Peace descends once more

So this morning is the first in 9 days that peace has reigned supreme chez Dungeekin.

The builders have, for the most part, finished the work on our revised living room - just the new floor to be laid (Mon/Tue of next week)then the skirting boards to be put in place.

Oh, and a metric buttload of decorating to be done.

But at least it's quiet.

Noise, Noise Noise!

My teeth are rattling in sync with the house, my ears are bleeding.....

We've got The Builders in.

Yes, after several months of indecision, wavering and even putting the house on the market, we decided to do the sensible thing, get rid of the unfeasibly large downstairs cloakroom and bring that salvaged space into an enlarged living room.

I mean, the size of that downstairs WC! Fine, I can understand building regs, but a wheelchair-accessible loo in a 3-storey house? That's just wrong.

So anyway, once the final decision was made things moved staggeringly quickly from quotes to agreement, and on Monday morning James the Builder rocked up and turned our once-beautiful living room into a symphony of concrete, new radiator pipes and breezeblock dust....

We're onto Day 3 of the build now, and right now James is taking down the old wall, going through it with a power drill roughly the size of a small child. I'm hiding in my top-floor study, feeling the vibrations coming through the building and telling myself that it's all going to be worth it in the end.

Photos to follow once I can be bothered to upload them...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes....

So 2008 started the same way it finished - with me working night shifts.

However, changes to the way we work means that this is the last week I'll have to spend every night sat at the laptop, gazing blearily at a monitoring screen waiting for something to break!

Yes, we're finally moving to an on-call structure - along with a pattern change that means no more late shifts finishing at 11pm, and just one working weekend in three!

In honour of this momentous occasion, I've created a mini-office (with the much-appreciated help of my father-in-law). The computers now reside on the top floor in what was formerly a walk-in wardrobe, but now has a large desk area and multiple shelves.

I was agonizing over how to get the Mac onto the network, and finally decided that I simply couldn't justify £85-worth of Ethernet over Power for just one iMac. So I've simply bought a USB dongle that claims to be Mac-compatible. Fingers crossed!

Now all I need is a new Linux box, and I'm sorted.....