Not the greatest nights sleep, a bit dozing. Anyway, got up and got on with it. Today was all about optimising a single shader. It was to do with full screen dirt. It started at 1.2 milliseconds, four hours later it was down to 110 microseconds. Not a bad ratio. A few other bugs a long the way, nothing too stressful. Theres something weird about to come up I just know.

Went for a run. Edited a new helicopter video, that’s uploading at the moment, will be released on Friday I think. Going for an early night again, probably fairly pointless.

So back to Monday again, no idea where the last week went, it’s been a week since we were on holiday. Still, at least today wasn’t too troublesome. Had some thread stuff to finish off then it was a bit of bug hunting. Walked Sasha. Went to BodyCombat, we did the new one, it was quite fun but tiring. Came back and did a bit more work. Finally sat down and ate salad. Think I’ll have a bit of an early night as I want to read some of that ‘Operational procedures’ book.

Okay, so didn’t get up at the crack of dawn. Actually I don’t think I had breakfast until about 11AM. Read for a bit then got up. Got the jet washer out, plus my high pressure drain cleaner. I then spent the best part of three hours jetting the drains. This is kind of a biannual job, that involves shoving a pipe down the drain gully and running it back and forward for hours on end. Plus the fun part of removing all the drain covers, shoving your hands in and scooping out handfuls of basically white solid fat. I’ve got them all running smoothly again, I reckon another twelve months and they no doubt need doing again. Also cropped some of the bush outside and shoved it in the black bin. Put the swimming pool on top of it (don’t ask).

I then fired out and went to Tytherington, which is a village just outside Thornbury, parked up at the pub. Did one Geocache within 50M and then another dozen or so over the next few hours. That’s basically that village done now. There is one puzzle cache there that I’ll probably get next time, then probably move about a mile away for the next group. Over the three hundred mark now. Target is five hundred next year, so all these are a bit of a bonus at the moment.

Came back and had a bath, now it’s time to cook one of my special hot curries.

Woke up this morning and I heard something drop on the floor as I got out of bed. Then my necklace started hanging down my cheats. Finally after about twenty-two years the very fragile clasp had broke at the join. I’ve worn it every day since I had it, it was bought in Jersey when I was there with Mark. I will take it to a jewellers hopefully tomorrow. Needs to be fixed, cost isn’t important, I feel naked without it.

Work went surprisingly well, fairly quiet, I got on with a load of stuff to do with thread management. Game is still demoing in London, and getting good feedback.

Went for a quick run at lunchtime, only about ten minutes. Saw a woman and a girl walking a tiny dog at the end of the road. It was taking a shit on the grass. They just walked off. I stood there and stared, the girl looked round then got, I take it her mother to look round. I glared. She said, “Sorry I don’t have a bag, I would have cleared it up if I had one.” I thought to myself, “Sorry, I will punch you in the face, I wouldn’t if I had more self control”. I glared a stare that Lionel Blair would be proud of. Bitch. Next time I’ll just kill her.

Went to Pump. Put weights near enough back to normal, then did a session with Laverne afterwards. Came back and did a load more work while Jamie was creating a racket on the treadmill.

Flying tomorrow.

I’m sure that wine last night was slightly corked. Worked was hanging around a hell of a lot for a data build. So I took the advantage and answered two hundred and forty odd questions on air-law. I passed. Then went through all the ones I didn’t get right. Oddly there were quite a few that I couldn’t find the answers to in the book at all. So I text James and asked to have a bash at the exam, he said to contact Candia. I then managed to send an email to the wrong address so god knows. Walked Sasha, it’s actually about one and a half miles around the block.

Finished off the stuff I was working on to do with render thread management. Incidentally I don’t ever mention what I’m working on, but it’s currently demoing at EGX and getting good feedback, so I’m pretty happy with that. Went for a run, felt rather energetic for some reason (back to the dodgy wine I expect) managed to knock two minutes off my personal best. Had a shower.

It’s now torture porn night, hadn’t had one of them for a while, and it’s a horror film. Roll on the cheese, and the wine.

Had a terrible nights sleep, mainly as Jamie was coughing and wheezing. I kept going between main bedroom and guest room. Then I was up at 6:30 to take Dillon to day care. Went back to bed, managed a couple of hours. Work was fine today, back to some coding, which is always nice. It worked as well, which is a plus. Lots more to do this week, steer clear of bug hunting for the time being.

Picked up Dillon. Went to Pump. Went fairly light tonight as I didn’t want to break anything after a week off. Will get back to normal on Friday. Did more work. Then wrote my TripAdvisor review of the Xanadu. Hmmm, how comes you only remember the bad bits? There’s a whole paragraph about how the safe broke and how bloody awful some of the food and service was. Still, they may take note, then again they may not. Will still probably go back there next year. Will keep an eye on EasyJet though, see when they start taking bookings for the flight, will be a lot cheaper then I hope.

Booked flying for Saturday. Air law….yes, I know.

Work was dull as fuck. Going through a bug list and then spent the best part of five hours staring at a gear stick. After that I was no closer to fixing it anyway. Two days back on the job and what to give up again already.

Went for a run. Ate too many chocolate biscuits. It’s not even ten thirty, I’m going to bed.

So was at the kennels at 9.20, dogs picked up fine. Started work just before 10. All was fairly quiet to be honest, the world didn’t end while I was away, which is slightly annoying. Things progressed, builds were done and there was no major panics. I spent the bulk of the day catching up on forum activity, various emails from console manufacturers and looking into a new technique that’s just been launched in the SDK. Lots of data building as well. Tomorrow the coding work proper starts again.

Walked Sasha. Went to the gym and did Combat. Came home and Jamie and his bloody treadmill have arrived. He finally got round to putting it together. It’s now packed vertically in the dining room, this is probably the position it will stay until I end up e-baying the bloody thing.

I looked into Blackpool, but due to the closeness it’s just not going to be practical this year.

I’m now upstairs waiting for him to get off the couch and go to bed so I don’t have to listen to his continual bloody sniffing.

So this morning started with an alarm, the first one we set this week. Put it on snooze a couple of times then finally got up. Headed to the Rosebud bar, no need for towels this time, had my black coffee then picked up a banana on the way back to the room. Did the final packing, carried the case to reception, paid for my extras and we were picked up a bit early. It took almost two hours to wind our way back to the airport, we were the first pick up. Listening to people moan as they boarded. One couple’s hotel was closed down for hygiene reasons after two days, another’s had nothing to eat but cold chip butties, I think we got off quite lightly with are magazines being thrown away and the octopus being slightly over cooked. These people were paying about twenty quid for their hotels, it felt quite embarrassing to say we were staying on a private island on its own peninsula. Bag drop took forever, immigration was non-existent. The flight back was actually painless, we were sat next to a lovely woman, ex-landlord, she had some great stories.

And that was it, soon we were back home. The washing machine was on and I went out for a run. Considering it’s been only a week, it seems like a long one. That isn’t a bad thing, I think this time we’ve both actually really enjoyed it and can’t wait to go back again next year.

Normality now resumes, I’m kind of looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, I’m sure all my enthusiasm will be quelled after about ten minutes. I do get to pick the dogs up first thing though, even though it’s been nice to have a dog hair free week, it will be lovely to have them back.