mhoulden

First unflocked post for ages. So what's been going on in the somewhat diminished house of Houlden? I'm still waiting to get grant of representation that will allow me to get my dad's affairs sorted out but the intestacy rules have some serious shortcomings about situations that weren't envisaged in the 1920s when they were drawn up, so it isn't that easy to sort out. Losing a parent is a big thing to deal with, especially when he was only 62, but I think winding up his estate is a good practical thing I can do for coping with it. It surprises me that organisations still act as if they don't have processes in place for dealing with deceased customers or clients. As I wrote in a letter to E.ON:

I write with reference to your letter of 12th January 2011 from XXX regarding my late father’s account. Frankly I was appalled by its condescending tone and the discourteous approach that EON has taken in this case so far. Domestic residences have been entitled to electricity supplies since at least the Electric Lighting Act of 1882 and I would hope that by now EON or its predecessors would have developed effective and sensitive procedures for closing the accounts of deceased customers.

There's a fair bit else going on that I may describe in a flocked post, but not in a public one.

Workwise I'm a redeployee (again) so I'm looking for a new job at the company. There are a couple of developer roles there but I'm also being asked to consider other stuff that I've tried before. Job searching doesn't take a lot of time so things are otherwise pretty quiet. At least I'm still working from home.

Gym-wise, after something of a hiatus over xmas I'm getting back into it. There's a BJJ seminar this Sunday and then I've put my name down to do another Thai interclub a week on Sunday. My weight did go up a bit over xmas and it's being tricky to shift, but I've definitely changed my lifestyle so much that there's no way I'm going back to the old ways. Now I'm getting back to normal and the weather's improving I can concentrate a bit more on bringing it down.

Something I'm after now is some kind of challenge. Not probate, or the gym, or work, or computer related, but something else. One idea is writing, but what? I've got quite a verbose style with influences from Bill Bryson and Charlie Brooker. My Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets are obviously one form but they're short and there's a lot I leave out, partly to avoid too much detail and partly because I don't like to mention everything about my life. Fiction is one idea: if music can have soundscapes it should be possible to do the same sort of thing with words, and I'm particularly interested in dystopian environments and the feeling of being "outside the system". Fiction would also give me the chance to describe situations without getting personally involved. If you know it's fiction you can change all sorts of details because it's made up.

Another idea is commentary, but on what subject? The minutiae of life can be pretty boring to read. I'm interested in politics and current affairs but I find writing something coherent can take a lot of effort because I want to check facts are correct and more reliable than Wikipedia. Same with covering the rituals and superstitions that infest sport. The other thing is getting people to read what I write. Publishing online is easy but there are zillions of blogs out there with no readers. There's the notes on Facebook as well but I find my friends list tends to shorten when I go into any sort of detail. For some reason being politically left wing and a sceptic when it comes to things like quack nutritionists and pseudo-scientific ideas doesn't go down too well in certain circles.

Ages since the last really long update. I think I've just got out of the habit of sitting down and writing long posts. Conversely I do a lot of status updates on Facebook or even Twitter because it's easier to write a single sentence or even just a fragment of one. Written English is not like spoken English and I refrain from using chavvy txtspk in the updates, even if there are limits on how long they can be. "Y" is the 25th letter of the alphabet, not an interrogative word. "Day" is a period of 24 hours, not the third person personal pronoun. Of course language changes and it's possible to be too prescriptive about how it's used. However, standard (written) English is a completely different dialect to the spoken sort and you don't spell things in the way that you would like people to read them out. Similarly, txtspk was invented with the specific purpose of getting as much into the 160 character limitation of an SMS. Twitter is limited to 140 characters for sure, but you can always post another tweet or just use shorter words. I go for the principle of being strict about what you send and lenient about what you receive, so if someone else wants to use that type of language I don't mind as long as I can understand it.

Anyway, life continues as normal. I'm still training 5 times a week, with the usual mixture of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Thai boxing and cycling. With it getting darker in the evenings I'm probably going to switch the midweek evening bike ride for a run. To get any kind of distance on the bike I need a reasonable proportion on of my route to be along the canal, but being unlit and somewhat isolated means I need to think about personal safety. Not everyone who goes along an urban canal towpath in the dark is there for entirely legit reasons, and also in the dark it can be harder to tell where the towpath isn't. I got back into running last year as a way of keeping fit while bike and arm were out of action and gradually built up to doing a mile in about 9 - 10 minutes and 6 miles in less than an hour.

On the Thai boxing front, I should hear in the next day or so whether or not I'll be fighting on the 18th of October. This will be in Harrogate and will be my first full contact fight, which means that I could win (or lose) by a knockout. It's 3 weeks tomorrow so I do need to know so I've got enough time to prepare. I've been put forward to fight at 86 kg which is the top end of Thai boxing cruiserweight class so I also need to find out what my weight is and how much I'll need to lose. Someone has nicked the scales from the gym so we'll need to get them back.

These days I don't have (or need) the relentless weight loss I had in the past. While I'm technically overweight, judging by the state of me in my profile pic there's absolutely nothing to worry about. I have a 34" waist, 42" chest, 25" thighs, and a resting blood pressure of 120/60 and resting pulse of 58. Not bad from where I was a few years ago. Friday will be my 31st birthday. Probably safe to say I've got a lot more ahead of me than I did 5 years ago.

I also seem to have got a new job at work. I was redeployed in May because of a short term budget shortage, got a project using Oracle and Linux to keep me occupied for a few months which is now coming to an end, and now I've got a new one which will involve C# and SQL Server development. This is a separate one from the one I mentioned on Facebook which is for a senior Windows developer working in a different bit of the company. It's supposed to be based in Wolverhampton and is a higher grade than my current one. On that one I'll just have to wait and see.

I've also been having a go at a bit of photography. Couple of shots here (On LJ) or the full set is on Flickr. I haven't taken many so far but it's a start.