Reckon I’ve got Supraspinatus Tendonitis (Rotator Cuff Tendonitis) in my left shoulder. Pobably from all the climbing I’ve been upto over the last couple of years. My shoulder has been on and off sore for the last 6 months or so and approx a month a go I think I made it a whole lot worse on a particularly uncontrolled climb down on an over hanging route at the Gloucester Warehouse.
I’m looking into getting it checked out and then figuring out what’s the best course of action.
What a bugger eh? Just gotten so that my climbing is the best so far in my life and I get an injury which, it seems in all likelihood, the best remedy will be to bloody well stop climbing.
Grrrrr!
Yesterday was my last day at Capita Life and Pensions Services (CLPS) in Barnwood, Gloucester as a C# Developer in the New Technology team.
It’ll be a shame to move on but I think sometimes as a Developer in emerging technologies it’s the thing to do .. by moving from one role to another you’ll always be exposed to so much more and learn so much more by seeing how different people solve their various IT development issues.
As a leaving gift I was given a Amazon gift voucher, and some wine :), and I’ve spent the voucher on Professional VMware Server (Programmer to Programmer) by Eric Hammersley .. hope it’ll prove usefull in setting up my server.
So I’m now on the look out for my next contract but I’m not in too much of hurry as I’d like to spend the next few weeks setting up various M$ systems at home and have a look at the .NET framework v3 (esp. the Work Flow functionality).
.. oh and one more thing, I’ve just tried using the search facility on the CLPS website and it fails with a missing page error. The search request is being sent to http://www.capita-lps.co.uk/clps/searchResults.htm (which doesnt exist) .. it should be sent to http://www.capita-lps.co.uk/searchResults.htm (no clps directory in the URL).
Oh well.
Wonder if I can raise an Assyst call by sending an external originating email to FirstCall?
I’ve just gone and bought a HP dc5750 Ath64 4200+ (dual core) with 2G RAM from Dabs.com .. cost £575 with £75 cash back from HP and a £25 coupon from Dabs .. bringing the price down to just £475.
Its currently got XP Pro installed but I’ll be changing that to Windows Server 2003 asap, installing VMWare Server and running as a virtual server to host a whole bunch of M$ server products eg SQL Server 2005, BizTalk 2006, IIS.
When financies allow I’ll hopefully be upgrading to 4G RAM and adding a number of extra hard drives to speed up this virtual server.
BizUnit - Test Framework for automated testing. enables the rapid development of test cases, specifically targetted by not restricted to testing BizTalk solutions.
BizUnit 2.0 - Automated Testing for BizTalk Solutions - Blog on BizUnit 2.0 from Kevin B Smith
In an attempt to re-enforce my knowledge of the practical differences between using C# within the .NET framework v1.1 and v2 I’ll keep a succinct list of the differences;
- Can now limit access within Properties ie make setter private and have the getter public. This fixes one of my pet hates with the old version of the framework.
- Type safe collections. I’m a great fan of compile time checks so this is a pretty cool addition. Also includes features such as Enumerating through the lists eg can use the foreach(){} construct.
- Nullable value types. As soon as you start dealing with databases you’ll see why these are usefull.
- Anonymous methods. Inline code where you want a delegate - cut downs on code. To be honest I don’t see myself using this new feature very much.
- Partial classes - seems that the only real use of this feature is to hide designer code. We’ll see.
- Can now have static classes
One of my other pet interests, at the moment, is the way in which SQL Server 2005 can be used in a SOA Architecure. I’m particularly interested in the Server Broker technology.
How SQL Server 2005 Enables Service-Oriented Database Architectures - Good overview.
.. and I’m off sick. Gotta laugh.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/06/national_sickie_day/
Diet came to an end with a splurge of cakes, over-eating and drink. I reckon that actually it’s just a blip on my diet (as in what I eat normally, as opposed to a temporary regime of very selective eating) landscape.
Running - 3 times in 5 working days - one run missed due to a business meeting and the other was on the Friday because I felt knackered and also that I deserved it (see next bit re: climbing)
Climbing indoors on Tuesday and Thursday evening .. I can’t remember how Tuesday went but Thursday was just perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever led so well indoors before in my life! OK my out right strength is not as high as it’s peak last year but technique and endurance is right up there.
Apart from some 6a/6a+ routes to warm up and pace myself, I led 3 6bs and 2 6b+ routes 
Finished off on the competion wall (which I haven’t been able to climb for bloody ages .. see early comment re lack of strength) and heaved myself up the easiest overhanging route (6a) .. all in all a bloody excellent evening.
Again and again through the evening, I noticed myself using good footwork and technique .. and apart from one desperate slap for a hold on the last, overhanging route, I felt totally in control for all of the routes .. good climbing - as it should be.
Reckon 6c is what I should be aiming for next .. perhaps on the ol’ top rope.
.. AND IT’S STILL ONLY FEBUARY!
(the only downside at the moment is that my shoulders, esp the left, are playing up .. hmmm .. rest seems to be the sensible route but I can’t see myself doing that at the moment .. perhaps lots of really easy routes?)