Author Archive

999 calling

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

Out of the blue, we received a phone call from Hampshire Constabulary this morning. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t quite out of the blue. They were returning a 999 call made from my mobile. It probably doesn’t take too much imagination to work out who made the call… It goes without saying that Emma is going to have to make do with her toy phone from now on!

Focussed

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

We finally traded in our ageing Seat Leon at the weekend and on the way to Fritham I picked up the replacement – a three year old Focus 1.6 LX Estate. We couldn’t bring ourselves to buy an MPV but were looking for a little more space in boot. So far the only complaint is that the engine is a little on the noisy side, for example in 5th gear it’s happy pootling along at 60mph but any faster and it seems to be straining a bit. I’ll miss the handling of the Leon but not the massive servicing bills we’ve had over the past couple of years.

Six ponds

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

As is traditional, for our first run from Fritham we took in the six ponds: Green Pond (on Fritham Plain), Cadman’s Pool, Ocknell Pond, Janesmoor Pond, Longcross Pond and Eyeworth Pond. There was a good turnout despite the darkness, wind and drizzle. I was certainly grateful for having donned a long sleeved top and waterproof when we were heading back across Longcross Plain straight in to the driving rain!
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Blood letting resumes

Monday, September 29th, 2008

After an enforced break due to my appendectomy I gave blood today for the first time in just over a year. It reminded me how painless the process is. Indeed, half an hour away from my desk in an otherwise hectic day was actually a welcome break. If you don’t give blood already, please do consider it. You can find your nearest session on the National Blood Service website.

Hursley 10K

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

670Christine having run it last year (whilst I was recovering from my appendectomy) it was my turn to run at the second Hursley 10K. The second half of the course is part of one of my standard lunchtime runs in Ampfield Woods but the first part was a chance to take a look at some of the paths through the private Hursley Estate.
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Stair gate saga

Friday, September 26th, 2008

We bought a Lindam safety gate from Argos way back before we went to Norway. Shortly afterwards I ordered the free (except for P&P) gate extension from their website so that it would fit across our stairway. At the time though Emma was showing no sign of being a danger on the stairs and when we moved to Norway we were in an apartment.
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New WebSphere blogs

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

There has been a recent push to get more of the WebSphere development team out in to the blogosphere in the run up to the release of V7 of the Application Server. The standard form seems to be to advertise new blogs on the WebSphere Community Blog. So far there is one covering WebSphere and Java Persistence, and likely to be of particular interest to readers of this blog, one on WebSphere and Messaging. Note that the latter doesn’t cover WebSphere MQ (see this blog if that’s your area of interest) but rather the default messaging provider in WebSphere Application Server. Expect to see lots of good material on some of the new features and make the most of the chance to interact with the development team. Whilst on the subject of new blogs, if DataPower is your bag then you can read all about a forthcoming book from some of my ex-ISSW colleagues here.

Last run from Rufus Stone

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

In a break with tradition, tonight’s run will be the last from Rufus Stone this year as the venue can’t really support five different runs. With a bumper attendance, Neil ably led us round a triangle(ish) containing Ocknell Inclosure. On this occasion we managed to stay out of the re-enterants on the North edge of the Inclosure and remarkably we were back at Rufus Stone with time (and daylight) to spare. In case Mike’s memory fails him (!) I should probably say that we ran round clockwise.

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