We picked Jean up on Saturday, and she's staying with us again now. Since we have the van, we can manage her and her stuff, even though we're still staying with friends in London...
Apparently when she saw the van appear outside Sarah's parents' house, she was all excited and was asking if we were there, since she associates the van with us, then was sad that we weren't. But we turned up a bit later!
However, we were puzzled that, when she disapproved of something (an inedible stone or stalk inside a bit of fruit, for example) she's scowl and shout "Moff! Moff!"...
But then Sarah's parents explained that Jean had been upset by a big moth that had landed on her foot and scared her, and ever since then, anything nasty has been referred to as "Moff" 🙂
We came back to the Bajery for a day to sort out the insurance stuff and oick up post and what have you - now I had warned the bank Lloyds that money would be going in late but they are still being mean and I now have a £74 account in the arease fine becuase obviously I hadn't got the warning letters becuase we aren't at home becuase of all the flood stuff 🙁
Then to the credit card bills - Barclay really nice - we realise you may have been affectected by flooding don't worry if you missed the last payment and don't worry about this one either we will not fine you. MBNA nice too don't worry if you missed the last payment due to adverse weather conditions (I'm paraphrasing by the way) - excilant - great - fantastic - I think I did pay the last bills but the thats really nice of them. Then back to good old Lloyds - who recon that I didnt pay the last bill (I definatly sent a cheque off for the last bill I recieved but then I suppose one might have been part of the big soggy after the flood and I wasnt really thinking too far ahead at the time.) and rar rar rar - pay now you swine dog - type letter.
Yes they should have all been payed on time and things but I had warned the bank we were flooded 🙁 It just seems so bizar that the other two are being so nice about things. I'm now going to have to spend a large fraction of the day phoning people up to try and sort this out especially as vodafone arent exactly being helpful either - but thats another story (p.s. as many have noticed my phones been cut off and I'm having a few problems getting it back mainly due to the bank trouble and stupid people in the shops).
Yeah ok I do realise that most of this is my own fualt for not having been on the ball enough-sigh.
The project I'm currently working on is to build a replicated database; and, of course, this gets me thinking about TUNGSTEN, my own replicated database design.
Now, a fully-replicated database like the one I'm writing works by multicasting write operations to every node, so that each node has a copy of the entire database. This means that you can increase your read capacity by just adding more nodes and spreading the work between them. Each node can read its local database independently of the others, so there's no inherent limit to how many reads the cluster as a whole can do in one second. As long as you have unbounded money and space to keep adding more nodes.
However, since writes get multicast to every node, there comes a point at which your write load is the highest the weakest node in the system can keep up with. Adding more nodes doesn't help, since every write still happens on every node. The cluster as a whole has a maximum write capacity, regardless of the number of nodes.
So this system will do for now, but the next big bit of work on it will be to increase the write capacity - by partitioning the data set.
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I actually wrote this ages ago but what with the house being flooded I never got around to posting it!
This weekend as always we were busy busy busy, between Al working about 14 hrs on Saturday and visiting family, before Sunday which started with Alaric getting up at stupid o'clock to go and meet anyone who wanted to go on the Walk the District from our Cubs and Scouts - it was raining and early in the morning - no one turned up so a disheartened Al returned to the house were he work some more until it was time to go and start setting up the Paper Boat Race which was joint between the Scouts and the Village Feast comitee, both of which we abvoisly belong too.
We went down to the scout campsite in the village and set up tables and lit barbecues - this was an impressive affair with a home made sturdy stand, the actual bit of the barby being a modified oil drum! It arrived on the back of a tactor that was blasting music.
Also due to the rain we hastily assembled a tent thing over the tables with the paper for paper boat folding on. I ended up in charge of the prize table which the kids loved.
Quiet a few of the cubs turned up to this as did alot more of the village than we thought would have considering the weather!
We've been getting the kids to make their boats for weeks at our meetings so we had several different types which I've posted about on Salaric!
For the big race at the end there was a prize of a trip in a speed boat - I made dad enter as this used to be something we did when I was little but unfortunatly his Bad Luck Field as always was heightneded by my presance and his boat and Jeans were the only ones to get stranded a hands bredth from the starting line!
Jean loved paddling in the stream as she is obsessed with water at the moment - infact at this very moment she is attempting to mop the carpet with cries of torta!
It was quiet an exhusting weekend realy but as always fun!
Last weekend as always was a busy one - but one that did happen to run a bit more smoothly than last weekend. We had yet another wedding to go to - Ella and Olivers from uni. I was a bit nervous as I thought we were having to go by trian and stuff and I had the wedding favours (the little presants of sugared almonds etc.. that the bride gives to the guests.) which I'd spent the last three days making after a load of hassel over losing the origonal stuff in the floods.
Fortunatly Charlee lent us her car which was a bit of a releif as we were going on to Gloucestershire after the wedding and didnt really fancy having to do that by public transport!
The wedding was lovely and there are already photos of it up on flicker so go and have a look 🙂 Apart from that we zoomed back to Gloucestershire for the village feast and to see Als Cousin and their family who were visiting Barabara.
Poor Al had decided that becuase we hadn't had the last Cub and Scouts of the year becuase of the flooding none of them would know to come in uniform so we decided not to go in uniform to the multi-denomial service held in the grave yard. And just becuase he was looking tired and scruffy he ended up carrying the village banner with its stags head emblazoned on it, at the head of the traditional procession up from the church, across the common and into the cricket club for teas and cakes.
We then organised the childrens sports (pickeled onion and spoon races - we didn't have any eggs ok) whilst the bell ringers held a minni cincert. Then the red barrows gave a sterling performance of formation wheel barrow sterring with coloured smoke and everything 🙂
This was actually lots and lots of fun 🙂 I will be posting photos soon I hope 🙂 We left the kids with a football and headed back to London exhusted.
Jean | alaric | 
Tue 28th Aug 2007 10:56 am | 
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