The Hodge Blog

Things went horribly wrong last night as the burglar alarm at work fired. As usual it was the dutiful trek out to check, only to find it was the warehouse door! Still at least I did manage to get the holiday clothes out ready for packing this evening, but that was about it.

I will have internet connection for some of the trip, but as we are travelling to the cabin on the lake with Linda for Fri-Sun this week, that maybe a stretch as it is very rural. Should be fine after that although the condo for the second week does not (or at least didn’t) have internet, I can normally pick up a neighbours, providing in the intervening few years, they haven’t locked it down with a key. The upshot of this is, I will be posting when I can but don’t expect it every day!

Home county, Hampshire won through to the semi-final of the T20 cricket trophy. That will make the national finals very interesting as they are being held at the Rose Bowl up the road and I have a ticket for it on August 14th. That is actually the day after I return home. Actually, not only do i have a ticket, I have a spare if anyone is interested as Stuart is now going on Holiday and will be leaving on that day.

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It’s very nice this morning, but how come does the BBC web site say light rain and the BBC breakfast show saying it will be beautiful and the chance of a shower almost non-existent?

Mood meter = Guess it feels like the end of the week?

For the third extended day, my visitors from the US remain stranded and it looks unlikely they will leave today. Although their flight is posted as 7:00pm this evening, I feel that is a holding time with announcements generally being made on 7pm and 1am. Still, we are getting plenty done albeit at the expense of other projects. It has even been tough to get emails answered for the last week.

The tooth apparently can be repaired and I am taking a cancellation, likely caused by someone not getting back from holiday due to the volcano, today at 8:30am. I just hope it works out well and is not too god-damn expensive.

Left work late last night at 7pm and when I got home, Jo had contacted her helpdesk to try and get her machine working with the ‘new’ router which has been dead since I installed it a couple of months back. The guy gave her settings which frankly made little sense. “Get the machine on the access list by MAC address and open the following ports in the firewall”, but as pretty well everything is ‘open’ and ‘accessible’ to machines with authentication it was unlikely to be the issue. Turned out after much research and searching to be a firmware upgrade to the router allowing VPNs using a certain protocol to connect. Applied the patch and voila, but the evening was gone and it was 9:30pm! No other work done here then instead so the sealing of skirting waits another couple of nights as Saints face Oldham this evening, with our game in hand so it will be off there.

Win tonight and we leapfrog Colchester into 7th place, one off the play-offs, lose and the dream is over for this year…

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It’s another sunny start

Mood meter = Onto day two of the week, but it does start with the dentist!

The outlook gets little better with temperatures now not lifting above freezing which is halting any melt. The snow has held off for over a day now but it looks like we will get more on Saturday night and Sunday, just in time for the Monday morning drag into work. Hopefully it won’t prevent my third Friday pub trip on the trot, although the others were Christmas day and Boxing Day, although I will likely have to drive myself as I wouldn’t put that on Jo or the kids, although Lindsay did venture out yesterday to get josh a haircut!

The Saints game is off on Saturday, so that should give us a fair run at getting the games room finished by the end of the weekend. Jo got a second coat on the woodwork and will hopefully get the last on today, whether Andy will make it for the third day, who knows?

The heating is now back on after the plumber came up and diagnosed…water in the system. That was also what was preventing the cooker from working. He found it very surprising, but we had the annual visit from the gas emergency team and they diagnosed it as our internal pipe work not theirs. Well they would wouldn’t they? It is mysterious that South Lodge at the bottom of the drive had them out the day before to drain water from the system, although I must admit we are about 25/30ft higher than them. Anyhow, it’s back on and I suppose that’s all that matters.

As a mail order company the difficult thing has been getting much needed heaters and the like out to customers. Neither of our carriers collected on Wednesday and two have now given up until Monday. We managed to convince one to drag a trailer away, so dug a path for it to pull the trailer away, transferred all packages to it and, after more digging of the tractor unit after it arrived we got it away and the parcels into the system. Whether they will get delivered is another matter! Let’s hope so as I have plenty of heaters, tarps, chainsaws and the like in stock and we are even now looking to bring in snow blowers for Monday to cope with fresh coverings.

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = Not quite as cold, but still chilly
Mood meter = It’s been quite fun this week with less cars on the road

Second week on the trot I’ve nearly not posted on the whole weekend and it’s been a busy one.

Was out Friday night at Jo’s Christmas party and certainly shared a copious amount of red wine. That was followed by a pretty early start as the new system was being put in at work.

Arrived just in time for the kick off of another great win for saints, 3-0 against Tranmere. It was a tough stalemate in the first half, with them wasting time and spoiling the game for the start, but once we went in front and they had to chase the game, we were the only team that was going to win it! Bumped into our centre back, Radhi Jaidi in town too and had a very quick chat, which was nice.

The was swiftly followed by another night out down town with Thirsty. I was needing to get to work again today, so decided to drive and drank orange juice and lemonade all night! I was still quite good fun and I had a very clear head this morning which was good.

The Christmas tree was put up tonight although half the lights misbehaved, so we only have every-other-one working. On top of that I have fitted the light in the under-stairs cupboard and screwed down some of the floorboards. I’ve only done some as I have eased the floorboards around the radiator pipes as they click as the system warms up and expands and want to check that it has stopped before doing it finally.

It sure is going to be busy this week, both at work and at home in preparation for the carpets so just hope I can get it all done by Thursday. Sure will be good when it’s done though as that will be a major part of the house done.

Lastly, I need to get going on this year’s free Christmas Quiz after the ones in 2007 and 2008. I haven’t made a start at all, so that will probably be another job in what is heading to be a very busy weekend next week.

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It’s cold, dry and still again

Mood meter = Even though it’s Monday tomorrow I’ve fitted a lot in this weekend and we’re heading toward Christmas.

It’s the end of the week and it’s going to be a busy weekend that’s for sure. It is Jo’s Christmas Party this evening and then I have the go-live of our new system at work over the weekend to deal with. There is footy on Saturday afternoon and then out with Thirsty on Saturday night. In between all of that I have to get some stuff done on the house for the carpets to be fitted that can only be done in the light, like altering some electrics.

Andy the decorator didn’t show yesterday, but assures me he will be here today, so hopefully before I get this posted he will be here. I don’t think he’s here this weekend but it would be good if he were as that will see his part of the upstairs done and me able to complete my bits.

Heard yesterday also that the carpet is possibly to be delayed by 1 day to the Friday due to some delay in the supply of underlay.

As the system upgrade at work has been progressing I have been asking for the new file structure as I drag huge amounts of data onto our local server to make our reporting systems faster and without adding bandwidth to the main systems across the Atlantic during the work day. This also runs the internal information centre on our intranet, a system I wrote over a Holiday and when I had time at home for fun. I knew lots of people now relied upon it and made several requests for the mappings with nothing forthcoming. Within about 3 minutes of the old system shutdown I was getting emails with error messages from users asking where it had gone…They all got the same reply… Who was it sung…”You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone!”. It could be gone a while as I certainly done have the time here at home for a while unless I stop other stuff. We’ll see what I can see of the mappings today and see what a task it is.

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = That’s better I prefer cold and dry! even though I can’t see a thing!

Mood meter = End of the week, but it’s not a ‘proper’ weekend.

Sorry I have skipped a couple of days but it has been busy, busy, busy and also a little strange on the sleep front as I am not coping at all well with the time difference.

My two customers from Australia have come and gone and the meetings were pretty successful, which is really encouraging for what is a new venture. Looks like I will be needing to go down there in January too which will be a first.

Stuff has been going on at home also as the heating lost pressure on Monday and Jo was not sure how to get it re-done. Terry next door managed to talk her through it, but I will need to show her the controls when I am back. Emma has had trauma too as her clutch has now gone after she had issues with her MOT too. Looks like she has opted for the cheap Dad fix rather than the £200 garage job, but I’m making no promises and with me out on Friday night, possibly Saturday night and footy on Sunday, that doesn’t leave an awful lot of time. That and jet lag may make it impossible.

Had a Hodge ‘first’ on Monday night as i went indoor cart racing. It was great fun, but I am rubbish. Started last in the first race and finished there too after being lapped by the leaders 3 times! In the second race, i started on pole and finished… last but one. i managed to hold a colleague off at every corner by keeping a racing line. i have to say I ache quite a bit today and my sides are bruised from the seat sides…ow! The guys do this every week and I’ve never done it before so I wasn’t too upset.

Was out with Cousin Tricia tonight at the Lyndale Tap House in Minneapolis. We met with daughter Michelle and grandson Ethan giving me 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins in one room at one time…neat!

Checked in for tomorrow’s flight home. I’m quite looking forward to it and I’m really hoping I get the same 3 seats spare as I’m not sure how I pull off a hectic weekend with jet lag otherwise???

Saints progressed to the southern semi finals of the ‘golden paint pot trophy’ by beating Charlton tonight. i think that’s 8 wins on the bounce or something and it was on TV. Bodes well for the weekend which is too!

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It’s unseasonably warm here.

Mood meter = Going home soon.

Boy, the autumn hit yesterday with heavy rain from about 4:30pm for most of the night and the wind howled. I am really surprised we’ve not lost another tree, although I haven’t looked all around yet.

Managed to get the tiles grouted last night so feel we are on the home straight with the en-suite. The list is now pretty short and we should be able to trip off a few more things tonight with a bit of luck

1. Fit skirtings and architrave
2. Fit toilet
3. Fit bath panel and sealing strip
4. Fit light pull
5. Spur cable for extractor and fit extractor
6. Fit curtain pole and curtains
7. Spray and fit radiator
8. Fit mirror

Of course, this doesn’t include the sink I broke but that shouldn’t take long once we get it. It’s close.

Saints made two good signings yesterday outside of the window, one was a free transfer (Jaidi) and the other a loan signing from Fiorentina (Waigo).Hope both play as spectacularly as their names! can’t wait for the game on Saturday.

Our new work website at www.northerntooluk.com went live yesterday. The old one was slow and the search difficult and as it becomes more important to our customers we had to invest in it. There are more features to come over the next few weeks and months up to about January 2010 so watch this space.

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = That’s the calm after the storm.

Mood meter = Suddenly the week seems to be dragging

I seem to be apologising more for being late posting recently than anything else. Today’s excuse is that I was on the second day of a course and actually had homework. It was fun though. Hopefully it will help form our strategy further and should give some good results for us in a different direction.

Today, as I am BBA, it is my job to announce the Birthday of Mrs Blakeley (senior). Nick and Barbara are away so I say…Happy Birthday Margaret.

I am told that I have spelt new baby Jaden’s name incorrectly. Well, that is correctly, but I was just following grumpy grampy ‘thirsty’ who had sent me a text with the previous spelling, so it really wasn’t my fault.

Was away overnight and I found tow things in the hotel that really made me chuckle. The first one was in the wardrobe in my room. As with a lot of hotels around the world, it had a small safe with electronic keypad. These are great for passports, money, etc, but only in the UK does health and safety dictate it should have a sticker on it as you see in the picture! How would you suffocate in there? As you can see by the other picture, which hopefully scales it, you would hardly be able to get a cat’s head in it, let alone any human however small. Even if you put a mouse in, there were drill holes in the back which meant it was very well ventilated thank you.(Click to enlarge).

The second thing. Which is shown below, is the difference between the way the Government sees stuff at the minute and the private sector. the latter has seen many job losses and changes. The former has seen nothing of this and the money just keeps flowing out. I was a recipient as the course was Government run, but this shows the difference. Government afternoon breaks had afternoon cream teas with Cornish Clotted Cream teas where Boots, the UK chemist chain had a few chocolate bars. Go figure taxpayer! (Click to enlarge)

Private Sector	Public Sector

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It been persisting down.

Mood meter = Home again and so is Lindsay!

What a topsy turvy world we live in? Saints were rescued Wednesday, as reported. Our goalkeeper, who was all but signed to West Ham in the premier league, being out of contract and unsure of work, makes a U-turn and signs a three year deal to stay with us. Fair play and a little loyalty in football for a change. Then, after all the euphoria, we sack our Manager Mark Wotte. That is really strange, as he too had shown a degree of loyalty staying without pay and trying to keep the squad together. I suspect they have a reason for it? His record was not spectacular, but he picked up the reins at a difficult time and had not really had a huge chance. Maybe we are destined to get a ‘name’ in and someone with a proven record and more experience in our league? Who knows, news in this situation only trickles out. At least season tickets go on sale today so, to boost them I would expect an announcement pretty soon. Mine with be £282 for this season.

Further on the footballing front, ‘bad boy’ Joey Barton seems to be getting another chance at Newcastle United after Alan Shearer suspended him for being sent off at Liverpool. I suspect it is only while they attempt to sell him, reputedly to Birmingham. Any Manager taking him on must do so with some trepidation. I would leave him suspended and have him serve hot dogs in the car park.

Had a long day yesterday and today, because of it looks like being extra busy. Not only do I have three staff interviews, a meeting with a possible supplier and a couple of phone calls to make. I also have to finish the presentation for the afternoon update to our US board. Is there two of me?

After a few more updates when I got home for today, we managed to get another coat on the ceiling. I suspect that will do and maybe one more on the walls and then we can get some of the fittings in (sinks and bath) before fitting the wall and floor tiles and finally the shower and loo. I’m determined to be in that room for our wedding, so have to stay on message. The grass will not have been cut for a couple of weeks, so that will need doing this weekend too and also finishing the brambles around the tennis court is high on the list.

Have an unknown ‘quota’ of stuff to do each year to maintain my MVP status with Microsoft. I have to be renewed each year in October and that means I had to complete a spreadsheet (how do you do that?) on my activities for the last year. It was a little thinner this year that last as I had no book reviewing and I have dropped the busy newsgroups where thousands answer for the relative calm, but more detailed world of my site at www.excelusergroup.org. I hope I have done enough, but it’s one of those things you never know until the 1st October. We’ll see. Truthfully this year, I have had a few more things to concentrate on, work and the recession, house and wedding, so Excel did come a poor fourth. Hopefully it will make it to third after August and maybe up to second in the new year. Who knows?

Lindsay, on her travels departs Sarajevo today for Zagreb. Still no blog post, but we do expect a phone call tonight. (We actually did last night, but that’s nothing unusual for Lindsay).

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = That’s a little cooler than of late

Mood meter = Can only manage a neutral as I have so much to do today.

Away very early this morning as Steve and I are making our annual anniversary visit to one of our key customers in Rotherham. Fortunately Steve is not a good passenger so it is chauffeured all day for me. Currently having a breakfast coffee at Trowell services on the M1 near Nottingham.

Great news yesterday, Saints’ purchase went through to Markus Liebherr, the Swiss businessman. He certainly has the credentials and money, but is so far proceeding with caution which is perhaps a good thing. I’m just pleased we have a club to follow next season. Don’t care about it being in league 1, beginning with minus 10 points, nothing can now dampen my relief as I believe it was  a very close thing to us actually closing for business and that would not bear consideration.

I loved the start of the official statement though. Is that an ‘off the shelf’ Company name or what?

“DMWSL613 Limited is pleased to announce that it has acquired the assets of Southampton Leisure Holdings, principally Southampton Football Club for an undisclosed sum.”

Anyhow, as I have very limited wireless and only about 15 minutes while Steve demolishes a fried breakfast, I’d best shoot….

On this day in history and last year…

Weather = It’s fairly warm here up north!

Mood meter = I like being out visiting customers, it’s good for the soul.