Sunday, January 30, 2005
Adventure 3 - 31st January 2005
Phew a whole month over , won't be long 'til christmas is upon us again...
Tried getting in to the backup server to have a look at some of the new SVM stuff but no luck.
Last week was pretty busy, what with the grand master saying "..so how's it going.." every five minutes, Quiet Rob, saying things that no one could hear and Invisible Dave making a rare appearance, that's without doing any work !!!
Silver Fox, showed up on numerous occaisions, either in person or by phone, "Fag ?" his main contributions to proceedings, accompanied by my rather weak "..yeah go on then..."
Monday: Not much to report, fiddle about with the SVM, setting up the volumes and testing the snapshots, Quiet Rob, was impressed by it's flexibility, something he really shouldn't do, still we managed to bend the box back again, so no one would notice ;-)
Tuesday: Still not much to report, helped out a bit with Alex's Microshaft project, which took some of the time, still had to fill the day though...
Wednesday: My sickness on Tuesday night hampered things a bit, meant I couldn't really go to work on Wednesday, which was a bind (as I'm sure you can imagine), the world of witchcraft and wizardry would have to cope without me unfortunately for one day which they did..
Thursday: Back to work, all was quiet, Alex Brent's car was in for a service and the tumbleweeds were rolling around the Inferior Structure Arsing about department. Harry was in and out, at meetings, would rush back say something really profound like "can you phone Rich-ard" (one of the Pir-ate consultants working on inactive directory, (they love to rub it in consultants don't they...while I'm there why do they all have names like Rich and Rob...just taking the piss if you ask me...) , "ask him, err about...err he wanted to know how many beans made five...", well it was something like that, I really don't understand this wizardry lark, I mean how can they utter so many words and form what seem like constructive sentances and yet say so little ? When they've finished speaking you're actually worse off than you were before they started, coz now not only do I not know what the hell they actually just asked me to do, I've spent so long trying to work out what the hell they actually said, I've forgotten what I was doing in the first place...aaarrggghhh
The Skunk man (Rebel Mc) wasn't anywhere to be seen, except on Thursday (I think) when he followed me up the stairs and said "mornin' mate", then wasn't to be seen anywhere....
On my walk in there's some characters, arranged in an almost medieval order of hierarchy…the first office within the office that is the first floor at the back of the office (anyone want to lie down yet ?)…there’s the IT director, well acting IT Director Chris…T (well I think he thinks he’s god or something, the only way he’d be able to get away with that hair do if you ask me (someone went mad with the bril cream this morning didn’t they ??;-)) until they give his company all the IT services on a platter then he really will be the IT Director, in any case so far no moves have been made (that I know about)…Next up the Skunk man (rebel MC), my boss of bosses, note to self, you are a worthless surf and have at least two bosses that you know about, in fact you are so worthless, you’re lucky we even told you you had one boss, but…I digress….
Next up Relationships manager, seems to me like he’s managing his relationships pretty well, a string of slightly older than they’re trying to be women, with skirts and blouses far to tight, seem to come and go from his office and he’s always got a smile on his face (proof if any were needed in my book)… I mean this job is about, the inter relationship between the business and IT, well that’s working real well at the moment isn’t it ? Surely if the business thinks IT is crap and we should outsource it, then he’s failed, no ?....anyhow I’m forgetting our other made up job, Security Manager…you’d think he’d at least walk around with one of those curly wire jobs like they do in the FBI, but no…not particularly technical, like his predecessor, so again, not sure what the function of the job is….
Then we have empty office …now this guy is really good, he manages to manage nothing and never come in fantastic..sounds like my type of job…
Friday: Least said the better, did far too much work on writing the scripts, gotta do documentation next week…then the phone rings it is the Silver Fox and he utters that word…”Fag ?...” thinking in on my feet as usual I profoundly say…”yeah go on then…”
Saturday: Went swimming, really wasn’t looking forward to it..but it was good fun in the end. Then we went out for a meal with our friends… turned up at the pub where they’d booked a table, got drink sat down, then they announce that there wasn’t really anything they fancied…so we snuck out and went to a different one…
Sunday: sodded about trying to convert a film to DVD, which worked in the end, then the new downstairs loo sink beckoned, fitted that to the wall and managed to connect it all up (no leaks !!! So far!!!!), only to find that the waste was the wrong size doh !...so I’m writing this now, another week at wonderful work beckons, can’t bloody wait..
Tried getting in to the backup server to have a look at some of the new SVM stuff but no luck.
Last week was pretty busy, what with the grand master saying "..so how's it going.." every five minutes, Quiet Rob, saying things that no one could hear and Invisible Dave making a rare appearance, that's without doing any work !!!
Silver Fox, showed up on numerous occaisions, either in person or by phone, "Fag ?" his main contributions to proceedings, accompanied by my rather weak "..yeah go on then..."
Monday: Not much to report, fiddle about with the SVM, setting up the volumes and testing the snapshots, Quiet Rob, was impressed by it's flexibility, something he really shouldn't do, still we managed to bend the box back again, so no one would notice ;-)
Tuesday: Still not much to report, helped out a bit with Alex's Microshaft project, which took some of the time, still had to fill the day though...
Wednesday: My sickness on Tuesday night hampered things a bit, meant I couldn't really go to work on Wednesday, which was a bind (as I'm sure you can imagine), the world of witchcraft and wizardry would have to cope without me unfortunately for one day which they did..
Thursday: Back to work, all was quiet, Alex Brent's car was in for a service and the tumbleweeds were rolling around the Inferior Structure Arsing about department. Harry was in and out, at meetings, would rush back say something really profound like "can you phone Rich-ard" (one of the Pir-ate consultants working on inactive directory, (they love to rub it in consultants don't they...while I'm there why do they all have names like Rich and Rob...just taking the piss if you ask me...) , "ask him, err about...err he wanted to know how many beans made five...", well it was something like that, I really don't understand this wizardry lark, I mean how can they utter so many words and form what seem like constructive sentances and yet say so little ? When they've finished speaking you're actually worse off than you were before they started, coz now not only do I not know what the hell they actually just asked me to do, I've spent so long trying to work out what the hell they actually said, I've forgotten what I was doing in the first place...aaarrggghhh
The Skunk man (Rebel Mc) wasn't anywhere to be seen, except on Thursday (I think) when he followed me up the stairs and said "mornin' mate", then wasn't to be seen anywhere....
On my walk in there's some characters, arranged in an almost medieval order of hierarchy…the first office within the office that is the first floor at the back of the office (anyone want to lie down yet ?)…there’s the IT director, well acting IT Director Chris…T (well I think he thinks he’s god or something, the only way he’d be able to get away with that hair do if you ask me (someone went mad with the bril cream this morning didn’t they ??;-)) until they give his company all the IT services on a platter then he really will be the IT Director, in any case so far no moves have been made (that I know about)…Next up the Skunk man (rebel MC), my boss of bosses, note to self, you are a worthless surf and have at least two bosses that you know about, in fact you are so worthless, you’re lucky we even told you you had one boss, but…I digress….
Next up Relationships manager, seems to me like he’s managing his relationships pretty well, a string of slightly older than they’re trying to be women, with skirts and blouses far to tight, seem to come and go from his office and he’s always got a smile on his face (proof if any were needed in my book)… I mean this job is about, the inter relationship between the business and IT, well that’s working real well at the moment isn’t it ? Surely if the business thinks IT is crap and we should outsource it, then he’s failed, no ?....anyhow I’m forgetting our other made up job, Security Manager…you’d think he’d at least walk around with one of those curly wire jobs like they do in the FBI, but no…not particularly technical, like his predecessor, so again, not sure what the function of the job is….
Then we have empty office …now this guy is really good, he manages to manage nothing and never come in fantastic..sounds like my type of job…
Friday: Least said the better, did far too much work on writing the scripts, gotta do documentation next week…then the phone rings it is the Silver Fox and he utters that word…”Fag ?...” thinking in on my feet as usual I profoundly say…”yeah go on then…”
Saturday: Went swimming, really wasn’t looking forward to it..but it was good fun in the end. Then we went out for a meal with our friends… turned up at the pub where they’d booked a table, got drink sat down, then they announce that there wasn’t really anything they fancied…so we snuck out and went to a different one…
Sunday: sodded about trying to convert a film to DVD, which worked in the end, then the new downstairs loo sink beckoned, fitted that to the wall and managed to connect it all up (no leaks !!! So far!!!!), only to find that the waste was the wrong size doh !...so I’m writing this now, another week at wonderful work beckons, can’t bloody wait..
Monday, January 24, 2005
Adventure 2: 25th January 2005
Ok, it's been a little while since my last post, I should really introduce myself.
I'm 35 got two kids (11 and 8) and a wife and a mortgage, too much credit card debt and not enough money coming in...but hey how's that different to anyone else right ?
This week I fully plan on winning the lottery, same every week but hell who cares.
I work for this huge company (now) after I was sacked, sorry made redundant from my position as Global Notwork and Inferior Structures Manager at a largeish Academic publisher...
So I take this job at Don't be Daft international as a server support guy..man frustrating or what...no money to spend, no strategy to determine and no way of getting where I need to be...anyhow another restructure later ("If you can't manage it, change it" - Cre8's guide to management in all good booksellers when I can be arsed to write it...) I find myself in the inferior structure architecture group...rolling out pointless systems to ungrateful, ignorant users, just because "the screens look nice"...
Today we had an engineer turn up to fix our SVM (storage virtulisation manager) appliance, which he duly did, seeing as this was the second box we'd had and that didn't work properly I thought it was the least they could do.
The Grand Wizard (Harry's Dad) was off today with tooth ache or something (couldn't be arsed to get up on time more like), so we had a fairly productive day (isn't that always the way when the boss isn't in ??)...
Quiet Rob and I had quite a good day configuring storage and servers and switches etc, but it was long I didn't leave until about 7pm and didn't get home until about 7.05pm I mean !!!
Alex "David Brent" was in a big strop, having 3 simultaneous projects to work on is really taking it's toll, still could be worse (perhaps not then ;-)).
The Under Development Manager decided to take it upon herself to issue another of her "They're my staff" edicts, telling us all that Camp Ed, was on a very important 2-3 month project and couldn't be allowed to lower himself to help migrate all their applications to their new, free servers as part of the "in"active directory project...oh that's going to go soooo well now isn't ? Boy will I have a smug grin on my face when it all turns to shit!!!.
What makes matters worse is that her boss Dunc the skunk is the Grand Wizzard's boss too and didn't think to stamp all over this obnoxious woman...(I think he's probably scared she might go all hormonal on him)...
Harry decided he'd hassle us all by phone today and give impossible jobs for us to do...I basically ignored his requests as for once I felt I was being productive.
Got home the kids for once weren't fighting, had a microwave re-heated dinner while the wife attempted another one of her challenging culinary delights for the kids, Pan-cakes, I say cakes they were more splat-cakes if you ask me, something I felt I really had to point out to her.
Nursing my bruised arm, I sat down for DisasterEnders, and tried not to nod off....with five minutes to go before bed, the kids decide they want a 3 course banquet just to tide them over and then wonder why I get annoyed...
Got them to bed just in time for "It's not my fault I'm Fat", frankly a masterpiece of BBC television....I only nodded off for 10 minutes, only to be woken by the sound of snoring (my own !!!)...
Plugged in our new BT telephones to discover the same problem exists i.e. too quiet...recorded the fault with BT, we'll see how many months I have to wait to get this one fixed....
Note to self, phone BT and reduce monthly payments. Phone Baldocks get a price for a 20,000 mile service, phone F5 in the morning and ask them if they want any business or not..they're driving me mad frankly.........phoned them today and friday, "oh yeah, I'll get back to you in 10 minutes" with an hour separating my calls...now that's what I call service .........
I'm 35 got two kids (11 and 8) and a wife and a mortgage, too much credit card debt and not enough money coming in...but hey how's that different to anyone else right ?
This week I fully plan on winning the lottery, same every week but hell who cares.
I work for this huge company (now) after I was sacked, sorry made redundant from my position as Global Notwork and Inferior Structures Manager at a largeish Academic publisher...
So I take this job at Don't be Daft international as a server support guy..man frustrating or what...no money to spend, no strategy to determine and no way of getting where I need to be...anyhow another restructure later ("If you can't manage it, change it" - Cre8's guide to management in all good booksellers when I can be arsed to write it...) I find myself in the inferior structure architecture group...rolling out pointless systems to ungrateful, ignorant users, just because "the screens look nice"...
Today we had an engineer turn up to fix our SVM (storage virtulisation manager) appliance, which he duly did, seeing as this was the second box we'd had and that didn't work properly I thought it was the least they could do.
The Grand Wizard (Harry's Dad) was off today with tooth ache or something (couldn't be arsed to get up on time more like), so we had a fairly productive day (isn't that always the way when the boss isn't in ??)...
Quiet Rob and I had quite a good day configuring storage and servers and switches etc, but it was long I didn't leave until about 7pm and didn't get home until about 7.05pm I mean !!!
Alex "David Brent" was in a big strop, having 3 simultaneous projects to work on is really taking it's toll, still could be worse (perhaps not then ;-)).
The Under Development Manager decided to take it upon herself to issue another of her "They're my staff" edicts, telling us all that Camp Ed, was on a very important 2-3 month project and couldn't be allowed to lower himself to help migrate all their applications to their new, free servers as part of the "in"active directory project...oh that's going to go soooo well now isn't ? Boy will I have a smug grin on my face when it all turns to shit!!!.
What makes matters worse is that her boss Dunc the skunk is the Grand Wizzard's boss too and didn't think to stamp all over this obnoxious woman...(I think he's probably scared she might go all hormonal on him)...
Harry decided he'd hassle us all by phone today and give impossible jobs for us to do...I basically ignored his requests as for once I felt I was being productive.
Got home the kids for once weren't fighting, had a microwave re-heated dinner while the wife attempted another one of her challenging culinary delights for the kids, Pan-cakes, I say cakes they were more splat-cakes if you ask me, something I felt I really had to point out to her.
Nursing my bruised arm, I sat down for DisasterEnders, and tried not to nod off....with five minutes to go before bed, the kids decide they want a 3 course banquet just to tide them over and then wonder why I get annoyed...
Got them to bed just in time for "It's not my fault I'm Fat", frankly a masterpiece of BBC television....I only nodded off for 10 minutes, only to be woken by the sound of snoring (my own !!!)...
Plugged in our new BT telephones to discover the same problem exists i.e. too quiet...recorded the fault with BT, we'll see how many months I have to wait to get this one fixed....
Note to self, phone BT and reduce monthly payments. Phone Baldocks get a price for a 20,000 mile service, phone F5 in the morning and ask them if they want any business or not..they're driving me mad frankly.........phoned them today and friday, "oh yeah, I'll get back to you in 10 minutes" with an hour separating my calls...now that's what I call service .........
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Adventure 1: 13th January 2005
11:05am - Been at work for 3 hours well I say 3 more like 2!! With my eldest sick (dreaded flu) I had to drop Jack (my youngest (8)) - "the prince of darkness at school and man was it cold today...."
Finally got to work about 8:50 and then the shirt starts...I have a real thing about shirt labels, I'm sure some psychologist would have reams to say about it, "oh yes this is classic labellism", or something like that...so I spent 30 minutes in the loo, unpicking the little sucker..
My mind drifted back to yesterday, when at about 5pm I got a call from the wife...
"Have you got any money on you", she asked, "No, sorry", I replied, "Why's that ?", I asked, "I wanted you to get some beans", she replied, "Beans ? why what are we having for dinner", I quizzed her (I could have been a gestapo interrogator in a previous life I think), "Well I don't know", she replied, "I've only got as far as the beans", she explained !!!!
I'm sure the people in the other cubicles were dying with curiousity snip snip, pick, pick, chuckle, chuckle.....
Got back to my desk, to discover that the DNS servers that had turned their toes up and stopped my ISA servers from working, still not convinced it's going to handle 4,000 users but hey what do I know, kicked them on to another set of DNS and all was well....
Alex "David Brent", was there (not that surprising given that I was late getting in) and within 10 minuntes it was time for a fag break....so I had two, gotta give this crap up I really do...
Finally got to work about 8:50 and then the shirt starts...I have a real thing about shirt labels, I'm sure some psychologist would have reams to say about it, "oh yes this is classic labellism", or something like that...so I spent 30 minutes in the loo, unpicking the little sucker..
My mind drifted back to yesterday, when at about 5pm I got a call from the wife...
"Have you got any money on you", she asked, "No, sorry", I replied, "Why's that ?", I asked, "I wanted you to get some beans", she replied, "Beans ? why what are we having for dinner", I quizzed her (I could have been a gestapo interrogator in a previous life I think), "Well I don't know", she replied, "I've only got as far as the beans", she explained !!!!
I'm sure the people in the other cubicles were dying with curiousity snip snip, pick, pick, chuckle, chuckle.....
Got back to my desk, to discover that the DNS servers that had turned their toes up and stopped my ISA servers from working, still not convinced it's going to handle 4,000 users but hey what do I know, kicked them on to another set of DNS and all was well....
Alex "David Brent", was there (not that surprising given that I was late getting in) and within 10 minuntes it was time for a fag break....so I had two, gotta give this crap up I really do...
