a day in the life of, well, me

Since one of the purposes of this blog is to capture my inane thoughts and experiences for future reference, and it doesn't feel like a productive friday anyway, today i'll be blogging "a day in the life of ewan" (™). I've left my camera at home, so it's not even going to be spiced up with photos.

05h30 - alarm goes off. My plan is to snooze until 05h45 (getting up early to go running), but that doesn't fit in with Baggie the cat, who prods me and tries to play with my toes until i get up, turn off the house alarm, and let the dogs out. Clair is still out like a light. Baggie then escapes through an open window, but the three of us manage to corner him in the garden. I'm now late - it'll take me about 45 minutes to get to the beach, and Kevin and Annelie are going to meet me there at 06h45.

It's a beautiful day (the fact that i only notice this when driving is really lame). From the top of Umhlanga Ridge the ocean is beautiful (this is where i berated myself for leaving my camera at home. On the other hand i'm too late to stop and happy-snap...) - the air is clear, and the ocean is grey, with bright white/gold circular patches (like giant spotlights trying to find ships) far out where the sun is breaking through the clouds. Kevin is late anyway, and Annelie already ran at 6am (nuts) so i needn't have rushed (yes, ok, i get the message Lord). The run is awesome - the weather is perfect (clear and not very humid, with a cool wind) - and keeping up with Kevin near the end forces me to push myself. Plenty of tourists to keep me entertained too :-)

To the office to shower and change (the showers here are amazing, with enough water pressure to blast the skin off your back) and to have breakfast. I don't appreciate the free food we get often enough I think - it's mad how you take things for granted after awhile. Catch up the nightly email and issue reports, and fire up rssreader for my daily fix of news, blogs and articles. Someone found the Flash MX easter egg. Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie make me laugh again with their "Every OS sucks" video. I'm really annoyed (and slightly concerned) to see that Microsoft have lost the initial component of the Eolas case - see my other posts on the web's friend Mike Doyle here (Oct 7th) and here (Sept 23rd).

"This is a big relief. Our wheels are finally dirty."
     - ROB MANNING, a mission manager, on the Mars rover's first drive.

Spirit's activities still fascinate me. She's now off the lander, and ready to explore. This is an awesome time to be alive :-)

Yesterday was performance review day for the Flash team and for myself. My own review always makes me nervous (in a good way) but being responsible for reviewing others always gets me on edge and worked up. Luckily the team is doing brilliantly, we've done some great work this last quarter - and we're finally getting more recognition... makes me really proud! My review as a great success :-)


i came across this article before the review period, and only read it properly earlier this week. Plenty of food for thought, especially for reviews...

It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.

On the baby front, Prawn is 14 weeks old this week - Prawn now has hair, some working muscles (can frown, grimace, squint and grasp) and may even be able to suck his/her thumb :-). We can't wait until the next scan, where with any luck we'll be able to end the huge boy-girl debate.

I loathe filling in timesheets. I've been a slack bastard and now have 3 weeks to catch up (never do learn my lesson). So i guess i have the rest of the afternoon booked up already - joy.

Had lunch with Colin, Martin, Susan and Pieter - Colin now works just up the road, and Martin was here on business. A real ePages reunion. I really miss the family aspect of a small company, it's just not the same in a bigger corporate. Still, there are many upsides! Caught up on the life and times of Colin, who is now dating :) - in future i promise not to spend so many lunchbreaks in front of this infernal machine.

After an afternoon filled with timesheets, game testing, tea and review weighting (joy), it's hometime. Hopefully to watch Shrek tonight - and not too late seeing as we have an early day tomorrow with a church training programme at our house (excellent, we can get up later :-)