I'm still around, you know

I'm just lazy and keep forgetting to update my blog. Bad, bad man.

Anyway, hello there. How are you? I hope you are well. Have you been up to anything exciting of late? Jolly good.

Things calmed down a little after the laptop theft which had happened when I made my last posting here, and the good news is that I have a replacement which is far, far better than the one which was stolen and yet cost maybe half as much. I'm absolutely delighted with it, and I'm writing this posting on it at this very moment. Windows Vista is its operating system of choice and I'm getting used to it, even though a lot of it seems like pure special effects with not much going on underneath. Still, it works.

The autobiography project is still coming along nicely - I don't know if I've mentioned it before but its title is "The Making of Peter Lee". My work in progress draft was unfortunately on the laptop when it was stolen, but I had fortunately made a backup copy of it on my home PC a few days before so I didn't lose too much. I've recently been working on it using Google Documents, which is basically Google's free online version of Office, and it is quite nice to use actually, plus being stored on the web it means that if I am revisited by the nasty contingent of society it won't be lost again. I'm almost at the end of the first half and am very, very pleased with it, and I'm considering actually getting it published in some form when it is finished. There is a website called lulu.com and you can self-publish small print runs for a reasonable fee, and so I'm thinking this over at the moment.

On the work front I'm still almost 100% utilised, teaching SQL for virtually all of that time. Thankfully I still like it and although I do get a bit "SQL's out" every now and again it isn't too bad. On the CRM front I went down to Microsoft at Reading a few weeks ago to see CRM 4 in action, and it is a stunning product - it finally does everything people have been asking me if it does since version 1.0. Demand for it at work is still fairly low, but I'm hopeful that when Titan (codename for CRM 4) comes out it will pick up a bit.

Lou and I went to see the Foo Fighters at the MEN Arena a few weeks ago and they were fantastic, but extremely loud - three days later my ears still felt weirdly metallic, everything sounding a tiny bit echoey, and I really wished I'd "done a Nine Inch Nails" and taken earplugs along! We've managed to get tickets to one of their Wembley shows next summer, so I'll take some to that one... plus some binoculars as the only tickets I could get were for the top tier. Better take my new big coat too as it will be cold up there. Next concerts on the horizon for us: Take That at the MEN, twice. Lou is excited.