Spent the day tracing a memory leak that was actually in debug text, wasn’t wasn’t really too much of an issue anyway. Still, nice to track down. Then it was more on placement buffers. Another nice day, Sasha had a long walk. I worked too late, still, short day tomorrow. Went for a run and had a bath. Now going to watch a film. Mother mailed, apparently Hotpoint aren’t going to do her tumble dryer until July, so still a good chance she’ll catch on fire before then.

Apparently she’s said that she never planned to sell or give away anything. I think she’s lying. She told me not to treat her like an imbecile, I’ll treat her like a lier instead then. I’ll be keeping an eye on it, I’m still planning to have a little chat with her neighbours and lodge something at the land registry, they can make building regs. rather more problematic.

Apart from the joys of that, work was on that bloody laptop again, but managed to shelve it for today. Did console placement buffers instead, all working nicely, a shit load more memory saved now that it’s implemented properly. Had some issues with atomics and threading again, it’s always a pain in the ass. Walked Sasha in the rain. Walked to the gym, it stopped raining at that point. Did Pump, walked home, it was dry but cold. Did a lot more work as catching up for a short day on Monday, up to date now, fourteen and a quarter hours left to do this week, so short day on Friday I think.

Didn’t have a great deal of enthusiasm today, took a long time to get into work. Still buggering about with that laptop, pretty much have to install everything from scratch again so I can get all the profilers working. Was doing a couple of other things with placement buffers as well.

Weather was nice again, took Sasha out for a long walk. Eaton far too many carbohydrates today. Went for a run, still over my carb count.

Got a text from my wiser (sorry, was downstairs watching Endeavour with the dog). Apparently mother has agreed to sell/let the neighbours have some land that she doesn’t own so they can build a bigger garage. Now, there are a few problems with this. 1) She doesn’t own the property, it’s on a life-time mortgage. 2) She certainly doesn’t have the legal papers necessary, plus the solicitors costs to do the transaction legally. 3) I have a feeling that the neighbour, nice as they are, are taking her for a ride, and I really don’t trust her mental capacity. So I sent her a rather curt email to the effect that what she’s doing is illegal and that I will be speaking to her neighbour. I’ll be writing to them and also logging a copy of the letter with her mortgage company, and that if any boundary changes occur they will be fully liable for any costs incurred. I also told her not to piss me off.

Okay, so there are 29 days in this February. But I’m on the second half now. My giant box of bags of tortilla chips arrived, they are high in salt but quite nice, and a damn site cheaper than Doritos. Weather was nice again, sun was shining, but very cold. Spent all day doing GPU analysis on a laptop. Walked to the gym, did Combat, walked back and then we went to the cinema and watched ‘Dead pool’, which for a super-hero film was very good, if a tad violent.

So this morning started off with coffee and cereal once again. It was a lovely day so I gave Ben a call. The helicopter tail cone had been bent, they are not sure how it happened but the aircraft was now out of action for a week. That pissed me off somewhat as it was the best the weather had been in weeks.

So in the end I just sat in bed and wrote a new video script. Went straight downstairs and filmed it. Popped out to find two geocaches, but in the end only found one of them. Came back and picked up Sasha, we then went out until it was dark. Came back and edited and uploaded the video:

Had a bath. Now time for food.

Started the way I like to start Saturdays. Coffee, cereal, papers. Could have done with nicer weather, it was bloody freezing. Walked Sasha. Came back and did a bit of music practice, I have a new course video, it’s very good, I picked up chord structure and all major and minor keys in about ten minutes, oddly you just need to be able to count to eight. Had lunch, drove towards town. Parked up and walked about three miles in the wrong direction to pick up a present for Jamie, lovely little shop, again would be nicer if it wasn’t pissing down with freezing rain. Walked into town, browsed. Went in the Apple store and browsed the staff, nothing which took my fancy. Picked up a card and some wrapping paper, that cost a fiver, very overpriced. Drove back via Asda, hoping Doritos were still on offer, they weren’t. Picked up bean sprouts. Came home and did the accounts, paid the balance on the holiday and had a bath. I was supposed to be cooking tonight, but I got Jamie to do it, I always burn noodles anyway.

So I got another letter from HMRC, this time giving me a tax code for two months (if they could get away with a negative one I think they would of) and one for next year, which gives me about a flat rate of 67%. Still, at least I’m getting somewhere now. Had a nice long walk with Sasha, clouded over a bit. Walked to the gym, did Pump, came back and went though my pensions as I need to dump a shit load of money into one. Found I had two, well two policies, then found I had a third, then evidence of a forth and finally a policy number of a fifth. There’s probably close to about a hundred grand there if all are correct, which I very much doubt, I’m assuming one has got transferred to another over the years and it’s probably about a quarter of that, shame. Still, I’ll make some phone calls and get all the figures. I’ll then make an appointment with a truly independent financial advisor and work out what to do. Now it’s time for pizza and beer that isn’t beer.

Started fairly early. Had the fun job of replacing a seventeen year old cygwin based pre-processor. Found a GCC one but couldn’t get it to work properly. Then remembered that a certain console SDK already had one built into the compiler, after a little fiddling it all works nicely. So goodbye cpp.exe. I’ll mourn our passing. Or should that be mourn your parsing. Many beeps suddenly shot out of the firewall, I logged in and looked at the logs, there were many failed login attempts through the backup firewall back door. I’ve closed that for the moment as I only really use it when I’m away from home for a long time. Nice day, but chilly. Sasha got a long walk as I was feeling rather stressed and want to get out for a while. Went for a run this evening.

Started a bit later as I had time o claw back, in the end I should have just started earlier. Work was quite dull, mainly building data all day. Found one of the anti-aliasing modes from the original game doesn’t actually do much. Fixed it up anyway. Got a new laptop out of the box and started to delete all the bloatware off it, its been sent to me to do some performance tests on, hopefully they’ll forget about it after I’ve done the tests. Was a lovely day today, why the fuck is it only nice mid-week? Sasha got a nice walk anyway. Walked to gym, did Pump, walked home. Ate spicy chicken wings, which were lacking in chicken.

Didn’t have the greatest nights sleep, must be said. Started on time. Lots of annoying people. Phoned the accountant people and made an appointment for twenty minutes later. Walked to them as they are just up the road. Had a very nice meeting with a lovely lady. Basically all my calculations and theories were correct, I’m paying 60% tax on a portion of my earnings, I ain’t happy with that. So it turns out my way of reducing this somewhat is legitimate, providing I’m willing to stand in front of the tax man and state that what I’m buying is work work purposes, which it is. Even though as accountants they’ve never come across a case of an employee claiming capitol allowances, although there is nothing to stop you and even a box to put the number in. It comes down to, “Do your employers provide everything required to do your job, and is it stated in your contract.” The answer to that is ‘no’, unless they want to pay for my entire network infrastructure. So I have some hardware to purchase, I’m also going to put a significant amount into one of my private pensions, not that I wanted to, but I’m buggered if I’m losing 60p in the pound for bugger all. We discussed going back as a contractor, considering the perks of me being an employee are absolutely zero. It would be advantageous if I went back to a limited company. I opened my own again today anyway. I spoke to our corporate accountant about it, his response was, ‘There are no real advantages and the tax people won’t let you do it’. This is the same guy who’s clueless about personal allowances eroding. If I want to resign and become a contractor then that’s exactly what I’ll do.