Not that I ever need an excuse to drink, but today is St Andrew's Day. For those numpties amongst you, St Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland. As per usual, tonight will see a few friends and myself hit the bar, literally, and toast a few drinks to celebrate. And yes, this will be my first drink since coming back from Boston. I've only just awoken from the alcohol induced coma! ps yes Mr Webster, you are absolutely right, I simply cannot make a blog posting without mentioning drink.

Well I finally went and did it. Lying in my death bed on Monday past - OK, it was just a really bad virus which I'm now about over - I proposed to my girlfriend Kelli and she said YES! I'm so so happy! I've been planning to ask her for a while, and actually did so a little earlier that I intended cause I'm such a sucker and just couldn't wait any longer. I've got a few mates - Neil, Colin, Ian, Thomas and Stephen - who I'm pretty sure have had a running bet on just when I would actually pop the question. I think I may have surprised all of them as well as Kelli. And this comes just a week or two after finally getting myself onto the (ridiculously) expensive property ladder here in Scotland. All going well I will have the keys at the end of August and I'll finally be granting my parents their long desired wish. Peace and Quiet! I'm only 15 walks from them so at least for now I can head there after work for my dinner and get my dirty washing cleaned! And then Kelli can take over when she moves in after we're married ;) And back to the wedding plans. We've not set a date or anything yet, but we'll definately be getting hitched within the next year, so I'd imagine May or June 2006. I'll be sending out the present list to all my fellow CF bloggers soon ;) But what does this mean for Scotch on the Rocks 2006? Don't worry, we're definately going ahead with it but we may now have to shift it from May to July or August. Fortunately I'll have a few more folks helping out this year - which is just as well now - and we've already started the preliminary discussions but I can't say any more for now. Anyway, now that I'm fit and healthy again - I wouldn't have wished whatever I had on an a midge - I hope to resume some sort of regular blogging schedule.

I'm on a half day this Thursday, which funnily enough coincides with the March ScottishCFUG talk. I'll be giving the talk at night but before that, I'm going to head through to Edinburgh (from Glasgow) and take a wander up the Castle and do a little photo shoot. I like to divulge in a little bit of photography from time to time and being that Edinburgh is such a beautiful city, it's about time I captured it in all it's splendour. For anyone who visits Edinburgh, and especially so those that attend Scotch on the Rocks in May, then you should definitely take the time to explore the Castle, before heading out to South Queensferry and catching the view that spans the Firth of Forth... the Forth Bridges.

Following on from Sean Corfield's post about his cube, as well as Doug Hughes' Christmas Cube I thought I'd post some photos of my Home Office. I should point out that I don't officially work from here, this is just where I do all things related to the Scottish CFUG, Creative Restraint (which is slowly coming along) as well as photography nonsense. My actual job location involves sitting in a corner on the 4th floor of an extremely drafty old building in Bothwell Street, Glasgow. Anyway, here's a couple of photos of my home working life. And note, not a beer in sight!

The 30th of November is St Andrew's Day, Patron Saint of Scotland. Unfortunately, it tends to be more popular with Scots abroad and is less celebrated here at home. However, some of my friends and I like to go for a celebratory drink on the 30th every year and tonight will be no different. Co-incidentally, St Andrew is also the Patron Saint of Greece and Russia (possibly more). And a nice touch by The Register in promoting St Andrew's day by wrapping the site in blue and displaying the Saltire flag.

Following on from my post earlier today, I've been told by a work colleague that the Mini Bar appears to, from the outside anyway, be OK. I've not yet had a chance to see for myself (I work about 4 streets away from the pub) but I've just had a look at the photos on the BBC web site (photo 5) and there's always a chance things are OK. The Mini Bar is the first white building next to the one on fire - you can just make out the outline of the pub's sign. Turns out that both Shack and Trash (the club in the basement) are completely destroyed, and considering the amount of water dumped in there it's reasonble to expect there could be water damage to the Mini Bar but hopefully nothing that will keep it closed for too long.

I'm a regular in the Mini Bar pub in Glasgow, and have been for some years now. In fact I should be heading there after work tonight, however this has been thrown into doubt as the club next door, Shack, has pretty much been destroyed by a fire (BBC report). I'll be distraught if my second home is gone.

While it's definately a good thing to make sure you're comfortable with more than using just ColdFusion (replace with PHP if your mainly a PHP developer, etc) ... ... what isn't good is when all hell is breaking loose at work and you're having to work on multiple projects simultaneously using multiple languages. I'm currently involved in projects using CF5, ASP and PHP as well as the fact I'm in the process of working on the new ScottishCFUG site, which will of course be done with CFMX. Oh yeah, plus the fact I'll have to start learning c# soon too, as we're moving to .NET here at work. Needless to say my head hurts. I'm beginning to really envy my mate Colin who packed in his job and sodded off to India! cmclennan.blogspot.com/

It's been a while since I posted, and it's going to be a while before I do again ... I've got a lot of stuff on just now, and I'm about to give my server a complete overhaul ... so commence the silence!

Well, the bones are that bit more creaky, the hair has a touch more gray and the memory is definately less stable... yes, it's my birthday! Today, I've joined the ranks of the other 27 year olds in the world and I'm glad to say that my appetite for beer and single malt whisky is as strong as ever (this could account for the instability of my brain, rather than age). Now, can I blag a free lunch from my co-workers?