Nick wanted to discuss something thata couple of other members of the team had been working on, so after the stand-up we all went into the meeting room to discuss it. Basically Nick wanted to ascertain whether what they were doing with regards to some testing - using the live message file as part of the unit tests. I have to day that I don't think what they're doing is correct and certainly goes against the grain of all that we've been taught, Jim and Steve were characteristically sitting on the fence, however the other two team members started getting very defensive and overly aggressive so Nick decided the best thing to do was to drop it. So this is yet another example of what we'd been taught by Thoughtworks being eroded away. It would have been interesting to have had one of the Thoughtworks people in the room as they would have absolutely wiped the floor with the pair of them!

Once that fiasco was out of the way, I continued with the XSLT stuff from yesterday. Eventually managing to get a rolling total onto the bottom of the manifest, but it's not a page total as required. I'd already spent quite a while trying to get the page total working but kept going round in circles, so I suggested it be passed over to our technical lead. We'll see how he gets on...

Later on I had a few minor changes to make to the styling, I got Nick involved as well. In fact he showed me how he'd been using Firebug to assist him previously. It's not something I've used for any CSS, but from what he showed me it could be a tool in my arsenal from now on!

I was supposed to be going out with my old Air Force buddy Stevie Carolan tonight, but I postponed it as I'm on call this week. My eBay auctions ended this evening so I got things packaged up ready to send out. The majority of people paid up so I'll be making a trip to the Post Office tomorrow.

I'm on call this week and true to form I got called out last night. The problem wasn't a big deal to sort out - and I was able to deal with it without calling Roger! I was called about 1:40am and it took me about 40 minutes to sort (most of that time was spent setting things up so that I could get the requisite authority). It then took me about two and a half hours to get back to sleep.

Amazingly I didn't feel a all tired this morning - in fact I felt positively awake! At work I managed to sort Philip out with his error message box - a bit of rethinking of the jQuery did the trick.

Nick and I went out for a brief walk at lunchtime - the weather was a bit inclement.

In the afternoon I managed to start working with Steve on formatting an XML document using XSLT. Something I haven't used before, but it's not too difficult to pick up. I have noticed that the documents that have been done so far could have been done better. They've been laid out using the old way people used to lay HTML pages out - using tables, but there is no need for them to have been done in this manner because XSLT has the facility to position blocks. If I get chance I'll make sure these documents are refactored to use the more favoured method, that way they will be easier to customise and control, plus they'll be easier to read and to maintain.

By the end of the day I was feeling a bit tired, however I still made it to the gym in the evening and that woke me up a bit. However an early night was in order!

I continued with the styling work this morning, the plan being to get onto something else this afternoon. By lunchtime pretty much the bulk was done, but I did need to make a few minor tweaks when I spotted some issues. I then gave a colleague a hand with some problems he was having with getting an error message to come out on the screen, which further delayed starting on the next piece of work. The plan now is to get that started tomorrow, once I've put this other problem to bed.

The weather was rather wet so Nick and I didn't bother to go out for a wander around the block.

One of the companies I'd called last week about coming to have a look at trimming our wasteland came just after we got home from work to give us a quote this evening.- it wasn't the same chap that was meant to be coming on Saturday (who definitely won't be getting the work). This chap was rather professional and to be fair to him, he has phoned me a few times to find out when would be convenient for him to come. The quote he gave wasn't too bad, but he said he leave it with us and I was to cal him if we wanted the work doing. Which we probably will do.

After he'd been we both went to the gym, it was really busy when we first arrived, so much so that there was barely a piece of equipment free! Thankfully it did quieten down fairly quickly so we were able to get on and do stuff.

The morning was taken up with the retrospective that was rescheduled from yesterday. Not much good feeling about within the team, I had my say about what I thought was wrong, backed up in part by Nick - and Stuart surprisingly! My feeling is that in the team we have two camps - the ones that have been shown the Thoughtworks way of working and those that haven't (and don't seem to want to). I iterated that I wasn't happy with the erosion of the Thoughtworks way. It will be interesting to see how my concerns are addressed.

Once that was over I did a bit more work on the styling, this time pairing with Steve. We came up with something we were both pretty happy with but it will need a bit of tweaking, which we hope we'll be able to get done in the morning.

Nick and I went out for our usual lunchtime walk around the block. I also bid on (and won!) a jacket on eBay using my phone - not the most reliable way to do it, but at least it did work - just a bit slow.

After we'd had tea, Nikki cleaned up in the lounge while I had the unenviable task of cleaning the downstairs loo!

We called in at he Post Office to pick up a parcel this morning, it was the Adobe Illustrator upgrade CD I'd bought on eBay last week. Niiki wanted it for some up and coming work she's going to be doing.

There a some roadworks that started today in the centre of Leeds, blocking off once of the sliproads on the inner ring road, consequently the traffic was a bit heavy around that area. Apparently the roadworks are going to take 20 weeks (probably longer if previous experience is anything to go by! ) - what fun, especillay when the kids are back at school.

At work I did a little bit more CSS work before we had the showcase. Again it was disappointing the lack of feedback we got from those present. I don't think the majority are fully engaged into the agile thing at all.

I had a parcel to send off at lunchtime - not an eBay item, but some packets of crisps for Steffi, one of Nikki's Sasha friends in Germany. She kindly sent Nikki a CD last week and wanted some salt and vinegar crisps in return - they are difficult to get hold of in Germany! Interestingly Steffi lives in Hameln (or Hamelin in English) in fact she lives in Afferde which is a village just down from Hastenbeck. where we used to live when my father was based out in Germany.

The afternoon would have ordinarily been the retrospective, but due to Matt the BA having to visit a customer tomorrow we had the estimating session and the retrospective is in the morning. The session wasn't as painful as previous ones, however I think there has been some serious underestimation of the work involved - time will tell whether I'm right...

I installed Adobe Illustrator on the Mac which was easy enough, we went to the gym and keep fit as usual on a Monday and I rang my mum when we got back. Then after watching a bit of television it was time for bed.

We didn't get up quite as early as planned, but we did still manage to go to the gym, mind you Pudsey was full of runners for the Pudsey 10K and we thought we'd struggle to get a parking spot, but it wasn't an issue thankfully.

I had hoped to get my scooter started today but it was a rather miserable day weather-wise, wet and windy, certainly not a day to be outside, so I got some more eBay listings together while Nikki did some more baking. By the end of the day I had 17 items to list, though I'm not expecting to make my fortune from any of them!

Nick rang up in the afternoon wanting to know if I could do him a favour by buying some vacuum cleaner bags from eBay for him. Naturally I duly obliged.

A bit later on I was going to have a look at the styling stuff I'd worked on on Friday but I hadn't copied the relevant files so I wasn't able to do so.

We watched a few bits on television later on, mostly stuff we'd recorded but we did also watch the Sir Bobby Robson football match between England and Germany which was quite good.

My car was booked in for its MOT at 9:45 this morning and we also had somebody coming at 10am to give us a quote for the 'wilderness'that is our piece of garden at the side. That meant us having to be up quite early. Thankfully the garage where my car was going for its MOT is only at the bottom of the hill. I took dropped it down about 9:20 to pick up later.

We then spent the morning awaiting the chap coming to look at the garden but he never showed. I hadn't heard from the garage about my car so I walked down to pick it just after 12. No problems, it passed the MOT without any issues which was a bit of a relief!

Once we'd had lunch we nipped out to Crown Point to have a look in TK Maxx. I got a shirt and Nikki got a couple of gym tops. We then went to get some bits from Morrisons. We were going to have another night out, but decided it was probably a bit excessive and so got some beers.

After tea we watched the film 'Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me' that we'd recorded last week. We hadn't seen it before, but had watched the TV series when it was on television in the 1990s. It was meant to be a prequel to the television series but actually was partly a sequel in that it gave quite a number of answers. It was a long film at nearly two and a half hours, but entertaining nevertheless.

Nikki had a 'management time-out' day at Elland Road today, so she made her way there and I made my own way to work. That meant me having to drive down Armley Road in the 'single occupant' lane, however the traffic was even lighter than it had been earlier in the week so it wasn't an issue.

I did a bit more work on some styling but only experimenting with some colours. I didn't come up with anything I was that happy with, so work in progress.

After work Nick wanted to know if I wanted to go for a beer with him, but I had to decline as I had to drive myself home!

Nikki'd thing finished around 3pm so she went off to do the shopping. I left work around 4:30pm and was home for 5. We had another night out, we were going to walk down to The Bankhouse, but it was a bit late by the time we'd sorted out what we were doing, so we decided to go to Kebabeesh instead. We got a taxi from the Marsh and had to direct the taxi driver - and when we got there he didn't know how much the fare was!

The food was nice as usual and we were both rather full afterwards!

Today was my 44th birthday and so at the stand-up I said that becuase of that I'd be taking it easy today! That didn't mean slacking at all, just doing something within my comfort zone!

We haven't got a great deal to show for the showcase on Monday so it was suggested that we get the screen navigation in place, plus some styling for the application, which I was glad to oblige! Philip paired with me and we got quite a bit done, though I wasn't particularly happy with some of the colours we'd used, but at least it looks better than it did!

I saved the opening of my birthday cards until we got home. Not many presents though - Nikki got me the monopod I wanted and I got a £40 voucher for the Turkish Baths in Harrogate - hmmm!

We went out for tea, pretty much the same as last year, a couple of drinks in Bar 57 and then across the road to the Chinese, which was very nice. I was pretty tired when we got home although it wasn't all that late - my age obviously!

Not a good day again it has to be said - I had to have a meeting firs thing to let Paul and Stuart know that 've just about had my fill of the thing I've been working on and it's really getting me down. They agreed I should move onto doing something else and so I helped with automating some acceptance tests.

In the afternoon as a bit of light relief I did a small amount of work on Plone - there was an issue with images not displaying correctly in Internet Explorer (although they were fine in Firefox) . I wasn't sure how long it would take. I suspected it might have been an issue with the style sheet and my suspicions we confirmed. A quick addition of a z-index attribute on the image style seemed to do the trick. If nothing else I did manage to get something constructive achieved.

In the evening we both went to the gym and then watched some bits on television before getting a relatively early night.

It's good to tell the summer holidays have started because the traffic was really light!

AFter last week and given that Andy was refactoring some of the stuff I had been working on I decided to concentrate my efforts on looking at some of the acceptance criteria and puting validation around the input fields. I wasn't supposed to be working on any of the front-end stuff, but as everyone else was busy doing other thing I thought it a good idea to make a start.

At lunchtime I popped out to get some petrol and incredibly it wasn't busy!

Nikki had something she wanted to get finished and so worked a bit late.

When we got home I needed to find a box that I could package up the lens that I sold on eBay yesterday. We've got plenty of boxes in the loft but it took me a while to find one suitable!

A bit later on we went to the gym and keep fit.

The day started out well enough I suppose, but went downhill fairly quickly. I was supposed to be working with Andy to get two parts of the application (save and print) married up. The problem was he was still refactoring the controller. I had a look at outputting the PDF file for the label into a separate window. I didn't have a problem with the window part of it, but as I haven't a clue how the PDF label thing works it wasn't long before I became unstuck and so didn't know where to go from there. Looking at the controller it's a real mess, I'm not sire what Andy's doing with his refactoring, but it's certainly not refactoring that needs to happen!

What needs to happen is we need somebody with the technical knowledge to guide us on what we've done wrong and how it should be refactored to put it right. Without that all I can see happening is us digging a deeper and deeper hole that's going to be harder and harder to get out of.

I had to nip out again at lunchtime, this time to the Post Office, to send the lens off to its new owner in Greece. At least it wasn't that busy, but sometime the woman who owns it can be rather rude and today was one of those occasions.

I took in the chocolates and cake that Nikki had made at the weekend - they went down very well. When I sent out the email a swarm of people came and there wasn't much left after they'd gone!

We had a visit from my sister Jacqueline, her hubby Andrew and son Ben in the evening, they stayed for a couple of hours. After they'd gone I did a few more listings for eBay.

It's good to tell the summer holidays have started because the traffic was really light!

AFter last week and given that Andy was refactoring some of the stuff I had been working on I decided to concentrate my efforts on looking at some of the acceptance criteria and puting validation around the input fields. I wasn't supposed to be working on any of the front-end stuff, but as everyone else was busy doing other thing I thought it a good idea to make a start.

At lunchtime I popped out to get some petrol and incredibly it wasn't busy!

Nikki had something she wanted to get finished and so worked a bit late.

When we got home I needed to find a box that I could package up the lens that I sold on eBay yesterday. We've got plenty of boxes in the loft but it took me a while to find one suitable!

A bit later on we went to the gym and keep fit.

Up and off to the gym first thing.

The weather was even worse than yesterday - much more rain, so we weren't able to trim the shrubbery again. We took some bottles to the bottle bank and then went to Morrisons to get some bit for Nikki to di a bit of baking - cakes for me to take in for my birthday this week.

Nikki continued making some chocolates and I started creating the eBay listings for the stuff I'd photographed yesterday. I made quite good use of GarageSale for the Mac, so much so in fact that I bought the full version - well at £28 I'd be daft not to!

I don't know where the time goes when listing stuff on eBay, but the afternoon just flew by. I actually got one item listed and up on eBay - one of the camera lenses that I'd bought recently. I put it up as a Buy-It-Now and it sold within a few hours!

We watched some bits on television in the evening, but not much of note really.

We had to nip into Pudsey first thing to pick up a parcel - a Spyder ski top that I'd bought on eBay during the week. From there we went into Bradford - Nikki wanted to take some shoes back to TK Maxx that she'd bought last week but were too tight for her.

Had the weather been any good we would have made a start on trimming the shrubbery at the side, but it was windy and threatening showers all day so we didn't bother.

Nikki started making some chocolates, I had a go at some more flash photography, this time it was slightly more successful - using the flash meter this time and it worked wonders! I managed to get everything photographed, all I've got to do now is list the items!

In the afternoon there was a Japanese animated adaptation of Metropolis on so I recorded it and we watched it in the evening. However it wasn't a patch on the original and was actually quite boring so we didn't watch it all.

First thing I had my second of three one to ones with Paul. After giving it some consideration over the past couple of days, I told him that my problem was with Andy. It was only meant to be a quick ten minutes, but ended up being half an hour. At the end of it we came to the conclusion (on my suggestion) that it would be worth me havong a chat with Andy in person to let him know my concerns. That's exactly what I did - straight after the stand-up. I think it was worthwhile and definitely cleared the air, so we'll see how things turn out over the coming weeks...

Once all that was out of the way Nick and I continued where we left off yesterday and we thought we'd made good progress until we tried to run the unit tests and the majority of them failed. So much for test-driven development! We'd been using the acceptance tests to drive out what we needed to do, but that obviously wasn't the right thing to do - which we know now!

We had to come clean to Paul and Stuart. They suggested we pass it over to Andy for him to have a look at, which we did but with a heavy heart.

It was a relief to get the week out of the way!

No dramas today! Philip was back - so he obviously hadn't contracted swine flu!

Nick and I cracked on, but still came up against some hurdles and so didn't get as far as we'd hoped, although by the end of the day we had at least got something coming back to the screen. We did enlist Philip's help as he understands the way the data hangs together better than us.

That means now there is all the acceptance criteria (and there is a lot! ) to go through and make sure we've got them covered! What are the chances?

It was the usual gym and keep fit in the early evening. I spoke to my mum on the phone to find out how she'd enjoyed the Great Yorkshire Show on Tuesday. I also rang Matt & Charlotte to let them know that our planned get together on 15th August could go ahead as planned.

I had my one to one with Paul this morning - although he had to shuffle things around to accommodate mine as I told him to was likely to take longer than the half hour he'd allocated...

As it was it lasted an hour and a quarter, well I had quite a lot to get off my chest. I've been getting pretty frustrated with the way things have been going (as I think I've made abundantly obvious to the regular readers!) and it was time to let him know my thoughts. He listened and took notes so we shall see how things pan out. I've got to have another chat with him on Friday and then again next Wednesday to see how things are going - I'll keep you posted!

It was also interesting to note that other people obviously aren't very happy because nobody's one to one was particularly short!

Due to the announcement about swine flu yesterday, Philip thought it best not to come in as he was feeling unwell, with a high temperature, sore throat and general malaise.

Once that was over (and Nick had had his one to one) we continued where we'd left off yesterday. It involved a bit more work than we'd anticipated because everything we did had knock-on effects on other tests which we needed to get sorted before we could continue. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to get the work completed.

Nikki and both went to the gym early evening and then watched some bits on television, the new series of Dragon's Den started.

As I mentioned yesterday, we had an estimating session today, but thankfully it didn't last all day, just all morning. There was quite a bit of discussion and disagreement which was to be expected really.

During the session we were interrupted as there was an announcement to be made out in the main office. The last time this happened it was about jobs so there was a bit of murmuring wondering what it was about - especially as that we are all incredibly busy. Thankfully it wasn't anything to do with jobs, instead it was to announce that somebody from the Leeds site had been diagnosed with swine flu. That set the tongues wagging wondering who it could be - there are a couple fo people off sick at the moment, but we're not sure that it's actually somebody from our office!

Nick and I went out for a walk at lunchtime to let off a bit more steam. We then had to deal with a broken build kindly left to us by some table changes that nobody communicated to us.

It took us a while to get that sorted, but then we were able to concentrate on getting back to the story Tall Tony and I had been working on last week. We actually made some good progress and if we can get another good stab at it tomorrow we should be somewhere close to completing it which will be good!

In the evening I spoke to our friends Matt & Charlotte and Jonny on the phone. I was on the phone to them for quite a bit of time. I had planned to do some more eBaying, but didn't get a chance, however I did download GarageSale which is an eBay listing program for the Mac and it looks to be pretty good.

I also got IntelliJ set up so that I'd be able to communicate with Nick, that worked so we can now instant message each other via IntelliJ, which is quite good.

We then watched a couple of things on the box, including the last episode of the second series of Flight of the Conchords, which has been mildly amusing, but perhaps not as good as the first series.

Well I can honestly say I didn't actually do any coding today. We had the showcase, which was a bit of a waste of time as there wasn't a huge amount to show.

Nick and I went out for a bit of a stroll at lunchtime to get some fresh air and to vent a bit of frustration.

It was the retrospective this afternoon, which was pretty good, there are quite a number of things that came out of it.
Although I do have some concerns, especially around the QA side of things.

Tomorrow will be yet another day of estimating - oh what fun!

It was the usual gym and keep fit in the evening - the rest yesterday must have done me some good as I felt quite energetic.

Andy the 'lead' developer mentioned something called Selenese which he thought might help with creating tests, but I've had a look into it tonight and it transpires that Selenese isn't actually a tool, it's the language that Selenium uses. I had a look into some tools and came up with two or three. The way I look at it is that the QA should be able to write Selenium tests rather than introducing yet another tool into the equation.

This morning we did have a lie-in - although it wasn't as long as we'd have liked, due to the flaming kids across the street banging their football against the wall outside our house.

We gave the gym a miss and after breakfast Nikki went to Morrisons to do the shopping, I washed up and did a few other bits. We trimmed a few brambles in the wasteland at the side of the house. Ideally the whole lot needs trimming, but the weather was a bit windy an not ideal.

I then had a strum on my guitar a bit later on, something I haven't done for a while, Nikki did some ironing.

We watched some bits on the box in the evening and I spoke to my mate Andy on the phone.

We didn't have too much to get up for but we didn't lie-in that long, however we did need to pop into Leeds as Nikki wanted to see if she could fins an outfit for Kevin's daughter Charlotte's 18th party tonight, plus we needed to get a present.

The present wasn't a problem, the Swarovski shop game up trumps on that score - a nice little flowery necklace. Nikki's outfit proved to be a bit trickier. We must have been into every shop in Leeds, but couldn't find anything suitable.

We had lunch at Zizzi's - a bit extravagant but we don't do it very often. On the way we bumped into a lad Scotty, who I used to work with at Cypher Group in Morley. I don't think I've seen him since I left so it was quite nice to catch up.

As I've mentioned earlier we were going to Charlotte's 18th - it was at the Queens Hotel in Leeds and it has to be the poshest 18th party we've ever attended! I don't recall going to the Queens Hotel before, but inside it's a really it is grand, very art deco.

It was a proper sit-down do - more akin to a wedding than an 18th! We didn't know anyone sat on our table but we soon got talking so that wasn't an issue. It was a good night, the live music wasn't fantastic but most people seemed to enjoy it. We left about 11;15pm to get the bus home and it was absolutely chucking it down. Thankfully the bus goes from just outside the station, just around the corner.

Again I firgot to take my camera so we don't have any photographs.

We had quite a busy day, it was Tall Tony's last day and we needed to get the story we'd been working on finished. Something that we managed, but in doing so it has left a huge amount of code that needs refactoring. In fact the whole code base is a bit of a mess, so I think as part of the next iteration some time will need to be set aside for that.

The day went pretty quickly. Sad in a way that it's the end of Tall Tony's contract, he's been a great member of the team and unfortunately we won't have anyone there with the knowledge we need to answer technical questions. Oh well, we shall just have to see how we get on. Tony did say if there is anything then we can give him a call and we could well see him again later on in the year.

In the evening Nikki and I were going out. We were going to see the St Joseph's RC Drama Group show. This summer's play was called 'Friendly Matches' and was based around a primary school football team. It was quite enjoyable, at the end of the day the people partaking aren't professionals so some of the effects didn't quite work, but we still enjoyed it. However unlike last year I forgot to take my camera so we don't have any photographs.

Afterwards we all went for a drink at the Fox and Grapes, it was good to catch up with some friends we hadn't seen for a while.

We were awoken this morning by a DHL delivery man bringing us a parcel (a couple of teeshirts that Nikki had ordered from Germany last week). It's a good job he came when he did otherwise we'd have slept in! Nikki had obviously knocked the switch on the alarm clock!

Work was pretty much a re-run of yesterday (without any merge issues!), I continued working with Tall Tony and we managed to get quite a bit further, although we did have a few hurdles to overcome along the way. With a bit of luck we should have the bulk of it done by tomorrow.

As per usual on a Thursday it was gym and keep fit. Once we'd got back I spoke to my mum on the phone, we then had tea and watched a couple more bits on the box.

The first job of the day was to sort out the merge hell from yesterday afternoon. I enlisted Tall Tony's help again and we got it sorted quite quickly. Philip and Jim were still working on the data stuff so I paired with Tony to continue with the story.

It's turning out to be a bit of an epic - more complicated than first envisaged. We got quite a number of tests written and some information coming back to the web page but there is still much more functionality to do. Tony finishes on Friday and it's the end of the iteration, I just hope we can get the bulk of the work done by then!

I spoke to Kevin to find out when it's convenient to drop Charlotte's laptop down to him. It's looking like that won't be until next week due to one thing or another! So Charlotte's just going to have to wait for her 18th birthday present - even though it was her birthday last Saturday - it's a good job she's a patient girl!

Nikki and I went to the gym in the early evening and then watched a couple of bits on the box.

There was quite a bit more work required on the data side of things, which Philip worked on with Jim. That left me to crack on with the story Philip and I had been working on yesterday. I managed to get a few tests written and the code around them, however in the afternoon when I came to check-in I had merge hell. I had to enlist the help of Tall Tony to get it sorted. To get me back on track we had to essentially dump all the stuff I'd written which meant having to redo it all.

Once I'd rewritten it and came to check-in for the second time, just before going home I had more merge issues. It has to be said the subversion plug-in for RAD is absolutely diabolical and in my opinion is not the right tool for a large development team that need to check-in on a regular basis. Everyone I've spoken to about it says "Well that's just how it is, merging is always an issue, whatever IDE you use." As we all know that isn't strictly true. IntelliJ handles merging much better, but we're not allowed to mention that.

After work we went off to Morley to pick up the laptop I'd ordered for Kevin. It took us a while to get there and to find the place, then I was waiting a while to be served, but at least I got it.

I have to say it's a very nice laptop, I spent the evening making sure it had the necessary software installed, which was slow going due to Windows Vista.

Indie must have been really tired because she didn't stir when we got up, she was slept inbetween us and then when we got up she was still in the same position when we left for work!

At work I started work on another story with Philip, leaving Jim to do the refactoring we talked about on Friday. Working with Philip wasn't that bad. He tends to be quite narrow-minded and has the opinion that his way is the only way, but to be fair there wasn't a great deal of that today. We did spend a good part of the day getting data set up so that we can ensure the tests we write will pass once we've got the code written!

During the morning I had a call from a delivery man who was trying to deliver the laptop I ordered for my mate Kevin. I told him to leave it with Mike over the road at No 3, but he said he wasn't able to do that and it had to be delivered to me personally. He said he'd leave a card and then I'd have to speak to his depot to arrange what to do. So I gave them a call when we got home and I've arranged to pck it up one eveing this week, probably tomorrow.

We did the usual Monday gym and keep fit and then had a relatively early night - still needing recover from the weekend callouts...

I had yet another call last night which was linked to one of the problems I'd had last night. The email that Roger sent me gave details of what to do, so thankfully it only involved a few minutes.

When it came to getting up I was still feeling pretty tired, however I did get up as we had to go to the gym. That actually woke me up good and proper!

After we got home and got sorted it was lunchtime. Once we'd nicely had lunch it was time to sit down and watch the men's tennis final from Wimbledon - Roger Federer v. Andy Roddick. It turned out to be an epic of a match with Roddick winning the first set, Federer winning the next two, Roddick winning the fourth and then the fifth being eventually won by Federer 16 games to 14! In all the match lasted just under four and a half hours! We both felt quite sorry for Andy Roddick, he looked heartbroken at not having won, poor lad and he gave put all he had into it, but in the end Federer's fitness won through. Roddick's serve hadn't been broken until the crucial point in the match. Shmae - it would have been good to see Roddick win.

Part way through the tennis we has a glass of Pimms (with ice and lemonade), we managed to get a bottle quite cheaply from Morrisons yesterday. Nikki hasn't had it before and I don't think I've had it since my days at RAF Hereford in the mid 1980s! I wasn't sure whether Nikki would like it, but she was pleasantly surprised, I couldn't remember what it was like and yes it was quite nice, although I don't think I could drink a huge amount of it.

We had tea once the tennis was over and then I rang my mate Andy as I hadn't spoken to him for a while. We then wacthed a few bits on the box, including a couple of episodes of Swiss Railway journeys - which is a nice gentle Sunday evening program.

I was called out another two times last night, once at 12:45am and then again at 4am. Both were problems I didn't have a clue about either and I couldn't get hold of Roger, so I had to call Matthew Evans instead. I did send Roger an email about the issues and he sent me a rather lengthy reply back about what he'd done to fix the problems and what to do tonight if the same thing happened.

It's a good job we didn't have anything to do this morning - I was pretty tired and so didn't get up until 11am.

We nipped out to get a few bits in the afternoon, but I was still feeling pretty tired, so much so that I had to have a lie down when we got home!

It was the Wimbledon women's final - Serina Williams against her sister Venus. We didn't watch it, but Serina won.

In the evening we were going to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Grand Theatre in Leeds and had talked about going out for a bit of tea beforehand. However it didn't quite pan out (mainly due to the constraints of time) that way and we had tea at home. We laso had to get a taxi into Leeds as the buses don't run that often on an evening.

We made it in plenty of time, arriving at the theatre for 7pm. The show didn't start until 7:30pm, so we had a drink in the bar before taking our seats.

The show surprised us both, it was actually better than we thought it was going to be! The dancing was terrific as was the singing. We both came away having really enjoyed it and it further emphasised how disappointing War of The Worlds was...

The show finished at 10pm, we then went to All Bar One and had a couple of drinks in there before catching the bus home.

It was a rather warm night last night and so I had trouble sleeping and to top it all I was called out - twice! Once at 1am and then again at 3am. Consequently I didn't get a huge amount of sleep, but amazingly I didn't feel all that tired at work (just when I got home!).

Jim and I cracked on quite nicely and managed to get everything complete on the story we started yesterday. So we've got a calendar widget working that passesa date back and retrieves some booking from the database with some new columns added all with tests written around it. Which doesn't sound like a great deal and to be honest it really isn't, but with our limited skill-set it's a bit of an achievement!

There is some major refactorage required as we do have a bit of duplication here and there, so that's Monday's task.

In the tennis it was men's semi-final day. The hope that Andy Murray would play Roger Federer in the final were dashed as Andy Roddick beat Murray. That means we'll have to wait at least until next year to see a Brit in the finals!

We watched a couple of bits on television including the penultimate episode of Dexter which was rather good.

It was quite a productive day - Jim and I managed to get the calendar widget working and fully tested. We then moved on to getting the JSP talking to the database using the selected date - again all fully tested.

By the end of the day everything was working as it should, tomorrow there we've just got some additional data that needs to be displayed on screen. That should then be the story completed.

Another warm evening but again it wasn't too bad at the gym.

I spoke to my mum on the phone a bit later on, she hasn't been too well, suffering with a bout of sinusitis and a tickly cough and to top it all the antibiotics given to her by the doctor had an adverse affect (I won't go into detail!).

At least I felt okay this morning!

I suggested at this morning's stand-up that we mix things up in terms of pairing because people seem to always be in the same pairs - myself included.

First thing after the stand-up though we had a demo on how we should be using Mingle (the graphical story card tool). After that I worked with Jim on getting a calendar widget onto a page with a bunch of tests around it. It was quite an interesting task - getting the tests written was fun! There is one test failing and that's to do with the date formatting, hopefully we should be able to get that cracked.

I went to get some petrol at lunchtime and as per usual it was manic, mind you probably better than going on the way home.

The weather was absolutely scorching but thankfully the air conditioning was working at the gym so it wasn't as sweltering as we thought it was going to be. Nikki wanted to watch the tennis and asked for them to put the it on as Andy Roddick was playing Leyton Hewitt in the Wimbledon quarter finals. It didn't finish until after we'd got home - with Roddick running out eventual winner.

We had tea a little later than usual as I was called out, something I managed to get sorted thanks to some help from Roger!

We watched the tennis highlights a bit later on, the semi-finals look a very interesting prospect - Andy Roddick v. Andy Murray and Stefan Haas v. Roger Federer...