Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be sent on a couple of Microsoft training courses for work. In preparation for the exams I configured half a dozen virtual machines in a test environment on my home PC, which were used to enhance my new-found knowledge and to test the various features of Server 2012 R2. Unfortunately, this test environment is no more.

It has been almost six full months since I last posted on this website, and yet today I'm doing something very rare: a double post. For you see, while perusing the photos on my phone last night I found several blurry pictures of various toys and building blocks. My daughter had obviously decided to capture her creations for posterity or something. Amongst the poorly captured images was a self portrait which simply captivated me.

Sometimes, this is how effective I feel as a parent.

They say time flies when you're having fun, so one would assume I have had a great time over the past ten months; given it's been that long since I've written something for this blog.

When I woke up this morning, I wasn't hopeful of it being a particularly great day. I had organised to take the day off as an RDO and had planned to go ten pin bowling with Evelyn. Yet as I awoke, groggy, sore and at 9am - after staying up til midnight the night before - I thought that despite my best efforts the day would just turn out flat. I'm so glad I was wrong.