Nicky

So Long, So Busy

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything and for that I am disappointed, however I do have just cause.
Since my last post, me and the wife Nicky have been working the Cambridge Weight Plan and in one week I lost 10lb which is amazing. We’ve got Nicky’s Dad over this week helping us with some lose ends of DIY in the house too, so my evenings are packed with DIY work.

Back in the land of tech, I’ve been busy on a MIMEsweeper for SMTP training course, a Websense training course, and working feverishly hard on System Center Configuration Manager and Exchange. I’m hoping I’ll be coming out with a couple of posts soon on these subjects, along with some bits on Windows Home Server 2011.

A Busy Week at Home and Work

As the title suggests, its a busy week this week all round. On Monday, I started the five day journey on the road to VCP while I attend the VMware vSphere 4.1 course with Gloval Knowledge, and with VMware currently running their own version of Microsoft Second Shot, hopefully I can have a chance if sitting the exam soon.

The wife, Nicky, Sat her final exam for her foundation course, Access to Higher Education for Midwifery, which means she now has the nervous wait to find out her final graded.

Me personally, I went to the doctors yesterday about my ongoing knee problems post-running and have now been referred to a physiotherapist for possible treatment.

As I write all this from my Windows Phone WordPress application, sitting in the car while Nicky runs into Tesco, we are about to go out for dinner with the girls to celebrate Layla’s birthday with another family, Gary and Amy and Joe’s birthday too.

The Change The Blog

In line with the changes to the design of the blog, I’m going to be making some other changes.

I’ve never used Categories properly. This is because I was using this WordPress installation as a MUI even though it was the standard installation.

As of today there will be a Category called Personal and anything by Nicky, myself relating to family or anyone else family oriented will go in the Family Category.

I will be creating a load of categories over the coming days and weeks to accommodate my posting habits and over time, re-organising my posts into them.

The net result will be a better and more effective experience using WordPress. This, coupled with the recent Permalink structure change on the blog giving it nicer URLs will also help.

Finally, I’m going to be changing the name of the blog.
As the only person to use it is me and as I mostly talk about technology related stuff these days, here’s the new name:

Baby-Green Blog :: The Mostly Technological Ramblings of Richard Green

It is a little bit of a mouthful, however it will better suit the topic of the site and will hopefully help improve the SEO of the blog.

UPDATE: Actually thinking about this, I’m going to stick with the categories, but instead use them for authoring, so whereas my posts are currently split into Richard for personal and Technology for my drivelling posts, everything for me will be under Richard now. This makes more sense based on how effectively I’m tagging my posts.

My Phone

So today was contract renewal and phone upgrade day.

I went to Carphone Warehouse on my way home knowing that on Monday they had 200 HTC Touch HD’s in stock in the warehouse.

Much to my disappointment they have managed to flog all 200 of them so they are out of stock and probably won’t get more for another two weeks. It’s just lucky my Nicky loves me as she’s let me have her two day old Touch HD and she’s going to take my upgrade.

Thanks x

Today’s the Day I Invest in HTC

Well not technically true because I’ve been using HTC devices for about the last three years, with my HTC Wizard first, my HTC Artemis now, but today my 18 month contract with O2 UK is eligible for upgrade, so I’m trotting down to Carphone Warehouse after work to order my HTC Touch HD.

They don’t keep them in stock in the stores but they deliver to home, so tomorrow when I finish work I shall be in possession of it.

Nicky got hers earlier this week and it’s gorgeous…I can’t wait.

The Blog After the Blog Before

So I couldn’t think of a good title for this entry, so the random title will just have to do. I haven’t written anything for a week now, so I’m going to play catch up.

Last week Monday was Labour Day here which means bank holiday: Made up for missing the bank holiday Monday in England as that day was a working day here. The four of us went to Gilroy shopping outlets on the Monday and probably spent too much money, but it was all so cheap and people did give us spending money to spend after all.

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San Francisco

So today being Saturday, the start of the long Labour Day weekend in the US, we made our first proper trip out somewhere to San Francisco as the title kind of gives away!

We had to change the rental car this morning because Hertz where charging a $25 per day young driver excess so we picked up a new car from Enterprise in San Jose Airport and then drive in convoy to San Francisco Airport to drop off the old car, the old car being a Pontiac G6 which was pretty nice in exchange for the new Ford Fusion, although it’s nothing like the Ford Fusion on sale in the UK.

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San Jose Here We Are

So we flew out of Heathrow Terminal 5 on Sunday at about 2pm, landed at San Francisco about 4.45pm, 8hrs behind UK time after a traumatic demon child filled 10hr flight here, but that said the flight was great. We flew British Airways on a 747 which was an experience being on something that big, and I have to say I was most impressed by their in flight entertainment service which was an on-demand video, music and TV service meaning we could watch what we wanted when we wanted and it worked really well. I’d love to know what they had running that for a media server because it must have had a hell of a lot of horsepower under the bonnet!

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LazyTown Live!

Today after swimming, we came home and picked up some stuff and headed down to mums. Why? We had tickets to see LazyTown Live!

We had tickets for the 5pm showing, and it was really good. We arrived a bit early so sat in a pub next door to have a drink while we pondered if Dave would have a nervous breakdown trying to look after Jessica while me, Nicky, Mum and Maddy where out and while in the pub we where amazed by the number of kids who where all dressed up in their Stephanie and Sportacus outfits for the show.

We all really enjoyed the show and probably all ate far too many sweets and ice cream, and it was obviously all a bit too much for Maddy Moo as she fell asleep during the second half of the show and missed the ending songs and dances etc which where cool.

All in all a good day – Now CBeebies Live at Wembeley in December to look forward to 🙂

I’m a Tourist

So today I was in London for work and I was being my normal self following the directions of TomTom on my phone because I knew that where I was going was just down the road, so not worth the effort of getting back on the tube and changing lines etc, but because I know London walking about as well as I do how to build a jet engine, I need TomTom and there I find myself looking at the Houses of Parliment and Big Ben in the distance whilst Downing Street is over to my right with New Scotland yard just ahead.

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