And so another weekend comes to an end. It’s been a quiet weekend as Ben’s been very tired as a result of full time school. I finished trimming the hedges yesterday and managed to cut the cable of the hedge trimmer. We also played board games and the boys played Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

Today, I did some research into the Subversion version control system with the intention of migrating to it for work. I’ve done the bulk of the work, so may even try to migrate this week or next. I also put Georgina’s new poster on the well. It’s this WTD comic strip. It looks good on the wall!

The drive to Birmingham was good. I left at about 8:10 and made it by 8:55. So the journey was around the same as my trip to the main office. The journey home was over an hour though… so need to work out a better route home!

At lunchtime I went for a walk to New Street. Our office in the Jewellery Quarter, so it’s about a 15 minute walk. I had a good workout as a result and I found the Apple store!

Today, I was in the main office which with James and Andy up in Birmingham was quieter. As a result, more tea was made and I was productive and improved my customer service by proactively dealing with a client :) I also got out at lunchtime and went to Haw Bridge, which crosses the Severn. It was much less interesting than I had hoped, so I’ll have to find somewhere else to go next time!

This evening was Ben’s first swimming lesson! He did really well though seemed a little scared of putting his entire body in the water. His teacher is really nice and handled him well. Afterwards, he commented that the water was cold, which when compared to a bath, I suppose it is!

Today we moved Andy and James into the new satellite office in Birmingham. It’s a serviced office that we are renting from another company that owns the building. I spent most of the day fighting with the network system to ensure we had enough access to get work done. It was surprising how long it took as there was an esoteric bug in the ADSL router that they have.

Sainsbury’s delivered this evening and managed to forget a fairly large part of the order too :(

Today I managed to get up early and so was able get things done before the kids got up. Very useful, so I’ll have to try and keep it up!

At work, we took delivery of the new laptop for Andy ready for starting our satellite office in Birmingham tomorrow with James. Tomorrow is going to be a fairly busy day as both Carl and myself are also going to Brum to ensure that everything is organised.

Today itself was a mixed bag as I mainly worked on a variety of bug fixes for various projects. I did manage to get in a little bit of design for Dawn though who was worried about the length of time a change request would take. I managed to distil the problem down to its bare bones and it turned out to be about an hour’s worth of work, which was nice.

Oh, and Wispa is back at the local garage in Gloucestershire!

No new pictures today, so here’s another one from yesterday :)

And so the weekend is over. This weekend was very busy for us with chores on Saturday and a visit on Sunday.

On Saturday, I caught up with my garden chores that had accumulated due to my USA trip and bad weather. I mowed the lawn, trimmed hedges and went to the tip multiple times. There’s still more to do, but the garden is looking much better and is much more ready for the winter. Georgina cooked a very nice roast dinner also which was very tasty :)

On Sunday, we went to Warwick Castle to meet up with Tim, Clare and Teagan. We haven’t seen them in a year or so and it was great to catch up with them. Teagan, in particular, is growing up and looking more and more like her mother which can only be a good thing. Warwick Castle itself was quite good, but the ghost tower event proved to be too scary for the kids. I particularly liked the displays in the Great Hall, like this one:

Finally made it to the end of the week. A relatively productive day as I managed to get some stuff done that’s been waiting for a good few weeks now. And it was pretty much all billable :)

I also managed to get to the post office to pay in a cheque which was nice. It was a lovely day; better than most of August in fact, so I spent a little while sitting in the sunshine too.

Today I managed to get some productive work done. The tiredness that I’ve suffered from this week is clearly over. This is a good thing as I have a very busy day tomorrow!

The biggest news of the day is that I’ve been accepted to speak at a PHP conference in Manchester. I’m really pleased as I want to get the experience and more exposure in the PHP community is only a good thing.

Ben had his first forest schools lesson today. He seemed to enjoy it, especially having to wear the yellow all-weather clothes.

Today, I took both kids swimming on my own as Georgina had a school meeting about a school trip for Jon in the summer. Swimming was good as the boys behaved well with Jon getting changed both times on his own. Ben starts next week, so was quite excited and said hello to Mark, his forthcoming teacher.

At work we have started making plans for opening our Birmingham satellite office. The current plan is to start next Tuesday and then I’ll be working up there two days per week – probably Thurs and Fri. As I had to leave early from work for swimming, I didn’t get to take any photographs though :(

I managed to get out at lunchtime for a short trip to Ashleworth Tithe Barn. I didn’t get any time to look around, so I’ll have to go back!

The boys had their school photos today which look good. I had a good evening as I fixed a bug in Zend_Config (easy) and learnt a bit about merging with Subversion (complicated)!