History Matters?

[lnr]

One day in my life isn't so very much different to others, and I've not been writing much about them lately, but over at http://www.historymatters.org.uk/ they're asking everyone in the UK to write a diary of 17th October 2006 to be saved for future generations, so why not? In a way it's just another sort of meme.

Since Mike was staying the alarm was set for 7:30, and I woke reluctantly for a snuggle before he headed off and I re-set it to 8:30 in an endeavour to feel less knackered. Of course I didn't immediately get up at that point, and ended up hitting snooze enough times to mean I was late for work, which is unusual for me lately. I'm supposed to be in by 9:30 but what with making sandwiches and general faffing it was 9:55 before I arrived.

It was a bit of a quiet day at work really, I keep a log there of what I've been doing each day, which I suppose I could include, but that would be even more dull. Most of my routine work is to do with reading assorted logs from the previous day to check everything is working OK, dealing with the vast quantities of spam and bounced email that comes the way of postmaster, adding and removing users from the system as necessary, organising and setting up new mailing lists for people, and helping people configure their mail programs or use the mailing list software. Today it was pretty quiet.

In addition I've usually got one or two programming projects on the go, and bits of documentation which need updating. Apart from the routine stuff I spent the day mostly working on one of the current programming projects, which is a script which compares our database of people in the department with the actual users which are on the computing system, and reports on a) discrepancies between the two and b) any changes in either since yesterday. This particular script is more or less done, but needs reviewing and putting into place so it will run automatically every day. I thought I had a bug but it turns out I'd fed it the wrong copy of the system data. It runs in several stages - update, run reports, commit - so I've knocked up a smaller script which can take today's data and automatically run all the stages and save the different reports in a systematic way. It's looking pretty good.

At the end of the day I had to leave it running overnight though and dash off to meet Mike. The plan was to meet at the Regal after work for a drink, maybe have dinner there, then go to our dancing class at 9. In the end we bumped into each other outside and decided we'd actually rather go somewhere else, especially since we didn't fancy trying to get in the Regal when Mike had no ID, they're terribly strict and he does look rather young. So we wandered over to Pizza Express and ate slightly less healthily than I might have otherwise planned, but very well. I'm trying to be more careful about what I eat at the moment, cutting out crisps and cakes and pies and biscuits and so on, and upping the fruit and veg. You've got to be able to relax now and then though, and I didn't quite fancy one of their salads with little or no dressing. The next couple of weeks are going to be a bit lax all told what with a weekend at my parents' place followed by the Whitby Goth Weekend (which lasts Thursday to Monday) but hey, I've cushioned the damage a little by eating well for the last week or so beforehand.

Anyway, we finished eating by 7:30, and wondered what to do for the next hour and a half. We were both pretty tired and suspected that if we went back to Mike's house (as it's closest to town) we'd probably never come out again. Which would be bad, because we don't want to start skipping classes again. It's just a nuisance it being so late, and the other available class being a little early at 6pm on Thursdays, and I normally work til 6. But in the end we decided we'd give that a go and see if it suits us better: I only need to get in a little early, and Mike's usually home in plenty of time, and it would mean having the rest of the evening free.

So home we went, hoping the next DVD from Lovefilm would have arrived and we'd have some more episodes of Buffy to watch. We were disappointed in that, but spent a quiet couple of hours reading and knitting and listening to music. I've got the iAudio (my mp3 player) on shuffle mode which means you get an entertaining random selection of stuff. Including one track which was 16 minutes long and spent an awful lot of that in repetitive instrumental - very very chilled out but not the sort of thing you'd want to listen to all the time. I finished my current pair of Sock Wars socks so they could go in the post in the morning, and did a bit more of the crocheted blanket. Rather goofed there though and don't have enough of the same wool to finish it and it's seemingly discontinued. I'll have to see if I have any other wool which co-ordinates well enough. Or maybe I'll start it again now I've got the knack of the pattern involved. I've got lots of pale yellow yarn that would work.

And so to bed at a fairly early hour and a cuddle and sleep.

Oh drat, it needs to be under 4000 characters! I'm sure it didn't say that at first.

Late to work today, but a fairly productive day. Current programming project is going well, although I had to leave it to run overnight. Met Mike after work for dinner before our regular ballroom dancing lesson. We had a nice meal in Pizza Express but ended up skipping the dancing as we were too tired. We'll give the earlier class on Thursdays a go, though it'll mean getting into work early on those days. Home instead to a quiet evening of knitting, crochet and reading with some music on. Finished my current pair of socks so I can put them in the post in the morning, and made some progress on the blanket I'm crocheting, though I may need to start it again if I can't find some more wool which matches. Fairly early to bed and a cuddle before sleep.

To be honest that's probably less boring :-)