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..............
# posted by cre8 @ 1:43 AM 
