Hmm, I really do seem to work better in the early hours.

So, here I am, 4am, awake, writing software. I really do work best at this time of day. Fell asleep at around 8:30pm, woke up at 2am, felt great. That’s more sleep than I normally get anyway.

Grete’s really worried about losing the car tomorrow (MOT – what if it’s too expensive to fix?) but I’ll do everything that’s in my power to prevent that happening.

Now, do I go to bed, or do I just stay awake until it’s time to go to work?

Well, another 12 hour Saturday at work 🙁 During the Summer 🙁

And now, it’s early morning, and it’s still DAMN HOT! So hot, that sleeping is almost impossible.

So, you’re feeling ill and guilty, what else is there to do than go through old QIC80 tapes and see what you backed up 5 years ago.

I found my entire JAM Message Base for FidoNet, and all my Point config files, GoldEd, mail tossers, utils, oh, the whole whack. 2600 messages in EASTMID, some of those were entertaining. We also had an echo called EM_DIARY, which was for, oddly enough, dear diary style posts. And I found these, from me. And I thought, what the hell, I’ll share em 😉

They are rather long, so I’ve popped them onto another page, remember, I was a bit younger when I wrote these 😉

You can find them here.

I’m trying to work out why I feel so guilty about taking a day off work. I’ve got a temperature of over 100 degrees, I’m having trouble walking straight, I feel terrible, everything is muffled and I can’t concentrate. And it still took me an hour to decide not to go to work this morning, and I still feel as though I’m cheating or letting people down.

I think perhaps childhood has a massive effect on adult life.

Perhaps if I went to work at lunch time …

Argh I feel terrible. Seem to have caught Grete’s cold, not getting enough sleep, getting stressed at all the wrong things 🙁

Probably working too much out of hours, and not enough during hours as well.

One day I’ll get it all sorted.

Anyone like to buy a house in Stockton on Tees? mail me if you do!

Morning folks. Well, recovering from another evening in the Sheriffs Lodge in Nottingham, free ale and good food. An excellent evening, even if I did get a headache before hand. Grete’s costume looked excellent, still waiting for photos from the actual night, but here’s one of her in the back garden before we went.

Thanks to Christine for organising the evening 🙂

We’re heading into town at some point to get photo’s developed – two of the flims we’re not sure what’s on them all, and one of them I probably ruined last night by opening the back before it had rewound 🙁

We do have some digital photos from Center Parcs, but not many (having real problems using the digital camera in low light conditions!). Anyway, here’s one of me preparing to fight off some ducks.

After that, if we’re up to it we might go out for some food with Andy and his mate, but it depends on headaches and stomachs.

The entire darkstorm.org site (including this bit if you’re viewing it at darkstorm.org and not tagman.demon.co.uk) was moved to another server over the last couple of days, by Xeran [the hosting company I use]. Went virtually without a hitch, so thanks to them for that. It now means I get to use PHP3 and mySQL if I can think of anything to use them for!

I might use PHP3 to allow me to make these diary entries without changing the page source, which should make things quicker and easier generally, but we’ll see how things progress.

Only 9 days to pay day.

I know, I know, nearly two months since the last update. Sometimes it’s easy to find the time and the emotional energy to update the diary, and other times it’s very hard. Also, at times, the stuff I
want to write in here really isn’t wise, and so I leave it alone for a while until I’m more me.

The Gemmell Mania website has suffered from a lack of updates as well, although I’ve just gone through it tonight and added all the reviews and recommendations that have been sent to me in the time between changes.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on NewsMangler, and it’s pretty good now, even if I do say so myself. Still needs work on the exception handling side of things.

Grete went through a pretty bad patch recently, one of the reasons for a lack of updates. However, she’s come through it with what seems to be a renewed lease of life, and is once again working at
Oxfam. Which is nice[tm].

We’ve been away for a few days at Center Parcs – Eleveden Forest, which was nice, although I’ve bruised my coccyx cycling, which hurts and is a bad thing[tm].

Work is better, generally not too bad to be honest, and I’m much busier now than I have been for a long time.

We’ve got another cat – Bubbles – to go with Squeak. No photo’s on Grete’s site at the moment, but I’m sure there will be soon.

I still officially hate cars – our car is now due MOT, Tax and Insurance once again. However, it does give us the freedom to get around, without which we’d be in real trouble.

The Omega event was excellent – without doubt the best LRP event I’ve been to, to-date. I think I set out to do nothing, and did far more than normal. Weather was ok, company was excellent, and the four days were generally brilliant. It’s not long now until the next event, and I’m really looking forward to it.

We’re off to our second Medieval Banquet at the Sheriff’s Lodge in Nottingham this coming weekend, which should be excellent.

[Although Grete still has to sort costume out – and only three days to go!]

Anyway, long update, and I promise I’ll try and make updates more frequently (for some reason, people seem to read this now and then!)

I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed,

I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how to have fun again, I will be more relaxed, I will learn how
to have fun again.