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Home News : 8th September 1997

It's Monday the 8th of September, and the time is 16:45.

I can tell you that with some authority now, without having to turn on the HPC, or rely on this IBM monstrosity actually being able to keep track of time while it crashes and reboots itself. Yes, I finally have a new watch. Two years after becoming watchless in my bicycle accident (actually the watch was fine, but the arm was not - it's a long story),

I splashed out and bought one of the new Seiko Kinetic watches. You would have thought that for the money they would have thrown in a battery as well, but it appears that the whole appeal is that it is battery-less. So like the old "automatic" watches of yester-year you have to keep moving to keep the watch charged. I currently have more than three weeks of charge (I have just pressed the cunning tester), and so life can resume it's normal sedentary pace after the frenetic weekends activity embarked on to wind the thing - at least for a while.

The weekends watch winding activity involved a brisk walk through the villages of Pewsey and Wilcot and a stretch of the Kennet & Avon Canal. We have a new approach to weekend walks. Unlike the fiasco before of trying to follow cryptic clues written by someone who may or may not

have walked the route sometime this century, but thought he knew it well enough to write a book and make lots of dosh, we now rely on Ordinance Survey maps, the GPS and have fun making up our own routes. So we never get lost, we just take alternative routes.

Weekend walking apparatus includes the OS Map (currently paper based unfortunately), the GPS, the mobile phone, the digital camera, a compass (in case the GPS runs out of battery) and of course boring stuff like boots, clothes and windup watches.

Lords of the Realm 2, the latest PC game, was nicked by Nicky and Tarryn over the weekend. They each patiently built up their county until frustration set in and they conscripted all their peasants and hurled them against the enemy castles in suicidal, bloody, pitiful displays of

generalwomanship. I was stuck trying to stop Chatterbox from falling over and being a pain, loading a million and three rows into SQL server using the delights of BCP and trying to get into C++ on Hooligan. C++ is a rotten, horrid thing thought up by people intent on preserving their

jobs by introducing as much gobbldy-gook as possible. Unfortunately it is also my only route to writing programs to run on the HPC (Hp320LX/Windows CE palmtops), so I am finally relenting and hacking through the C++ forest. So far I have got my very simple program down to

one compile error, and I think I know how to get around that now.

I also bought a new mobile phone on the weekend, a Sony-Z1 (for those who are into that sort of thing). After a frustrating couple of hours last weekend at Carphone Warehouse going though a zillion questions (I've told myself a million times not to exaggerate, but I never listen) and going through their "credit check", they promised that it would all be ready for me to collect on Friday. Teeth gnashing time when they wanted me to go though it all again as they did not keep their records and in fact had not ordered all the bits yet. I let them know what I thought of their service and where they could stick their phones, and ordered the phone from someone else. It arrives this coming Friday by courier and I will be able to keep the same number. I think we will also be able to use both handsets (though obviously not at the same time or to talk to each other), although I am not sure of that. Anyone know ? The nice things about the Z1, apart from the size (about a third of my Nokia) are : the battery life - 10 hours talk time (and it' not NiCad, Li-Iron), that it is data capable (now just need to buy the PCMCIA modem for the HPC), and the great name/number recall facility (little roller wheel).

Maggie started her course at Eastleigh College today, and it appears to have gone well. Tarryn is still super keen at Kings, something which obviously fades with time as Nicky has all but lost her keenness.

Have a good week all...Oh, and remember that if you want to receive my

weekly Photo News (as in the weeks photos in JPG format), just let me

know.

Flute Results

Nicky got Honours (highest category) for her Grade 3 Flute Exam,

242/300.

Chalmers Long Term Plans

We have been thinking (probably mainly me to be fair).

This is always a dangerous thing.

Our long term family plans are moving in a new and exciting direction as follows...

Currently we owe about 100,000 on our house in Parliament Place (not bad to have paid off a third in 18 months). We have upped the payments to 3,000 per month and if the calculations pan out and interest rates don't go too much higher, we will have it paid off in February 2000. Another

three years after that and we will have 90,0000 pounds (give or take a few pence) stashed away. Date wise, that puts us in 2003, which is also when the girls will be finishing school and A-Levels.

So around about 2004 we (hopefully all four of us) will be leaving Southampton harbour on a 50 foot ocean yacht bound for the Caribbean. Then after about six months sailing around and enjoying the islands (and perhaps accommodating family holiday trippers), we will be heading

through Panama and setting course for Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia. We plan to keep the house in Winchester as an investment (as in rent it out).

The other part of the new long term plan is that I am pretty sure that I qualify for an Aussie passport, care of Craig who is an Australian citizen. I hope to be able to keep both a Brit. and an Aussie passport. So once in Aussie, we will settle for a while and hopefully contract a bit while the girls go to University or whatever.

In the meantime, as John Lennon says... "life is what happens while you are making other plans". We are going to the Southampton boat show this weekend (or maybe next Friday) and plan to buy two small trailer boats (probably lasers - and hopefully fitting on a single trailer) to muck

about in. Then we are starting a plethora of courses, beginning with "Day Skipper" and some more navigation courses and such interesting stuff as Diesel mechanic etc.

I was pretty certain that we wanted a motor boat until the sailing bug bit. Now I can't see the point of them compared to being able to switch the noisy thing off and unfurl/hoist the sails, heel over and start rushing through the sea.

So thems the plans...

Ricky

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