Well I was supposed to be starting a new project today, but there was no sign of anybody coming to talk to me about it, so I carried on working on the Plone site design mock-ups.

I've pretty much go one design done, but I still need to do a few more.

I nipped out a lunchtime to get some petrol and yet again the petrol station was chocka-block.

In the evening we did at least manage to get to the gym and keep-fit, now that the colds have subsided!

We had quite a bit on today (which meant we didn't get to the gym yet again!). We had Nikki's nephew Dane coming round with his partner Helen and their baby, Lennon. Keith and Jayne came back over to see them. They all stayed for just over an hour or so.

Then we needed to head off to pick up Nikki's brother Stuart as we were all going over to Knaresborough for Nikki's grandma's 100th birthday get together (she's not actually 100 until tomorrow).

It was a nice do (at Nikki's Aunty Brenda's house) and we caught up with a few people we hadn't seen for a while, including Grandma, who we haven't seen for a number of years.

We were there for a good few hours before making our way back home in the pouring rain.

We were expecting a man to come this morning to read the water meter, the most accurate time they could give was 'between 8 and 12' We did have a few things to do so we hoped he'd turn up earlier rather than later. As it was he arrived around 11am. We then popped into Pudsey to go to the Post Office and from there we headed off to 'Gearbox Micks' to pick up Nikki's car. We then came home for a spot of lunch.

In the afternoon Nikki went off to Marks & Spencer and I did a some bits and bobs on the computer. Later on Keith and Jayne arrived (they're up for the weekend, but weren't stopping at ours). We were going into Leeds with them for a spot of tea before Nikki and I went off to the Grand Theatre to see Chicago. We went to Zizzi's, near the Corn Exchange for tea, which was pretty good. Keith & Jayne made their way back to Pudsey while Nikki and I went for a drink in The Ship before going to the theatre.

Gary Wilmot was one of the leading members of the cast of Chicago and played a very gppd part, in fact the whole thing was thoroughly enjoyable. It was a late start though 8:30pm, so it didn't finish until just before 11pm. We decided to go down to All Bar One for our usual post theatre drink - but it was closing (it closes at 11 apparently) so we made our way to the station to get the bus. It was absolutely throwing it down with rain and the bus wasn't due for around half an hour so we had our post theatre drink in Weatherspoons - well it was better than getting wet!

After the London trip yesterday I had quite a bit to be getting on with today! I looked into a couple of things and then documented others that still need some investigation as I'm supposed to be starting on another project on Monday.

I spoke to "Gearbox Mick" to see how he was getting on with Nikki's car, he said it was done, so I told him we'd pick it up tomorrow.

I had a phone call from one of our ld neighbours, Mark "Snogger" Morris, the network card in his computer had given up the ghost and needed replacing. I used to help Mark out with his computer problems until for some reason he stopped asking me. Anyway I had a spare network card so after work I nipped down and installed it for him.

Nikki went off to do the shopping while I did that.

We had tea and watched a few bits on the box and like a sad fool I did some more Plone investigation..

I had a meeting in London today, Nikki got up a bit earlier than me as she had to get an earlier bus in order to get to work in time for her Thursday morning meeting. I got up at normal time and got a bus around 7:50am (my train was at 8:40am) which should have been plenty of time - but as it was I just managed to get to the station 5 minutes before my train left. Everything was going swimmingly until a broken down car on Armley gyratory.

The journey down was very smooth and uneventful, although it's good to tell the East Coast mainline is back under public ownership - none of the seat reservation cards were in their correct slots! Still I got a seat no problem.

I met Paul and we walked across to our meeting. We met with one lady from HR and two others from a couple of the Brands. We listened to what they wanted out of Plone and any issues they had. They had only seen the 'live' version of the site so when I showed then the work I'd been doing in development they were amazed, then I showed them some other Plone sites I'd found on the web 9some of which looked rather smart! I think any doubts they had about what Plone could do were laid to rest there and then.

After the meeting we walked back to Kings Cross, Paul's train was going to be late, mine was on time and I was back home for 7pm. Nikki had just got in before me. We didn't go to the gym and keep fit, instead I had a look at some more Plone plugins and Niki did a bit of ironing.

I had a major breakthrough today, I've been trying to work out how to style Plone subsites for ages and have met with little success. However today I came across a post on t'internet that ws exactly what I was looking for. Consequently it means the different brands and departments will be able to have their sites styled individually - just what they've been asking for!

There were a few more bits I needed to do before the meeting in London tomorrow, but they didn't take me too long.

I felt a little bit chesty today and Nikki thinks she's coming down with the cold now, so we didn't go to the gym.

I did some more work on the rolling image gallery for Plone today and I've got to say it's looking pretty swish. I've also got a list of other things to look at before Thursday.

Mick from the gear box garage rang up to let me know that he'd stripped the the gearbox in Nikki's car down to find that a bearing had collapsed and it has damaged some other parts - ouch! Still it needs doing so I told him to crack on with it.

My cold was a bit worse today but it's not that bad.

In the evening I had a night out at Coopers in Guiseley with Nick and our old work colleague John. It was a pleasant evening and the food was pretty good too. John was happy because they did a reduced price menu until 9pm!

Nikki went to the White Rose Centre to get some new clothes for work and then came to pick me up a bit later on.

My cold was still in evidence, despite me having a hot toddy at bedtime last night!

As the day wore on it seemed to subside a little, but then as it approached home time it started to resurface!

I spent the day adding some more eye-candy to Plone, this time it was a rolling slideshow to emulate the company website. The slideshow itself was quite easy to do (jQuery to the rescue yet again!) but I wanted a bit more - a paragraph of text that faded in and out with the images. I worked out how to do it and it worked wonderfully in Firefox, but Internet Explorer was a different kettle of fish. Eventualy I did manage to get it all functioning as I'd intended.

I was in two minds as to whether to go to the gym, but hey what the heck it's only a bit of a cold and it wouldn't do me much harm if I did go, so I did.

I spoke to my mum on the phone and we watched a few bits on the gogglebox when we got home.

Interestingly when I woke up this morning my sore throat had gone but I've definitely got the beginnings of a cold. Still it didn't stop me going to the gym - I thought I might be able to sweat it out!

We spent the afternoon doing chores, Nikki tidied up upstairs while I did the ironing. We then made the bed, Nikki did a bit of baking and I made some fruit salad.

We watched some bits we'd recorded in the evening including a bit of slalom skiing from Moscow.

I woke up with a sore throat which isn't a good sign...

We had to take Nikki's car in to the gear box garage, but first popped into Pudsey to pick up another parcel from the Post Office, this time it was some Christmas presents Nikki had ordered for Indie.

Rather than take both cars to the gear box garage (off Whitehall Road) we went in Nikki's (the chap who has the garage wasn't there so we left the keys with the chap at the garage next door). We walked up to Whitehall Road to catch a bus into Leeds. There was no timetable, but you could send a text to a number and you would get one back letting you know when the next bus was due to arrive - it reckoned a 244 was due in 4 minutes. Sure enough about 4 minutes later a 244 showed up - modern technology isn't it brilliant?

I managed to get one Christmas present for my sister Denise, Nikki got a skirt and I also got a bargain pair of ski gloves from TK Maxx (RRP over £100 - cost £14.99!). We also had a wander around the German Christmas market, which was quite busy.

After having a couple of drinks in All Bar One we came home. In the evening we decided to go into Pudsey to try out the new restaurant called Gigi's that's recently opened. We didn't book, but we should have done as they didn't have a free table, so we went to the Jade Dragon Chinese instead. The food was okay, but it's been better.

Some people might say "It's no weight for a man", but I can safely say that today was a milestone - I now officially weigh less that 10 stone! That's the lightest I've been for about 5 years! Fantastic!

After having a look at the code I'd done for Plone yesterday I decided it needed a bit of refactoring as there was a considerable amount of duplication. As it was I managed to halve the code and in the process make it much more readable and understandable.

I had an email from Sandra, a Team Saas Fee member, she'd booked for Verbier in April and we followed suit, it remains to be seen what the rest of them are going to do!!

I spent the day continuing with adding the bit of jQuery Plone functionality I started on yesterday. It all works very well, I even introduced a 'twisty' which is red and turns green when the hidden content is revealed. It looks pretty swish even if I do say so myself!

Looks like I'll be off to London next Thursday for a meeting with HR regarding Plone and how the could utilise it.

Gym and keep fit as usual for a Thursday, then afterwards I spoke to my sister Denise on the phone to discuss Christmas presents. My mate Matt then rang up and we hadn't spoken for a while. He's got a new car - a Golf GTI, something he's been dreaming of for a while now. he says it's fast but not as good on the twisties as the MINI!

I emailed the rest of team Saas Fee to see what they want to do about skiing in April as we're going to book it over the weekend.

I set about creating another set of styling for Plone this morning - this time going fo a blue theme, but I didn't really like it so I gave up.

One of our newer users wanted to be able to add some jQuery functionality to some Plone content, so I had a go at creating it for them. Essentially it's a hidden answer that is revealed when a link is clicked. I didn't quite get it finished, but it shouldn't take too much effort tomorrow.

The traffic was again a nightmare on the way home although we weren't home quite as late as last night.

We both went to the gym, which was really busy. Then after we'd had tea we watched a couple of things we'd recorded,

Some of the feedback I'd received about Plone is that a lot of people weren't keen on the black and white colour scheme. So today I set about addressing that by changing it to a mostly white with grey highlights - a little more easy on the eye!

I had the last couple of eBay parcels to send off today so I went to the Post Office at lunchtime. Not sure what was wrong but they queue was out the door - I had about a half hour wait!

Then the traffic on the way home was a nightmare which meant we didn't get home until after 6.

Nikki ordered some Christmas presents for Indie and we watched a few things on television.

If I'm honest I didn't do a great deal this morning - the time just seemed to fly by! One thing I did do was to ring up about Nikki's car and getting it booked in for the gearbox looking at. The chap I spoke to, Mick, said we could drop it down either tomorrow morning or on Saturday if that was more convenient. So Saturday it is. Goodness knows how much it's likely to cost, but it needs doing!

I went to the Post Office to send off some more eBay parcels at lunchtime, then I did some documentation in Plone in the afternoon, adding some more content to my HTML primer pages.

It was gym and keep fit in the evening, I also set my laptop upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 and that also went swimmingly! I spoke to my mate Andy on the phone and We watched some bits on the box when we got back.

We had a lie-in and got up a bit too late for the gym.

I spent most of the day sorting computers out, I upgraded Nikki's to the latest version of Ubuntu (9.10) which was hardly any effort and it looks really swish - each release seems to get better and better.

Nikki spent a good portion of the day baking Christmas cakes.

We watched a few bits on the box including the new series of Top Gear.

First task of the day was to take a host of eBay parcels to the Post Office, which is what we did, but one of them (containing 2 jackets) that was bound for Finland was too heavy to be sent via Air Mail, so we had to come home and slpit it into two and then go back again!

After that we nipped down to Staples (I needed some more packaging materials) and Aldi in Bradford, then it was lunchtime. In the afternoon we took some recyclables to the tip.

Nikki was going on a girls' night out in Leeds with my mate Jon's girlfriend Kirsten and so of Jon's neighbours. We'd been invited down to Jon's for something to eat before the girls went out. He picked us up about 5:30pm. We had a nice, healthy pasta meal.

The girls went out about 7pm, Jon and I headed off to Xscape at Castleford to do a couple of hour's skiing. The carpark was jam packed and we struggled to get a spot. As a member of the Ski Club of Great Britain I got 20% of the entry price so it cost under £25 for 2 hours each instead of £31 - bargain! It wasn't that busy inside and we got quite a number of runs in. I gave Jon a bit of braquage instruction. By the end of the evening there were only 5 of us on the slope!

We got back to Jon's just after 11pm, we had a couple of drinks and arround 12:30am the girls arrived back - earlier thatn we'd imagined. I got into the taxi with Nikki and we headed home.

We'd booked Nikki's car in for some work doing at our neighbour Neil's garage - it needed some bushes replacing and the grinding/rumbling noise (that is actually starting to get worse) looking at.

He rang later on to let me know the bushes were done, but it was quite a difficult job. He diagnosed the rumbling noise at the gearbox main shaft bearing - not a job he felt capable of tackling, but he gave us the number of somebody who would be able to do it. Obviously it needs doing so we'll get in touch with him next week

Again more Ploning at work, this time I was answering some questions that had been asked as a result of some feedback we'd received.

In the evening my eBay auctions ended so I spent a good part of it packaging things up ready to send out. There were only a couple of items that were left unsold, While I was doing all that Nikki went off to do the shopping.

After we'd had tea and I'd finished packing the eBay parcels we just watched a couple

I tried having a look at some Zope Template Language today in the hope I could customise some Plone pages. I had measured success but struggled a bit with the menu tabs. I might continue looking at that tomorrow.

It was gym and keep fit as usual in the evening, we bumped into our neighbour Rob whom we haven't seen for quite some time, so we had a bit of a natter with him.

I spoke to my mum briefly on the phone, there wasn't a great deal on the box so we watched abit of Austrian TV.

Again more Plone stuff today, nothing of note really, just continuing working out how to do some things - like setting up a Wiki site.

I'd had an email from PayPal to say they'd suspended my account - allegedly because I'd had more than £1200 pass through my account - something to do with money laundering apparently. Now I could maybe understand that if the money had passed through in just a few days, but that amount must have been over the last year at least! I had to verify a few questions and it was reinstated thankfully. A good job as I've got a load of eBay auctions that end on Friday!

We went to the gym early evening, then after tea I popped down to Farsley to go for a drink with my old cycling buddy Jon. As usual we met in The Fleece, had a couple of drinks and walked up to The Village which was closed as was Rooms, so we went to The Old Hall, there were two other people in there who left after about 5 minutes, so we finished up our drinks and headed over to The New Inn, where there were about 5 people in. Talk about a deal loss - the pub trade is just dying on its feet...

We managed to successfully pick Nikki's parcel up from the Post Office on the way to work this morning.

Again I had a few more Plone things to look at, the day didn't seem to drag quite as much as it did yesterday. Part of that might have been down to the two bits of excitement that occured - one the opening of the newly refurbished toilets and the fire alarm going off (not a drill), which turned out to be a faulty sensor.

There haven't been any more bids on my eBay auctions today, though there are a good number of people watching things. In the evening I cleaned the bathroom while Nikki did some studying.

Another morning where we called in at the Post Office, this time to pick up a book that Nikki had ordered last week, but they couldn't find it.

At work I revisited some Plone questions and updated the documents on the state of progress. Not an exciting day and it did seem to drag a little. Neil from the garage rang me to say he should be able to look at Nikki's car on Friday to do the bushes, but he's not sure about the other thing!

There had been a few starting bids on some of my eBay items, plus I'd had a couple of questions to answer.

We went to the gym and keep fit as usual, not sure why but the car park was rammed and we were lucky to get a spot!

Afterwards we watched a couple of bits on the box.

We got up as usual to go to the gym ,but waited until Keith and Jayne had left before we actually went to the gym.

Obviously today was Remembrance Sunday and so it was quite busy around the cenotaph but we were in the gym well before the service started. It was pleasing to see most people n the gym paying their respects by stopping their exercise during the two minutes silence.

We didn't do a huge amount today - Nikki cleaned the bathroom, I finished off the eBay stuff and got the listings up.

I made some fruit salad and we watched a bit on the box in the evening.

We were up fairly early as we had a few things to do today. I visited out neighbour Neil's garage to see if he'd be able to look at Nikki's car - it's making a funny noise. he's never done any work on a MINI before so he said he'd have to do some investigation and let me know on Monday.

From there we popped into Leeds to pay some bills at the bank, then to Crown Point and then back into Leeds to do a bit of shopping. From there we came home, then went down to the Go Outdoors store at Stanningley and finally up to Morrisons to do the weekly shop.

Keith and Jayne were going out for Jayne's mum's 70th birthday (the main reason they came up). We watched some bits on the box including the final couple of episodes of 24, which was a disappointing series overall.

Given that it's bonfire season there were a couple of bonfires in the street and a good number of fireworks, not sure whether it's the spell of wet weather we're currently having but there don't seem to have been as many fireworks going off this year at all - which has got to be a good thing!

On the way to work we called in at the Post Office to pick up a parcel that wouldn't fit through our letter box. I was amazed to see the amount of packaging that can be placed around a CompactFlash memory card - no wonder it wouldn't fit through the letter box!

I continued with some more Plone stuff today. I'm generally happy with everything now, not sure where to go from here!

Nikki's brother Keith and his wife Jayne were coming up for the weekend - the arrived not long after we got home. We went out in the evening for a few drinks at the Fox and Grapes and then to the new Aagrah restaurant at Thornbury. Personally I'm not keen on the Aagrah to be honest - I usually find the food to be rather to rich or salty. This time it was neither, but fairly unremarkable if I'm honest. The new place isn't that good either - too large and no atmosphere. Needless to say it won't be on the list to be revisited in the near future!

Yet another day of Plone styling tweaks, I'm now down to sorting out the very minor issues with differences in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Being 5th November means Guy Fawkes night - the weather was rather wet which appeared to dampen quite a few spirits - there weren't half as many fireworks going off as there has been in previous years. Maybe people are waiting until the weekend...

The traffic was a bit heavy coming home - obviously people going to bonfires.

We went to the gym and keep fit. Then after tea I did a couple more eBay listings - only three left to do now!

Thankfully the traffic was back to normal this morning, so no hold-ups getting to work.

Again it was another day full of Plone tweaks - I've decided to redo some of the styling - again!

We had a team meeting and it doesn't look like I'm going to be working on another Java project for at least the next fortnight, so it looks like it's Plone all the way for me!

We didn't go to the gym this evening - it was Mischief Night and I didn't fancy my car getting trashed or vandalised in the car park.
Instead I did some eBay listings, in amongst taking a few phone calls.

The traffic was really bad this morning - there had been an accident (looked quite serious too) on the inner ring road and it basically ground the whole of Leeds to a virtual stand-still.

I continued with more Plone tweaks, I'm slowly getting through my list, but people keep coming up with other things!

In the evening I did a bit of cleaning up in the bathroom, put some more CDs into iTunes and got started on a couple of eBay listings while Nikki did a bit of tidying up and changed the sapre bed.

My mate Andy rang up a bit later on so I had a natter with him and then we watched a couple of bits on the box.

I carried on with some more Plone work today - I made some minor changes to some styling on the development site last week and they needed some serious tweaking! There were also a few issues in Internet Explorer that needed ironing out. Plus for some reason Events didn't work. I managed to narrow that down to a jQuery change that must have been made in the latest release. I managed to fix it once I'd found the relevant file! There is still one issue with events not appearing in the calendar, so that will give me something further to investigate tomorrow!

When we got home we'd been left a card to say we'd had a parcel delivered and it had been left in the shed, but we weren't expecting anything. It actually turned out to be a parcel for next door! So I delivered it to them.

Nikki's keep fit class wasn't on so we went to the gym earlier. That gave me chance to do the finances when we got back.

We got up early this morning - much earlier than normal - as we'd arranged to speak to Dan & Tracy in New Zealand via Skype at 8:30am. As it was we were ready, but Nikki had a text to say they'd have to postpone it - so we got up early for no reason!

So we went to the gym earlier than usual. After we'd got back and had something to eat we headed off to Otley - I wanted to go to Glide & Slide in Otley to have a look at a fleece jacket I'd seen advertised on their website. I was pleased to find it had actually been reduced from £60 to £25 so I bought it.

From there we popped into Bradford - we went to Home Bargains for a few bits - it was mayhem in there!

I made some fruit salad after tea, then we caught up on some more episodes of 24 - only two left now!