Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

Early morning interviews, mail chew & admin left & right. Out to help run the kids games at a Light Party - why people appear to choose to celebrate the vile things in life, and not the victory over death and evil on All-Saints eve is unclear to me.
Rather good hands-free doughnut-on-wool eating game, Pinata (shepherding a queue of kids away from the most dangerous spot: right behind the hitter), Pizza, movie, and more.

2017-10-30 Monday.

Mail chew, status report, admin, lunch. Consultancy call, and catchup with Miklos. Customer cold-call, sync with Eloy & Jona.
Julie over for dinner.

2017-10-29 Sunday.

To NCC, helped with the older kids work; home for a Pizza lunch. Played go with H. and M. variously - getting into it rather. Slugged in front of a movie in the afternoon, put babes to bed: Vernor Vinge short-stories for M. and playing Raspberry-Pi & colored light strips with H. nice.

2017-10-28 Saturday.

Off to see Bruce & Anne, fine lunch; out to walk along the beach the other side of Sizewell, good to chat with Bruce. Back for tea, some sandwiches & set off home again. Read stories in the evening.
Watched Inside Llweyn Davis - rather underwhelmed for a Cohen Brothers film.

2017-10-27 Friday.

Up early; out for a run with J. Chewed mail, dug through an strace, sync. with Kendy. Lunch. Sync with Dennis & Miklos, poked at profiles, admin, and more.

2017-10-26 Thursday.

Out to Fountains Abbey in the morning with M&D, attended a free stone-carving workshop - and spent some hours chipping away at blocks of limestone (apparently a low silicosis risk stone). Had a great time, and carved some nice lettering.
Admired the extremely creative Joseph Hayton exhibition of our tutor's work - Monks growing out of the Abbey, and more.
Home, a fine pasta lunch, packed and hacked in the car on the way back; with a stop for some chips; relaxed - read until late.

2017-10-25 Wednesday.

Mail chew, out into York to see the National Train Museum, lots of fine trains, wandered through the shambols, bus back, sadly missing the nice electric busses both ways; home - caught up with work variously.

2017-10-24 Tuesday.

Up lateish; got stuck into The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich by mistake - bother. Out for a walk into town with J. and M. Back for lunch, consulting call, mgmt call. Built ESC stats.

2017-10-23 Monday.

Mail chew, admin, partner call; wrote status report. Sync with Eloy & Jona. TDF board call. Set off north to Knaesborough with the family.

2017-10-22 Sunday.

Up lateish, picked up H. and on to West Road, good to see Barry; but forgot violin to return to him. Clear teaching explaining the passage.
Home for lunch, room painting action, N. and M. returned exhausted; tea, put them to bed early; painting action & reading Adrian Plass to H. and J.

2017-10-21 Saturday.

Up in the night with horrible neck pain; hmm, poked at an online bug in a curmudgeonly way - found a cut/paste coding horror & tried to fix it. Back to bed.
Up at midday; breakfast - David arrived; J. and H. back from organ practice; set too painting H's room, cleared moss off the roof with E. Dinner, H. out to a murder-mystery sleep-over. Listened to A monk's tale with David by the fire; while E. and J. played smash-up.

2017-10-20 Friday.

Mail chew; marketing / analytics training much of the day. Managed to get some admin done too.

2017-10-19 Thursday.

Off to Cambridge in the morning; caught up with Hannah, Traice, Julie, met Olivier, Jakob and more - lunch with the team. Chased admin bits. Mgmt meetings all afternoon, out for dinner in the evening.

2017-10-18 Wednesday.

Up early; mail chew, admin bits, chat with Andras. Lunch. Sync with Kendy.

2017-10-17 Tuesday.

Mail chew; bug poking; Commercial team call; built ESC agenda, showed a local young gamer: Bailey the VIVE, interesting to see his improved situational awareness - it never ceases to amaze me how normal people put a Vive on and look at a very limited field of the scene: perhaps 45 degrees (if that) - without prompting to 'look around'.

2017-10-16 Monday.

Two lots of maths revision in the morning with H. and M. Mail catchup, started working through the backlog. Lunch, consultancy call. Read to babes in the evening.

2017-10-15 Sunday.

J. off to do the NCC kids work. Played with H. and N. variously, lunch, Chris over - and out to church in Histon, stayed for a meal afterwards. Back, read stories put babes to bed.

2017-10-14 Saturday.

Up rather early with Kendy; set off to St Peter's Basilica to have a look - arrived in good time 7:30 or so to find it closed for a service; bother. Got a Museum trip instead, the expensive 'tour' option horribly over-priced but interesting. Sad to see so much wealth, and focus on the art, and artists rather than what they're trying to say about their inestimably more interesting subjects. Sola Dei Gloria (as they say).
Wandered around myself, curious at the various celebrations of syncretism on display. Lunch, back through the Sistine Chapel - hard to express how beautifuly rich and the colors are, on into St Peters - guilded, but not as gaudy as some.
Train, bus, to the airport - RyanAir; poked at mail and the task backlog.

2017-10-13 Friday.

Up earlyish, presented the great work we've been doing with South Eastern Health Trust:
Various encouraging customer & partner meetings Out for ice-cream with some awesome French guys. Caught Ash's non-blocking socket talk and Armin's EMF+ bits.
Great closing session - was an amazing conference, congrats to all who were involved! Out for dinner together at a Pizzaria near the Colosseum (named after the gigantic golden statue of Nero that used to be there apparently).
Back to the flat, farewells, bed.

2017-10-12 Thursday.

Conference, lots of hallway-track goodness; positive CoC panel / discussion with Marina & Simon - good.
Lunch with friends great to see Pranav's Dialog Tunneling talk; gave a talk on Online Unit Testing:
Off to the hack-fest in the evening, fine food, good company, lovely.

2017-10-11 Wednesday.

Enjoyed the introduction, and the staggering depth of history, and richness of the venue - very grateful to the City of Rome for hosting us.
Massed board & MC & employees panel thing. gave my Collabora Opening keynote with some examples of the exciting thigns we've been up to for the last year:
Lunch; and minuted a rather lengthy ESC meeting afterwards - with some ideas of where to go next in graphics & code cleanliness.
Out for a pleasant social event in the evening in town with the conference.

2017-10-10 Tuesday.

Up early, breakfast from the Termini Station & waited around - sending scouts to find the missing bus, collecting partners and Collaborans variously. Eventually found the bus, got to the Airsoft venue, and played a surprisingly fun team-game - lots to learn:
Coach to a nice Italian restaurant for lunch, and on for a presentation (minus working projector sadly), still - good stuff.
Back to Termini; and had an all-afternoon team meeting & brain-storming / planing session until late. Out for dinner together; talked until rather late, bed.

2017-10-09 Monday.

Up, quick breakfast - Kendy & I tried to get Uber working to get us to the Hotel. Board meeting all day, board dinner until late.
Back with Kendy to try to locate somewhere to sleep; thankfuly found Miklos & woke Andras to let us in; quested for (and found) the necessary extra bed in the end; phew.
Worked until 3am polishing slides; tiring.

2017-10-08 Sunday.

NCC in the morning, helped with the older kids work with Uche. Home for a quick Pizza lunch with Julie. Finished packing, J. drove me to Stansted, Ryan-Air-ness to Rome; got gotcha'd by an overly-expensive bus into town - should cost Eur 1.50 for a std. bus ticket.
Found Kendy, out for Pizza together; back to enjoy the free bottle of sparkling red & catch up until late.

2017-10-07 Saturday.

Slugging in the morning; into town later to get some organ practise with H. only to discover a day of quiet prayer in AllSaints going on: fair cop.
Waited in Spec-Savers for an hour for a trivial repair-job on N's glasses - before discovering that we'd just been forgotten; hey ho.
Home, some travel preparation; bit of hacking.

2017-10-06 Friday.

J. out to counselling course; took E. to school & ran back. Sync. with Dennis, mail chew, slide-ware & stats, customer meeting; picked up E. from school; babes returned.
Babes out for a Compassion bake-off competition evening, another customer call, chat with Philippe; mail chew.

2017-10-05 Thursday.

Mail chew; admin, more admin, sync with Tor, Dennis. Partner call, lunch. Interview with Lenny, gap, another interview.

2017-10-04 Wednesday.

Blizard of E-mail & admin. Lunch. Call with Nico, admin and calls until late.

2017-10-03 Tuesday.

Mail chew; built ESC stats, lunch; sync with Kohei. mgmt team call, reviewed Marketing CVs for our opening & setup interviews.
Dinner; read stories, admin, setup interviews.

2017-10-02 Monday.

Up rather early; prodded mail, wrote status report. Breakfast. BT engineer arrived to diagnose our line problems - not in the home; seemingly the wire to the exchange actually died: wow - tree roots, water ingress (the cables are underground) ? who can say.
Lunch; more mail poking, consultancy call, sync with Tor. roadmap planning, chat with Bruce, bed exhaustedly.

2017-10-01 Sunday.

Up; packed random books, face-paint, sweets etc. NCC for kids work; home for a roast lunch, Martin & Marie-Jane, Talitha & Tirza over to share it. Chatted much of the afternoon. Tea, read stories to babes & put them to bed.

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In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE, Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International), or anyone else. It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy. Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences or fun.