Father’s Day! (by alaric)

Yesterday was Father's Day in the United Kingdom.

Now, Jean doesn't know this since she only just approaching ten month's old, but (perhaps due to recovering from illness) she was very affectionate today and always seemed to want me to pick her up and hold her, then was all fun and happy when I did. So I felt very loved 😉

Disturbing dream (by alaric)

Last night, I dreampt I was having a heart attack - horrid pains in my left arm, then I was taken to a hospital and wired into monitors and had a drip inserted, again into my left arm - then I woke up to find that I'd fallen asleep with my left arm bent into an uncomfortable position and it was in agony!

It always fascinates me, how the human mind manages to weave external stimuli into our dreams like that. The classic case is when somebody is shouting at you to wake up or an alarm clock goes off, and your brain weaves it into your dream for a few seconds before you come round...

My weekend (by alaric)

Friday night - worked until about 10pm, getting things done that were meant to be done for Friday.

Then helped pack and prepare to go into London, a 3 hour drive. Sarah's choir reunion starts at 9:45am tomorrow.

Not sure what time we set off, but I remember leaving a service station at about 3am after stopping for a nap because I was starting to nod at the wheel, but I had barely fallen asleep when I was awoken by Sarah's parents ringing her on her mobile, and found my leg had gone dead from trying to sleep curled up on the driver's seat.

I slept in at Sarah's parent's place, but then had to get up in order to go and buy some baby milk powder for Jean, since there was none there. The little nearby chemist turned out to be shut so I walked back and took the van to a large supermarket, braved the Saturday morning queues, and then brought it back. I spent some time fruitlessly trying to fix Sarah's mother's computer which had come down with Microsoft Windows Goes Very Slowly disease, but there were no obviously out of place malware processes running, and it's slow right from the very earliest stages of booting. Then I managed to grab a couple of hours to myself to do some shopping (a shiny thing to put across the windscreen of the van when parked to prevent it from becoming a solar oven, and part of a wedding anniversary present for my wife), and to go for a walk, before picking up Sarah's brother and going to the choir concert that evening. Then to bed.

Then up early Sunday to pack all of our stuff away and go on a delivery mission of various things to various people as we crossed London back towards home, then get home, do work that needs to be done by Monday, then to bed, now at 1:30am. To be up about 7:30am tomorrow morning to take Jean to nursery, then for a conference call to start the next week of work.

Zzzzzz.....

I need to restore coolness to my life (by alaric)

Once upon a time, I worked for Internet Vision. I started as a programmer, then towards the end of my time there, I was their chief technical architect also looked after the internal library (which I found incredibly satisfying). The technical architect thing meant I was involved in nearly every project, working on the design of the software and troubleshooting problems that the developers hit as they coded.

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Van! (by alaric)

Well, last weekend we picked up our van from Sarah's parents, who have been looking after it, and I drove it home.

I like my van.

For a start, all three of us can sit in the front, with Jean in her baby car seat in the middle, Sarah on the left, and me in the driving seat. This makes it easier to entertain her and supply her with milk than when she's alone in the back of a car.

Also, the van has manual transmission, which I'm more accustomed to and generally find easier than the automatic transmission of the car. I'm not quite sure why, but I find it really hard to maintain a speed with automatic cars... the speed seems to creep up or down unless I'm watching it all the time. With a manual, I get it into the correct gear, then just listen to the tone of the engine to regulate the pressure on the accelerator, and it stays at the same speed.

The van is more fun than a car, since you're sitting very high up and can see far ahead. The road seems to be moving much slower beneath you since it's further away; everything seems to happen in slow motion compared to being down by the ground in a car; you can plan further ahead and think about things more carefully.

There's a big comfortable soft steering wheel, hooked up to a power assisted steering system with an impressively tight turning circle for such a large vehicle. You can almost drive it sideways; I can stop the van with the nose about one or two metres away from a wall in front, put it in full lock, drive on, and end up parallel to the wall without needing to reverse. You can tell the van was designed for delivery drivers in London!

I've yet to do a complete test, but it seems more fuel efficient than the car, which is a surprise considering that it's a large cuboid of a vehicle with a 2.5 litre engine compared to a small streamlined thing with a 1.3 litre engine.. The car uses about 16 pence worth of fuel to drive a mile. It was nearly empty when I put about £45 worth of fuel into it, and it's driven about 240 miles since - but the fuel gauge is showing about three eighths full. When I next fill it up and reset the odometer I'll know for sure, but it's looking something like 10 pence per mile.

And, needless to say, being a van, it has a 'boot' ('trunk' to you Americans) about the size of my bathroom, into which one can chuck things without having to go to great lengths packing them down.

The only main downside is that there's only room for two passengers, not the four that can squeeze into a car...