Posts Tagged Eleanor
The long TV Weekend.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal, Technology on February 8th, 2010
After being Duty Manager last weekend I had Friday off as a day in Lieu and thought I would book Monday off and enjoy a long weekend. I dropped the car off for its annual service first thing Friday morning and then headed into town for a coffee and some window shopping. I sat in Costa Coffee for about two hours, chilling out with the laptop and looking at potential holiday destinations, but didn’t arrive at any conclusions. I then wandered around the town, only buying another 500 GB USB Hard Drive, before walking home.
It wasn’t particularly warm but I did enjoy the walk. One of the problems with commuting every day is that I don”t really have the energy or time to get any real exercise, and this time of year only really see daylight out of the office window. I had a couple of PodCasts to catch up on so wrapped up warm and plugged into my iPhone
After a spot of lunch Mum dropped by as I had agreed to go TV shopping with her. She had seen my new Samsung and set her heart on one. So we headed up to Curry’’s only to find that they didn’t have any in stock but said they could order one for delivery, but there would be a delivery charge. I asked if they could order it in and we would collect it but they said they couldn’t, if it was ordered it had to be delivered. Mum had really set her heart on walking away with the TV, so we headed over to Comet. They also didn’t have any in stock, but said they could order one and have it delivered Sunday with no delivery charge. It wasn’t walking away with one, but at least she would get one before the weekend was out. Mum then dropped my back at the garage to pick up my car. I drove home not noticing the software update they had performed to the Engine Management System, as they said I probably wouldn’t.
Saturday I got on with the normal chores and started to make a list of the job’’s that need doing around the house. This weekend was supposed to be the weekend I started getting people round to quote for some of the bigger jobs, but after a crappy couple of weeks, I just wasn’t in the mood, so settled on writing lists. Saturday evening I was sad and ironed while watching TV.
Sunday I headed round to Mum and Dad’’s to setup the TV on the promise of a roast dinner. The TV was delivered around midday and I was set straight to work setting it up. Now I believed that it had a Free View receiver built in, but quickly found that it didn’t. I then spent several hours trying to get it to work with there existing Thomson Free View box. In the end I was pretty sure it was the ariel but Mum came up with the idea of trying the portable ariel that she uses in the dinning room. This quickly proved it was the ariel and once we had swapped out the ariel cable, the setup was a breeze. We tided up and I connected the TV to their home network and showed them the Internet interaction, and then connected up the DVD player and tested that out by watching the BBC’’s Earth Series.
Today I enjoyed a nice long lay in and then popped round to Mum & Dad’’s as Mum looks after Eleanor on Mondays, and I hadn”t seen her or Katrina for a couple of weeks. Returning home I did the last few chores before plonking myself on the sofa where I spent the rest of the day.
A Higher Definition Outlook on Life.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal, Technology on January 25th, 2010
Last week ended pretty much as it had begun, cold, wet, and very busy, but at least there wasn’t any snow. Friday arrived and I was quite looking forward to getting home and opening a few cold beers and enjoying a long lay in Saturday morning, but you what they say about the best laid plans. So I got home Friday night and went through the normal routine of grabbing a shower and starting dinner. I opened a beer which boy did taste good and then sat down in front of the TV with another cold brew to watch a movie. Now this is where I should have known better as food, beer, and sitting down after a week at work meant only one thing. Yes, you have got it, I fell asleep before even finishing the second can. I woke up just gone midnight feeling a little chilly with a sore neck and resigned myself to the fact that I had at least had the intention of getting rather drunk. Luckily my power nap didn’t affect my ability to sleep in Saturday morning, and I eventually forced myself to get up, showered, and dressed a little before 10:30.
Now I had booked my Sky+ HD & Sky Multiroom installation for Saturday afternoon, but after I had done a few chores it was too late to go out as I risked not being back in time to meet the engineer. Luckily he turned up and was done in quick time although I was left to run the Multiroom cable myself across the attic and down into the bedroom as he wasn’t allowed up there for health and safety reasons. I decided to leave this for Sunday and opting instead to tidy up all the cable’’s behind the TV downstairs. I spent about an hour doing this, for it to look pretty much the same when I had finished, so I think I am going to need to invest in some proper cable management as it really is an eyesore. I think that will have to wait until next weekend. Saturday afternoon I got on with a few more chores and chilled out with the cold beer I had promised myself Friday night. I decided to be lazy and threw a pizza in the oven before taking up position on the sofa for the evening.
Sunday I was up bright and early and although I could have easily gone back to sleep I decided I needed to get on so set about sorting out my personal email and correspondence. Luckily this didn’t take long and I was able to get on with some the remaining chores. I was half way through these when I remembered I hadn’t dropped my brother-in-law’’s birthday present down to him. After catching up with him, my sister, and the kids I came back ready to finish the Sky Multiroom setup in my bedroom. My sister had a newer menu system on her Sky+ HD box and said you needed to have both connected for it to sort itself out. After getting everything setup there was still no difference so I called Sky who talked me through forcing a firmware update. I followed the instructions they gave me but it made no difference, but by this point I had opened a beer and couldn’t be bothered as I still had access to the content via the old menu system. I spent the rest of the evening scanning the TV channels and generally playing with the new features before heading to bed.
Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal on January 4th, 2010
Christmas was a quiet affair this year with just Mum, Dad, and I sitting down for Christmas dinner. Boxing day however was anything but as Katrina, Rob, Rob’’s Mum, William, and Eleanor came to visit and proved that Christmas is all about the children.
Even though I had a chest infection (read Man Flu) I still had to take my turn having invisible cups of tea and falling down when shot with either a machine gun or a ray gun. All in all it was great fun and watching the kids open there presents was priceless. They really didn”t know what to play with first. Mum and Dad, as always, were excellent hosts and ensured we all had everything we could possibly want.
All the photo’’s I took are now available in the Photo Gallery and on Flickr.
Eleanor Two, Australia One.
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal on November 30th, 2009
So Eleanor reached the grand old age of two on the 25th November, but as this fell mid week we decided to have the get together over the weekend. We also had Ebony, my cousin, visiting from Australia so we decided to roll both events into one. It was a great day and Eleanor was on top form despite frowning for this photo.T he rest of the photo’s I took can be found here or here.
Ouch Reality hurts!
Posted by Mark Dalton in Personal, Work on November 2nd, 2009
05:00 and I am wide awake, could it be the excitement of returning to work? I don’t think so! Something to do with the bl**dy car alarm that has been going off every hour since 02:00, not really! The overwhelming desire to watch the sun come up? In Basingstoke, are you kidding me? If I analyse it deeply I think it had something to do with the fact that I was rested, relaxed, and in bed by 10:30 last night, and maybe the slightly weird dream I had about ducks! All I will say is that my first job tonight is to adjust the timing on the heating, dam 05:00 is cold.
So I hit the override button on the heating control and after a cigarette and glass of orange juice went back and laid in bed, waiting for the heating to kick in. I didn’t doze back off which I fully expected to, but when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was laying there trying to remember what I had watched on TV that would encourage the duck dream. Showered and dressed and still none the wiser regarding the ducks I stuffed the laptops into the bag and headed for the car. Once outside I really noticed how cold it was and getting into the car I felt the need to test the heating on HIGH and make sure the heated seats were fully functional.
I had to renew my train ticket and luckily my early start paid off as while there was only one guy serving he was the one with 90% of the brain cells and powered through the queue. Even more luck when I pulled into the car park and the car in Bay 1, yep the golden bay, the bay right next to the exit, was pulling out. Parked, smiling, and still cold I headed for the station and then I realised the shorter walk didn’t allow me to finish my smoke before entering the station, so I had to either stand with the private school students who had all been kicked from Dad’s Merc into the cold or ditch it. I ditched it and headed for the coffee shop.Then it happened, Yes I had the quick queue, yes I had the gold parking spot, but the coffee shop was closed! I nearly gave up then and there but figured I could wait until I got on the train. Then it happened, the 06:51 was delayed by 4 minutes due to slippery tracks. Now most people would shrug and say four minutes, what’s the fuss? After 10 years commuting however I saw the look in the other commuters eye’s. The rules now change and the shuffle starts. You take the gamble you take your spot and you pray to the great train god that the doors will open in front of you. If they don’t, your screwed, and there was no chance of the much needed coffee elixor. There will be 10 people to each seat, and it will be elbow warfare. In my relaxed state of mind I was no match for them, and with low nicotine levels and zero caffeine this was a fight I was not ready for. So I hung back and watched the chubby cyclist squeeze in between the suited guy and the rather sleepy goth bloke and decided it was better to save the fight for another day.
As the 12 coach 07:17 arrived I smiled, the train gods had respected my peaceful, non combative stance and rewarded me with an empty train, and as I boarded I thought to myself “Don’t get to smug, it can all go so wrong”. We arrived at London Waterloo on time and intact, and without seeing one duck.
Then it started….the working day. I can’t really say I got into it or really took any notice of what transpired but as I packed up I thought, what was with the bl**dy ducks? The journey home was uneventful and the golden parking bay position paid off as I pulled out of the car park in poll position.
Arriving home, showering, and changing I felt that I had won. Maybe not the war, but certainly the battle. Logging on to check my email I noticed a post from my little sister and remembered I hadn’t caught up with her after her Halloween party. After hearing about her day and my niece Eleanor not being well I logged into her laptop remotely, using the free LogMeIn service and installed the Adobe Reader software for her, and set up a separate account for her husband, so he could use the laptop without messing up anything she was working on.
So now I am ready to sort the heating timer out, grab something to eat, and then chill out in front of the TV. I hope tomorrow goes this well, but you never know the mood of the train gods!
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