So there was January and CES

Oops. I guess my first CES update should have been called ‘the CES’ update. As usual it ended up involving a lot of drinking, learning a lot about upcoming technologies (a lot of which were ultimately covered a day before the public or press were even allowed on the show floor.

I also spent a lot of time flirting with my now current girlfriend over Instant Message, lost a stupid amount gambling (it seems my blackjack technique ultimately had some flaws)

Of course the event was focused around Windows Vista, but having used it for over two months up to that point there wasn’t a great deal that was new and exciting. Home Server was cool and we are starting to see and hear more about that now, the release of the Dreamscene was also cool and again that is also something that hasn’t yet appeared and is still a little bit too buggy to be generally used on a production system.

So how do I update this blog after such an action packed period? I was thinking of a quick summary, really wanting to keep it sparse and then have to cover a few things afterwards. I have two pages of notes to blog on. Are you supposed to write notes?

Consider this one to be January, although things are a little hazy. Like I said before I re-met Victoria on New Year’s Eve and chatted to her regularly while out in Vegas, a week after I got back into England she came out to Salisbury to see me and we have been going out ever since. I am staying in London most weekends at the moment and it is very exciting to be spending time in a city again, as exciting as Stonehenge is, there really isn’t much going on at any one time. I did manage to stop playing World of Warcraft so much which is good; it was taking up far too much of my time

February – I can’t remember so much of, obviously getting the train to London every Friday and coming back on Sunday, waiting for the weekend again. I was obviously working and things are progressing here very nicely – using Remote Installation Services I can deploy Windows XP to any workstation on our network in the countries with two key presses from boot with all our applications and settings, naming convention and ready for the user.

Interesting stuff, I make changes on our 18 or so RIS servers using Vice Versa with minimal changes per region. I am hoping the method with Windows Deployment Services will be easier, but having only just deployed SP2 to the RIS machine (and using the old images in Legacy mode) my research there has only just begun and I know very little about WIM images at the moment, it might be Vista only but that is an Operating System that I guess we should start getting ready for.

In March Victoria and I found that we still had holiday and leave (respectively) left that had to be used by April or we would lose it. We checked out prices for the Algarve, Morocco and eventually found a cheaper holiday that I was really optimistic about taking Victoria on – Florida, as she has never been there and I hadn’t been there for a good eight weeks.

We hit Universal Studios several times and had a great time. Lots of photos and stuff which hopefully left a good impression of the country on her although I made it clear it wasn’t the real states, 20 miles in either direction outside of Orlando (that word wasn’t in Word 2007’s dictionary!) and it would be a different experience!

We ate far too much at Hard Rock, Planet Hollywood, and Bubbah Gump to name a few. Hit Cirque du Soleil (although I think the Beatles Experience in Vegas was far superior). The time change was interesting – only four hours between Orlando and London, we still made a huge error and slept when we got home for a little too long. I got back from Vegas – 8 hours – with no jetlag and then this and it really hammered us!

April I went to Neowindex with the Neowin guys in Amsterdam, talked about geeky stuff, met a few more of the Neowin guys I have never met, hit the red light district (which never ceases to amuse me, but not in that way) followed by flying home and having a nice picnic in Green Park, London before checking out Buckingham Palace and a few touristy things.

I also started driving down to London, getting very lost several times and generally ending up in Hammersmith, going down Cycle paths and always somehow finding my way to Shepherds Bush – where Victoria lives. Things are getting better though and in good conditions I can travel the 84.8 miles required in one hour and fifteen minutes – I am sure I can get this down more as there were a few situations where people were in my lane knocking my speed down to under 80mph which is severely down from my preferred 100 – there is also that area on the M3 where the speed limit is 50 so I only feel obliged to speed thru there a little. It is a shame the best time to drive is also the darkest, so I am sure that affects the time as well. A faster car would also help. But I do love my Peugeot sometimes, currently hating it as all the bits that I fixed up in it have decided to break again.


May is almost over and the sailing season is upon us. Sailing? Never done it myself but it is something Victoria is really into so I have helped her fix up her parents boat (by that I mean making a mess of the paintjob and leaving a near-permanent stain on the hull), hoping to go sailing soon as we plan to sail to/from Amsterdam in July and it would be nice to have a little experience before that happens.

I now also have both a Facebook and Myspace pages and have actually contacted and been contacted by some really old university and school friends, really quite mad!

So I think we are just about up to date with what I have been doing, so let’s get down to the good stuff?