We had this over a week ago, and it's took me a long time to get round to posting it, so I'm too late for the round up anyway! We've not had Shiraz before, and weren't that keen on it.
The wine was a bottle of Wolf Blass Eaglehawk 2003, and had a slightly blackberry like smoky aroma. It was a too sharp for our tastes really, as we generally prefer something a bit smoother.
From the Wolf Blass website: The 2003 Eaglehawk Shiraz is a fruit driven style with a bouquet of lifted spice, plum and red berry fruit characters and subtle oak overtones. The palate is of medium body, showing soft complex fruit flavours with rich berry characters. Soft tannins help finish the wine with a dry lingering finish.

I've been thinking of putting a list of the firefox extensions I use on my blog for a while, and then Dean listed the extensions he finds useful and asked what anyone else was using - so I decided I should post it! So here is my list of firefox extensions:

All in one gestures

Extension that helps you to navigate the web just using the mouse - includes mouse gestures and extra wheel navigation

Web Developer Extension

Very useful extension with lots of CSS tools and tricks which is especially useful for designing and testing webpages

Sage

Sidebar RSS Reader for Firefox

Livelines

Changes the live bookmarks icon to add RSS feeds to Sage

IE View

Useful for testing pages to check that they work both in IE and Firefox, also for the pages that are designed not to work in Firefox.

Link Toolbar

Site navigation toolbar - useful for navigating blogs and forums - provides buttons for next and previous pages (and other related pages - but I use next and previous most)

OpenBook

Extension to open the bookmarks dialog with the full tree automatically

Colorzilla

Useful extension to check what colour things are! - Can pick up colours from pictures and webpages and copy them to the clipboard in different formats

Autofill

Automatically fills in forms - like the same feature from the google bar

Bookmarks Synchronizer

Backs up a copy of my bookmarks to my website

Scrapbook

For taking notes and recording websites

HTML Validator

For checking website source code

Outliner

Adds a sidebar of document structure

GeoURL

Adds a status bar icon to show if the current page has geographic information

Gives and option on clicking a PDF link whether to download or view in the browser.

All In One Sidebar

Adds a toolbar of sidebar options

Also you can see which search plugins I use.

We had a really good bible study last night on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Which really encouraged us to see things in a right perspective, in relation to the great hope we have for the future in Christ.

On the plane over Des met a guy who'd recently brought property here, who could recommend an estate agent for us to contact. So in the morning he gave them a ring, and their colleagues took us for a drive round 3 of the properties for sale, and a few others that had been sold and done up, so we could see some of the things that had been achieved. The properties gradually got better throughout the day as in the amount of work that needed doing on them but they all had potential.

I fly today at 5 o'clock to Varna, and then I've got no idea where I'll be staying (?). I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not really sure what to expect there. I've set up my phone so I can use it there, but vodaphone charge £1.69 per minute for calls in Bulgaria, so I might get a sim card out there. A few useful links I might need:

• Mobile Phones

• Map of Varna

• Map of Bulgaria

The other day we were looking at buying a wireless PCMCIA card for Laura's laptop, so that she can use it at the university and at home with out new Belkin Wireless Router, which has been working well with my work Thinkpad since we got it set up. I liked the idea of getting a Belkin network card so that it is the same as the router, but according to the information I found online it doesn't support WPA - apart from an addition to the manual on the Belkin site that tells you how to configure WPA with the card. I then decided to phone up their pre-sales technical support line to check on this and I got through to an advisor immediately without being put in a queue. Also the guy I spoke to knew everything I needed to find out about the card without having to look it up on the system somewhere - Very impressive com,pared to a lot of technical support departments!

While sorting out all my various documents on our different computers today, I found some old webpages that I'd made back in 1999 after going interrailing around Europe with a bit of an account of some of the places we visited. So I've included them now on this site under the travel section at the side - I might try and add a few more bits that I remember from the trip and some photos soon, but for now it's just the text.

Well we ordered our [Ikea] [Fågelbo Sofa] on the 18th July, and received it initially when we expected - 2nd August, although instead of being in 2 parts and us just having to put it together like they told us would be the case, it was in three seperate packages and we had to put the backs on each part and join it together. After a while trying to understand the diagrams (no text on the instructions of course!) we got the first half together and then found that for the second half the bolts seemed to have a different thread to the holes for them. After phoning Ikea, and waiting a couple of days for a 'product specialist' from the store to get back to me I was told to try hitting them with a hammer to get them in as thats what they do in the store, or they could get someone to come out (which would take 7-10 days), I decided to try it and got them a bit further, but then they got stuck. Next step - get someone to come out. The upholsterer came out, was shocked at the advice we'd been given, put screws in to hold it temporarily and said he'd need some parts, we then had to wait 7-10 days for them to arrange this. When they phoned us back it turned out they couldn't get the parts, so we had two options: a discount (of 10%) or a replacement. We chose the replacement which took another 7-10 days, and arrived yesterday without the bolts to fit the replacement parts together - Aparently it will take another 7-10 days for them to find and ship out a packet of bolts for us...

I wonder how long it will take before it fits together properly?

Well I've now been back at work at IBM Hursley for a week and I'm currently working in the DBDC team which will involve dealing with DB2 and database connectors installation and fixing problems. It will probably be mainly working with DB2 on the mainframe (OS/390), although the team is going to start to be more involved in DB2 on distributed platforms as well. It's been quite strange going back to a different team, having to get all the userids sorted out again and starting to learn how to do things for my new role but the team I'm working with are great and have been really helpful. It's also been strange adapting back to British life - the supermarkets seem expensive and there are lots more choices! I'm sure after a few weeks I'll have got used to life back here a bit more - although this week I've found it quite tiring commuting to work. Although with car-sharing I don't have to do all the driving, but that means finishing at times that are convenient for both of us.

Well we fly back home today leaving Montevideo at 5.50pm, everything is pretty much packed and Jonathan is going to give us a lift upto the airport. Just a few more goodbyes to say and check our mail before we go. It still feels strange that we´ve finished here and are heading back, but it will be nice to see our families, as we´ve definitely missed them. But it´s going to be strange adapting back to life in England after our time here.

We´ve had a nice week in Montevideo, but it´s been strange - having left Salto, and finished, but not having gone home yet. It´s been great to catch up with everyone down here. Also we managed to time it just right for Daniel´s birthday party which was great fun.