Sleepypete's Pillow

Yey 🙂

Looks like they’ve got him off the yacht ok. And on the way back they’ll be able to drop off some fuel to help out Mike Golding who got dismasted earlier this week.

Loved the Chrsitmas list 😀

I have my fingers crossed for Yann. A broken femur can be very dangerous as it can interfere with the femeral artery and also it is possible to die from internal bleeding as the femur contains a rich blood supply for the bone marrow.

I’ve been following the Vendee Globe single handed ocean race, not quite as much as I did in its early stages but I’m still keeping up with it.

I’m pretty shocked at the news to burst out today : A broken femur for French skipper Yann Elies. (official Vendee Globe link)

Blimey ! I’ve had a few broken bones over the years so I know how much minor fractures can hurt. I’ve never suffered anything on the scale of what Yann Elies has suffered today though and never while alone on a yacht more than a thousand miles from civilisation.

The full story can be found on the Vendee Globe site (link above) but a short summary is that Yann Elies has managed to crawl back inside his boat to get into a bunk and has the boat set up such that it is heading in the right direction without any intervention needed. Two Vendee Globe skippers have diverted to offer morale and psychological support. They’re Britain’s Sam Davies of Roxy and France’s Marc Guillemot. The Australian Anzac frigate HMAS Arunta has been diverted to rescue and evacuate but will take a day or so to get there.

Fingers crossed that the Aussies get Yann out ok. I’ll be keeping a closer eye on this one over the next few days. Looks like Yann’s able to keep the doctors ashore up to date with what’s happening, which is a good sign. It does remind you that we haven’t tamed this Earth of ours yet and it can still catch out even the most prepared and skilled people using the best equipment.

Hopefully in a few years time, Yann will be back for the next Vendee Globe and I’ll be adding him to the group of skippers I’ll be egging on.

(addon)

On a much brighter note, here’s a link to the Vendee Globe newswire with Sam Davies’ letter to Santa from before she diverted due to the incident above. G’wan, have a peek, it’s guaranteed to make you crack a smile.

Yep – every year, we have a big one for our office and there’s others too 🙂

About 50-60 people at this one. Big project 🙂

“SPIRIT” of the Holiday….lol! Oh this one finger typing….!

So this is an Annual Happening? How many people get together for this special Xmas Meal? I hope you don’t get into too much trouble….After all, it is ALL in The Pririt Of The Holiday…Yes?

Xmas meal out for the project today, which means everyone dressing up and descending on one of the city centre restuarants.

Well, almost everyone. There’s usually a few missing, whether it be due to being busy, rationing out the parties they go to or just plain shy … But there’s always enough of us to have a fun meal out with enough going on to make it a good idea for us to think about finding a different place to go the next year 🙂

Today’s post will almost certainly get me in trouble 🙂 🙂 🙂 But then getting into trouble with people is one of the things I’m good at … I’ll be in trouble with a couple of people tomorrow anyway, one for this post and the other for not letting her pay for a drink ! I have a simple rule, if a person goes to a lot of trouble to organise something like today’s project Xmas meal, then I’ll do what I can to make sure they get at least one drink 🙂 And our Boss does an excellent job of subtly but firmly keeping everyone organised.

That’s the plan at least. Asking The Boss “what are you having?” turned into a “I’ll have a coke, here’s some cash and I’m going to need the change for the car park.” Hmm. Not quite what I had in mind but I knew I could work a little subterfuge there :-). So off I toddle, grab a couple of cokes (I don’t drink much alcohol, 1 pint of Seahawk was enough for me) and come back. Boss gets her coke but instead of the expected change being £20 minus Drinks, it was the full £20 broken up a bit 🙂 And me scarpering back to my table before The Boss has a chance to count the change. Muahaha – subterfuge completed, The Boss not paying for that drink, plus The Boss gets a useful bit of change or the car park. Meant I had to get another round in later to get some change for the bus home but that’s no hardship.

Who’s the other person I’m going to be in trouble with ? Enter the Snow Queen.

I got in this morning to see our favourite Pixie (aka IT Girl) about to head outside. The outfit today was something special, a resplendent white coat matched with white scarf. This was complemented perfectly by our Snow Queen’s dark hair, cut specially (although typically bloke-like, I never realised until hit over the head with it), with the hair framing our Pixie’s ever-present smile. So a new nickname for our Snow Queen 🙂

Description above is what’s really going to get me in trouble tomorrow 🙂 But it’s much deserved (the trouble or the compliments?). Missed seeing our Wild Thing there today and there was no Miss Perky (new one for da cast list!) at the meal either.

More postings later in the week, if I survive the poking I’ll get tomorrow.

PS I may also be in trouble for using the line “Beauty before Age” on someone who was feeling slightly guilty for getting the attention of the barman before me. Another project person but someone who I haven’t figured out a fun name for yet … True saying though – she’s far prettier than I ever have been, plus everyone knows a lady never gets older than 21. Which makes me 13 years older.

You know those annoying breaks you get in the middle of stuff you’re trying to watch ? That you always fast forward through ?

I’ve been getting bugged lately by someone claiming to come from Israel …

They want to sell advertising on people’s websites. Somehow, they’ve found this blog and they’re trying to get me to sign up to them. The email today is a guilt-trip one, where they’re saying I didn’t get back to them the last time. Darn straight ! No way am I going to sign up for someone to infest this blog with the advertising that is a bane of so many people’s lives !

Reasons :

You lose control over what’s on the site you’re responsible for. 3rd party content seems to be (info from forums) the most common means by which identity theft trojans and other nasties get on to a system. Displaying any link means you’re obliged to make sure that link is safe for other people to click on. Delegating the control of that link to a third party means you no longer have the ability to protect your readers from malware.

I have removed sites from my blogroll in the past because I could no longer support what they linked to. In the case of the Mercs website, that was removed because the webmaster was unable or unwilling to implement what was necessary to prevent it being spammed to death by malware and porn people. So it got unceremoniously dumped off the link list.

I don’t need the money. Offering up for advertising is like selling your soul. You lose the total editorial control over what gets posted because of the segment you have delegated to the advert people. I don’t find that acceptable for this blog. I will point people towards various bits n bobs I’ve liked but that’s my choice. As soon as the advert people get in, you lose that choice, possibly finding yourself plugging stuff that you know is absolute rubbish.

I like what’s left of my soul, I’m not interested in selling any part of it.

Trust. This is the big one. I’ve had 2 emails recently from people wanting to affect the content of this blog, one is a blatant advert person with the other wanting to collect links. Nuff said about the advert person, however the link collector is slightly different. My hit counter (it collects more info, hidden behind a password) tells me the link collector comes from a South African hosting company, yet he claims to come from Israel. Sorry mate, that instantly flags up BOT, which is where I instantly flag up I’M IGNORING YOU.

Loading time. Not so big a point in the Broadband age but still a good one. When I was an active participant in Michele’s Meet & Greet, I’d look at sites, wait a moment for them to load. If they took too long (and I have a decent connection), I’d say byebye and never look at them again. Long loading times is a big turn off. And adverts only serve to lengthen load times, the worst ones seem to demand to load before the rest of the page becomes visible (Register and Cricinfo were terrible for this, which was one big reason why I went hunting for adblockers)

Anyway – gotta get ready to go out for some more gaming now, so I’ll cut short the rant on adverts and go for another advert myself 🙂

Our gaming group has been steadily getting to grips with the latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, which has been heavily simplified in its 4th edition. Lots of interesting changes, where they’ve made the characters a lot more “generic” instead of in 3rd and 3.5ed where there was more in it for the Power Gaming Munchkins than the role players. Ok, we don’t do hard core roleplay in our groups, we’re more interested in bashing monsters. However, whereas in 3rd and 3.5ed the rules kinda got in the way, 4th ed rules seem to be a lot smoother.

I like it – and our group is playing well with them too. A change for the better ? 🙂

PS When I get back tonight, I’ll update this post with a link to the Flashblock and AdblockPlus post I did a while ago. Say no to adverts by banning all influence they may have from your browsing influence.

I get the feeling that my immune system likes to round up the bugs and put them up against the wall for shooting …

Not had a day off sick for ages 🙂 (well – nosejob accounted for a few and there’s a day or so when I stopped eating) I seem to avoid the worst bugs, even though I’m still around people who have to go off sick with bugs.

Sounds painful! Hope you feel less achy soon and most of all avoid all the nasty bugs going round at the moment!