Work is fine. Tiger is fun. I'm single.
Just some miscellaneous updates on what's been going on in my life recently.
Dev
This has been limited to work-related coding. My present task is to port an
MS Visual C++ app to work on the web, via a combination of a Java servlet
(running via Tomcat on Apache), an Oracle database, and some client-side
JavaScript. It's all going well so far. I got my keys to the department
recently, including electronic fob. Chris and I continue to pimp it up
large-style with the academics.
Tiger
I had the opportunity to play with Tiger recently, in the immediate vicinity
of microwave burgers, beer, Ribena, dodgy cigarettes and a huge quantity of
bootlegged DVDs. Seems incredibly stable for something that's only going to be
released next year, which is a good sign. Dashboard is cute, though I'm not
convinced that its modality is a good thing. Sometimes I'll want to just pin
a widget to the screen all the time. Maybe it can do that, and I just haven't
bothered to check.
Oh, and Automator is indeed incredibly exciting (though
it seemed to be called Pipeline in the build I used, and was accessed via
contextual menus in the Finder).
Personal
After nearly 3 years together, Fi and I broke up last weekend, very amicably.
We're still living together at the moment until other arrangements can be
sorted out. We have good days and bad days emotions-wise, naturally, but
we're both still incredibly good friends, and I'm sure we always will be.
Thanks to all the folk who have been supportive and offered kind words. We're
both doing quite well, all things considered.
Amusing stuff
I got an email from Neil the other day (who's now back down south working for
Macro4, after a week of triple-X-rated debauchery in Amsterdam, which I've been
explicitly forbidden from posting details of, sadly). Here it is:
Subject: The Matt Gemmell of Macro4
I decided today that Mark McInnes is the Matt Gemmell of Macro4. He knows
ALL the ladies. When he walks down past the secretaries he gets the small
talk going ON.
And just like Matt, all the girls he talks to are ugly!
Only joking, you're both legends.
You know it.
Fiona said something kind of funny too; yesterday morning was her first ever
cervical smear appointment, and she was naturally a bit nervous. The nurse
talked her through it etc, and it all went fine. She was telling me afterwards
that, before the exam, the nurse had described the dilating device as "like a
plastic penis", and that if she found it uncomfortable, there was a smaller one
which could be used instead. Fi told me that she didn't in fact require to have
the smaller one used, and that she guessed she could thank me for that. As if my
ego isn't out of control enough already.
(Incidentally, I post the above with Fi's express permission.)
Lastly, Chris and I were playing snooker in the QM games room (which has a nifty
new small bar in the corner now), with Rachel ("Lord of the Rings") and her
boyfriend Craig from last year's 4th year. Craig for some reason was convinced
that I was actually called Mike, and that Chris is in fact Steve. In deference
to this, we called him Colin for the rest of the evening, and Chris created the
first of a series of web-comics chronicling the uncannily true-to-life
<a href="http://chris-miller.org/comics/mike_and_steve/">adventures of Mike and Steve</a>.
That'll do for now.