Monday 30 June 2008

QP Open weekend

The weekend went and another Quarry Park Open has gone; and as expected I sucked!

Started off well and made a great start. Was placed in the group starting on hole 3 which was good, not usually started that close to the beginning of a round before. My round started off with 4, 2, 3, 2, 4 (OB), 2 ... so after 6 holes i was -1 par! It all went completely to pot after that and scored 3 of my worse rounds in years ... 69, 70 and 74 :-(

Ah well, there is always next year!

So 3 rounds of disc golf, but also 2 beers in the house so beer / exercise ratio is still negative. But soon it'll get better ... hopefully :-)


Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 9
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 5

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Friday 27 June 2008

Bad weather == BBR (Bad Beer Ratio)

The weather was lovely all day in Reading yesterday then I got on the train home and as it was pulling into Leamington station it was peeing it down. Due to this motivation to run was pretty much none existant and then the mrs offered me a beer; how could I turn it down?

Ah well, 3 rounds of golf at the weekend should help with the beer credit crunch.


Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 7
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 2

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Big Beach Sports - Disc Golf on the Wii

New game released today which has disc golf in it!

Not played it or anything, but at least its getting the sport more coverage and hopefully more people will have a go and then want to have a go in real life :-)

Thursday 26 June 2008

Round of 66, how rubbish am I?!

Last night went over to Quarry Park and played a round with Rich and Scott. Was good fun and played some good shots. Managed to get a couple of birdies on holes 8 and 10, but got to hole 13 and fell apart some what and ended up shooting a 66 which was rubbish! Hopefully I can improve at the weekend.

As for the beer, had dinner at my parents came home and drank a couple of bottles of Stella while eating some left overs and watching some west wing. So the round of golf was good, but then went and completely un-did it with the beer.

Ah well, I'll be playing at least 3 rounds at the weekend and planning on going for a run tonight so should be in positive in my beer / exercise account. Will keep you updated :-)

Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 6
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 2

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Wednesday 25 June 2008

First running ness ...

Last night when I got home I went for a run. Yes shocking isn't it that I actually went out and started the first miles for this crazy thing I've decided to do!

The route can be found at click

And I did it in 15mins, so in runners terms it was at a pace of a 10min mile (ish). As Aakash says "just building a base" :-)


Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 4
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 1

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Tuesday 24 June 2008

2 more beers, 1 exercise

Another weekend has gone by and at the mo that means painting for me, but after painting another room and becoming a broken man I gave in, watched a dvd and had a couple of beers. It was good to unwind, but it means I'm more in debt, although not so much as expected. I played some disc golf on friday evening for an hour or so, and had another 1.5 hours of practice yesterday which I think equates to about a round, so I'm going to count it ... I made the rules so I can class that as some exercise :-)

Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 4
Miles: 0
DG Rounds: 1

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Friday 20 June 2008

First Thousand Beers / Miles / Rounds

Why?

The weekend just gone I finally moved into my new house that Lau and I just bought! Woo! Currently its a bit of a mess with all my stuff filling the living room but that is due to us still painting and getting the upstairs habitable. Once that is done I can move up stairs and put the bed together etc. can't wait!

Anyway, I thought as its a new beginning I thought I would do a new thing which will involve something I enjoy doing and trying to keep fit. The issue is however that I enjoy having a beer, but my belly doesn't get rid of itself, so we have come to a bit of a problem (or a solution starting point as some might say).

What?

Well I am going to ride on my bike and / or run a mile and / or play a round of disc golf for every beer which I consume in my house (practice rounds and tourament rounds count; at quarry park a full round is 1.5 - 2 miles of walking, but will only count to 1 beer). When I say consume a beer in the house I mean a bottle or can of any beer/lager (and when I say beer I mean lager) and will document them on this blog. It doesn't matter how big the bottle is or the percentage volume as that will make the calculation not very easy or fun and thats what it is supposed to be!

First

Well Sunday night after painting for what seemed like forever (but was actually about 6 hours) I had a couple of beers (as I thought I'd deserved them doing all the painting and during dinner). That means I am currently in debt to my beer/exercise ratio and I need to remedy that soon!!

Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 2
Miles: 0
DG Rounds: 0

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Team Foundation Server 2005 - adding files when offline

I've recently been given a laptop at work to be able to work on the commute between my home (Leamington Spa) and work (Reading) and here comes the issue, TFS doesn't like it much when working disconnected.

I've done some research online and found that some of the issues which TFS has in 2005 version are addressed in 2008, but as we won't be uprading for a while I need to live with 2005.

This morning on the way to work I needed to add a new workflow activity to my project so I could carry on with work, obviously right click > add new item > activity, TFS client moans about not being able to connect to the server (no really?!) and VS adds the file with no source control bindings. The file is added and I can edit it, compile etc and work away fine on it. However the issue comes to making sure it gets added to source control for when I check it in it doesn't break the automated build. Due to this issue I decided that if I added / edited a file when offline I'd make a note of which and to add it / check it out when I got into the office.

I got in this morning and connected the wireless, went to source control viewer to add it in and couldn't find the folder where it exists (even though its in an existing folder) ... hmmm strange. So, found the file in solution explorer, right click > ... no "Add to Source Control" which is a bit rubbish. However there is a really simple solution ...

If you right click on the file in question and exclude it from the project, save the project file, click on the "Show all files" button at the top of solution explorer and find the file in the greyed out version, right click and add to project ... it gets added to source control :-)

Wednesday 11 June 2008

Ever wondered what could be build out of Meccano?

Well wonder no more as to what size you can make stuff and start thinking about what you can make on the grand scale from Meccano!

A new skyscraper has been built in NY, but even though its only 65ft tall its still a break through from artist Chris Burden.


The image above is from the Daily Mail (click) of the artist looking through some of the Meccano pieces.

Some footage can also be seen on the BBC iPlayer ... well worth a look!

Tuesday 10 June 2008

Crazy Spam Subjects

With the mass amount of spam I get some crazy subject lines, some I'm not going to post as they are discusting, but some are just hillarious and I thought I'd share some of them; read into them as you will ...
  • challenge the dark knight when you are ready
  • Update you p***s
  • Find out incredible hulk's secret
  • 15 times the power
  • All your buddies will envy you
Why do people think that these would work and make people open the email let alone click on any links inside!!

Stop opening spam and clicking on the links people!!!

Monday 9 June 2008

Work lappy

UPDATE: Jon said I can't refer to Lau in the future as 'my wife' yet.

After travelling home the other week I enquired about getting a work laptop so that once I moved up to Leamington Spa I would be able to leave on time (if not a little earlier) and work on the train so I could get home to my wife the woman to be at a reasonable hour (also so I could play some disc golf after work in the summer ... woo!!).

Well last week I got given a new machine! Its not the latest from Dell, but its a reasonable machine and I am quite surprised by it!

The machine I have been given is a ...


...Dell Precision M65.

Spec rundown ...
2Ghz Dual Core 2 Pentium
2.5GB ram
NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M

The thing which has surprised me the most about it is the battery life currently at 88% while I write this and it claims it could do another 3 1/2 hours! I worked on the hour train home the other day, and back with a stop over in Leamington station as the train was running late, restored a 4gb database and worked on the train; and still had 25% battery life remaining. Along with the usual typing I also had music playing, 2 instances of Visual Studio 2005, sql server 2005 running , outlook and other stuff and still worked like a dream!

I hope this can continue and I get lots of work done on trains and the wife woman likes it when I get home from work on time :-)

PS. Only just over 7 weeks to go!!! :-)

CRM and Spam!

About the spam situation, I didn't do a post at the beginning of May due to the fact that I was on my stag do which was great!!

Another reason was that it was a lot lower than it had been previously; ~ 28000 mark. This kept up for most of the month and had nothing spectacular going on. I've come back after a weekend of sorting out my new house (more to come in another post) and no internet connection at all to a wh00ping 31,636 spam. An all time high!!

It pretty much reassures my thoughts on what spam is; its just a very bad marketing campaign. Somone behind these plainly stupid blanketing emails have obviously had their CRM software popup with a new campaign.

CRM software is good for business; bad for spammer!