A surprise return

Yeah, so I haven't been blogging much. There's a bunch of reasons - it seemed pretty pointless, since I don't know if anyone's reading this stuff; dial-up internet is annoying; I've been pretty busy; I haven't had much to say. So here's a quick update. I'm in the process of buying a laptop (a Dell Latitude D510 - any opinions on this model?), so I'll be able to blog more often. Maybe. It'll be more convenient, at least.

So, an update. Well, I resigned from my job about 4 weeks ago, along with 3 other of our top developers, which leaves just 4 people. I have a new job, though, at a company called Peresys (oddly enough, just down the road from my current company), and it looks like it'll be a bit hectic and challenging, but a really good place to work. I'm really sad about leaving ATC, and I'm going to really miss the friends I made there (who are mostly going to London - I may follow them in a year or two). It's sad, but I know I made the right decision. Hopefully I'll make good friends at my new company too - it just takes me a while to relax enough around new people to the extent that I can just be myself :-)

I went to DevDays yesterday, along with most the guys I work with - it was pretty interesting - the new C# features look really cool, and I had a really fun day. My take on the tech aspects are pretty well summed up in Dave's blog on DevDays (yeah, I'm just too lazy to write what I thought about it, but I agree with pretty much most of what he said).

Hmm, what else? The bike's going well - there was a whole saga a month or two ago, when it went in for a simple gasket change and I didn't get it back for almost two months, but I don't want to get into that. I'll just annoy myself again for nothing :-) I've been going for driving lessons every Saturday, as well, and I think I'll do okay on my test (9 June, in case anyone wants to wish me luck). Once that's done, I want to go for my big bike licence (I'm currently limited to <= 125cc), but that's a pain because I have to write the learner's test again too, and there's such a long waiting period.

I'm redesigning/creating a new website - I've been saying that for ages, but now I'm actually making a bit of progess in that I know how it's going to work What it's going to say, I still don't know.

The recliner that I blogged about before is in the news again - the linkage between the reclining mechanism and the lever that you pull to actually make it recline is broken. So they want to send a service guy out to fix it. After all the problems I had before, I'm not too impressed with this idea, but what can I do? Apart from never buy anything from Tafelberg Furnishers again ...

I guess that's it - it seemed like a lot more living through it, but I guess that's a basic summary of my life over the last few months. Of course, if I went into all the icky details it would be lot longer :-) I intend to blog more often in future - and I always *mean* to blog about interesting websites and coding problems and stuff like that, but somehow I never get round to it (at this point I feel like inserting some pithy comment like, "those who do, do, and those who don't, blog about it -- but I'll resist the temptation).

I'll leave you with some interesting DIY links (i.e., look it up on google - I'm on dial-up, go find your own links :P)

• I'm currently reading "1610", by Mary Gentle - excellent book, I'm really enjoying it.
• I'm going to buy "Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard', by Tom Holt, as soon as it comes out in paperback (I have the first two in paperback, want to maintain the look of the collection)
• If you haven't seen it before, check out ToxicCustard's How to Destroy Your VCR - excellent viewing, and may give you some ideas about how to deal with annoying office equipment
• Check out Bruce Schneier's blog, or read the monthly version, CryptoGram

And at some point, I'll actually add my list of visited-daily websites to the links section that should on this page somewhere.