Wedding Anniversary Number Three

As hard to believe as it seems to me, three years have now gone by (well on Friday) since Nicky and I got married. We repeated last years events we enjoyed them so much. We headed up to Stratford Upon Avon again, for fine food, rowing and Shakespeare.

This time we saw Ian McKellan in King Lear, it was excellent, everything I expected. We have really been very lucky two years running, last year it was Patrick Stewart in Anthony and Cleopatra. To have seen two of the greats in Shakespeares home town in quality productions is great.

Before the play we had fine food and wine, then after the show pudding back at the hotel.

Marvellous.

A very tame Reading Beer Festival this year

Wow, we must be getting old, it was the tamest Beer Festival we have been to yet. We drank plenty, all day long, but just did not seem to get drunk. Was great to have the usual crowd there, although we were missing a few due to weddings etc.

On the plus side Rosspo, Darth Limpet, Chudplug, Bert and I did all wear tweed, and Chudplug and I bought pipes for the occasion. As per usual the pictures are up on flickr-rossputin, and flickr-theplugs.

Roll on Newbury Beer Festival now, when we will have to try to get back into the drinking games :-)

A little update on our busy lives

A few months ago, I blogged about getting a new job. I am still loving it, nice little company, great location, interesting work, cups of tea made for me all day, marvellous.

Well, after a long difficult search Nicky has a new job now also, she is finally leaving Francis Bailey Primary School after eight years teaching there. Nicky will be starting a new job at John Rankin in September, so now hopefully her life will be easier knowing what the future holds.

On the house front, we accepted an offer on ours, and then found a nice new place just up the road. We made an offer on that and had it accepted, so fingers crossed, it could all go smoothly.

Updates to follow soon.

My rapidly approaching 30th birthday

Oh dear, I am almost 30, scary! On the plus side I am milking it for all it is worth, I have already been to Center Parcs, am off to the Reading Beer Festival in a couple of weeks, and this weekend went home to Bournemouth to spend some time with my family. I got a fantastic golf set, my first one. I can't wait to get out there and swing my new clubs.

Thanks everyone :-)

Centre Parcs

Alas, the long awaited Centre Parcs visit is over. The Newbury lot, Rosspo, Darth Lipmet Chudplug and partners plus myself and Nicky paid for the Exclusive Accomodation this time, with hottub, steam room and sauna facilities. It was marvellous, we had wine and Champagne in the tub. The rapids were excellent as per usual. I won an archery competition, wow, first time I have won anything for ages.

Thanks to everyone for my birthday pressies, so much Belgian Beer it will take me ages to drink it all, and I even got an authentic Pauwel Kwack testtube glass thingy!

We videotaped a cake-off between Joey and Rosspo, both cakes tasted very good. Photos are here!

Amiga Emulation, marvellous

Yep, I could be considered late jumping onto the bandwagon, I just never got round to it, well, finally I set up WinUAE, and started playing some of my favourite old Amiga games. I need to get hold of a load more, but for now I have 'Menace' and 'Arkanoid' working, and they are as playable as ever. Its relatively painless getting WinUAE up and running, but if you want a really simple solution, simply look up 'Amiga Forever' on your search engine of choice.

My little sister is going to love playing Menace again after all these years.

We got tickets to see the police.. wow!

Excellent news, Nicky and I are going to see The Police at twickenham with Mr and Mrs Plug.. (The Chudlings). As its my 30th this year, as mentioned in my previous post.. it seems fitting that we struck it lucky and not only did they reform, but we got tickets to see them.

Added to this, I am doing the Reading Beer Festival is rapidly approaching, 6th of May I think.. so much to look forward to right now.

Centre Parcs is just around the corner

Hurray, only a couple of weeks to go now, I can't wait, we have booked Centre Parcs over the Easter weekend, with swanky accomodation including a hottub. Darth Limpet and I are going to be celebrating our 30th birthday there.

We are just about to book our activities, lets hope there is more Greco Roman wrestling 'strictly torso dude'.. and drinking!

A little update

So I mentioned before that I was job hunting, well.. no more, finally some 6 weeks after I started the search I got me a new job. What's more its away from London, so no more ridiculous commute, hurray!

Its with a small company in Hungerford, and everything about it just felt right, I like the technologies, the location and the people, I hope it works out.

I will be sad to leave VNU behind, but the time is right to move on to the next stage of my career. I just have to get through the remaining 6 weeks of my notice period.. half way now!

So now Nicky and I just have to find a new house! Hope thats gonna be easy.

So now, its time to watch a cheesy horror film.. 'Last Cannibal World' and crack open a bottle of wine.

Well, back from Dubai.. boo, there's no sun here

Nicky and I just got back from our holiday in Dubai, see pictures at Flickr. We had a great time staying with our friends Tina and Kent. If the rent were a little cheaper, and there were more footpaths I would be out there to live in a flash, (12 months of sunshine).

So now its back to the UK, and getting the house ready to put on the market and on going career change trauma.. oh why is life never easy?

On the up side, I bought myself a Nintendo DS and it is great fun, looking to get more than just the one game though, only have Brain Age or whatever its called.

On the other up side Supreme Commander should be joining my collection of PC games tomorrow if all goes according to plan :-)

Fantastic Christmas break

So, despite a massive amount of free time from 11th December until 3rd January, an almost total silence in blog land... sorry, I was pretty much playing golf, or Oblivion, and after Christmas Medieval Total War 2. I had a brilliant holiday, as I had been saving up my holiday at work due to many busy project launches.

Hair update.. sadly the locks of the hairy Rossputin are no longer with us, as they were at the recieving end of too much abuse :-) I got called Lego Man, Playmobile man, The Hulk, Superman, and probably far worse things I can not remember! I am now more like Tintin again.

So a new year.. my resolutions, how am I doing?

- give blood (not yet)
- get fit (trying in between fighting off colds and travelling all over as per usual)
- address my work life balance (yep, doing pretty well on this one)
- couple of hobbies with Nicky (French, Squash) (we are still keen on these)

Its all up in the air right now, we are tidying the house up to put it on the market, and I am considering my career options, basically everything may change, watch this space

Second post so soon?

For a good reason, while we are on the subject of New Years Resolutions, lets add another 'getting organised'... its time I did just that, thanks to my continually disorganised state, see (Nicky is my Oracle/calendar/contact book), I have just let a close friend of mine down.. I was supposed to go to Breakpoint in Germany in April with him (sorry Emanuel), but have already booked and paid for a joint birthday celebration. Muppet!

So what organiser software to use? My phone I suppose, and SyncML... more details to follow.

First post of the New Year... 2007...

What will it hold? Probably going to move house, try to keep my resolutions :

- Give Blood
- Get Fit
- Don't take any bullshit

.. thats probably it for now.

Christmas was great, and the New Year at Darth Limpet's place, we dressed up as James Bond, and did some horse racing. Drank some great wine, and got lots of nice pressies. Including the main reason why 90% of my time has been spent in front of my PC... Medieval Total War 2, the best game since Rome Total War. Wow!!!

Got to finish Total War in time for Supreme Commander, which is coming soon :-)

My New Phone

I got a new phone a couple of months ago, the Sony Ericsson P990i. Its great I love it, but there are some small problems. The user interface is not consistent in the messaging section, sometimes I cannot delete multiple messages, this is annoying. More serious than this though, the keyboard has stopped working down the far right hand side.. and ironically the web browser crashes every time I go to the Sony Ericsson homepage.

On the flip side as already stated, the phone is cool, and I have done some cool stuff with it, like synching up with a centralised contacts database, and hooking up my encrypted wifi network at home :-)

My last Sony Ericsson phone the V800 was replaced twice with new handsets before it finally just worked.... the theme goes on.

The Guiness Surger

So Rosspo bought me a Guniness surger for my birthday back in April... finally, months later, in between my wine experimentation, I got to try it out on Sunday night...

See the evidence The Surge Experiment.

The pint did actually look exactly as though poured in a pub in Dublin, tasted great, and most importantly, the ultrasonics were geekily impressive :-).

On holiday at the moment, loving it.

I decided to use some of my holiday up and keep Nicky company while she is on her half term. We are not going anywhere, just spending some time together, and getting all the things in order that I am usually too busy to do, paperwork, keeping CV up to date, sorting out a new dedicated server for rossputin.org, so expect updates there over the coming weeks! It just goes to show.. when we are working, we just don't have time even to do every day things.. it kind of takes over our lives! Booo, lets push work down the stairs!!!!

Company of Heroes

Just completed Company of Heroes... and as its rare that I complete a game.. it must have been good! An RTS set in the Second World War, you can lay mines, build sandbag emplacements and shoot the Kraut! Marvellous. I highly recommend it.

Wow, did Oktoberfest on Saturday!

It was amazing... a completely different experience to UK beer festivals.. not better, just different!
The traditions were amazing, great costumes, ceremony. The atmosphere was astonishing before even the first beer was poured. One thing only was lacking, proper beer :-) The Whitebeers were tremendous, just too much goddamn lager! Yuck.

The downside was me chucking my guts up on foul lager, I am a lager girl!!!!

Glad I did it though, thanks to my most esteemed German Compatriot Emanuel, for organising everything, and making sure I got back to my hotel on the publisc transport.

The Beer Festival Run

Well I thought it was about time I picked this subject up again. The beer festival run.. I am aiming for 6 festivals this year, with 2 already attended, Reading and Talin... I hope to squeeze in The Pubecks Banks Arms festival immediately after getting back from holiday.

But yesterday I realised Nicky is out to destroy my plans.. by removing the possibility of me attending my annual visit to the Newbury festival!!! I am horrified!! What to do?

Sniff snif, sad Putin.

Second Thoughts on Keane's new album

OK, maybe I was hasty... just been listening to the album again, and this time, very unexpectedly, another song just started grabbing me, 'Nothing in my Way'. Marvellous, from nowhere, it grabs you, with close to the brilliance of some of the songs on the first album!