Really old whiskey.

They're going to dig up some really old whisky from under the ice in Antarctica. After a hundred years, frozen, in glass, I doubt they'd be that interesting to drink. Probably hasn't changed much, and it isn't clear if its a single malt, a blend, or how long it was aged in the barrel.

A bad day that ended well.

It was one of THOSE days today.
It started as I woke to the sound of a quite unwell wife asking me to sort the kids out this morning and get them to school. OK. No worries, I'm feeling good, and fair is fair. Driving back from school, I realise I've given Cian a peanut butter sandwich, and dammit, I've only just been allowed to rejoin polite society after the last time I did this about 13 months ago.
I get home, and Sinead's work partner Sioned is on the phone telling me the server at work will not boot. At all. And I'm the CTO. Bugger, drive into their office, and yep, sure enough, it won't boot and looks baaad. I set the router to do DHCP so they can get internet without a domain controller (*sigh*) and hauled its matt grey metal ass out of there. I dropped it off at the local PC Guy Shop, cause, you know, I'm supposed to be working today.
Right, so then I'm working at home, and I hear this almighty, slow motion creaky cracking sound. It is a deep and powerful noise. I look outside in time to see a massive branch, hell, a whole tree in its own right break right off a tree out the back and fall towards the earth. The patch of earth in this case is my back yard, complete with flimsy aluminium pool fence, and well, my house. It crashes to the ground, scything through the fence as if it was plastacine painted gum-nut-grey. I didn't even hear the metal complain over the sound of the awesome deep crashing of tree vs pavers, grass and pool. It missed the house. Here's some pics.
One should note that this is the very branch that the kids' swing hangs from, and which they were using not 18 hours previously. The obvious alternate universes here left me feeling cold, quite unwell and not a little shaken.


Then I got the call that the motherboard on Sinead's server had just given it up, and thus the server needed a complete rebuild. Mobo, CPU, RAM, all of it. At least the disk was fine.
The day started to improve from here. Insurance should cover the tree damage, Sinead's server was fixed by 6pm and reinstalled by 8pm. Then I sat in front of Good News Week with a whiskey. Ahhhh.

Don't Mess with the Zohan

OK, I normally don't like films with Adam Sandler, or his acting. But this is actually quite funny, and he doesn't play his usual character. Its funny, watch it.
Oh, I was drinking whiskey again. But is still funny, is good!

Kill Bill

I just finished watching Kill Bill again, downloaded of course. It's so good. I can't get the poignancy of the song Bang Bang out of my head. The song features mostly in part 1, rather than part 2, (I just finished watching the latter), but there is a scene at the end involving a four year old girl playing guns, where she shouts "bang bang". It's painful. I physically winced. Neise is four. OK, enough whiskey, bed now.

Speaking of drinking...

For teh win! Woolies Liquor are selling Glenlivet 12 year old single malt for $43 a bottle. I went in with two empty hands, but didn't come out that way. They usually sell it for $60+, and I was running out of Jameson, so today I'm a happy man today.

Of Blackouts and Drinking

Smiles all round (mostly) at work yesterday as the power went down at 2pm, and by 3pm it was clear it would be down for much longer. The boss said we could go, so most of our team took ourselves across the road to the Greenwood Hotel.
We had a blast over the next 7 hours drinking beer and more importantly whiskey! As was pointed out today, we spent nearly a whole working day's worth in the pub. It turned out to be a really great night, as many ad-hoc unplanned sessions do. Since I've only been at Wensense now for about 6 months it was a great opportunity to talk some shite with my co-workers and get to know them better. Tops!
Mind you, it was a very slow and difficult day today at work. Slooooow. Brain just wouldn't. work. stuff. ow. sql. hard.

Other Interests

To complete the background info I'll round out with some other interests.
I like whiskey. My favourite affordable whiskey is Jameson, but I'll buy 12 year old Glenlivet if its on special. I quite like an Islay malt occasionally too.
DIY home renovation. You know, I started off really not liking this, but it's so different from everything else that I do, that I'm really quite enjoying it. I've built a deck surround, a built in office-desk, and most fun, destroyed and removed an entire kitchen!
I enjoy riding my Razor scooter in and out of work. Mostly I take public transport, but the last leg home is all downhill on a 3 kg aluminium board. Yah!
Parties. OK, I don't party like it's 1999 anymore, but I enjoy many drinks with friends. Many.
I keep tropical fish. I have two Angels, two Clown Loaches, a bunch of Neon Tetras, some catfish in a 250L tank. They're purty.
I try to keep up with current science advances, although I don't understand as much as I'd like to. This kind of ties into my love of tech in general. I wanted to do a combined degree (Comp Eng) with Physics, but the schedule wouldn't pan out. I'm a LHC fanboy!