Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

In Berlin, the Red Army has made its way to the Oder in about three weeks and established bridgeheads there. But then they had to get rid of the Germans kettled in East Prussia, which they did with great efficiency and exceptional brutality. Now they can turn their attention westwards again, and we all know how that ends

Meanwhile at Yalta, Stalin has run rings round Churchill and Roosevelt, which will be a problem for Poland, among other countries, for many decades to come

Friday tomorrow! I’m still not sure if I’m going shopping, but I don’t think there’s any need. If I do, it’ll only be a quick trip out to Not as Big Sainsbury’s

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea: pork cutlet with chips and beans

This was accompanied by the remainder of the Inside the Factory Christmas special, meaning I can now move on to their less seasonal fare

And I’ve put the mundane laundry on. Doing this on Thursday evening seems to be becoming a regular thing, because it’s nice to have it out of the way for the weekend

[NickFitz]

I noticed while doing my timesheet this afternoon that my extension to early August appears to have been sorted out, so: boomed!

[NickFitz]

Another week done!

I managed some really productive stuff today in the interstices between meetings and things

Just popped round to the shops once I’d finished and I’m starting to find those “feels like” temperatures a bit more convincing. It didn’t feel as bad as the -3°C the weather app is currently showing in that slot, but it was distinctly chiller than the 4° at the top

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been a bit of leftover oniony chicken casserole as it wouldn’t split into whole figures as portions for freezing, due to an odd number of chicken thighs

I managed to avoid being landed with too much tech debt stuff

There’s a long and dull "all hands” type of meeting this afternoon, and then a slightly more interesting one later. But before the tech debt stuff kicked off, I worked out how to do something I wanted for actual work, so I’ll see if I can fit that in too

[xoggoth]

Much better day today, me coughy thing seems to have gone. Went to Mahjong session this morning. Not much PM apart from me walk and exciting visit to the dump.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Blue sky with a mix of wispy fluff and occasional lumpy fluff scurrying by. Currently 6 degrees ('feels like' 3) with a high of 7 expected. Barometer up a snifter to 998 mBar.

Sunrise 07:44; Sunset 16:45 GMT

Thursdays are always a quiet day so I have had a gentle start. Got some positive feedback on a piece of work I did yesterday, which is always nice. Much chatting with a team member about the data he's wrangling for one of my projects - I know the dataset well so can easily answer questions about the best way to fill in gaps.

Need to stall gig 3 a little so that my start date is one that's convenient to me as I suspect I'll be expected on site. There's no contract yet and that's a 3-5 day turnaround for legal review

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Thursday apparently. I didn't hear the Recycling Engineers earlier though they'd taken away my 3 months haul of bottles thusly proving it must be Thursday and they weren't on strike.

Dry.

Wanly sunny.

Bit overcast.

Chilly in here at 13.2 deg, 12 in the kitchen, 10 in the leanto, 7 in the saltinghoiuse.

990 mBar, 29.235 in Hg, 742.6 Torr, 14.36 psi, (down from 991 last night), 63% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 13th of March 2020 BR14 and Brillo popped in, along with NF, and I watched "Terminator" despite being wordperfect, and on the 14th Brillo and NF popped in whilst I found it grey, cloudy & cold out.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the wan sunshine & cold wind. Managed ok despite all the aches & pains.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: noon o'clock news.

Foyle's War S5 E2 "Broken Souls". Grim in parts.

Book. Other book.

Tea: beans on toast etc. wherein I remembered what I'd forgotten that I wanted from Tesco/Morrisons. I shall now proceed to forget that all over again.

Entertainment: bit of science thing about solar flares and the upcoming Artemis thing. PM. <click>.

If there's owt else to watch/listen to, it's not become apparent as yet.

Thing about smart meters on 5.

UFO bollox on Blaze at 21:00. <click> Book. Other book.

Odd. Just had an email from a pimp. Can't remember the last time that happened.

[WTFH]

Walk was successfully accomplished in the dry. There's a slither of sunshine below some very dark clouds the look like the amber warning may be coming into force before its current 3pm time.
Bumped into the plumber while out walking. He was telling me that during the worst of the weather on Monday he had already planned a paperwork day to get invoices out.
I'd contacted him on 12th January because our boiler was cutting out, he came on 13th in the afternoon and back on the 14th (due to his tester not working properly). So I said to him this morning that I'd not had an invoice yet, just in case he had sent it to the wrong email. He laughed. He doesn't raise invoices until the end of the month after. I'm happy with that.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Thursday!

It’s a bit misty this morning, presaging a cloudy day. The relatively mild 4°C “feels like” -1°, even though there isn’t much breeze; the day’s high will be 5° but only for a brief spell this afternoon. The barometers are up at 986/994mB

[WTFH]

Morning all a slow start here, just about to go out for a walk

[NickFitz]

Tonight I started reading Berlin: The Downfall 1945 in which The Red Army has launched its attack across the Vistula and, within days, has taken back much of Poland and also cut East Prussia off from the Reich. There’ll be no stopping them now!

Tomorrow’s the day we’re supposed to address tech debt. I’m hoping there isn’t much of it and I can get away with adopting one ticket that mainly involves asking another team to do something and giving them the info they need, so I can then switch back to the thing I’m working on

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea was some leftover thing that’s been in the freezer for a while. I couldn’t remember what it was! I’ve occasionally thought about having it, then found something else instead with a known identity

But I decided to defrost it and see what turned up, and it revealed itself to be a recipe out of one of the Turkish cookbooks that I don’t even remember making: spicy mince with a sauce based on tomatoes and red pepper paste. Nice enough with chips, but I found it a bit rich; if I make it again, I might tone the recipe down a little

This was accompanied by the new episode of Forensics: Crash Scene Investigators on 5

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

It was a sunny day with wispy fluff. Currently 7 degrees and the high was 9. Barometer up to 996 mBar.

Sunrise 07:46; Sunset 16:44 GMT

Another busy day. Disgraceful. Cleaning the cooker hob proved useful in getting a presentation done.

All the compliance is mostly sorted for gig 3 except the insistence that references are required from previous employers. I mentioned that the companies they are referring to were never my employer and getting HR to say I was there will be nigh on impossible. I offered up my accountant, and will see how that goes. This is an agency requirement, not the client's.

[NickFitz]

A reasonably productive afternoon was had

There was also an unexpected surprise in the form of nearly five grand arriving in my bank account. This comes down an inheritance chain: it was from a sum that was left by my great uncle to my Mum and Dad, then devolved solely to my Dad when Mum died, then came to us. The great uncle died in 2021, but for various reasons the handling of his estate has taken ages. But they finally got around to sending it to the bank account that my brother and I have as executors of our parents’ estate this afternoon, and my brother immediately sent us each our third

I think one of the reasons for the delay has been that my great uncle was 99 when he died, so loads of people he left bequests to have died or can’t be traced, because he hadn’t updated his will since the 1980s