Mozzie stealth attack

Was kept awake last night by dive bombing Mozzies. Couldn't work out where they were coming from as they hadn't bothered me the night before and I had the window closed.

Finally figured it out this morning as I watched one of the blighters fly in under the door! They were zooming from room to room having a whale of a time, mozzie style. Really annoying - especially since my room didn't have Air Con.

I mean, a modern hotel (Hotel Cuijk) that doesn't have A/C! What's with that?! The great food, designer decor and views over the countryside are all very nice. But if you can't sleep because of the heat and the insects... well.

Back at the Asteria in Venray, tonight. May not be as up market as the Cuijk, but it's got Air Con and a decent restaurant. Looking forward to a good sleep on my last night in Netherlands.

Though I'm off to Italy on Sunday... Grrrr!

New Car!!

Yes, we have a new car. A NEW new car. Amazing! Never thought we would be able to do it but we have. It's a shiny new model Kia Carens. We are chuffed to bits with it and are looking forward to a bit more visiting to friends and family in it. We always had very old cars so it is lovely to buy something brand new and be absolutely overwhelmed by the comfort and ease of driving.

Much more on it to come, but in the meantime here are some pictures:

New Multimap - with added wifi!

Nikki told me that Multimap had a new site up. I have not looked at Multimap for ages. I love online maps and always was grateful for Multimap's service, but after the arrival of GoogleMaps and its constant adding of new features I just began to find Multimap outmoded and outclassed and stopped using it.

It's new interface is a lot closer to the usability that we have come to expect with online maps and it seems to replicate most of GoogleMaps features. With unfortunate exception of the mouse-wheel-zoom - a feature I think is such an intuitive addition to GoogleMaps.

However, Multimaps UPS (or 'Unique Point of Sale') for me is the addition of the useful information tickbox tab. When one of the 'Useful' items is near by it will display the number of said items next to the tickbox. When you click them the locations appear on the map you are viewing. My Favourite so far is the inclusion of the 'Wifi Hotspot' item that uses TotalHotspots.com info to show the hotspots in the area you are looking at.

This is the sort of usability that will bring me back to using Multimap. It's good to see them back on form.

*Updated* - the snapshot is of Wifi hotspots in Witney, UK.


*Updated 1.2* - Sorry, I meant Wifi hotspotsDidcot, UK.

Home again, off again, home again

Well, since my last post I have been home - yes, I made it. Then I was off again to the Netherlands. Today I back home again.

Tomorrow is my anniversary. Ten years that I have been married to my fantastic wife, Nikki. I really have trouble thinking how I managed without her love and support before I met her. It's been a rocky ten years, but has served to strengthen our marriage and love for one another. I can't wait to be home to her and our beautiful children, Joy and Elias. And 'Home' is wherever she is.

Another plane journey to come. The ones back from Rochester (Roch->Newark->Bristol) were pretty bumpy and I didn't enjoy them at all. I hate the take-offs. Can just about bear the landings since I know it will be over soon. I don't think I like flying. I was absolutely shattered on the flight back to Bristol but kept being jerked back from sleep by the turbulance. I'm not even sure it was that bad. The landing at Bristol was all over the place - mostly because of the wind. But we got down.

A welcomed side effect of lack of sleep was that I stayed awake the whole day in the UK and then had a full nights sleep at the right UK time. Thereby pretty much wioing out the Jetlag.

Fortunately, the flight and landing of the KLM to Eindhoven were fairly good. It was a small plane (Fokker 50 turboprop) but seemed to be pretty stable. The landing was the best I've had. Hardly felt it. I wonder if that's because it's a lighter plane or better weather.

Will report on today's landing soon. But my wife and I are off to celebrate 10 years tomorrow - so don't wait up!

Heading home

In about half an hour we start our journey home. The snow has been pretty heavy here but we've heard nothing about cancellations. Hopefully the plane will be half full like it was on the way here and I can spread out and get some sleep. Could really do with it. Of course, we have all the mucking about to do before we even get to Newark... See how we get on. With God's grace we should be getting into our cars in Bristol at about 9.30am GMT (4.30am EST) and arriving back with our families at about lunch time.

Really looking forward to being home again. Here's a late picture from the girl:

Three (four) more days...

Few more days until I return home. Start out on the Friday about 4pm and arrive about 8am in the UK. Hopefully I can sort out some comfortable seating on the flight back and get some sleep. Apparently, it should be a shorter flight (6 hours) than on the way here (8 hours).

It's been snowing in Rochester for the last two days. Beautiful ,but slippy. It came right on the back of an 'ice storm' the like of which I had never seen before. It rains and the rain freezes as soon as it settles. At the weekend on the trip to the cabin, Ash's windscreen wipers were frozen over. It was weird. I'd never seen that before.

The snow is great and it doesn't seem to stop them here like it would do in the UK. Lots of trucks have strap-on Snow Ploughs and they just clear it all out of the way. I didn't see any accidents (and there have been a few apparently) and everyone was driving slowly today and yesterday. Not that the speed limits here are that high. Strange for such a large country.

More on my US musings later. Photos to follow (I've had connection issues at the hotel).

Missing my wife and babies, and have lots of work to do...

Day 6 picture with hamster

Here is the picture for day 6. Those more observant observers will notice a rodent complementing the digit so beautifully drawn and coloured by my wonderful children, Elias and Joy. The Hamster in question is 'Pinsley' that Joy named after the road on which we live.

I am half-way through my trip to the States (Rochester) and for the most part am quite enjoying it. We have been working very hard. Training from 8am to 5 or 6pm and then usually meeting with colleagues from 6pm to 9 or 10pm. Most of the evening meetings take place outside the office at a restaurant or someones house and are normally chilled out more that the training. But they are still meetings and I need to pay attention to _most_ of what's being said.

Matt, who has been leading the training, has been especially accommodating to Kieran and myself. We have spent a little time with his wife and beautiful kids which has been a great antidote to the Hotel-Office-Restaurant-Hotel pattern of most of the days.

Tomorrow we are hoping to spend some time out at a cabin by a lake. This should be real wind-down time. We'll cook-up some chilli and walk and shoot and row. Not sure what we'll be shooting at. There's a small waterfall nearby that is supposed to be very pretty.

Last night, whilst waiting to get into a restaurant with 11 others I was encouraged to join with three others in some barbershop singing. Long time admirer of the art but never having tried it I had an immensely satisfying time learning to sing a part and joining with the three other chaps singing away. The complements we got were fantastic and Scott, the leader was brilliant in encouraging me to sing stuff I thought I wouldn't be able to
as well as the incredible memory he had for all the parts. We might be trying again this evening so more on that later. I might even record it since I managed to charge up my iRiver last night.

Off to the Mall for some retail therapy and probably my only shopping trip whilst here. Have a big lon list somewhere...

Off tomorrow... I think

Well, off tomorrow. We'll see if we actually get any further than Bristol Airport. Never been to the States before. Never been away from my boy or girl for more than five days. I'll let you know how I get on...