I’ve spent three days this week in Berne, Switzerland, and I’m due to return there next week. Trying to book accommodation has proved a nightmare though. Apparently Robbie Williams is in town on Wednesday and Thursday which means the place is booked out. Looks like I’m going to end up in the nearby town of Fribourg.
Selling out to Robbie Williams
August 18th, 2006All quiet at Terminal 4
August 15th, 2006Work is taking me to Switzerland this week, flying to Zurich from Terminal 4 at Heathrow. Remarkably it took me just an hour and fifteen minutes to make it from home to past airport security – an hour sweeping up an empty M3, 5 minutes (if that) at self-service check-in and then 10 minutes for security, most of which was spent waiting for them to open the departure area.
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The good loaf
August 13th, 2006We have finally retired our Kenwood Rapid Bake breadmaker after many years of frequent use. The bearing in our second replacement bread pan had disintegrated in the same way as the first and the whole machine was making such a racket that it was no longer possible to put it on overnight. After a whole ten minutes research we plumped for the Panasonic SD253 currently retailing for £80 on Amazon (a lot less than the Kenwood cost originally). From the two loaves we’ve had so far I’d rate the Panasonic pretty highly. We have a greater choice of loaf sizes than with the Kenwood and the paddle leaves less of a hole in the bread. Bake times seem to be longer than for the old machine but this isn’t a problem as we can once again leave the machine on overnight. Indeed, it’s so quiet you can sit next to it and barely know that it’s on. Just have to work out why the nut dispenser didn’t drop seeds in to the last loaf…
Making space
August 13th, 2006In anticipation of having to reduce the number of peripherals I tote round, set about clearing space on my primary hard disk to copy some essentials off the secondary disk. As on previous occasions, I found SpaceMonger to be an excellent tool in locating the disk hogs and had soon freed up around 30 gig. Hopefully the subsequent defrag will also help bring some life back to my increasingly sluggish laptop. While using VMWare last week I could no longer remember whether the disk light was meant to stay on permanently!
Travel chaos?
August 11th, 2006On Thursday morning I was driving to the customer site with the radio burbling away in Danish when I heard the words “John Reid”. There then followed a statement by the man himself (interesting that the Danes don’t feel the need to translate), detailing the foiled terrorist attacks and the consequent restrictions on hand luggage. Myself and a colleague, working at the same customer, spent much of the next 24 hours pondering how this would impact our journey home today.
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Rude awakening
August 10th, 2006Back in Denmark again this week but in yet another hotel: Comwell Holte. This proved to be a fairly standard conference venue but has the twin benefits of a) being just 15 minutes drive from the customer and b) having a large forested area known as Rude Skov just over the road.
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Final O-manager results
August 8th, 2006The standings in the WOC O-manager competition have finally been updated with the results of the relay. Odds On ended up in 109th place and Christine’s Stars were 177th. I take some small consolation from having just beaten Jon’s Jokers although I suspect that, as a GB selector, he may have made the mistake of picking too many Brits for his team!
WOC round-up
August 6th, 2006The rest of the World Orienteering Champs has flown by. Britain put in a bid to be the world’s sprint specialist on Wednesday with 5 placings in the top 20 (Matt Speake was one of those disqualfied for crossing an uncrossable fence). Special mention has to go to Helen Bridle who, having been chased round by the eventual winner, Aussie Hanny Allston, finished in fourth place, and to Graham Gristwood who showed what superb form he is on at the moment by coming ninth. I still can’t believe this is the same Graham that I once shadowed around a course at Burnham Beeches and had to keep stopping because he’d forgotten to bring his inhaler!
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