Checking in

Just checking in, it's been a while since I posted again.

I have ideas that pop into my head for posting but they tend to flee before I get back to my keyboard.

It was the birthday this week and this fella arrived :

Awesome isn't it ? Love him.

There he is, poking his head out of the bag so he can watch Thor Ragnarok. If you haven't seen that film yet, go see it. It goes out of its way to not take itself seriously and I think it's accessible too for those who haven't seen all of the Marvel movies. Like I have. It's huge fun. Thor, that is, some of the Marvel movies have been a bit poor and lose their fun.

Yep. Monday was a great evening.

Should be a good weekend too.

It'll take a certain toll on my outsides but I've had a couple of good weeks there. Not great weeks because I have a few delicate areas on my legs that are remarkably easy to redamage but good consistent healing is happening.

I need to read more actually. I have Leviathan Wakes (Book 1 of the Expanse) by James S A Corey on the iPad/Kindle and Revenger by Alastair Reynolds in paperback. And that's just the newest books.

Games and game watching are still how I occupy most of my time. Monday was busy but Tuesday and Wednesday were game watching instead of playing. Tireds are catching up to me at the moment. The main game at the moment is Stellaris ... still :-).

I may have broken myself on Stellaris though by reverting to Corvette swarms. Maybe not though. The latest game has come to a conclusion though. My race of spiritualist warrior psychics were quite happily taking over the parts of the galaxy they wanted to. They were having trouble taking on the ancient Fallen Empires but that was going to come in time. I made a mistake with one of my traps, so that big engagement didn't go as it should have.

However ... on came the Unbidden. And the Contingency.

The game has what Iain M Banks called Outside Context Problems. In the late game, it can spice things up by bringing out an End Game Crisis. The Unbidden are invaders from another dimension and the Contingency is where rogue AIs attempt to wipe out all life in the galaxy. There is also the Prethoryn Scourge.

It turns the end game away from effectively a mopping up operation into an actual challenge. It's the first time I've taken the game far enough to run into a crisis. I'm usually far more interested in the early building phase although in this game, I was getting a lot of enjoyment from having the AI fall into traps that I'd set for them. Using the noggin to turn engagements the way of my people, things like that.

As someone once said : If it's a case of dying for your country, make the other guy die for his country, the one you're fighting. Or something like that.

Anyway, the Unbidden came and started obliterating everything. I think part of the problem is a balance mod I was using, which also made the Fallen Empires too strong. I have a different mod in mind this time which alters the ship types.

But I should really play some other games before diving back into Stellaris. I haven't been back in Elite for a while, I'm currently listening to a Zombie Defence strategy game called They Are Billions which sounds amazing and there are a few more that are coming soon which sound great.

Like the Surviving Mars. I'm expecting this to be something better than the game Planetbase, which I enjoyed chilling out to as the colony grew. And Astrobase Command, which looked promising enough to join in with the kickstarter. And I expect I will acquire the space crime game, Heat Signature, in the sales. Frostpunk is a post apocalyptic survive the deep freeze game.

And I'd like to record some more gameplay videos too.

Yep. Tired. But still enjoying. And it was a :

:-)

Well that was more dramatic than expected ...

This weekend saw me heading off to see the mum & dad again.

Birthday weekend !

It's my birthday on the 13th and my sister's on the 15th. So while we all live 100s of miles apart, we make the special effort to gather together on a weekend convenient to the birthdays. We don't buy stuff for each other any more. We find the gift of being together to be far more significant than present buying.

Present buying is really stressful isn't it ?

There's the finding out what people want.
There's the acquisition of it.
There's hoping it's what they really, really want.
And there's the getting it to the right place.

That said, I still do love getting things for people. It gets them smiling, which is the biggest thank you anyone could wish for. Hmm. Is it ? Hugs are better. But I'll settle for smiles.

But this weekend took a rather dramatic turn ...

We'd headed out to a local pub/restuarant for birthday munchies. There was a kerb ... It shouldn't have been there, it was between car park and pub. It was just a kerb in the middle of the road/path between car park and pub. I tripped on it but managed to catch myself before toppling. My dad ... didn't.

Result - a sideways roll to the floor, narrowly missing bumping his head on the wall behind. Thankfully that didn't happen (head injuries are hellishly dangerous, I should know, I've had 3 !) but the damage was done on the way down. He has a broken hip which has been operated on this afternoon.

I don't know the results of that yet but my dad is a fairly active guy. He doesn't get the chance to go golfing any more and they're moving because there's too much garden to manage but he still takes the muttley walking several times a day so that keeps his legs in good shape. He's probably in better condition than me to be honest, that's a sign of how inactive I've been.

So we're hoping that when he comes out of the surgery, it won't take too long before he's back on his feet.

I hope Skye understands that I'll be anxious for news when we meet tomorrow but I'll try to not let it interfere with the evening. Hopefully she'll let me buy her dinner :-) I'm quite nervous and anxious and that first first date for way too long but at the same time, really looking forward to it. I hope we end up talking into the small hours.

Wish me luck. But more important, wish my dad luck.

He needs it far more than me. Hopefully it's an easy surgery with no complications for the recovery.

PS I'm still thinking of going to Comic Con next weekend in Birmingham and there should be space in the car for one ... The other two (maybe 3) spots are booked already ;-). Dunno which day though.

Coming up on milestones

I have two of those coming up actually ...

One is for here. This post will be number 995. Of those published at least. There's another 11 that are languishing (forever!) in the drafts box for various reasons.

One is for me - I'll hit one of those age milestones in just over a month.

Scary.

But I'll still be hoping people will guess hilariously young ages if I can get a guess out of them when I bring in the donuts and cakes. One person thought I was still in my twenties last time. I loved that. I guess that comes from what I look like on the outsides (and losing some weight has taken another few years off) and how I act.

I'm out for the fun.

I'm an easy going person. Live and let live and all that. I like to think I love the world and everything in it. Even those things that aren't particularly lovable. (I have to watch myself when driving though, the demon horns come out). I'm one of the smart ones too, although a defense mechanism learned early means that smartness sometimes gets concealed. Not very well apparently !

I can be serious and pro when I need to be but I keep that for when it's needed. The rest of the time, I'd rather be the grinning fool trying to make others chuckle. At least, when the depressive tendencies aren't kicking. We have to be serious sometimes in my line of work though. I won't say what it is but lives genuinely do depend on the quality of it.

That's enough about work - although if you look in the right place here, there's 1 post that mentioned the project I work on last ...

Milestones ?

Birthday is one of them and it's close enough that I'm stopping buying things. Adding stuff to the wish list ? Sure. But ... you have to leave stuff for people to buy ... Although there's not many people who buy me stuff. /sob. Oh well. Can I buy some more friends ? Do they come from Rent-A-Friend ?

That's a really silly thought. I don't have many people here who I count as real friends but those I have, I value hugely. I love 'em to bits. And I wouldn't ask anything from them that they wouldn't be prepared to give anyway. That said, I'd like to find an extra special friend who I could share my stuff, troubles, strength, weakness, laughter with. And the rest. I thought I'd found that special friend a few times but ... still looking.

(Although I am still hoping that a special little lady will let me take her to Comic Con)

I have bought myself something for my birthday - and it's for Comic Con. I got me a camera ... It's a Canon Ixus 265 and I have to say, the feature that's impressed me most is the ability to control it from my phone. Love that, although it does depend on wifi and I'm not sure if that would be too available when out and about. I'm looking forward to trying it out. And there's another reason for that :

My outsides are steadily improving. That makes it freer to do stuff like randomly go to unusual places. I don't get out enough and that's been a legacy of the problems with my outsides. It's still not sorted but it's getting closer.

Other milestone ?

I've been thinking. And this is the point where you prepare to run. Because :

I love my music
I love my singing
I love writing about music here
And I thought I could combine that ...

With me singing a few of my favourite songs and linking the results here. That depends on a few things though : getting a mic input again. Figuring out where to put it (no web camera will be used). Figuring out what to sing. Figuring out how to do it while having the prompter going (I can sing well when accompanying but badly when there's no backing) And getting the right day to do it. My voice can be pretty variable, some days it's amazing, some days I can barely croak out a note.

Songs ? I have a few ideas :
Cardigans 03.45 am No Sleep - this was the original Sleepy Sings song when I got drawn into joining in with 2 very sweet Swedish ladies from the WoW guild.
Moon River - for that special little lady who I keep mentioning.
All About Eve's Apple Tree Man
Mindy Gledhill's I Do Adore
ABBA - Thank You For The Music - of course
Alisha's Attic - The Incidentals
Bat For Lashes - Laura (perhaps)
Caro Emerald - something from Stuck or A Night Like This (maybe not - she's way too good)
Edie Brickell - loads here, perhaps Buffalo Ghost or Ghost Of A Dog
It's Not Over Yet (from the Goldfrapp version)
Thunderchild or Forever Autumn
Kate Bush - Oh England My Lionheart

I think that's enough for now. I'd suggest Beatles but I think they get nasty over copyright. (If you haven't watched Across The Universe, I'd thoroughly recommend it). And listing those was, of course, an excuse for me to listen and sing along to them yet again.

The song post maaaaay happen ... If you'd like to see (hear?) it happen, chuck in some ideas for songs in the comments :-)

Boom ! Recovery

I've been writing a lot lately about the infection that had hold of my legs and various bits of the rest of me ...

Hopefully that little segment of my life is coming to a close :-)

Since the doctor trip on Wednesday there's been some quite dramatic improvement. I'm not clear of signs of inflammation yet but it's getting so close that I'll soon have difficulty picking places to put the medicine cream. It's improved that much and that's coming from it affecting maybe 20-30% of me.

I hadn't said exactly how much it had affected me had I ? Well, as well as the big patches on my legs being joined by patches around my elbows, the infection had spread to my hip, ribs area, bum, ears, a patch under my eye. Probably about 20-30% of me, some bits worse than others.

But it's now considerably better. I'm hoping that when I next see the doctor in 9 days, I can walk into her office with a big grin and show completely healed legs and arms. But I'm not counting my chickens just yet, it's improved before and then come right back. Hopefully I've identified why with thinking that I'm allergic to a few things :

Orange Juice - think I have a citrus allergy which was setting off bad breathing and the excema.
White bread - I can mostly avoid this because brown bread seems fine. Pizza's a problem but as long as I keep that in moderation I'll be fine :-)
Office - dry air is promoting the excema I think. Can't do much about that except try and get moisture in to me.

So yeah - I'm hoping this little chapter is coming to a close so I can concentrate on getting things done and moving forward again :-) I've let a lot of things drift lately because I've had my whole essence focused on trying to get healthy again.

BOOM !

We had our annual Crazie Fireworks combined with birthdays last night, hosted by the BionicDwarf. I'll hopefully get this house in order for a bit of hosting soon, that's another thing put on hold by the infection.

I have to say, Sainsburys rockets are much better than Tescos rockets although we did get one "interesting" rocket which hangfired. And we had one of the mortar boxes decide to start shooting sideways.

Great little display though, CK, BD and I chipped in with £270 worth of fireworks which gave us just over half an hour of :

Cracking fireworks too.

We followed that with pizza (yey!) and a couple of movies after handing out of a decent selection of birthday presents. Tis birthday season at the moment, with BD, CQ and mine coming in quick succession. Mine's not until the 13th (born on a Wednesday). Oh - movies, I'm watching one of my new ones at the moment : Beastmaster. Old classic.

After that - Strictly results. Yep. I watch Strictly Come Dancing. First year watching it as a regular and I'm quite enjoying it.

And with that admission (coinciding with the dinner gong from the kitchen), time to sign off with the shreds of leftover dignity :-)

Reversed Psychology

Sometimes my head behaves so strangely even I can't keep track of it.

Currently on a bit of a downer even though I have no reason whatsoever for it. I've had lots of reasons to be grinning today :

Mrs Sunshine was back after a birthday. Which meant cakes. Which meant lots of chances to say Happy Birthday (while stealing a cake). And you can bet that I found a few excuses to say Happy Birthday to Mrs Sunshine and get that wonderful smile in response.

And I definitely don't believe the claimed age. It's lies. Mrs Sunshine can be no older than 21.

There is always the amazing Snow Queen, who happily seems in good cheer at the moment. Our Snow Queen has been one of the best things about working on my project since almost Day 1 (she joined after 6 months) and it was a really sad day when she left for another project a little while ago. That seemed like a good idea at the time (10 years on a project is a Long Time), even though the inner voice was going "You can't leave - Don't go !" :-)

Was over the moon when I heard our Snow Queen was coming back. She does things her way, which is not always the way we ask her to do stuff. Nope. Things get done the Right Way. Engineer instructions are often well intentioned but quite bad for keeping things straight, we just patch over the gaps with duck tape. People like our Snow Queen, Queen Bee and Superspy (who's retired now) help us maverick engineers in not putting our fingers in the firey stuff.

There's also The Boss, who returned from a baby break last year and got straight back into the swing of things barely missing a beat. Despite engineers asking daft questions.

Where would we be without them ? Probably forever hunting for the information we need to get stuff done.

That's enough about people (for now at least). Work wise I managed to finish something off today which I thought would take longer. Happy about that because it was meeting minutes, which I hate because I start doubting a memory I expect to be perfect (I have a photographic memory that's nowhere near perfect and it works better with stuff I've read than stuff I've heard). Got that done despite a few "Do Immediate" distractions which needed some serious headscratching.

Last week I got to see what I've been working on, which is amazing. Walking in from car park to office, I allowed out a happy "Hello Diamond". We're more visible in the news these days and it's great seeing something go from paper and powerpoint to actual living steel. I bet I'd feel the same way if I joined the kit car world as the car steadily came to life.

So things are actually going ok, there's just something in my head that's blocking the Be Happy message.

I suspect a little of that might be having less interaction with people at home compared to work. Since leaving the WoW world, I've missed having that chance to dip in and out of chat in the evening. I think I needed that as a crutch after my last relationship broke up.

But it'll also be down to lack of sleep. I've been running light on sleep lately with being captured in the Deus Ex world and last night was especially bad. I went to bed at a reasonable time but due to legs being really sore, probably only got maybe 2 hours of sleep.

That's not enough. Will try to make up for that tonight (finished the second DXHR run last night) and hopefully that'll be without needing the Rubber Mallet.

Oh ! Happy Birthday Mrs Sunshine (again) ! :-) And I shall hit "Publish Post" and treat myself to one of the mini-muffins in the cupboard in honour of your "It's definitely 21, it has to be".

Handyman Hunter

I'm up at my parents place this weekend, it's birthday weekend. My nan turned 90 yesterday and is still able to cause more chaos than a teenager :-) My mum gains another year next week.

Birthday munchies tonight, which will hopefully be good. We tend to hit two pubs pretty regularly when I'm here, one is in the local town, one is on the outskirts of Lincoln. The Sleaford pub is a drinking pub, not really one you'd want to eat in. The one in Lincoln suffers heavily from a lack of consistency, most of the time the food is good but there's usually one dinner sighted that's heading back into the kitchen due to complaints.

I usually mop up the little electronic jobs when I come back, which I don't mind doing. The burglar alarm has had a seeing to this morning, as it has been chirping away trying to tell us something. It can't get the message through properly though as its designers didn't bless it with too much intelligence ... Problem sorted though.

I'm still a little sore from the badminton on Wednesday, which is something earned by me being idle physically for a couple of years ... Not recommended ! May have to take up jogging around the block to keep my legs moving. It's all honest soreness, the only bit I was wary of was my knee which was really upset with me. However, since Friday I've been able to walk without thinking too much of keeping the knee straight so no new permanent damage there.

Ben greeted me last night by dragging his new toy in, he's now curled up in his bed having a little snooze. He tortures himself a bit does our Ben, I had some toast not so long ago but didn't let him have any.

We hunted cars on the way back from the lunchtime pub, I have a few more ideas of what to look for now. The next one will be :
Something Focus sized or smaller (not likely to be a Focus)
Decent engine - I like having a performance option
Cushiness toys
Not an MPV - I don't need something that big

Looking forward to the munchies tonight and to more badminton next week.