(07:28:33) "Coupon printing is not permitted in a virtual environment." I've not encountered that before. Why does barcode printing need a special app?

(09:37:14) is catching up with @petecooper's bleepshows while trying to fix an unexpected oddity and translating user manuals from German. Need coffee!

(11:59:24) is done with the translation..now being beset by Windows Messenger messages from work about stuff nobody seems to be able to explain. Great.

(12:23:26) is considering becoming the office despot.

(13:56:15) My eye feels bruised. Time for a tuna & salad cream & cheese toastie & coffee. Then.. change control. Oh joy. I may just grow that beard...

(16:33:28) will quit & have a quick tidy & shower once this last change request has gone in. I've a crazy day planned tomorrow.. spilling into Friday!

(17:25:29) is all done.. disconnected from the Work Umbilical.. now to shut down the computers & have some family time. And a cup of tea. And a shower.

(18:09:22) is predictable. Peanut butter on toast, I think.

(18:36:06) is crying with laughter at Failblog: http://failblog.org/page/9 [sorry if everyone on the internet already knows about this except me!]

(21:30:45) is off to bed, having tooled around with ping.fm for far longer than appropriate...

(10:44:56) RAR! Twitter's stopped texting me with the latest happening in World Of Tweets. I shall have this seen to, after bashing away at registries.

(15:39:34) wonders: how hard can it be to configure a system to send an email if a disk fails? HP clearly make it too complicated. Or I'm too thick.

(19:26:05) was going to send this from the coach, but Twitter has stopped working on by SMS now. Bah! I shall have some banana milkshake to compensate.

(19:35:02) Anyway, as I was saying, if it's not Flying Ant Day today, I'm fairly sure it will be tomorrow. Nasty little things. Bring on the seagulls!

(08:36:53) robot rage, gladiators, cycle ride, Toys-R-Us window shopping: a boy's ideal summer holiday Monday...

(09:28:06) is pumping up the tyres and squirting WD40 onto the chains.. Chris & I are going on a bike ride... hope I can find the cycle path this time!

(10:34:40) is ambling round ToysRUs with Chris, after a gentle bike ride through the industrial area. Odd that there's free wi-fi here.. but cool!

(12:01:31) is home and all tired out. We cycled 3.7 miles, and did some errands on the way. Chris's first 'proper' cycle ride.. another momentous day.

(12:13:42) got an email from FriendsReunited.. "Why not add yourself to these places? Bridge of Don, ABERDEEN.." (etc). Because I've never been there?

(20:15:59) is officially off to bed (after selecting and flattening clothes for the remainder of the week). Thank you, Monday, that will be all.

(11:16:42) is watching the Brainiac Sports Day.. definitive study material for A-level sports science students everywhere. Hilarious.

(11:57:29) What I use my i600 for: to confirm that Wayne & Waynette Slob did, indeed, have a daughter called 'Spudulika'. I've never had a Spud-u-like.

(13:33:48) has just put a little light up in Lenni's room.. long overdue, since her bunk beds cast a massive shadow! Now: sparkying, coffee & laundry.

(16:38:29) I've been a-blogging: Cave! http://tinyurl.com/6aos7v

(16:48:20) I've been a-blogging: Daily Photo of the Day : hoop-la! http://tinyurl.com/5u4puc

(20:10:18) is FAIL at needlework. No badges sewn on Chris's cub sweater during Top Gear. I was going to break out heavy machinery; now Beth's doing it!

(09:27:39) they're digging up the main road again.. there's a machine that sounds like a loud, giant, unremitting vacuum cleaner. It's a noisy weekend.

(09:30:08) Shower tune: Sister Sledge - Lost In Music. It's in my All Time Top Ten Songs. Now enjoying Cake - Guitar. Feel Good Saturday!

(19:06:48) is home after a busy day.. Christopher's birthday party (caving at Dell Farm - http://snipr.com/dellfarm cool!) & mic installing at church..

(19:09:31) whoops!) and and and ... I saw my first 'new' coin today - only a 1p, but I like the design. SHINY. http://snipr.com/coinij

(21:08:59) has just finished a couple of hours of NSD editing. I fear I will need several bucketloads of sound effects for one of these sketches...

(12:37:22) doesn't feel like any progress has been made either with Virtual PCs or HP Systems Insight Manager. Most frustrating. I *will* prevail..

(15:40:44) has a Virtual Windows 2000 machine running on Windows XP! Trivial, you may think.. not when it's off a Ghost image. http://snipr.com/ghost2k

(09:56:26) is back from the shortest fire drill ever. Why do people laugh at me when I put a day-glo vest on? Am I a comedy fire warden?

(10:27:18) loves the way facilities management works here; second time round the loop to get a laser toner cartridge recycled. Bureaucracy 1 : james: 0

(10:38:09) loves the way I can call up Lyreco and ask for free stuff, but they'll not send it unless I order it through the 'procurement' 'system'. 2:0

(11:01:17) can't remember if my boss told me he was going to be away this week. This may mean I'm in charge. Uhoh. POWER RUSH!

(12:59:15) is awaiting the return of my colleague (ooh.. this week he's an UNDERLING! POWER!) with a sachet of mustard. If he fails me, he will die.

(13:50:31) Mustard update: FAIL. It'll have to be McDonalds barbeque dip.

(14:16:25) is on a conference call..waiting for the meeting to start, since they've had to move rooms. Kinda disembodied & odd. Bring on Google Lively!

(14:39:01) has had the conference call interrupted by a fire alarm. Now is a good opportunity to make some tea...

(16:38:09) is all done on the phone and is wrestling with virtual PCs and translating German manuals. This is, indeed, the life.

(16:52:07) is going to dispatch himself home through the medium of the Internal Post.

(17:22:09) To write comedy, one needs a good memory. And funnyness. And an armoury of amusing words. That may not be all; it's what I just thought of.

(17:31:27) is Listening Again to a David Quantick programme about the mix tape. My children will look back & say 'you did ~what~ with C90 cassettes?'

(17:37:49) still makes CD compilations, mind. They take me days. In case you're interested: Radio 4, 11.30 today. End of side A.(gap) (leader) (click)

(07:45:24) Google Lively.. heard it on Digital Planet. I find myself reading T&Cs of so many sites to see if Chris can play them. Not this one. :(

(07:45:57) "You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google" Scary.

(09:34:50) may make August an Internet Distractions-Free month. Twitter, blog & emails stay.. mailing lists & Facebook go.. a chance to rationalise.

(12:05:18) is running crunchy VBScript to rename 22,000 WAV files based on XML fields. It may just come in handy. If it doesn't break horrendously.

(12:19:32) is still sniggering at @petecooper's earlier twitpic (http://twitpic.com/49pc) I may have to print and laminate it.

(16:49:05) is stil getting angst from an emo server. Man, it's got issues. It just doesn't want to talk... darn tweenage ProLIant DL380 G4s...

(19:15:09) is home & dry (after garden watering - entertaining for the children at least).. feedings, then a brief interlude of This and, indeed, That.

(20:54:39) wants to buy the guinea pigs a fez each: http://www.monkeygoods.com/images/fez.jpg

(21:38:01) has worked out a way to get podcasts to my phone from the mac.. Mocha FTP server (http://is.gd/VjT) on the i600 & Cyberduck on the mac. Heh.

(15:20:27) is back at his desk; speakers had to be unplugged to put the fan on. Carbon footprint reduction through lack of power sockets. It's a start.

(17:22:20) is tweeting during a #Lugradio discussion of Twitter. Ver good. I may have a dull life, but live in hope that something interesting happens.

(18:58:49) is home and sniffling. My mac mini is running hot, as am I. I'm in the mood for own-brand-Malibu and own-brand-Coke. Alcohol's bad, m'kay?

(19:51:03) Where have my old tweets gone? *cries*

(09:17:29) has started the drilling. Plaster dust everywhere..

(10:33:51) is all done with the drilling.. now back to Microsoft Office. Licence but no media.. and the copy I (ahem) borrowed is corrupt. GAH!.

(15:03:58) is home after the school-run, a bit of shopping in Letchworth Garden City, doing the parental thing and DRILLING. A busy day.. Cubs later..

(15:56:00) has prescribed himself an hour of gentle leisure time.. HalfLife 2 & the 1000th Vobes show. A brief period of bliss (if that's OK?)

(20:13:34) has been inspired by Alternative Kitchen Garden 65.. it's getting ompost to the office which is the problem. Any garden centres in W1?

(09:50:35) Don't underestimate the benefits of the Westwood Soundboard to turn any piece of music into a comedy masterpiece: http://snipr.com/dabomb

(16:59:54) is reclined on the sofa, watching Scrapheap Challenge with the children and trying not to doze off...

(19:50:45) approves of Clarkson's use of a Bill Oddie mask to avoid speed camera prosecution in Japan. Most humourous. We want the rubbish stuntman!

(21:58:31) I've been a-blogging: A new Discovery! http://tinyurl.com/5pfkls

(07:26:29) makes a mental note: Stephen Fry, Adam Hart-Davis, Rolf Harris, Olivia Colman, Liza Tarbuck & Chris Morris would be my ideal dinner guests..

(09:47:20) is shorn and now waiting in a Post Office queue for some defective memory postage action.. then home for some last minute tidying.

(12:13:30) is hoping for sunny spells tomorrow.. it'd be nice to get out & about without the risk of being damped upon! For now, though, tea and cake.

(16:00:01) http://twitpic.com/3q6r - Before and after my lawn-mower treatment...

(16:02:17) is (between sneezing fits) quietly expiring on the sofa. There is some schitzophrenic weathers going on today...

(20:01:35) Man-colds and fruitloops... http://tinyurl.com/2hv863 ; http://tinyurl.com/6xvcv2

(20:58:52) is off to bed. If I feel this rubbish in the morning, shoot me. It's the only humane thing to do. Night, interwebs!

(16:36:24) is done throwing knowledge at engineers. I think I might be allergic to this hotel room. Antihistamines are good. And relax (with a Lemsip).

(17:28:12) is off to get something to eat & pop over to see some old pals; there's little more I can do here. I wonder if anywhere does menthol pie..?

(21:40:11) is stuck in a roadworks traffic queue. This might take a while.. looking forward to honey & lemon at the hotel. Top to see my pals, though.

(22:19:02) is back at the ranch (or rather the 'Pear Tree'.. Ah-haa!) and doing a quick bit of recording before bed. Just the tiniest bit.. it's late!

(13:54:41) is in a presentation about software licencing. I can feel my life being sucked away. I didn't know it was possible to melt from boredom.

(16:10:48) knows more than before. And has eaten lots of custard cream biscuits. The sad thing is, though, there is no connection between the two.

(17:29:25) delights somewhat in an eerie calm when the lights bring the rushing splash of traffic to a halt. Lots of people have pokey broken brollies.

(20:13:52) has invented a new drink: peach schnapps + root beer + a splash of brandy = a "Datkoin Datting." Very nice.. sweetness with dark undertones.

(20:14:31) is a little disappointed with Ebuyer.. sending me duff laptop memory on TWO occasions now. Quite inconvenient.

(20:29:08) There goes next-door's smoke alarms again. Almost a nightly occurrence. What *are* they cooking?