Joe’s Blog

Woohoo, last weekend I made it all the way down to Kerry with the help of my brother (thanks again). 2006/Nokia_6600/Image_314_.jpg. Going through most places was grand, Abbeyfeale was quiet enough and Listowel was grand too. On the way back though there was a lot more traffic and it was a lot harder coming up the junction in Abbeyfeale - a tight uphill T junction with cars parked on both sides of the street, pedestrians and poor view left and right.

Saturday Jim and I went for a run but I haven’t run since for a few reasons - aoife and the lads in business were busy with assignments, monday I was swimming, tue and wed I had indoor soccer, table quiz on wed night, canvassing on thu and I collected my sister on friday and took her out to Adare. I was also pretty wrecked after Wednesday’s soccer - it was a high-paced, very close game and when no-one showed up after an hour we kept playing and playing and playing - 2hrs 15mins in the end with a score of like 43-41 to us. I even got 3 goals or so which i was very proud of.

So yesterday then we had the wedding in Newcastle - Catherine stayed in a lovely B&B in Adare just yards down from the Woodlands Carrigane House. It’s great having a car - I was delighted to be able to pick her up from the station, drop her out to Adare and take her to the wedding the next day. Buses are good but not great for when you are in wedding clothes and it’s wet. The wedding was lovely of course, Ann’s family are always cheerful and the groom’s side were up for a bit of craic too. The day flew by - no sooner were we there than they were married and we were at the reception. The Woodlands impressed me quite a lot - first time there and the band were very good too. I’m not a good dancer but Catherine, Mary and I hit the floor quite a bit - it’s great fun too doing the siege of venice (correction: Siege of Ennis) and all that. Some people really do swing and I came back with a sweat across my brow. The speeches were nice too - a few short words by everyone and a bit of banter about the lovely couple. I even remembered my camera and all the salacious photos are here (not really, our family is too nice for any of that - the poor Poles must remember to look for a Pioneer pin before offering my uncle wine next time!): 2006/2006-03-25_Ann_and_Dans_Wedding

The map is now up at
http://www.freeforum101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&mforum=universityarena

Entry Form:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/entryform.pdf

Overview map:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/plassey10kmap.pdf

Detailed map:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/plassey10kmap1.pdf

Best of luck to everyone who is in training!!!

A brief guide to software development in the real world. Aimed mainly at new developers: experienced programmers already know most of this. This guide is for hands-on programmers, not managers.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/1/28/32622/4244

Yesterday I really didn’t feel like doing the run - the weather was cat but Aoife was still enthusiastic and I’m so glad I went. Today was almost perfect - dry with a nice breeze and not that cold at all. The time - 42:01 which I’m very happy with considering the training I’ve done and the course - a nice few ups and downs and one large puddle. Dorel was there too and did a very good time, finishing well ahead of me, Kevin and Aoife were behind me then. And Dorel’s little baby did the course in his buggy too! Afterwards we went back to the town hall which looks like a blast from the past but I was very glad of the tea and sandwiches. I was nearly gone when they started drawing spot prizes and as luck would have it, I won Sunday Brunch for 2 in the Woodlands - very nice indeed.

Oh yeah I still saw most the Grand Prix at Emilia’s place. As expected Renault won by strategy and consistency, Ferrari came out very strong and even Jim Rosenthal said how they were an unknown quantity till this race. McLaren car looks interesting to day the least, Raikkonen is still my favourite of the two and if they’re consistent then we could have a good three-way battle on our hands but we certainly have two teams at the top. Even the midfield was full of battles between teams and I loved watching all those passes and pushing and shoving. Nico Rosberg seems to have done brilliantly setting the fastest lap time of the race, coming up from the back of the grid after a spin and he’s only 20!

To clarify - I’m talking about the new F1 season starting in Bahrain this weekend, should be interesting to see how well the teams have done over the Winter, the new teams, driver lineups and the new qualifying setup.

Did you know that it’s Spring here in Ireland but Winter everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere - they all wait till the equinox on the 21st Mar before declaring it to be Spring - article in Wikipedia

Back to the F1 anyway - I suspect Renault will continue to be consistent finishers and near the front, McLaren will be very fast a lot of the time but suffer from reliability problems and other incidents, Ferrari may or may not come back to the front and Honda are sounding good too.

So I think I’m going to do the Adare 10K on Sunday - just found out about it on Thursday but it’s a very manageable distance for me at this stage - not looking for any medals or anything. Aoife and I went to the gym yesterday since the weather was pretty poor. Now Aoife and I have been out a couple of times a weeks for the last few weeks and I had no trouble running, but in the gym without and ipod and the whirring of other treadmills it wasn’t all that interesting - might get some headphones and borrow someone’s mp3 player next time. But fair play to Aoife she started running and didn’t stop for well over and hour and a half - I started on a machine at the other end of the gym cos it was busy, moved over when there was one free, got bored and tried some of the weight machines. That was good actually cos I think I’ve got powerful legs and puny arms from indoor soccer and running. Then I came back to the treadmill and did a bit more.

Driving-wise I am now set to do the test in Limerick, probably will be due at the start of August if the waiting list is accurate. Both lessons went well this week - went out to Raheen on Tue and Moylish on Thu. Moylish is where one of the test centres is and I was surprised at how different it was. Firstly the area has quite a few hills, secondly the road outside the test centre is narrow and has cars parked on both sides and there’s a dip at the entrance. But it was also the first time I came across a crossroads with traffic lights and instead of a yellow box, they have a little white box to pull into for turning right - you either wait for a gap in the traffic or the green arrow…. I’d prefer a roundabout.

Oh yeah, this week we took on Ogra in outdoor soccer - the astroturf wasn’t booked properly so we had a kick-around in the bowl.It was 7-aside, YFG took the lead, then a second, ogra pulled one back, then two, then got a third. YFG equalized again and then noticed that Ogra were playing with an extra player! We applealed for their last goal to be disallowed but they got to play with 6 players for a while instead and it finished 3-all. A tug of war had been arranged too but didn’t go ahead cos Ogra didn’t want to do it on the grass, the road or the running track - I thought I smelled fear in the air…

Went for the first impulsive shopping trip last night - negotiated the drunken students well enough. And I got my space back today although the car park was beginning to fill up by the time I got there. I reversed in, straightened up and reversed in again and I’m pretty happy with the result:2006/Nokia_6600/Image_309_.jpg The only thing is that I’ve a driving lesson at 10 and I said we’d meet at home so I’ll be sacrificing the space - someone won’t believe their luck when they find it.

update - had driving lesson, went well apart from crazy pedestrians and now I’m parked over at the east gate - luckily I brought my umbrella

Locked the keys in the car :-O
I had a strange start to the day - woke up and went back to sleep till the phone rang, it didn’t - hadn’t set it so I missed the 9am rush for parking spaces. I still did a tour of the concert hall car park to no avail and parked at the east gate. It was then that habit caught me out - firstly I usually lock passenger doors everytime I leave a car. However I also have a habit of leaving the key in the ignition for driving instructors. Put the two together and then there’s a little problem. I didn’t mind too much really cos I have a spare key at home and it wasn’t too far.
That’s when things lot a little more annoying - I went home thinking Tom was there - his car was parked outside but he wasn’t and there was no answer from the door. Turns out that he is renewing his insurance and couldn’t drive today….so came back to UL, got his house key, back to my house and back to UL again. Now today is not the most pleasant of days to be walking and carrying a fairly heavy notebook too adds to it all. In the end it was all grand and I’m back on track.

Btw - day 1 the parking was like this 2006/Nokia_6600/Image_305_.jpg
day 2 we got to see the bungee jump 2006/Nokia_6600/Image_306_.jpg 2006/Nokia_6600/Image_307_.jpg 2006/Nokia_6600/Image_308_.jpg

I drove to work today for the first time - woohoo. The ice was quite a nuisance but some lukewarm water sorted it out. Getting in was no trouble and there was plenty of parking since it was 8.30 when I arrived. I just hope I get out of the car park okay this evening….Saturday I just went for a short hop over to Chawkes to get petrol under the supervision of Dec - thanks mate.

Btw, you can suggest what I should call my car if I need to coax it through a roundabout or some other awkward spot Poll on Bebo

Sunday I was off out to the far reaches of county Limerick with a local councillor and friends from YFG. Enda is coming to Kilmallock on the 9th and 10th so we dropped some leaflets in Croom (larger than I thought), Ballylanders, Galbally and maybe one more place, I forget now. Did you know there’s a place called Elton in Limerick too, not far from Emily and Hospital - they do know how to pick names down there.

Okay, I haven’t been to the Kinsale Road Roundabout but I’ve heard a lot about it. Now I can see what the fuss is about
eeek
The people of Cork must be competing with the magic roundabout in Swindon

Okay - Bebo isn’t fond of usernames with dots in them so try this link instead
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=363248643

I also made a nice little purchase over the weekend from Elverys www.elverys.ie - Asics Gel Fusion runners. I had heard that Asics were THE shoes for running but there was so much jargon it was unbelievable. Thankfully Dec put me right and now I hope to bounce along faster and longer than before