Sleep Interrupted

Perhaps I spoke too soon?

The eastbound slip-road traffic lights at the Maidenhead junction of the M4 were operational today for the first time. They didn’t seem to be helping much but I was passing at a time later than usual so perhaps it’s relative.

My view on “the future” is that it is arrived at by the accumulation of many small changes, a bit like evolution. This is probably why flying cars aren’t likely to turn up any time soon; there’s little evolutionary advantage to a car that flies or glides a little bit, so the process of getting to a fully flying car is a bit of a non-starter. Bummer.

How shall I start the year on the blog? How about a grumble? Is there anything more depressing than being stationary at junction 8/9 of the M4 at 7.30am as the rain buckets down from a cold gray sky and you watch your windows slowly mist up? Okay, I’m sure there are plenty of things but it certainly didn’t help on a Monday morning.

Grumble over, normal service will be resumed shortly.

I have to agree with James: Travelling for work sucks. Not that Louise believes me but it loses its appeal very quickly. Every hotel room is the same, it can be lonely, you miss your family, you get tired and it plays havoc with your carbon emissions.

Ever feel you’re losing the battle against entropy and chaos? Well, it’s certainly feeling that way around here at the moment. My boss is on leave at work, right when an important client is making a tricky hardware transition, leaving me to do the tidying up. Then I get roped into a sales meeting in the US, so I’m going to be away from home for two days, which will no doubt mess up my body clock nicely.

And at home? Well, the hard drive finally broke so I had to rebuild the PC, which was actually quite painless — thanks Ubuntu! Then the kids managed to break our bed this week by jumping on it too enthusiastically, meaning the mattress is on the floor until the replacement arrives next Tuesday, when, of course, I’m in the US and unable to put it together for Louise.

So, I may be losing the war at the moment but there’s one battle I can win: With some help from the Google Reader Widget for WordPress I’ve added the contents of my news feed to the right-hand side of the blog. Sweet. Hope you find the links interesting.

Also making an attempt for the most categories for a single post here.

My new job requires me to attend a ten-day training course in New Jersey, so that’s where I’m at right now. I’m slightly bemused that a meeting, a phone call and a dozen emails can see me in a new job and on a different continent. Jet-lag is preventing me from being more… wordful… at this point but I thought I should at least check in.