Good Movember bowler to you all.

I'm not happy with the way my tash is coming along, but atleast the bowler cheers me up.
Have a look at the Movember page for more info. Or my Movember page - http://uk.movember.com/mospace/350066/

Me and PJ.

Me ready for work and PJ just off to school.

Morning! Don't forget its Movember.

Morning all, only the second day of Movember time. So only the second day of growning a tash to increase awareness of male prostrate cancer. Have a look at the Movember page for more info. Or my Movember page - http://uk.movember.com/mospace/350066/

Give me your brains...

Guess my Emotion...

This journey upto Nodnol is bloody hot, but can you guess how I feel about it from my face?

Bowler today

Almost at the office, bags all packed ready for my trip home tonight.

Bowler today and delayed train again

Waitin on my train for the 3rd time this week, trains seem to be almost only running late. Going to probably get worse to with how cold the weather is getting.

Bowler time!

Reflections on the Tube.

Look its me in my bowler, don't I look funky.

Bowler time

Out and about in London, miss the tash though.

Hat for the day.

Just had to. I know its a bit wet today but this hat cheers my soul, maybe my happiness will rub off.

God like...

Today I performed a miracle, well the the Ladybird that I saved I did. Its must have landed on my shirt when I went for a walk at lunch, so end up in the building with me when I went back in the office. Now there is no way poor little Ladybird could have back-out with all the fire doors and closed windows.
So a miracle was performed, I clasped it in my hand, when down the stairs and through a few doors and released the tiny beetle. Now you might not think this is a miracle but imagine if the same had happened to you, trapped somewhere no knowing where and huge hand came down scooped you up and then suddenly released you into the world free again. Sounds like a god to me, its just perspective.
Now I'm not relegious, but if you lost and that miracle does not come, then maybe today you where to small and where not noticed or simply god saw you and couldn't be arse. As I almost went the same way, after all said Ladybird is probably splatted on a car windscreen now.

Domant bloging'

Wow, its been 3 months and I've not posted a thing on my blog site, what must have been wrong with me? To a word, just plain busy. Just before Christmas I left my job at IBM to take up a new job in London, which is better money and hopefully better career prospects. Not to say that I didn't enjoy the job at IBM, which I did, but some things at IBM, I feel will never change, now if your at IBM you know what I mean.
So in January I started my new job at a company called Euroclear with there Unix team as a Support Engineer, going back to the support and administration work that I know and have done for years.
I did miss the first week of work due to a rather bad coughin' and vomiting bug that I caught, plus Jax got the winter sickness bug so I was at risk and there HR really preferred me not to come in and give it to other people. This in turn meant that I missed the pay day cut off so had to wait another month for my wages, and as some people know IBM in the UK pay in advance. It worked out that when I go paid this month I hadn't been paid for 3 months, 3 long hard months. As you can imagine things have been very tight, and on top of that our car decided to have a gear box failure costing just under a grand. Lucky my Mum has lent us the money till I get something sorted out else we would have been up the creek with out a paddle, thanks Mum.

Anyway onto the the other stuff, as I result of the new job I now stay up in London 3 weeks out of 4 else I would be doing 72 miles each way, and a 2hr journey. Its hard to do as it means Monday to Friday I'm not seeing Jax and PJ, and I miss them both very much, but it needs to be done. I'm hoping after a couple of years doing this we can sort something out, moving jobs, home or even both so that I can give them both the things they need and want. Enjoy those family holidays and travel to those places that we would all love to do.

We had a nice Christmas though Jax's Dad was very ill over it which made things very hard as he was in hospital, he has got better now and is at home and recovering well. So all the best Dad.

Jax has had her birthday yesterday as well, not mentioning age here, and she got lots of presents and cards. Thanks to Jax Mum I put up some balloons and banners as a little surprise when she popped out at lunch and even managed to get PJ's nursery to get him to make a card for Jax from him. It was a nice mellow day and I hope Jax enjoyed it.

I've also been fiddling with stuff as per my normal geekyness, and just put Sky Freesat in our kitchen. Managed to acquire a sky box of Jax's brother Pete as he's gone over to Virgin same as us. So we where going to stick it on ebay as he didn't want it, ebay not really being his thing, but in the process discovered Sky Freesat. Sky in there attempt to curb the people move from them to freeview offered a freesat service, where you can have the dish and boxed fitted but get all the 'free' channels through it. As this house already has a dish and we have the equipment you can just pay 20 quid to get a 'freesat' card and then just use it. So this was the plan, set it all up, plugged it all in and... Nothing... Lucky for us the guy next door is a Aerial and Satellite engineer so had a look for me. Turns out that the LMB had been struck by lightning at some point in its life and was fried, so popped out to the van and dug out a second hand one for me. Presto! It all came to life, and we did a swap with a spare 40GB Sky plus box for his time and the parts. So he was well happy and as was I, as we now have digital in the kitchen and Jax never need miss Corrie, Emerdale, or Dancing on Ice again.
You can find out more about this on the web just looking for Sky Freesat, FTA or FTV.

In addition to that I got hold of a BT homehub router which is a re-badged Speedtouch modem with a Linux core, now after a little fiddling I have managed to get set up as wireless bridge. Lucky for me my old (over 5 years) 11b cable modem supports WDS (Wireless Distribution System), the great little modem/router that it is, seems to support everything and as my broadband is only just becoming 10mb I see no point in upgrading.
So after a lot of faffing I managed to get them to link up, the trick was to put on the BT's 6.2.2.6 firmware that I got off the 'HomeHub Hacks' website. Then set them to the same wireless channel, the SSID does not need to be the same, and the same wireless key so make access easier. You can set the SSID the same to make auto switching to the strongest signal enabled, but I didn't want this. You also need to set both routers so that they have different admin address so you can log on and administer them, so one on 192.168.1.254 and one on .253. Ensure that the BT hubs mac address was added to the 11b routers wireless details as I explicitly set my access control via mac address. Add the 11b router to the BT hubs 'repeater' details, then turn of DHCP on the BT hub via the 'IP addresses' menu. As all this is now being controlled by the 11b router as the BT hub is simple a bridge to jump the signal.
Now hopefully this will mean that I can keep the router downstairs and connect stuff in that does not have a wireless card on to my network, or peoples laptops that I'm repairing which is not yet added into my mac address list. Also looking about the web I should be able to use the BT Hub to add in other devices via the USB interface on it, so I could have wireless printing or network storage. Sweet as they say, and my nerdy moment is complete.

5.5

That is my number, my cholesterol number. Not a good thing so I'm told, though hopefully it's a trend that I can halt, and it goes towards explaining my big tummy now and its side-affects on me.
Also it means a rather drastic change in my life, in what I eat. No more cream, cut down the cheeses and I'm only allowed 3 eggs a week.
Oh well I suppose its all something that I really needed to do, next is exercise I s'pose as I have noticed that I get tired a lot more. Have a look at this last photo and you'll see what will be slowly happening to me if I'm not careful. After all, I don't want to have to go in 10 years time and have the arteries to my heart replaced.

True Blue...

That me, blue, with a red star... why not, not sure why myself, but its one of those things. People seem to like it and I've even managed to get way with it at work. But then it is IBM, and IBM is the blue company.

So what do you think, signs of some sort of mid-life crissis... and the star is red, not pink.

Hair today...

Gone for work on Monday... that is I've had to shave my blue hair and beard off, due to the nature of my work I can't really keep it. I still have a blue line down the middle that I will have to wait to grow out abit. But I do kind of miss it all now, almost to the point that I'd like the idea of having it all blue. Might have to see if I can find anything specific that say I can't.

Mad Hair Day

Well I've gone and done it now, Jax has coloured my hair. I've got 2 weeks off and at the end I'm on a big ride out, camping weekend up at the Lake disrict. So the hair got cut, beard trimmed, and then both got a nice colour put into them. Have a look at the web album below and you will see...

My Mad Hair Day

Thoughts and my wandering mind

What is going on in my head, why do I have this need to blog? What is it about this medium that enables me verify my existence with the world, do I have a need to be seen. Is it a kind of need to be famous and known by others in some way?
Now I have always considered myself a simple person with clear values and a sense of black and white in all things, but since the birth of my son that changed. Now I know how I feel about things and I'm clear on right and wrong, but somethings have smudged. Like I never joined the army as I knew one day that I would be called upon to maybe take another persons life. Now I could have avoided that in the signal core, but the need would still be there. And I don't think I could have done it, sure they may have trained me to act on instinct but I have a strong mind. Now all that has changed, if my family was threatened in some way I don't think I would even draw breath. Sure it would haunt me, but I would know the reasons I did it and my black and white mind would justify it all.
Saying all this I am a changed man, a little while ago, in my own words I went 'a little strange'. Depression and stress kicked in, I felt myself fall, dragging those around with me. And I grabbed and spluttered as I went down, but I threw myself a life line, went to the doctors and have had counselling. After it all I'm now on some little white tablets for the next 4 months, 6 in all.
So the question I ask is this me? I know that the tablets are fixing a imbalance in my mind, just like a splint helps fix broken bones. Or that injection helps those that suffer with diabetes, but this is my mind. Does this change in chemicals to stop me spiralling away also stop me being me?
After all I am the person I am due to the signals and chemical reactions that occur in my brain, by changing this have I changed who I am... If I have changed then why I am I writing these questions, why have I not spoken to this with my wife. What is it about this keyboard, laptop and screen that makes it easy for me to free my mind and write the things that I think, that I can't do in my life. Have I become attached to the PC so long that it is now a extension of me, have I become cyberpunk'ed and not realised. Is my lack of empathy all due to this, have I just worked in the logical IT career to long. I would have loved to have been a plumber, how much of a different person would I have been, maybe the birth of my son has some how pulled these feeling and emotions to the surface and made me realise as my thoughts of him are so clear. I know how I feel with him and yet have so many questions for myself.
Like why airsofting? Is there a underlying need to fight that I have crushed all these years? Why during and after did I get such a rush, even have a need to go again. I'm not a violent person and yet I enjoyed it so, even the marks it left on my body has left me feeling chuffed. Like some sort of battle scare, god next I'll be getting a tattoo. And how I don't like the idea of one of those on my body.
Maybe over the years I have calmed these things with my motorbike, out riding with nothing but the road to worry me. Now there is more in my life and I don't have the same flexibility I had to just go out and let the stress drift away so now I need something else. Something more intense to remind me I'm alive...

Maybe I write this so that maybe someone else will know my mind and remind me I'm not the only one going through this, but also I have a connection to these machines which has grown over the years. While in the sense of 'cyberpunk' I don't have a robotic arm, eye, or lung I do have this which is no longer a laptop but a extension of me.

Hairy Face...

The story continues, as my face gets hairier, and hairier. I'll post some pic's later...
But I've noticed that I now fiddle with it through-out the day, twisting and pulling the long hairs. Sometimes tugging them right out, with a momentary pin of pain as the little hair follicle gives up. What's that all about?
Annoyingly the hair on the left* of my face grows down in a nice uniform fashion, while the hair on the right** seems to lay horizontal. Its annoying because it means its all unsymmetrical. But is this strange of me, am I thinking about this to much, seems I'm becoming a bit anal-retentive when it comes to my beard?
I'll be naming it next...

Jax has bought me a rather nice beard trimmer so I can keep it all ship shape and Bristol fashion.

* my left, not your left, but your right.
** my right, not your right... Oh I think you get it now.

Tea and Biscuits

We had some bikers over this weekend for tea, biscuits and cake. It was a good day...

Tea and Biscuits