I'm feeling a rather odd mix of annoyance and melancholy today. Mostly the annoyance is aimed at various services I have to use at work. But some of it is aimed at the same reason as the melancholy - a sudden change of circumstances at work.

So, firstly, last week our company announced that several people's positions were being made redundant at the company, including one of my underlings and one of my bosses. As the 'boss' has been there since I started (and was the main person to guide me through the company) it feels odd to see him leave... the company will feel very odd without. To all though whom are having to move onto pastures new, good luck :).

Also, 'Munchies' the sandwich shop I use daily for my lunch at work has moved outside of the town - too far to sensibly walk there and back in a lunch break. That sandwich shop had become part of my daily ritual, and it feels strange to walk down the high street and not turn into that shop. Given that I was introduced to the shop by the afore mentioned boss, life is suddenly going to feel very different in the coming weeks.

Hmmm, other news...

Dom has his 2X birthday last week, so the house went out for a very enjoyable meal at Old Orleans in the Lanes. Reasonable amounts of alcohol was consumed (Purple Rain cocktails are gorgeous!) and a good time was had by all. We've been trying to go out as a house more often recently, and I definitely think it's been improving the general mood of the house.

Not much else happening really. I've had a fair amount of rack mountable computer hardware come through the post, and I'm now looking into a server cabinet to house it all in (see my rant in the code section).

Oh, and I have found I have a liking for weird teas - I ended up ordering about 15 boxes of the stuff on Amazon.

Right, out of lunch time to write stuff, and out of stuff to write about, so I'll leave it here.

Dear Angry Balding Fat Man who drove past London Road Sainsburys at approx. 10:35am this morning.

I am sorry that I offended you so much that you felt the need to honk your horn at me and flip me off.

If you could let me know what it was about my behaviour or appearance that, in the one second you had to see me when you came round the corner, offended you so much, I will my utmost to improve that aspect of myself.

Yours, a concerned citizen

Since when has playing around on train tracks regained it's popularity? I have noticed a very marked increase in the number of deaths on the rail network recently - mostly because they keep making the trains I use late, but it's starting to get silly - In the last 7 days the London - Brighton line has had delays for 4 different fatalities. Come on people - repeat after me: "Stop playing on the railways".

Been a very disruptive week so far - I was off ill on Monday when my headaches worsened to the point of my whole body aching and, at one point, a loss of color perception. As is normal for me these days, a day off my feet seems to have cured me (though my sleeping pattern still seems to be screwed).

And now I'm at the start of my long weekend - I've taken today and tomorrow off for a well needed break. Work has been a little stressful lately due a number of factors and, combined with my general health last week, I admit to being a bit bitchy at work these past couple of days. Apologies to colleagues for my occasional shortness.

So, long weekend. I don't have too many plans - I have some work to do on this site, and my room needs a tidy (desperately) but I think my plan is just to laze around and relax.

In fact, on that thought - bugger. Badminton starts on the other side of town in half an hour, and having just woken up from an afternoon nap, I don't have the energy or motivation to go...

Bad Nick.

It's 10am, and this is already gearing up to be a bad day. In brief, I'm feeling angry at the world.

I feel like crap because I've had this killer headache for the last week which has stopped me responding like a well adjusted human being. Considering that both housemates and colleagues have had it worse than me, just makes me feel like it's only going to get worse, and I'm whining for nothing.

I'm angry because aforementioned illness is making me feel less energetic and socialable, to the point where I don't have the enthusiasm left to go with Dan and Craig to this years Modelworld exhibition.

I'm furious because I have just had a letter from the Council saying that I owe them £700 in back council tax, and that I should have thought about paying by direct debit, despite the fact that I signed up to pay by direct debit about 5 months ago. All this after they send around about 7 different notices in a 3 week period all asking for different amounts of money for time periods that overlap.

And I'm annoyed that I seem to be whingy bitch prime today.

I really hope I'm not this pathetic for my long weekend next week...

This is so typical.

After 18 months, I finally manage to get my blog online again, and I have nothing to say!

Ah well.

I've done a few upgrades to the site, added a tagging system and RSS feed. Hopefully I can finish all the functionality over the next few weeks, and actually start posting some stuff on the 'code' section of the site.

Maybe.

Who knows - maybe I'll have something to write about by then!

Well, winter has decided that it should actually make a show, and has gone and dumped 8 inches over Brighton (and most of the south half of the country). As most of the transport links to work were down, I ended up working from home today - which wasn't too bad, but the interwebs were going a bit slow, and I ended up needing tools which I can only access from the office, which put a bit of a crimp on some of my bug-fixing efforts. Unless the weather is worse than today, I think I'll be risking the trains to work tomorrow.

Thankfully the cold weather doesn't seem to have affected us in any other way (electricity, water supply etc..), though considering we had a water main burst just down the road a couple of weeks ago, I'm surprised we haven't seen any damage yet. May our luck hold, I suppose.

Before I sign off, the 'Friends' page of the site is now live. Here, you will be able to find blog posts from several (well, two currently) of my friends' blogs. Their blatherings may be more interesting than my own :P