Archive for July, 2009
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07.22.09
am i getting old?
I’ve been attending football training in preparation for the new season, potentially turning out for Lesters Elite FC this year on a Saturday. So far there have been four training sessions, and the theme thus far has been running…… and that’s about it. Weeks 1 and 2 we ran for 15 minutes, 2 minute break, 10 minutes, 2 minute break and 5 minutes. Weeks 3 and 4 we upped this to 20, 15 and 10. All the while there are random sprinting activities – sprint to a cone in the centre of the circle, sprint from the back to the front, sprint from the front all the way round to catch up with the back (this is a killer).
I think I’m possibly the oldest player there at a ripe old 28, and I’m finding it really tough. First week I didn’t quite make all the way through, but now I can at least participate, but I’m always lagging a bit, and by the end can’t really do an awful lot of sprinting.
I have done a bit of jogging in between training sessions (although didn’t this week) and yet still I’m struggling with these sessions. Is this because I’m getting older? I don’t ever really remember being super fit, even when younger. Perhaps my innate low level of fitness is shining through?
I don’t think I’m particularly unfit, I’m not carrying any extra weight. Perhaps I just need to keep at it. I ran a 10k last year and whilst I was regularly running I did feel quite fit, even in football matches I could manage a swift run without too much bother. My fitness can only be improving, so I’ll keep at it and hopefully I’ll at least be fitter than the opposition by the time the season starts!
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07.19.09
getting married
Myself and Mrs Tom are due to get married later this year, making things official after seven years together. An exact date however is not known, which is possibly a little unusual at this stage – we are hoping to get married in October.
Our main reason for this late arrangement is cost. We will be able to make things a heck of a lot cheaper for ourselves if we leave the booking late, and as we are paying for everything ourselves (no donating parents here I’m afraid) this is pretty much a must. We’ll be heavily dipping into an ISA that Mrs Tom has been keeping for around ten years, as well as a maturity fund which I have which pays out next year (essentially I’ll be borrowing money from Mrs Tom’s savings and giving her back what I get when my fund pays out).
It’s not as difficult as you might imagine. We will have things like suits, dresses, invitations, flowers, favours, cake etc all taken care of, so when we do finally know the date it should hopefully just be a case of popping the invites in the post and taking care of some final arrangements.
Now we’re getting down to booking a venue, we’ve found a couple that we like and now we just have to negotiate with them to make it affordable for us. This may or may not be successful, but we have to give it a go, anything we can save will help us hugely. Hopefully we’re not too far away now. I’d post links to the possible venues, but I’m scared my one reader might book it before we have a chance! Perhaps I’ll report back when it’s all sorted!
Hopefully my nominated best men (plus helper) will sort me out a nice stag do to preface the big day. I’ve been holding my breath, but I’m starting to turn blue!
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07.10.09
must be the music
Having seen Blur in Hyde Park last Thursday, seeing Oasis this coming Saturday and The Kooks the following Thursday, I feel like I’m on a bit of a wave of music right now. I love watching live music, of almost any kind. As a half-arsed musician I can appreciate the complexity of playing instruments and so when I get the change to watch someone who is clearly very accomplished I can stand and watch transfixed for ages, even if the music is not necessarily something I would listen to outside of the live arena.
In 2005 and 2007 I went to the world renowned Glastonbury festival. The first time I went I had the best time of my life, cramming as much music as possible into the three days we were there, it was truly fantastic. I came home inspired to do more with music and decided to learn piano. That hasn’t worked out too well, working an hour away from home puts limits on practice time and I’ve been in career mode for a while now, but I still plan to do it one day.
Music can inspire, heal, lift and bring people together. It can also give people a commonality that they otherwise may not share. Millions of people across the world have been able to share in something recently because of Michael Jackson’s death. They all loved him and his music, and right not you’d be hard pressed to go 24 hours without hearing an MJ song. Thankfully they are mostly brilliant. Whilst the death of a legend like that is clearly a horrible event, people can still love him through his music forever, much like people still love Elvis and Buddy Holly.
Make time for music!
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07.08.09
network update
Here at EIS towers things have moved a little bit. I realise that I’ve not updated for a while so I thought I’d throw this out there to keep things ticking over!
We have been given the go-ahead to implement a new Cisco based network here at work and the kit has been ordered. Next phase will be configuration and implementation, and this may take a while as there are debates over how we should implement things.
It’s still exciting though, in terms of the opportunity to implement what is a greenfield network, and also for the unit to have a network which works how it should and meets our business needs (which we don’t really have now, if we’re honest).
There is also some slight forward motion in the service which we have been touting for schools too. A school is desperate to move ahead with things but we haven’t yet got contractual stuff sorted out. Ho hum, hopefully we’ll get there.
In other news, I passed my CCNA Security test this weekend. I think I’m going to concentrate on the BGP aspect of obtaining the CCIP next, then the MPLS.