Palfrey's life

After all my worries, after all my "this might go to complete and utter shit...arrgg... panic..." moments over the drastic decisions I've made in recent times that have vastly changed my life, things appear to be *almost* going amazingly well. I'm gonna bitch about a set of 3 things now, each which consist of a good thing and a bad thing, and the good thing is something really good, something I'm *so* glad has happened within the last week or so, but in each case there's a bad thing that has gotten/is getting in my way of the good thing. Now, I'm sure that I will recieve advice along the lines of "be happy for the good things, bad bits are just temporary set backs" (thanks everyone here for being emotional support/shouting board thru some pretty tricky times right now). Yeah, I know. I know that things are going *way* better in many ways than I could have possibly hoped, but I'm still gonna bitch. temporary shit is still annoying right now.

1) I've just spent the last two days with bad diarrhoea and vomiting (allergic reaction to some damn homeopathic anti-flu meds i think). Now, if i had been actually in a state to move and use a computer, I could have had dinner at Eva's on Thursday, having got an email from her inviting me to said. I'm understandably, somewhat pissed off. OTOH, it's a bloody good sign IMNSHO. Now all I gotta do is explain the term "geeky" to her..... :)

2) Given 2.5K euro (~£1.8K) budget to buy a laptop (as previously mentioned). laptop in question kicks several kinds of ass. in order to speed this up, was gonna buy this myself, and then get money back from finance later. Unfortunately, the bank account with the money in doesn't have any of the nice Dell-accepted things like Visa. The ones that do, are UK rather than NL, so gonna have to fuck around with international bank transfer crap, which may delay me until after Xmas, and I wanted a laptop to mess around with on my *really* long travel plans.

3) Bad thing here would be the whole "ill for 2 days" bit, but had a great idea regarding my current work while I was lying there last night unable to get to sleep because I'd spent a lot of the last two days sleeping. Basically, it involves resurrecting some of my earlier research that I'd mostly discarded to gain some *significant* (i.e. order of magnitude or better) optimizations in my current work, and given the nature of the algorithms, optimization may result in actually improved results, as opposed to just faster... stuff to mess around with on Monday.

*sigh* It's getting there. I want to see England's green and pleasant (ok, wet and windy) land again tho. Plane flights now booked, in England 20th December - 4th jan. In London probably until about 28th, depending entirely on what the hell happens with New Year plans. If anyone's in London and possibly bored around 22nd-23rd, drop me a line. Don't get to see much of the old place any more. I'd *like* to be in bris for new years, but so far I haven't managed to nail down anyone who will actually say that they will be in bris and ergo capable of offering me somewhere to crash. Got several "if i'm in bris" offers, but everyone wavering like hells. What's everyone here doing? (given as I haven't asked yet, and no-one has said anything AFAIK) Alternatively, could end up in Swindon with David, Sam H (? - he's uncertain, David reckons he's certain, fug knows). rpg'ing and geekiness, would be fun, but not bris. Have promised to Gwen I'll be around for her bday on the 3rd of Jan, so should see most bris ppl then, but would like more time with ppl