2000

Records I bought included: Basque "Radiate", Chameleons "Strip",
Number One hits in the UK: Manic Street Preachers - The Masses against the Classes, Britney Spears - Born To Make You Happy, Gabrielle - Rise, Oasis - Go Let It Out, All Saints - Pure Shores, Madonna - American Pie, Chicane feat. Bryan Adams - Don't Give Up, Geri Halliwell - Bag It Up, Mel C feat. Lisa Lopez - Never Be The Same Again, Westlife - Fool Again, Craig David - Fill Me In, Fragma feat Coco - Toca's Miracle, Oxide and Neutrino - Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty), Britney Spears - Oops I Did It Again, Madison Avenue - Don't Call Me Baby, Billie Piper - Day and Night, Sonique - It Feels So Good, Black Legend - You See The Trouble With Me, Kylie Minogue - Spinning Around, Eminem - The Real Slim Shady, The Corrs - Breathless, Ronan Keating - Life is a Rollercoaster, Five and Queen - We Will Rock You, Craig David - 7 Days, Robbie Williams - Rock DJ, Mel C - I Turn To You, Spiller feat Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Groovejet (If This Ain't Love), Madonna - Music, A1 - Take On Me, Modjo - Lady (Hear Me Tonight), Mariah Carey and Westlife - Against All Odds, All Saints - Black Coffee, U2 - Beautiful Day, Steps - Stomp, Spice Girls - Holler/Let Love Lead The Way, Westlife - My Love, A1 - Same Old Brand New You, LeAnn Rimes - Can't Fight the Moonlight, Destiny's Child - Independent Women part 1, S Club 7 - Never Had A Dream Come Tru, Eminem - Stan, Bob the Builder - Can We Fix It?

1/1/00: No y2k problems, the millennium bug failed to bite.
Sat 01 Jan 2000 10:56:15: Well here we are, all present and (so far) correct. Last night's celebrations were pretty spectacular worldwide although the "river of fire" didn't seem to happen - or if it did it was a washout. We went for a drive to Ally Pally then came home and had roast pork, fireworks and champagne in front of the telly. L got up early-ish with Joe and I had a bit of a lie-in, now she's gone back to bed and I've got the monitor to listen to Joe sleeping. I've just turned on the PC (booting from a virus-free floppy) and I'll do a scan of it all before booting as normal but the general picture seems to be that the Millennium Bug had no bite - or rather that enough work was done worldwide to render it (so far) harmless. Hope so, although part of me would like to have seen just a little bit of chaos, somewhere in the world...
4/1/00: First succesful gtr/2 vox/MIDI Cubase. Joseph seriously crawling!
10/1/00: Converting old trax to MP3s
11/1/00: Appraisal with AD
12/1/00: Bought CD-R
26/1/00: UO summit meeting 1 with Natalie
29/1/00: Mame to stay 1 night
30/1/00: To Crews Hill for ivy and plants
1/2/00: I handed the EC6 UI specs over to Leigh & Nigel. AD being really annoying and frustrating!
AD faffs about, changes his mind, is swayed by everybody he talks to and generally fails to get the point, it seems to me. His fucking approach & process gets in the way of my doing my fucking work. I need to do EC Help and not faff about with issues around it. Still, I'm going to take on board "Vision and mission for UO Intranet site" wrt going towards Web work.
Must mention - Joseph now spends half an hour each night (at least) in his cot pulling himself up to standing and then bumping down onto his bottom. Funny - and he's doing "bumble bumble" with his fingers on his lips (well, whole hand ackshully).
Spent most of today setting up my spanking new Windows 98 partition on my laptop, but also had time to think - AD is so fucking hidebound by procedure, he can't even see that if Andy and Carole say something is no good what's the point of the whole department following a procedure which is clearly wrong???
Oh, by the way, the London eye (aka millennium wheel) finally took its first customers today, and Dr Harold Shipman has been found guilty of murdering (at east) 15 of his patients.
7/2/00: Making an Airplane MP3 anthology CD, having wierd spacy floating feelings. Natalie started at work.
21&22/2/00: Performance Leadership Training at the zoo
25/2/00: A day off with a cold
28/2/00: UO summit meeting no 2 ("circus skills"...)
3/00: Floaties 2, AD calming down a bit, SC6 Help topics, Crews Hill, L and J trading colds all month
16/3/00: Ultrasound all clear on gallstones
25-26/3/00: Sarah & Ade to stay
27/3/00: Dreadful meeting UO<>ID
31/3 and 1/4: Mame to stay, Crews Hill Sat.
2/4/00: Mothers day with L and Mum (me & Mame)
3/4/00: Amanda and Rob leaving!
10/4/00: Offer of £1800 or 40 shares - I took the money. Meanwhile AD is into est... The beginning of his end and several arguments with him about Quartz docs.
What it was like dealing with AD...
I need you to build me a house for the Jones family. Here’s a list of the people, how long will it take?
Well I can't really say accurately, but my gut instinct based on houses I've built previously for families of this size would be 3-4 months
Which is it, 3 or 4?
I don't know - say 3 and a half
I need it in 12 weeks, is that possible?
(thinks) OK, probably
But you told me 3 and a half months before, I clearly can't trust your judgement. How many bricks will it take?
Eh? Oh, I dunno, I’ve never counted
You’ve never counted
No
I see
(long pause while he stares at me)
Best guess, top of my head - ten thousand
And how many bricks could you lay in a day if you spent all your time laying bricks?
About 200 I suppose
And how much of your time is spent not laying bricks?
About a third
So you will lay 133 bricks per day - that's 75.2 days, or just over 15 weeks. You said you could do it in 12, how do you account for the discrepancy between your estimates?
I don't, but I still think I can do it in 12
I see
(long pause while he stares at me)
I need you to account for the discrepancy
I can't, I stand by my original estimate
Which one, 3 and a half months or 12 weeks?
12 weeks
I would like you to go to a one-day conference in six weeks time, what impact will that have?
Not much - I think I can probably still do it in 12 weeks.
So a job which will take 60 days can easily be done in 59?
Yeah
I see
(long pause while he stares at me)
And if I need you to add more rooms, how long would that take?
How many more?
Enough for the Smith family as well
Well, they can probably share things like the kitchen, garden, hallway - I’d need to talk to them, find out how big the family is
And when can you do that? How long will it take?
Well, I don’t know where they are so I’d need to find them. Say a fortnight to scope the changes, another month to make them
Two weeks to find out the scale of the changes?
Yeah
So the work will take six weeks longer than planned
Yeah
I see
(long pause while he stares at me)
And if one person could give you all the information you need today?
That’d be great - but they can’t, can they?
(long pause while he stares at me)
So what will I tell our customers?
Well, I can either finish the Jones' house in 12 weeks and then the Smith house six weeks after that, or I can stop work on the Jones', investigate the Smiths, and possibly finish both together in about 18 weeks time
I see
(long pause while he stares at me)
and so on…
20/4/00: L last therapy. Me on leave, order new PIII from Carrera (hassle with lost partition)
25/4/00: L to visit her mum
26/4/00: PC arrives, AD departs
31/4/00: Repartitioned new HDD and lost 10GB... Good old Svent! Also saw Julia S chez mum
2/5/00: Joe's 1st BD: a noisy stroller, loads of bricks and balls, a mobile phone, a crab clacker and some skittles
3/5/00: Me to work in Waterloo
6/5/00: Joe's party with Georgious, Knipes, Anna, Murrays - and Roger. Julie and Sam (grrr) staying with us
8/5/00: Ken Livingstone starts as mayor, we met Si & Carole in Highgate Woods
17/5/00: Drinks with Si, Ben & Andy. EC project driving me potty - everyone thinks they're in charge!
20/5/00: Floaties cancelled, Parliament Hill tomorrow
29/5/00: Bank Holiday Monday at the zoo
6/00: PMagic and Drive Image, Simon starts, EC6 Help.
10/6/00: Mum's birthday at Kenwood
21/6/00: L hair cut *1 not short enough. Joe unwell.
22/6/00: London Eye for my brithda
23/6/00: L hair cut *2 short enough
24/6/00: Didn't go to David Potter's party cos Joe had chickenpox, instead had FM aerial put on the roof.
1/7/00: L to visit mum, me & Joe to Rookfield centenary garden party. WAP with R320 phone.
8/7/00:To visit new Tottenham Hale wildlife reserve (!), bought filing cabinets & garden table.
12/7/00: MOT £530... Weather absolutely dreadful, bugs (ant larvae) behind the cupboard.
15/7/00: To Kenwood (Kiri Te K) for L BD. Norman in hospital with breathing difficulty
21/7/00: Bought acoustic bass
22/7/00: Drove to visit Norman & Phyllis
25/7/00: Jason is our new manager! Concorde crash outside Paris
27/7/00: Nestor doc re a new paradigm for user assistance
30/7/00: IKEA for chairs for L
4/8/00: Learning Dreamweaver.
5/8/00: Hair cut with Joanne - water shortage
7/8/00: Drove to St Just (M3/M5) to stay with Ben & Chris, returned 13/7 via A30/A303 - a mistake!
15/8/00: Brent Cross for L's throw and a Dyson
16/8/00: Tate modern
19/8/00: Gig with Wickens in Rosie O'Grady's (Camden) - 6 people, all friends of BW.
20/8/00: Toys-R-Us for sandpit. All the crew on the sunken Russian submarine confirmed dead.
26/8/00: Another gig, 12 people.
29/8/00: Kevin started work on the windows.
30/8/00: Ben to stay for the night, L with very stiff neck
6/9/00: Patent application for Active Help going through!
7/9/00: Symbian UD pub quiz, Intranet going live
9/9/00: Gig in East Finchley with Roddy & Steve
11/09/00: Move to 15th floor Capital House
12/09/00: L starts working from consulting room at home. Petrol shortage.
14&15/09/00: Dreamweaver course in Egham. Joe's bedroom carpeted, then I did the bathroom and loo.
18/09/00: Kings X closed rush hours so bus to work from Warren st.
24/09/00: To IKEA for a kitchen, mum had Joe. Kevin has pretty well finished the windows and door.
27/09/00: ATM snaffled my card 'cos someone's been using the number
30/09/00: L to visit Norman & Phyllis.
10/00: The logo and Intranet hoohahs at work, preparing the kitchen at home
14/10/00; IKEA to change the cooker, Brent Cross to buy the hood
16/10/00: BT Openworld connected - the beginning of (at least) a fortnight of hassles
19/10/00: Serious Audiogalaxy and (later) Napster, S5 3-beeped on me
27/10/00: Joe poked me in the eye- very painful!
31/10/00: Incredible rain & storm the past few days. IKEA stuff delivered 9.00 pm
11/00: Kitchen slowly taking shape, relentless rain, US presidential election fiasco with Bush & Gore both claiming victory & Florida recounts. WAP push, iDesk, huge Napster and Audiogalaxy DLs,
4/11/00: Ally pally fireworks from redston Road then a pizza
15/11/00: Joe had conjuctivitis and an infection in both ears
19/11/00: Got a full refund on the IKEA oven!
1/12/00: Team lunch & bowling.
4/12/00: Xmas shopping
16/12/00: O Brother Where Art Thou, Anna babysat
17/12/00: Bought digital camera
19/12/00: Mediaeval banquet.
22/12/00: To see Norman & Phyllis. Boiler broken (no hot water)
24/12/00: Up London Eye with Mame
25/12/00: Me grim guts Xmas day but pheasant anyway. Leather jacket from L, dressing gown, JW black label & cash from mum, etc. Joe got a kitchen.
27/12/00: Went to the zoo.
29/12/00: To IKEA & Brent Cross - kitchen cupboard, stool, chest, bin, airer.
31/12/00: Georgious for brunch then Finsbury Park for fireworks.