Screw you white company… this is the blanket I have been searching for forever, you got my hopes up so high when I saw it was on sale, only for the gray colour to be out of stock.

oh wool rich blanket
how I love you
I thought you had some synthetic
but I found out you were wool/alpaca
then I loved you even more
then you were out of stock

um hello poem of the year.

One of the major downsides of moving countries is the whole temporary redecoration thing. When we arrived we needed bed linen etc.. and I find it really hard to spend money on things that I know we will not be able to take home with us. Bedding is one of those things that I think you should spend as much money as you can on because you spend so much time in bed and good cotton sheets just improve with age, they get softer and more comfortable the more you wash them. However the good ones are obviously going to be expensive. So we have ended up with some really dodgey sheets because I couldn’t get my head around spending the money. And a horrible polyester filled duvet which is really really not cutting it… sigh.

I love nice modern/contemporary soft styled bedrooms. Our furniture at the moment is a lot lighter than what I would ideally choose if I had disposable income – I picked up this bed off eBay for some ridiculously cheap amount- but its really a light pine not dark like in the picture and plus I don’t have the bed curtains.

We had a beautiful real possum throw that decorated our last bed – and now it’s approaching winter I am looking to get a throw or bedspread on the cheap – time to hunt down IKEA and eBay I think.

I love neutrals for bedrooms – so relaxing and romantic and I need to get some cushions that set the bed off. Watch this space – before and after photos to come eventually (I hope).

Bye bye to my work and my workmates.. it has been cool working with everyone from BCM.. I certainly have learnt a few things that I will take with me .. hehe… I will miss you all.

Im having issues with .NET 2.0 WSE 3… My web services respond fine to one client but not another. Both of which are on my local machine. So you think it would be an easy fix…

The request failed with HTTP status 415: Unsupported Media Type.

I have seen all the advice saying to add <soapServerProtocolFactory type=”Microsoft.Web.Services3.WseProtocolFactory, Microsoft.Web.Services3, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35”/> to web.config… But my configs are all looking good so what gives.

Well it appears it was something funky to do with MTOM – I had MTOM settings off on the client and on on the server. Switching it off appears to have worked

Now onto the next issue. Sigh. Do not install .NET 3.5 if you still need to publish .NET 2 Web Services….epic issues ftl.

So I got asked to make a cake for my boss at work. First they suggested a 3D Porsche, and after reading this, I decided that was a decidedly bad (read screw that no way in hell can I do that, ever) plan.  So I set about making a Porsche crest from fondant and icing.

Instructions and Pics after the jump

I photoshopped up a Porsche logo outline and printed it out multiple times and then attacked them with scissors. I then rolled out some brownish fondant and placed the logo on top and began to trim away…

then the smaller middle piece

I then dusted the fondant with gold luster (edible) and a drop of yellow food coloring to get it more yellow gold colored, and left it out overnight to dry.

then the fun part (not). Decorating. This gave me insane hand cramps lol…

And then I made a Nigella Lawson Chocolate Fudge cake (which happens to be the best chocolate cake ever btw – I will post it later) and placed the Posche Crest carefully on top and shaped it a bit with my fingers because it was still a bit soft and the top of my cake was by no means flat (stupid icing skills)

I probably could have taken more pictures but I was so so tired and grumpy when I had finished I just wanted to go to bed lol.

• change passport $150
• change name on drivers license $31.50
• change name at the bank
• close my old bank account that is accruing interest like crazy (not the good kind)
• make photocopies of important docos.

All of this so I can go travelling without worry that I have changed my name recently… sigh. Its so expensive!!

Ahh well at least I get new passport photos, hehehe

Well having just spent 5 hours of my life trying to work a Vista MCE remote I am asking myself why, why did I not research this more before I did it. Sigh.

I bought the Hauppauge PVR150MCE edition. Why did I not just get the normal edition? I think the name sounded cooler at the time or something. Sigh.

SO anyways, there I was with my copy of Windows XP (just plain old vanilla XP, not MCE) and this darn Vista Remote/Reciever. I plug in the reciever and get a New Device found, which it picks up to be the eHome Infrared Transceiver. Automatic updates doesn’t find anything. So I start googling away, and get more and more depressed and frustrated over the course of about 2 hours. I find a slew of forum posts saying that you should be able to install the Rollup 2 for Windows Media Centre and it will install the correct drivers sweet.

Wrong! Epicly wrong. Times ten. After trying every single combination of random drivers and Updates etc etc the bloody thing was still not working. Why on earth can their not be a simple, Windows XP driver lurking out there???

In the end I ended up editing the INF file for the irblaster drivers by adding the unrecognized device id to the file. Will post up details later. Probably not the best solution but I was able to use HID to program all the remotes functions and mesh it up with GBPVR.

If only I didn’t have a husband that likes watching SKY so much, I could have it all set up by now!! But a certain someone can’t live without un-interrupted TV viewing

well this week I did a bit of a crazy… me and 2 of the other guys at work somehow ended up working thru most of the night and cramming 2 hours of sleep in before waking up for another full days work :S

well, thats not entirely true, its not like we worked entirely thru the night… we had many breaks to retain some sanity that involved…

• quake 3 LAN
• swiss ball soccer (highly recommended – just make sure not to do indoors over other peoples desks..)
• wrapped one dudes entire desk and everything located on it in newspaper
• a multitude of drinking games…

Ok that sounds like we didnt do much work but I swear we did. I probably got another whole days work in. However this was possibly counteracted a tad by the fact that the next day I was only at 1/2 productivity or so, sleeping on the meeting room floor on 2 couch cushions with NO air conditioning was definitely the low light.

Good times.

And even better, there is still crap loads of work to do. Ahh. Thank goodness its Friday, woot.  I can guarantee I wont be doing that again though. I have missed 4 gym sessions in a row this week