Holiday Season Round Up Part 1 of... I'll let you know...

So, isn't it weird having the holidays at the weekends?  In days gone by I'd have been somehow annoyed at this.  Although I suppose it does maximise the time off to holiday used ratio.  Which is not something that really applies to me anyway.

Christmas we spent with friends, having done a more traditional British Turkey thing the weekend before.  Through the magic of a VPN I managed to watch Doctor Who more or less in sync with my family before we had our Skype video call.  The equally magic new ISP meant that for the first year we were able to keep the call going and the nice web cam over the TV shocked the family as they were able to see us clearly too.  

Doctor Who - well, he said brightly, I liked it.  I know it was a little Panto, but it's Christmas - I'll live with that.

As for presents...  well, I got a decent kitchen knife, which is pretty sweet.  It's actually nice to be able to try all those chopping tricks you see on the cooking shows and have them work.  I also got a Helicopter Ride (more on that later), a spirits tasting and a few other bits and pieces.  M's new Kindle went down well for her.

I spent the balance of the week immersed in the company books.  There's a thing we do which is tidy up the day the cleaner is due... well this was not unlike that, as I fixed the books and got everything into the accounting software we use in preparation for closing the 2011 books.  It was long, tedious and reminded me why I'm not an accountant.  In the end I'm $0.60 out on the reconciliation of the bank account verses what I though we were and $124 out on what I've paid in expenses verses what I have claim forms for...  the later can be fixed relatively easily by under paying myself that much on the final claims of the year, which already total almost $7000...  (No wonder I'm feeling poor).

Anyway, from Jan 1 we have a book keeper doing this stuff, and I'm moving over to using an expenses system that automates a lot of the hard stuff.

New Years Eve was, after years of trying different restaurants and other stuff, quiet and spent with friends where we drank too much wine and fizz and generally chilled.

New Years Day was spent, as is traditional, recovering from the hangover through watching movies and then going around to friends to finish off all the high calorie Christmasy/Holiday food...

Resolution stuff...

1. Weight.  After several years of successfully losing weight on an year by year basis, this year, especially the last 6 months, have reversed the trend.  I'm about 3.5kgs up on where I was in Jan 2012, which is annoying because I'd be averaging being down 7ish on the previous years.  The thing about losing weight is I know how to do it and it's not even all that hard, it's just fitting it in around stress that I've struggling with.  And the stress of a new startup, with no money and higher levels of personal debt than I'm used to, means that I've been eating and drinking too much.  Anyway.  We joined a new gym at the end of last year, so it'll be in there for a new schedule with them, and they also have a pool, which, bang for buck is one of the most calorie intensive CV exercises I do - I don't run.  I've tried, I don't like it, I do like swimming, always have done.  I'd like to end 2012 10kgs down on where I am now, which would put me back to where I was in 2002.

2. Money..  as I like to quip - we have a revenue problem in the household, not least due to $30,000 in company expenses sitting on personal credit cards from the last 2 years.  We're starting the year strongly, we've $80,000 in accounts receivable which lets us start the year and make payroll for the first couple of months.  With a fair wind, we should have income to make payroll through the first half of the year.  Being able to plan on this and make some simple changes like moving company expenses to the business rather than personal checking account will make a big difference.  I'd like to end 2012 debt free.

Films of 2012

Because I'd like to actually keep on top of this...

#1 - Demonic Toys Revenge - we got this as a joke title for friends with whom we vie to find movies we can't watch more than 5 minutes of.  We actually made it through this.  Dreadful, badly acted, badly written, but as compelling for a hungover movie slob fest as a train wreck.  Part of that, was you just assumed there was going to be a soft-core lesbian porn sex scene in there somewhere, but it never appeared...  anyway, not recommended.

#2 - Captain America: The First Avenger - does what it says on the tin.  Nice 30s and 40s design on the technology, obvious comic book movie, lots of big action and eye candy.  Saw the ending coming but interesting to see them essentially avoid an obvious sentimental bit with Samuel L Jackson basically saying "get over it".

#3 - Zookeeper - meh.  Didn't do a lot for me.  Kevin James as the love interest for 2 improbably attractive women with talking animals...  I mean... what's to like?

End of 2011 Movies...

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I've watched the Swedish versions and read all the books and spent a fairly non-trivial amount of time in Sweden, so I was interested to see what they'd do with this.  My first reactions are all excellent - they've included some stuff that bugged me by being left out of the Swedish version, or perhaps lost in the nuance of sub-titling.  I think they've set things up well for the second and third films, which I always thought that the original movies didn't do very well.  There is a lot of plot but I think they left out some stuff that made the third film in particular, incoherent.  

Good cast, nice acting - interesting to have the faux Swedish accents and speech patterns - which isn't all that hard - most Swedes you'll meet speak fluent English in a slightly stilted way.  Anyway, I suspect Christopher Plummer will get a nod come awards time for his excellent portrayal of the head of the deeply flawed Vanger family.

As a link to our second film of the week, we have Noomi Rapace who played Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish version, playing a gypsy in the new Sherlock Holmes movie.  Apparently realising that her career had been made by the other films she had to learn to speak better English, which, based on her accent and use of idiom in the Sherlock Holmes film she did in London.

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
Didn't exactly require a lot of mental capacity to watch.  Not canonical but plenty of fun.  Not sure I'd recommend seeing this at the movies, unless it's one like The Big Picture which you can get served booze in.

More resolutiony things...

3. Coding.  I actually did used to code, except that was in the early 1990s and it was all Fortran and Basic...  Given that most of what we do these days is JavaScript and HTML, with an increasing amount of .NET I feel I ought to really put some effort into this as a hobby.   I've got the basics down now - at least I know what the syntax is for JavaScript now - which is helping with some debugging nonsense.

Anyway...  that's enough things for one year.

Holiday Season Round Up Part 2 of... I'll let you know... The Helicopter

So M got me a Helicopter ride for Christmas from Groupon...  there was a slightly wrangle, in that the Groupon as offered was for a lesson, but the training helicopter had a weight limit which I would exceed even when at a pretty healthy weight for my height...  but the company assured her that she could swap the value for a tour of Seattle.

So we trawled down to the address, somewhere in the dark recesses of Boeing Field and found the them.  It wasn't a great experience, and the building didn't give us much confidence, M joking as we entered that she was sure this didn't reflect their maintenance practices.

Sadly, things didn't improve when we got inside.  Basically, the pilot didn't get Groupon.  After about 10 minutes of glaring at us and muttering he announced that we could use the amount PAID for the Groupon but not the value - because he just didn't understand the difference between amount paid and value.  At that stage I had seriously had enough.  It was not going to be fun no matter how we dressed it up.  This felt like misrepresentation and even though we could afford the difference, I wasn't going to give them any more of our money with that attitude and, frankly, if you don't really understand the maths behind a Groupon, I'm not sure I want you flying a helicopter with me in it.

So we walked out.  As we left he tried to say he'd honour the value but only against the more expensive trip.  I carried on walking.

M is going to talk to them about the Groupon and the previous offer and see what can be done.  

Bit of a shame, but I'm still not sure I want to fly in anything they maintain.

Lifelog - 1/2/12

Managed to avoid spending the day playing Skyrim, which is pretty addictive, and therefore is shocking.

For some reason I had a bit of a cleaning kick this morning.  Removed about a week's worth of poop from the garden; cleaned the kitchen, for some reason several times; cleaned out the fridge in preparation for the arrival of normal food tomorrow.

Restarted the food diary too - it's actually about the only way I can guilt myself into eating sanely again.

After that I sorted out iTunes, did some "light" blogging and watched a movie.

I also signed up for Amazon Prime and xBox Gold - I intend to try and hook up the xBox to the Media Center...

Hard life innit.