Latest Update

The skirting board is finally in - when the missus said 'can you fit new skirting board in the office' I don't think she fully realised what an undertaking it would be. I stripped the old wallpaper, removed the old skirting and door-surround, then took up all the flooring board-by-board...
I painted the walls, sanded and stained the floor and finally cut, prepared and fitted the skirting - I also added some vertical 'trunking' so that I could have more power sockets in the room and also fitted a phone, modem and LAN socket to the same trunking (which I constructed from tongue and groove pine). I have yet to sand down the window surround and give it a fresh paint of coat, but apart from that, we are pretty much ready to move back in (and buy some new office furniture...). I have already started putting some of the old furniture back in just to make some room in the bedrooms that have been used as storage - can't wait to get a new desk in there and put the computers back in!

Golf balls with logo

When Christmas comes around, my company are always looking for a corporate gift for our clients, and we have struggled to find anything suitable.
The problem is in finding something that is 'useful' so that it will be well-used, and therefore often in the clients line of vision, and yet at the same time, affordable and of good quality.

Recently, we have taken to having several different items made up and given to selected clients based on what we think they would like. That's where something like golf balls with logo works really well, especialy for those further up the commercial 'food chain' where golf is not only a leisure activity, but can be a business tool too.

Some of our industry partners run 'golf days' for clients - offering to provide free golf balls for such an event might be a real coup. Logo golf balls are available in budget, standard or even professional specifications.

Organisation

Quite honestly, I have been rather disorganised lately due to my home office being in turmoil. This has given me the chance to have a think about how I am going to rectify things when I have a flash new office to work out of. My plan is to set one night aside per week to devote to updating sites and building new traffic. This means setting aside time to post updates to my several blogs and also to place comments on other blogs - maybe even find a forum or two - place sites into some online directories - nothing spectacular, just time set aside to get all the 'daily grind' work done. There is a lot of 'footslogging' involved in maintenance of websites whether they be blogs or  info/trading sites - it isn't really possible to leave a static site in the vague hope that traffic will arrive without any background work being done..
Time will tell whether my plan will come to fruition, but I certainly have solid intentions to devote at least the one night a week to keeping on top of my online activities.

Progress at last..

I was getting concerned that I would have little to show for this weekend after I got so little done in terms of renovating my home office yesterday. However, today I managed to get out of the way, one of those tasks that has been bugging me a bit. The reason I was hesitating over this job is I was not sure how it was going to turn out, but as it happens it turned out quite well.

My wife had picked out a light for the office, but there is an ugly hole in the ceiling which used to be the loft access. I had fashioned a wooden square to cover the hole, and had to get this and the light fitted whilst extending the wiring to fit.

It was a relatively quick job, but has taken me a psychological leap forward as this was one of the 'big' jobs that still remains, and because of the complex nature of the wiring and the wooden cover for the hole, one that was becoming a bit of a psychological block. As you can see from the picture, the painting has also been done, so there is little to stop me finishing the job relatively quickly now...

Spray tanning

After what must have been the UK's wettest April in living history, warm weather returned to our shores today. A blazing sun means that there is no need for spray tanning this weekend, in fact I think I may have picked up a bit of a tan playing football today.
Hopefully, this burst of good weather is not just a flash in the pan otherwise I think artificial tanning might be the only type of tanning we will see for the next few months.
The weather prompted me to mow the lawn for the first time this year (I'm ashamed to say), the grass was really quite long, and getting it down to manageable length is just the first of many garden-based tasks I need to do to prepare the garden for the coming Summer.

Latest...

Not having my home office finished is affecting quite a bit of my work - I have not started preparing my accounts for my tax return, and I am not really on top of things. My day job is still giving me a lot of pressure, but I am enjoying the new role I have at work, and am confident that the excessive pressure will be off fairly soon, and normality will resume.
I am looking forward to getting the office finished at home, I have a new light fitting to get done and some woodwork to rub down, then I will be in a position to get the skirting board back in. After that, it's a trip to Ikea to kit the place out! However I managed to spend the entire day today being Daddy and managed little more than rubbing a little of the woodwork down as far as office renovation goes - well, there's always tomorrow!

Rivets

My 'day-job' is getting increasingly busy (worked a 15 hour day on Friday!) as we are beginning a manufacturing process from scratch.
This has meant having to source all the screws, washers and rivets as well as all other manufacturing components before starting the process. Time is of the essence as we have orders to fulfil, but things would go so much smoother if we had all the components ready at hand, as it is, we are spending as much time sourcing parts as we are on the manufacturing process itself.
Currently, we seem to have most of the small parts, but it is becoming increasingly tricky to keep stock of parts as they are being used. Hopefully when we have the first batch out of the way, it will all calm down a bit...