Today she left, came home, went out, came home, we went out and we came home.

Over one hundred miles done, eating late and little time together.

This just isn’t fun…

We shared the same years in IT but he gave up a lot sooner than me.

We grew up with the promise of Gem and the disappointment of Windows 3.1.

Now we have the bloatware of most Microsoft applications, the prevalence of them in the marketplace and the better years ahead with Opensource.

Here’s to your retirement and many successful years of the Gates Foundation.

Still, perhaps, the words of Suggs sum it up best …

Madness, madness, they call it madness
Madness, madness, they call it madness
It’s plain to see
That is what they mean to me

It wasn’t until many years after it closed that I realised that there were many International Stores across the country and that Mr and Mrs White who lived up from the road from my Mum and Dad weren’t incredibly rich as a result of owning the largest shop in the town.

After yesterdays trip into London we had decided to stay closer to home doing less exciting things today. The farm shop was certainly a change from those we had seen yesterday in St. James.

After the subtle product placement, lighting and careful displays of Sainsbury’s this store was a refreshing change. Vegetables ran into cheeses which sat next to a mixture of dry goods which flowed into things for the garden and hanging baskets.

No pressure selling, misshapen vegetables and bratwurst from Germany, Mr White would be proud.

“Your face is very lucky, you will have very good fortune for the next few months, you will have to work hard but you will get a lot of money”.

I wasn’t sure why he had chosen me as I was feeling far from lucky. We had come into London to see a photography exhibition but I’d picked a combination of the wrong day and the wrong venue to visit on so that hadn’t worked.

I’d picked somewhere to eat which didn’t live up to it’s promise so we abandoned that idea in favour of one K had visited recently. That turned out to be closed for lunch.

The one around the corner where we did eat was pretentious and rather like eating in an hotel lobby. “Did you see the painting of the woman behind the bar ?”, K asked. I had. It looked rather like a soft porn photography from the 1970s painted in acrylic paint.

Apparently the most notable feature of it wasn’t the silk draped over her eyes but the lack of care and attention to a certain part of her anatomy.

The food was nice but not amazing. Asparagus salad with quail’s eggs and crab salad followed by chicken tortellini and pan fried red mullet on black eyed beans and broad beans. The service was attentive. The problem was there just was no ambiance.

As we left, in a flurry of goodbyes from the staff I had to look. The only problem was the woman serving behind the bar. What if the picture was of her ?

I decided in the end to defer to chivalry and not stop and stare just in case she was the one who was not being attentive there.

After such an eventful day I was surprised to be the only person in Bond Street to have a lucky face. I thanked him before the conversation turned to me sharing some of my current wealth with him to secure the secret of how I could unlock future wealth and we headed home.

The Tube in summer isn’t the best place to be. Not on the Piccadilly line crushed into a carriage with a small woman with a wheely case trying to get onto the remaining few square inches of space on the train while a large Russian man is lifting his case above your head as he pushes himself and the wheely case lady onto the train to the sound of the driver shouting, “STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS NOW”.

So, I’m taking my lucky face outside this evening to sit and watch some stars, burn some logs and enjoy not being in London for a while.

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”

Bernice Johnson Reagon (American Historian and Musician. b.1942)

I’m not sure if they are helping me discover who I am, they are helping me discover more abut other people, some of which is quite startling….

I’m off to look for ways to use a bag of dry polenta.

Update : this strawberry and polenta shortcake recipe may be the answer….

Social networking joins up BT - 03 Apr 2008 - Computing

“It lets us see people’s skills and competencies, allowing us to create communities for addressing specific challenges.”

The internal network has also made it easier to handle the growing need for co-operation across different work disciplines, said Bross.

“As you start to see the formation of ecosystems within the supply chain that can improve your business operation, you often have to move across industries to find the right solution.

“For example, something that worked well in the finance systems could provide benefits to the pharmaceutical sector as well,” he said.

“We have created a massive wiki to help create an understanding between people around the globe, so that everyone is working with the same definition of terms,” said Bross.

I don’t think I will ever be able to turn Sharepoint into something as interesting as Facebook but the more I think of it the more I feel that’s where I’d like to go.

The more I look at the sites we create at work the more I think they fail simply to engage with people. The look more like the static websites people used to throw up in the 80’s with a list of links and an About Me page.

The idea of putting people in charge of micro-sites is a good idea. Not telling them how to make their sites interesting (or even fun), how to attract and keep an audience or how to promote them is a serious failure.

I feel bad that this has happened before we got to know each other and I’ll miss the chance to get to know the organisation and the role with them. In a way I feel we could have grown up a little together and made sense of all this madness.

I guess the best I can hope is that I gave then as good a start as I could.

I know that sort of breaks the idea of a single repository of information but the fact that we have any at all; that the ones we do have people are enthusiastic about and that they are on a supported product set (albeit Sharepoint which has as much to do with information sharing as I have with Lithuanian) is a great step forward.

I’m sitting running WOS for my own ends and every time I try to do anything other than put simple text into Sharepoint I grimace at the lack of functionality but people are slowly begining to see the value of collaborating and sharing information.

Maybe blogging at work will be next ?

Shanties and Sea Songs - Lyrics

Where it’s wave over wave, sea over bow
I’m as happy a man as the sea will allow
There’s no other life for a sailor like me
But to sail the salt sea, boys, sail the sea
There’s no other life but to sail the salt sea

It was windy enough to set sail for distant shores but all we had on our minds was to enjoy a little sun, wander by the sea and watch the seagulls make comedy landings on the beach…

“It’s wireless, Internet radio”, I explained as Martin unwrapped his present.

It seems a long time since we sat in his front room listening the radio with the green eye that we tried to sell and here we are over a year later with Internet radio.

Today we all met for what was supposed to be a combined summer Solstice party and birthday party for Martin but instead became the marking of another year passed.

Happy Birthday !

Do I go for Chinese and wonder what “Husband and wife’s lung slice” is, or if “Chicken without sexual life” is a comment on why I’m alone or do I call Dominos …

Perhaps a DVD and some planning for a summer Solstice party is what I need …

Laters.

• Senseless management speak- Impacting is my current hate…
• Panzanella to cook on a summer’s day
• Anti-graffiti
• Daily Life in Sadr City, Iraq