Well, just one more day this week which is shaping up to be pretty busy. On Saturday Kat and I are off to the zoo where she insists she will be reaping revenge on the monkeys by throwing her feces at them. A classy lass, that one. We were thinking Chester but I have it on good authority that the monkeys are much better behaved in Cumbria so we're off to Dalton-in-Furness. Then it's five days before Kat and I do one to Llandudno for a few days for my birthday.

In reference to the effort to outsource my team and others, I am mildly optimistic that this will be a good thing. Initial dealings with the team from what we shall call company B have been pretty positive. They have offices all over the UK. There is one on the Wirral which is pretty much half way between Llandudno and here. In addition to having a very open mind on cloud computing, they have a similar deal with cloud working so if the planets align and I can wangle a transfer to the Wirral, then I see no reason why Kat and I cannot move to Llandudno. I am going to have a look for houses tonight, just to amuse myself. Lord knows I need cheering up.

I have been in password hell today. I think I now have at least 10 different unames and passwords at work. Most of these require changing every 30 days and repeat passwords are not permitted. Today saw one expiry and one locked, even though I had it reset last week. Tomorrow I will be in Windows 2008 hell.

One semi-interesting thing that I heard today which is of a techie persuasion: company B are taking the whole cloud computing thing very seriously. Their view is that it doesn't matter where data is so long as it is secure. They are playing the card that in the future, data will not be stored locally. The last time anyone tried that was in the mid-nineties and it was a phenomenal failure. Sun would have had us all back on X-terminals from NCD had their \"the network is the operating system\" blag worked. What was the other tag line? Ah yes, \"Sun sets on the PC world\".

I'm still skeptical about that. I think we're a few years off it yet.

To get back to my favorite subject, Kat sent me some pictures of her at some ungodly hour last night which I received when I got to Leeds this morning. I am not allowed to call her gorgeous because she will hit me but you might draw your own conclusions...:)

After a horrendous start to the week, the back end of the week was pretty good and yesterday was phenomenally good.

I was planning on working from home on Wednesday but was summoned in for a meeting. My team and several others are being outsourced to another company, only we get to be transferred to the company in question. It came as no surprise. We've been expecting it for years so I was suitably nonplussed about the whole dealy-bop. What was annoying was that it took me nearly three hours (crash on the M62 requiring four lanes to merge into one) to get there and over two to get home (diesel spillage on the M6) to attend what amounted to a 20 minute press conference.

By contrast and for reasons that I fail to fathom, yesterday's trip to Leeds took exactly 58 minutes. Mean time to work is usually 90 minutes.

On my way home I had to pick up Kat to go somewhere. Afterward we came back via a few shops (where Kat dictated which clothes I needed) and got prepared to do a Tudorial. The Vanquisher was waiting for us chez moi and was sat in a rarefied state of amazement at mine and Kat's dialogue. After witnessing sarcasm oozing around the room for half an hour, he finally lit a cigarette and said \"For God's sake. You two are like a married couple.\"

I responded with \"Not true. We don't argue or sulk at each other.\"

There is a degree of truth to his words though. We get on so well. Kat is more surprised than anyone. In general she dislikes and distrusts men. To my knowledge I am the only male allowed to hug her. I wear it like a badge of pride.

Anyhooooo, we performed a Tudorial, the three of us plus Anthony, where we met up with The Tudor Barmaid and Adam briefly. There was a token lunatic in there who attached himself to the party. His shameless admission of having done jail time was only surpassed by his audacity in claiming to be an expert Pascal programmer (I don't know much about Pascal but even I managed to ascertain this was just a tad delusional). Kat and I quickly picked up on a coping mechanism. Whenever Mr Loopy engaged one of us, the other stepped in and did a redirect. Telepathy at its very best. Were Kat not a Libyan^[1], we'd be married by now.

When we got back here, Kat decided that we celebrate a thoroughly enjoyable evening by cooking minted lamb steaks. A veritable chestnut of a day.

I feel it only proper that I end this post with yet another homage to my best Libyan mate:

Bit of house-keeping, 'tis all.

After last week's work, I was dreading today. Happily it was not quite as bad as I expected it to be but you just never know when stuff is going to bite you in this job. I appear to have had more than average buttock lacerations in the last few months. I have a theory that this coincided with us making our Leeds based project managers redundant -- we had rules of engagement with them.

Getting to Leeds took forever. Getting home. just slightly less than forever. Same again tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday.

I'm learning about installing Windows 2008 on blade servers via ILO ports and revisiting some networking configuration stuff that I learned probably two years ago. Have I ever mentioned how much I despise anything Microsoft? Good.

I can virtually guarantee that nothing of any import will happen this week apart from me moaning so I may be quiet for a few days.

Hope your week is shaping up to be more entertaining than mine.

I'm fiddling with a document and I'm getting increasingly annoyed with it. In the meantime, things appear to be exploding around me. I have taken 30 mins to eat a good pie and reflect on the fact that I have four hours-ish to go. And the Kat will arrive and I will finally be happy. I honestly don't know what I would do without her at the moment.

I have popped on to tell you about a conversation I had with the Waaart. I'm sure he will not thank me for this, but as a break it is very therapeutic to me. We were talking about food. He needs to lose a stone. I need to gain one but I seem physically incapable.

Apparently he has started buying £20 joints of beef for Sunday lunch. Given that there is only him in the house who is not vegetarian, it seems a bit radical. He does a replica Sunday lunch for Monday dinner to use up the joint. After that, and to quote him, he "goes down market and just buys a sirloin for Tuesday". It gets worse in terms of bourgeoisie. On Wednesdays he gets a ham and then boils it for a while to get the salt out and then roasts the bugger. Are you spotting a trend here? I'm thinking he has surplus income. I live on pies, onion bajhis and whatever Kat and Jenn cook up.

Right, pie dispensed. Document to be completed. Admin crap to be done. Roll on a week on Friday when Kat and I do one for a week. You will not see us for dust.

Again, this is for posterity. Babbles has been a tower of strength for me today. She really has propped me up. The good news is that she will be back tomorrow and will be here tomorrow night. I have just 24 hours of hell to deal with in the meantime. I can't wait for the sarcasm levels in the house to hit optimal.

You're now asking yourselves why I keep warting on about Babbles when other things are happening. The answer is discretion is the better part of valor. I'd sooner focus on the positives than the rest.

Anyway, here you go:

I've posted this one just because I'm jealous. Given my legs don't work, I resent anyone with balance. As you can see, Kat is a dancer. Her balance completely baffles me. How you can keep yourself upright in those boots defeats me.

My mother has made comparisons between Nski and Kat. If only she knew the difference...

I've kind of left the topic of Japan alone on the basis that it has been a little too much to absorb. Japan is one of my favorite places on earth so to see it in such chaos leaves me a tad breathless. When you travel to the East, it is invariably via Narita and getting back to Narita is like getting home. I have spent many happy days at the Hilton in Narita, randomly stranded. It's Lost In Translation but with a mellow element.

I've been in Japan when the quakes have hit albeit on a much smaller scale. I stayed on the 20-something floor of a hotel in Lompigi once while it oscillated wildly. For all my phobias, and God knows I have enough of those, I was not too troubled by it. The look of this one scares the nads off of me. More to the point, I think the tsunami is more brutal. I was in Phucket a few months before the tsunami hit there -- had I been there at the time it struck, I would certainly have been a goner. Mother nature is a bit of a bugger.

In other news, the Jennster appears to have had a surge of energy. I awoke this morning to my collection of newspapers dispensed with, the dishwasher going and the washing machine doing its stuff. The house is barely recognizable. Every house should have a Jennster.

Kat is off to Wales today and I'm insanely jealous. Had she told me she was doing this before Friday, I might have been able to join her, but she didn't and I can't. I have put in my leave request for the week of my birthday though, so we can do one back to Wales then. And we will.

To finish, my heartfelt sympathies to all in Japan. Great country, great culture, seriously bad luck. All the best from this side of the great divide.

Here are a couple of my favorite photos from the last few weeks. I'm posting them only for posterity.

Good Lord. Those guys are witty. I took my little camera with me -- a serious flaw as it apparently has only a 128MB XD card in it. My proper camera has a 4GB card. So after four songs, the amount of video had max'd me out. The substitution of Jean for Jude in various Beatles numbers was sublime.

While I was in Wigwam, I put down a deposit on a Line Pod Studio UX2. It's some kind of gubbins that will allow Kat and I to record the music we have written and mix it properly. As soon as payday comes around, and we have had some time, I will be posting our efforts. Naturally, you will all be queuing up to line our pockets. We need to finance this move to Wales somehow.

Speaking of, Kat is off back there next week. The bugger. To her credit, she invited me but I have other things to be done, like work.

Right, I'm off for a power nap before the footie. Toodles.

This will be very quick since I have to go somewhere, stat.

This weekend is the Wigwam food festival. It should really be called the pie festival. I am looking forward to some exotic pies. Pheasant and potato, moose and onion, kangaroo and pea, etc. If you can shoot it and stick it in a pie, it will be there, I guarantee it.

The happy corollary to the pie fest is that the Lancashire Hotpots are playing a free gig in the market square. I'm meeting up with my cousin to indulge in a bit of parochial cheer -- not seen him in years, even though he lives but five miles away. The Jennster is out but I may meet up with her there too. Kat overslept (quelle surprise) so I haven't got time to go pick her up.

Later peeps. I shall take a camera for the pies and Hotpots.

I have to get my ass down to Bristol shortly. As you can see from the phraseology I'm not over the moon about it, but I should at least show willing. I'm looking at this as a must-do, not a want-to. On a Moscow rating it is down at the lower end but I fear I should be there for news so I get to spend four hours of hell on a train and two nights in a hotel I have grown to despise.

I was on the phone to an old mate of mine from Llandudno last night for an hour, trying to get a lead on jobs. Although he had no leads, he did give me the email address of someone who might. Come the glorious day, brothers and sisters.

Kat and I have pinky sworn that we are doing this, even if it means me licking seagulls clean for a living while she performs unsavory acts with donkeys as entertainment for the masses. That is how committed we are. Work is doing nothing to convince me to do otherwise so why the hell not?

The first thing that we are doing when we get there is getting a dog. For one, I love them. For two, it will stop Kat from nagging me as she'll get all mushy, like she did with that baby that turned up the other day. I did one to the back room as soon as he arrived. As I said at the time, I have served my time on baby duty. It stresses me to have another life in my hands. I did make a throw-away comment that amused Kat no-end. "I already have three kids. 45 seconds of pleasure for three kids? And fifteen of those were not exactly rosy." I think that kind of sums it up. A dog would be far more up my street.

Right, I should pack and get moving before I talk myself into not going and spend the rest of the day on jobsite.

Well, if ever there was a game of two halves, that was it. It started off with the best weekend of my life and got it extended by a day. I came home on a gleeful high, albeit skint. Skint, but seriously bloody happy. That did a U-turn on Wednesday morning and went downhill from there. By the time Friday finished, I was utterly depressed. The prospect of spending three days in Bristol next week does not fill me with joy either.

I could write a book on how good last weekend was and the contrast to the rest of the week.

I spent yesterday morning driving around the rabbit warren that is Salford, looking for Kat's house so I could return her to the marital home (sic). She stayed here last night and I ferried her into Wigwam this morning to go air-shooting (she explained it to me but it made no sense).

I'm serious about moving to Wales. As I said on Facebook, I have already looked for jobs. Already, I have identified a pole-dancing position. Just this morning I found a vacancy for a rent boy. If it means I need to change careers, I will do it. Up with work, at the moment, I will not put.

I have a theory on this (albeit utter bollocks): I bought a little Buddha statue in Wales to sit alongside my gnome in the front window -- you know, to keep the gnome company. Since they have been together, rather than bring serenity, there is some cosmic non-compliance going on twixt El Gnogmio and the Buddhaveiser that has resulted in the Gods throwing various shades at me. I may have to move them to opposite sides of the window ledge.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again. -- A E Housman

That quote could be true if you let it -- I intend to buck that trend by waiting for payday and going straight back to Wales with Kat for the weekend. I'm also considering accompanying her to Turkey in May. She's going for two weeks but I think I might just do one (week that is, not just "do one").

'Tis all. I may be back later, after the football, hopefully a tad more upbeat.