I couldn't sleep again. What is going on at the moment with Anna's temperature??? Some nights I wake up at night, it feels like she is on fire. I know its hot at the moment, but really, if I had wanted a hot water bottle I would have just gone out and bought one. Instead, I chose a wife. Looks like I got both for the same price.
Expect a press release soon, as we finished AOL for Mac OSX today!!!

So the weather was nice yesterday, and we went to Kew for the day. We were talking about the first time we went there, and the differences between our previous perceptions of what it was like, and our reactions after having seen it. It was very strange really... I remember when I thought something like "Great, we'll go to this botanical garden thing, and it will be boring and full of old people". Three or four years later, I view Kew as an escape from the city that betters anything I've seen before. It's just so... calming, and energising, and clean :-) If you haven't been there, then do so now while the weather holds up. Kew in the winter is different, and not as good as it feels after you get off a tube stuffed with smelly sweating Londoners.

I've just seen the first episode of series two of The West Wing. Its a two-parter, immediately following on from the end of series one, where there is a shooting at an event Jed and the others are working. Now, I know that Jed and Joss got shot, and I know from further on in the series that both survive, though Joss needs counselling for trauma. This should have pretty much spoiled it for me. It didn't however. I still can't get over how fantastic the script writing is for this show, and how talented the actors are. Between episodes I'm like a junkie awaiting his next fix, and that hasn't happened much in the past. Twenty Four did it for me, though at times it was a little off. Enterprise did it too, but not as much. Going back, I can't actually think of another series that I have watched with as much fervour as this one. I want more, I want it now, and I don't want it to stop... ever. I have some of series two, and all of series three to get through, and series four is due soon I think. It just isn't enough though. My habit must be fed, and I can't accept that I have to wait it to be sated. Therefore, I must lead the life of a criminal, and download the show from the internet. Even with DSL though, this isn't quite the instant fix I need... the second episode of series two isn't going to be downloaded for another eight hours. What the fuck am I going to do between now and then????

So, after putting the finishing touches on AOL for Mac OS X on Thursday, we discovered on Friday that we had fucked up a little, and there was still a bug in the software which was bad enough for us to delay another day. We had a really big rush on to get everybody in place on Friday evening to test it before we released it to the beta testers. Now its out there though, there have been a very satisfactory amount of downloads, and so far there only seems to be one minor issue reported. I like the sweet taste of success :-) I took my mac home yesterday so I could monitor things over the weekend and be in a position to make any changes if I had to. I hav to say, the user experience over a modem is horrible. Its slow, un-responsive, and so far has connected properly only two times out of eleven. That sucks. Bring on DSL for macs I say.
This morning, after four years or so of trying, I finally persuaded Anna to learn chess. It wasn't the unmitigated failure I had been expecting either; she seems to have enjoyed it a little, and was certainly pushed on a bit by me beating her... you see she really doesn't like to lose ;-)

::Yawn:: Last night we put the finishing touches on a new piece of software :-) I had forgotten what the buzz was like, of making changes, then checking them in, waiting for them to compile, downloading the result from the US, doing it all over when you discover you've done something stupid... its a great cycle. Eventually you get it right, and you look with anticipation and nervousness at the piece of software you've just changed, hoping that the fix you made is in there, hoping you didn't fuck something else up. The feeling when you discover that you DID get it right is just fantastic. Last night we got it right :-))))

What the fuck??? They let this get out and dont bother to inform us? ::sigh::

After about twenty seconds of nagging this evening, I caved in, and decided that it would be ok to go through my hardware collection and chuck out the extraneous shit. It turns out that I had a lot more shit than I thought... I dumped two black sacks full of cables, and am going to list several of the more valuable items on ebay. Anybody want a Zip Drive, Colorado Travan T-1000 tape drive or a Courier iModem? Make me an offer! Hey, I was reading another review today of Bruce Springsteens's latest album - The Rising. Seems like its a really good album; the E-Street band are back together, and the music is deeper than most of the shit around at the moment. It is political though, which might be a problem. I'm a little ambivalent in my feelings about the US war on terror.
Anna was at the Passage again today, and they've asked her to come back and work with them again. She's going to do a couple of days a week with them fairly soon :-) How cool is that :-))))

An illustration of British efficiency at its best... This phone conversation was my second with them, and the fifth or sixth attempt to get through (more about that later) : "Thank you for calling Initial City-Link, my name is blah". "Hello, I'd like to find out when my package is being delivered please. Can I give you my reference number?". "Yes please". "OK, its blah". "OK, let me check that for you... right, its due for delivery tomorrow". "Great! Can you tell me what time its due?". "Some time between nine and five thirty". "Em, can you be a bit more specific?". "No, I'm sorry, its just down for between nine and five thirty". "Er, really? Thats a little inconvenient". "I'm sorry, but it'll be delivered between nine and ficve thirty". "Well, thank you, goodbye."
Fuckwits. If this was another country (with Ireland of course as the exception), then the damn thing would have been scheduled to be delivered at something like "from 14:15 to 14:30", and if it was Germany, it would have been "14:25" and fucking well delivered at 14:25. I hate couriers.

Today is the first part of our wedding anniversary :-) Unlike most people, we get to have two anniversaries... as we had both a civil and a church ceremony spread over two days. So today was the first part. We had planned to maybe go for a picnic in Kew today, but fuck me was the rain heavy. Last night I noticed that the shore outside wasn't draining properly, and figured it had to be unblocked. Today, the damn thing flooded the outside almost up to the door level. So I fixed it... with a mop ;-) So, instead of Kew, or going out to dinner... we ordered in a take-out and watched The Others while hiding under the quilt.

Today's lesson : Half a pint of methylated spirits and a Microsoft Internet keyboard do NOT mix.