WoodClan

Don't Panic! - It's only snow

Here at Wood Manor we have lots of snow coming down at the moment. Earlier this afternoon (around 3pm and before any snow had arrived) and after the media scare stories about the weather, Waitrose, Tesco's and other supermarkets were selling out of vitals. As reported by my mother-in-law, Waitrose doesn't even have mince or chickens!

@ 19:15

It's now close to 10pm and we have a few inches of snow, we are trapped, society is falling, with no means of escape we now have to wait until the spring for the thaw - if it ever comes - maybe we should have done a dance at the winter solstice, a load of deities must be pissed at the UK.

@ 21:16

This is of course unlike Norway where my wife and mother-in-law are from and would walk in a couple of metres of snow with society working perfectly well, where the school bus stops on the side of an icy road half way up a cliff to put on snow chains to avoid slipping further down the road and off the side of said cliff.

Now that being said and all things being equal the likely hood of me getting into London tomorrow is slim, but what's the point of being English if you can't complain about the weather.

But to keep you warm tonight and keep your spirits up I will now impart to you the only thing that will stop Stoke-on-Trent for being someplace you pass on the M6, I am of course, talking about Oatcakes.

The reason for this random part of the post is thus, it's snowing and when it's snowing you need a something warm and something filling - a hot oatcake.

It was one of the things that kept me going at uni each weekend, a great hangover cure and I lived just down the street from the "Hole in the wall", the last surviving front-room oatcake shop in Staffordshire - cooking the best oatcakes in Staffordshire. It was under threat of closure from the re-development of Stoke-on-Trent, but will be re-homed when they get around to that area.

Now however, for all those who have left Stoke and want a bit of oatcake goodness, you can buy online from those very great people who own the "Hole in the Wall" Glenn and Sue at www.oatcakes.org order by wednesday night and they will be sent out to you on thursday!

The way I have them is with sausage and cheese (as Glenn would say 'soss and cheese') or bacon and cheese or all both and cheese without sauce, however, apparently you are not a muppet, no matter what I say, for having a bit of red or brown sauce according to Pritch, the gent who introduced this food of the gods to me.

Anyway, here is what you do

1. Buy said oatcakes from www.oatcakes.org
2. Wait for delivery on the Friday after order
3. Remove from packaging
4. Layout



5. Grate Cheshire Cheese (NOT Cheddar it doesn't taste right and goes rubbery)
6. Add your selection of meat if desired



7. Place on oatcakes



8. Grill - open
9. Fold in half once cheese has started to melt
10. Grill some more - folded
11. Ready to eat!

Well, enjoy and I wish I still had some in the freezer as I think we may be stuck in the house for some time!

New year, no smoking again

So it's now 2010, it has been a year since I joined Hearst Digital, the time has flown and a lot of change has happened in the last year.

I've have survived three managers, a redundancy and moved offices. With my team, built Huxley, a CMS that uses Gearman, R3 (Yahoo! templating system based on Rosetta), Perl backend and PHP frontend, MySQL Database, that runs on the cloud. It is also cheap as chips to run. The sites running on it as of today: Diet Diaries , 30 Days and Mens Health Lucozade 

At home we now have Charlotte with us as well as Oskar and Tomas. She is 8 weeks old now and has grown into a cute little girl already; the worrying thing for me is that I get excited about cute pink outfits now.

For the last 3 years I have tried to give up smoking, in fact it has become a bit of a family tradition for me to give up at new year, this year is no different, I am currently smoke free and  a bit grumpy, but on the plus side I'm up by £6.20 in savings already. At this rate I'll be able to afford all the shoes, clothes and other random "must haves" that Oskar, Tomas and Charlotte all need.

It is Oskar's first day at "big" school on Tuesday 5th Jan, this meant that we needed to go school uniform shopping. Oskar and I went to Staines to get shoes, Trousers, Shirts and Plimsolls. We came back home with black trousers - should be grey, long sleeve shirts - should be short sleeve and totally lacking in shoes. Bad trip all in all, but Linda and Oskar went and sorted it all out, exchanging the items I got wrong with the words "I shouldn't have sent my husband..."

Well, it's Tom and Jerry day on Boomerang today, so should get on and try to find some peace and quiet away from the bang and crashes of the cat and mouse. The thing that is both a relief and an annoyance is that they are showing old Tom and Jerry cartoons, which have not be airbrushed by the health Nazi's and they both still smoke. This now annoys me as I fancy a smoke at the moment!

• Day: 1
• Number of ciggies: 0
• Grumpy factor: 8
• Snapped at boys: 2
• Savings on ciggies: £6.20

 

End of an Era

Well it's the 31st December 2008, 2009 is only a few hours away and it's all change in the Wood household.

Today is officially my last day at Yahoo! a company I have worked for since the beginning of 2000. Admittedly Ihave been on holiday since the 12 December, bu it didn't really hit me that I was leaving until I got my final pay slip and P45 though.

In the 8 years and 10 months I have worked for Yahoo! I have seen the boom and bust of the Internet, launched numerous products across Yahoo! Europe and have closed down a fair few as well. I have played snooker with Filo and Zod in the wee hours while a little bit worse for drink (they won). Gone to Grenoble, Milan, Munich, Madrid, Paris, Ibiza and Teneriffe - all on business i might add, although some times it was a little more than the odd meeting. 

I'm going to miss Yahoo! I have enjoyed the large part of my life I spent there, I joined as one of the youngest engineers in Europe and left as one of the oldest and longest serving. When I joined I was young, free and single. I am now married with two little boys and no longer free, just quite cheap ;-)

I've grown up and so has Yahoo! It's time for me to leave and continue my journey, I will watch Yahoo! continue to grow as I do, and I wish all my friends i've left behind all the best for 2009 and that I will see them for a pint very soon.

As for tonight and the year to come, Oskar has Chicken Pox (got his first spot yesterday) - we are hoping that Tomas gets them soon!  and I start my new role as Head of Technology for Hearst Digital on the 5th January. It's all change here, but nothing lasts forever and change is good.

All the best for 2009.

Recovering from the holiday [Part 1]

The story of our holiday to the South of France. Taken from emails to the family.

After 35 hours, 1 hotel, 2 supermarkets and 1 breakdown 300km from argeles we are now here (Argeles Plage, near Perpignan).

[July 28]
We left Sunningdale at 10am and got on the EuroTunnel at 2pm, with the time difference we left the Terminal at 4pm. We then Drove to just outside Rouen where we stopped for dinner. After a couple hours we left and the boys promptly fell asleep, it also started to rain. At midnight  we were at Bouges and decided to stop.

[July 29]
At 9am and a nice sleep, we left and drove for about 3 hours and the battery light came on while Oskar was having a paddy, so we stopped at the nearest airre.

It turned out after opening the bonnet that the engine was not really in working order to say the least. Even with my limited knowledge of car mechanics, power steering liquid pouring over everything and a shaft thingy hanging off and a belt haning lose is not a normal working. After phoning the AA, we had to call the police to get a tow truck.

We got to a garage about 30 mins from Millau. After looking at the car, speaking to the AA and confirming it would take longer than 8 hours the AA agreed to get us a hire car. At 4:30 we were picked up and at 5:30 we left Millau car hire. We arrived at the van at 20:50. The boys are up and having fun, we are drinking and all is at peace with the world!

I sure am glad of two things one that we got AA cover and two that we got the car serviced last monday to avoid this sort of thing happening!

Total pre-emptive spend on holiday

AA Cover: £69 for 15 days

Total cost for all that the AA Provided:

• Cost of Car Hire (4 days)
  
• 2 taxi rides (Marvejols to Millau and Millau to Marvejols - 140km total distance)
• Cost of recovery from Motorway Airre

All of above: £750 approx

Money well spent I say!

Bad luck comes in three's

Well this week has been interesting, what with the credit crunch, petrol prices and Gordon Brown telling us that we should stop buying food, the last thing i needed before our holiday is extra expenses.

No such luck for me; First our washing machine's control board blew up. Luckily, it did not burn down the house and I was able to find a replacement part online at a 50% discount on what was quoted by the manufacturers.

Secondly, Our computer decided to not recognize the keyboard, mouse or monitor - typical... well another expense as it's needed for work.

Today however our front door no longer opens. Now I agree that is better than not closing, however it really is a bit much!

I feel like I should just smack my head against a brick wall. This week Gordon Brown, the PM and ex-chancellor said that we should cut back on the amount of food we throw away in an attempt to combat spiraling energy and food costs.

Well Thanks Gordo, I didn't notice that my food bills have increased by close to 10% in the last month or two - I must have also missed the fact that my petrol costs are going up daily. He suggesting that i should cut back on the luxuries in life like food and water is a bit much when its his government that got us in this situation in the first place.

Don't worry Gordo, the rate things are going, i wont have any food wastage soon, due to the fact i wont be able to afford any food in the first place.

MPs have voted to keep their £24,000 second home - well thats more than a lot of people have to live on in total and they have the balls to say we should stop wasting food. How about stop taxing us into the stone age and start running the country.