Monday, January 16, 2006
Adventure 47 - 16th January 2006 - Punishment Special
Monday 16th January 2006: "I'm so happy, really happy...." lo all yup tiz I le clair again...back with another adventure. Sorry for the week skip, but I just couldn't bring myself out of my boredom, post new year "and I still have to do this crap" mentality....to bring you up to speed with the goings on..... Last Wednesday following the Thursday before I went to the doctors to pick up my prescription for Zyban. The wonderdrug that's taking the anti smoking thingy by storm... I sat in the chair and said "good news !!!" then waved my note from cig-anon at him.
He seemed relatively enthusiastic, whilst printing out the prescripton...He handed it to me and said "was there anything else ?"..to which I simply replied, "well you are supposed to check my blood pressure apparently.." having a slightly now raised blood pressure himself through the embarrassment that one of his patients knows more about this drug than he does...he checks it and says that it's fine...I rushed out and got my 30 pill prescription...
Then the following Thursday it was time for Cig-Anon, group therapy session...We all sat around in a circle with our names on bits of paper in front of us, while the very health service professional Margy (not marjy but margy) explains to us all about NRT and how we could use that instead. They then passed around the various gums and gadgets for us to have a go. One guy had a try at everything, and nearly passed out through nicotine poisoning, but he managed to survive......
08:30: Just dropped Ryan off at school...having left Jack throwing up in the toilet. For some reason he gets himself in such a state about going to school and it's crazy really. We're going to have to sort something out soon.
On my way now to good old Overdone...for the first time I hasten to add. Yup it's my 'Turn' to suffer a week at the sh!t hole that is Overdone in the company of one mr Satsuma. Poor old Brenty (yeah poor old Brenty, i'll get to him later) will now have to suffer the return of the Nunoid, Nunob, all on his very own...well ok Quiet Rob will be there but it's like you're alone with him anyway...
Even Basra has had the good common sense to to take the day off...and me well I'm still not entirely sure if a week at Overdone is a punnishment (I think it probably is) or just a relief so I get away from Nunob for the week....Though when I say get away from....
08:45: Walk to this little office with a chap sat in it, behind some serious heavy duty turnstile type doors...The 'Guard' is about 105, so when he says "hello sir, how can I help you ?", I quite cheerily tell him, that I'm there to work with Mark Satsuma, for the week..."right you are sir, you'll have to go and report to the main gate I'm afraid"...so I meander my way back down the hill again to the main security office...
08:50: "Hello sir, how can I help you ?", comes the all too familiar question...I'm fully expecting to see the same guy asking me the same question, but no, (probably his son, well it is Overdone).
I explain, show my pass, then I'm thrust a piece of paper that the guard has scrawled something illegible on and he then picks up the phone and leaves a message for Mark..."Right well Marks not there at the moment so, you'll have to go up and find him..." he directs me through the door, "to the right and up the hill"..there's me thinking this site was secure...I consider wandering off somewhere but I think better of it...besides I have work to do. I walk in to the building to be greeted with another reception...I again explain and this time, the receptionist is able to get a hold of Mark who then comes down and shows me where I'll be working....
08:54: Checking in with the hiccups and all seems to be well. An email from Nunob (ya see you can never escape), asks "Hows the backups for Jupiter going..." a cryptic, bound to be hidden meaning question, to which I simply respond "the backups for jupiter are going fantastically..."
09:05: An email from Brenty pops in to my inbox...He's noticed that one or two of the backup jobs that should have been deleted when the servers were decomissioned were failing. He's volunteered to delete the jobs so that this doesn't happen again, to which I agree.
09:15: Another one from Brenty, confirming that he's deleted all the jobs that had no schedule to run. I reply with "So the backups that get run as a result of the task scheduler i.e. are invoked by other applications, have been kept though right ?"...knowing the answer only too well..his reply is..."Ahh, Yep big mistake by me…. What do I need to setup to resolve that??"...I'm tempted...but no, unusually I'm feeling kind and not only a little forgiving, christ knows why, but there you go. I talk him through what to do and we managed to repair the damage before anyone else notices...
10:00: Just heard that Mary Tyrant and Nunob are stuck on the motorway at the services because there's been a massive accident and they've closed it. They were on the way to the D'Unstable site and now have to sit in a traffic jam...you know there really is a god.
11:00: Marks been showing me the Backups and the servers in the server rooms. When you're used to massive rooms with air conditioning and oodles and oodles of servers, looking at the one's here that are 5,6,7,8 years old if they're a day makes you understand how lucky you are...
11:30: What is particularly good is that site is a non smoking one, so the only opportunity to have a cigarette is at lunch time...this is going to be a good test of my Zyban.
12:30: Now I'm going out with mark for my first cigarette since about 8:40 this morning..I haven't had a craving yet so that's pretty good
14:00: The afternoon is upon us...and I'm fiddling with the hiccups...in the main because there is sod all else to do....
15:00: zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzz
16:00: Mark has chirped up...do I want to do something ? Whaaaat ? I was just nodding off too...apparently they have a bucket load of print servers and they want to consolidate (my favourite word) them in to the one new one they bought not too many years ago.
I ask him to send me the details.....which he does...but I'm still none the wiser....
17:10: Mark suddenly chirps up..."it's ten past five!" he exclaims..."time to go cre8"...triffic, the end to a perfect day. I trudge wearily down to "In"Security, I make it through the door with the feet going the wrong way and managed to struggle to the window to hand over my pass....that's it I'm free (well until tomorrow)...
17:20: I hop in to my car light a fag and make my way back to civilisation....I'm reflecting on the fact that all the work I had done today, involved jobs I would have done in any case. I have in fact contributed nothing to the workings of the Overdone Sys Admin team, whatsoever...I don't know anything about any of their systems..it's a bit like dropping me in to Poland and expecting me to know how to make vodka...still who am I to question management decisions...
Tuesday 17th January 2006
08:55: Made it in without so much as a wimper today...Insecurity quizzed me once again though about whether I had camera's, video recording devices or audio recording devices...I do, but they're called my eyes and ears..and I store all these images in my brain...perhaps that's what they mean and I have to take mine out...
09:15: Into the office and I've checked the hiccups (nothing sensational to report)...I've also checked the hiccups here in Overdone, to discover that there's been some sort of error since one is still running...which delays the duplicate set that gets sent to BackOfBeyond....so a real pain...Mark and I go down to the "Data Centre" to change the other tapes !!!! (Others !!!)
10:00: Having suitably recovered from the experience that is "changing the tapes" (there really isn't anything like it in the world...I make my way back to my desk...for a mocha...or something that's called a mocha but is really just the crushed intestines of woodlice or some other crustacean...
10:30: Mark the Satsuma, is going to give me a bit of a guided (ha!) tour. We have to walk around with some woman from a network point installing type company and show her what needs doing and where in the main factory (i.e. not an office)...We wander around various machines that all seem to be doing surprisingly little (I'm sure they're actually running a full steam ahead (especially since they seem to be running on steam !!))
11:00: That done we make our way back to the office, only for Mr Satsuma to announce that that wasn't really the tour of tours, oh no, the tour of tours is about to begin, with Lynn who's obvoiously the IFSnBUTS project manager since she has a clipboard, has no clue where she's going but she's going there in a real hurry...I am struggling a bit to walk in a pair of steel toecapped boots that are three sizes too big for me, thoughts like zippo the clown start entering my head, any how that said, she's here and there and "this way guys...." and "nope it's over there...", by the time we get back to the office I'm knackered..
12:20: Mark is meeting his Mrs for lunch today (awww bless) so he's badged me out of the "employees only" gate then while he was waiting for said mrs badged me back in once I'd had my statutory two smokes (well I'm not going to get another one until at least 5pm)....I keep thinking "Friday is the day"...my Zyban two tablets a day will well and truly be in full swing and I will have officially given up ...gulp...
13:30: Lunch basically over...I get on with some dismantling and rebuilding the BackofBeyond backups...they've been crying out for simplifying which now thankfully I've done.
15:30: Nothing else much to report today....
17:15: Time to go.......
Wednesday 18th January 2006
08:40: Blimey...I've got here really quick today..I can't quite understand it...still never mind...
09:00: Mark isn't in yet...this could be trouble...so I busy myself with checking the BackofBeyond backups and filling out the check sheet.
09:45: Mark's made it in after doing himself several injuries at his Gymn (just signed up). I thought about mentioning the fact that Gymns are supposed to make you feel fitter and better generally...Killing you isn't part of the deal normally...I thought about it but thought better of saying anything....
10:00: Email from Brenty to say that they've moved the SVM device and now it's showing up as amber....
10:10: A quick email off to SVM support, reveals that this is a partial failure of the fibre core...(well it's easy when you say it like that isn't it ?), so I pass this information on.
10:15: An email from Brenty confirming that the interruption in the fibre core was created by Quiet Rob, plugging the fibre in the wrong way around...doh !
10:30: Time to check the Overdone backups...this could be fun since I now have to remember what to do....gulp...
11:00: Managed to remember it wahay all tapes in the respective positions..things are going too well.
11:15: Quiet Rob is here !!! Some people will do anything to get away from Nunob...I've just got an email from Richman at CopperNitrate Centre to say the two tape drive upgrades we'd bought, not only were now £800 more expensive than we thought, but now they'd take longer to get here too...I made my feelings clear by translating my reply in to Portuguese...
12:30: Lunch is already upon us !! How did that happen...Jadie Blondfringe, First/Second line manager is here today so she joins Mark and myself on the trudge to the cigarette shelter...
I comment that I think a group of smokers should be known as a Cough...
13:30: Back now, setting up yet more backup jobs..and generally just getting through it....
14:30: Backup jobs are progressing...zzzZZZZZZ
15:15: Backup jobs are now complete...now lucky me I'm going to write up some of this documentation.....
16:45: 15 minutes of pain to go....can I stay awake....can I make it...zzzZZZZZZZZZZ
Thursday 19th January 2006
08:45: Made it here again...the hill to the building I'm working on seems to get longer everyday.
09:00: The hiccups at Backofbeyond have all failed today, since the server crashed at around about 6pm last night...Brenty has rebooted the server but they'll be going most of the day.
10:00: God damn it...the little plastic bendy man that sits on a shelf above my desk has decided to enter the world diving championships..and dived headlong into my coffee. This is annoying for two reasons...1. I'm not sure how clean mr man was and 2. It doesn't matter since it's knocked my cup over and has spread coffee all over the desk...
10:30: The mess is finally cleared up...In fact i'd say the desk is even cleaner now than it was before...
11:00: Crispin has been regailing us with stories of his evening out, all sounds very laddish to me...
11:30: Starting to get a little bit of a craving now...only one hour to wait....hiccups are still running...what else can I do ?
12:20: The nice man who turns the light on to show everyone that they can go and have a smoke has turned on the light...(bloody good of him that!)..so Mark and I make our way out for a brace..This will all stop tomorrow..so that bloody Zyban had better kicked in by then. I'm beginning to wonder if the Doctor hasn't prescribed me something else like fertility drugs or something like that..(that'll teach me to be sarcastic...)
13:00: Tinkering around on giggle searching for this and that...have a quick look at the backups...nothing interesting happening there....man there has to be something to do...
14:30: I'm fed up...everytime someone asks me if I know how to do something I'm having to tell them "no, I don't know how to do that...", it's driving me crazy..if they talk to me about backups I can do it...
15:00: I'm off....to help Mark and Crispin, install what they're trying to convince me is a switch. We all know however that this "switch" is in fact a hub and over 15 years old. In fact it's been chiselled out of a single piece of granite...We're installing it in the little hospital unit they have here on site which is all very quaint...
15:30: Seeing all the dust that we're dispersing into the atmosphere has begun to make me thing about MRSA, this is a hospital afterall...
16:30: After much tooing and froing, the hub is installed...this after Mark, Crispin, and myself nearly killed ourselves by precariously balancing one foot on a chair and another on a set of filing cabinets....The doctor lady was quite nice though she made us a cup of tea and coffee..so it wasn't too bad...The building itself was reminiscent of my time at RAW-E, which was all atomic stuff..but the buildings were dated to the 2nd world war...still at least I've refrained from my afternoon nodding off in the chair session and we got out had a bit of a laugh at the same time...all good fun.
17:00: Nearly time to go...Cig-Anon tonight...I have 3 cigarettes left...and the Zyban still hasn't kicked in....gulp.....
Friday 20th January 2006
09:00:....The end of the world.......well almost..................Zyban has kicked in and everything is fan-bleedin-tastic......I just shouldn't drive anywhere ;-).................
Weekend tomorrow...so abject boredom and lots of, well I don't know what do you want to do's....and so on....still the Zyban is working..............
He seemed relatively enthusiastic, whilst printing out the prescripton...He handed it to me and said "was there anything else ?"..to which I simply replied, "well you are supposed to check my blood pressure apparently.." having a slightly now raised blood pressure himself through the embarrassment that one of his patients knows more about this drug than he does...he checks it and says that it's fine...I rushed out and got my 30 pill prescription...
Then the following Thursday it was time for Cig-Anon, group therapy session...We all sat around in a circle with our names on bits of paper in front of us, while the very health service professional Margy (not marjy but margy) explains to us all about NRT and how we could use that instead. They then passed around the various gums and gadgets for us to have a go. One guy had a try at everything, and nearly passed out through nicotine poisoning, but he managed to survive......
08:30: Just dropped Ryan off at school...having left Jack throwing up in the toilet. For some reason he gets himself in such a state about going to school and it's crazy really. We're going to have to sort something out soon.
On my way now to good old Overdone...for the first time I hasten to add. Yup it's my 'Turn' to suffer a week at the sh!t hole that is Overdone in the company of one mr Satsuma. Poor old Brenty (yeah poor old Brenty, i'll get to him later) will now have to suffer the return of the Nunoid, Nunob, all on his very own...well ok Quiet Rob will be there but it's like you're alone with him anyway...
Even Basra has had the good common sense to to take the day off...and me well I'm still not entirely sure if a week at Overdone is a punnishment (I think it probably is) or just a relief so I get away from Nunob for the week....Though when I say get away from....
08:45: Walk to this little office with a chap sat in it, behind some serious heavy duty turnstile type doors...The 'Guard' is about 105, so when he says "hello sir, how can I help you ?", I quite cheerily tell him, that I'm there to work with Mark Satsuma, for the week..."right you are sir, you'll have to go and report to the main gate I'm afraid"...so I meander my way back down the hill again to the main security office...
08:50: "Hello sir, how can I help you ?", comes the all too familiar question...I'm fully expecting to see the same guy asking me the same question, but no, (probably his son, well it is Overdone).
I explain, show my pass, then I'm thrust a piece of paper that the guard has scrawled something illegible on and he then picks up the phone and leaves a message for Mark..."Right well Marks not there at the moment so, you'll have to go up and find him..." he directs me through the door, "to the right and up the hill"..there's me thinking this site was secure...I consider wandering off somewhere but I think better of it...besides I have work to do. I walk in to the building to be greeted with another reception...I again explain and this time, the receptionist is able to get a hold of Mark who then comes down and shows me where I'll be working....
08:54: Checking in with the hiccups and all seems to be well. An email from Nunob (ya see you can never escape), asks "Hows the backups for Jupiter going..." a cryptic, bound to be hidden meaning question, to which I simply respond "the backups for jupiter are going fantastically..."
09:05: An email from Brenty pops in to my inbox...He's noticed that one or two of the backup jobs that should have been deleted when the servers were decomissioned were failing. He's volunteered to delete the jobs so that this doesn't happen again, to which I agree.
09:15: Another one from Brenty, confirming that he's deleted all the jobs that had no schedule to run. I reply with "So the backups that get run as a result of the task scheduler i.e. are invoked by other applications, have been kept though right ?"...knowing the answer only too well..his reply is..."Ahh, Yep big mistake by me…. What do I need to setup to resolve that??"...I'm tempted...but no, unusually I'm feeling kind and not only a little forgiving, christ knows why, but there you go. I talk him through what to do and we managed to repair the damage before anyone else notices...
10:00: Just heard that Mary Tyrant and Nunob are stuck on the motorway at the services because there's been a massive accident and they've closed it. They were on the way to the D'Unstable site and now have to sit in a traffic jam...you know there really is a god.
11:00: Marks been showing me the Backups and the servers in the server rooms. When you're used to massive rooms with air conditioning and oodles and oodles of servers, looking at the one's here that are 5,6,7,8 years old if they're a day makes you understand how lucky you are...
11:30: What is particularly good is that site is a non smoking one, so the only opportunity to have a cigarette is at lunch time...this is going to be a good test of my Zyban.
12:30: Now I'm going out with mark for my first cigarette since about 8:40 this morning..I haven't had a craving yet so that's pretty good
14:00: The afternoon is upon us...and I'm fiddling with the hiccups...in the main because there is sod all else to do....
15:00: zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzz
16:00: Mark has chirped up...do I want to do something ? Whaaaat ? I was just nodding off too...apparently they have a bucket load of print servers and they want to consolidate (my favourite word) them in to the one new one they bought not too many years ago.
I ask him to send me the details.....which he does...but I'm still none the wiser....
17:10: Mark suddenly chirps up..."it's ten past five!" he exclaims..."time to go cre8"...triffic, the end to a perfect day. I trudge wearily down to "In"Security, I make it through the door with the feet going the wrong way and managed to struggle to the window to hand over my pass....that's it I'm free (well until tomorrow)...
17:20: I hop in to my car light a fag and make my way back to civilisation....I'm reflecting on the fact that all the work I had done today, involved jobs I would have done in any case. I have in fact contributed nothing to the workings of the Overdone Sys Admin team, whatsoever...I don't know anything about any of their systems..it's a bit like dropping me in to Poland and expecting me to know how to make vodka...still who am I to question management decisions...
Tuesday 17th January 2006
08:55: Made it in without so much as a wimper today...Insecurity quizzed me once again though about whether I had camera's, video recording devices or audio recording devices...I do, but they're called my eyes and ears..and I store all these images in my brain...perhaps that's what they mean and I have to take mine out...
09:15: Into the office and I've checked the hiccups (nothing sensational to report)...I've also checked the hiccups here in Overdone, to discover that there's been some sort of error since one is still running...which delays the duplicate set that gets sent to BackOfBeyond....so a real pain...Mark and I go down to the "Data Centre" to change the other tapes !!!! (Others !!!)
10:00: Having suitably recovered from the experience that is "changing the tapes" (there really isn't anything like it in the world...I make my way back to my desk...for a mocha...or something that's called a mocha but is really just the crushed intestines of woodlice or some other crustacean...
10:30: Mark the Satsuma, is going to give me a bit of a guided (ha!) tour. We have to walk around with some woman from a network point installing type company and show her what needs doing and where in the main factory (i.e. not an office)...We wander around various machines that all seem to be doing surprisingly little (I'm sure they're actually running a full steam ahead (especially since they seem to be running on steam !!))
11:00: That done we make our way back to the office, only for Mr Satsuma to announce that that wasn't really the tour of tours, oh no, the tour of tours is about to begin, with Lynn who's obvoiously the IFSnBUTS project manager since she has a clipboard, has no clue where she's going but she's going there in a real hurry...I am struggling a bit to walk in a pair of steel toecapped boots that are three sizes too big for me, thoughts like zippo the clown start entering my head, any how that said, she's here and there and "this way guys...." and "nope it's over there...", by the time we get back to the office I'm knackered..
12:20: Mark is meeting his Mrs for lunch today (awww bless) so he's badged me out of the "employees only" gate then while he was waiting for said mrs badged me back in once I'd had my statutory two smokes (well I'm not going to get another one until at least 5pm)....I keep thinking "Friday is the day"...my Zyban two tablets a day will well and truly be in full swing and I will have officially given up ...gulp...
13:30: Lunch basically over...I get on with some dismantling and rebuilding the BackofBeyond backups...they've been crying out for simplifying which now thankfully I've done.
15:30: Nothing else much to report today....
17:15: Time to go.......
Wednesday 18th January 2006
08:40: Blimey...I've got here really quick today..I can't quite understand it...still never mind...
09:00: Mark isn't in yet...this could be trouble...so I busy myself with checking the BackofBeyond backups and filling out the check sheet.
09:45: Mark's made it in after doing himself several injuries at his Gymn (just signed up). I thought about mentioning the fact that Gymns are supposed to make you feel fitter and better generally...Killing you isn't part of the deal normally...I thought about it but thought better of saying anything....
10:00: Email from Brenty to say that they've moved the SVM device and now it's showing up as amber....
10:10: A quick email off to SVM support, reveals that this is a partial failure of the fibre core...(well it's easy when you say it like that isn't it ?), so I pass this information on.
10:15: An email from Brenty confirming that the interruption in the fibre core was created by Quiet Rob, plugging the fibre in the wrong way around...doh !
10:30: Time to check the Overdone backups...this could be fun since I now have to remember what to do....gulp...
11:00: Managed to remember it wahay all tapes in the respective positions..things are going too well.
11:15: Quiet Rob is here !!! Some people will do anything to get away from Nunob...I've just got an email from Richman at CopperNitrate Centre to say the two tape drive upgrades we'd bought, not only were now £800 more expensive than we thought, but now they'd take longer to get here too...I made my feelings clear by translating my reply in to Portuguese...
12:30: Lunch is already upon us !! How did that happen...Jadie Blondfringe, First/Second line manager is here today so she joins Mark and myself on the trudge to the cigarette shelter...
I comment that I think a group of smokers should be known as a Cough...
13:30: Back now, setting up yet more backup jobs..and generally just getting through it....
14:30: Backup jobs are progressing...zzzZZZZZZ
15:15: Backup jobs are now complete...now lucky me I'm going to write up some of this documentation.....
16:45: 15 minutes of pain to go....can I stay awake....can I make it...zzzZZZZZZZZZZ
Thursday 19th January 2006
08:45: Made it here again...the hill to the building I'm working on seems to get longer everyday.
09:00: The hiccups at Backofbeyond have all failed today, since the server crashed at around about 6pm last night...Brenty has rebooted the server but they'll be going most of the day.
10:00: God damn it...the little plastic bendy man that sits on a shelf above my desk has decided to enter the world diving championships..and dived headlong into my coffee. This is annoying for two reasons...1. I'm not sure how clean mr man was and 2. It doesn't matter since it's knocked my cup over and has spread coffee all over the desk...
10:30: The mess is finally cleared up...In fact i'd say the desk is even cleaner now than it was before...
11:00: Crispin has been regailing us with stories of his evening out, all sounds very laddish to me...
11:30: Starting to get a little bit of a craving now...only one hour to wait....hiccups are still running...what else can I do ?
12:20: The nice man who turns the light on to show everyone that they can go and have a smoke has turned on the light...(bloody good of him that!)..so Mark and I make our way out for a brace..This will all stop tomorrow..so that bloody Zyban had better kicked in by then. I'm beginning to wonder if the Doctor hasn't prescribed me something else like fertility drugs or something like that..(that'll teach me to be sarcastic...)
13:00: Tinkering around on giggle searching for this and that...have a quick look at the backups...nothing interesting happening there....man there has to be something to do...
14:30: I'm fed up...everytime someone asks me if I know how to do something I'm having to tell them "no, I don't know how to do that...", it's driving me crazy..if they talk to me about backups I can do it...
15:00: I'm off....to help Mark and Crispin, install what they're trying to convince me is a switch. We all know however that this "switch" is in fact a hub and over 15 years old. In fact it's been chiselled out of a single piece of granite...We're installing it in the little hospital unit they have here on site which is all very quaint...
15:30: Seeing all the dust that we're dispersing into the atmosphere has begun to make me thing about MRSA, this is a hospital afterall...
16:30: After much tooing and froing, the hub is installed...this after Mark, Crispin, and myself nearly killed ourselves by precariously balancing one foot on a chair and another on a set of filing cabinets....The doctor lady was quite nice though she made us a cup of tea and coffee..so it wasn't too bad...The building itself was reminiscent of my time at RAW-E, which was all atomic stuff..but the buildings were dated to the 2nd world war...still at least I've refrained from my afternoon nodding off in the chair session and we got out had a bit of a laugh at the same time...all good fun.
17:00: Nearly time to go...Cig-Anon tonight...I have 3 cigarettes left...and the Zyban still hasn't kicked in....gulp.....
Friday 20th January 2006
09:00:....The end of the world.......well almost..................Zyban has kicked in and everything is fan-bleedin-tastic......I just shouldn't drive anywhere ;-).................
Weekend tomorrow...so abject boredom and lots of, well I don't know what do you want to do's....and so on....still the Zyban is working..............
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Adventure 46 - January 3rd 2006
Tuesday January 3rd 2006
“Another year over a new really crappy one just begun……” Well hello and a happy new year to one and all….It’s the start of another year for me and I’ve nearly completed a year of Adventures and nearly 2 years at Don’t Be Daft International. This is a period of the year where I like so many others have that debate with ourselves as to whether it would be better to wait until we’d got our bonus, or whether we should in fact actually leave before hand…well I can tell you it’s not an easy decision to make…ha! who cares about the bonus…I’m a bored over qualified, 3rd line support technician / Systems Administrator GET ME OUT OF A HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
08:30: Up and out with a spring in my step, ok that’s a lie, even Ryan who has to go to school is quiet, tired and fed up with the prospect of going somewhere where they value him less than the smearing of dog’s mess that’s doubtless on his shoes…either that or it’s his new Lynx deodorant I can smell…still nice to see there’s more than one of us in the same boat…..
08:35: Dropped Ryan off and made my weary way to DBD….even though I had to go in on the 28th (my compulsory one day of work) it’s hard getting motivated to even drive through the gates…but I do and I even find a parking space not so far away, so my weary legs don’t have to wander too far….
08:40: As an added bonus today Nunob isn’t going to be in this week…(thank heaven for small mercies) !!!
08:45: I have the dubious honour now of checking the hiccups for completion…simply because no other bugger is going to….
09:00: An email pop’s in to my in box, it’s from Nunob….wandering what is happening to the order for the hiccup system upgrade (some £40k or so)…My reply is somewhat sarcastic, (he’ll never know), that since Cazakstano Pregnant one, has been off between Christmas and New Year, she will have placed the order today…probably about five minutes ago…
10:00: Phone call from Copper Nitrate Centre…it’s Richman, thanking me for the order …well that’s what you call service isn’t…
11:00: Suddenly remembered…I got a phone call during the Christmas break….from the NHS Quitifyouwanttowe’renotthatbothered Line…saying that they’d just received my email …email…email I’m thinking oh the email I sent them in August….It would seem that the NHS even have a waiting list for emails now too….Basically I’ve signed up to go to “Group” on Thursdays in an attempt to save my life…and give up smoking and have pots more cash to spend on….well on….S.T.U.F.F (Something To Use For Fun)….The main reason for going apart from giving up…is to get me a note to get a prescription for some Zyban…or if that doesn’t agree with me, some Patches etc…all at a cut price prescription cost…well it has to be done and if I can save some money in the mean time then great….
12:00: I mention my impending quit attempt to the newly reformed Brenty..who’ given up again…This time however he’s using patches…and he isn’t smoking !!!! Well done him…though I do have a little chuckle to myself…as every ache and pain and get up to quickly, is being blamed on the bucket loads of nicotine being pumped into his body from the aforesaid patch…He even claims to have lost 2 ½ inches from his wasteline…yeah right…it’s just moved up over the waistband of your trousers mate !!!!...Still it gives me something to laugh about (there has to be something) and him feeling “funky” (his words not mine…from an NRT patch is pure theatre in any case….He’s even stopped (for how long though) drinking Diet Pepsi…..so he’s on a real de-tox at the moment….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…there’s a distinct depression in the air…no particular reason there just is….
14:30: “So have you written your latest adventure yet…” Brenty asks as he accompanies me outside to watch me smoke a lovely cigarette (cough splutter…half lung collapses)…”No I haven’t yet…It’s almost done..just gotta tie a few bits together” comes my reply…”So did you include my disciplinary ?” comes his next question….”No” again I reply…though that’s not strictly true now is it…….He was basically pulled before the beak…for a load of trumped up charges…and basically because, he’d been a bit silly…and had a right moan about Nunob to Karen Shark…one of Nunob’s closest confidents…I mean…you can slap people about only so much before they get the message…So he went through the farce of facing charges like, Dress Code violations…i.e. not wearing a tie…and performance related problems…like…”you did this…did you think you dealt with this professionally ?”…”yes I do think I dealt with it professionally”….”err…ok then…” I mean what a crock of Sh$t…any way he basically escaped with a “don’t talk out of class…if you want to have a moan about “people” moan to me or Bill or Chris (the IT Director) about them…” warning…hmmm yeah like we’re going to do that…I’m so disengaged with this place that I’ve realised there’s no point in moaning about things, nothing changes so I might as well keep my 16 years IT experience to myself….well I try…but it’s not always easy….
Any how now you all have a summary of the events....
15:30: The day is winding down now…not that it got particularly wound up anyways….
17:15: Just left…bit late today…for some reason….
Wednesday 4th January 2006
08:15: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh%t!!!!!...just got up…Jack’s going to School, or “fall out with friends” as we now call it….Mandy’s in a panic and as she has to do her hair and then get Jack who’s still only wearing his pants, dressed and to school in about 10 minutes flat….ahh the joys of school days…
08:20: Finally Ryan and I are on our way, having waved to a semi dressed Jack, luckily leaving as late as we are means that we literally get to school for 08:25 which is his start time…I finally get to work at about 08:40..so no harm done there then….
09:00: Not much to report today, except an email from Mary Tyrant, telling us that she’s got to rotate us with the Overdone office since they’re a man down and this means that Brenty has to spend next week there and I have to spend the week after that there too….That would be ok if it wasn’t for the fact that it’ll be spent working with Sparky Satsuma, the resident Overdone 3rd line guy who’s as useful as a chocolate fireguard most of the time…Obviously he’ll be spending time in the Back of Beyond office at some point too…obvious to me and no one else that is including Mary…I’m beginning to think this is punishment for standing up for ourselves during Brenty’s disciplinary…but I can’t prove it….
10:00: Another email this time from Nunob, who’s decided that we need to review our use of NoBackup since it’s “not the company standard”…therefore he wants to get quote from Verishagged for NotachanceBackup…Now knowing that NotachanceBackup is significantly more expensive….has filled me with glee..and I respond to his email enthusiastically claiming that I’d love nothing better than to get the quotes….I’ve even instructed Richman at Copper Nitrate centre to provide a competitive quote (the main reason for this of course is that I know that they’ll check to make sure I haven’t been making it up…”. I do get the sense however that because I’m an advocate of NoBackup, that even if NotachanceBackup is twice the price they’ll still decide to implement it just to spite me…but that’s the pessimist coming out I guess.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Backup from lunch…and I’ve discovered that the Horrorgraphics tape drive has decided to turn it’s toes up…or get a tape jammed inside it and not eject it….This means I have to drive over their and try and free it up.
14:00: Just arrived at Horrorgraphics…I’ve provided security with a sample of my DNA and had my finger prints done…
14:15: In to the ‘Computer Room’ (cupboard) and yup sure enough tape well and truly jammed in the drive…I’ll have to take it back to BackofBeyond and see if I can disassemble the drive enough to free the tape…
14:30: Back at site now…I’ve extracted the drive from it’s external caddy…but I haven’t got an allen key the right size to undo the drive case itself and there’s a large sticker saying “Calibration Void if Removed”…didn’t know you needed to calibrate stickers but there you go….A quick phone call to Copper Nitrate Centre, and they’ve agreed to come and pick up the drive that they sold us as surprisingly it’s still under warranty….luckily it’s on an advanced replace turn around so I’m fully expecting it by Monday….
15:30: My mobile is buzzing away…it’s an agent from an agency !!!...I was supposed to go for an interview for a job I’ve long since forgotten about in December last year, however they wanted me to go to Milton Keynes for the interview, even though the job was in Fleet…just up the road…mental…also our leave had been cancelled so I kind of figured that that was that…anyway a little after that the agent had rung me and said the company Eee By Gum, was still interested and would I be available in January around the 5th…well that’s like 24 hours away and I’d not had it confirmed or anything so I emailed the agent to find out…She basically tells me that they’re still interested in me for this and possible one or two other opportunities and they’ll be in touch, but they can’t do the 5th…I’m starting to get that all to familiar feeling…so breath holding wont be something I do in the short term….
Nothing else to report today…it’s all so flat and I’m struggling to get motivated…so I’m just pottering about….
Thursday 5th January 2006
Nothing at all to report….
Friday 6th January 2006
08:30: Managed to get up ok today..alarms are finally getting used to waking me up again…Even Ryan was up and well Mandy no she was still struggling, but then she still has a bit of a cough and she seems to have pulled a muscle in her chest which no amount of my rubbing can alleviate…(it’s doing wonders for me though !!)…So every time she coughs she’s basically doubling up to stop it from hurting….
10:00: Chased up my quotes for NoBackup and NotachanceBackup…from Copper Nitrate Centre…I’m advised I should see it in about 10 minutes…well we live in hope don’t we…
10:30: The quotes have just arrived and well they make interesting reading…..Like I’ve said…I was under the impression that NoBackup was significantly cheaper than the Notachance Backup standard…and how right I was…nearly £60k cheaper…the quote that’s come in for NoBackup as if we were implementing the system we’ve already got is £30k the quote for Notachance Backup is £90k…I’m gonna love imparting this information…though not until Tuesday since that is the deadline….I don’t know if I can sit on this for that long……
It’ll soon be the weekend…..with only Monday morning to look forward too…..grrrrr…
“Another year over a new really crappy one just begun……” Well hello and a happy new year to one and all….It’s the start of another year for me and I’ve nearly completed a year of Adventures and nearly 2 years at Don’t Be Daft International. This is a period of the year where I like so many others have that debate with ourselves as to whether it would be better to wait until we’d got our bonus, or whether we should in fact actually leave before hand…well I can tell you it’s not an easy decision to make…ha! who cares about the bonus…I’m a bored over qualified, 3rd line support technician / Systems Administrator GET ME OUT OF A HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
08:30: Up and out with a spring in my step, ok that’s a lie, even Ryan who has to go to school is quiet, tired and fed up with the prospect of going somewhere where they value him less than the smearing of dog’s mess that’s doubtless on his shoes…either that or it’s his new Lynx deodorant I can smell…still nice to see there’s more than one of us in the same boat…..
08:35: Dropped Ryan off and made my weary way to DBD….even though I had to go in on the 28th (my compulsory one day of work) it’s hard getting motivated to even drive through the gates…but I do and I even find a parking space not so far away, so my weary legs don’t have to wander too far….
08:40: As an added bonus today Nunob isn’t going to be in this week…(thank heaven for small mercies) !!!
08:45: I have the dubious honour now of checking the hiccups for completion…simply because no other bugger is going to….
09:00: An email pop’s in to my in box, it’s from Nunob….wandering what is happening to the order for the hiccup system upgrade (some £40k or so)…My reply is somewhat sarcastic, (he’ll never know), that since Cazakstano Pregnant one, has been off between Christmas and New Year, she will have placed the order today…probably about five minutes ago…
10:00: Phone call from Copper Nitrate Centre…it’s Richman, thanking me for the order …well that’s what you call service isn’t…
11:00: Suddenly remembered…I got a phone call during the Christmas break….from the NHS Quitifyouwanttowe’renotthatbothered Line…saying that they’d just received my email …email…email I’m thinking oh the email I sent them in August….It would seem that the NHS even have a waiting list for emails now too….Basically I’ve signed up to go to “Group” on Thursdays in an attempt to save my life…and give up smoking and have pots more cash to spend on….well on….S.T.U.F.F (Something To Use For Fun)….The main reason for going apart from giving up…is to get me a note to get a prescription for some Zyban…or if that doesn’t agree with me, some Patches etc…all at a cut price prescription cost…well it has to be done and if I can save some money in the mean time then great….
12:00: I mention my impending quit attempt to the newly reformed Brenty..who’ given up again…This time however he’s using patches…and he isn’t smoking !!!! Well done him…though I do have a little chuckle to myself…as every ache and pain and get up to quickly, is being blamed on the bucket loads of nicotine being pumped into his body from the aforesaid patch…He even claims to have lost 2 ½ inches from his wasteline…yeah right…it’s just moved up over the waistband of your trousers mate !!!!...Still it gives me something to laugh about (there has to be something) and him feeling “funky” (his words not mine…from an NRT patch is pure theatre in any case….He’s even stopped (for how long though) drinking Diet Pepsi…..so he’s on a real de-tox at the moment….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…there’s a distinct depression in the air…no particular reason there just is….
14:30: “So have you written your latest adventure yet…” Brenty asks as he accompanies me outside to watch me smoke a lovely cigarette (cough splutter…half lung collapses)…”No I haven’t yet…It’s almost done..just gotta tie a few bits together” comes my reply…”So did you include my disciplinary ?” comes his next question….”No” again I reply…though that’s not strictly true now is it…….He was basically pulled before the beak…for a load of trumped up charges…and basically because, he’d been a bit silly…and had a right moan about Nunob to Karen Shark…one of Nunob’s closest confidents…I mean…you can slap people about only so much before they get the message…So he went through the farce of facing charges like, Dress Code violations…i.e. not wearing a tie…and performance related problems…like…”you did this…did you think you dealt with this professionally ?”…”yes I do think I dealt with it professionally”….”err…ok then…” I mean what a crock of Sh$t…any way he basically escaped with a “don’t talk out of class…if you want to have a moan about “people” moan to me or Bill or Chris (the IT Director) about them…” warning…hmmm yeah like we’re going to do that…I’m so disengaged with this place that I’ve realised there’s no point in moaning about things, nothing changes so I might as well keep my 16 years IT experience to myself….well I try…but it’s not always easy….
Any how now you all have a summary of the events....
15:30: The day is winding down now…not that it got particularly wound up anyways….
17:15: Just left…bit late today…for some reason….
Wednesday 4th January 2006
08:15: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh%t!!!!!...just got up…Jack’s going to School, or “fall out with friends” as we now call it….Mandy’s in a panic and as she has to do her hair and then get Jack who’s still only wearing his pants, dressed and to school in about 10 minutes flat….ahh the joys of school days…
08:20: Finally Ryan and I are on our way, having waved to a semi dressed Jack, luckily leaving as late as we are means that we literally get to school for 08:25 which is his start time…I finally get to work at about 08:40..so no harm done there then….
09:00: Not much to report today, except an email from Mary Tyrant, telling us that she’s got to rotate us with the Overdone office since they’re a man down and this means that Brenty has to spend next week there and I have to spend the week after that there too….That would be ok if it wasn’t for the fact that it’ll be spent working with Sparky Satsuma, the resident Overdone 3rd line guy who’s as useful as a chocolate fireguard most of the time…Obviously he’ll be spending time in the Back of Beyond office at some point too…obvious to me and no one else that is including Mary…I’m beginning to think this is punishment for standing up for ourselves during Brenty’s disciplinary…but I can’t prove it….
10:00: Another email this time from Nunob, who’s decided that we need to review our use of NoBackup since it’s “not the company standard”…therefore he wants to get quote from Verishagged for NotachanceBackup…Now knowing that NotachanceBackup is significantly more expensive….has filled me with glee..and I respond to his email enthusiastically claiming that I’d love nothing better than to get the quotes….I’ve even instructed Richman at Copper Nitrate centre to provide a competitive quote (the main reason for this of course is that I know that they’ll check to make sure I haven’t been making it up…”. I do get the sense however that because I’m an advocate of NoBackup, that even if NotachanceBackup is twice the price they’ll still decide to implement it just to spite me…but that’s the pessimist coming out I guess.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Backup from lunch…and I’ve discovered that the Horrorgraphics tape drive has decided to turn it’s toes up…or get a tape jammed inside it and not eject it….This means I have to drive over their and try and free it up.
14:00: Just arrived at Horrorgraphics…I’ve provided security with a sample of my DNA and had my finger prints done…
14:15: In to the ‘Computer Room’ (cupboard) and yup sure enough tape well and truly jammed in the drive…I’ll have to take it back to BackofBeyond and see if I can disassemble the drive enough to free the tape…
14:30: Back at site now…I’ve extracted the drive from it’s external caddy…but I haven’t got an allen key the right size to undo the drive case itself and there’s a large sticker saying “Calibration Void if Removed”…didn’t know you needed to calibrate stickers but there you go….A quick phone call to Copper Nitrate Centre, and they’ve agreed to come and pick up the drive that they sold us as surprisingly it’s still under warranty….luckily it’s on an advanced replace turn around so I’m fully expecting it by Monday….
15:30: My mobile is buzzing away…it’s an agent from an agency !!!...I was supposed to go for an interview for a job I’ve long since forgotten about in December last year, however they wanted me to go to Milton Keynes for the interview, even though the job was in Fleet…just up the road…mental…also our leave had been cancelled so I kind of figured that that was that…anyway a little after that the agent had rung me and said the company Eee By Gum, was still interested and would I be available in January around the 5th…well that’s like 24 hours away and I’d not had it confirmed or anything so I emailed the agent to find out…She basically tells me that they’re still interested in me for this and possible one or two other opportunities and they’ll be in touch, but they can’t do the 5th…I’m starting to get that all to familiar feeling…so breath holding wont be something I do in the short term….
Nothing else to report today…it’s all so flat and I’m struggling to get motivated…so I’m just pottering about….
Thursday 5th January 2006
Nothing at all to report….
Friday 6th January 2006
08:30: Managed to get up ok today..alarms are finally getting used to waking me up again…Even Ryan was up and well Mandy no she was still struggling, but then she still has a bit of a cough and she seems to have pulled a muscle in her chest which no amount of my rubbing can alleviate…(it’s doing wonders for me though !!)…So every time she coughs she’s basically doubling up to stop it from hurting….
10:00: Chased up my quotes for NoBackup and NotachanceBackup…from Copper Nitrate Centre…I’m advised I should see it in about 10 minutes…well we live in hope don’t we…
10:30: The quotes have just arrived and well they make interesting reading…..Like I’ve said…I was under the impression that NoBackup was significantly cheaper than the Notachance Backup standard…and how right I was…nearly £60k cheaper…the quote that’s come in for NoBackup as if we were implementing the system we’ve already got is £30k the quote for Notachance Backup is £90k…I’m gonna love imparting this information…though not until Tuesday since that is the deadline….I don’t know if I can sit on this for that long……
It’ll soon be the weekend…..with only Monday morning to look forward too…..grrrrr…
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Adventure 45:12th December 2005
AD45 HOUSE OF THE DEAD SPECIAL
“One glove has to better than none….” Lo all, welcome to the house of the dead. Mandy is really not well and Ryan having gone down with much the same thing, can only mean that it’s a matter of time before I get it…in the mean time, I have the duties to attend to or the endless washing up as it’s better known….
Monday 12th December 2005
08:00: Just about got up, Mandy is at death’s door (still) and Ryan is coughing and spluttering everywhere…
Jack is sat at his computer, having probably been up since it got light, though I’ve no evidence to support this….I go down and make his breakfast, like a fool I make Mandy her statutory cup of tea (that she’ll never drink), sleep wasn’t a big thing on her list of things to do last night so she’s making up for it now, bless her…
08:30: Just dropped Jack off at school and realised, lucky me that I have another enforced day off today, since the guy who from 2nd line who wasn’t coming in anymore has relented and agreed to work until the 23rd (that’ll be all the books they threw at him).
10:00: The day is a bit of a nothing day, Mandy is drifting in and out of consciousness, Ryan is flitting between watching telly downstairs and lying in his bed at death’s door…welcome to the house of the dead… Me, I’m on my third bowl of washing up…I still don’t know who’s using all the bowls, glasses and cups but If I ever finish cleaning them and putting them away, I intend on mounting a full public enquiry…weapons of mass destruction ha!, try the great washing up mystery for size…
11:00: Doing some stuff on the computer, trying to sort my play lists for the new years eve party, hoping that we’ll have enough people to do it.
12:30: Well I figure I may as well make some lunch..it’s only me that’s going to eat it though I force Mandy to agree to eating two boiled eggs, having been lectured on the benefits of eggs by her dad, spitfire dave…
13:30: Lunch over, guess what …yup washing up….
13:40: Alan the cat is meowing at the door so I figure what the hell and let him in. He brings a certain cheeryness to the atmosphere, even if it is just because he wants feeding.. I open him a tin of special gourmet cat food and he goes mental….clawing the mat and chirping, completely ignoring Cedric and Cyril our two gay squirrels who are scavenging the fast becoming bare, trees out the back of our garden.
14:30: Another hour gone and only 30 minutes until I have to go and get jack from school, where does the day go ? Time for coffee and a cough interrupted chat with Mandy, she really shouldn’t try and talk if she can’t but I suppose you do…
15:30: We’re back, Jack is currently rehearsing his part in his schools extravaganza, he’s a window washer, which means he needs an apron. Now you’d have thought amongst four sisters and two nan’s that one of them would have an apron he could wear, but no, well my Mum said she had one, but it had writing on it, which apparently is a no go..so we’re dependant on Lynne, one of our friends. Apparently she’s discovered an old apron at the back of her cupboard, which she’s now washing in readiness to give to Jack tomorrow.
16:30: I suddenly remember that dinner is going to be down to me again tonight, so I’d better get on with it…I think just to be different I’ll do garlic & rosemary sausages, with oven baked garlic mash and the normal vegetables, along with my world (well house) famous onion gravy (home made).
17:30: In hope more than common sense I set four places for dinner…Mandy and Ryan manage half a sausage and a potato between them, Jack show’s me a clean plate and I do my best…then the washing up…(groan).
Tuesday 13th December 2005
09:00: Just made it in, Jack has his first performance at school today and one this evening, fortunately Lynne and Colin are going so they’re picking him up to take him.
I have my one to one or two to one to give it’s correct title, I’m not hopeful of a good outcome since Nunob is chairing it. It’s basically a review of the objectives I haven’t been set and a general performance review…oooh I can’t wait…
10:00: The hiccups are complete joke today (well it is the 13th), the daily duplicates basically got locked waiting for the server to become alive again and I couldn’t even vpn in last night to check them, that’s how sick it was. Brenty had restarted it at about 8am but there wasn’t much hope for the one’s that hadn’t been done. That being the case I restarted them anyway since I’m determined to have a backup of all the servers every day..Nunob has been going through my 3 month old proposal for a storage and backup system upgrade, and asked if we can take out the second tape drive. Well we can but it’s not preferable, me thinks there’s a squeeze on money, so he’s trying to make it as cheap as he possibly can. What he doesn’t quite seem to grasp is that not only is the proposal 3 months old, not only are we running out of space on the users U: drives, but also that we’ll be looking at expanding this again in another 3 months, since the option he’s already chosen is the cheapest and therefore involves the least amount of upgrades, so reduce it still further ? Of course we can..I feel there may be more battles to be fought on this over the next few months.
11:30: My one to one to one, is In full swing…so far I’m fairly gobsmacked since the comments and diatribe from Nunob is all good…having a go back may have hit the right notes or maybe he’s just caught up in the good will season, somehow I think not…
12:20: All just about done… I had the usual perception chat…about how some people in and around the department have a bad perception of me…it’s funny since no one I’ve seen has ever had a bad thing to say about me, I wonder who these “people” are, however I’m guessing this is going to be this weeks theme….
12:30: Lunch – Mandy announces that her Mum and Dad have been in and so shocked were they about how she looked, her dad has insisted that she goes back to the doctors. So she has an appointment at 2:15pm
13:30: Back from lunch..hiccups are still running ( and probably will do all day)
14:30: “Cre8, how is the file server”, ask Nunob, “erm it’s ok I think, we’re a bit short on space on one of the drives” I suspiciously reply, “Can we expand the drive ?” he asks, “well we can Nunob, but it won’t be quick, I mean it’ll be a few hours until we can”, I reply, “ok can we do that then…”, “ok but it’ll be the last one we can do before we’re officially out of space”…he wanders off…an email I think is in need of here…Since I was told that if I have frustrations I should vent them and nag him and Mary, (which I thought I did already), so I simply make the point that I’ve been waiting for the storage upgrade for 3 months and could something be done about it soon ? I’m not hopeful.
15:30: ½ an hour before I can go, I have to pick up Jack from Lynne’s, well that’s what I told them, simply the whole family needs supervising so they don’t die…
15:45: I make a lucky escape, Nunob wants to go to the Co Lo to install a server, given the present situation, Mary has come to my rescue, I would have to have declined anyway but at least I didn’t have say no. Unluckily for Brenty, he’s drawn the short straw…
16:00: Home time now..dinner and the washing up await me…..;-)
Wednesday 14th December 2005
GLOVEGATE
08:30: Just trying to chivvy Jack up so we can leave for school. He’s wittering on about something to do with his gloves…apparently he can only find one. When I say find, what I mean is he’s looked for one glove in his coat pocket and found just that…”so where did you have the glove last ?” I ask, “it was in my coat pocket”, he stresses, so I do the typical parent thing and reply with, “well if that’s where it was, that’ll be where it is now”, parents do come out with some daft stuff don’t they…he’s stressing me out big time now, it’s….
08:35: He has to be at school like now and we’re looking under coats and going through cupboards looking for this damn glove…in the end I just say “you’ll have to just go without it today, we can look tonight” Now with 20:20 hindsight, saying this to a child who is so obsessed by wearing his gloves, he even wears them during the summer, even I can see that this was not the right thing to say, still time is getting on…
08:40: In a big strop now…Jack is doing his I’m looking out of the side window and not going to talk to you the whole 3 minutes to school..he’s already thrown down the one glove he did have across the hallway, so now he’s completely gloveless…still he has his show and his class Christmas party to look forward too, so he’s got his change of clothes to take too…By way of a compromise, I tell him I’ll go and look at home for his glove and run it up to school for him, he’s not looking that impressed, since obviously I hadn’t opened a vein and bled to death on the floor…ahhh kids eh ?
LARGE GAP ………….CANT REMEMBER WHY………………….
Monday 19th December 2005
08:30: Well now the kids are off there’s no excuses for getting into work late…so I struggle in at about half eight….I was toying with the idea of taking the rest of the week off due to my resurgent cold but seeing as tomorrow is FRRRREEEEE Christmas Lunch (Cre8’s rule number 357: Never Miss a free lunch), I figure I should really come in. Nunob is in, in his ever so over the top Portuguese jolly way as is QRob and Brenty…
09:30: We’re on such a wind down that there really isn’t much to report today…just sorting the hiccups out when I get the call, that the “network” is really slow…checking with the guys and it would appear that it isn’t the network at all, but the file server collapsing in a big heap…it’s all a bit odd, since we can ping it etc, but I can’t remote connect to it and when I go and look in the CD3 room I can’t even log on to it directly…a swift attack of Powerus Interuptus quickly ensues and things come back to normal….
10:30: The call comes again…”the file server is sinking”…odd this but I can’t check any logs or anything until it’s rebooted again….Checked all the logs and nothing is leaping out at me …I check the SVM’s log and ah hah !...it’s telling me that the file server went of the air…hmmm..I kinda knew that already….
Just walking out of the CD, I detect a flashing red light on the storage array…so I open the cabinet and yup sure enough one of the disks has given up and the array is busy rebuilding itself in the background…I remove the drive and slide it back in and the light goes green so I figure all will be well….
11:30: I’m on tenter hooks now..over it goes the file server is turning in to this years joke….but I think I know why now…the disk array is rebuilding and it’s just not coping with the snapshots we’re asking it to do…so I suspend them until the array has completed rebuilding which could be sometime tomorrow…
12:30: The time has passed…and the file server is still up and functioning ok…I breathe a sigh of relief..now I just have to wait for the rebuild to complete….Lunch….
13:30: Back from lunch…nothing happening……
Tuesday 20th December 2005
08:30: In with a spring in my step…”free lunch” day today…Brenty and I are wearing our suits today…one day in the year can’t hurt now can it…he keeps mentioning that he might not be in for the rest of the week since he’s got Barry’s / Rob’s / My cold and is sinking fast…I guess he’ll make it to lunch though ;-))….
13:00: Christmas Lunch, at BackBreakers..very nice too…the look on the guys face when someone said “table for 50” was just a picture…you could almost see the pound signs glistening in his eyes…
13:30: Basra has made it to lunch too, despite him having this week off..you see people will do anything for a free lunch absolutely anything….
16:30: Got back to work…it’s a struggle finding things to do in half an hour and my heart really isn’t in it…still on the bright side Nunob is off to Portugal for the duration so, we can all relax a little….
Wednesday 21st December 2005:
08:45: Phew made it in…not only did I oversleep the alarm…but I also had an incident with my contact lenses…having put one in and thinking that it was a little painful to say the least, I slid the other one in and walked out to the kitchen blinking…something wasn’t right…I discover by putting a hand over one eye and then the other that I’m actually blind in my right eye…This will be due to the fact that the contact lens I’d put in had, instead of sticking to my eyeball actually stuck itself to my top eyelid and was nestling quite nicely under it…so the only time that I could actually see with any clarity through it was when my eyes were shut !!! I managed to drag it down via my tear duct (which was now working overtime), wash it and put it back in again…
09:00: hiccups are behaving themselves for once and the hiccup of the servers in Porsthumouth, all now seem to be behaving themselves which is something of a miracle, since once of them is trying to back up 160GB to a 150GB tape…not the smartest of moves that…I’ve excluded a 20GB directory from this backup so it at least works and the others are now regularly getting their tapes inserted….all going far too well I think you’ll agree…..
Thursday 22nd December 2005:
09:00: T minus 2 days and counting…until the “festivities” begin…I can’t wait, no I really can’t ….time off work…thank god for that…my only hope is that the telly is worth watching…and there are no more reruns of Only fools and bloody horses…(“you plonker Rodney…” aaaaggghh)…
I’m really struggling to find things to do today and to make matteres worse I couldn’t gel my hair since Mandy has decided that I need a hair cut before Christmas otherwise I’ll die !
Froday 23rd December 2005:
09:00: Well I’m here…typing this…everything is ticking along…
10:00: Quiet Rob is flitting in and out of CD2 muttering to himself..he then says “have you got a minute ?”…he takes me along to CD2 where he’s got the finance Director’s laptop (home version)….It turns out that they’ve been trying to copy his “data” from the server to the laptop and not having much success in doing so…”what is the data ?” I innocently ask…”you don’t want to know” comes Rob’s eversoslightly annoyed reply…the reason for this is because the “data” to be copied is the FD’s mp3 music collection….god I love this place….at least I’m not being involved in wasting my time !!!! I suggest we leave a note on the laptop saying “next time take it to bloody pc world” but it’s thought this might have a negative effect on my bonus…so we don’t….
11:30: Got a message through saying that basically everything is being locked up from about 2pm, so I’m wondering if we’re all going to be bugggering off around that time…tricky since, if I take lunch normally at 12:30 I’ll be back at 1:30, so if I took lunch at 1pm I wouldn’t need to come back…I’ll broach the subject with someone in the know in a minute….
12:00: Well, apparently it’s down to the most senior person in the building…and that’s the FD hmmmm…..god I’m evil….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Just got back, and I’m told that they’d try to phone me since we’re now all allowed to go home…you could go off people, you really could…
13:45: Pack up all my troubles in my Lap-Top bag, and make my way for the exit…
14:00: The frivolity has officially commenced…Mandy is busy doing something..that involves coughing…she’s still got this cough and is regularly bent double so as not to pull any more muscles in her stomach….
22:30: Mandy has gone to bed since she’s completely knackered, so this gives me an opportunity to wrap her presents…I’ve even managed this year to wrap them so they look like presents…all normal rectangular shapes rather than the TV aerial shapes she normally gets….I have to leave it this late as otherwise she’ll spend the whole time trying to guess what I’ve bought her…
Saturday 24th December 2005:
09:00: Ok ok, that’s a lie….
10:30: Up with a spring in my throat…and on full autopilot, radar at the ready as I bounce down the stairs off one banister then the other…Somehow I’ve made it in to the kitchen and even managed to make a cup of tea…Alan is peering up at me from the kitchen door, he loves us soooo much…right up until we feed him and then he couldn’t care less about us…Cats can be soooo fickle.
10:40: The kids are watching ‘That’s So Rubbish’ or some American kids sitcom that’s been repeated about 100 times already…but they don’t seem to mind… The house is surprisingly quiet for Christmas eve…no people screaming around getting far too excited and throwing up before lunch because they’ve already eaten too much chocolate, and that’s just me !!!
25th December 2005: Christmas Day
08:30: The kids are up, Mandy’s up and I’m fully intending on staying in bed for at least another hour…FAT CHANCE !!...I’m persuaded by carefully placed clenched fist to depart my slumber zone and make my way downstairs…video camera in hand…I figure that I should put my glasses on since putting contact lenses in at this time of the morning is likely to be a complete disaster and I’ll lose one and it’ll spend the morning being stuck to my ear…So I put on my glasses only to discover that I can’t see…I’m going blind…I take them off and I can…bugger…the sudden realisation that the reason my eyes feel like they’re on fire is because I’ve slept in my contact lenses !!!!... I quickly whip them out, wahay !!...and put on my glasses…I’ll catch up with you all again in the New Year……
“One glove has to better than none….” Lo all, welcome to the house of the dead. Mandy is really not well and Ryan having gone down with much the same thing, can only mean that it’s a matter of time before I get it…in the mean time, I have the duties to attend to or the endless washing up as it’s better known….
Monday 12th December 2005
08:00: Just about got up, Mandy is at death’s door (still) and Ryan is coughing and spluttering everywhere…
Jack is sat at his computer, having probably been up since it got light, though I’ve no evidence to support this….I go down and make his breakfast, like a fool I make Mandy her statutory cup of tea (that she’ll never drink), sleep wasn’t a big thing on her list of things to do last night so she’s making up for it now, bless her…
08:30: Just dropped Jack off at school and realised, lucky me that I have another enforced day off today, since the guy who from 2nd line who wasn’t coming in anymore has relented and agreed to work until the 23rd (that’ll be all the books they threw at him).
10:00: The day is a bit of a nothing day, Mandy is drifting in and out of consciousness, Ryan is flitting between watching telly downstairs and lying in his bed at death’s door…welcome to the house of the dead… Me, I’m on my third bowl of washing up…I still don’t know who’s using all the bowls, glasses and cups but If I ever finish cleaning them and putting them away, I intend on mounting a full public enquiry…weapons of mass destruction ha!, try the great washing up mystery for size…
11:00: Doing some stuff on the computer, trying to sort my play lists for the new years eve party, hoping that we’ll have enough people to do it.
12:30: Well I figure I may as well make some lunch..it’s only me that’s going to eat it though I force Mandy to agree to eating two boiled eggs, having been lectured on the benefits of eggs by her dad, spitfire dave…
13:30: Lunch over, guess what …yup washing up….
13:40: Alan the cat is meowing at the door so I figure what the hell and let him in. He brings a certain cheeryness to the atmosphere, even if it is just because he wants feeding.. I open him a tin of special gourmet cat food and he goes mental….clawing the mat and chirping, completely ignoring Cedric and Cyril our two gay squirrels who are scavenging the fast becoming bare, trees out the back of our garden.
14:30: Another hour gone and only 30 minutes until I have to go and get jack from school, where does the day go ? Time for coffee and a cough interrupted chat with Mandy, she really shouldn’t try and talk if she can’t but I suppose you do…
15:30: We’re back, Jack is currently rehearsing his part in his schools extravaganza, he’s a window washer, which means he needs an apron. Now you’d have thought amongst four sisters and two nan’s that one of them would have an apron he could wear, but no, well my Mum said she had one, but it had writing on it, which apparently is a no go..so we’re dependant on Lynne, one of our friends. Apparently she’s discovered an old apron at the back of her cupboard, which she’s now washing in readiness to give to Jack tomorrow.
16:30: I suddenly remember that dinner is going to be down to me again tonight, so I’d better get on with it…I think just to be different I’ll do garlic & rosemary sausages, with oven baked garlic mash and the normal vegetables, along with my world (well house) famous onion gravy (home made).
17:30: In hope more than common sense I set four places for dinner…Mandy and Ryan manage half a sausage and a potato between them, Jack show’s me a clean plate and I do my best…then the washing up…(groan).
Tuesday 13th December 2005
09:00: Just made it in, Jack has his first performance at school today and one this evening, fortunately Lynne and Colin are going so they’re picking him up to take him.
I have my one to one or two to one to give it’s correct title, I’m not hopeful of a good outcome since Nunob is chairing it. It’s basically a review of the objectives I haven’t been set and a general performance review…oooh I can’t wait…
10:00: The hiccups are complete joke today (well it is the 13th), the daily duplicates basically got locked waiting for the server to become alive again and I couldn’t even vpn in last night to check them, that’s how sick it was. Brenty had restarted it at about 8am but there wasn’t much hope for the one’s that hadn’t been done. That being the case I restarted them anyway since I’m determined to have a backup of all the servers every day..Nunob has been going through my 3 month old proposal for a storage and backup system upgrade, and asked if we can take out the second tape drive. Well we can but it’s not preferable, me thinks there’s a squeeze on money, so he’s trying to make it as cheap as he possibly can. What he doesn’t quite seem to grasp is that not only is the proposal 3 months old, not only are we running out of space on the users U: drives, but also that we’ll be looking at expanding this again in another 3 months, since the option he’s already chosen is the cheapest and therefore involves the least amount of upgrades, so reduce it still further ? Of course we can..I feel there may be more battles to be fought on this over the next few months.
11:30: My one to one to one, is In full swing…so far I’m fairly gobsmacked since the comments and diatribe from Nunob is all good…having a go back may have hit the right notes or maybe he’s just caught up in the good will season, somehow I think not…
12:20: All just about done… I had the usual perception chat…about how some people in and around the department have a bad perception of me…it’s funny since no one I’ve seen has ever had a bad thing to say about me, I wonder who these “people” are, however I’m guessing this is going to be this weeks theme….
12:30: Lunch – Mandy announces that her Mum and Dad have been in and so shocked were they about how she looked, her dad has insisted that she goes back to the doctors. So she has an appointment at 2:15pm
13:30: Back from lunch..hiccups are still running ( and probably will do all day)
14:30: “Cre8, how is the file server”, ask Nunob, “erm it’s ok I think, we’re a bit short on space on one of the drives” I suspiciously reply, “Can we expand the drive ?” he asks, “well we can Nunob, but it won’t be quick, I mean it’ll be a few hours until we can”, I reply, “ok can we do that then…”, “ok but it’ll be the last one we can do before we’re officially out of space”…he wanders off…an email I think is in need of here…Since I was told that if I have frustrations I should vent them and nag him and Mary, (which I thought I did already), so I simply make the point that I’ve been waiting for the storage upgrade for 3 months and could something be done about it soon ? I’m not hopeful.
15:30: ½ an hour before I can go, I have to pick up Jack from Lynne’s, well that’s what I told them, simply the whole family needs supervising so they don’t die…
15:45: I make a lucky escape, Nunob wants to go to the Co Lo to install a server, given the present situation, Mary has come to my rescue, I would have to have declined anyway but at least I didn’t have say no. Unluckily for Brenty, he’s drawn the short straw…
16:00: Home time now..dinner and the washing up await me…..;-)
Wednesday 14th December 2005
GLOVEGATE
08:30: Just trying to chivvy Jack up so we can leave for school. He’s wittering on about something to do with his gloves…apparently he can only find one. When I say find, what I mean is he’s looked for one glove in his coat pocket and found just that…”so where did you have the glove last ?” I ask, “it was in my coat pocket”, he stresses, so I do the typical parent thing and reply with, “well if that’s where it was, that’ll be where it is now”, parents do come out with some daft stuff don’t they…he’s stressing me out big time now, it’s….
08:35: He has to be at school like now and we’re looking under coats and going through cupboards looking for this damn glove…in the end I just say “you’ll have to just go without it today, we can look tonight” Now with 20:20 hindsight, saying this to a child who is so obsessed by wearing his gloves, he even wears them during the summer, even I can see that this was not the right thing to say, still time is getting on…
08:40: In a big strop now…Jack is doing his I’m looking out of the side window and not going to talk to you the whole 3 minutes to school..he’s already thrown down the one glove he did have across the hallway, so now he’s completely gloveless…still he has his show and his class Christmas party to look forward too, so he’s got his change of clothes to take too…By way of a compromise, I tell him I’ll go and look at home for his glove and run it up to school for him, he’s not looking that impressed, since obviously I hadn’t opened a vein and bled to death on the floor…ahhh kids eh ?
LARGE GAP ………….CANT REMEMBER WHY………………….
Monday 19th December 2005
08:30: Well now the kids are off there’s no excuses for getting into work late…so I struggle in at about half eight….I was toying with the idea of taking the rest of the week off due to my resurgent cold but seeing as tomorrow is FRRRREEEEE Christmas Lunch (Cre8’s rule number 357: Never Miss a free lunch), I figure I should really come in. Nunob is in, in his ever so over the top Portuguese jolly way as is QRob and Brenty…
09:30: We’re on such a wind down that there really isn’t much to report today…just sorting the hiccups out when I get the call, that the “network” is really slow…checking with the guys and it would appear that it isn’t the network at all, but the file server collapsing in a big heap…it’s all a bit odd, since we can ping it etc, but I can’t remote connect to it and when I go and look in the CD3 room I can’t even log on to it directly…a swift attack of Powerus Interuptus quickly ensues and things come back to normal….
10:30: The call comes again…”the file server is sinking”…odd this but I can’t check any logs or anything until it’s rebooted again….Checked all the logs and nothing is leaping out at me …I check the SVM’s log and ah hah !...it’s telling me that the file server went of the air…hmmm..I kinda knew that already….
Just walking out of the CD, I detect a flashing red light on the storage array…so I open the cabinet and yup sure enough one of the disks has given up and the array is busy rebuilding itself in the background…I remove the drive and slide it back in and the light goes green so I figure all will be well….
11:30: I’m on tenter hooks now..over it goes the file server is turning in to this years joke….but I think I know why now…the disk array is rebuilding and it’s just not coping with the snapshots we’re asking it to do…so I suspend them until the array has completed rebuilding which could be sometime tomorrow…
12:30: The time has passed…and the file server is still up and functioning ok…I breathe a sigh of relief..now I just have to wait for the rebuild to complete….Lunch….
13:30: Back from lunch…nothing happening……
Tuesday 20th December 2005
08:30: In with a spring in my step…”free lunch” day today…Brenty and I are wearing our suits today…one day in the year can’t hurt now can it…he keeps mentioning that he might not be in for the rest of the week since he’s got Barry’s / Rob’s / My cold and is sinking fast…I guess he’ll make it to lunch though ;-))….
13:00: Christmas Lunch, at BackBreakers..very nice too…the look on the guys face when someone said “table for 50” was just a picture…you could almost see the pound signs glistening in his eyes…
13:30: Basra has made it to lunch too, despite him having this week off..you see people will do anything for a free lunch absolutely anything….
16:30: Got back to work…it’s a struggle finding things to do in half an hour and my heart really isn’t in it…still on the bright side Nunob is off to Portugal for the duration so, we can all relax a little….
Wednesday 21st December 2005:
08:45: Phew made it in…not only did I oversleep the alarm…but I also had an incident with my contact lenses…having put one in and thinking that it was a little painful to say the least, I slid the other one in and walked out to the kitchen blinking…something wasn’t right…I discover by putting a hand over one eye and then the other that I’m actually blind in my right eye…This will be due to the fact that the contact lens I’d put in had, instead of sticking to my eyeball actually stuck itself to my top eyelid and was nestling quite nicely under it…so the only time that I could actually see with any clarity through it was when my eyes were shut !!! I managed to drag it down via my tear duct (which was now working overtime), wash it and put it back in again…
09:00: hiccups are behaving themselves for once and the hiccup of the servers in Porsthumouth, all now seem to be behaving themselves which is something of a miracle, since once of them is trying to back up 160GB to a 150GB tape…not the smartest of moves that…I’ve excluded a 20GB directory from this backup so it at least works and the others are now regularly getting their tapes inserted….all going far too well I think you’ll agree…..
Thursday 22nd December 2005:
09:00: T minus 2 days and counting…until the “festivities” begin…I can’t wait, no I really can’t ….time off work…thank god for that…my only hope is that the telly is worth watching…and there are no more reruns of Only fools and bloody horses…(“you plonker Rodney…” aaaaggghh)…
I’m really struggling to find things to do today and to make matteres worse I couldn’t gel my hair since Mandy has decided that I need a hair cut before Christmas otherwise I’ll die !
Froday 23rd December 2005:
09:00: Well I’m here…typing this…everything is ticking along…
10:00: Quiet Rob is flitting in and out of CD2 muttering to himself..he then says “have you got a minute ?”…he takes me along to CD2 where he’s got the finance Director’s laptop (home version)….It turns out that they’ve been trying to copy his “data” from the server to the laptop and not having much success in doing so…”what is the data ?” I innocently ask…”you don’t want to know” comes Rob’s eversoslightly annoyed reply…the reason for this is because the “data” to be copied is the FD’s mp3 music collection….god I love this place….at least I’m not being involved in wasting my time !!!! I suggest we leave a note on the laptop saying “next time take it to bloody pc world” but it’s thought this might have a negative effect on my bonus…so we don’t….
11:30: Got a message through saying that basically everything is being locked up from about 2pm, so I’m wondering if we’re all going to be bugggering off around that time…tricky since, if I take lunch normally at 12:30 I’ll be back at 1:30, so if I took lunch at 1pm I wouldn’t need to come back…I’ll broach the subject with someone in the know in a minute….
12:00: Well, apparently it’s down to the most senior person in the building…and that’s the FD hmmmm…..god I’m evil….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Just got back, and I’m told that they’d try to phone me since we’re now all allowed to go home…you could go off people, you really could…
13:45: Pack up all my troubles in my Lap-Top bag, and make my way for the exit…
14:00: The frivolity has officially commenced…Mandy is busy doing something..that involves coughing…she’s still got this cough and is regularly bent double so as not to pull any more muscles in her stomach….
22:30: Mandy has gone to bed since she’s completely knackered, so this gives me an opportunity to wrap her presents…I’ve even managed this year to wrap them so they look like presents…all normal rectangular shapes rather than the TV aerial shapes she normally gets….I have to leave it this late as otherwise she’ll spend the whole time trying to guess what I’ve bought her…
Saturday 24th December 2005:
09:00: Ok ok, that’s a lie….
10:30: Up with a spring in my throat…and on full autopilot, radar at the ready as I bounce down the stairs off one banister then the other…Somehow I’ve made it in to the kitchen and even managed to make a cup of tea…Alan is peering up at me from the kitchen door, he loves us soooo much…right up until we feed him and then he couldn’t care less about us…Cats can be soooo fickle.
10:40: The kids are watching ‘That’s So Rubbish’ or some American kids sitcom that’s been repeated about 100 times already…but they don’t seem to mind… The house is surprisingly quiet for Christmas eve…no people screaming around getting far too excited and throwing up before lunch because they’ve already eaten too much chocolate, and that’s just me !!!
25th December 2005: Christmas Day
08:30: The kids are up, Mandy’s up and I’m fully intending on staying in bed for at least another hour…FAT CHANCE !!...I’m persuaded by carefully placed clenched fist to depart my slumber zone and make my way downstairs…video camera in hand…I figure that I should put my glasses on since putting contact lenses in at this time of the morning is likely to be a complete disaster and I’ll lose one and it’ll spend the morning being stuck to my ear…So I put on my glasses only to discover that I can’t see…I’m going blind…I take them off and I can…bugger…the sudden realisation that the reason my eyes feel like they’re on fire is because I’ve slept in my contact lenses !!!!... I quickly whip them out, wahay !!...and put on my glasses…I’ll catch up with you all again in the New Year……
