Civilisation

Busy day at work today. I finished a program that someone else wrote a year ago that had never reached production. In truth it was just a working prototype, but even so it had quite a few bad practices in that I had to seek out and eradicate. I don't like magic numbers in code, they only come to bite you in the arse at a later stage when you least expect them. It also had some very dubious logic in that could fail, so I replaced it with something more robust. I'm quite happy with the result.

After work it was badminton, which as good. I've lost a lot of fitness over the last month while I've been waiting for my thumb to recover, but I felt a lot better today than on Monday. I don't think I'll need any more analgesics, I've now to got keep the new skin moisturised and work the stiffness out of it.

The new Woitrose/John Lewis at home opened today in Basingstoke. This is very good news. The Waitrose will give the M&S food hall a good kicking - the extra competition will definitely be good for them. The John Lewis is only the "at home" version, which will give the home section of the local BHS and Debenhams a kicking. It's not a full John Lewis so the clothing section of M&S, Next and Debenhams can breath a sigh of relief.

I like the partnership model of John Lewis/Waitrose. I've always found their stores clean and well laid out and their staff helpful and friendly. They seem to care what they are doing, unlike most other retail staff. I'm a fan of the co-operative model too, but the co-operative promises so much and constantly fails to deliver which I find so disappointing.

We tried the new store which is very nice, but it was full of people trying the free bubbly and so it was actually very hard to buy anything practical. My better half got a oat biscuit thing - which was under-baked, and we picked up a brioche for the weekend.

Today's blip is the the rather impressive sign on the front of the building - which I would have blipped from a better angle they've not finished the site yet and I couldn't get where I wanted to.