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……
# posted by cre8 @ 7:53 AM 
