Adventures of the nothing man

"straight, what do you mean straight..." Lo folks, back to work today grrrr...feels like monday all over again.

08:45: The by now customary drive to work has been completed..15 minutes this time so it's getting better. The hordes of 4x4 drivers have obviously discovered that the white stuff doesn't actually do anything, especially when it lands and instantly turns to water !!

09:00: Get to work, I'm still thinking "what the hell happened to all the snow that was forcasted", typical this country, we can't get anything right.

09:05: Open my email, to discover one from the grand wizard. He's not happy, and is having a right old go about the BIG IP from tuesday. Of course had the design not changed, and a load of other unforseen events not taken place then this would have been deployed by now but hey I only have 15 years IT experience, what the hell do I know. I send him a fairly curt email back, though I held off being abusive. If the guy lets me off his lead, I might actually do some good, another point I've made to him.

09:10: The disco from Tuesday, isn't in fact a disco, it is in fact a series of presentations. Brentboy and I can distinctly hear the "blah, fnah, stor, process" followed by some clapping and the odd "hu hu hoo hoo" from the same audience, so we decide to join in. Everytime the clapping starts we start applauding too, we've no idea what we're applauding, the presentation may have been complete garbage, we will never know, but we laugh at the same time everyone else does.

10:00: The bloody presentation thing is still going on. I'm trying to do documentation, and it's getting there, only 42 pages done.

11:00: Absolutely nothing is happening, I've submitted my change request so I can actually get the webnonsense stuff deployed within the 10 days the grand wizard has stipulated. Of course they've come back and said they can't possibly approve it unless there's several meetings and discussions and I was hoping to have it approved before the grand wizard comes back from moving castles but so he couldn't suggest clever things like DNS round robin instead, but that's not looking likely.

12:00 back to the documentation for 30 mins.

12:30: Lunch.

13:30: Back to work, Mark Bailout calls "fag...?", "yeah go on then" doh !....Brentboy cant' come, he's pinned under the desk (if you know what I mean), because Julie Lowcutop has arrived to discuss messaging and to display her impressive clevage to him. She obviously finds adjusting her clothing, keeps people (I say people I mean men) interested in what she has to say, though I think if she asked them they wouldn't actually remember.

14:00: Brentboy is still talking to her, I'm sure his desk is vibrating, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

15:00: Checked the snapshots to find that they're snapping from two days ago and some are failing..grrr..so I open up the editor to have a look what the hell is going on.
Out having a smoke in the smoking shelter (appropriately named I think you'll find), the topic of conversation I've chosen is my discovery that the founder of the Atkins diet is actually 24 stone!!! I happen to mention that that's probably due to the fact he's an American and that they're all fairly large, when someone pipes up and says this guy here is American, I look over and yup, 9 stone if he's a pound...quick as a flash "well you're obviously the exception that proves the rule", dunno why I'm bothering, as I don't actually care whether he's offended or not.

16:00: Snow is still falling and turning to water instantly, I'm sooooo unimpressed with this stuff.
Bit of surfing is what's called for, so I got my web mail account to discover the wife has downloaded it to our home PC, for some reason I find that really annoying, even though 90% of it is spam, it's my spam and I want to delete it !!;-)

17:00: Documentation is done, I have to do the Daily Operations guide, so I, like the clever sod I am I save my "How to reinstall it if you've really screwed it up guide" and then delete it all so I can use the same template and fonts etc...typing away all is well.

17:30: Reet home time, just save this now, and noooooooooooooooooooooooo, I've saved it with the same name as the mamoth 44 pager I spent a week writing!!! For some reason I figure there has to be a way of getting it back but you know as well as I do, there isn't much swearing ensues and I shut down the machine in a rage...time to go bloody home !!!!!

"4 b 2, more like 3 b 1...", mornin' all, I mean mornin' too as I haven't recovered yet....

06:00: Yes 06:00!!! in the morning, I say morning it's not really morning until at least 07:30. I'm awoken by the shrill sound of the wife shouting in my ear, "come on, make me a cup of tea", followed quickly by an elbow in the ribs, "whaa? it's only 6 go back to sleep..", Ryan is at the door, this can mean only two things, a. he's broken something and is coming clean or b. he's broken something and about to blame his brother for it, "hello" he says, "hello mate" I reply...The wife stirrs again "come on, time to get up", I'm really confused, it's 6am and I'm having to get up, then there's the deafening sound of the penny dropping as the wife says "happy birthday mate", yup it's Ryan's birthday, he's 12, 12!!!!!, I demand a recount, he can't be 12, why only last week I was changing his nappy...cuh, time flies eh.

06:15: we all troll downstairs, the wife doing her best to pretend to actually be awake, but I know the truth. We all sit on the settee and Ryan begins opening his presents, I could tell you what he got, but I honestly can't remember, please note I am still semi conscious at this point having only had 4 hours sleep!!

07:00: Present opening is done, and he's getting ready for school...I slope off upstairs and find my bed...aaaagghhhhh zzzzZZZZZZ

08:15: Woken to the sound of an aircraft landing on my house, nope it's the wife drying her hair, apparently I've been snoring and I really should stop it (like I've any control over it). Feeling like I'm in the wrong for something, the make up is going on with some force at this point so I know I've done something wrong...I go to walk past and she deliberately lifts the flex of the hair dryer across the door way, but I'm aware of this so I manage to escape.

08:20: Made her a cup of tea PMT week isn't for another week or so, so I know I'm in the wrong. "I thought I was taking Jack to school ?" I say helpfully, "You were snoring" she replies, "It's ok" I say almost meaning it, "I'll take him", the things you do eh?

08:25: I look outside and there's been a modest snow fall, I mean about 3 milimetres so we'll have to go steady.. Outside de-snowing the car which takes about a nanosecond, open car, turn on car, turn on air conditioning and heated rear window, leave to simmer for 5 minutes....

08:30: Take Jack to school. Fortunately it's not raining, it's always raining when I take him to school, but not today.

08:45: Back home now, and I've got a day off...Wife is having breakfast so I nip upstairs un-noticed and see what's new on the email front...ooh another 30 "Improve your sex life" emails to delete.

09:00: Check work's email, nothing doing...so I guess I'll have to get on with downstairs loo, undersink cabinet..maybe in a bit...

10:30: Ok guilt has finally got the better of me so I come down and begin, not really much to report here, just a lot of me swearing and screwing bits of wood together.

16:00: yup bit of jump there but days off are days off, not much to report on that score. The cabinet is looking good, the doors aren't looking so good, so I make a mental note to redo them on Saturday.

16:30: Everyone is coming over ! Well ok, My Mum, My Stepdad, and the Wife's parents, for dinner. Wife's in a bit of a panic over her insinerated roast beef, but it's actually looking eminently edible.

18:00: Dinner's over, washing up to do, though I have help tonight, I dish the tea towels out and claim that I'll do the putting away as I know where everything goes (that one always works !!)

19:00: Everyone's in the front room, and we're discussing a variety of intelligent topics, from politics, to the Royal family.

"Ok, but if you break it yer paying for it...", Hi folks, Adventure 9 has the same date I know, ok brentyboy wind yer neck in..

I don't know why I'm talking to him, as he hasn't moved from BOFH since yesterday so probably won't end up reading this anyway.

08:30 Hey guess what, apparently 3 snowflakes fell last night and now it's really snowing, I have to get out get fags and warm up and clear, the afore mentioned 3 flakes, from both cars with my Homebase patented ice scraper..

09:00: Ok I've spent 30 minutes in the car and I've travelled 3 miles, the long stream of 4x4 off road vehicles don't seem to be able to cope with snow ! Not that there's any on the road, just generally, they've heard there's snow about and it's that white stuff falling from the sky, and that means we have to drive reeeeealllly sllllooooowwwwwlllyyyy.

09:15: The grand magician is there as I walk in "damn it" I think and they said there'd be disruption, fortuantely he's talking to the brentboy so I may get away with it...yup yesterday he said "change the font in your email" , "No I said I like wingdings", "makes you look like a secretary who's just discovered word" he says, "so ?, I like the font" I could've said, "sod off, git face, what the hell's it got to do with you, haven't you got some magic tricks to do (or programme management) as we like to call it."

10:00: Quiet Rob is here, I think he has new batteries as I can actually here him and we have another one of our in depth conversations about how having policies and procedures is a good thing and it'd be even better if we had them here....he does a lot of nodding..."

11:00 Brentboy, has been dragged away from BOFH, he has a messaging meeting (there is a God and he's not a nice guy!), and the grand master magician is going too...excellent!

11:15: In the smoking shelter having my customary, as many fags as I can get in whilst still holding down a sensible work related conversation, Mark Bailout turns up, thanking me for the invite and then (drum roll please) Dunk The Skunk, (rebel mc) turns up too, asking piercing questions like how's webNonsense coming, I think for a second he may actually understand what he's asking, but then reality dawns so I make up an answer and that seems to appease him for now.

12:30: Lunch

13:30: I've just noticed they're building a stage and sound system, just across the way from me. No one seems to know why, brentboy, breaks off his in depth technical discussion with some guy to do with messaging and starts singing "if you don't know me by now...", If I could I'd murder him in his sleep...

13:55: The music has started now, maybe they've hired the hall out to some disco / party..dunno more details as I have them...

16:30: Still no news on the disco that seems to have been set up along the way...30 mins before the F4.5 engineer turns up and we turn off internet access for good ;-))

17:00: Internet access is down as we upgrade the box, I've allocated 1-2 hours so the 3 minutes it took to do the upgrade is making me look damn good! I haven't told anyone they can use the internet as we've some very in depth configuration to do "...hit that, press that read a bit of the manual, does it work, no, shit, try that, no..." still not working, at least the old proxies are still working. I said the F5 engineer earlier, I should have said the F5 - Trainee engineer, I know this because he spends far too long calling the real F5 engineer and reading manuals etc.

18:00: Still here I was hoping we'd have it nailed by now (and man am I tired). The F5-Trainee is convinced the problem is that we need to add a route to our switch, yeah right, like he knows a. what a route is and b. what a switch is. To the uninitiated, I'm talking jargon here it's a thing that does something that you really don't need to know about unless you know what I'm talking about and then it's a really technical discussion. Fact is the connections can ping each other (i.e. communicate with each other) which if that wasn't working would be why you'd put a route in so the Trainee is talking bublocks.

19:00: I point these facts out to him and I know he hasn't a clue when he very quickly says "oh, yes that's right, of course silly me"...not overly impressed. After a final call to the guy who actually has a clue what he's doing, it's decided that they'll retire back to their lab, to lick their wounds (hey and who know's each others wounds), and try and resolve the issue. I'm off tomorrow so I know the sh$t is really going to hit the fan, I mean the project is only 3 weeks late....never mind!

"I know, kettle flex is best.....", reet a day on I know from yesterday, but yesterdays was all about last week, I've moved on and in 24 hours alone I've got more to tell you about...

08:30: Well I'm up, it's cold bloody cold, the cold snap they've been bleating on about is now upon us, it's only about 15 degrees inside and about 2 out. Also I have this sudden realisation that half term is over and the seemingly empty roads of last week are now a thing of the past.

08:35: I'm on the road behind a train of four by four's and people (or small people) carriers, with their huge off road tyres churning up the salt that the wonderful gritting guys have chucked out the night before, still I didn't actually like my paintwork anyway !

08:40: Nearly at work now, man it's heavy going, the wife had taken the car to the garage for it's 20,000 mile "service" and now I'm only £250 lighter as a result, so there's absolutely nothing worth listening too on the cd player, I kick it on to Radio 5 live, for some intelligent chat, and the top story ? The one they want people to phone in about, smacking ! That old chestnut... I would say that I don't know why they do it but that would be me pretending to be naive. I know damn well why, coz there's sod all else to talk about.
President bush is over schmoozing his way around european leaders quicker than a woman called alisha, who does a mean line in furniture preservation products (if you catch my drift), and I hear snippet of something remotely intelligent he said once (probably just after birth) by way of recognition.

08:45: Made it to work, just sitting down and he's there..."so how we doing?", "err not bad...." and that's hit he's off to a meeting. His mobile PDA is on his desk though, so every 2 minutes we get the annoying diddly diddly ding ding, which initally isn't a problem but some persistent arsehole is just going to ring it and ring it and ring it. I nearly phoned frank to tell him there was big mess in the patio outside the canteen, that no-one uses (primarily because the doors are locked but also because it's february and that would be stupid!), but I resist.

09:00: The magician's back, comes over "how we doin' then" ..."yeah alright" I say trying hard not to mutter some expletives under breath. "I've got a little project for you to do", "oh yes" I say trying to sound interested, "yes, the portsmouth users", "mmm ?", " they're all coming up here and I'd like you to sort out power and comms etc", "ok" I say, waiting for the finite detail to the project....but then nothing, obviously assuming telepathy is a god given gift that everyone has he turns and walks away, now I'm a little lost, should I know what the hell he's blathering on about ? Should I know how many users, how many, PC's, Printers, faxes and where everyone is going to sit ? Obviously not, I'll run up a project plan later with an estimated figure for everything costing millions, that'll spark some better information I'm sure.

09:30: Checking the snapshots on the file server and ooh yes they're all from the weekend, in fact no snapshots have happened today so I spend an hour trying to work out why.

10:30: I keep hearing strange chuckles from my left hand side, either Alex Brentboy, is drunk or high or both or he's reading something funny....I look over and my suspicions are confirmed. He has discovered the "Bastard Operator From Hell" section of the register and is intent on reading them, and letting me know everytime something is funny. I try and ignore it for a bit but the temptation is too much, so I end up reading it.

11:00: It's starting to snow, I say starting, when actually I mean there's the odd flek of something white falling from the sky. It could be that a passing helicopter pilot has just flicked his ash but I don't know at this stage. I know with hand on heart, that I'm going to be extremely disappointed by the snow united turn out, living in the mid/south of the UK doesn't lend itself to any extremes of weather usually so I'm not holding much hope out for this "BIG FREEZE".

12:30: Lunchtime, I go out and brave the driving nothingness that hasn't fallen from the sky and go for my bacon sarny.

13:30: Back, ready to fight the good fight...then I realise I have documentation to do, so I knuckle down, to write yesterdays blog, which takes a good hour to complete.

14:30: Done the blog, now I've gotta do some work ;-(....More chuckles from the Brentboy..

17:30: Another fruitless day ends...still I managed to resolve all my WebNonsense issues even without the help of Non-Technical Support.

17:35: Just got back home (man those long drives home are starting to take their toll!!)

18:00: Finish my dinner, the kids have escaped to battle some villanous breed of alien or drive far to fast and smash in to something semi-solid, so i'll wait for the screams to start.

18:30: Washing up is done, the wife mentions she's got to do some work, so I'm left with the onerous task of "looking after the kids", which is code for lay on the settee, and nod off whilst watching some worthless mid evening tv series about lesser spotted kites or something.

19:30: World war II has begun! I just mentioned to POD that perhaps if he wasn't too busy (I mean how busy can an 8 year old be ?) he might quite like to practice some spellings ? That was it, "huh! neeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww I CANT DO SPELLINGS, I DONT WANT TO DO SPELLINGS, YOU CANT MAKE ME, AAAAAAGGGgHHHGHGHG", winning that one then ? As my child relationship skills are in full use I also suggest to my nearly 12 year old (T-minus 1 year and 1 day remaining) that he might like to do his maths homework....wadda mistaka to make a !!! "OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOO " (wail sob, wail sob) stomp upstairs, slam door, shout scream, "oh I'll just do my homework then I won't watch my absolute monday night 7:45pm BBC1, favourite programme then, I have no life!!"... I mean CHRIST !!

20:00: The wife has finished her work (or was that the other way around), obviously she could hear the ensuing cries of children being abused by their father, and has come to help.....THEM!
We resolve our differences by me shouting louder than everyone else (always works that one !!) and we discover that I was in fact in the right all along (yeah right !).

21:00: Finally the kids are in bed, pretending to be asleep whenever I come upstairs so we sit down and watch what remains of the monday night telly.

22:00: Can't wait for tomorrow to begin, the snow is almost coming down 1 flake a minute now, I know the roads are going to be turmoil, I know I have to buy fags first thing and i know I'm going to get a snow flake go down my back just to really annoy me...it's great being alive !!

.....yeah the collander should do it..., hey there, haven't been on for a while..man I've been busy. Time for a bit of a catch up...

Last week was well I don't remember much of last week. I spent most of it in a semi conscious state trying to write documentation for our new WebNonsense application which I'm sposed to be deploying this week.... The "How to reinstall it when you screw it up" guide is now 47 pages long and still it's not done.

The manic Magician was in from Tuesday and try as I might I still got embroiled in his house moving drama. Then helpfully with less than a week to go until deployment and at the time two days to go before the F'off 5 engineer turns up to hook it all together, he suggests we change the design of the system so radically it's taken me until today to get the thing sorted out.

Also on Tuesday, I sent my email notification of outage to the Non-Helpdesk, to be ratified, clarified, approved and then spelt incorrectly, only to find that Mark Klueless (Surface Deliberately Manager), was "In Overton today". Ok I think maybe he'll approve it Wednesday morning, and it'll still be ok to send it in time for Thursday evening's outage. How wrong you can be. He managed however to find time to send me an email stating that he had no knowledge of a piece of software that needed it's maintenance renewing (well it's a piece of shareware that cost £90, for christ's sake!!), no mention though of the email....

Wednesday lunchtime comes and still nothing, I mention this to the grand wizard on the grounds that we'll have to cancel the engineer for Thursday only to find that it's been rejected by the same SD Manager (should've been VD in my book) !! Stating that he didn't know what users would be affected...Now then the email quite clearly states...all users using WWW services..I dunno clues in the question I think...

That was cleared up on Thursday by the Magician going round and throttling him (he does have some uses)...The email goes out stating that Tuesday is the day when the service will be out. Now I specify 1-2 hours and tell them all why "Upgrade of BIGIP operating system". I know in my heart it's question of copying a few files and will only take 10-15 minutes, but hey my business is pain !!!....

We get a response from Chris "bully boy" Nobead, the stand in, "honest guv I'm a contracter" IT Director (funny the company he works for is an outsourcing company too, can't think what the outcome of his firms management consultants IT review will be can you ?), sends an email back saying "nope that's totally unreasonable, during the day, can't you do it on sunday when the power's out"... I nearly did, i promise you, I nearly very nearly replied, a. I don't work sundays or weekends for time off in lieu, coz you aint giving me something that's not already mine, and the engineer doesn't either, besides he's booked for Tuesday and b. I need power to do the f'ing upgrade you muppet!... The magician to the rescue again, I tell you his talk to someone for an hour and say absolutely nothing spell is at breaking point today, The IT mis-director is appeased, we'll give him his very own proxy to play with so he can download his porn from it (after first switching on the logging !! ;-))

The phone rings (in true BOFH style), It's Wos Satsuma, Wos isn't his real name but something I threw together by way of an acronym..Waste Of Space (Wos). "Cre8, I see that you're now backing up the file server every 2 hours when the users are on it....I think it's screwing up the backups" (AAAAAGGGGHHHHGH). "Hang on" I say as I connect to the server, "Wos, the reason the backups from last night haven't finished is because they're all ""WAITING FOR BLOODY MEDIA"" !!!", "yeah I know, it's coz the file server backups are going to often and nabbing the tape drive before the other jobs get a chance"....." Wos, err, no the fileserver backup uses the first drive..., the application backups all use a different one, one we call drive 2, there are no blank or unfil tapes for it to write the data to, consequently it's "WAITING FOR F$%"£$%ing MEDIA!!!", "oh right, should I blank a couple of tapes ?", I nearly said yes but in a fit of peak I complied and said "No, it's ok, I'll do it for you..."

Friday arrives finally (I never thought it'd get here) Mark Bailout is in, his "How to completely knacker your nokia firewall in three easy steps" course only being a 4 day affair. What's this Alex the Brent is in too, having struggled from his death bed (or the Rose and Crown as it's more commonly known!!), to make it in to work..what a trooper !!!

So we're back to the 5 minute fag break syndrome where old "Silver Fox" (bailout) tries to persuade me that when he said (and I quote exactly) "I think it's these snaps that are stopping the backups from running..." what he actually meant was "cre8, any thoughts on why it is the backups haven't been working ? or should I review the logs first"... you know I can see how you'd get confused as they're sooooo similar .... naaat!!!

Sunday, is power down day, we just had an email through, but not just that, they're also planning on painting some more lines in the car park, whoopy do! Why do they send these emails ?

Apparently snow's on the way this week so that should be fun - naaat....

More from today later...

8.

"...no..the grater".... G'day all...(note to self stop talking like an Australian),...It's just been one of those weeks...had a real death defying heavy cold and felt like well someone who was dead but not quite, for some time...

The week has been pretty uneventful, apart from me trying to fit skirting board that's so warped it's almost cylindrical !!! Even the liberal use of the world famous "no more plaster" hasn't managed to stick it properly and the least said about the mitre joints the better.

We had a blokey bloke, come and "fit" our hall floor (how do you "fit" a floor incidentally, but no matter), which looks nice, if not a lot similar to what it looked like before, but still it was only £500 !!! (If I don't get sent some Allied shares soon there'll be trouble).

The car service is due on Friday so that'll be another £250+ and it's my eldest spawn of satan's 12th birthday (T minus 1 year and counting) next week and the father in laws and my sisters so February is looking REALLY REALLY crap so far....still I have the downstairs loo to change to make up for it...I know that's really going to cheer me up. (Note to self, make sure we have some clothes pegs)

Tuesday 15th:
08:40: Got to work, head is banging again..hopefully the Nurofen will kick in soon...

09:00: Invisible Dave is here !!! (hold the back page) apparently he's got a meeting with The Grand Wizzard, who's erm...working from home (funny that in half term week). Dave's out of the Portsmouth office so lucky he came to Basingstoke to have his conference call with erm...Portsmouth...Needless to say he's not happy, and is going to be making his way back to erm Portsmouth, real soon.

09:15: Quiet Rob, came up, I know he said something but I'm not sure what (lip reading was never a strength of mine)...I'm trying to find this web site that tells you how to do clever things with scripts but I can't for the life of me find it....aaaagghh...

09:30: No one is in, it's like it's a bank holiday and I've forgotten not to get up (not easy for me to do I can assure you). Alex Brent, hasn't been in since Friday (i.e. he was off Monday and no one knows why), Mark Silver Fox Bailout, is on a course, "how not to blame things you know nothing about" I hope (I put that in coz I know he reads this), Quiet Rob and Invisible Dave I've already mentioned..the one bright spark on the horizon is that the grand wizzard isn't here, so today could be quite productive, there'll be no "soooo how we doin'" every five minutes, the down side is that I'll have to remind myself to go for a smoke....

10:00: Still no one about, some consultants and a woman from Overton called Pervy or something (I really tried hard not to laugh out loud, but I was crying inside), have arrived to do something really clever, the Insultant, is one of those special one's that company's send along to install their meaningless drivel of a software package that costs a fortune, but is just a few batch scripts bolted together. Further, he's their top Insultant which, for the uninitiated, means he actually thinks what he's doing is really clever...I have the dubious honour of having to log them in and take them to the datacentre where he talks incessantly about the things he's seen and done at other company's and how 32mb memory sticks are like just amaaazin...and he's even got a cake box of 25 Napster blank CD's like they're any different to any other blank CD ...aaaargh..then he laughs and well by now I'm screaming in side, luckily the company Annoying bastard Insultant murder weapon (anything heavy and close to hand) has been moved so I can't put him out of my misery, the laugh is a bit like a castrated pig, not that I know what a castrated pig sounds like, but if one was being castrated I'd imagine that's what it would sound like...

Any how, we're back at the relevant desks now...he's literally 3 feet away and I could just throw this Lacie drive (bout 3kg in weight) and it'd be all over...but I resist...

10:30: Found it !! The website...scripts are ammended God I'm good...I can crib anyone's bits of code, bolt them together and make them work...Bill Gates eat your heart out!!!!

11:00: Checking my mail...20 items and one ahaaa! from Ski, Customer, Couldn't, Care less department..thanking me for my email (yeah like they read it!), and asking me for my name and address, account number, viewing card number, serial number of my left toe, bank account number and £1,000,000 in cleared funds in their offshore account... ok I'm exaggerating £500,000,...Christ sake, (red rag, bull spring immediately to mind)...so I very politely reply, stating that I don't have my viewing card number as it was in the Sky + machine (at HOME!!!) or my account number (why would I know what that was) but here was my name and address and perhaps, for once, they'd meet me half way and give their own database a lookup...you know the one that sends me the bills, has my bank account details, and sends me my Sky+ packing material (magazine).

12:30: Lunch..phew made it thus far. I've avoided Women talking about their relationship difficulties and managed to almost have conversation with quiet Rob...Bacon sarny now..at the mother in law's (she who did the catering at the feeding of the 5,000).

13:32: Made it back to work, stomach somewhat fuller than before. I've escaped the kids too, as they all seem a little bit miserable so tonight could be fun!!

1350: Invisible Dave has just run - from Portsmouth...he left a CD envelope on the desk here with a really vital license key...so I realy the number to him (well not quite the number)..I relay a CD key just not necessarily that CD key..I'll wait for him to phone back !!


14:30: Why do people insist on asking me things I can't answer ? "What's the admin password for this box" ...."errr I don't know..." I'm drifting now..back a couple of days...so there's Alex Brent and Julie Locatop working together, I mean close proximity..working on spam filtering etc etc...the subject of explicit text came up and Alex says and I quote .."what I want is explicit sex..", you've never seen anyone go so pink...me I was falling on the floor in hysterics really quite funny, really the highlight of the week...ahhhhah...

I'm on a roll now..the daily "What's for dinner.." competition has begun, one player, me.. I reckon it could be Shepards Pie...I may be wrong. I'll let you know, for some reason I'm getting an incling that it could be...

15:00: Nothin' much doing, scripts are working fine yahay (spoke too soon I think), and I'm manically trying to do some documentation (or Mickey Mouse guide to doing things)...

15:30: Aaaaghh my mobile is ringing (well zzzing anyway), I can't talk to an agency now I'm far too busy with this pointless, meaningless (I'm not bitter) drivel...phew it's not an agency, it's Tom the grand wizzard. He's explainng to me about some confusion he generated with some other documentation...I come off the phone no wiser than before, but I'll phone Julie Locatop anyhow to try and explain things..."right, er well if you think it's best" I say, she's arbitarily decided to cut the whole paragraph out, here's hoping !!! ;-)

16:00: And another snapshot works just like it should...this is getting close to being perfect..(I really shouldn't say things like that). I've just sent a Doug uahole an email the Ages2Store Insultant who caused our corruption problems earlier in the week, but I know our content checker will out words like Tosser so I choose my words more carefully...

###########################################################
...Dear Mr T. Osser,
Thank U seooooow much (check repetitive use of the letter 'o') for completely screwing to the floor with brass headed multi tap screws, our file server.

Given the sublime nature of the "upgrade" I'll be fully expecting your bush berry's in the post by way of apology....

Yours

The poor s. ucker who had to deal with your c rap sheet.

##########################################################

16:30: Sent my email to Helpdesk, got a instant reply...must try to spell helpdesk correctly...wastersdesk just doesn't work...tried again, then a delay but I think it got through, so now I have evidence.

16:45: Patrick Scuritywotscurity, has just rung, wanting to know about certain change control requests I put through...he's under the impression that the change required to completely knacker the BIGIP load balancer (the one 4,000 users go through) will need doing at a weekend or really late at night, oh how foolish young men can be..I've put him straight it happens on Thursday at 5pm or not at all I'm afraid...serves us right for only having one box.

17:00: 30 mins 'till home time (though I could slope off now, no one would notice)...back to the documentation..grrr....

"....yes with the masher....", reet sorry, apologies for the last entry should've been Adventure 4, and I bet someone bright spark is going to point that out to me real soon...

Friday:
18:00: Phew just got in, and I'm annoyed, it's taken me 8 minutes to get home, poxy learner drivers !!!

18:01: Kids are quiet I think...no screaming "leave me aloooooooooone", no "I didn't touch him" what the hell is going on...I open the front door from the inside, to check I've come back to the right place, then I check the front room to make sure they haven't moved and not told me...Nope no sign of anyone, then I hear the familar sound of a herd of elephants bounding down the stairs, yup it's Ryan, with a rucksack !!! Could my evening get any better ? Thank god for sleepovers that's all I can say.

18:30: I sit down at the table and much my way through my dinner, proper oven chips and chicken nuggets, fan-bloody-tastic, no, I mean it, it's been eon's since I had decent oven chip in fact any type of chip at all (if you don't count last weeks fishcake and chips from the local chinky!!). The wife's in a bit of a panic, Jack has had a friend over, I say friend when I actually mean, small child like creature, who doesn't speak, and they spend all their time not speaking to each other while one plays the playstation, gameboy, computer (delete where applicable) and the other plays the playstation, gameboy, computer (delete where applicable), try as they might they can't seem to do anything together apart from follow each other around when there's food in the offing. Anyhow I digress....
"what's up" I say,
"I'm late taking James back",
"James ?" I say, having already clocked the extra pair of velcroed trainers by the front door, "Yeah, Jack had a friend over for tea" she replies,
he chose not to eat this one then !! I think to myself,
"oh ok" I say "what's the rush ?",
"well I was supposed to have him back by 6 and it's gone half past, his mum will be wondering where he is" she says in a panic, gulping the last of her yogurt down,
"Ok I say" now I know I'm going to regret it, but I ask anyway,
"so, why not phone her and explain" I utter innocently,
"I haven't got her number" the wife replies, cuh stupid me eh?,
"isn't she in the book" I ask even more innocently than before,
"I don't know she replies, James has one of those (trendy) double-barrelled names" (heh ever wonder why double-barrell is hyphenated ? (little things eh)...again I digress..
"so I don't know if she's a baker or a smith, or a baker-smith"
"ah, well you could always give directory enquiries a ring and give them the address"
"well I would she says but I'm not 100% sure where he lives",
"right, well you'd better get going then", "I'll do the washing up" (god I'm a great guy aren't I ?

Saturday:
09:45: Just got up (god I love weekends), Ryan has literally just walked through the door, a dishevelled mess, no change there then, 5 mins and we have to leave for stage school, I explain this to him, "Ok" he says and disappears upstairs to complete the domination of some foreign land via playstation transport..

09:56: "RYAN !!!! we have to go NOW", a strop ensues, how dare I ask him to come and get in the nice warm car and get driven to his stage school for his drama lession, I mean how unreasonable am I ?

10:04: Drop Ryan off at stage school, and proceed to the hell on earth that is Homebase. This place has this unerring nack of releiving me of my hard earned cash. I'm looking for a waste for the downstairs toilet sink (we're replacing that...note the emphasis on we there when I actually mean I'm replacing, having been told that's what I'm doing by my good wife, see partnership in action !!) Any how this is a bit of a challenge, luckily for me I only spent £70 this time...got off lightly I think, then I think "no, coz now you've got to go to B& Queue for avery long time while our till staff smoke weed or something"..so off I toddle, I park in the deserted part of the car park, just coz I like my doors the shape they are, and trek the seven miles to the main entrance, "this is too simple", I've found a flexible waste (wahay!) that's no good for anything and a connector pipe that won't fit when I get it home, not to mention all the wood i need to make the complete cock up (prior to buying all the wood again and doing it right second time), new bathroom under-sink cabinet, I escape with a bill for £40, which I think is pretty good, and I've almost completely forgotten the silly cow in homebase who constantly asks me "would you like some new PVC windows or doors, or a conservatory ?" with a beaming smile on her face...everytime I try not to look at her and everytime she manages to make me...I'm running out of excuses...so I use the "sorry love I'm a gypsy" that seems to throw her (until the next time)...so I jump back in the car, well that would be simple wouldn't it...having parked in a part of the car park with no cars within a 70 mile radius, you'd think I'd just get back in the car...no no I have to squeeze myself in throw a gap about an inch wide because somebody has bloody well parked next to me...If it hadn't happened so many times I'd lose it but no, I manage to get in whilst making sure my jeans rivets scrape the side of the numb nuts who decided to park next to me... I know it's a woman, I just do, that's what women do in a car park of 700 spaces, with about 60% of them unfilled they decide they're going to park next to the bright shiny sports car just to piss the driver off....aaaaggghhghghgh...

The other week though on my way back to the car I spot this ferrari tessatorossa, who the hell takes a ferrari to B&Q ? Anyone in their right mind ? I think not, I put it down to joy riders abondoning it...I can imagine the conversation "shall we take the aston, or the ferrari today dear ?", "oh the ferrari I think, we can get more cement bags in boot"...

I digress again...anyhow I make it back on to the race track that is the drive home, lucky having a V6 I can just zoom up someone's arse which is always theraputic...

11:00: Get home and unload the car, try out my useless flexible waste (and it was) and the other pipe thing, neither of which fit, so I bodge the waste together with pipes I had, run the taps and yup you guessed it, it leaks, did i mention that "I don't do plumbing"...anyway a couple of hours later I've got it nailed no leaks (yet)....

15:00: Take Jack and Ryan swimming, I'm not looking forward to it, but it's ok, I've got goggles, but no I suddenly remember, these are Ryan's goggles so I ask the girl on the desk If I can buy some, "no sorry we've sold out, but we should be getting some more in tomorrow", quick as a flash she's let me in to her sad little world, "not much use to me tomorrow if I'm swimming today though, are they" i say as sarcastically as I can, she devoid of any understanding of what sarcasm is, says "heheh, no spose not, they won't be here until 5pm any way"....aaaarghh...

Anyhow we get in the pool it's not too bad for the chemical soup that it is, I reckon my eyes have about 30mins before they start leaving their sockets of their own accord...

16:30: Made it back to the car, with the help of a blind man's guide dog (he was helping me to see !!) and I somehow manage to drive us home.

16:45: "You know that sink"...the wife asks, as if I could forget it, "yes" I reply, " well I think it's leaking again" like a fool I ask "what makes you think that", why ? why did I ask, "well there's a bit of a puddle on the floor"...aah that'll do it then...The next hour is spent with me cursing this bloody thing...but finally I think I've got it nailed, definitely no leaks, not a hint of a leak, it's not leaking...

Sunday:
11:00: Got up late, feel like it too...but we're over to Supa Dave or The Silver Flash, as he's sometimes known, the wife's dad. Her mum's their painting fence panels...He's going to help me find out where this oil leak is coming from...turns out it's the oil filter, so that's quite quickly resolved..

11:45: Olly, (the mother in law) is talking to Mandy (the wife) about a concert Ryan wants to do..."well I think the Tunisian's need our help", I look at Mandy, then I look at Dave (who just shakes his head)..."do you mean the Tsunami victims" I ask innocently...think we'll chalk that one up ;-)...

Reet, it's Friday "Dress (scruffy) Down" day and I'm all alone...this week has truly shown the self serving nature of people...(me included).

So we're rolling out Active Directory, to this site, 400 ish users within these walls are having their world turned upside down, shaken, spat at and then reassembled... boy they don't know what pain is (but they're about to find out). Pillock Systems the consultants charged with the migration (I've the joyous task of being involved with the subsequent consolidation project woopee do!) have been sauntering around looking very professional, having meetings and saying "yeah we really should touch base" and other really professional, consultant type things..not completely sure they're in full posession of what it is they're doing but I may be wrong.

09:00 Been in about 20 minutes, Brent is here looking at some sculdugorous web site about models. What makes it worse is they're the sort of troll, elf, warrior models and not the type that go about scantily clad, (now there's an idea...). No one else seems to be about...so I get myself a coffee and read my mail, my yahoo mail, some mail that was left in an intray, followed by last weeks daily mail...yup I'm feeling energised and incentivised this morning...
Truth is I have a banging sinus headache (so much so that I actually don't care if I spelt that right or not!!)

10:00 head is a bit better, the nurofen I took about 2 hours ago, seem to be in full swing now. Checking the SVM (a natty bit of kit that is sort of a SAN but not, it's like the clever bit of a SAN without the storage and it allows you to do snapshots and stuff www.storeage.com for further details) and all looks well, the backup kicks in, bugger it's running another full instead of the differential I told it to run...yeah I told it I know I did, just neglected to included it in the script doh !!!

11:00 Ok the "FULL" backup is still running...The Silver Fox is on the blowa, "can I come round and bother you lots about stuff..." he says (well no ok he didn't but that was the upshot ;-), "yeah ok, fag first ?" thinking I'll get in first, "No just been for one" he says...what !!?? and he hasn't asked me ?...so I go down on my own...it's lonely out there you know..., Jean's there..she'll say "Hiya" then not say anything at all for the duration of my smoke...She quickly walks away and a strange man comes in to the bus shelter (our smoking hut)..."Hillo", he says, "Vere is ze sunshine goink", he continues, "Great I think a bloody foreigner talking about the weather"...see it isn't just the British, and he's German too...holding back the "we won the war, so don't talk about or weather" thought that was rattling around in side my brain, I exchange pleasentries, he's ok, but will insist on telling me who he's working with and how long he's over for etc etc...he stopped short of telling me what hotel and room number, so I make my excuses and leave...phew...

12:00pm Quiet Rob has appeared...a bit like zebberdee from the magic roundabout but without the boooiinnng!!! He's talking to me about the SAN and what's going on downstairs with Pillock Systems, you know I could be bothered to talk to him.......I just cant though....

12:30pm Brent has spent the last hour telling me how tired he is and everyone else...so far I haven't cracked...I haven't asked him why...then all of a sudden he just says "well that's it I didn't get home from here until midnight last night, so I'm going home now..", damn! I think and I never even asked him...

Cazza DramaNotaCrisis, is on the hunt for someone to sort out a problem that isn't hers to do with USB sticks and laptops..somehow I've managed to get lumbered. Worst thing is, that the people who need me to fix the problem for them, won't let me anywhere near their machines because they're busy planning a conference for 120 delegates...the irony of that is that these 120 problematic memory sticks are for that conference...so I throw my hands up in the air and resort to something more productive...fag, coffee, web surf, mail,wwww .... nearly said it phew...

Blimey is that the time...I'm outa there, lunch time....Wife is suprisingly in a good mood today...don't understand it, so I check my calendar (the secret one with little * by relevant dates that tell me whether I should go home at all...yup we're safe, this could be a pucker good mood, not a calm before a storm "you didn't pick your socks up" storm, a genuine, good mood, one to be savoured...now then what can I get away with...Damn no football on tonight....

14:00 Lunch is over, back at my desk...what's this no network, now I could offer to help or I could be like everyone else and start phoning the helpdesk and complaining about network speed, but I do the only decent thing to do...finished speaking with the helpdesk...apparently they're inundated with calls and can only spend 10 seconds telling me what's wrong ....grreat...must remember where that lead I unplugged is for future reference...hmmmm.

Brent has gone home, so it's quiet...too quiet...Now at this point I'm between the devil and the deep blue sea, guilt has overtaken me, should I make an attempt to complete my documentation or should I not.....best to do a bit...so I do...five minutes later the phone rings..."fag....???"