(see ReSharper for this stuff)....

and.......

Programming Windows Forms completely sucks.....I can't think of anything in life more tedious than this...(At a push I'm sure I could, but it would not be something I would be prepared to post about!)......anyway no offence to Windows developers, but I was really losing the will to live through this section of the course......

......Thankfully we had made our feelings clear to the instructor that this topic was up there with "Top 10 tips for avoiding Haemorrhoids" as far as interest was concerned!

Can't remember what's on tomorrow, obviously haven't quite recovered from that last section......

[Now Playing: A Perfect Circle - The Outside (04:06)]

Beware The Dog

2005-04-22T14:43:00.000+01:00

We seem to have a new pet in the house......it's call Conor.....

He has adopted this bizzare behaviour where he chases after you and gnaws whatever extremity he happens to latch onto. Last night, I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating my dinner when my left leg goes into convulsions.....

........yep it's the rabid baby again

....It would be funny except every now and again he manages to bite flesh and believe me, the wee bugger has some bite!

[Now Playing: Staind - Outside (04:52)]

Belligerent Pampering

2005-04-21T08:25:00.000+01:00

This is a comment a colleague made to me a couple of days ago.....it's just so good I have to post it!

We were discussing "somebody" who was undecided around the role he wanted on some projects we have coming up (how vague is that!). After talking to him he had agreed to talk to the afore mentioned colleague to clarify matters.......

Anyway, after all that I had asked "How did it go with Gerry" (......oops)

The reply I got was "Gerry's fine......he just needed cuddled with a firm hand!"

You've got to admire the style!

[Now Playing: AC/DC - Have a Drink on Me (03:59)]

Test Post via NewsGator

2005-04-14T09:42:00.000+01:00

I've just installed the NewsGator plug-in for Outlook that does RSS aggregation and alledgedly posts directly to my blog.....

If this all works there should also be a tag line at the bottom saying what's currently playing on my Laptop....

Here goes.......

[Now Playing: Pink Floyd - Mother (05:37)]

I Can See Nails........

2005-04-13T23:36:00.000+01:00

I'm currently working my way through Extreme Programming Adventures in C# by Ron Jefferies. It's a kinda introduction to XP and C# written almost like a diary following Ron through his development of an XML editor. I manage to grab an hour every now and again (usually after everybody has gone to bed) to read a bit and work through the case study, the idea being you pick up XP and C# along the way....

Cutting to the chase....

He has this really nice analogy that is really prevalent in developers that he calls "Small Boy with a Patterns Book". It's when a developer has learn't something that has really hooked him and he is now pointing out how this great new thing could be applied to all manner of places in your application architecture.....

The metaphor being: To a small boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail........

Now I have to admit, this is me and probably everybody else who builds software, it's not a bad thing, in fact it's OK to be the small boy, just recognise it when your doing it.....

As the title says "I can see nails!"

M

There's Oil in the Water.....

2005-04-07T23:22:00.000+01:00

This is probably going to be slightly cryptic

Every now and again we get a clash of ideas, it tends to be healthy and challenges the assumptions we make around our own decisions.....

They can also be very emotive and defining events.........

Stevie can set the context, and I'll let Pat Helland finish this post with his insight on the subject.........

M

A Test In Parenting - Revisited......

2005-04-01T23:08:00.000+01:00

OK time for round 2.......

Larkin was having one of those days were she was looking at the kids and picturing a barbeque, some skewers and an avacado salsa.....

.......time for the big girl to have a break

So I load up and take both Chaos & Mayhem (Lauren & Conor.......or is it Conor and Lauren) with me. Everybody note, this is my first unattended trip with both of them.....boy am I f*cked!!!

So as is usual in Northern Ireland, the weather is crap.....so I head to Kiltonga Leisure Centre which apart from the usual has something called Dino's Den....it's one of those padded indoor play areas (cell?) were you let the little angels loose to go kill or be killed.....)

Now the play part of this little adventure (nightmare) was actually OK, the only dodgy bit was the den is 3 stories of ladders, rigging, slides etc were you literally lose them in the melee. This sounds great in theory until somewhere in all of that you hear you're child screaming for help because she's stuck.....shit, what now.....

.....well if you're me, it's crawl up 3 stories of obstacles built for kids with a 9 month baby under one arm to find the distressed 3 year old.....and of course when you get there it's like "what are you doing here.......I'm playing......Go Away"

.....at this point I'm thinking "I could live without the avacado salsa!"

But still, so far this is OK, I'm not too stressed, but there's always some banana skin waiting to trip you up......Mine as past experience is starting to show is the trip to the toilet.....

So Lauren wants to take a leak.....it's been a while since that first trip to the cinema, so I'm not too freaked out by this, but I didn't account for the extra complexity, I've got Conor too....

Picture this, we're in the disabled toilets, Lauren's on the can doing the needful while I'm on my kness holding her up so that she doesn't disappear down the loo......now add a 9 month baby hanging on to your leg chewing your left buttock.....

How do you reach the toilet roll......

.........They don't teach you that one in parenting class

In the blink of an eye.......

2005-03-23T22:43:00.000Z

Well she got there......

Lauren managed to beat the odds and make it to three......the book re-opens on her chances of seeing four!

In fairness, she had a very good day and was the life and soul of the party.....

.....She was also carried out like hand luggage when it was all over!

One birthday over, one to go.....Conor hit's the big 1 in June.....now that just might be worth a punt!

M

Girl Goes Postal Over Gougon

2005-03-12T22:53:00.000Z

We had a momentary lapse of reason today.......

We decided to go for lunch and take Lauren and Conor with us. This must prove how well your brain suppresses traumatic events in your life, I completely missed the alarm bells that should have been giving me a migraine at even suggesting this.....

We went to Pier 36 in Donaghadee, a really nice pub / resturant on the coast.

Everything started well, Conor was engrossed as he tried to eat his high chair while Lauren was drawing on the table with crayons.....(that was the resturant's naivety in thinking Lauren would stick to the paper they give her along with the crayons.....they'll learn!!)

Anyway, we ordered.....Filo Prawns followed by Steak and Guiness Pie for Ciarraigh, Pickled Herrings followed by Baked Cod for myself, and the soon to be controversial Chicken Gougons and Chips for Lauren.....

The food arrives and Lauren to this point has been in pretty good form, OK she's singing in the middle of the resturant but people don't seem to be put out by the whole performance thing.....

........Now here is a classic example of how something so innocuous can be so devastating once you chuck a soon-to-be 3 year old into the mix......Lauren wanted to use her knife so Ciarraigh helped her hold the knife and cut up her gougons......well f*ck me the child needed restrained!! Now we're not talking your run of the mill crying tantrum, she went completely postal on us.....you would have thought we'd cut her hand off by the way she was getting on.....

So here we are again.....as you catch those cold stares of people in the resturant all thinking the same thing, who's that couple with the unruly child.....and of course it all comes flooding back how we've been here before.....what were we thinking!!!!!

So, between Ciarraigh and myself, we scoff the gougons so that she can't see them anymore and suddenly we're back in the other parallel universe were child of darkness is once more child of light.....calm and serenity return to the resturant, Conor has almost finished the high chair and we can at least consider staying 10 minutes longer for a coffee......

How can the state of a chicken gougon determine the fate of so many!!

When Elegant just ain't Pretty

2005-03-03T21:44:00.000Z

In database parlance, you're generally very satisfied when you can look back on a database design and say......"now that's elegant"

A week ago I thought I was there.....we were building a new caching framework and our first iteration supporting hash tables was done.....all we needed to do was get a sql server store and plug it into the cache manager.......

......then it would be time to break out the cigars and have a wee drink.......so wrong!

The schema was elegant, I was juggling the different requirements of having caches that could:

contain items with their own individual expiry details
contain items that collectively shared the expiry details of the cache

It just proved to be a bit cumbersome within the stored procedures and it was the deadlock queen under load (yes my database is a chick....it would have to be for all the grief it's given me!)

Now I'm not going to go into all the reasons why this is, it's a chick after all, but there were a couple of bizarre things going on under the covers.....

Now I like SQL Server, it's pretty good and fast if you're on a Wintel platform.....it'll never be Oracle on Unix, but horses for courses and all that.....

Now if you want to see SQL Server do something really crap and then do it again in an even more crap way, try this.....

Do a delete from one table were the key you're deleting is in another table, for example:

DELETE
FROM tableA
WHERE ID IN (SELECT ID FROM tableB WHERE blah.....)

What happens is SQL Server will do the delete but with an eager spool.....this eager spool will be the most expensive part of the execution plan and creates a temporary table of the deleted items just incase you might want them back??

But while you're chewing over that try this.....

DELETE
FROM tableA
WHERE ID IN (SELECT ID FROM tableVariableB)

Here you have parked the keys you want to delete into a table variable so that you can clear down multiple tables that share the same key.....sound OK??

Well when you run this, the optimiser decides to switch from it's performant index seek to an index scan and just to rub salt into the wounds, slaps a table lock in for good measure.....end of performance & concurreny.....

I never got to the bottom of this......there just comes a point when you know deep down, it's time to dump the bird and move on.......

So, we now have the "not so pretty" but "fast as f*ck" database......plus of course she's got a great personality.....that is just purring at the moment, I'm not breaking out the cigars just yet, but I think I can indulge in a wee single malt.....

So as with everything in life, appearances can be deceptive and elegance can certianly fade away......

Picasa Hello

2005-02-15T21:21:00.000Z

Well I seem to have finally got this working, in fairness I just haven't had the time to play with this yet, but it seems pretty good. My only real gripe was that I didn't have a clue what it was actually going to do until it had done it.....

Lauren & Conor.....The calm before the storm!

The Eco-Friendly Toddler

2005-02-11T22:43:00.000Z

So.....

You've had a long day at work, you've swung by granny's house and picked up the kids and you're now driving home.......scene set

As is usual about now, we're trying to prise out of Lauren what see got up to during the day, and so far it's all familiar stuff, until.......

"I went to the toilet in the bushes today"...........I'mmmmmm

OK, so we have the 2 things to work out here....

What happened that the child ended up nurishing the the local foliage
She's obviously waiting for some sort of acknowledgement that this is infact a good thing

On the first point, it seems that she was playing in the park and got caught short and hence the need to go au natural. In saying that, I've taken her to the park and the last time I checked they had toilets.......

Time to have a word in granny's ear......

The second one's tricky,

While in practical terms, it's probably better opting for a little exposure in the bushes than being stranded with a soiled toddler (probably in that it's not me!). On the other hand, I'd rather not encourage any dropping of the bags in public (especially if it's with me!)........

And I know we've all done this, though usually at night with a fair bit of alcohol mixed in for good measure.....

So back to the car.....Lauren has that glint in her eye that tell's you she knows she's got you and she's just waiting to see how you react!

"Well, I guess that was cold".........you can't win them all

M

A Wierd Week

2005-02-05T19:33:00.000Z

It's been a bit of a strange week, I feel I've been a bit out of sorts and I can't put my finger on it......

I have to do a presentation next week at our group development forum, so trying to put that together and fighting Powerpoint has probably upped my stress levels a bit.

On the work thing, part of what we have been doing this week is building a cache block to be used by our applications and subsystems. Caching is something most of our app blocks do so we decided to bite the bullet and build a cache manager so that all the other subsystems can just delegate to it.....

This has been complicated by 2 things.....

Microsoft's caching application block
Microsoft's new caching application block (within Enterprise Library)

We didn't really like the first one, but it was useful in helping us define what we did want our caching mechanism to do. I'm not sure I'm that taken by the new block either as any use of persistent stores seems to be fronted by an in-memory store which for my tuppence worth, defeats the purpose of going with a persistent store. It also doesn't seem to be designed to work in a web farm environment which would put a question mark over the block being in an "Enterprise Library"......

Anyway, that's been annoying me on top of the number of issues we've hit this week in trying to add some minor encryption functionality to our configuration block.......

I think we've got some serious refactoring to do whenever I find the time.....

Anyway, the chinese has arrived so I'm off for some curry and wine

Later....

Incoming!

2005-01-27T22:43:00.000Z

If you have ever seen the John Carpenter movie "The Thing" (1982....I had to look this up, i.e. I'm not a movie geek!) , it basically involves an alien doing alien things like causing people to explode and mutate with loads of mess, well.....

Lauren (the toddler) is getting on like she's in rehearsals for a remake. We have some serious projectile vommitting going on at the moment, were you really have to be on your toes not to get caught by some unannounced barf. By the mood Ciarraigh was in when I got home from work, the girl needs to get herself off to the gym as she's obviously not been quick enough in getting out of way!!

Anyway must dash.......the alien's coming!!!!

The Sound Of Her Wings

2005-01-19T23:22:00.000Z

James Larkin passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning.......
..........He will be sorely missed.

Our 2 year old summed up his passing quite profoundly.....

"I don't want the angels to take granddaddy away"

All the best Jimmy......

It's a Wonderful Life........

2005-01-16T09:47:00.000Z

I've been absent of late......

........because I've been away skiing courtesy of HP (I'll take two of those Blade systems and a SAN.....god bless ya!!)

It was fab........we were flown into Saint Moritz for a number of presentations (get the work stuff out of the way) and then let loose on the slopes for a couple of days plus a formal gig at the Casino on the last night.......

Now I've never skied in Europe before, always the States and I must admit I was surprised.....I've alway's been told that Europe is a real hassle and that the States is a much slicker operation, well I would have to disagree.....

The setup in Saint Moritz is fantastic!! After they you check into the Hotel the first thing they do is get you sized and kitted out with boots and skiis. Each morning the ski instructor picks you up from their ski reception and takes you up the slope and back (Thanks again HP!!)

The runs were superb...though hard in that I really wiped out on the first day, but after the second day with Luka (my ski instructor) I had really knocked the rough edges off the old technique and was going really well.......cheers Luka!!!

The most bizarre thing we did was Snow-flashing....

........This involves going up the mountain at night and getting on a cross between a tricycle and a sled, slapping a torch to your head and hurtling down the slope.....fantastic!!

One guy missed a sharp turn on the run and disappeared over the drop into some trees. Initially we though "oh shit!" but the howls of laugher from the darkness below chilled everybody out.....If he survived that then we were probably going to be OK........we were almost right!

We lost one more to an adrupt stop by our guide, sensibly just round a corner (these things didn't have any brakes) so when (I think it was Derek) came hurtling around the bend to be confronted by a spot of a traffic he veered out of the way, totaling some snow poles and flipping his sled.....he won bragging rights for the night!!

The Casino was painful.....

My friend Mark and myself decided to join a game of poker, about 2 minutes later we were both 50 quid down and debating a trip to an ATM to get more cash. Thankfully we decided not to as people were losing money hand over fist. The Blackjack table was impressive, for the Irish lads it was a massacre.....

........over in about 5 minutes with most people pretty much cleaned out!!

The last thing I must mention is about the poor "Beginners" within the group. The instructors in Saint Moritz seem to be a serious bunch as they wouldn't let one of the beginner groups up the mountain (apparantly they weren't ready!!)......

My mate Mark, the guy who brought me over as his guest, was unfortumate enough to be a part of this baby group. The closest he got to the mountain was the coach trip in and out of Saint Moritz!!!!!

But thanks for the invite mate......

Back to School

2005-01-06T06:27:00.000Z

Well it all had to come to an end....we've been back 2 days and I'm knackered!

Stevie is back from his honeymoon and (after recovering from the renaming job we did while he was away) we have been finishing off design for our current project. The latest Constructive Debate now that we've finally finished the logical design is around namespaces, assembly stuctures, directory structures and VS projects....Yet another bloodbath!!

Previously, I think that we (or me....I don't mind) have not paid enough attention to the physical component design. We have tended to be very purest in our approach without considering how we structure everything to make it more manageable for developers to build and practical for others to use.......

For Example, we tend to adopt the pattern whereby we place our interfaces in one assembly, the concrete classes that implement those interfaces in another assembly and the factory to instantiate them into a third assembly (all with different namespaces)......phew!!

Now there are reasons for this....

Seperated Interfaces in case we ever need to implement remote objects

Seperated Factories so that we can plug additional objects in without a code change, this will allow us to move to mock objects in the future....

The Pain with all this is that.....

We have Parent / Child projects with the same directory structures but with Child projects appearing within the Parent project directory structure (so actually they're not the same structure)
We need to deploy and version control multiple assemblies that combine to perform a given function
Developers need to use multiple namespaces to use these assemblies as designed

So we've spent the day rationalising this so that there are less "bits" in the overall design making it more compact and easier to build and use.......I hope

All projects will have the same directory structure and will not contain other projects
Interfaces do not need to be defined within a separate namespace and do not need to be physically separated from any concrete implemenation
Factories can be contained within the same assembly / namespace as the objects they create. This does not prevent us from plugging objects into the factory that exist in other assemblies

This might change tomorrow, but it's a start......

A Test in Parenting.......

2005-01-01T09:14:00.000Z

Today I got chucked out of the house with our precocious 2 year old daughter with the objective of not returning for at least 4 hours.....

......This is enough to scare the sh*t out of the most experienced child minder let alone dopey old dad (that's me just incase your not keeping up)

.....somebody was in for it and you can bet it wasn't the minor!!

Anyway it started well.....

We went to the cinema, but on route there was those trampolines with the bungees that shoot people into the stratosphere and back. Everytime she sees one of these she wants on it, but Ciarraigh has always said no because she's pretty freaked out by these things....Well today we were mommy free so Lauren got to impersonate a rocket for 5 minutes.....

In fairness she enjoyed it, though watching somebody ping from standing to the roof of the building and back at the click of a finger had me on tender hooks.....I was already mentally listing a dozen good reasons why this was a good idea at time "just in case!!"

Next we got popcorn and coke and went to see The Incredibles....which went down a storm with only two real points worth noting....

1. Lauren hasn't quite grasped the concept of just watching the movie....the auditorium got a running commentary of the show intermixed with a few zillion whys? (it's that time)

2. Nobody prepped me for the "I need to go to the toilet" bombshell that hits after the coke has down it's job......

Now for a bloke this is a real prickily situation.....

There's no way she's going to keep it in, and you can't have her pee all over the seats.....sh*t (though in this case, thankfully not!!), so you've got to take her to the toilet.....

So, we leave the auditorium and hit the gents toilets, which is a waste of time as they are disgusting and there's no way she's usings the cans there. Plan B is to quickly dart into the females and to get the deed done and out before I'm arrested as some sort of pervert....

.......I'm still here so we got that sorted and back to the movie before anyone was any the wiser.....

Now you would think I'm doing a grand job (I did), but there was still time for it all to go pear shaped.....

After the movie Lauren was hungry, so we went to McDonalds (always loves this) and to start with it was all fine (Happy Meal.....yeah!!)

The sh*t storm happened over the seating.....she wanted to sit on a chair on it's own, I sat us down at a table not 12 inches from this so that I could keep an eye on things....well the child went beserk.....now you have to appreciate this, you now have 3 feet of insanity screaming the place down yet everybody is looking at YOU....not crazy girl.....YOU, so what the f*ck are you supposed to do??

Like any grown adult you plead, beg and grovel for sanity and reason to kick in and when this fails you whip out the free toy you get with a Happy Meal and hope for the best......fortunately the free toy is an Incedible which transforms the raging bull into bambi.......Thank Christ!!!

Anyway, I then tentatively get through McDonalds with one more trip to the toilet before I get her into the car and back home.....gone for nearly 5 hours.....Passed!!

Happy New Year.....

What a Turkey.......

2004-12-23T22:44:00.000Z

My dad's a butcher, which will explain what happens next....

I get a call at 8:00am from my dad telling me he needs a hand down at the shop and could I come and help?

I said "No problems see you in 10 minutes" (especially since he's just woken both kids and it seems like a good time to get out of dodge!)

I then spend the next 40 minutes loading 160 turkeys and 160 hams onto a lorry in the pouring rain while my dad comes up with all sorts of reasons why he's too busy inside the shop to come out and help.....

Christmas eh......

......Have a good one

Christmas Spirit.......Restaurant Facists

2004-12-15T05:48:00.000Z

I have some friends flying into town for the weekend and in lieu of this I decided to book a restaurant for Saturday night, which you would think is a simple thing.....

....Not a f*cking chance!!

They want you eating at a fixed time.....
They only have a reduced Christmas Menu.....
They want your ass out the door within an hour and a half to make way for the next mug......

....and you get to pay through the nose for the experience!!

I got so pissed off arguing with the restaurant people on the phone that I've decided to have dinner at home and cook instead......at least I can guarantee the wine is good!!

(plus I do a pretty mean Margarita)

Later......

Christ.......has it been a week

2004-12-10T07:26:00.000Z

I've just realised it's been a week since I've looked at this blog.....shoddy!!

To finish the cliff hanger from my last post (I need a hobby), we ended up modelling html as a set of content lists which contain items (very original)....

......but here's the thing

One of my suggestions was publications and articles which although very SQL Server replication sounding, fitted quite well (I thought). Absolutely nobody else bought into this and as I tripped over the tumble weeds rustling across the office I conceded that this was not going to fly within the team.......

........and then today, I'm on a conference call with Microsoft about personalisation and guess what, they refer to content fragments as articles!!!

Not that I want to be in the brown duffle-coat camp, but if the hood fits......

It's all in the name

2004-12-03T07:07:00.000Z

We have had a really interesting couple of days.....

We're currently designing a new framework for one of our applications which contains a number of components across application layers (UI, mid-tier and database) with a mix of concrete and generic models wired together to complete the solution. We have debated/argued and cajoled each other in trying to get the namimg of every object/entity in the design right. Right now we are taking advantage of the fact that the senior designer is off getting married to rename everything one final time.....

The point of this......

I really believe you need to take the time and get the vocabulary of your design right. It's paramount to the correctness of the solution. Get the words right and it all suddenly clicks together, there's a rightness about it that suddenly leaps out of the screen at you!

This is what we have struggled with for the last couple of days.....not the structure or the function of the design, just how we describe it. Our last sticking point is the proper term for a collection of html fragments

.....I'm sure it's not a flock???

The Joy of Insomnia

2004-12-01T12:10:00.000Z

It's very early in the morning and I can't sleep.....

......actually to be correct I was sleeping just fine until a certain 2 year old in the house decided she was thirsty and wanted a bottle (that was an hour ago and I've given up trying to go back to sleep!)

Anyway, it's about time I did something with this blog. I originally set this up so that I could lob metaphorical grenades at a mate of mine who has his own blog (and it was no fun showing up as anonymous), but in doing that I now have a blog of my own.....so I kinda feel obligated to post of few things as it seems such a waste not too.....

Me and this blog: I have the fortunate/unfortunate position of being a technical architect within a application development centre based in Belfast. I suspect I can't post specifics about what we're up to in the office for confidential and/or commercial reasons but I can probably rant/rave about some of the technology stuff we get to sort out along the way. This at least will protect the innocent and probably cover for the guilty (and keep my ass in a job) but we'll see how that goes.....

My days tend to have the same pattern to them.....the highs when we (the team of course) come up with a really elegant design/solution to something we are working on ......to the lows of when something that you assumed was pretty straight forward goes horribly wrong and more resembles a train wreck than anything else!

.....but I guess that's life

Outside of work I live in a small village called Saintfield. It's pretty small (2 horse type stuff with the usual suspect breeding habits you seem to get out in the country) but with 4 pubs and a ton of nice resturants in the local vicinity.....

As I mentioned at the start of this (and the prompt for this entry, I have a a 2 year old girl and a 5 month old boy to make sure I don't get bored) plus the other half of course without which the other two would not be possible....

Anyway to wrap this up for now I will continue to use this blog to have digs at brian and generally talk to myself in some sort of self help therapy scenario......

Later

Did I just do that......

2004-11-24T06:09:00.000Z

.....oh cr*p!