I'm under a lot of pressure to get 3 web sites finished by next Friday and I have 300+ pages to do, 3 meetings to attend and a full day in the video shop on wednesday so unless your email is urgent please don't be offended if I don't return your emails until after next weekend.

Also if you are on my MSN contacts please don't msg me unless it's really important because I lose my concentration and rhythm every time someone sends me a message. I would stay offline but then people phone to see if I'm ok so it's a lose-lose situation ;)

Updates on here will also be minimal until I get these sites up and running so bear with me :)

I've updated the tide times for Torbay for this weekend.

Don't forget the clocks change to British Summer Time this weekend also!

One other thing that is worth mentioning is pretty much all my adult life I've suffered from insomnia and I've just lived with it. I would always go to bed between 4am and 6am and then I was up again at 9am. Not good for my health at all.

Anyways, I need to be getting up earlier now (7am) so I had to really try and combat it. My hi-fi also has an alarm clock so I set that up as well as my normal alarm clock and even though I was still going to bed between 4am and 6am I was getting back up at 7am and staying up (Always the hardest part when you've only been asleep an hour).

Touch wood for the last week now I've been going to bed ealier and ealier (1am to 2am now) and I'm getting up at 7am much easier. I'd love to get the time going to bed to midnight but I've moved passed the hardest part already so hopefully I can work towards this.

I'm pretty chuffed with myself :-)

Oh my god, I have a few days off the diary and everyone starts emailing me complaining... leave me alone dammit :)

Ok, heres a run down....

Monday was super busy with designing web sites and sorting out the Lock pick tools orders. I'd also arranged to start having a lan battle with a mate on Tuesdays so I was busy installing all my old games again. I also gave the home page of this site a bit of a change as I was getting bored of the old look. I also removed my old MSN address because I now have a new one. Just add DevonLocks before the at sign for hotmail if you need it.

If you want to hear something really funny how about this headline: Swimming Pool Bans Backstroke
I kid you not, they've banned it: "Bathers at the council-run Daisyfield pool in Blackburn have been told they can only do front strokes during busy periods when the pool is sectioned into lanes." More on this really barmy story here.

Tuesday I had a friend come over during the afternoon for a chat and then in the evening I had my mate come round for the mini-lan. I had installed a number of games to only find his computer was about 5 years old with only 256mb ram. Needless to say most of the stuff I installed was no good... grrrrr....

Although there are dozens and dozens of toolbars for IE these days there is one that really is worth a peek,

Desktop SideBar. Desktop Sidebar v1.03 is out!
This new version includes a POP3 Mail Checker panel, Longhorn Clock, Network Monitor, support for RSS Auto-discovery and automatic HTML to RSS conversion in Newsroom panel and many more small enhancements and bug fixes.

Someone ordered something from Devon Locks and after a few days he emailed me to say he hadn't received the parcel. Thankfully I send everything by recorded delivery so I checked on the Royal Mail web site and after initially saying not received it disappeared.

I have spent hours and hours on the phone and online tracking down this parcel because I felt really bad that the parcel hadn't arrived. I had to wait 10 days after posting before I could report it missing. Friday was the 10th day so I reported it missing. I emailed the customer once again to say as soon as I hear from them I'll re-send the parcel next day special delivery at no extra cost to him. This is what happened in emails since Friday when I reported it missing....

Me to Customer: "I've phoned them up and reported it as missing. They are contacting customer services to get them to track down the parcel. They said I should hear from them in the next couple of days. As soon as they can confirm the parcel is lost I will re-send you another parcel using 24hour special delivery at no extra cost to you. Again, we're really sorry about all of this"

Customer: "thanks for being so helpfull i have recently moved so could you please send the package to *Deleted new address*"

Me to Customer: "Is your move the reason for this?"

Customer: "hi simon yes that is the reason why"

Oh My God!

If he had told me he wasn't actually living at the address it got posted to I wouldn't have spent so much time and money trying to get this sorted out for him. Some people just simply amaze me.