I have another 30 minutes of quiet time before the Megster (conjunction of Meggie Monster) is back and all the chaos that she brings. Meg spent the night with my parents last night while Kev and I enjoyed a night in with a takeout and bottle of wine in front of children in need. Oh, why didn't we use their website to donate to children in need before? It was so much easier than going to the bank or trying to get through on the phone lines. Doh!

We had a nice relaxing evening and it was great not to have the bed time battles and constant running up and down the stairs to put little miss back to bed. The night before we went to bed and found Meg asleep on our bedroom floor!! Now she can open doors so doesn't stay in her room. I hope she wasn't the same for my parents, although generally she's better behaved up there. I imagine that they were all tucked up in bed together this morning watching tv while drinking their respective cups of tea or bottle of milk.

Meg has been asking to sleep at Nanny's for the last few weeks. It's not exactly subtle when she climbs up the stairs and tries to get into their bed. That and she creates merry hell when it's time to leave. So as she hadn't stayed for a while I picker her up from nursery early yesterday and after she packed her teddy and Tigger into her overnight bag off we went. Now it's time to have her back. Never mind. Hopefully they have worn her out!!

Watch out Meggie, we're coming to get you! Have a big cwtch ready for Mammy.

Got this at work from a friend, looks pretty interesting. If you're in the South Wales area and interested in technology at all I'd pop along:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only had 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world, web enthusiasts, creatives and entrepreneurs have been putting together Ignite nights in answer to this question and now Cardiff Web Scene and Nocci are bringing Ignite to the UK. Join us at Sodabar at 6.30pm on Wednesday 3 December. Entry is FREE and you don't need a ticket. Thanks to Skillset Cymru, there will also be some free nibbles so why not come along? If you want to take part simply send an email to hello@cardiffwebscene.com letting us know what you want to talk about and we'll get back to you if your submission is successful. For more information about the event please visit www.cardiffwebscene.com or www.noccinet.com. The Ignite community is sposored by O'Reilly.

It's been a wonderful day and it's all down to Meg being amazing. The first thing that made me laugh was driving to work. Both kev and I drive down the same dual carriage way for a bit on the way to work and Meg of course is in the car with Kev. Well this morning we were a bit late and got stuck in traffic. At one point I was alongside kev's car and I looked over to see Meg waving furiously at me from the back of Kev's car. Apparently after I drove on she was shouting 'Daddy! Drive!' and pointing after me. Kev had to explain that the car in front was in the way.

Today was Meg's first day of potty training in nursery. We postponed it for a couple of weeks because she has been really ill but she seems to be really up for it now.

We packed her bag last night with plenty of spare knickers, trousers and socks. She wants to be a big girl now like her friend Charlotte who she's been watching on the potty for a while. Monkey see... and she's certainly a monkey!

Well I wasn't expecting her to use the potty successfully today but she surprised us and actually did it. There were a couple of accidents as well and she didn't manage to hold it in the car on the way home. But hey, it's a lot better than either of us expected on her first day.

Bow down to Meggie.

By this evening though she was tired and couldn't be bothered any more. She wanted her nappy back on and then pretty much took herself to bed.

When I recently bought a new laptop, I was forced to upgrade to windows vista as you can't ask for XP anymore. I thought, ok, it wasn't a problem last time and I went for it.

My first impressions of vista are pretty much the same as I think of MacOsX. It might look swish but it has counter intuitive functionality. I'm getting used to it but it really is clunky. I also bought office as the last version I bought was, well far to old to admit really. I haven't faired very well there either. After knowing office inside out and being an advanced user (apparently) I find myself once again looking for the most basic functions. It's no wonder my work place are reluctant to upgrade. It would cost them a fortune in lost man hours while we all get used to the nice looking but useless interface.

In short, if I had wanted a mac I would have bought one. Come on microsoft, don't alienate loyal consumers.

This article (and it's subsequent parts) make interesting reading no matter on which side of the fence you stand. It fits in with some of the stuff I'm experimenting with at the moment - flash/flex development.

It's all pretty exciting to me at least. The last time I posted about Flash vs Java my attitude was pretty much if you want to write simple web games with loads of accessibility use the right tool (i.e. flash) rather than spending a lot of extra time trying to make things work.

That was, of course, based on just thought. I had a very limited experience of flash development. I've got a little bit more (still not much) but I have at least released stuff to the community and tried to sell stuff on. So far, it's much easier experience.

I posted this over at JGO and it's stimulated some pretty interesting conversation. The most poignant comment to me was this:

Pick your goals and market, then pick a technology that fits.

Right now, it's all just still an interesting experiment.

Kev recently showed me an article in the BBC news where a sign had been translated into Welsh incorrectly. Well I guess as it was last week most people have seen it by now.

I happen to prefer the one that happened a few years back where 'cyclists dismount' was translated into 'bladder inflammation upset'!! See below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4794753.stm

So as I sit here catching up with my missed Welsh class this week I can see why work is willing to pay my course fees and give me time off to do it.

Of course I want to learn Welsh because Meg is in a bilingual nursery and is learning Welsh already. She was counting in Welsh before she was in English. At least if I know some as well, I can tell if she's actually talking or jabbering!

Oh well, back to it, da boch chi.

Classes that are called AbstractExampleThing that arn't actually abstract.

Uck.

Three weeks now, of coughing, aching and feeling lethargic. This sucks. I've never had a cold thats lasted so long. So far, lots of pain killers have kept me in work and getting on with life but I'm starting to feel pretty sick of it all.

Work is actually going ok, we seem to have moved past the paralysis and are finally getting on with things. Lots of things kicking off and lots of meetings. Looks like there are actually decision being made, woo hoo!

Family wise things are about normal, though Meg is a little under the weather and Cath is generally worked up more than normal.

I think things would be pretty good if I could just shake this sickness.

Oh I have to laugh. After all the family crap that has gone on over the years, (Kev's family btw) all I can do is laugh. It's all so pathetic. My BIL and SIL told some half truths to my MIL and kicked off an overdue family wide sulk. I quote, 'After convincing us to come home from Davis for family support, my in laws have done nothing to help and are unreliable.' Note the wording, this is since we came home. Anyway, my BIL played chinese whisper and of course got it wrong, maybe on purpose, I don't really care. MIL went off on one as usual only this time aimed it at us.

Well since this I have to laugh at my SIL. She has tried to IM Kev only doesn't realise that it was running in invisible mode so we can't respond anyway. Yeah it's so 'transparent' that we know its in invisible mode!!! Well now I have a pleasantry on my facebook account. She's pretending to give a damn even though the last time she visited us was probably in excess of 5 years ago! In other words she's feeling guilty. Well it's quite simple, there's nothing to feel guilty about (unless it's because they cashed a £50 cheque from me the same day that they tried to stab me in the back, then I'd say yes you should feel guilty). Anyway, they have done me a favour as now I don't have to be civil to any of them any more. It's makes life so much easier. What a relief! For 13 years all I've heard is crap about how BIL treats MIL and now they have a common enermy to unite them, me!!

Well, Kev, there's not much point really in censoring this one because apparently they don't read my blog anyway!!
Go on leave it here.

As usual my parents have come to the rescue. They have taken Meg or a couple of hours so Kev and I can have a break. Kev has been ill for nearly 3 weeks now (I blame his family) and Meg has been ill for a few days. The only thing that Meg seems to want to do is go and see Nanny so maybe she can tempt her into eating something.

I'm getting worried about Kev now though. He's been ill for far too long. He is usually better at fighting things off but I think he's been so stressed lately that its hit him harder than he knew. He's been to the GP once but I think he might have to go again at this rate.

I have to admit to feeling worn out today. I was off work with a migraine the other day which came out of the blue. Since I've been a bit off cause of my meds. Oh and Meg being ill all night. Kev looked so bad this morning that I sent him back to bed and I looked after Meg. I've been trying to get things done like the laundry but Meg was really clingy so that was hard work. I spoke to my Mam and she decided that she would come down and take up the slack. Well Meg, as usual when she sees Nanny, was all excited and you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with her. They took her out for a couple of hours and they have just arrived back.

Thanks Mam and Dad.....again!!