luckykaa

I was hoping to get out early... I had an urgent mission of mercy!

flickums' wallet had been stolen at the weekend. The replacement debit card was probably going to arrive yesterday, but she had to head to London. I volunteered to rush it to her before she left. She said there was no need. My control freakery insisted.

In our software development team, as is typical, we each work on our own branch. We do all the work, get other people to review it and then merge it. Merging is only allowed when a test build has been completed, a tester has tested, and another developer has signed off.

So I had everything working. Tester noticed one more extra issue... Fixed that. Rebuilt. Everything was ready! I could finally do the merge!

Merge conflict!

Gaaah! So I merged, pushed and started a build. Then tried it locally. There was an error. Fixed that. Set off a test build. I was watching the progress indicator like a hawk.

It passed. I merged! I rushed home. The replacement card was there! So was a mystery package. I rushed to the station. Flickums demanded I didn't. Sadly, there was a communications issue of some sort and the message broke up... I leaped onto a bus, went to the station and handed the envelope over. And the other mystery package. I was rewarded with gifts liberated from the first class lounge. The mystery package contained a replacement Fallout Oyster card wallet.

I realise this is all bit self congratulatory but I felt damn good about myself!

Plus I got to kiss my Flickums goodbye at the station :)

For the last year or two, I was having trouble getting to sleep roughly once every other week, but this seemed to be increasing. For the past month this hasn't been a problem.

It may be a coincidence, but that's also the time I ditched an aggressive happy-meatarian (i.e. free range or veggie) lifestyle. I was finding it way too much work to be sure meat was outdoor reared, so was essentially vegetarian. Partly because I found a veggie diet hard, but the possibility that the insomnia may have been diet related was a factor. I had been putting it down to stress, but I wasn't feeling all that stressed.

Would do some experimentation to work out what I might have been missing but that would involve periodically making myself miserable and sleep deprived and I'm actually enjoying this sensation of being able to sleep.

August is busy. Full of stuff that I'm planning to enjoy.

It also involves a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing between here and Britain.

I really miss having a high speed train direct to London. And having a car.

Nineworlds is happening in a couple of weeks. All I really need to do there is book a flight. Will have to leave early to get back home. This is a shame. I just don't feel in a position to take too many days off having only been here a month.

The week after some friends are getting married. Need to plan logistics there. Plane, trains, taxis and hotels. Anyone getting a taxi from the station who wants to share? What are other people doing here?

I have to buy a birthday present for my mum. As ever I've no idea what to buy. Most obvious options at the moment seem to be some sort of a day out, or something for her beach hut. Suggestions are hereby solicited but will probably be rejected.

My plan was simple. I'd finish this contact. Possibly take a short holiday. Start looking for a new contract.

Then I got contacted regarding an interesting-ish sounding contract. Sadly that's in Wiltshire which isn't the most exciting of places. On the plus side, there is the opportunity to work from home. the flipside of that is that I don't actually have a home at the moment, or at least I won't when the rental period ends here which makes it a bit of a moot point.

Since it seemed I'd inadvertently started looking for a new contract, I might as well go for one that sounds generally positive. I like the idea of exploring life in other countries, and although Ireland is the most British foreign country there is, I did see a contract there that I really want. I also was approached by another contract, which was allegedly in Edinburgh, but as it turns out, that was a lie and it's actually in Dundee. Dundee doesn't look that exciting.

I guess I should also apply for that Finland job I saw. That was before I had two glasses of wine though so it may make sense to leave that one until tomorrow.

Now, you ask - why don't I just leave it for a few weeks. There are clearly many contracts out there that I can do. This is true. The problem is that a lot of projects seem to start in April/May, so this is when they cluster.

The result of this is I have no idea whether I'm going to need to be in three week's time, so planning on where I'm going to be is really a bit tricky. It also means that conventions and LARPs are a bit tricky. The issue with these is always travel. If I end up working in ireland, then there's no way I'm not going to IDWCon. If I end up working in England, it's very likely that I'll crew Serenity LARP. I'd quite like to go to a few other conventions, and maybe do Empire if I get a good character concept.

I guess this is probably a good thing since I need to learn to deal with this sort of thing, but as a control freak this lack of certainty makes me a little uncomfortable.

I saw a box at work.  Someone's collecting milk bottle tops for charity.  Apparently the money goes to buying a kid a wheelchair.

I've heard about these things before and it makes no sense.

Google tells me that type of plastic goes for £50 a tonne.  A tonne of plastic bottle tops is several hundred thousand of the things.  A motorised wheelchair costs £1000 or so.  So that's 20 tonnes.  Seems like it would be hard for any single charity to collect so many.  Most sites on this scheme also suggest this is probably a hoax. 

But I've been hearing about this for years.  Who are these people who are collecting them?  Are people really organising a collection without thinking of what the next stage is?  Do they all end up going to the same person?  What does that person do with them?  Or is there some charity actually collecting them?

I'm just confused. 

You're all lovely and I know it's against your nature to say things that might come across as mean, so those who did I appreciate your courage and honesty.

As a result I have lots of useful advice.  Shall certainly try and sort out that eye contact and nervous energy thing that I do so badly. 

I'm kinda curious as to what my main positive points are.  There are half a dozen people on my friends list who I am 100% certain have been attracted to me at some point.  (although tbh, I actually have some idea of these might be).

I could post something.  How about the excitement of late trains, or my fascinating ruminations about the lack of healthy options for takeaways.  My ability to be a whopping 134 words ahead on nanowrimo.  Is it really worth it just to claim a daily blog post? 

Naah.

Did meet up with an old friend in the pub though.  That was nice.

My goals for the weekend: 

Sew on 6 buttons

Pick up a package from the post office

I think I'm going to find myself at a loose end. 

I predict that today 100 people will need to contact me. 

Dancing helped a little.  Ginger honey tea helped as well.  So did Low Level computer game.  Spaced Penguin comes highly recommended. 

Chatting to ghostpaw helped a lot.  Largely because it lead to identifying the problems (it also lead to tea).

So, I have worked out what I need to get done.  No extra work has been inexplicably piled on top of me. 

And I had a nice meaty lunch. 

And I went to the beach at lunchtime. 

Still feeling a little wound up.  Hitting things would help.  Maybe I should take up Karate.