Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Adventure 17: 29th March 2005
Monday, March 29, 2005
“Well if he makes himself sick, you can clear it up”, ah hello all, it’s been over a week since my last update. There’s a reason for that, namely that I simply couldn’t be bothered. You see when you have wonderful documentation to write, you can just get carried away on a crest of interesting, challenging work and simply forget the world as we know it….OR…. you can be so bored that you just can’t be arsed to write anything, coz all that’s happened is you’ve written a complete tome of “cut and pasted from on line help” or documentation as I like to call it.Any how it’s Easter, the clocks have gone forward so there must be something to write about, I know I was planning on writing my top 10 things that really annoy me, but as writing top 10 lists of things that really annoy me is one of the things that really annoys me I decided not to! Maybe in a fit of peak I may revisit that.So it’s Monday, normally I hate Monday’s but given that this is a bank holiday Monday, It’s not going too bad. We’ve even managed to get through the day with some reasonable weather which is even better ! Friday 26th March 2005,09:00: I wake up with a start, then suddenly realise it’s Good Friday and I’ve got the day off, now that really is good! That’s actually code for “the weekend has already started, there are jobs to be done”. My mission this weekend is going to be two fold. a. No DIY, and b. No visit’s to Cashbase. Last weekend was excellent from the latter’s point of view, as I managed to successfully not go to cashbase even once. No no, Buy and Queue Ltd, was my saviour (if you could call it that). I only went in for some floor tile adhesive so Mandy could regrout the kitchen in something that didn’t take a week to go a lovely shade of grimy black. You’d think buying some “Grimy Black” grout and adhesive would be the key there, but how stupid am I ? Beige is the colour, apparently, coz it seems to be the only colour they sell. Anyhow having picked that up, I managed to avoid their “discount” card offer, discount card indeed, they should give me one just for turning up at their run down ramshackle excuse for a DIY store. £40 later, I’m back in the car, well you can’t just buy a tub of floor tile adhesive now can you, it wouldn’t be fair. I then spent the next ½ an hour trying to reverse out of the parking space. As I’ve obviously mistaken the car park for a grand prix race circuit, and there are no end of cars (all of them far too small for what the people in them are going to buy from the shop!!)….but I digress.So I’m up, “what are we planning on doing today”, I innocently ask, knowing that all my work is done as far as the downstairs loo goes. “We’re off to Linda’s”, “oh yes why’s that…” I ask knowing what the real answer is. “Well you haven’t seen her new house have you ?”, “err no….” I mutter sarcastically, knowing there’s more to come “and well she needs a few jobs doing”, right the cats out of the bag. 13:00:So we turn up at Linda’s new pad and spend ½ an hour discussing paint schemes and stuff. My first job is to put up a bathroom mirror. A round one, from IKantbearsedtowriteinstructionsyouworkitout, the job looks fairly straight-forward until I get to the instructions…what instructions…precisely, exxxcellent. Basically there’s a diagram of a round circle inside a square with some measurements by it. Like a fool I naturally assume that I have to draw a square around the mirror. You can tell I’m not really with it as the square is completely irrelevant to proceedings, still it looks good to passers by.Luckily in anticipation, I’ve brought most of my power tools and a hammer, “if in doubt hit it”, as I’ve always thought. So I begin drilling my first hole for the mirror fixings which I’m still a bit dubious about. The drill veers off at an angle somewhat different to the normal veering which makes me a little suspicious, sure enough following some informed prodding I discover I’ve hit a pipe or a nail or something metal. This means I have to now move the fixing and try again. 14:00: The mirror is up, the pencil drawn square is looking very impressive. Apparently my next job is to put up a blind in the same bathroom that is too long for the window. hmmm, could be tricky this. So we agree I’ll take it home and mangle it up with my bench saw.15:00: Tie backs, my absolute favourite, but they go up almost straight and without too much of a struggle. Lee is back from work and is the coolest,19 year old there is. Driving his works, Peugeot cabriolet, and moving about with the grace of a large ungraceful thing. “Your easter egg is in the fridge”, brings him down to earth with a bump, it’s really hard being cool if mum still buys you an easter egg. That all stops when you get married, as mum then buys your kids an easter egg, but I don’t want to give him ideas.Saturday:10:00: We’re off on one of those family days out, to Fisher’s farm to give It it’s full title and some free advertising. Now then apparently it’s a farm and a bit of a kids adventure playground, with some rides etc, this should be good as we all know, rides etc aren’t for the kids at all, they can stroke the sheep if they want to but I want bumper boats!12:00: After driving for what seems an eternity, but was in fact just over an hour, we’ve made it, I nearly managed to park straight but that would be breaking the habit of a life time and no one wants that. The stench of animal poo, is thick and acrid in the air (that’s literary genius for you), and we make our way to the tills. “Two and two please” I say, “Is that two adults and two children ?”, comes the informed reply, not quite sure what else It could be, two adults and two small people pretending to be caterpillars perhaps, but instead of giving the sarcastic reply my brain is screaming at me to use, I simply confirm her suspicions and pay the £10million pound entry fee.13:00: Well we’ve been here an hour and not made it out of the gift shop! Good oh. What is the relevance of rubber snakes at this place, should I be worried ? That’s not strictly true, as we simply breezed through the excuse for a gift shop, they didn’t have any wicker baskets at all !! I can still smell the poo, so then we make our way to the source. There are some Shetland (that should be shitland) ponies (they’re from New Zealand) and there’s one male and two females, I know this I think because the male is soooo very obviously male, either that or he’s the first 5 legged pony, if you catch my drift. A point that Mandy would take great pleasure (this is getting risky) in pointing out to me a bit later on, and adding “and that was when it was soft” to add insult to my possible injury. 13:30: We’re going to make it outside, I’m determined. If we don’t then this may be the last entry…..Nope we did make it. There is a climbing wall which looks interesting though my ankle is just not going to put up with me bending it into different shapes to get up something like that. There’s a bucket load of trampolines, for young and old, ankle again, there’s some bumper boats (wahay!) in a pool about the size of a dinner plate which I can and do, do, though POD insists he’s going to steer and drive….in a circle for the entire time allotted. Then it’s off to the quad bikes, which looks like fun except the attendants (young girl students who couldn’t get a job at Sainsbury’s during the holidays) telling all the people “racing” around at 3 miles an hour to “SLOW DOWN!”, so I’m fairly switched off by that.
14:00: We catch up with Tina, Andy and Rebecca, who’s only 4 so she’s having a whale of a time. We decide it’s time to go on the ghost train, so we queue. I should have known really as it’s the only ride that everyone is queuing for, so I know it’s the good bit…
15:00: Absolutely terrified………I wasn’t….still what can you expect for £30 ? Blood ? The sun is shining and despite the very obvious younger audience of most of the attractions for a 36 year old, we’re having some fun together and it’s not DIY which is an absolute bonus and hey the sun is bloody shining on a bank holiday!!18:00: Made it back home, all is well.
Sunday:
10:30: Easter Sunday !!!! Today we have a charity auction to go to (it’s all go in our house!!). That’s not until 2pm though so there’s some time to kill. We mooch around a bit, doing some bits and pieces, until dinner at 13:00.
14:00: Made it to the auction, where we end up buying, a pub quiz kit, an ultimate movie quiz kit, a clock a bad picture and a cd rack. Not sure what any of them are worth, but at least we did our bit.
Monday:
Can’t remember the times as it’s all a bit of a blur, it being Monday me not being at work is a blessing and I think I’m going to rename every bank holiday “Good Monday”.We got up at 11:30 which was really 10:30 since the clocks had gone forward the previous night. Not sure what time they went forward, and quite why that matters but hey it’s a point.
I manage to cut Linda’s blind down to the slightly smudged pencil line, not entirely sure it’s actually the right size but I can hope.
Unthreaded all the slats which Mandy then had the dubious honour of cutting to the right size with a tool from IK which for once was pretty good. Then we both sat on the carpet rethreading the bloody things.
Next up is Leanne’s PC which has come back fixed from Nobbleyerpc, so I have to install the operating system and office etc which takes most of the rest of the day.
The afternoon / evening is spent delivering said items to said relatives, so Monday has actually been quite a productive day, even if it was for other people. Still you have to give a little to get a little I always reckon.
Tuesday is looming and we know what that means, back to “work”, back to the drudgery and documentation. Still the kids are off which is pleasing Mandy I can tell ;-))
“Well if he makes himself sick, you can clear it up”, ah hello all, it’s been over a week since my last update. There’s a reason for that, namely that I simply couldn’t be bothered. You see when you have wonderful documentation to write, you can just get carried away on a crest of interesting, challenging work and simply forget the world as we know it….OR…. you can be so bored that you just can’t be arsed to write anything, coz all that’s happened is you’ve written a complete tome of “cut and pasted from on line help” or documentation as I like to call it.Any how it’s Easter, the clocks have gone forward so there must be something to write about, I know I was planning on writing my top 10 things that really annoy me, but as writing top 10 lists of things that really annoy me is one of the things that really annoys me I decided not to! Maybe in a fit of peak I may revisit that.So it’s Monday, normally I hate Monday’s but given that this is a bank holiday Monday, It’s not going too bad. We’ve even managed to get through the day with some reasonable weather which is even better ! Friday 26th March 2005,09:00: I wake up with a start, then suddenly realise it’s Good Friday and I’ve got the day off, now that really is good! That’s actually code for “the weekend has already started, there are jobs to be done”. My mission this weekend is going to be two fold. a. No DIY, and b. No visit’s to Cashbase. Last weekend was excellent from the latter’s point of view, as I managed to successfully not go to cashbase even once. No no, Buy and Queue Ltd, was my saviour (if you could call it that). I only went in for some floor tile adhesive so Mandy could regrout the kitchen in something that didn’t take a week to go a lovely shade of grimy black. You’d think buying some “Grimy Black” grout and adhesive would be the key there, but how stupid am I ? Beige is the colour, apparently, coz it seems to be the only colour they sell. Anyhow having picked that up, I managed to avoid their “discount” card offer, discount card indeed, they should give me one just for turning up at their run down ramshackle excuse for a DIY store. £40 later, I’m back in the car, well you can’t just buy a tub of floor tile adhesive now can you, it wouldn’t be fair. I then spent the next ½ an hour trying to reverse out of the parking space. As I’ve obviously mistaken the car park for a grand prix race circuit, and there are no end of cars (all of them far too small for what the people in them are going to buy from the shop!!)….but I digress.So I’m up, “what are we planning on doing today”, I innocently ask, knowing that all my work is done as far as the downstairs loo goes. “We’re off to Linda’s”, “oh yes why’s that…” I ask knowing what the real answer is. “Well you haven’t seen her new house have you ?”, “err no….” I mutter sarcastically, knowing there’s more to come “and well she needs a few jobs doing”, right the cats out of the bag. 13:00:So we turn up at Linda’s new pad and spend ½ an hour discussing paint schemes and stuff. My first job is to put up a bathroom mirror. A round one, from IKantbearsedtowriteinstructionsyouworkitout, the job looks fairly straight-forward until I get to the instructions…what instructions…precisely, exxxcellent. Basically there’s a diagram of a round circle inside a square with some measurements by it. Like a fool I naturally assume that I have to draw a square around the mirror. You can tell I’m not really with it as the square is completely irrelevant to proceedings, still it looks good to passers by.Luckily in anticipation, I’ve brought most of my power tools and a hammer, “if in doubt hit it”, as I’ve always thought. So I begin drilling my first hole for the mirror fixings which I’m still a bit dubious about. The drill veers off at an angle somewhat different to the normal veering which makes me a little suspicious, sure enough following some informed prodding I discover I’ve hit a pipe or a nail or something metal. This means I have to now move the fixing and try again. 14:00: The mirror is up, the pencil drawn square is looking very impressive. Apparently my next job is to put up a blind in the same bathroom that is too long for the window. hmmm, could be tricky this. So we agree I’ll take it home and mangle it up with my bench saw.15:00: Tie backs, my absolute favourite, but they go up almost straight and without too much of a struggle. Lee is back from work and is the coolest,19 year old there is. Driving his works, Peugeot cabriolet, and moving about with the grace of a large ungraceful thing. “Your easter egg is in the fridge”, brings him down to earth with a bump, it’s really hard being cool if mum still buys you an easter egg. That all stops when you get married, as mum then buys your kids an easter egg, but I don’t want to give him ideas.Saturday:10:00: We’re off on one of those family days out, to Fisher’s farm to give It it’s full title and some free advertising. Now then apparently it’s a farm and a bit of a kids adventure playground, with some rides etc, this should be good as we all know, rides etc aren’t for the kids at all, they can stroke the sheep if they want to but I want bumper boats!12:00: After driving for what seems an eternity, but was in fact just over an hour, we’ve made it, I nearly managed to park straight but that would be breaking the habit of a life time and no one wants that. The stench of animal poo, is thick and acrid in the air (that’s literary genius for you), and we make our way to the tills. “Two and two please” I say, “Is that two adults and two children ?”, comes the informed reply, not quite sure what else It could be, two adults and two small people pretending to be caterpillars perhaps, but instead of giving the sarcastic reply my brain is screaming at me to use, I simply confirm her suspicions and pay the £10million pound entry fee.13:00: Well we’ve been here an hour and not made it out of the gift shop! Good oh. What is the relevance of rubber snakes at this place, should I be worried ? That’s not strictly true, as we simply breezed through the excuse for a gift shop, they didn’t have any wicker baskets at all !! I can still smell the poo, so then we make our way to the source. There are some Shetland (that should be shitland) ponies (they’re from New Zealand) and there’s one male and two females, I know this I think because the male is soooo very obviously male, either that or he’s the first 5 legged pony, if you catch my drift. A point that Mandy would take great pleasure (this is getting risky) in pointing out to me a bit later on, and adding “and that was when it was soft” to add insult to my possible injury. 13:30: We’re going to make it outside, I’m determined. If we don’t then this may be the last entry…..Nope we did make it. There is a climbing wall which looks interesting though my ankle is just not going to put up with me bending it into different shapes to get up something like that. There’s a bucket load of trampolines, for young and old, ankle again, there’s some bumper boats (wahay!) in a pool about the size of a dinner plate which I can and do, do, though POD insists he’s going to steer and drive….in a circle for the entire time allotted. Then it’s off to the quad bikes, which looks like fun except the attendants (young girl students who couldn’t get a job at Sainsbury’s during the holidays) telling all the people “racing” around at 3 miles an hour to “SLOW DOWN!”, so I’m fairly switched off by that.
14:00: We catch up with Tina, Andy and Rebecca, who’s only 4 so she’s having a whale of a time. We decide it’s time to go on the ghost train, so we queue. I should have known really as it’s the only ride that everyone is queuing for, so I know it’s the good bit…
15:00: Absolutely terrified………I wasn’t….still what can you expect for £30 ? Blood ? The sun is shining and despite the very obvious younger audience of most of the attractions for a 36 year old, we’re having some fun together and it’s not DIY which is an absolute bonus and hey the sun is bloody shining on a bank holiday!!18:00: Made it back home, all is well.
Sunday:
10:30: Easter Sunday !!!! Today we have a charity auction to go to (it’s all go in our house!!). That’s not until 2pm though so there’s some time to kill. We mooch around a bit, doing some bits and pieces, until dinner at 13:00.
14:00: Made it to the auction, where we end up buying, a pub quiz kit, an ultimate movie quiz kit, a clock a bad picture and a cd rack. Not sure what any of them are worth, but at least we did our bit.
Monday:
Can’t remember the times as it’s all a bit of a blur, it being Monday me not being at work is a blessing and I think I’m going to rename every bank holiday “Good Monday”.We got up at 11:30 which was really 10:30 since the clocks had gone forward the previous night. Not sure what time they went forward, and quite why that matters but hey it’s a point.
I manage to cut Linda’s blind down to the slightly smudged pencil line, not entirely sure it’s actually the right size but I can hope.
Unthreaded all the slats which Mandy then had the dubious honour of cutting to the right size with a tool from IK which for once was pretty good. Then we both sat on the carpet rethreading the bloody things.
Next up is Leanne’s PC which has come back fixed from Nobbleyerpc, so I have to install the operating system and office etc which takes most of the rest of the day.
The afternoon / evening is spent delivering said items to said relatives, so Monday has actually been quite a productive day, even if it was for other people. Still you have to give a little to get a little I always reckon.
Tuesday is looming and we know what that means, back to “work”, back to the drudgery and documentation. Still the kids are off which is pleasing Mandy I can tell ;-))
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Adventure 16: 16th March 2005
“you can’t make me even if you do pull a face like that….”Hello again, indomitable Cre8 here, Monday was almost a non event but for me putting the ITSY / NonSense / GFY (Go F%ck Yourself) system live, which I was fairly impressed at….Monday: 09:00:I’m in again, must arrange for some “sick” leave or interviews as I like to call it. I haven’t actively applied for another job now for days, and still I keep getting phone calls from “Secret” Recruitment Agents. Thing I don’t quite get is why they’re all so posh. It must be part and parcel of a careers day or something they have at eaton college.10:00:The phone rings, “hillo, it’s Simon brenton-smyth he’are from couldntgiveatoss recruitment…”, “hello” I thoughtfully reply, “I’ve just seen your excellent CV on Sodoff Jobsite” (god they’re really crawly aren’t they ?) “We’ve got this excellent role that we think you’d be suitable for”, brilliant, £90,000 a year, company car, running a company’s IT department, at my next door neighbours house ? err I think not..”It’s writinig Java code for a small company up in the outer Hebrides with a salary of £20,000 per year, you’ve got to admit that’s tempting isn’t it”, I mumble the normal “yeah great put me forward for it”, which is just code for don’t ever phone me again, “would I like a copy of the job spec? No no you keep it you never know when some numpty is going to give a monkeys enough to want it” and then I put the phone down.11:00: I have to admit I’m getting a little nervous, the NonSense cut over is going to happen at 2pm I’ve even persuaded Jilly Fringe (“Help” desk manager) to send an email out without authorisation. My god what is the world coming to, bypassing red tape, then I’m brought down to earth with the realisation that she’s going to re-type it, “for the lay-man”, “huh” I say, I don’t really know how much simpler it could be, my message reads:====================Message begins=======================
”Dear pains in the arse”, that’ll be changed “users” when it goes out, We will be implementing a new Internet Web proxy browsing solution in the coming days.
It is hoped that the new system will improve your web browsing experience.
No changes are required by you to use this new system however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.
If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.Nooneisgoingtoreadthis@uk.dontbedaft.com
Thank you in advance for your co-operation
======================Message Ends===============================
Now how much more simple could you get, but no apparently “Mark Pasty, and Bill Zunpronoucable, have asked if I can modify it so it tells them a new system is being put in”, “ah I see” I reply not really seeing at all “so the sentence, “we will be implementing a NEW internet web proxy browsing solution…” doesn’t actually tell them it’s a new system”…I understand completely….When eventually the message goes out (about 11:15) it’s stripped of some of the more extraneous drivel I had put in to read;
======================Message begins==============================
A new Internet Web browsing service will be implemented today (15/03).
It is hoped the new service will eliminate problems that have been experienced with internet browsing.
The change will be totally transparent to you however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.
If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.report@uk.dontbedaft.com
Thank you in advance for your co-operation
=====================Message Ends=================================
Now then the “in the coming few days” bit missing is going to bite me I know it is…
12:30: Lunch13:30: Back just walking in the office and the looks I’m getting..I check my fly to make sure I’m not embarrassing myself, but no all is well, I turn a corner to hear a familiar voice say “there he is!” they didn’t do the “get him” bit but I could tell from their voices that’s what they wanted to say.”Hello” I say quizzically, it’s Quiet Rob who pipes up first, “that new proxy system of yours doesn’t work”, “really?” I ask “no Portsmouth and Overton have no internet access”, “really?” I ask a kind of smug conceitedness in my voice indicating to anyone not really involved that I know something he doesn’t…”well what’s going to happen about it ? It’s really important…” and without breaking for breath, I can almost see the penny drop, “you haven’t put the new system live yet have you…”, “No” I’m half smiling, “ah well they still can’t get to the internet”, “great” I reply, “perhaps they’d like to phone service delivery and get them to fix their problem!!!” I love it when I’m right, I just love it.
14:00: DNS has been modified, with a 10 minute TTL (time to live) so I’ve got 10 mins before the world as the users know it ends muahahahahah…so it’s fag time. That takes up about 5 of those 10 minutes so I come back do a bit of browsing…3 minutes, check my achoo web mail for likely looking jobs, 1 minute, ok time to run up the performance monitor, the 10 minutes are up and wahay up go the graphs, web connections at about 300 fantasticimo.
15:00: 1 hour in and all is well-ish, trying hard not to think like that as it’ll all collapse in a big heap soon and then we’ll be in trouble. The phone rings at this point, it’s Quiet Rob (I can hear Invisible Dave in the background), “hello it’s me”, “jolly good” I reply, “are you busy at the moment”, “busy!!?, busy!!!? Am I busy!!?!???, hell no what do you want?”, “I wanted to ask you a question”,he falters, damn! He’s gay and I didn’t spot it, “ok ask away” I reply, “well we need you to come down here”,”that’s not a question” I say, “no but we need you to come down to the data centre to ask you the question”, he goes on, “right, ok”, I’m confused.
15:15: In the data centre with QR and ID they want my opinion on how to root the power cable for a rack to the floor, “well you could just use the hole in the floor next to the rack” I say simplistically, “oh that’s a good idea” they reply almost in unison, “that’s what we thought”, now I’m really really confused. The bent servers are still bent, sat on the desk looking sorry for themselves but they’re “Delluded” servers so I don’t actually care about them. Compress servers are much much better in my opinion, they actually look like servers, with flashy bing bang lights ‘n’ everything.
16:30: Make it back to my desk, NonSense, ITSY servers seem to behaving. I thought they would be handling 3,500 users but a so far they’ve only clocked 300 simultaneous connections. Now either we don’t have 3,500 users or the monitoring is completely bollixed and it isn’t actually telling me anything. Given that this monitoring was set up by the grand wizard, the later rather than the former could well be true!!
17:30: Home time, still nothing doing in terms of errors, quick run away before anyone notices….
”Dear pains in the arse”, that’ll be changed “users” when it goes out, We will be implementing a new Internet Web proxy browsing solution in the coming days.
It is hoped that the new system will improve your web browsing experience.
No changes are required by you to use this new system however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.
If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.Nooneisgoingtoreadthis@uk.dontbedaft.com
Thank you in advance for your co-operation
======================Message Ends===============================
Now how much more simple could you get, but no apparently “Mark Pasty, and Bill Zunpronoucable, have asked if I can modify it so it tells them a new system is being put in”, “ah I see” I reply not really seeing at all “so the sentence, “we will be implementing a NEW internet web proxy browsing solution…” doesn’t actually tell them it’s a new system”…I understand completely….When eventually the message goes out (about 11:15) it’s stripped of some of the more extraneous drivel I had put in to read;
======================Message begins==============================
A new Internet Web browsing service will be implemented today (15/03).
It is hoped the new service will eliminate problems that have been experienced with internet browsing.
The change will be totally transparent to you however you may notice that certain messages are formatted slightly differently. Functionality and speed should be greatly improved.
If you encounter any difficulties in internet browsing please register this by sending an email to the following address; NonSense.report@uk.dontbedaft.com
Thank you in advance for your co-operation
=====================Message Ends=================================
Now then the “in the coming few days” bit missing is going to bite me I know it is…
12:30: Lunch13:30: Back just walking in the office and the looks I’m getting..I check my fly to make sure I’m not embarrassing myself, but no all is well, I turn a corner to hear a familiar voice say “there he is!” they didn’t do the “get him” bit but I could tell from their voices that’s what they wanted to say.”Hello” I say quizzically, it’s Quiet Rob who pipes up first, “that new proxy system of yours doesn’t work”, “really?” I ask “no Portsmouth and Overton have no internet access”, “really?” I ask a kind of smug conceitedness in my voice indicating to anyone not really involved that I know something he doesn’t…”well what’s going to happen about it ? It’s really important…” and without breaking for breath, I can almost see the penny drop, “you haven’t put the new system live yet have you…”, “No” I’m half smiling, “ah well they still can’t get to the internet”, “great” I reply, “perhaps they’d like to phone service delivery and get them to fix their problem!!!” I love it when I’m right, I just love it.
14:00: DNS has been modified, with a 10 minute TTL (time to live) so I’ve got 10 mins before the world as the users know it ends muahahahahah…so it’s fag time. That takes up about 5 of those 10 minutes so I come back do a bit of browsing…3 minutes, check my achoo web mail for likely looking jobs, 1 minute, ok time to run up the performance monitor, the 10 minutes are up and wahay up go the graphs, web connections at about 300 fantasticimo.
15:00: 1 hour in and all is well-ish, trying hard not to think like that as it’ll all collapse in a big heap soon and then we’ll be in trouble. The phone rings at this point, it’s Quiet Rob (I can hear Invisible Dave in the background), “hello it’s me”, “jolly good” I reply, “are you busy at the moment”, “busy!!?, busy!!!? Am I busy!!?!???, hell no what do you want?”, “I wanted to ask you a question”,he falters, damn! He’s gay and I didn’t spot it, “ok ask away” I reply, “well we need you to come down here”,”that’s not a question” I say, “no but we need you to come down to the data centre to ask you the question”, he goes on, “right, ok”, I’m confused.
15:15: In the data centre with QR and ID they want my opinion on how to root the power cable for a rack to the floor, “well you could just use the hole in the floor next to the rack” I say simplistically, “oh that’s a good idea” they reply almost in unison, “that’s what we thought”, now I’m really really confused. The bent servers are still bent, sat on the desk looking sorry for themselves but they’re “Delluded” servers so I don’t actually care about them. Compress servers are much much better in my opinion, they actually look like servers, with flashy bing bang lights ‘n’ everything.
16:30: Make it back to my desk, NonSense, ITSY servers seem to behaving. I thought they would be handling 3,500 users but a so far they’ve only clocked 300 simultaneous connections. Now either we don’t have 3,500 users or the monitoring is completely bollixed and it isn’t actually telling me anything. Given that this monitoring was set up by the grand wizard, the later rather than the former could well be true!!
17:30: Home time, still nothing doing in terms of errors, quick run away before anyone notices….
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Adventure 15: 13th March 2005
"Ok..I’ll go to cashbase…" Afternoon all, yup it’s Sunday and that can mean only one thing, DIY, the downstairs loo, is up to it’s old tricks again, requiring screwdrivers and hammers and any other tool I can lay my hands on. Ah well it’ll be over soon and we’ll laugh, then again, p’raps not.
Friday:
09:00: Been at work for far too long today (well 20 minutes is a long time). It’s a bit like the Mary Celeste, tumble weeds are rolling along the now empty other side of the office, there’s the faint but constant tappetty tap of keys on keyboards and the Grand Wizards, mobile phone, PDA thing, with it’s oh so sickly sweet ring tone….I will I’ll bring my hammer in on Monday…
09:30: “Soooo how are we doing…”, he’s back, being nice to me again, I can’t take it much longer, we’ll just have to fall out about something really technical.
10:30: Brentboy is back from wherever he was and quiet Rob is accompanying him. Odd that, just had a call from Tom Plumthedepths to say that the web proxy’s he’s using as part of the trial to replace the other boxes of garbage, have stopped working. Then the phone rings, it’s the “help” desk, now you were thinking that these were the guys that fix everyone’s computery problems weren’t you, nup not a chance, the so called “Help” desk are called that because they always need “help”.
“It’s Crispin here, we seem to have a bit of a problem with Sumpoxyapp..”, Crispin, is like the lead second line guy, desktop side, Crispin Spider is the name, he’s the one who likes nothing more than talking about his obviously long, film / tv career, given that he’s younger than me and went to university, so I would make that about 6 months work experience but hey who am I to judge. He’s a good guy really (well his heart is in the right place), that’s how we know he’s human (there’s little other evidence).
He does have a lot of stories to tell (anyone who’ll stay awake long enough), but his passion these days is fencing, so imagine my surprise one day (prior to my restructure), working on the helpdesk, and this giant toblerone shaped box turns up, I think soooo he’s getting fence posts delivered to work, but no, it’s a bloody sword !!!
Crisping works with Ady, Ady Suarvey, the only guy I know who has only two facial expressions, smiling and not smiling, it’s bizarre, but anyway I digress….
“Sumpoxyapp, is down and the users are screaming”, “jolly good”, I say wondering why a. I’m getting the phone call and b. what I should do with this piece of information…”Invisible Dave and the guys have been doing stuff with servers and I figured this could be the reason they’re now down”, hmm I like his thinking, I mention it to ID who’s now appeared from Portsmouth, and he goes a shade of, well, off white, “It’ll be the err, hmmm I’ll go and have a look” he stutters, “Ok I’ll come with you”.
11:30 Back from the data centre, always helpful if when you move servers around that you make sure the switch they’re plugged into has power, I know it’s a bind but these are the way things are unfortunately.All is well with my ISA servers too so that undoubtedly was the problem, and Tom is happy that he can now do trivial things like work again.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch now, it’s gone quiet again, so just for a change I figure I’ll do some work, it’s a shock I can tell you. 12 email messages later, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself, I am to be honest prolific when it comes to emails, I sent one asking, “any ideas when my change request will be approved…” all fairly simple that, but since I hadn’t had an answer in 8 days and the approval process states that requests will be approved within 7, I’m feeling a bit let down.
14:30: The Grand Wizard asks me to send my project plan for the No’Sense project to Nunob, or Cowboy Nunob to give him his full title. There’s only two problems with Nunob, 1. He’s now in charge of the network, after they let Hagrid Jackson (no relation to Michael) go, and 2. He’s Portuguese.
Not that I have anything against the Portuguese, well that’s not strictly true now is it. The guy is a complete twit when it comes to anything really. Figures if he has a port down on a switch that’s reason enough to power cycle it!! Taking 30 critical servers with it…I’m beginning to rant so I’ll stop that there. So I quickly load up my project plan, modify the title so it says “Nonsense” rather than “Generic Project” and send it on to him. Why he needs it to approve my change request to a DNS I don’t know but soon it’ll become apparent.
15:30: “Can you send Nunob, a few lines, telling him why we want to do it this way, and the other options we’ve investigated and why you were unable to do it that way”, the Grand Wizard says. Notice where the “we”’s and the “you”’s appeared there, any failures it’s “you” and successes and it’s “We”, which is then doubtless translated into “I” during management meetings. This I duly do, by breaking open my “Generic Email to Tossers who don’t approve my change requests” and modify the “Dear Tosser” bit at the start.
16:30: Down in DC1 with Brenty and Quiet, moving some servers. In order to get the servers out we have to undo the screws that are holding them in place. Unfortunately the only tools that Don’t Be Daft International will allow us to have in our Super Deluxe toolkit is a kind of ratchet bit holder which is completely useless for undoing screws. Luckily I’m only assisting.
17:30: Back at my desk, just about to shut down my laptop, and I check my mail, there’s one from the Wizard, to me and Dunk the Skunk, it’s a forwarded email from Nunob to his boss Bill Z’unpronoucable saying that he can’t approve the change I wanted to make as it was an all or nothing change and would affect all the users…duh, yeah, that’s the whole point!!! So now I’m pissed of, just in time for the weekend, triffic.
Saturday:
09:45: Up with the lark this morning ! (well ok that’s a complete lie), I’m up in any case, making the by now customary cup of tea’s and a coffee for me. I’m stood at the kitchen door watching the world go by as I inject my nicotine (through my mouth). Just then I see a twig move, it’s Cyril. Cyril is our solitary gay Squirrel who makes an appearance every now and then. He must come from the same gene pool as Invisible Dave as he has this tendency to be invisible. As with most squirrels, once they detect the presence of a human they do the “freeze” position which as far as they know, means they’re of course invisible. I remember driving somewhere and a squirrel trying that in the middle of the road, but duh I was in a car travelling towards it, I remember feeling a slight bump and looking in my rear view mirror just seeing this tail wafting about as it’s owner was now completely stuck to the road….
No sign of Donald (our mouse) but then the wife’s been particularly good at putting the rubbish out so the pickings aren’t so rich these days.
09:50: I’m screaming up the stairs to Ryan, to get a move on as he has to be at stage school for 10:00. Apparently it’s really inconvenient of me as he’s right at a good bit in his “kill them all with slashy swords” game, fathers eh who’d have em.
10:30: Back at home, on the computer checking my stuff, tidying some other bits up and doing some good old fashioned house keeping. “Are you going to be getting on in a minute?”, the wife drops in gently, I know this is code for “you are going to be getting on in a minute” resistance is futile I know. So I finish up then make my weary way downstairs.
11:00: Right now I’m organised, what’s left to do ?;
1. Affix, right-angled strip of beading to window ledge
2. Affix new baton to wall – pipe side for skirting
3. Affix skirting boards
4. Affix door closers on doors
5. Affix door handles (that the wife’s “Not Sure about”)
Hmmm, not bad should be able to manage that, lot’s of affixing mind but still we’ve got loads of “No More Plaster” so we should be good.
Nup, thought as much we have No More, “No More Plaster”, try as I might I can’t find even the remnants of a half empty tube anywhere.”There’s some in the draw”, Mandy tells me, “which draw?” I ask, I know what’s coming, “the draw in the kitchen”, ok now we have 8 drawers in the kitchen and it could be any one of those, she knows this so before I can even ask “the one under the glass cupboard by the back door”, aha! I have one tube left. This not going to Cashbase business could be a winner today !!So I cut my length of 2b2 to the right size, cut out the holes for the radiator and other various pipes and test it out, yup sure enough it fits and it’s the right size, I’m getting too good at this DIY lark. I figure that the nails that were holding the old bit of battening on the wall must be good enough to hold the new bit on so, I liberally apply my no more plaster to it and position it on the wall…Now of course No More Plaster is really good stuff….when it’s dry, but there’s just going to be no way I can hold it on the wall in the right position and hammer the nails in, so I call Mandy to come and hold it while I bash the living daylights out of it with my biggest hammer. Easier said than done that as my downstairs loo is about 6ft by 3ft and fitting one person in there is a struggle, so I’m stood astride Mandy as she holds the batten on the wall, large hammer in hand and wack! (that should be wack! Wack wa wa wack ! thump, ouch!, wack wack wack! In truth). Alrighty then that’s one side done and so like a fool I say “s’Ok love I think I can manage from here”. So I begin hammering in the other side. Now then this only works if a. the batten is straight and has no bumps or bends in it and b. if the wall is perfectly straight, otherwise you end up with a lever action which actually pulls the other nail out of the wall, dropping the batten to the floor covering your nicely newly laid floor tiles with glue, your new jeans which were for “best” and anything else within the vicinity. I must admit I did swear rather vociferously at this point !
Ok plan B. I’m going to wipe all the No More Plaster off the wood and walls and then I’m going to drill some holes in the batten and screw the sucker on. Bearing in mind I’m drilling into about 12ft of pure plaster, a bit the plasterer obviously had left so thought he’d just bung it all in down the bottom where no one would notice, so unsurprisingly rawl plugs whilst looking like they go in really easily actually just take up the space. Screwing a screw in to it through a bit of 2b2 only gives a modicum of grip, but hell I’ve been through enough today and I’m not about to try and get really technical with it now. It seems to be holding and we have to go to my Mandy’s sister, so I can look at her husbands computer and fix the antivirus / email bit.
Sunday:09:00: yeah right who am I trying to kid eh ?10:00: ahem!10:30: Ok I’m up and raring to go (naat!), but the skirting’s won’t affix themselves. This is “Don’t go to Cashbase” weekend as I think in linear feet I have enough skirting to do the requisite walls. Trouble with linear feet is that it takes no account of how many pieces and whilst if all the pieces were joined together I’d have enough, fact is they aren’t all joined together so this is going to be a tinsy winsy little bit of a bugger. The main wall is fine, the piece I have for that is long enough, in fact too long so I have to use the compound bit of my mitre saw (coz the skirting board is too high) and we all know how good my mitres are using that ! Still it’s not come out too bad and Mandy is a real wiz with filler !!!
11:30: I’ve got all the skirting cut to the correct lengths, ok there’s a 4 inch gap behind the toilet, but hey it’s behind the toilet and only the spiders care about that, if they want skirting they can bloody well go to home base and get some ! It’s all going too well, I know this, ahaaa I don’t have to go to Cashbase for a whole weekend it’s unbelievable, right now to glue the skirtings to the wall / battens etc, out with the glue, oh it’s empty, but no matter we have loads more tubes of it, I pull the handle back on the glue gun, and crack, click, ptwoing, It falls to pieces in my hands, looks like I’m going to Cashbase then ;-(
12:00: Arrived at Cashbase, now it’s really quite a funny place to go (if you know you’re not going to spend £80 that is)
I park about a mile away in the only space that has any space either side of it, to be honest I bought my car because I liked the shape of it, so I don’t feel the need to let anyone else make my doors a slightly dimpled shape…just me in my mad little world…What’s particularly noticeable as I hike in to the shop through the car park, is that every car seems to be tiny. Every other car seems to have a man and woman trying to defy the laws of physics and trying to fit 8ft lengths of 2b2 into a Vauxhall corsa. Then the biscuit is taken, by the guy who’s wheeling out 8 (counte ‘em) full length interior doors, he must have a transit or something like that, but no, much better than that, he has a Mini cooper !!! with a roof rack !!!! This car will look like a mini aircraft carrier driving along, still it brings a smile to my face which has to be a good thing.12:15: Now then I’m in…. I only need a glue gun, nothing else, no scart leads, no wizzy new tool that doesn’t actually do anything at all useful, just a glue gun, but oh those tool boxes look really good…and look that one has wheels!!!, “stopit” I tell myself, I have a list, it says glue gun…now then where might that be. The consensus is that glue gun’s are kept near the “really nice power tools” so I spend at least 5 minutes drooling over them, but no, no glue gun’s to be found here. What about by the glue, look at that they have 3 “budget” glue guns, dunno what the deluxe one does maybe it’s powered, but this one will do I think.12:25: So I go and pay and try not to look at the woman who’s trying to get eye contact with me so she can say “are you interested in new double glazing or conservatories “, she says it anyway now, and I just shake my head, not necessarily because I don’t want double glazing or a conservatory, but it’s such an oh so depressing job that she must have. The only people who want to talk to her are the elderly, who only came in for a box of pansies because they were on offer, and they’re far too polite to say get stuffed.
12:30: Back at home and heh the glue gun works !!! Bonus.
17:00: The skirtings are on ! The doors are fixed, and I’m done….except for the shelves, ok so I affix the Ikea shelves above the toilet, and they’re even level !...At least I didn’t have to go to cashbase though ….!!!
Monday (grrrr)08:40: Yup it’s bloody Monday again.
08:50: “So how are we doing?” he’s back I thought sending him on a quest to return a magic ring would have done the trick for a while but no. Back to bother me I guess. “Well things would be great if I could actually deploy NonSense”, I reply, “Well we can do it today, I had a chat with Bill Zunpronoucable on Friday and it all kicked off, but we have tacit agreement”, I’m not entirely sure what the tacit bit of the agreement was but any how. Apparently the suggestion was to not deploy NonSense at all and to wait until the new WAN solution was implemented and outsource the proxy connection (hmm not understanding the outsource the proxy bit there). What a great suggestion I thought, it’d be even better had that been decided about 2 months ago prior to me spending all that time developing the system !!!!!!!09:30: Sent my email to the masses to the “Un”Helpful desk to send out and to Mark Pasty their boss, to “approve”, only to discover that he’s on leave until Thursday. Can’t possibly send an email out unless it’s approved. I tell you if it comes to it I’ll send the bloody message myself if necessary.
10:00: Quiet Rob is here, apparently ID, has told him he needs to have the Pirate systems kit moved into the old data centre as they’re moving. Apparently he and I are the only IA staff in as Brentboy is on his training course this week. Training course ? We do training ? I don’t know who you have to sleep with to get training, maybe I’m so good at what I do, I don’t need any training, note to self, remember to check the job boards for something a million times better than this.
11:00: Moving Pirate systems PC’s (servers) into DC112:30: Lunch13:30: Back from lunch, ½ hour to go until the NonSense cutover the Grand wizard tells me that we’d better do it tomorrow as we’re not going to get the message out to users in time to give them any notice. To be honest I wouldn’t tell them anything anyway but that’s just me.
14:00: Back with Quiet Rob, moving servers this time, they don’t stand a chance as he’s in charge of the trolley and it’s not exactly rally driving but somewhere close I think.
15:00: Most of the servers are in the rack now, just these three 1u servers to go, tiny little one’s so no worries there. We undo the screws on the bottom one, and slide it out, just in time for the two on top of it to come crashing down behind it….ah the missing “these servers aren’t on rails” sign.
16:00: The dropped servers are in a bit of a sorry state, all a bit bent really, still they’re only “VITAL” servers so we shouldn’t worry too much….
17:00: The Wizard announces that he’s on leave for the next two days (interviews, well I can hope can’t I ?) but that the deployment for NonSense must happen tomorrow…(well he can hope can’t he ?)…
Friday:
09:00: Been at work for far too long today (well 20 minutes is a long time). It’s a bit like the Mary Celeste, tumble weeds are rolling along the now empty other side of the office, there’s the faint but constant tappetty tap of keys on keyboards and the Grand Wizards, mobile phone, PDA thing, with it’s oh so sickly sweet ring tone….I will I’ll bring my hammer in on Monday…
09:30: “Soooo how are we doing…”, he’s back, being nice to me again, I can’t take it much longer, we’ll just have to fall out about something really technical.
10:30: Brentboy is back from wherever he was and quiet Rob is accompanying him. Odd that, just had a call from Tom Plumthedepths to say that the web proxy’s he’s using as part of the trial to replace the other boxes of garbage, have stopped working. Then the phone rings, it’s the “help” desk, now you were thinking that these were the guys that fix everyone’s computery problems weren’t you, nup not a chance, the so called “Help” desk are called that because they always need “help”.
“It’s Crispin here, we seem to have a bit of a problem with Sumpoxyapp..”, Crispin, is like the lead second line guy, desktop side, Crispin Spider is the name, he’s the one who likes nothing more than talking about his obviously long, film / tv career, given that he’s younger than me and went to university, so I would make that about 6 months work experience but hey who am I to judge. He’s a good guy really (well his heart is in the right place), that’s how we know he’s human (there’s little other evidence).
He does have a lot of stories to tell (anyone who’ll stay awake long enough), but his passion these days is fencing, so imagine my surprise one day (prior to my restructure), working on the helpdesk, and this giant toblerone shaped box turns up, I think soooo he’s getting fence posts delivered to work, but no, it’s a bloody sword !!!
Crisping works with Ady, Ady Suarvey, the only guy I know who has only two facial expressions, smiling and not smiling, it’s bizarre, but anyway I digress….
“Sumpoxyapp, is down and the users are screaming”, “jolly good”, I say wondering why a. I’m getting the phone call and b. what I should do with this piece of information…”Invisible Dave and the guys have been doing stuff with servers and I figured this could be the reason they’re now down”, hmm I like his thinking, I mention it to ID who’s now appeared from Portsmouth, and he goes a shade of, well, off white, “It’ll be the err, hmmm I’ll go and have a look” he stutters, “Ok I’ll come with you”.
11:30 Back from the data centre, always helpful if when you move servers around that you make sure the switch they’re plugged into has power, I know it’s a bind but these are the way things are unfortunately.All is well with my ISA servers too so that undoubtedly was the problem, and Tom is happy that he can now do trivial things like work again.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch now, it’s gone quiet again, so just for a change I figure I’ll do some work, it’s a shock I can tell you. 12 email messages later, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself, I am to be honest prolific when it comes to emails, I sent one asking, “any ideas when my change request will be approved…” all fairly simple that, but since I hadn’t had an answer in 8 days and the approval process states that requests will be approved within 7, I’m feeling a bit let down.
14:30: The Grand Wizard asks me to send my project plan for the No’Sense project to Nunob, or Cowboy Nunob to give him his full title. There’s only two problems with Nunob, 1. He’s now in charge of the network, after they let Hagrid Jackson (no relation to Michael) go, and 2. He’s Portuguese.
Not that I have anything against the Portuguese, well that’s not strictly true now is it. The guy is a complete twit when it comes to anything really. Figures if he has a port down on a switch that’s reason enough to power cycle it!! Taking 30 critical servers with it…I’m beginning to rant so I’ll stop that there. So I quickly load up my project plan, modify the title so it says “Nonsense” rather than “Generic Project” and send it on to him. Why he needs it to approve my change request to a DNS I don’t know but soon it’ll become apparent.
15:30: “Can you send Nunob, a few lines, telling him why we want to do it this way, and the other options we’ve investigated and why you were unable to do it that way”, the Grand Wizard says. Notice where the “we”’s and the “you”’s appeared there, any failures it’s “you” and successes and it’s “We”, which is then doubtless translated into “I” during management meetings. This I duly do, by breaking open my “Generic Email to Tossers who don’t approve my change requests” and modify the “Dear Tosser” bit at the start.
16:30: Down in DC1 with Brenty and Quiet, moving some servers. In order to get the servers out we have to undo the screws that are holding them in place. Unfortunately the only tools that Don’t Be Daft International will allow us to have in our Super Deluxe toolkit is a kind of ratchet bit holder which is completely useless for undoing screws. Luckily I’m only assisting.
17:30: Back at my desk, just about to shut down my laptop, and I check my mail, there’s one from the Wizard, to me and Dunk the Skunk, it’s a forwarded email from Nunob to his boss Bill Z’unpronoucable saying that he can’t approve the change I wanted to make as it was an all or nothing change and would affect all the users…duh, yeah, that’s the whole point!!! So now I’m pissed of, just in time for the weekend, triffic.
Saturday:
09:45: Up with the lark this morning ! (well ok that’s a complete lie), I’m up in any case, making the by now customary cup of tea’s and a coffee for me. I’m stood at the kitchen door watching the world go by as I inject my nicotine (through my mouth). Just then I see a twig move, it’s Cyril. Cyril is our solitary gay Squirrel who makes an appearance every now and then. He must come from the same gene pool as Invisible Dave as he has this tendency to be invisible. As with most squirrels, once they detect the presence of a human they do the “freeze” position which as far as they know, means they’re of course invisible. I remember driving somewhere and a squirrel trying that in the middle of the road, but duh I was in a car travelling towards it, I remember feeling a slight bump and looking in my rear view mirror just seeing this tail wafting about as it’s owner was now completely stuck to the road….
No sign of Donald (our mouse) but then the wife’s been particularly good at putting the rubbish out so the pickings aren’t so rich these days.
09:50: I’m screaming up the stairs to Ryan, to get a move on as he has to be at stage school for 10:00. Apparently it’s really inconvenient of me as he’s right at a good bit in his “kill them all with slashy swords” game, fathers eh who’d have em.
10:30: Back at home, on the computer checking my stuff, tidying some other bits up and doing some good old fashioned house keeping. “Are you going to be getting on in a minute?”, the wife drops in gently, I know this is code for “you are going to be getting on in a minute” resistance is futile I know. So I finish up then make my weary way downstairs.
11:00: Right now I’m organised, what’s left to do ?;
1. Affix, right-angled strip of beading to window ledge
2. Affix new baton to wall – pipe side for skirting
3. Affix skirting boards
4. Affix door closers on doors
5. Affix door handles (that the wife’s “Not Sure about”)
Hmmm, not bad should be able to manage that, lot’s of affixing mind but still we’ve got loads of “No More Plaster” so we should be good.
Nup, thought as much we have No More, “No More Plaster”, try as I might I can’t find even the remnants of a half empty tube anywhere.”There’s some in the draw”, Mandy tells me, “which draw?” I ask, I know what’s coming, “the draw in the kitchen”, ok now we have 8 drawers in the kitchen and it could be any one of those, she knows this so before I can even ask “the one under the glass cupboard by the back door”, aha! I have one tube left. This not going to Cashbase business could be a winner today !!So I cut my length of 2b2 to the right size, cut out the holes for the radiator and other various pipes and test it out, yup sure enough it fits and it’s the right size, I’m getting too good at this DIY lark. I figure that the nails that were holding the old bit of battening on the wall must be good enough to hold the new bit on so, I liberally apply my no more plaster to it and position it on the wall…Now of course No More Plaster is really good stuff….when it’s dry, but there’s just going to be no way I can hold it on the wall in the right position and hammer the nails in, so I call Mandy to come and hold it while I bash the living daylights out of it with my biggest hammer. Easier said than done that as my downstairs loo is about 6ft by 3ft and fitting one person in there is a struggle, so I’m stood astride Mandy as she holds the batten on the wall, large hammer in hand and wack! (that should be wack! Wack wa wa wack ! thump, ouch!, wack wack wack! In truth). Alrighty then that’s one side done and so like a fool I say “s’Ok love I think I can manage from here”. So I begin hammering in the other side. Now then this only works if a. the batten is straight and has no bumps or bends in it and b. if the wall is perfectly straight, otherwise you end up with a lever action which actually pulls the other nail out of the wall, dropping the batten to the floor covering your nicely newly laid floor tiles with glue, your new jeans which were for “best” and anything else within the vicinity. I must admit I did swear rather vociferously at this point !
Ok plan B. I’m going to wipe all the No More Plaster off the wood and walls and then I’m going to drill some holes in the batten and screw the sucker on. Bearing in mind I’m drilling into about 12ft of pure plaster, a bit the plasterer obviously had left so thought he’d just bung it all in down the bottom where no one would notice, so unsurprisingly rawl plugs whilst looking like they go in really easily actually just take up the space. Screwing a screw in to it through a bit of 2b2 only gives a modicum of grip, but hell I’ve been through enough today and I’m not about to try and get really technical with it now. It seems to be holding and we have to go to my Mandy’s sister, so I can look at her husbands computer and fix the antivirus / email bit.
Sunday:09:00: yeah right who am I trying to kid eh ?10:00: ahem!10:30: Ok I’m up and raring to go (naat!), but the skirting’s won’t affix themselves. This is “Don’t go to Cashbase” weekend as I think in linear feet I have enough skirting to do the requisite walls. Trouble with linear feet is that it takes no account of how many pieces and whilst if all the pieces were joined together I’d have enough, fact is they aren’t all joined together so this is going to be a tinsy winsy little bit of a bugger. The main wall is fine, the piece I have for that is long enough, in fact too long so I have to use the compound bit of my mitre saw (coz the skirting board is too high) and we all know how good my mitres are using that ! Still it’s not come out too bad and Mandy is a real wiz with filler !!!
11:30: I’ve got all the skirting cut to the correct lengths, ok there’s a 4 inch gap behind the toilet, but hey it’s behind the toilet and only the spiders care about that, if they want skirting they can bloody well go to home base and get some ! It’s all going too well, I know this, ahaaa I don’t have to go to Cashbase for a whole weekend it’s unbelievable, right now to glue the skirtings to the wall / battens etc, out with the glue, oh it’s empty, but no matter we have loads more tubes of it, I pull the handle back on the glue gun, and crack, click, ptwoing, It falls to pieces in my hands, looks like I’m going to Cashbase then ;-(
12:00: Arrived at Cashbase, now it’s really quite a funny place to go (if you know you’re not going to spend £80 that is)
I park about a mile away in the only space that has any space either side of it, to be honest I bought my car because I liked the shape of it, so I don’t feel the need to let anyone else make my doors a slightly dimpled shape…just me in my mad little world…What’s particularly noticeable as I hike in to the shop through the car park, is that every car seems to be tiny. Every other car seems to have a man and woman trying to defy the laws of physics and trying to fit 8ft lengths of 2b2 into a Vauxhall corsa. Then the biscuit is taken, by the guy who’s wheeling out 8 (counte ‘em) full length interior doors, he must have a transit or something like that, but no, much better than that, he has a Mini cooper !!! with a roof rack !!!! This car will look like a mini aircraft carrier driving along, still it brings a smile to my face which has to be a good thing.12:15: Now then I’m in…. I only need a glue gun, nothing else, no scart leads, no wizzy new tool that doesn’t actually do anything at all useful, just a glue gun, but oh those tool boxes look really good…and look that one has wheels!!!, “stopit” I tell myself, I have a list, it says glue gun…now then where might that be. The consensus is that glue gun’s are kept near the “really nice power tools” so I spend at least 5 minutes drooling over them, but no, no glue gun’s to be found here. What about by the glue, look at that they have 3 “budget” glue guns, dunno what the deluxe one does maybe it’s powered, but this one will do I think.12:25: So I go and pay and try not to look at the woman who’s trying to get eye contact with me so she can say “are you interested in new double glazing or conservatories “, she says it anyway now, and I just shake my head, not necessarily because I don’t want double glazing or a conservatory, but it’s such an oh so depressing job that she must have. The only people who want to talk to her are the elderly, who only came in for a box of pansies because they were on offer, and they’re far too polite to say get stuffed.
12:30: Back at home and heh the glue gun works !!! Bonus.
17:00: The skirtings are on ! The doors are fixed, and I’m done….except for the shelves, ok so I affix the Ikea shelves above the toilet, and they’re even level !...At least I didn’t have to go to cashbase though ….!!!
Monday (grrrr)08:40: Yup it’s bloody Monday again.
08:50: “So how are we doing?” he’s back I thought sending him on a quest to return a magic ring would have done the trick for a while but no. Back to bother me I guess. “Well things would be great if I could actually deploy NonSense”, I reply, “Well we can do it today, I had a chat with Bill Zunpronoucable on Friday and it all kicked off, but we have tacit agreement”, I’m not entirely sure what the tacit bit of the agreement was but any how. Apparently the suggestion was to not deploy NonSense at all and to wait until the new WAN solution was implemented and outsource the proxy connection (hmm not understanding the outsource the proxy bit there). What a great suggestion I thought, it’d be even better had that been decided about 2 months ago prior to me spending all that time developing the system !!!!!!!09:30: Sent my email to the masses to the “Un”Helpful desk to send out and to Mark Pasty their boss, to “approve”, only to discover that he’s on leave until Thursday. Can’t possibly send an email out unless it’s approved. I tell you if it comes to it I’ll send the bloody message myself if necessary.
10:00: Quiet Rob is here, apparently ID, has told him he needs to have the Pirate systems kit moved into the old data centre as they’re moving. Apparently he and I are the only IA staff in as Brentboy is on his training course this week. Training course ? We do training ? I don’t know who you have to sleep with to get training, maybe I’m so good at what I do, I don’t need any training, note to self, remember to check the job boards for something a million times better than this.
11:00: Moving Pirate systems PC’s (servers) into DC112:30: Lunch13:30: Back from lunch, ½ hour to go until the NonSense cutover the Grand wizard tells me that we’d better do it tomorrow as we’re not going to get the message out to users in time to give them any notice. To be honest I wouldn’t tell them anything anyway but that’s just me.
14:00: Back with Quiet Rob, moving servers this time, they don’t stand a chance as he’s in charge of the trolley and it’s not exactly rally driving but somewhere close I think.
15:00: Most of the servers are in the rack now, just these three 1u servers to go, tiny little one’s so no worries there. We undo the screws on the bottom one, and slide it out, just in time for the two on top of it to come crashing down behind it….ah the missing “these servers aren’t on rails” sign.
16:00: The dropped servers are in a bit of a sorry state, all a bit bent really, still they’re only “VITAL” servers so we shouldn’t worry too much….
17:00: The Wizard announces that he’s on leave for the next two days (interviews, well I can hope can’t I ?) but that the deployment for NonSense must happen tomorrow…(well he can hope can’t he ?)…
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Adventure 14: 10th March 2005
"I don't care I'm not taking it back now...." Evening all, it's been a couple of days since Monday, well ok it's been 3 but who's counting. Still trying to get my documentation finished, which would be helped if certain individuals would stop keep on changing the design at the last bloody minute...still that's a whole can of worms...
08:40: I'm early ! what the hell is going on ? The looks of surprise and shock on people's faces is quite something to behold. I walk down the partition made corridor towards my desk to discover that all the other desks have gone !!! I say "good morning" as I walk past certain inmates, sorry staff and the same to the grand magician who's now going to be in tragically early as he's moved and his journey time is now 20 minutes and not 2 hours doh!. I'm met by the customary but polite silence that I expected.
08:45: Brentboy is in talking with the grand magician, about something or other, can't quite work out what it is but there are raised but polite voices, I love it I really do.
08:50: Judy Knockerty arrives to talk in soft scottish to her mate alex, whilst adjusting her gaping suit jacket. "Just get em out for christ sake and put us all out of our misery" I think, quietly to my self.
08:55: The wizarad himself the grand master, is being really nice to me for some reason, it's very disconcerting, but it may be something to do with the bucket load of emails I've been sending him just recently, the more I send him, the more he's tied up reading them and the more peace brenty and me get.
09:00: Andy Nomanisa has turned up, one of the Pirate systems insultants, he's looking for the grand wizard, "sorry he's not here, must be in a meeting or something...", there's a sort of uncomfortable silence, he's hovering for some reason, "hmmm ok" he says (very intelligent these insultants), "you guys must be nearly done now", I say trying to spark a little magic into the conversation (it's not working), "yeah, would have been here longer had we won the outsourcing contract", "you wouldn't want that, beleive me" I assure him..and with that he's gone.
10:00: Invisible Dave ! Has made an appearance, he's been here all week obviously, no I jest, up from portsmouth on the red eye, made it in to do some server moves, except all the change requests he's put in that need approving before he actually moves the servers have been put on hold! He's not happy. All he's doing is moving kit from one room to another, most of the servers have been decomissioned in any case and the rest, well I don't think anyone would notice if they weren't up for 10 minutes or so, still procedures are procedures....Any how he's a bit irate.
11:00: Quiet Rob, is here aswell my god, yesterday was good as it was a full house then too, and an almost argument ensued between my good self and invisible dave to do with unix etc etc, Quiet spent the whole time nodding, I'm sure at one point he nearly said something but turns out that was just a squeaky floor tile, my mistake.
11:05: A discussion is abound about spam and banned word lists, excellent something i can add my two penneth to. "...so basically the word list is complete", this is the word list that contains all the naughty swear words in it and it's taken them two weeks to agree it, so just to pour acid on to their burns I add, "so Dont Be Daft, is an international company, with non english speaking users at sites across the world","yes", says the wizard, curiously, "well just thought you should add some profanity to the list that isn't english I add", god I hate my self sometimes...
12:00: I decide to phone Nobbleyerpc to see what the deal is with this PC of my niece's. I've been to their website and filled in all the supplied details and described the fault, IT DOESN'T WORK, and I've got the customary "thank you for your email..." email's, " a person who doesn't know what they're talking about will contact you within 8 business hours", which actually doesn't translate into anything at all, apart from they may contact me sometime later this week, 8hours !!!? I think they've had long enough so I phone them. The "customer service" girl is obviously having one of those weeks (if you catch my drift) as she said "thank you for phoning Nobleyerpc how can I help you" said in the "what the hell do you want" style. "Well", I say trying not to be intimidated, but it's too late, "My niece bought this PC just under a year ago...." I feel the heat of an interrogation lamp in my face "your niece eh.....", "just under a year ago eh..." "anyway she's asked me to look in to why it seems to not be working properly and I think it's the motherboard", "oh really" the cust servs rep replies, "well have you got an order number or your customer number?", "well no because I didn't order it, but I have got a ticket number that's been sent to me via your email system", I say helpfully, " well that's no good to me, I can't use the ticket number...", "how come", I ask, "how come what?" she replies gruffly, "how come you can't look up my ticket number ?", "because I haven't got a system that'll do it","so why send me one then ?", I ask, "so you know what number the email is", she replies, "what is the post code?", "I don't know", I reply, "I don't live there, as I say it's my niece's PC, tell you what I'll get the customer number and order number and phone back this afternoon" (when you've developed a personality.
12:30 Lunch - over the mum in laws, and Grandalf the white has had a bit of problem with one of his eyes, (that'll teach him to play tennis with it!!). He's been up his loft re-pointing the breeze blocks holding his roof up, because "the surveyor might notive that there's some mortar missing", now I don't know about you but I've never seen a surveyor take any notice of the mortar course in a loft, but for some reason he needs to do it.
12:45 Grandalf has been to the doctors and according to Mom in law catering inc, it's a "jurassic cyst", right I say looking slightly bemused, "do you mean a subaceous cyst ?", I ask helpfully, "yeah somet like that", she replies, "bacon sandwich ?", "go on then" I reply, I just can't resist it.
13:00 apparently Grandalf the white is going to hospital this afternoon to have...an oil change, his eye looked at, funny that I thought, thought it was the eyes that did the looking....
13:30: back at work
13:45: The phone rings, it's the wife, with those details for that PC.
14:00: I ring nobbleyerpc and wait, plinky plonky plinky plonky, "your call is important to us, but your are in a queue that never goes down, you are at position 87", "christ!", click "hello thank you for calling nobbleyerpc customer services", a voice breaks through, still confused how I can of got to position 0 from 87 in heartbeat, (maybe I'm a time traveller hmmm), I explain all over again, about how I'm phoning for my niece etc etc, "do you have ticket number from the email" she asks, "yes", I reply and I give it to her, "ok I'll get someone to call you back immediately". Just a second that number is completely useless, I remember distinctly asking what the point of it was on the snotty email I sent them before lunch, aha!, stroppy emails do work sometimes ;-)).
14:30: Having explained that I was phoning on behalf of my niece and that the order and customer number I've supplied are actually for her and not me, they then proceed to phone my brother in law to tell him they have replied to my original email (fat lot of good telling him will do)...The wife sends me the email, which is basically instructions on how to return stuff and a returns number....RESULT !!
15:00: I feel like a hot chocolate ! So damn it I'm having one. As I walk back I remember the conversation with the wife yesterday....."how'd you go in town today...", "well I bought this jacket..." she says nervously, "another bloody jacket ?...you've got 105 of them", well this one is a bit more padded and it's got a furry hood...", "triffic" i think, but it is a nice jacket, and I don't care that much that she's bought it out of her family sorry Mandy allowance ;-)) At lunchtime however she did comment to me that POD had said that it was nice but it did make her look a bit like stacy slater from eastenders, kids can be so cruel sometimes can't they....
16:00: This documentation is driving me mad, so I decide to do another "My Contribution" idea, suggesting the outright ban on personal web based email as a security and productivity issue, that'll go down a storm but then I am evil.
17:30: Home time, I've survived another day, thank god...now just gotta amuse the POD, fortunately there's a wildlife on one programme about dragons, so that's gonna keep him quiet for at least 10 minutes....
Incidentally, the blind is still hanging, looking like the weekend could be expensive, as the wife's talking about doing something as a family on sunday, I haven't completely ruled out the possibility that that may involve a trip to homebase, you never know......
08:40: I'm early ! what the hell is going on ? The looks of surprise and shock on people's faces is quite something to behold. I walk down the partition made corridor towards my desk to discover that all the other desks have gone !!! I say "good morning" as I walk past certain inmates, sorry staff and the same to the grand magician who's now going to be in tragically early as he's moved and his journey time is now 20 minutes and not 2 hours doh!. I'm met by the customary but polite silence that I expected.
08:45: Brentboy is in talking with the grand magician, about something or other, can't quite work out what it is but there are raised but polite voices, I love it I really do.
08:50: Judy Knockerty arrives to talk in soft scottish to her mate alex, whilst adjusting her gaping suit jacket. "Just get em out for christ sake and put us all out of our misery" I think, quietly to my self.
08:55: The wizarad himself the grand master, is being really nice to me for some reason, it's very disconcerting, but it may be something to do with the bucket load of emails I've been sending him just recently, the more I send him, the more he's tied up reading them and the more peace brenty and me get.
09:00: Andy Nomanisa has turned up, one of the Pirate systems insultants, he's looking for the grand wizard, "sorry he's not here, must be in a meeting or something...", there's a sort of uncomfortable silence, he's hovering for some reason, "hmmm ok" he says (very intelligent these insultants), "you guys must be nearly done now", I say trying to spark a little magic into the conversation (it's not working), "yeah, would have been here longer had we won the outsourcing contract", "you wouldn't want that, beleive me" I assure him..and with that he's gone.
10:00: Invisible Dave ! Has made an appearance, he's been here all week obviously, no I jest, up from portsmouth on the red eye, made it in to do some server moves, except all the change requests he's put in that need approving before he actually moves the servers have been put on hold! He's not happy. All he's doing is moving kit from one room to another, most of the servers have been decomissioned in any case and the rest, well I don't think anyone would notice if they weren't up for 10 minutes or so, still procedures are procedures....Any how he's a bit irate.
11:00: Quiet Rob, is here aswell my god, yesterday was good as it was a full house then too, and an almost argument ensued between my good self and invisible dave to do with unix etc etc, Quiet spent the whole time nodding, I'm sure at one point he nearly said something but turns out that was just a squeaky floor tile, my mistake.
11:05: A discussion is abound about spam and banned word lists, excellent something i can add my two penneth to. "...so basically the word list is complete", this is the word list that contains all the naughty swear words in it and it's taken them two weeks to agree it, so just to pour acid on to their burns I add, "so Dont Be Daft, is an international company, with non english speaking users at sites across the world","yes", says the wizard, curiously, "well just thought you should add some profanity to the list that isn't english I add", god I hate my self sometimes...
12:00: I decide to phone Nobbleyerpc to see what the deal is with this PC of my niece's. I've been to their website and filled in all the supplied details and described the fault, IT DOESN'T WORK, and I've got the customary "thank you for your email..." email's, " a person who doesn't know what they're talking about will contact you within 8 business hours", which actually doesn't translate into anything at all, apart from they may contact me sometime later this week, 8hours !!!? I think they've had long enough so I phone them. The "customer service" girl is obviously having one of those weeks (if you catch my drift) as she said "thank you for phoning Nobleyerpc how can I help you" said in the "what the hell do you want" style. "Well", I say trying not to be intimidated, but it's too late, "My niece bought this PC just under a year ago...." I feel the heat of an interrogation lamp in my face "your niece eh.....", "just under a year ago eh..." "anyway she's asked me to look in to why it seems to not be working properly and I think it's the motherboard", "oh really" the cust servs rep replies, "well have you got an order number or your customer number?", "well no because I didn't order it, but I have got a ticket number that's been sent to me via your email system", I say helpfully, " well that's no good to me, I can't use the ticket number...", "how come", I ask, "how come what?" she replies gruffly, "how come you can't look up my ticket number ?", "because I haven't got a system that'll do it","so why send me one then ?", I ask, "so you know what number the email is", she replies, "what is the post code?", "I don't know", I reply, "I don't live there, as I say it's my niece's PC, tell you what I'll get the customer number and order number and phone back this afternoon" (when you've developed a personality.
12:30 Lunch - over the mum in laws, and Grandalf the white has had a bit of problem with one of his eyes, (that'll teach him to play tennis with it!!). He's been up his loft re-pointing the breeze blocks holding his roof up, because "the surveyor might notive that there's some mortar missing", now I don't know about you but I've never seen a surveyor take any notice of the mortar course in a loft, but for some reason he needs to do it.
12:45 Grandalf has been to the doctors and according to Mom in law catering inc, it's a "jurassic cyst", right I say looking slightly bemused, "do you mean a subaceous cyst ?", I ask helpfully, "yeah somet like that", she replies, "bacon sandwich ?", "go on then" I reply, I just can't resist it.
13:00 apparently Grandalf the white is going to hospital this afternoon to have...an oil change, his eye looked at, funny that I thought, thought it was the eyes that did the looking....
13:30: back at work
13:45: The phone rings, it's the wife, with those details for that PC.
14:00: I ring nobbleyerpc and wait, plinky plonky plinky plonky, "your call is important to us, but your are in a queue that never goes down, you are at position 87", "christ!", click "hello thank you for calling nobbleyerpc customer services", a voice breaks through, still confused how I can of got to position 0 from 87 in heartbeat, (maybe I'm a time traveller hmmm), I explain all over again, about how I'm phoning for my niece etc etc, "do you have ticket number from the email" she asks, "yes", I reply and I give it to her, "ok I'll get someone to call you back immediately". Just a second that number is completely useless, I remember distinctly asking what the point of it was on the snotty email I sent them before lunch, aha!, stroppy emails do work sometimes ;-)).
14:30: Having explained that I was phoning on behalf of my niece and that the order and customer number I've supplied are actually for her and not me, they then proceed to phone my brother in law to tell him they have replied to my original email (fat lot of good telling him will do)...The wife sends me the email, which is basically instructions on how to return stuff and a returns number....RESULT !!
15:00: I feel like a hot chocolate ! So damn it I'm having one. As I walk back I remember the conversation with the wife yesterday....."how'd you go in town today...", "well I bought this jacket..." she says nervously, "another bloody jacket ?...you've got 105 of them", well this one is a bit more padded and it's got a furry hood...", "triffic" i think, but it is a nice jacket, and I don't care that much that she's bought it out of her family sorry Mandy allowance ;-)) At lunchtime however she did comment to me that POD had said that it was nice but it did make her look a bit like stacy slater from eastenders, kids can be so cruel sometimes can't they....
16:00: This documentation is driving me mad, so I decide to do another "My Contribution" idea, suggesting the outright ban on personal web based email as a security and productivity issue, that'll go down a storm but then I am evil.
17:30: Home time, I've survived another day, thank god...now just gotta amuse the POD, fortunately there's a wildlife on one programme about dragons, so that's gonna keep him quiet for at least 10 minutes....
Incidentally, the blind is still hanging, looking like the weekend could be expensive, as the wife's talking about doing something as a family on sunday, I haven't completely ruled out the possibility that that may involve a trip to homebase, you never know......
Monday, March 07, 2005
Adventure 13: 7th March 2005
"size 11 boots ? I should coco"...Afternoon all. Well it's another one of those days at work. MONDAY!, I don't like mondays, I'm gonna shoot the whole day down, cuh, should turn that in to a song and make a fortune I reckon..
Well what's been happening, well not much but here from dim and distant memory...
Saturday: 00:00: On the net doing some stuff, downloading some stuff and yes my 1mb connection is absolutely flying....at 4k a second, I toy with the idea of shocking the support guys at Noconnection (my ISP) from their slumber / game of halflife, but think better of it (you never get any sense out of them at that time anyhow), I'll leave it until the morning, still I've got games of Fifa to get done!
Saturday 5th March
09:45: Gotta take Ryan to stage school and he's naturally up and ready and raring to go, NOT !
Make the customary cup of tea for the wife and see if I can go and unweld him from his bed, given that he's got about 5 minutes to get ready and get out, that should be really easy. On my way back upstairs I notice a PC sat in the hallway. This can mean only one thing. One of my relatives has a problem and want me to look in to their PC problems.
10:15: Managed to get Ryan to stage school, albeit 5 minutes late, and I raise the issue of the PC with the wife who has the low down. "Leanne, has installed an "update", and since then the machine won't boot", "groovy" I think. Now then my brother in law has a problem with AVG and Inlook, my Mum has the same problem and now this one, don't ya just love having a skill, it must be the same for electricians or plumbers....
10:30: Check my internet connection, 4k a second grrr...so I'm on the blower to my ISP, "hillo, Abdul speking, crackle,crackle,hissss" I explain my problem, "ok, crackle, his, can you go to www.BloodyTerrible.com/speedtestoryourlife and run their speed test thing, crackle, hiss", "Ok" I say and quick as a flash I'm there at the site punching in my telephone number, I hit the by now infamous "Go" button (which is always a mistake as it does anything but Go! in my experience) and my PC sits there for about 2 hours doing the odd flash flash on the network connections screen.
11:00: Surely I can drag this out until lunch, but the natives are getting restless, and those doors just aren't going to make themselves...Out come the doors, resembling a bad DIY SOS television programme at present, nails sticking out of them and an overrun of glue that could frankly hold the forth bridge up and then I get, "err well I was wondering if you'd do my blind first...", "of course I will", I said, that wasn't what I was thinking but hey it all needs doing.
11:15: The blind is two inches too big...why can't they make windows or blinds the right bloody size ? This being a dark wood venetian blind means I have to break open the "How to narrow a dark wood venetian blind" toolking or my benchsaw as it's better known. The procedure is quite simple;
1. Unthread the 28 billion slats from the blind (this blind seems to have a 5 ft drop, anyone know of a window that is 3ft wide by 5ft long that's not stained glass ?
2. Remeberring to keep the slats the same way up as they were taken off (DOH !!!!) and using the universal sticks to nothing, except the stuff you don't want it to and itself, masking tape (that'll teach you to buy the really cheap stuff!!), bind the afore mentioned slats together so that the ends are all the same length (yeah right like that's just sooo easy)
3. Measure (with a tape measure not a bit of wood you had lying around!) the correct distance in from both sides, place a mark at the relevant place (nowhere near where it should be), then using a square or other straight edge, draw a line the correct distance in from each side (so that you can completely ignore it and cut far too much off)
4. Take afore said bound (and gagged wife) blind, to the garage and......
WATCH AS YOUR BLOODY MITRE SAW SHREDS THE POXY THING INTO MATCH STICKS !!!!!
5. Cut gently with a hand saw (that'll be where I'm going wrong !!)
6. Reassembly of blind is reverse of disassebly procedure....(aaagghhh) or....
7. Sit on the front room mat with your wife and thread the slats back on to the blind rememberring to point out that she's being really slow.
8. Wait until the last slat is being inserted, and comment that had she (your wife / partner) put the ladder inside the string it wouldn't fall off as soon as you try and move the blind (that one really got her ;-))
9. Screw unscrewable screws into double glazing unit, rendering it's draft proofing capability completlely useless, rememberring that the rawl plugs that come with things like this, even though they cost you 60 bleeding quid, cost about 1/2p to make and are consequently useless, especially since some nice builder ensured that there is a huge lump of metal just where you want to screw the bracket to.
10. Put up blind on fixings, ensuring to do this at arms length so that if it falls it won't kill you.
11. Before doing 10 ensure that all breakables are removed from the window sill below the blind, otherwise a lot of shouting and "why didn't you move them" cannot be avoided.
12. Invite wife / partner to comment on the loveliness of the new blind that cost you 60 quid, with comments such as "I'm not sure I like it now..." and other helpful comments.
13. Bite tongue, be calm and agree to anything she now wants to do.....
12:30: Lunch, Ryan "The Ac-tor" is back, me having picked him up, gone to homebase for some hinges for my doors (I am determined to get these done today), lunch ensues with both me and Ryan flicking furiously through the channels only to discover that the only TV programme worth any of us watching is in fact Football focus tch such a shame.
13:00: Lunch over back to the doors...Some wise old carpenter once taught me that if you're going to do hinges you need good sharp chisels, HAH, fat chance ! So the stanley knife comes out which isn't half bad you know. I only nearly took the skin off 3 knuckles which considering my chisels are about as dangerous as my nan and she's been dead for at least 5 years, is pretty lame. Thanks to the wife for that (wasn't all her fault, I had to scrape floor leveling compound off the kitchen floor with something and the bone handled knife had butter on it at the time !!).
14:00: Hinges are nearly on the doors....
15:00: No swimming today as POD is going to a fellow demon's so there's a least some peace, only shattered by Ryan's "shtupid bloody game" and lots of thumping.
16:00: Hinges are on the doors now just have to fix them to the cabinet.
16:30: Afixed the hinges to the cabinet. Good old CashBase, nice and straight NAAATTT!! So I fix them in place with their closers and hope that the passage of time straightens them out.
17:00: Checking my internet connection, and it's still bad, so I phone up Notonyourlife Internet services, and ask politely why it's not fixed. "ah, what's your reference number", "62941" I reply, "ah..." (much scurrying and rustling of paper), "what I need you to do is go to Bloody Terrible.com/speetest", "hang on a minute", I say, "I've sent this to you before why are we doing it again ?", "because the guy you spoke to last time didn't take down all the details", stifling my annoyance at this point, "try this address speedtests.speedtest.com/speedtest", I run up my browser and type in the address, then hit the "GO!" button (grr), 10 minutes later it comes back "4k a second" I reply, "and what makes you think this is slow ?" by now I'm gathering that the "support" guy is actually the tea boy and has only answerred the phone becasue they're at a critical point in their half life tornament... "because a 1mbps link should give me about 960kbps", "about 512kbps is normal", "eh?" I say, "about 512kbps is normal for a 1mbps link", "isn't that a 512kbps link" I say pretending to be really stupid, "no, 512kbps is much less than that, about 300kbps in reality"...ok I'm really not getting this....512 = 1mb hmmm...note to self, only pay them half this month... "it's the average" he explains, "ahhh now I understand, coz I normally get at least 900kbps", "yeah you will", "no not today or last night" I say,"this is how I know it's slow" I explain in words of one syllable..."please fix, let me know when it's fixed", "oh yeah ok, but we need you to send a screen shot in", "a screen shot ?" I say "of what?", "of your speed test", "you're joking aren't you?", "no Bloody Terrible won't talk to us unless we've done a speed test, "but it takes about 2 hours to run and I don't know if I'll be able to send it to you, given my problem", "try sending it from a friends PC"...erm yeah right like I know anyone else with broadband that lives say within a 5 minute walk of my house.
Fortuantely the email did go seems my problems are only one way.
SUNDAY 6th March 2005: MOTHERS DAY
09:30: Woken up, brought the wife her customary cup of tea that she won't drink because in half an hour it'll be cold!! Note to self, remember to look up superheating water on the net.
10:00: Kids come in and pretend to be interested in Mum opening her mothers day card which they didn't buy, to be fair POD has sketched his interpretation of armageddon on the back of the envelope which is nice....
11:00: Over to the mother in law's for tea and buns, she can't help herself she really can't.
13:00: Over to my mums for dinner (and to fix her PC).
17:00: Back home, checked my connectivity and low and behold all is now working again. No message, no email, just working...ah well you can't have everything you know.
19:00: The wife is stood staring in to the downstairs loo, "use it", I say, "it'll be fine", "no it's the blind" she says, "I'm still trying to decide if I like the colour...."
click......bang!.....
Well what's been happening, well not much but here from dim and distant memory...
Saturday: 00:00: On the net doing some stuff, downloading some stuff and yes my 1mb connection is absolutely flying....at 4k a second, I toy with the idea of shocking the support guys at Noconnection (my ISP) from their slumber / game of halflife, but think better of it (you never get any sense out of them at that time anyhow), I'll leave it until the morning, still I've got games of Fifa to get done!
Saturday 5th March
09:45: Gotta take Ryan to stage school and he's naturally up and ready and raring to go, NOT !
Make the customary cup of tea for the wife and see if I can go and unweld him from his bed, given that he's got about 5 minutes to get ready and get out, that should be really easy. On my way back upstairs I notice a PC sat in the hallway. This can mean only one thing. One of my relatives has a problem and want me to look in to their PC problems.
10:15: Managed to get Ryan to stage school, albeit 5 minutes late, and I raise the issue of the PC with the wife who has the low down. "Leanne, has installed an "update", and since then the machine won't boot", "groovy" I think. Now then my brother in law has a problem with AVG and Inlook, my Mum has the same problem and now this one, don't ya just love having a skill, it must be the same for electricians or plumbers....
10:30: Check my internet connection, 4k a second grrr...so I'm on the blower to my ISP, "hillo, Abdul speking, crackle,crackle,hissss" I explain my problem, "ok, crackle, his, can you go to www.BloodyTerrible.com/speedtestoryourlife and run their speed test thing, crackle, hiss", "Ok" I say and quick as a flash I'm there at the site punching in my telephone number, I hit the by now infamous "Go" button (which is always a mistake as it does anything but Go! in my experience) and my PC sits there for about 2 hours doing the odd flash flash on the network connections screen.
11:00: Surely I can drag this out until lunch, but the natives are getting restless, and those doors just aren't going to make themselves...Out come the doors, resembling a bad DIY SOS television programme at present, nails sticking out of them and an overrun of glue that could frankly hold the forth bridge up and then I get, "err well I was wondering if you'd do my blind first...", "of course I will", I said, that wasn't what I was thinking but hey it all needs doing.
11:15: The blind is two inches too big...why can't they make windows or blinds the right bloody size ? This being a dark wood venetian blind means I have to break open the "How to narrow a dark wood venetian blind" toolking or my benchsaw as it's better known. The procedure is quite simple;
1. Unthread the 28 billion slats from the blind (this blind seems to have a 5 ft drop, anyone know of a window that is 3ft wide by 5ft long that's not stained glass ?
2. Remeberring to keep the slats the same way up as they were taken off (DOH !!!!) and using the universal sticks to nothing, except the stuff you don't want it to and itself, masking tape (that'll teach you to buy the really cheap stuff!!), bind the afore mentioned slats together so that the ends are all the same length (yeah right like that's just sooo easy)
3. Measure (with a tape measure not a bit of wood you had lying around!) the correct distance in from both sides, place a mark at the relevant place (nowhere near where it should be), then using a square or other straight edge, draw a line the correct distance in from each side (so that you can completely ignore it and cut far too much off)
4. Take afore said bound (and gagged wife) blind, to the garage and......
WATCH AS YOUR BLOODY MITRE SAW SHREDS THE POXY THING INTO MATCH STICKS !!!!!
5. Cut gently with a hand saw (that'll be where I'm going wrong !!)
6. Reassembly of blind is reverse of disassebly procedure....(aaagghhh) or....
7. Sit on the front room mat with your wife and thread the slats back on to the blind rememberring to point out that she's being really slow.
8. Wait until the last slat is being inserted, and comment that had she (your wife / partner) put the ladder inside the string it wouldn't fall off as soon as you try and move the blind (that one really got her ;-))
9. Screw unscrewable screws into double glazing unit, rendering it's draft proofing capability completlely useless, rememberring that the rawl plugs that come with things like this, even though they cost you 60 bleeding quid, cost about 1/2p to make and are consequently useless, especially since some nice builder ensured that there is a huge lump of metal just where you want to screw the bracket to.
10. Put up blind on fixings, ensuring to do this at arms length so that if it falls it won't kill you.
11. Before doing 10 ensure that all breakables are removed from the window sill below the blind, otherwise a lot of shouting and "why didn't you move them" cannot be avoided.
12. Invite wife / partner to comment on the loveliness of the new blind that cost you 60 quid, with comments such as "I'm not sure I like it now..." and other helpful comments.
13. Bite tongue, be calm and agree to anything she now wants to do.....
12:30: Lunch, Ryan "The Ac-tor" is back, me having picked him up, gone to homebase for some hinges for my doors (I am determined to get these done today), lunch ensues with both me and Ryan flicking furiously through the channels only to discover that the only TV programme worth any of us watching is in fact Football focus tch such a shame.
13:00: Lunch over back to the doors...Some wise old carpenter once taught me that if you're going to do hinges you need good sharp chisels, HAH, fat chance ! So the stanley knife comes out which isn't half bad you know. I only nearly took the skin off 3 knuckles which considering my chisels are about as dangerous as my nan and she's been dead for at least 5 years, is pretty lame. Thanks to the wife for that (wasn't all her fault, I had to scrape floor leveling compound off the kitchen floor with something and the bone handled knife had butter on it at the time !!).
14:00: Hinges are nearly on the doors....
15:00: No swimming today as POD is going to a fellow demon's so there's a least some peace, only shattered by Ryan's "shtupid bloody game" and lots of thumping.
16:00: Hinges are on the doors now just have to fix them to the cabinet.
16:30: Afixed the hinges to the cabinet. Good old CashBase, nice and straight NAAATTT!! So I fix them in place with their closers and hope that the passage of time straightens them out.
17:00: Checking my internet connection, and it's still bad, so I phone up Notonyourlife Internet services, and ask politely why it's not fixed. "ah, what's your reference number", "62941" I reply, "ah..." (much scurrying and rustling of paper), "what I need you to do is go to Bloody Terrible.com/speetest", "hang on a minute", I say, "I've sent this to you before why are we doing it again ?", "because the guy you spoke to last time didn't take down all the details", stifling my annoyance at this point, "try this address speedtests.speedtest.com/speedtest", I run up my browser and type in the address, then hit the "GO!" button (grr), 10 minutes later it comes back "4k a second" I reply, "and what makes you think this is slow ?" by now I'm gathering that the "support" guy is actually the tea boy and has only answerred the phone becasue they're at a critical point in their half life tornament... "because a 1mbps link should give me about 960kbps", "about 512kbps is normal", "eh?" I say, "about 512kbps is normal for a 1mbps link", "isn't that a 512kbps link" I say pretending to be really stupid, "no, 512kbps is much less than that, about 300kbps in reality"...ok I'm really not getting this....512 = 1mb hmmm...note to self, only pay them half this month... "it's the average" he explains, "ahhh now I understand, coz I normally get at least 900kbps", "yeah you will", "no not today or last night" I say,"this is how I know it's slow" I explain in words of one syllable..."please fix, let me know when it's fixed", "oh yeah ok, but we need you to send a screen shot in", "a screen shot ?" I say "of what?", "of your speed test", "you're joking aren't you?", "no Bloody Terrible won't talk to us unless we've done a speed test, "but it takes about 2 hours to run and I don't know if I'll be able to send it to you, given my problem", "try sending it from a friends PC"...erm yeah right like I know anyone else with broadband that lives say within a 5 minute walk of my house.
Fortuantely the email did go seems my problems are only one way.
SUNDAY 6th March 2005: MOTHERS DAY
09:30: Woken up, brought the wife her customary cup of tea that she won't drink because in half an hour it'll be cold!! Note to self, remember to look up superheating water on the net.
10:00: Kids come in and pretend to be interested in Mum opening her mothers day card which they didn't buy, to be fair POD has sketched his interpretation of armageddon on the back of the envelope which is nice....
11:00: Over to the mother in law's for tea and buns, she can't help herself she really can't.
13:00: Over to my mums for dinner (and to fix her PC).
17:00: Back home, checked my connectivity and low and behold all is now working again. No message, no email, just working...ah well you can't have everything you know.
19:00: The wife is stood staring in to the downstairs loo, "use it", I say, "it'll be fine", "no it's the blind" she says, "I'm still trying to decide if I like the colour...."
click......bang!.....
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Adventure 12: 3rd March 2005
"leak, what leak ?".... Ok it's been a little while, got so much buzzing around in my brain....
I did take a couple of days off this week (monday and tuesday), yes I know I'm a rebel. As with all things 'day off' like they aren't really days off, oh no, no lounging in bed until midday, or watching Trisha, until I can't take it anymore (which for the record is about 5 minutes into the start!). No my days off this week were for plumbing, specifically the downstairs loo. You wouldn't beleive such a small room could take so long. I put in a new sink and toilet, built a cabinet under the sink and then tried the impossible, building some doors to go on the cabinet.
The results are looking not bad but I did have one or two minor "adventures" along the way.
It all started with a construction of the bathroom cabinet. Easy enough, some furniture board, expertly cut to shape by me with my wobbly jigsaw (I defy anyone to cut anything straight with one of those). Fortunatey I didn't have to cut any straight lines but I did have to cut around the shape of the sink which was fairly interesting. Still that done, and some 2b2 (homebase straight variety), with some furniture board sides later the thing is virtually done. Now to make yup make some doors. Easy enough, no mitres to worry about, the wife just wants square joints. Well the first problem I come up against is the fact that not only can I not jigsaw in a straight line, but now I can't even drill a hole in a straight line, much swearing ensued and a bit later I had what I can only describe as a none square door, with far too many holes in it. I often figure that there must be a massive market out there for wonky drills and jigsaw blades that actually counteract my and other peoples tendancy to vere off at an angle somewhere approaching 20 degrees.
It's been snowing for some time, but even though it's about -38 outside the ground isn't frozen so it's just adding to the waterlogged nature of my back lawn. I always think it's a bit of a waste when it snows and that annoying git in the office says "it won't settle", I mean what do we have to do to get a decent amount of snow ? Living in the mid south of the UK we seem to be too far west and south to get anything more than a few flakes stuck to a few grass blades. Kent oh Kent!, if we'd lived there we'd get 10 inches but not hampshire oh bloody no...grrrr...
Anyhow back to the doors, or not as wife would have it, "instead of doing the doors, why don't we" (I love that "we" business don't you ?" " ...do the toilet instead", hmmm, it's a tricky decision that...replace the toilet (what are the stringy bits that hang out the back of it any way?), or make some doors, so WE decide to do the toilet... The toilet is all constructed, and after I discover that the mains feed is actually the other side now, we nip to homebase. Following the open wallet surgery that I've once again had to endure (still I make up with it with a couple of scart leads, one of which I don't actually need (but you can never have too many)), we escape with the relevant angles and copper pipe and glue and stuff required (I think) to complete the job.
So I've by now connected up the mains, the waste is connected to (bit of a struggle but we're there), so now it's time to switch on the mains supply. I open up the isolating valve and water begins to fill the cistern, alls well so far.
Then I hear the drip drip drip from the screws holding the cistern on, quick as a flash I'm there with my trusty screw driver tightening the screws so much so I know they'll never come off....dripping seems to have stopped, but there is a puddle of water behind which doesn't seem t have come from the holes.."hmmmm I know what I'll do" so I flush the toilet whilst watching from underneath the cistern, "wooooosh", I'm soaking wet...then I suddenly remember a large foamy type washer thing...I wonder if that was supposed to go between the toilet and the cistern...I think perhaps it should have ;-<....Of course getting those screws undone now is going to be a real laugh!.
Picture the scene, I'm almost laid over the toilet pan (the one that has no lid currently) trying to undo the screws with a screwdriver (on the nylon nut!!) and the wife squeezes in, "what colour do you think we should paint in here, I think the mottled squashed pidgeon from DontLux what do you think ?, are you going to carry on with the doors once you've finished ? The sink doesn't seem to sit quite straight" ...."AAAAAAAGHGGHGHH" so I do the unthinkable and suggest that she stop wittering on about things while I try and unweld this nylon nut from it's thread, that's it she's not talking to me now...bugger!
An hour later, and I've finally got it sorted, the loo is in place and flushes without flooding an area the size of a small country, I've made my peace with the wife (you know at least I think I have, she'll be storing it up for later use!) but now the loo has developed an unstable feel to it, rocking backwards and forwards on the oh so even tiles the wife has put on the floor. In fact even screwing the sucker to the floor doesn't seem to have helped. What's needed is a call to the plumbing advice line, so I phone the wifes dad....Dave the Stormin' Boiler suit, or Grandalf the Grey (the kids came up with that I promise) He advises lifting the toilet with some universal tools (or screwdrivers to you and me (paint stirrer, lever, bespoke chisel etc etc 1001 uses) and squeezing some "No More Plaster" under the toilet then leaving it to dry for 24 hours or so.
That done I move on to my doors...which I now decide are not going to be screwed together at all and since I need a screw that is about 2.5 inches long and I have 3" or 2" screws that's not such a bad thing, I really couldn't face another trip to GIVEUSALLYERMONEY DIY store and I'm absolutely not using the UNIVERSAL USELESS MINI ELECTRIC TOOL, who's sole purpose in life is to waste my time trying to find things to use it for. No, no more screws, in fact and here's an irony, I'm actually going to use No More Nails and some Nails !!!!! Must send that to their sales department muahahahha!.
Doors are now made (well the frames are and they're almost square!!) Work tomorrow, great, then the snow starts again, great.....
08:45: Back to work on Wednesday 11th, and the atmosphere is terrible, you know when you get the feeling you're being talked about ?
09:00 The grand wizard has disappeared into a "How to Manage and Influence people" course, I'd thought it would just be a case of waving his magic wand and capow! things would happen but apparently not.
10:00: Got notification of a "Team Talk" which is where the magician stands up and tells us how it's going to be, real inclusive that, apparently and suspiciously his boss Dunk The Skunk (rebel MC) is also attending. The time oh yeah 12:00 - 13:00 hmmm lunch time, so I politely send an email asking why it has to be then and couldn't we make it 2pm or something. I get this snotty email back, saying "I'm very sorry if this inconvieniences you...but it's got to be at this time and it's imperative", yeah right, it'll be a real imperitive meeting, I can just feel it...and I was only asking after all.
11:00 I've just discovered that the grand wizzards course isn't what i thought, I've managed to obtain a copy of the course literature and I'm disappointed I wasn't asked to go on it.
here for your perusal...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW EVENING CLASSES FOR MEN
ALL ARE WELCOME
OPEN TO MEN ONLY
Note: due to the complexity and level of difficulty, each course will accept a maximum of eight participants
The course covers two days, and topics covered in this course include:
DAY ONE
HOW TO FILL ICE CUBE TRAYS
Step by step guide with slide presentation
TOILET ROLLS- DO THEY GROW ON THE HOLDERS?
Roundtable discussion
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LAUNDRY BASKET & FLOOR
Practicing with hamper (Pictures and graphics)
DISHES & SILVERWARE; DO THEY LEVITATE/FLY TO KITCHEN SINK
OR DISHWASHER BY THEMSELVES?
Debate among a panel of experts.
LOSS OF VIRILITY
Losing the remote control to your significant other - Help line and support groups
LEARNING HOW TO FIND THINGS
Starting with looking in the right place instead of turning the house upside down while shouting
"It's not there!”, You’ve moved it!” or “We’ve run out!” – Open forum
DAY TWO
EMPTY MILK CARTONS; DO THEY BELONG IN THE FRIDGE OR THE BIN?
Group discussion and role-play
HEALTH WATCH; BRINGING HER FLOWERS IS NOT HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH
PowerPoint presentation
REAL MEN ASK FOR DIRECTIONS WHEN LOST
Real life testimonial from the one man who did
IS IT GENETICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIT QUIETLY AS SHE PARALLEL PARKS?
Driving simulation
LIVING WITH ADULTS; BASIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR PARTNER
Online class and role playing
HOW TO BE THE IDEAL SHOPPING COMPANION
Relaxation exercises, meditation and breathing techniques
REMEMBERING IMPORTANT DATES & CALLING WHEN YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE
Bring your calendar or PDA to class
GETTING OVER IT; LEARNING HOW TO LIVE WITH BEING WRONG ALL THE TIME
Individual counsellors available
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was particularly interested in the filling ICE CUBE TRAYS section, as I beleive that someone got the design wrong on that one...
12:00: Nearly lunchtime, the phone rings (bugger!), it's the Skunkmaster (rebel mc), he's got an urgent change to make to the corporate website, results pending etc and the hosting centre have gone and changed the box and now he doesn't have access. "Yeah being all nice now aren't you" I think to myself, "Can you help ?", "sure I can" I reply, "I really need this desperately", It's like lambs to the slaughter isn't it, "Ok I'll give them a ring". I put the phone down, wait around for 10 or 15 minutes, then I phone the hoster UNATTENDING INC, after 5 minutes of greensleves played by some epileptic spider on a xylaphone, I get "Drew" christ why can't they just have normal names like Bill or Fred, "oh sorry I can't talk to you coz you're not on my list", "groovy" I think, "We've got an email from Skunkmaster, but he's not on our list either", "But he's the IT Director" I say rather pathetically, "yes we know sorry, we need to talk to Karen Sharkbite to gain approval", "Ok I say and put the phone down", I phone the skunkmaster straight away and in a fit of suicidal feelings I relay the conversation I just had with their "support" guy. Following much gnashing and grinding of teeth and threats of tearing up contracts etc, I get "Ok thanks Cre8, I'll phone them, I really need this doing quickly", "I'll do the best I can" I reply helpfully, "No cre8, I need you to do better than that"...better than the best I can, I muse, how exactly does someone do that ? ...About 30 seconds after this my phone rings again (note to self, take phone off hook, when approaching lunchtime)...it's the third line, twice removed support geezer, who has a propa name !!! "Hello it's Bill here" my prayers have been answered !!! "We're sorting the Skunkmasters problem on an emergency change, how quickly do you need it implementing ?" oh probably in about an hour or two I most helpfully advise ;-) I am evil, I really am ;-)
12:30: Lunch - Mother in laws and Grandalf's coz the wife just has to go in to town. I turn up to find my Bacon a little crispier than normal, I won't mention it coz at least we've dispensed with the cancer causing brown sauce and now we have some pucker barbeque stuff..very nice (if not a little crispy)
13:30: Back to work
14:00: In the datacentre trying to work out who and what the hell is plugged into this switch and my mobile goes, "not another agency desperate to find me a job" I think to myself, nope it's the grand wizard, who's been taught to talk to his staff to help improve morale (it's a novel approach I'll grant you), he's actually stood outside the door of the data centre and we meet about 3 feet from each other (yup I know I could have hidden).
15:00: As a result of the conversation earlier, I spend the rest of the day doing a plan for the deployment of a new proxy system, done the wizardry way, so christ knows if it'll actually work or not.
15:30: Quiet Rob has turned up, right in the middle of my plan, apparently he's bored, can't blame him, having to do documentation can be a real bind, especially if you keep being interrupted whilst doing it !!!! He doesn't get the hint, so I take him outside for a fag, good one this as it's about -37 degrees and he has no coat or even a jumper and better still he doesn't smoke !! ;-))
17:30: End of another beautiful day.....that I didn't see coz I was stuck inside...
20:00: Parents Evening !!! at POD's school...fan-bloody-tastic. Why do schools always have in huge letters, things like LET'S DO MATH and APOSTROPHE IS KING, etc etc...here's a wake up call MATHS ISN'T FUN FOR 8 YEAR OLDS AND PUNCTUATION IS THE MOST BORING SUBJECT ON THE PLANET !!! I refrain from mentioning this to the teacher, mainly because she has a bowl of sweets on her table and they're mint creams (yummy!). Apparently POD is doing really well, he's only buring 2 classmates a day at the stake which is an improvement (gulp). She then offers us a sweet, I take one for me and two more for the kids, "the kids don't like mint sweets" my wife helpfully mention's "I know", I very enigmatically reply ;-)))
I did take a couple of days off this week (monday and tuesday), yes I know I'm a rebel. As with all things 'day off' like they aren't really days off, oh no, no lounging in bed until midday, or watching Trisha, until I can't take it anymore (which for the record is about 5 minutes into the start!). No my days off this week were for plumbing, specifically the downstairs loo. You wouldn't beleive such a small room could take so long. I put in a new sink and toilet, built a cabinet under the sink and then tried the impossible, building some doors to go on the cabinet.
The results are looking not bad but I did have one or two minor "adventures" along the way.
It all started with a construction of the bathroom cabinet. Easy enough, some furniture board, expertly cut to shape by me with my wobbly jigsaw (I defy anyone to cut anything straight with one of those). Fortunatey I didn't have to cut any straight lines but I did have to cut around the shape of the sink which was fairly interesting. Still that done, and some 2b2 (homebase straight variety), with some furniture board sides later the thing is virtually done. Now to make yup make some doors. Easy enough, no mitres to worry about, the wife just wants square joints. Well the first problem I come up against is the fact that not only can I not jigsaw in a straight line, but now I can't even drill a hole in a straight line, much swearing ensued and a bit later I had what I can only describe as a none square door, with far too many holes in it. I often figure that there must be a massive market out there for wonky drills and jigsaw blades that actually counteract my and other peoples tendancy to vere off at an angle somewhere approaching 20 degrees.
It's been snowing for some time, but even though it's about -38 outside the ground isn't frozen so it's just adding to the waterlogged nature of my back lawn. I always think it's a bit of a waste when it snows and that annoying git in the office says "it won't settle", I mean what do we have to do to get a decent amount of snow ? Living in the mid south of the UK we seem to be too far west and south to get anything more than a few flakes stuck to a few grass blades. Kent oh Kent!, if we'd lived there we'd get 10 inches but not hampshire oh bloody no...grrrr...
Anyhow back to the doors, or not as wife would have it, "instead of doing the doors, why don't we" (I love that "we" business don't you ?" " ...do the toilet instead", hmmm, it's a tricky decision that...replace the toilet (what are the stringy bits that hang out the back of it any way?), or make some doors, so WE decide to do the toilet... The toilet is all constructed, and after I discover that the mains feed is actually the other side now, we nip to homebase. Following the open wallet surgery that I've once again had to endure (still I make up with it with a couple of scart leads, one of which I don't actually need (but you can never have too many)), we escape with the relevant angles and copper pipe and glue and stuff required (I think) to complete the job.
So I've by now connected up the mains, the waste is connected to (bit of a struggle but we're there), so now it's time to switch on the mains supply. I open up the isolating valve and water begins to fill the cistern, alls well so far.
Then I hear the drip drip drip from the screws holding the cistern on, quick as a flash I'm there with my trusty screw driver tightening the screws so much so I know they'll never come off....dripping seems to have stopped, but there is a puddle of water behind which doesn't seem t have come from the holes.."hmmmm I know what I'll do" so I flush the toilet whilst watching from underneath the cistern, "wooooosh", I'm soaking wet...then I suddenly remember a large foamy type washer thing...I wonder if that was supposed to go between the toilet and the cistern...I think perhaps it should have ;-<....Of course getting those screws undone now is going to be a real laugh!.
Picture the scene, I'm almost laid over the toilet pan (the one that has no lid currently) trying to undo the screws with a screwdriver (on the nylon nut!!) and the wife squeezes in, "what colour do you think we should paint in here, I think the mottled squashed pidgeon from DontLux what do you think ?, are you going to carry on with the doors once you've finished ? The sink doesn't seem to sit quite straight" ...."AAAAAAAGHGGHGHH" so I do the unthinkable and suggest that she stop wittering on about things while I try and unweld this nylon nut from it's thread, that's it she's not talking to me now...bugger!
An hour later, and I've finally got it sorted, the loo is in place and flushes without flooding an area the size of a small country, I've made my peace with the wife (you know at least I think I have, she'll be storing it up for later use!) but now the loo has developed an unstable feel to it, rocking backwards and forwards on the oh so even tiles the wife has put on the floor. In fact even screwing the sucker to the floor doesn't seem to have helped. What's needed is a call to the plumbing advice line, so I phone the wifes dad....Dave the Stormin' Boiler suit, or Grandalf the Grey (the kids came up with that I promise) He advises lifting the toilet with some universal tools (or screwdrivers to you and me (paint stirrer, lever, bespoke chisel etc etc 1001 uses) and squeezing some "No More Plaster" under the toilet then leaving it to dry for 24 hours or so.
That done I move on to my doors...which I now decide are not going to be screwed together at all and since I need a screw that is about 2.5 inches long and I have 3" or 2" screws that's not such a bad thing, I really couldn't face another trip to GIVEUSALLYERMONEY DIY store and I'm absolutely not using the UNIVERSAL USELESS MINI ELECTRIC TOOL, who's sole purpose in life is to waste my time trying to find things to use it for. No, no more screws, in fact and here's an irony, I'm actually going to use No More Nails and some Nails !!!!! Must send that to their sales department muahahahha!.
Doors are now made (well the frames are and they're almost square!!) Work tomorrow, great, then the snow starts again, great.....
08:45: Back to work on Wednesday 11th, and the atmosphere is terrible, you know when you get the feeling you're being talked about ?
09:00 The grand wizard has disappeared into a "How to Manage and Influence people" course, I'd thought it would just be a case of waving his magic wand and capow! things would happen but apparently not.
10:00: Got notification of a "Team Talk" which is where the magician stands up and tells us how it's going to be, real inclusive that, apparently and suspiciously his boss Dunk The Skunk (rebel MC) is also attending. The time oh yeah 12:00 - 13:00 hmmm lunch time, so I politely send an email asking why it has to be then and couldn't we make it 2pm or something. I get this snotty email back, saying "I'm very sorry if this inconvieniences you...but it's got to be at this time and it's imperative", yeah right, it'll be a real imperitive meeting, I can just feel it...and I was only asking after all.
11:00 I've just discovered that the grand wizzards course isn't what i thought, I've managed to obtain a copy of the course literature and I'm disappointed I wasn't asked to go on it.
here for your perusal...
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NEW EVENING CLASSES FOR MEN
ALL ARE WELCOME
OPEN TO MEN ONLY
Note: due to the complexity and level of difficulty, each course will accept a maximum of eight participants
The course covers two days, and topics covered in this course include:
DAY ONE
HOW TO FILL ICE CUBE TRAYS
Step by step guide with slide presentation
TOILET ROLLS- DO THEY GROW ON THE HOLDERS?
Roundtable discussion
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LAUNDRY BASKET & FLOOR
Practicing with hamper (Pictures and graphics)
DISHES & SILVERWARE; DO THEY LEVITATE/FLY TO KITCHEN SINK
OR DISHWASHER BY THEMSELVES?
Debate among a panel of experts.
LOSS OF VIRILITY
Losing the remote control to your significant other - Help line and support groups
LEARNING HOW TO FIND THINGS
Starting with looking in the right place instead of turning the house upside down while shouting
"It's not there!”, You’ve moved it!” or “We’ve run out!” – Open forum
DAY TWO
EMPTY MILK CARTONS; DO THEY BELONG IN THE FRIDGE OR THE BIN?
Group discussion and role-play
HEALTH WATCH; BRINGING HER FLOWERS IS NOT HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH
PowerPoint presentation
REAL MEN ASK FOR DIRECTIONS WHEN LOST
Real life testimonial from the one man who did
IS IT GENETICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIT QUIETLY AS SHE PARALLEL PARKS?
Driving simulation
LIVING WITH ADULTS; BASIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR PARTNER
Online class and role playing
HOW TO BE THE IDEAL SHOPPING COMPANION
Relaxation exercises, meditation and breathing techniques
REMEMBERING IMPORTANT DATES & CALLING WHEN YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE
Bring your calendar or PDA to class
GETTING OVER IT; LEARNING HOW TO LIVE WITH BEING WRONG ALL THE TIME
Individual counsellors available
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I was particularly interested in the filling ICE CUBE TRAYS section, as I beleive that someone got the design wrong on that one...
12:00: Nearly lunchtime, the phone rings (bugger!), it's the Skunkmaster (rebel mc), he's got an urgent change to make to the corporate website, results pending etc and the hosting centre have gone and changed the box and now he doesn't have access. "Yeah being all nice now aren't you" I think to myself, "Can you help ?", "sure I can" I reply, "I really need this desperately", It's like lambs to the slaughter isn't it, "Ok I'll give them a ring". I put the phone down, wait around for 10 or 15 minutes, then I phone the hoster UNATTENDING INC, after 5 minutes of greensleves played by some epileptic spider on a xylaphone, I get "Drew" christ why can't they just have normal names like Bill or Fred, "oh sorry I can't talk to you coz you're not on my list", "groovy" I think, "We've got an email from Skunkmaster, but he's not on our list either", "But he's the IT Director" I say rather pathetically, "yes we know sorry, we need to talk to Karen Sharkbite to gain approval", "Ok I say and put the phone down", I phone the skunkmaster straight away and in a fit of suicidal feelings I relay the conversation I just had with their "support" guy. Following much gnashing and grinding of teeth and threats of tearing up contracts etc, I get "Ok thanks Cre8, I'll phone them, I really need this doing quickly", "I'll do the best I can" I reply helpfully, "No cre8, I need you to do better than that"...better than the best I can, I muse, how exactly does someone do that ? ...About 30 seconds after this my phone rings again (note to self, take phone off hook, when approaching lunchtime)...it's the third line, twice removed support geezer, who has a propa name !!! "Hello it's Bill here" my prayers have been answered !!! "We're sorting the Skunkmasters problem on an emergency change, how quickly do you need it implementing ?" oh probably in about an hour or two I most helpfully advise ;-) I am evil, I really am ;-)
12:30: Lunch - Mother in laws and Grandalf's coz the wife just has to go in to town. I turn up to find my Bacon a little crispier than normal, I won't mention it coz at least we've dispensed with the cancer causing brown sauce and now we have some pucker barbeque stuff..very nice (if not a little crispy)
13:30: Back to work
14:00: In the datacentre trying to work out who and what the hell is plugged into this switch and my mobile goes, "not another agency desperate to find me a job" I think to myself, nope it's the grand wizard, who's been taught to talk to his staff to help improve morale (it's a novel approach I'll grant you), he's actually stood outside the door of the data centre and we meet about 3 feet from each other (yup I know I could have hidden).
15:00: As a result of the conversation earlier, I spend the rest of the day doing a plan for the deployment of a new proxy system, done the wizardry way, so christ knows if it'll actually work or not.
15:30: Quiet Rob has turned up, right in the middle of my plan, apparently he's bored, can't blame him, having to do documentation can be a real bind, especially if you keep being interrupted whilst doing it !!!! He doesn't get the hint, so I take him outside for a fag, good one this as it's about -37 degrees and he has no coat or even a jumper and better still he doesn't smoke !! ;-))
17:30: End of another beautiful day.....that I didn't see coz I was stuck inside...
20:00: Parents Evening !!! at POD's school...fan-bloody-tastic. Why do schools always have in huge letters, things like LET'S DO MATH and APOSTROPHE IS KING, etc etc...here's a wake up call MATHS ISN'T FUN FOR 8 YEAR OLDS AND PUNCTUATION IS THE MOST BORING SUBJECT ON THE PLANET !!! I refrain from mentioning this to the teacher, mainly because she has a bowl of sweets on her table and they're mint creams (yummy!). Apparently POD is doing really well, he's only buring 2 classmates a day at the stake which is an improvement (gulp). She then offers us a sweet, I take one for me and two more for the kids, "the kids don't like mint sweets" my wife helpfully mention's "I know", I very enigmatically reply ;-)))
