Mutterings for the Minority

2 more games…

… and the Swans could be at wembley. Yes it’s true, tonight’s 1 nil victory over Brighton means we’re into the Southern area final of that illustrious cup competition they call the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.

Quite simply, if we beat Paul Ince’s MK Dons over the 2 leg final we’re at the NEW wembley - how cool would that be. Just to make matters all the more intriguing a certain Willy Gueret now plays for the Dons. I’d sacrifice it all for a place in the Championship next season though.

I still can’t get back into the routine of work. I know it’s only been two days, but it feels like I’ve undergone a lifestyle change!! Hopefully my body clock will have re-adjusted by next week, ‘cos at the moment I feel like a zombie and quite possibly look like one too.

With DDWT Junior returning to school tomorrow, I just hope he doesn’t suffer from the same effects as me. We have tried to get into the school routine over the last few days though to try and help the process, so we’ll see if it’s worked in the morning. Here’s hoping

Road to/from hell?

Today is my first day back in work after my 2 week festive holiday and unsurprisingly I’ve been faced with a deluge of email and voicemail. Typically this usually means I can kiss goodbye to the best part of the day as I trawl through what I’ve been sent. This process usually reveals that 70% of the stuff is crap and I can either simply delete or ignore it. It begs the question I guess of how did we manage before the advent of email, etc. Ah yes I remember, a mound of scribbled notes on my desk

And what with no lunchtime training to look forward to for a few weeks, the days ahead are going to feel rather long and increasingly frustrating no doubt. Just what you need before a nice slow commute home via Oystermouth Road - which just happens to be at the centre of 13 weeks of roadworks commencing today I hasten to add! Now, where did I leave my bike…

I’m currently wasting the bandwidth (LOL) of work’s internet connection listening to Radio 5 Live in readiness for the FA Cup 4th round draw. Hopefully the Swans will get a decent draw and then go on and paste the cloggers from Havant & Waterlooville in their 3rd round replay on January 16th. Let’s hope that Stuart Atwell isn’t reffing that game shall we!

Storytime

Going back to work after a weekend off is usually a rather mundane and somewhat depressing affair, this wasn’t the case today however.

With THE party having passed everyone by on Friday, it was storytime today with everything catching up on the gossip from what is always an eventful afternoon/evening. It also made me realise that I more than lived up to my nickname of ’snakehips’, as apparently I was shakin’ my ass to most of the discs being spun

Mind you that’s quite tame to some of the reports of heard of other peoples antics *blush*

It was nice to take DDWT Junior to school again - as per Friday - and even more of a delight to see all of the things he’s made this term. From tree decorations to candles, chocolate to cards, each one was fantastic and a treat to see. It made us proud to be his Mam and Dad and it was a real treat to see his little face light up with excitement when showing us his work. It’s hard to believe that he’ll be 4 in January - where have the past 3 years gone?

Rather than do a training session at lunchtime today, I opted to ride my bike back home in readiness for the impending Christmas break. I swear the 9.21 mile ride was one of the coldest I’ve had this year as the bracing northerly wind made the temperature indeed feel like the -7 wind chill forecast. My journey took me 45 minutes and 28 seconds with a top speed of 19.6 mph.

I think I’ve only just thawed out!

First Nativity play

It was with great disappointment that I had to miss DDWT Junior’s very first school nativity play today - due to it clashing with an immovable meeting in work. If that wasn’t bad enough, my misery was compounded by the fact that there was a poor turnout for the meeting anyway. I was tinged with both sadness and anger as you can imagine.

Fortunately, Mrs DDWT was able to film the play - which obviously wasn’t as good as being there, but came a close second. It was great to see his beaming little face in the class of children and him kitted out in his shepard’s outfit (i.e. dressing gown with tea towel!) whilst singing lots of songs. We did have a chuckle though at the bemused faces of all the kids though at the very start of the play. Bless them, it must have been quite a site all of these adults looking at them with big grinning faces.

I know one thing though, I won’t be missing next year’s play - meeting or no bloody meeting!

An early start

It’s been a bit of a struggle today mainly due to a 4:30am wakeup call from DDWT Junior this morning. As you can imagine my concentration levels - and patience for that matter - have suffered all day. So perhaps unsurprisingly it’s not been the most productive day at work I’ve had.

Mind you perhaps me trying to get my head around getting Windows 2003 servers to talk to Nagios and Windows application thread pools, it’s little wonder that I didn’t achieve anything really is it - as those familiar with such things will know that they’re not exactly the easiest of things to resolve.

I was glad that it was a training ‘rest’ day today, as otherwise I think I would have really struggled to get any sort of decent workout in - especially giving the squally showers and strong winds.

On a more positive note, the contractors have finally finished tarmacing our pavement and road - so now the final half mile of my journey to/from work won’t feel like going over the rocky mountains! Even better perhaps is that now the road (and street furniture) can be adopted by Swansea city council.

Office Christmas tree

After not doing anything much in the way of exercise last week, I thought I’d best start this week off on a more positive and energentic standing. So come lunchtime, I mounted my bike and headed off on my own little ‘Gowerton loop’ of 14.05 miles. The first thing that struck me - no it wasn’t a pedestrian - was the force of the wind, which thankfully was behind me on the way back! My journey took me 56 minutes 58 seconds in total, at an average of 14.7 mph and a 21.5 mph top speed.

Hot on the heels of putting up the Christmas deccies at home, I managed to convince my colleagues in work that it was about time we put the office decorations (well tree anyhow) up - in an attempt to raise spirits (Monday’s are never good in our place!).

As you can see from the picture above I succeeded in getting my way. Although it has to be said it’s one of the lamest office Christmas trees I’ve ever seen!

With the clock ticking towards Christmas day - it’ll be here quicker than you think - we decided to start packing some of the pressies tonight. It’ll save us some time nearer the big day and also make our Christmas tree look all the more ‘real’. The biggest problem we face of course is deterring DDWT Junior from wanting to open the presents on the QT when our backs are turned!

Destination Gloucester

My work took me to Gloucester today to see how the County Council had setup their call centre. It also gave me an opportunity to have a look at the ‘Solidus’ system from Sony Ericsson - which was quite impressive I hasten to add.

The timing of the trip was a week out however, as last Friday the Osprey’s were at Kingsholm (home of Gloucester RFC) for a European Rugby Cup - which would have been an ideal destination post-meeting time. Oh well maybe next time.

Our return journey via the A40 (as opposed to the M4 - anything to avoid the toll bridge you see) I got my first glimpse of the new Amazon building on Jersey Marine. It is MASSIVE and a great coup for this area, especially in terms of the economy and regeneration. My only concern however is what ’sort’ of jobs will be on offer and how much they are likely to be paid. Time will tell I guess, but I doubt very much that Amazon would be a bad company to work for - especially given their global size and status.

On the subject of the Opsrey’s I had the misfortune of watching them misfire (again) against Leinster on the box earlier. Granted they were missing 9 senior players, but given the squad Lyn Jones has assembled surely they could have got a result against Brian O’Driscoll’s men? I’m beginning to think that the time for change at coaching level is fast approaching.

Talking of TV, I saw the much debated ‘Swansea at Christmas’ advert on ITV tonight. Despite my initial optimism BEFORE seeing it, I really felt deflated after seeing it - it could literally have been anywhere in the UK and I felt it came across on the cheap side. What a major disappointment, considering the vibrant and stunning area we live in.

How to de-frustrate yourself

I’m still feeling frustrated and as a result I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be work that’s the problem, or rather the indirect people I work with (if you can call it that). I’m not even going to begin to talk about outsourced IT contracts, execept in this case I personally think the organisation has made a BIG mistake.

Anyway, enough of my bleating. At least I do feel somewhat better now I’ve been out for a ride on the bike lunchtime - down to Verdi’s and back (and no I didn’t have an ice cream!). It was bloody cold mind you - due to the strong wind - and the pathway being part closed due to a “suspected” gas leak added a somewhat different twist to the event.

In the interests of my training records (and for future retrospective readings) my Cateye Mity 8 gave me the following outputs (sounds technical doesn’t it LOL) - distance of 9.77 miles in 39 minutes 57 seconds at an average of 14.6 mph.

DDWT Junior has been a busy boy today, as he decided he wanted to make some cakes after school. So armed with a ‘Dora the Explorer’ cake making kit he - with the aid of Mrs DDWT of course - produced some pretty darn good cakes to be fair, which went down rather well with a cup of kenco.

I’m going to be a Dad!

Oh yes indeed - I’m going to be a Daddy for the 2nd time and it’s a wonderful feeling. We’ve known for a couple of weeks, but today is the day that we’ve officially told everyone outside of the family (as they knew a few days ago). It’s soooo exciting and the thought of DDWT Junior 2 being around fills me with joy.

We decided not to tell DDWT Junior just yet - primarily because he’s obsessed with babies at the moment (you should see him with our friends babies!) and because we wouldn’t get a moments peace from him asking questions about it! I can see it now though when he does know, it’ll be like one of those kids in the car saying “Are we there yet?” only it would be “Is the baby here yet?”.

Mrs DDWT is due in June 2008 and ironically only a couple of days after our wedding anniversary. Now that’s what I call a wedding anniversary present!! I’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date with progress - so keep tabs on the blog for regular updates (including details of me and my phantom pregnancy symptoms!).

It’s been a day or revelation and upheaval all round actually, as I also moved office and team today - so it was like starting with a new family in work as well

I’m now in amongst the ICT teams and after 3 years or so being on the periphery - I’m now back where I perhaps naturally belong, with other ICT techies.

So what better way to celebrate, say farewell and toast someones birthday than to go out for lunch and have a good old natter. After the success of our visit to ‘The Village’ in Swansea’s SA1 district the other week we opted to go there again and once again indulge in the steak and kidney pie dish (well I did anyway).

Websites launched

It’s been a busy day for me on the website front with the official launch of two new sites for some clients of mine.

The first one is Siop Ty Tawe, a Welsh shop in the centre of Swansea which is part of Canolfan Ty Tawe / Ty Tawe Centre. The shop sells Welsh language books for adults, children and learners as well as gifts from Wales.

It’s well worth a visit if only for a cuppa and a chat with ‘Siw siop’ (the owner) and they’ve got some cracking Welsh t-shirts there too. In fact they stock loads of Welsh merchandise - so it’ll be well worth a visit come Six Nations time

The other site launched was that of Partneriath Pontarddulais Partnership, a site dedicated to developing the Pontarddulais Community through partnership working.

The partnership is a voluntary group that consists of representation from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors and has a number of agencies acting as advisors. So if you’re from Pontarddulais why not get in touch with them as they’re always looking for new ideas.

So here is a shameless plug for my services, aimed at anyone who wants a quality website for an affordable price - no matter what the subject area. If you want to know more, simply drop me an email and I’ll be happy to have a natter with you.

On an altogether more amusing subject, I’m amazed by the number of Leeds fans who seem obsessed with posting comments on the video’s I put on YouTube from last weekend’s game. Thankfully I moderate all the comments, but if I hear one more about it being ‘our cup final’ and ‘how quiet we were’, etc I’ll go potty.

Anyone would have sworn the Leeds United supporting keyboard warriors were obsessed with us sheep lovers from Swansea