Red Hot Chili Peppers' song Scar tissue perfectly describes my general mood this morning. One that is relaxed, calm and pretty much non-descript. Today is Monday. I hope to get ahead of myself today in terms of my project.

This weekend was like death, well in term of sleeping I might have seemed dead. I progressed finally in the Bath with Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Funny how my break throughs happen when I'm I'm bath. Strange.

Last night I was looking for a slim laptop rucksack but the one I was after is now not being made or is not available which sucks. I ended up finding a military grade 13" rucksack with these cool add-on attachments which makes it super versatile...then I saw more military stuff and more cool stuff and well, now I have a wishlist of £300 which is nuts but there you go.

Ok, wasn't totally deathly this weekend - I went to the gym and ran about 4kms. Also went to see John Carter on the big screen and pretty much fell in Love with the princess of Helium...I think that's what it was called. It was on a planet called Barsoom which was supposed to be Mars. Actually very cool film.

I finally got my website moved, I might have said that in my previous post but now I got some scripts moved across too - stuff to fetch my comics etc...actually must check that works.

I plugged my Garmin Ant+ stick into my laptop last night, and could pretty much see that I'm running a lot - one week I did 30kms! I think these weekday runs are so more than just miles though, they're therapeutic insights into my soul!

Bought some coffee on Saturday and then realised I had no sugar and that I don't want sugar - then it hit me walking back to my apartment: I don't like coffee without sugar. Dumb.

I uploaded a couple of new videos to my website, it was when I went to Citrix. I realised this weekend that I'm going to have to stop putting some stuff off. I got two things done - I payed for the water and electricity(what my dad calls the 'lights' - paying for the lights). Pretty hefty amount when you round it up. Nice thing is to know you've done it(so much for my £300 wishlist)Now just need to act on other stuff, less money driven but equally as important like making contact with some people that I should. Sometimes I get so stuck(on purpose, I guess) in my life, I don't really want to get anyone else in but at times I must. Maybe that's what my whole life will be like?

Just put on my music for the tube and I just remembered that I have an album on Disc somewhere that I should import into my iPod: Stadium Arcadium, Red Hot Chili Peppers - I need to do that, I only have 3 RHCP songs...

Looking forward to my run tonight, my fruit juice this morning and my music today...

EOF

I had a week of planning this week as I prepare for my next piece of work. The creation of tasks, thinking about risk and estimating how long stuff is likely to take is the lion share of it. Funny how long one estimates only to have ones manager half it. I overestimate, I guess, for the unknown, worst case scenario. Feels good though to be in the planning phase again.

Continuing with my weekly runs, 3rd week now. Still haven't signed up with the gym outside work, nor paused my membership at gym at home.

Was up until 2:45am on Wednesday and paying for it yesterday; I had a mental block and couldn't get my head around the last question in my uni course assignment. It was to do with making an animation by constantly drawing on a canvas with a graphics object and because you get a pre-defined bunch of classes and methods - I have to do it within the constrains of this...they remove the code and tell me that here is where I want to do this or that...silly - I'd normally do it a different way. That said, animation is not interesting to me and I don't want to ever use it. So I probably got full marks for all the questions, bar the last one.

Was 20 minutes for my last Dentist appointment - still saw me, that was good. My last appointment should be next.

Been not really involved in too much reading but I have everything I need if I find myself read-y. I figure it's because of all my night runs and assignment work over the last week.

Got a new running partner this week, and yesterday was the end of the first week of running. When you know how beneficial running, getting-out and having a social amble is, you start seeing the differences, not only on your own mental, psychological state but also in people running with you. Healthy does a lot for you - it's kinda great. Sometimes when I run by myself I'm not running just to feel fit, I'm running away from the mental thought processes that bombard me ever waking moment and demand my absolute attention. I guess, that's a great way to do that and get the oxygen flowing.

Interesting, yesterday I was reminded that I'm not on Facebook and I just wondered right then, how that would just add to my list of have to worry-abouts. So glad I'm free of that!

Visited Citrix research and development offices in Cambridge and was pretty much mesmerised. Kinda how I imagined a software company to look like - we had a tour around, introductions and pretty much saw how big boys play with their toys and I was pretty envious. They had a great space, atmosphere, chill-out rooms, table tennis tables, a cool kitchen...but it wasn't my home, obviously and felt that I missed our little office in London, Nessled away in a quite space, but a lovely space... It will be sad when I leave.

I got my share of stress yesterday, worked to complete something that was uncompletable. Was for a customer and my superiors had managed an expectation that was a bit rough. Anyway the next day we came out on tops.

Had another run tonight and really enjoyed it, even went to see a exhibition at the Tate modern all up in our running kit - it was pretty fun. That said, we clocked 11km between taking note of the architecture, scenery and running. Long may these night runs last!

My site is now living on a new server, and should be running like the wind with my older server still serving me mail, spam and other things that are hard to differentiate burden from pleasure...it's pleasure mostly I think except for maintenance trouble like server overloaded, running out of disk space ...that sort thing.

Well, there you have it - the last week crammed into a blog post.

Arivadechy

I think I'm sort of learning how best to complete this course in doing. I have a cut off at the end of Feb, the assignment is 4, roughly 25 mark questions, so I figured that I should answer a question a day before the deadline. So that's making it much easier than getting to the day before the deadline and doing everything then - which is normally how I roll. I'm normally OK with that, I just go to bed late.

We launched out product yesterday evening, codenamed Barracuda. Just thinking...why do releases have to have a codenamed? Could have been named names is or even nightingale to represent all the late nights. however in all seriousness, I'm happy it's out there.
Now I can forget(momentarily) about the features I've been working on and concentrate on the new R&D project that I've been assigned. I'm pretty happy about it but will be doing limited coding which is a break with the norm and I like the norm but I'm ok with that :-)

Slep terribly laste night. I know why. Went to bed too late. Midnight. Not good. Was because of question 2 - Pre-nightmare. Amazing how slow I feel this morning because of it. One thing I do like about waking up lately is knowing I get to go to work and research and learn and that not a bad thing but sometimes even better than that, it's the smaller things like wakin up and playing my music throughout my apartment to kickof my morning routine.
I woke to my iPhone, under my pillow. I snoozed it twice before rolling over and getting up to turn the broadband switch on, and then stumble to the other side of the room to switch the speakers on. Oncr that's done, their has been a limited brain activity but enough to realise that the next thing to do is grab my Mac off the floor, flip open the lid and connect to my wireless speakers and play my latest feel-good playlist. At tho point, I realise that my morning has morphed into a hive of activity, musi playing and me in the middle I figure I might as well continue. I grab my jeans of the chair, wonder to my bathroom, grab the first t-shirt I see, put that one. Then I source out from my clothes drying frame standing on the carpet, two mostly identical sock candidates and put those one. At this point I'm 70% done, everything else is sub-essential. Back to bathroom - I don't load up tasks in each room, I'm a go-back-and-forther, wet my face with cold water - that's become a ritual now - I both look forward and hate the cold wake up I get from this, then wet my hair which is as rude, then dry it as my towel and hands shuffled furiously and I end up looking at myself in the mirror and see that I am awake, have hair like wookie. I do some quick Johnny Bravo style swoosh hand movements and style my hair. 90% done now. Wonder to kitchen.I grab a yakult probiotic(remember I was on antibiotics - need my good bacteria with me again!) and a muller-rice desert for breakfast. At this point I grab my phone, and back-pack and grab my shoes on the way out. Today's different, I grab my running longs, roll them up and put them I to my back-pack. I grab my heart-rate monitor chest strap and then my running watch. That all goes in. Put my earphones on, plug-in and place my iPod in the right sure I my bag do I can easily access it when it's on my back. I flip the broadband switch, the speaker switch and turn off the lights - I like knowing that nothing is running unnecessarily while I'm out not using them. I'm like 99% now. Quick check in the mirror to capture my mind-picture of who I am today and with my shoes on, grab my house keys hanging up on the way out and I'm out the door. Keys go into the left side of bag. I'm Done 100%.

Had the most terrible fruit juice yesterday. It was labeled as "veggie" - go figure, I guess. I didn't drink it all. it was freaking knarly! I donated my chicken and mushroom pie to a fellow lunch-hunter as I had eyes bigger than my stomach, as my dad would say.

I got a run today which is great and I'm looking forward to that. I'm out of ice-cream in my apartment, just remembered that - that's not good. Mental note made.