Michael's Meanderings

Started Cold / Flu / Allergies at the beginning of the month which continued through to the end of the month. Did see a Doctor, and prescribed medication.
J Returned from S America, so was able to dance with a partner once again. Went to 2 Saturday dances, one in BH one in Crawley, the latter being the Summer tea dance with Tea and Dance Demo
Continued line dancing, 10 weeks to last class in the month. Yoga had a 2 week hiatus at end of the month due to low numbers
Saw Wonder Woman at the cinema, best DC movie since the original Superman!
I had to transfer domain dendarii.co.uk from Just the Name to 1&1 (JTN stopped trading), transition went without a hitch.
Completed all Mandatory online training at work. Had problems with the IP phone system (made difficulties for a service desk!)
D has decided to move back to Holland, and intends to be gone in August (hopefully after I get back from Worldcon)
Continued to listen to audio books, finished Sorcerer to the Crown, Winter Tide, Mira's Last Dance, & Storm Front: The Dresden Files.
Summer finally arrived with record temperatures, of course this only lasted for about a week!

With Barnes & Noble / Nook leaving the UK market (only one book I bought has been transfered to Sainsburys), I decided to root my Nook - It was out of warranty anyway.
It was relatively straight forward; using NookManager, allowed me to finally browse the net on the Nook tablet, I've been unable to run the kindle app on it but the Kobo app seems to work. and generic epubs can be easily read.
Went to see Zootropolis which was a sci-fi, cop buddy, animated feature. well worth a watch
Dance classes continued every Tuesday, and this month we had an extra Saturday dance mid month. Finally started to learn some new Latin steps (in Cha Cha)
It was my 55 birthday this year, so I can technically take early retirement - I decided not to. But the family got together for a meal the Saturday before.
The second Monday is SF Book Club and as this was on my actual birthday I ate at the pub (rather than the cheaper Burger King / Subway) drinks were also purchased for my fellow readers.
Also for a change I had just completed reading " "Station Eleven" by Emily St John Mandel, this month book to read. Once it got going it was an interesting example of Literary SF (it won the Clarke Award last year)
The following day went to lunch with J before we went dancing, extra long weekend!
Started listening to Audible; audio books; again (after not listening at all during March). Especially the Noctis Magicae series by Sylvia Izzo Hunter - looking forward to the 3rd in the series.
I have a belt bag that I keep all the stuff I need every day (keys, wallet, pen etc) it was hand made a number of years ago. While the leather is still in good shape the seams have been coming apart. I returned to the shop (Clever with Leather in Brighton) and they repaired all the seams and replaced the belt attachments for £5!
As a belated birthday present I decided to buy myself an Amazon Fire Tablet for £49, it arrived only a few days later and was a delight, nearly the size of a paperback (though thinner) and with the ability to read kindle books aloud, download and read epubs (inc library books) watch video and of course browse the net and check email, it even has a pair of cameras (though not the greatest quality).
Finally uploaded my Eastercon report to LJ!

Continued Ballroom dance classes on Tuesdays, with normal social dance at the end of the month. Mid month we got an additional social - a charity event at the same venue.
Strictly Come Dancing is regular week end fare on TV with Dr Who to follow. Also the Librarians return to TV
Also continued with after work yoga, also found some yoga apps to try to continue efforts away from class.
Took Saturday morning adult education class over 3 weeks on Family History in the 21st Century! (Who Are You?) from 10:00 - 1:00. When I last did any research all records were on paper and indexes were on microfiche. They are now all online.
Brighton SF Reading Group discussed Cloud Atlas - I only read the first chapter.
Took out a free two week introdutory membership to ancestery.co.uk very usefull for the saturday class. Cancelled it after the last morning!
Saw Dave Gormen at the Hawth where he gave his "Dave Gorman Gets Straight to the Point*
*The Powerpoint comedic presentation. (trains delayed both arriving and leaving
Watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Thunderbirds are Go and Supergirl
Spent a number of days at the Doctors office (after getting a flu jab last month) with blood tests, checking for high blood pressure and and ECG. Mostly OK but could loose a little weight.
Updated The Bujold Nexus and ordered a print of all the ebook covers as a poster
Started listening to audible books again. Especially The Chronicles of St Mary's, byJodi Taylor. Also currently on track to read 200 books this year. Not anywhere near my highest numbers but respectable.

So over the Christmas holiday (which I spent at my parents/sister and family) I suffered a cold, causing me to cough all night. I did get better over time and now my coughing is not nearly as racking.

My Dad's eye sight is still poor, an I've been investigating option that will allow him to read his office (once a priest, always a priest even after retirement). I've been looking at Kindles / Android tablets with large print and read aloud options. Also text to speech on Windows 7 (but the free options seem very limited).

I've also re-started listening to Audible books, most recently "Bloodlist" by P N Elrod, read by Barrett Whitener. This is the first in the Jack Fleming series. I'll probably get the next one in the series as my January book.

One thing that is different in contracting, than in permanent employment is payment. I now get paid weekly, and have to get 3 different sets of time sheet numbers completed every week. One for the company where I'm actually working, one for the recruitment company (signed) and one for the payroll company (done on line). Then I have to have a master sheet for my own personal use, which includes all expenses and salary details.

We were working between Christmas and New Year (for 3 days) which was an unusual experience for me. The building was almost empty, and with nearly all the permanent staff off we got a lot done. I'd made some suggestions about documentation, and was very surprised to be shown some a while later that took my idea and ran with it, to produce something that would have been very good to have when we started! It was still very handy even so...

I've been wanting to see "Stomp" at the theatre for years, but haven't got around to it. I was therefore very happy to see that it was on Sky Arts during the Christmas/New Year period. I managed to watch it this time and was very impressed. They managed a live recording at the Dome in Brighton. Anyone interested in dance/acrobatics/movement and percussion should try to get to see this. And I expect a live performance would be event better.

My favourite ebook reader on my ipod has been for the last few years "Stanza" which is well supported by many ebook sellers. However a few years ago Amazon bought the company, and the software languished unsupported. Last November a final version was released, with a note that no further support was available. Unfortunately this copy was broken and only ran on iOS 5 devices. Since I have an iPod Touch 2G with iOS 4.2.1 it stopped working! I did manage to recover the previous version of Stanza on my device, but decided enough was enough, and moved to ShuBook, which while not quite as functional as Stanza is under current development. I have managed to archive all the ebooks I'd downloaded to Stanza (285 in total) and have just finished copying them back into ShuBook. Stanza is no longer on my iPod!

For New Year D cooked a chicken dinner with roast potatoes and sprouts. There was a chicken EACH so I've been eating the stuff all week.

Last Tuesday there was a storm across the UK and trees were blown down on the railway line, which meant that instead of taking 45min door to door, it took and hour and a half (which was my average journey time when I worked in London!) Luckily nothing was damaged near my house and if I hadn't watched the news I'd never have known.

With the New Year a new batch of people started doing the admin work we had been doing for 2 weeks, I got asked to do some mentoring, which seemed to go well. I'm also part of the pilot group which will start on the second half of the job, inputting data from the on site examining engineers.

I've been looking at the other software that was on the original requirements list (Office skills being number one) Visio was mentioned and I've do a little with it but not much. The other was SmartDraw a simple CAD package. I was able to download a demo and it looks very easy to use. It has the same layout as Office 2007/2010 and a wide selection of pre-developed objects. I would expect that Amey has added their own widgets, so I'll have to try it out next week.

Today I went shopping and got a coat (on sale at £11) and pyjamas (on sale at £1.50!) then to the library and got 3 books (including the latest book club one), and finally to the hairdresser to get a hair cut. Then home and a chance to update my blog!

This month's book club was "The Two Pound Tram" by William Newton, for the first time I completed the book, it was a shorter book, so was an easy read. Set in Sussex during World Word II it managed to feel almost documentary even though it was almost entirely fictional.

Then I got a student discounted haircut at Boomerang in Burgess Hill

The next few Business Admin courses were shorter and got first test at the beginning of the month and the final one at the end of the month, passed both. This completed "EDI Technical Certificate in Principles of Business & Administration Level 2". Got a new ID card that will be valid for next year as I got funding to take the Level 23 course in the new year.

I upgraded Lucid Puppy Linux on my eeePC, all the advantages of the Ubuntu repository with a smaller footprint Linux.

I also finally upgraded my iPod Touch 2G to iOS 4.2.1 (which is the last version of iOS which will work on this older device). This means that iBooks is now available, up to 20 apps were updated after the upgrade. The actual upgrade process took nearly a week! possibly due to the age of the PC I was using to do the upgrade. I haven't got around to jailbreaking the iPod yet as the only feature that I really miss is the option to stop rotation, and some apps have this as an option.

I subscribe to Audible.co.uk and buy at least one audio book each month. This isn't too expensive at £7.99 each month, which if it's a reading of a hardback is cheaper than getting the book.

I have been borrowing more books from the library and have therefore managed to reduce my book purchasing by a significant amount, I've tried to reduce it to less than 2 books a week!

Had to pay my TV License which was a fairly large chunk of change. But it's worth it just for Doctor Who and David Attenborough!

I've seen a three films at the cinema since the new year. These included: Megamind 3D, this animated feature was the first 3D film shown at the Orion Cinema, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the continuing Narnia series with mostly the same cast but a new studio.
Lastly Tangled, a retelling of Rampunzel, which mostly makes sense.
I also watched a couple of films on Sky Box Office: Knight and Day (I think) and Scott Pilgrim vs the World. This was fun but not as great as everyone has said.

I've seen my doctor re aches in my arms and fingers and numbness in my feet. So far I've had a negative blood test. I'm still visiting my chiropractor regularly, but need to do more walking.

I've recently downloaded the Audible App for my iPod, and am now downloading and listening to a number of audio books. Withe the current membership subscription they are cheaper than hardbacks and only slightly more than paperbacks.

I'm still currently unemployed, but I've final started to make a significant effort to actually find a job. I've started tracking job seeking activity in a spreadsheet.

At the end of the month the toilet started leaking again. Luckily D was able to fix it.