Tempus fugit

I had to get one of those clocks. Every blog on here seems to have one. Very nice.

All talk.

Great, finally got some comments! Okay.....thanks for the spam.

I am definitely going tonight. It's been too long since I have been to the gym and completed my workout. I feel I am in danger of becoming a silent member, someone who pays the monthly membership but doesn't go anymore.

The only mitigating plea I can offer is that I have been busy. I have been looking into J2ME. Vikram Goyal's article on getting started with J2ME is an excellent walkthrough.

Still busy.

Terrible excuse, I know. I am still working and it is Saturday! No running, just some squash. I will rest from now until Monday and resume running then.

Need a simple but good webpage in 2 minutes? Then visit OSWD and you won't be disappointed. They have many options and choices.

I updated the template but haven't changed the colours for AdSense yet. Another todo task!

Java, java and java.

Mad rush today to get some old code together for the current project. This means bringing the code up to 1.5 and making sure it is commented properly. A good Ant build.xml is worth its weight in gold!

I didn't run after last night but I did play squash this morning. I should buy a decent racket, but I haven't played in so long I know I will bash this one a few more times. I would like to get my skill level up before I commit to a decent spend, I don't want to break a good racket just yet.

Anyway.

Back to the gym this evening. I am going to try a slower pace again and see if I can do the whole run with less or no slowing down. Up till now I have been running for 5-10 minutes and then walking for 2 minutes. I run for longer at the early stages and I typically run twice as fast as I walk. I want to get to the 8k mark without slowing down, so tonight I am going to try to get to 6k at the same pace (i.e. without any slow down). Then I will try to build up the distance, once I hit the 8k I will try to speed it up. I reckon my 6k times are very slow, but with a little time all will get better.

Have been looking at buying some new hardware. Prices in Ireland are very expensive. I normally wait until I am in the US and get what I am looking for there. The benefit is threefold, the currency exchange is currently very much in my favour, most shops in the US are selling newer stock (i.e. if a 1Mb memory key is the mid point here, them a 2Mb will the midpoint in the US) and prices are lower (actual competition). Most shops also have some rebate option when they are trying to shift stock, which can save me anything from 20-80%. I normally go to Frys. But this time I went with Amazon (.co.uk) for my goods. Get this, Amazon was cheaper than buying from the principal distributor for this product! I don't mean reseller and I am including shipping! True, it could be a case where I am not getting special pricing, but further investigation reveals that the price I was quoted is the best available. So I pity any mugs who are buying from a reseller thinking they are getting a better deal. I accept though that this may not be the case for every product, but, this is the rule and not the exception.

On yeh......ever notice there are no phone numbers or contact e-mail addresses for Amazon? Go to there help pages and they say click on the left......bet you won't find one. Well, I wasn't able. But it seems somebody else has had the same issue and found a solution.

I have to stop being so negative and tell the good news stories.

Xenix!

I was pretty close! A quick Google reveals Xenix's history.

.........

6k in 41m45s. Quite happy with this. I thought it would be worse as I actually went a little slower than usual, but took less walking breaks. I also went an extra 0.7k. I would like to get to 8k everytime now, so I might pull back the pace a shade more, though I know I am not exactly burning rubber. Weights went fine too.

I have switched to FireFox & Thunderbird on all machines now. I am seriously impressed. Not just the tabbed browsing but the extra features/themes/plugins etc. Very happy and nice to have the same application across all platforms (Fedora Core 4, Windows XP and OS X).

There is a Linux war raging locally.....the old "Which is best?" song. As far as I am concerned if you weren't around when it was distributed as a set of floppy disks or you don't remember Microsoft's version, you should listen more and shout less. Fair dues to the people who really stuck at it and have brought it (all versions/distro's) to where it is today. I remember writing a version of find as a project, am I showing my age? Probably. Anybody know what happened to Microsoft's version? I would love to know. Wasn't it called Minix or something like that. I got it wrong, Minix is the Tannenbaum operating system. I found this while looking, very funny. But it (the MS version) was something like that. I keep hearing this rumour that he (Tannenbaum) is dead. I heard it years ago in college, when we were using one of his books. Don't know who started it but it keeps circulating around TCD. Oh....and I have tried most....I have settled on Fedora, why? Well, it does what it says on the tin (or website) without a lot of issues. These days I am trying to focus on using my computers rather than getting sidetracked into how can I get some old SCSI card working.

Anyway....enough for now.

Early start today.

At a family event yesterday, good time had by all.

Off to the gym today, for the first time I don't feel sore. Usually pain and stiffness creeps in on the second day after a session. I did more stretches after the last session, maybe that helped.

I played an old squash pro last week, we bashed about for about an hour. The game got good after 30 minutes, I guess it can take a while to bring it all back. The next day I was fine, but he was very stuff and sore. I was delighted, not at his pain but because the running must be paying off!

No weight loss, not even a pound! In fact if anything weight gain. I don't know why.

Name change.

To avoid problems and issues, new name was ordered. Sorry.

Nice one...Friday at last.

Gym this morning, 6k in 42m20s, which I am proud of, started with 6k in 54m10s three weeks ago. I would like to get up to the 8k mark and just build up speed slowly.

NIB are my gripe for today. I have a FreeBank account. I let it go into below the zero balance twice. The hit me with a referral fee (~20Euro) twice. Now they are hitting me with the fees for the quarter! Ahhhh........my own fault really.

No comments yet....I should make more of an effort to add someusefull/entertaining stuff.

Getting back on track

I have been a bit busy and a little lazy. I have played squash as an alternative to running and weights.

Work has taken over again, but, I am slowly bringing it all under control. I hope to go to the gym tonight to get things going again.

I have a lot to get done this weekend, especially organising material that is spread across three machines. I should really do a backup too!

Must remember to watch this a week from next Monday. Eddie is more or less on the ball, most organisations, institutions and people are ripping anybody they can in Ireland. Never mind government and the commercial sector, I think we get very, very poor return for our investment in other areas (education, medical and security). The times they are a changing though, thankfully. More and more people are thinking, "Hey, this is crap" or "If I have to work hard, why should you get a free ride". I wonder how many parents of Leaving/Junior certificate students are thinking how much of the low scores are their kids fault?

Anyway.....

P.S. Please visit WAG!

Ahhhh Apple.

Apple are driving me mad. I got a new iBook recently and have two issues. They told me when I was buying the iBook that you could add memory to the existing memory later, as in there is a free slot. As it turns out, there is only one slot. So I have to buy memory and what is in the iBook is useless to me. Ahhhhhhhh.........

Anyway, my hard disk drive is hotter than hell. It is located in the bottom lefthand area of the iBook and it gets very warm. Phoned Apple. Over a crappy line the support guy explained to me that this was normal. Solution, turn the iBook off for 30 minutes every hour or so. Nice one. I guess this will be my first and last Apple product. And yes, I am one of those people who bought an iPod and then decided to try another Apple product.

What annoys me now is that there is nobody to complain to. The support people say there is nothing they can do. There is no contact information for customer care, either locally or globally. Messages to the Apple website never get answered. Anyway, that is life, my only regret now is that I recommended two friends to buy the same product and they have.

I have been looking about. I am guessing the hard disk in the iBook is just the standard 2.5" laptop disk. I believe the HDD has to be under 9.5mm in height. Next year I will get a 7200 rpm 80GB or maybe a 100GB. The HDD in the iBook is 4200 which is crap. I know from swapping in a faster disk with a regular laptop that this usually has a big impact. I see from various sites that this is a complicated process on an iBook as the HDD is buried deep.

Anyway......you live and learn (or get burned).

P.S. I found a tool called APM Tuner which has enabled me to stop the HDD from constantly trying to go offline. Reduces the noise to nothing!

Back again.

After the 300 mile round trip we were both a bit wrecked. A good weekend all in all.

We booked a room at the Markree Castle in Sligo to attend a wedding at the same venue. A few days before, we rang to make sure all was well, and it was not. They had lost our booking. To cut a long story short they apologised and made a reservation for us in the Sligo Southern hotel in Sligo town. The Markree paid for our rooms for the nights we had originally booked with them to apologise. This was very generous and mistakes can happen, so we were very happy (plus a saving of 300€).

The wedding reception was at the castle and the venue itself is very beautiful. We had a peek at the rooms and immediately felt sorry we weren't staying there. Some people said they felt their room was a little old and maybe damp in places but most got that this is what a castle is like!

The Sligo Southern in an experience we won't be repeating. Nice room, but filthy and noisy. I think we got the spare room that each hotel keeps for emergencies, so I suppose we shouldn't complain too much about the noise. We were over a generator or there was one just outside our window and that purred (or clunked very loudly) all night long. There was urine and pubic hair in the bathroom when we arrived. We complained, they cleaned, same result afterwards. The staff were very nice and helpful, they did they best they could. Nice (small) gym and pool though.

I should really be off to the gym today, but I have to head off for a work related meeting. I will definitely go tomorrow and make amends. I bought some new kit in JJB Sports in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. They have better prices than LifeStyle Sports and carry a wide range of kit. This means no more running in a regular t-shirt.

I am also looking at getting a home wireless access point. I want to replace my existing DSL cable modem with a new box that includes all, rather than buying a second box to give me the wireless capability.

Away for now.

I am off for the weekend. So no gym, maybe while I am away. There is a leisure centre and pool at the hotel but I would rather take the weekend off and then go back full-steam next week. Maybe a dip in the pool would be a good compromise.

So far I am at 6k in about 40 minutes. I want to get to 8k as that was the original goal (to be able to jog 5 miles).

I finally completed one of the weights sessions, only one machine was very difficult. Weird thing though, I feel sore two and three days later, but not the next day? And I mean very sore, restricted motion and sore while resting. Aspirin or paracetamol have no effect.

Still off the smokes. Including all relapses (about 1 month) that is 10 months. I feel way better for it. Sleep better and don't feel so tired. I have tried most cures (nicotine chewing gum, Zyban tablets, nicotine tablets) and found the patches to be the best. Not very easy to start off with, the first three days are a bitch but after that all goes well. Only thing is that they can fall off very easily and they are very hard on my skin.

First post

hello world!

I know, I know. Not very original, but at least it is a start.