Month: June 2012

Feels like it’s been mayhem today.

I don’t think it has really but that’s the way it feels. We’re at a stage in the project where we’re seeing the skeletons we buried in cupboards ages ago start to rattle their bones. No decision is perfect. Whatever you buy, something will come along later and make you think “What if we’d gone a different route ?” “What if we’d thought of this back then ?”

And on really complex projects like our’s, there can be a few of those skeletons around. What’s important is :

Knowing you’ve delivered something awesome (and we have)
Knowing that you’ve got an excellent team that sort out the issues
Knowing that the early decisions that got made, got made for the right reasons

From my own engineering, I know a lot more about building PCs now than I did 15 years ago. I made a lot more Good decisions with this desktop than I did the last one and the one before that. However, my car knowledge has gone a little backwards as we’ve got more insulated from what our cars do.

Where’d that come from ? We’ve been investigating some of those skeletons so we can properly sort them out. Duct tape does fixes but we want Proper Job Fixes, not duct tape bodges.

Picture !

I actually feel a bit worried about people I see who I think are too skinny. There were Lexus ladies in the garage on Saturday, both were on the thin side. One was too thin (or was wearing stuff that was too tight), one looked thin cos she was quite tall.

Yep – I get worried about thin people. Are they starving themselves in order to fit an image that just isn’t right for them ? Are they causing themselves health problems because they aren’t eating enough of the right things ? A starved, hollow look just isn’t attractive.

What is attractive is how confident people are in their own skin. And that can be Big People, Little People, Medium People, Skinny People, Chunky People. While I’d still describe myself as Chunky, I’m a lot happier now with the way I look than I was a year ago when I was a stone heavier. That’s from being able to move better, although I wasn’t happy in the early stages of the diet because a side effect of changing was that my muscles were tending to cramp up more.

I know a couple of young ladies who are both on the short but very large side. One projects an attitude of “The world hates me”. The other projects bubbly, confident, fun. Guess which one I find myself asking “who dat ?” and which one I avoid so the “world hates me” doesn’t become catching … (both of those are “first mention”s here and only 1 reader is likely to know 1 of them)

Dodger of DexBonus put in an awesome vid yesterday for cheering yourselves up. There’s a lot of beauty out there. It just needs a chance to break out past those preconceptions on what size and shape we should be.

I miss cakes. I’m at a stage in my diet where I can eat what I like. The trick is that I’ve managed to change “what I like” into something that has me munching the snack food in moderation instead of gluttony. Oh !

That takes me to shopping tonight. Mall trip tonight was aimed at getting a few things : Jacket for Lords so I could see inside the pavilion. Cash. Snack food for car. But this will be the last time I go to Morrisons for a while (I nearly put my shopping back so I could go to Asda instead). I don’t normally keep snack food in the car but Minstrels are really good for it. E numbers to keep you awake. Chocolate for energy. Shells so they don’t melt in the packet.

I like Minstrels.

But I’ve managed to alter my thinking so I don’t devour a packet of Minstrels a night. I’ll ration the munchies. And that’s one secret of the diet I’ve been following :

Eat what you like – but in moderation. Treats are an excellent motivational device. You shouldn’t deny yourself them completely. Just keep them as occasional bonus munchies so they’re special, instead of boring cos you have that packet of Giant Buttons every night. (I would if I could get away with it) Especially if they’re of the quality we got from Snow Queen & Co !

PS This is definitely me hoping that my favourite iPhone based visitor spots this and lets me know the next time there’s cakes 🙂 ! 🙂

I think my brain is anticipating tiredness. It tends to do that kinda like getting it out the way for when I’m going to be doing a heap of stuff.

Work’s going to be busy over the next week, plus :

Mall tomorrow night cos I need to pick up a few things
Lords trip on Tuesday which will be a long day
Avoiding getting too many munchies on Wednesday
And lots of driving to do next weekend

Lords on Tuesday will either be frustrating or fun. If it rains like last year, there will be a fair bit of frustrating waiting around for play. But at least we won’t have the annoyance of having to head home while play was still happening. Last year we were like : “Seriously ? We have to go home now because the coach driver has to be in bed soon ?” Something about working hours in a day and daft legislation. I can understand the legislation type aspect of it but not enough to go by the same travel plans this year.

It’ll be :
Pick up a mate from the work team,
2 hours down the motorway to an underground station,
1 hour inc walking to get to the ground,
Chill out all day to cricket,
Repeat the travel in reverse to get home.

I’ll hopefully have enough juice in my phone to allow pictures to be taken throughout the day for adding to Facebook and then I can pick out the odd one for here. (That’s actually the easiest way to move photos from phone to laptop, although I suppose I could connect them up via USB).

Tiredness could partly down to sleep. It took far too much time to get off to shuteye last night due to accumulated rubbish in my lungs. They’re still not clear yet. Maybe I need to get that vacuum out again or another way of clearing the air. Or it could well be that I’m ill and doing my usual thing of not noticing. There’s a bug been going around that’s been causing coughing plus loss of voice and my voice has been struggling lately too. Hopefully I’ll get off to sleep easily tonight instead of wondering if I’ll cough up a lung.

This has all been cricket + tired so far hasn’t it ?

It’s been a weird weekend. The only music I’ve listened to was on Friday night and Saturday morning on the way to Cheltenham. Lots of sport on the telly. Great Le Mans weekend, although I missed a trick : I could have raided Tescos while the safety car was out for the Anthony Davidson incident and not missed racing time. It would have been good to see the Toyota’s stay in a while longer to make it interesting with the Prototype racing but the GT Amateurs kept it competitive right to the last 30 minutes of the race.

Good win by England yesterday dodging the weather. The rains are back today. I’m thinking about heading down to Taunton for a game or two as well to see Somerset play. They had a close win today over Northants, managing to avoid the rain.

Spam 🙁 Although you don’t see it from the outside, I’ve been getting more and more spam comments attempted. Google does a good job of trapping them, although 1 or 2 have slipped by. I’m not going to reactivate the hated word verification (ad blockers interfere with it plus it’s NASTY) but I have been forced into disabling anonymous comments. Which I’m quite sad about, partly cos I know there’s someone out there who comments only as Anonymous and I’ve love to see more comments from there (even if she does kick my butt with them!).

Comments in general – I’d love a bit of feedback 🙂 Give me ideas for stuff to talk about. Tell me where I might be upsetting people so I can try and make amends.

Last thought for today – started reading Lost Fleet BYF : Invincible yesterday when in the Lexus garage and I’m already 150 pages in. Authors develop over their careers and Jack Campbell definitely has. The Lost Fleet books are pretty darn good. They’re well paced and keep you up with the action while giving the occasional chance to draw breath. His earlier Stark’s books aren’t so good, I was struggling my way through Stark’s Command before going away from books for a while.

Hopefully I won’t be reading lots of Invincible on Tuesday ! Will finish the current run through of Deus Ex HR (so Steam can tell me how many hours it took) and then I’ll give the game a rest for a while and hammer the books instead.

Had the next phase of my Lexus experience this morning – interim service day for my CT.

It’s actually a little late, as I should have got it done about 2 months and 2000 miles ago. I just wasn’t feeling like getting it done at the time and then cricket season came along, making it awkward for thoughts of getting to Cheltenham in the evening.

Where was I ? It’s definitely a different ownership experience having a Lexus. They treat you like a valued customer instead of pointing and laughing at the latest person to go through the sheep dip. Anyway. First service day today so it’s off up the road to Cheltenham. I could go local … but the nearest Toyota garage is another that tried to screw me over with “Yes you need your 1 year old brake discs replaced”.

Lexus make some really good cars. They’re not the fastest, the biggest or most economical (not cheap either) but they are Different by going their own way and have huge amounts of quality included. And they make some quite pretty cars too : IS-C convertible.

Very shiny. I suspect that’s the car my sister would quite like to have now. She got forced into replacing her MR-2 a little earlier this year before the MR-2 fell to bits underneath her. The Saab 9-3 TDI convertible she got ticks all the boxes for company car type benefits :

Extra seats
Turbo Diesel for all the extra miles
Speed (it has a Proper turbo instead of one that just cleans up the exhaust)
And it’s been around long enough to get cheap enough

But – it’s not an MR-2 so the honeymoon period of the 9-3 was short. Incidentally, my CT is still well and truly in its honeymoon period. Awesome car. I caught another victim of the Trademark Sleepypete Grin, as I had a little peek at an IS-C in the showroom before passing on the “Sister shoulda got one of these” to a blonde lady pretty enough for me to have to say it twice due to tripping up on the words on the first attempt. Sadly the IS-C is a little too new to be in price range plus the running costs (CO2 and mpg) are much higher than the Saab.

Was away from the garage early enough to be able to listen to cricket commentary (Tune In Radio on Android is a cracking app) and back home early enough to catch the start of the Le Mans 24 hour race.

Enter the Batmobile :

(Nissan pic nabbed from a Wired.com article)

Gorgeous innit ? Bit different to your average F1 car or Sportscar Prototype. Sadly though it might not get much more running in during this Le Mans due to having been eaten by a Toyota.

If you catch any Le Mans coverage this year, you’ll definitely catch the big incident involving one of the Toyotas … There’s going to be far too much said about that so I’ll : moving swiftly on …

Sky taking over some of the F1 coverage has made me look a bit more at the commentators. Now there’s a choice, which one do you listen to ? It’s like the cricket where you have :

Sky commentary – by the numbers, good quality but take themselves seriously
Test Match Special – they accurately portray the game without the benefit of pictures but have a ball doing so. If I could, I’d listen to TMS commentary with Sky pictures. That doesn’t work though because of delays that mean the commentary would be before or after the pictures.

Motorsports is similar, except that both F1 commentator groups take things very seriously. They forget to pass on that they’re enjoying the racing, if they are actually enjoying the racing.

Eurosport on the other hand … They seem like the Test Match Special of motorsport commentary. I’ve been happily chortling away to them all day, especially now I have it on the big telly (cricket was hogging it earlier). It helps that they know what they’re talking about too, as they are current or ex racing drivers who also have the gift of being able to pass on what they’re seeing to the viewer.

They’re being hugely entertaining. They’re not at the race track to get stamps on their passport and a sun tan, their job is to keep the viewers in the picture and to make them smile. And the Eurosport commentators are doing a cracking job on both points.

I hear there’s football on as well today.

PS Charity links : there’s a Race For Life that needs your support and a Pink Haired Thumper who I owe £5 of Pink Hat bounty to.

Thanks Dianne 🙂

When I spotted it on Facebook I knew there was only one thing I could do – grab & re post 🙂

first of all, I love that dog and that caption

you really make me smile when you're being funny and cute

You can have fun with old cliche settings.

When people hear them, it’s guaranteed a groan. But if you say them slightly wrong 😉

Had the excuse to do one of those on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday – da days are blurring). Running into someone, again, getting a big smile (as always) before rushing off in our different directions led to me sending the message across :

“We mustn’t stop meeting like this”

Didja see what I did there ? And then I promptly ruined it with something about not wanting to fix the typo. Nooo ! Make that “we must keep meeting like this” :-). I come out with as many Shoot Self In Foot daft comments as I do daft comments that make people grin.

Anyway – there’s a few people who the phrase “We mustn’t stop meeting like this” definitely applies to. They always remember my grin and answer with one of their own when I spot them first at work (if they spot me first, I see a blur as they hide – I know it’s true!) :

BK and Craziequeen 🙂
Badminton Girl who enjoyed it when I was there but quit badminton at work for the same reason as me – some of the other players were jerks
The Finance Angels (who we’ve inherited from the old team – yey!)
The Pretty Contractor Ladies (there’s a bunch of ’em)
Always the Snow Queen
And many more
But there’s another one today who asked a question which brings me to today’s picture :

The question followed me saying that my side was still sore : “Why do I still play cricket ?”

The answer is fairly simple – it lets me run. I have several speeds – Walk, Fast Walk, Run, Run Fast and RUN LIKE HELL. It’s only at Run Like Hell where I get to play with the full potential of the power in my legs. It’s a full pelt, head back, feel the wind ruffle the hair and whistle past the ears type of speed.

And I am pretty darn fast with it too. I’ll do other people’s fielding because I’ve run that much faster than them.

Cricket is about the only chance I get to do it too. You can move quick around most places given the excuse but to RUN LIKE HELL needs a lot of space. A cricket field is about the only place with the space to kick into that gear. Partly cos of the ground you cover at a full sprint, partly because of the distance needed to stop. I can slow down and dodge better this year than before I lost the weight but 13 stone of me moving at over 20mph is going to make a dent.

I enjoyed the bowling a lot, it was like outwitting the batsmen. I was pretty good with the bowling too before the shoulder tightened up. I don’t enjoy the batting much these days. I know I can produce better innings than I do, which is where I put a pressure of expectation on myself. Fielding is a good laugh though. I can use my running speed and now my regained agility to full advantage to scare the crap out of batsmen attempting to pinch singles to me.

Ok, that’s enough about cricket – where did that other typoed cliche come in ?

It’s not just cricket where rain stops play – I’m half watching the football where the Ukraine vs France game got delayed 55 minutes for rain. Crikey. England game on later and I’ll probably watch that properly. Have to actually because I haven’t had dinner yet and have run out of other stuff to watch.

The cricket quote is actually “It’s just not cricket”, which for foreign readers is an English saying that’s basically “They don’t cheat like that in proper games”. Let’s just say football is just not cricket and leave it at that shall we ! There’s a reason I only rarely follow football, despite otherwise being a sport nut.

One day later – still ow.

What’s actually the damage ? My actual shoulder seems ok. My arm and fingers are fine. Not saying it would support bowling or throwing but it’s not the bit that’s causing pain at the moment.

No – it’s more higher ribs area, intercostal muscles near the back. I think it’s actually a second injury that joined the shoulder injury when I bought my last telly. Humping a 28″ CRT (the old big type) from its box on to its stand, on my own, was probably not a good idea :-). There’s also damage at my front where the pecs link to arm.

I’m wondering if it’s one reason I’m having issues with my breathing at the moment. I have full running power available, which is a burst that draws off anaerobic respiration*. However, it’s taking a while to get the breath back after one of those bursts.

*Anaerobic respiration – muscles do work without oxygen. Makes a byproduct called Lactic acid, which is where a “heavy legged” feeling comes from. It’s a (weak) natural poison that’s telling us to take a breath.
Aerobic respiration – muscles do work with oxygen. If you get enough oxygen in, the muscle can work for longer.

It’s the reason why a sprinter can cover 200 metres in 20 seconds but it takes 100 seconds to do 800 metres and 2 hours+ to do a marathon. (Marathon = 42km, 2 hours = 7200 secs, so that’s about 5.8 metres per second). We can do a burst of high energy output but the cost is that lactic acid that tells us to slow down, plus we need to replace the oxygen in our cells with the oxygen from the air.

I’ve always been better at the burst of energy thing than the running for miles thing.

Tonight’s game got cancelled early as the rains rolled back in again at about 3.00pm. I’ve got mixed feelings about that – the selfish side goes “phew! easy night, no more cricket damage -> chill out” but the team side is sad that 22 guys won’t get to have some fun on the cricket field.

That’s something – always be true to how you’re feeling. If you’re having bad thoughts like the selfish one above, recognise it, own it, accept it. It’s ok to admit that you’re in two minds about something. Doubts are part of all of us. The important thing is to act and not be owned by the doubts.

You never know the answer unless you ask the question !

Oh my – I must be feeling lightheaded for all this deep thought to be coming out 🙂 I must have bumped my head when I fell backwards yesterday.

Back to the cricket – the getting older thing is creeping up on me with it being harder now to bounce back when I get hurt. I can still run Very Fast, including having the sprinter change up (which is awesome). My eyes when they’re not streaming are still good (when I trust them). My heart & mind are in the best shape they’ve been in for years, now that I’ve laid to rest a few ghosts.

So yeah – it’s feeling harder to bounce back after I do damage. That’s where I’m having the hardest job of adjusting. I’ve done things in the past like twist my ankle before a game so badly I could barely walk for the next week. Yet I played a full part in that game including bowling my 10 overs. I bent some fingers into a Vulcan salute (missed a catch) and then bowled faster …

I’ve done a few things like that – take damage, ignore it, bounce back quickly. That’s always been my way. Accept the pain, don’t let anyone else see it.

HOWEVER !

With all that mopey stuff about how I’m feeling old, what really makes up for it is two things :

Getting smiles from Pretty Ladies (visited the old team today)
And getting indulged in my favourite amusement of “Guess Pete’s age”

Yep – someone else today thought I was under 30. Can’t be bad 🙂

PS Charity links – they need your support ! CQ’s Race For Life and Thumper’s Avon Foundation walk.

4th game of the season tonight, despite the weather predictions :

That’s one from Facebook that just had to get Yoinked 🙂

Today’s been the first dry day for a little while and despite a certain doomsayer (I know too much) saying : “It’s sunny now but come 5pm ? Apocalypse Rain”, we got the game on tonight.

We didn’t do too well tonight. We batted first and lost wickets steadily. An early comedy moment involved our star batsman (not me) getting the strike stolen from him for several overs and when he finally got to face, his first ball ended up being hit on to a roof. 6 runs !

We scratched out 90 painful runs eventually. I didn’t help, I think I only managed to get a couple due to not actually being on strike much when I was there, before falling lbw to a very straight one I tried to do too much with. That’s the story of my batting at the moment – trying to do too much with the ball, not keeping it simple.

Defending 90 runs in the field is very tough in our cricket. It’s feasible but only if you get early wickets backed up by good fielding.

I did earn another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty fund 🙂 As well as getting the Comedy moment for the game. (We’ll ignore someone’s bowling as that gets the Tortured Soul award)

Bowler comes in, batsman hits it around the corner. Straight … at … me …

Cue the world going into slow motion as I’m peering through the gathering gloom, struggling to pick up the ball against the background. (I need new glasses as I’ve lost all confidence in my depth perception.) The ball hits my hands and I push it upwards. As I’m falling backwards, I grab the ball as it comes back down.

He’s OUT !

Yep – comedy moment right there, at least I pushed the drop catch straight up so it was still in reach for the second attempt. Just one problem – I landed on the weakened right shoulder again and it’s hurting a lot more than it should have done. Think I have real damage there and I’ll have to break a habit and actually get it checked out.

There’s another game tomorrow which I’m down to play in. I’ll turn out if they need me, plus I’ll be at the ground anyway because I have the team kit in my car.

Given up on me dinner (Chinese is very good for after cricket but there’s a lot of it). Shower time after another Transvision Vamp track.

That catch earns another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty, which I’ll add to a contribution to Thumper’s next walk. Here’s a link to her training blog. Thumper’s next walk is going to be in San Francisco on 7-8 July (donations link) and I’ll add my normal £5 contribution for things like this to anything more that comes from Pink Hat bounty before the 7th and 8th.

PS Not forgetting the Race For Life – click ! donate ! save lives !

Think I need to test hayfever tablets again.

I’m sensitive to a few kinds of pollen, although it seemed to be the types that came early and late in the season. I tended to be ok in the middle of summer. Not now though. Eyes have been streaming and the nose has been running … Lungs have been fairly ok but still not brilliant.

The eye streaming thing has a knock on effect – I think the hayfever tears spark off a depression like : Sad -> tears, Tears -> sad. Anyway, that’s been getting to me lately in a Brainzzzz kind of way :

Why don’t I take hayfever pills I hear you ask ? Side effects …

One of the side effects I realised I was getting was a type of chemically induced depression. I’d take a hayfever tablet to give me 24 hours relief from streaming eyes and I’d then be grumpy for the next 36 hours. I’d take an anti-histamine to open my lungs up for cricket and find that my legs went utterly unresponsive for fielding. I could still run but when I looked for something extra for sprinting, it felt like there was no gas in the tank.

(And by gas, I mean energy – not the type that makes fielders fall about laughing when a bowler makes a series of raspberries when running in to bowl – and I’ve done that a couple of times !)

Thinking of cricket, one thing I realised from watching the old highlights while it was raining is that umpiring standards have improved no end recently. It used to be that you could instantly say whether you’d see a stream of errors from the umpires in an international as soon as you heard who would be officiating in a game. Some of the umpires changed the results of games through their appalling decisions.

You don’t see the likes of Darryl Hair, Billy Bowden or Daryl Harper standing in games at the moment. Darryl Hair was blind (although kudos to him for calling certain bowlers for throwing) and Bowden and Harper thought the game was to show them off, instead of the umpires being there to support the players.

What’s really improved standards has been the Umpire Decision Referral System. In a Test Match, each side has 2 chances per innings to refer an umpire’s decision to TV evidence. What that means is :

The umpire makes his decision,
The players get a chance to say “we think you’re wrong”
The TV umpire checks lots of evidence
And the correct decision is given

I think it’s given umpires the confidence to go with their gut. Before, the benefit of the doubt would be given a lot more in a “yeah I think it’s hitting the stumps but I have doubts – not out”. Those get given out nowadays, with the onus on the batsman to refer it.

What we’ve been seeing is a lot of referred decisions staying with what the umpire on the pitch said. The benefit of the doubt is given to the umpire. It’s turned into something very good for the game. It supports the umpires and doesn’t hold up play very much. And most important, it’s fair to both sides and game changing decisions are given correctly.

Will other sports go the same way ? Rugby already does. Football is refusing to.

PS Watched Snow White & the Huntsman tonight. If you buy one Snow White film from this year, IGNORE this one ! Buy Mirror, Mirror instead. SN&tH is another of those admittedly well made films that just doesn’t have the storyline. Mirror, Mirror was far more entertaining.

I think I said ages ago that there was another different Pocket Dwagon avatar coming soon …

I changed at the weekend (just felt like it!) but I’m looking to switch to another one as a symbolic thingy. I like my symbols. But I think that might be the OCD tendency talking …

Anyway – the next avatar’s going to be one of this pair :

With “Feed Me” being the symbol. I’ve used the little fella before as an avatar but just as a jokey Feed Me Mini Eggs thing. Nah – the symbol this time will be weight loss :

I’ve been seeing the needle go below the 13 stone mark 🙂

Not sure how many years it’s been since I was last under 13 stone. I think I hit that at uni due to working too hard and exercising less. (Yeah right). But the weight definitely climbed on when I started working because I could indulge in far too much unhealthy food. Lunchtime Heaven would be finding out that a placement had a place I could get chips for lunch every day.

Effectively having 2 dinners per day is bad news for the waistline, especially if you’re not expending enough energy to cover that intake. It’s sandwiches for lunch now and they just happen to be the sandwiches with fewest kcals :-).

Yeah – been seeing the needle of the scales go lighter lately, although I’m not going to jinx it by switching to that Feed Me avatar until it stays under that target weight. I need to lose more still to be honest. I’m back to 34″ waist trousers but they’re a stretchy 34″. I won’t go below 34″ (hips are too wide for 32″). But it’s definitely getting there :

I have my speed back
Some underlying health issues have faded
(I’m not saying what those were cos people would get worried)
And I feel much better for it

I need to keep the exercise going – I’m fine if I keep myself moving. However, a couple of weeks away from cricket and my back is wanting to freeze up on me (rubbish chairs at work too). I suspect that doing gardening would help me out (weather permitting).

I’m going to keep the discipline going for now with the weight. The leg infection helped me out there – the “diet” pills told me that I could handle going for a while without grazing on junk. The “diet” pills were antibiotics that needed 2 hours without food before and 1 hour without food after. 4 times a day. So that’s a 6 hour cycle with 3 hours of no munchies. It can be done ! Even by a serial snacker.

So that’s just over a stone lost so far with more to come. Just gotta keep the discipline going and not eat stuff for the sake of munching. Did ok there today, avoided an afternoon cookie 🙂 This was just after giving a big grin and wave to the Snow Queen (hello Snow Queen!) who just happened to be nipping through the canteen area at the same time I was.

Happy days.

Wonder if I can use a different description to “a little extra” soon ? I don’t honestly consider myself to be “trim” or “athletic” yet. More like “normal disappear into crowd” type average build.

Last thought – if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re going the heavy exercise route, don’t be discouraged if your weight goes Up after exercise. I gained half a stone through the first two games of this season. A lot of that was in my legs, which felt very heavy and stiff after those games. The reason was lactic acid build up, after that went away over the next couple of days I was back down to the weight from before the games.

Exercise may make you gain weight as well as lose it – the lesson is to understand why and balance energy incoming with energy outgoing. So on match days, I’ll eat more. At other times, I’ll attempt to avoid temptation when not actually hungry.

Too much ramble ! Not enough pictures !

PS The CQ Race For Life link needs more clicking and definitely more support.