Not a great start to the day

I managed to lever myself out of bed this morning and get to the gym before 7.30, so plenty of time for a half hour work out and the 15 minute drive to work to start at 8.30.

Except there had been a nasty tow car/one van pile up on the mororway, so the 15 minute (7.5 if the road is quiet) turned into a one hour crawl instead.

Then I get in to an email from my Spanish opposite number saying that the written update I'd been asked to provide wasn't what he wanted, which was a percentage update on progress. Based on hours worked against hours forecast. Possibly. Or possibly based on a project plan he hasn't shown me. Or possibly, and my boss suggested this, based on a figure he made up. Boss's suggestion was that I make up a figure too, but this strikes me as, well, less than ideal.

Work at the moment is either boring me or stressing me, sometimes at the same time. I'm procrasinating on simple tasks, and stumped on important ones.

I'm trying to plan things for Christmas, but can't get son, dog and cat sorted out, so I'm stressing about that. Exercise seems to have had no affect on me except to make me hungry, all the time, and I'm eating badly.

By the time I get home at night I don't have the energy to do anything excpet slump in front of the TV or my laptop. This does not make me ideal company. I'm not pulling my weight with chores, and I'm still tired when I get up in the morning. One saving grace is that I'm sleeping the sleep of the exhausted - I don't stir from when I close my eyes until the alarm goes off.

I think I need to cut back on what I'm doing outside work, which will probably start tonight with swapping the badminton club for staying in and catching up on chores, and then going to bed around 10.30 or so.  I'm stubborn enough that I'm going to keep going to the gym - I feel that the investment I put in there is money in the bank for my health (well, better than money in the bank - I know it won't collapse on me).

At the moment I'm just living for the weekend, and while the weekends are very, very good, that just isn't enough.

A Boy and His Toys

A sure sign of lack of interest at work is when I start tinkering with my gadgets (ooh er missus).

Cheapest upgrade of the day has been £3.49 for am Internet Radio application for the iPhone. WunderRadio (despite the appalling name) seems to be pretty smooth – it used the GPS functionality of the iPhone to come up with a list of local stations, including all the BBC channels, and the “reception” was good enough for me to listen to the Archers at work.

 I had been thinking of paying £50-£100 for a stand-alone unit for the bathroom, but got hung up on the need for AC power in a room with no power outlets. Now all I have to do is dig out my old battery powered dock and hope it works with the iPhone (even if it doesn’t, speakers seem to be dirt cheap these days).  So, since I’ve saved myself, oh, at least £50, what should I spend it on? I’m so glad you asked…

My humble MacBook has started to slow down, partly because I’m running more streaming video on it and partly because I have about 80 gig of music and video on it. Upgrading RAM and hard disk space always seems to help, so….

I remember (he said, settling into an comfortable chair by the clubhouse fire and ordering up a pink gin) I remember the first time I upgraded one of my Macs. I think I doubled the RAM up to 16 mb, and bought a 250 mb external drive. The RAM cost about £200, if I remember rightly, and the drive about the same. That would have been in about 1994. I had to practically disassemble the machine, and was left with a couple of extra screws when I put it back together again.

I just had a look at the procedure for updating the hard drive on a Macbook. The phrase that sticks in my mind is “slides out on rubber runners”. It involves loosening three screws and sliding the thing out. I may also have to use a coin to open the battery cover.

Replacing the RAM is almost as easy.

I had a quick look at Crucial for memory upgrades, and I can go from 1gb to 2gb for about £30. I need to have a look at the Macbook first, though, since it may be new enough that I can actually go to 4gb. And if I can, well, I will.

Hard drives seem to be something under £70 for 250 gigs. I’m hoping to go for a half terabyte, though, just so that I can use a new abbreviation (and also because I remember costing memory in £k/Tb not too long ago). Does anyone have recommendations for a particular drive, or for a supplier? I’ve always gone for the biggest and cheapest in the past, so I have no brand preference. Crucial will get the RAM order, because they’ve always been cheapest, and easiest to deal with.