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……
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Adventure 44: 5th December 2005
AD44
5th December 2005
“like a scene from the exorcist….” Right well it’s Monday again that can mean only one thing…depression central t’business…
Monday 5th December 2005
09:00: Not much to report, since there’s no one in, Mandy is complaining she’s coming down with my cold, well, it’s good to share…I’ve got tomorrow off thank god, however that’s tinged with the undoubted certainty that my wallet will be attacked from the various angles that Mandy can get to it by….as such there’s not really anything else to report…
Tuesday 6th December 2005
06:bloody:00am ! Yup it’s Tuesday and that means Basketball…oh great…So I’ve managed to get up and get Ryan up and he looks like I’m feeling. I make his breakfast and go back to bed…
07:00: Up with a start…I hear the tones of Ryans friends mum’s People carrier, she’s early…Ryan is rushing about like a mad thing…”She’s early” I grunt at him, “yeah I know” comes his reply…”Has Mark knocked on the door yet ?” I ask him, “yes a few times” comes his inspired response….”and you haven’t answered the door ?”, “no not yet”…luckily they’re used to this response from Ryan and he’s quickly out the door and away…ahhh 30 minutes and I have to get Jack up….
08:00: Damn it! Must reset the alarm next time…I drag Jack kicking and screaming out of bed and downstairs (thump thump thump), I force feed him some cookie crisps, because he’s really not awake and make sure he get’s dressed…I take Mandy a cup of tea up…
08:30: Mandy has the dreaded lurgy…namely Flu…she’s in bed and so I’m having to take Jack to school….so much for the “on leave” lie-in…
09:00: The one good thing to come out of Mandy being too ill to get out of bed is that my wallet is safe (for now)….
10:00: I figure I should do the washing up which now consists of every cup and bowl that we possess, I swear we have people coming in over night making themselves sandwiches etc…
10:30: Alan (the cat) is sat by the door and since there doesn’t seem to be much of a hope of him giving up I give in and feed him…Not an easy trick since Alan likes to try and trip you up…He seems to now have taken up residence in the garage since every time I go in there now for something other than to feed him, he has a look on his face like “what the hell are you doing here ??”….
12:00: It’s no good…I submit to making some lunch…Mandy doesn’t want anything, so I make my tuna sandwich, packet of crisps and chocolate bar and a cup of tea and coffee and go and eat it in front of her (god I’m kind aren’t I ?)
14:00: One hour until I have to get Jack…the time just vanishes…I go in to the kitchen to discover that our invisible friends have been back, since all the cups and bowls and cutlery that I washed up this morning are back on the kitchen side again requiring my washing up skills….
15:00: Up at the school waiting for Jack. David Cameron has just been voted in as Tory leader, and with that news ringing in my ears I make my way down to the school to wait for Jack. The other mums (in the main) and the odd dad are busy pacing up and down, their 4x4’s and people carriers extending their way up the hill by the school like a steel and glass python, predominantly grey with the odd flash of green and red…Jack hands me his lunchbox and book bag…and we’re off up the hill…back to the car which is now completely boxed in.
15:30: Just about to turn in to our road when Jack spot’s Ryan getting off the bus. He’s obviously spotted us because now it’s…..A RACE…I turn in to our drive, Ryan is running across the road, I pull up to our drive, Ryan is just approaching the front garden…I stop the car, Jack leaps out and touches the door first…we all end up laughing on the door step..(strange our family)…I explain to the kids that Mum isn’t well and could they keep the noise down accordingly, so of course that means that Ryan can go up to his room and turn on his music, which then requires Jack to go and shout at him from his room to turn it down “BECAUSE MUM’S NOT WELL”…well done that man…
Nothing much else to report…it was a day I had to take to use up my leave so I wasn’t overly bothered….but it’s a shame Mandy wasn’t feeling so great…
Wednesday 7th December 2005
09:00: I’d emailed Mary Tyrant last night to explain that I needed to take both Jack and Ryan to school and so I was going to be in a bit late…I’d also asked that if it was possible “could I work from home ?” but I got a cryptic reponse that due to the fact there was a “staffing crisis” this wouldn’t be possible…odd…very odd…So I emailed In and said could I just come in a little later and leave a little earlier…I got a “that’s fine” response…having been fairly frantic for the last hour or so, it was good to get to work, for a bit of a rest. Basra, Quiet Rob and Brenty are all in, some staffing crisis…as is Nunob (worst luck) and Mary…11:30: Mary comes over to me and asks me to step in to the office recently vacated by a very cheery Bill Zunpronoucable. I’m guessing he’s going home for the Christmas break….and he was “happy holiday”-ing everyone on his way out, which I guess is the give away.
11:45: I’m in the office now…I’m fairly sure I haven’t done anything wrong…Mary comes in and explains that one of the 2nd line guys who used to commute from Posthumouth to Overdone, has handed in his notice. Further “tha blaggard” has announced that he isn’t going to work until the 23rd of December as they’d hoped but in fact wouldn’t be coming back on Monday.
Well hold the back page, I’m stunned (ok I’m not). So in a fit of peak and retribution, they’ve moved him from Overdone to Backofbeyond and put him in CD2 to do some really meaningless work..and the legal department are and I quote “going to throw the book at him”. I fully expect that that’s all they’ll do in fact since throwing some large heavy books at the guy is going to be a lot cheaper than taking him to court for breach of con-trick. Still at least putting him CD2 with meaningless jobs to do, is holding up the true professional behaviour you’d expect of a company as big as Dbd. At least we’re not sinking to childish behaviour to make a point…..
12:20: The day so far is going ok…the hiccups have been fine so far.
12:30: Lunch…and the land of the dead…There’s something quite odd about eating your lunch in bed…
13:30: Back now…As are the boys…
14:30: “So cre8, have you got the raffle ticket ?”, brenty asks, “err what raffle ticket is that then ?”, he seems quite concerned, “the one for Christmas Dinner” he explains somewhat curtly, “no, I gave them back” I reply, “Why did you do that ?” he asks again….”well I had the wrong Christmas dinner, you were on leave, Rob was off that day, Basra, was going to be somewhere else and Corvette didn’t want to go, so I figured, my holding on to the tickets and the prospect of me going and sitting there on my own like a prick at a wedding was all a bit pointless…” I’m getting my own back now, he just sighs and makes for the exit, so he can go and get his free school dinner ticket…Rob who’s had his leave cancelled for that day is following him as is now Basra and Corvette…must have been something I said….
15:00: My mobile is ringing…another bloody agency no doubt, but no, just goes to show how wrong you can be doesn’t it. It’s QRob, he want’s to know if I want to now come with them to Christmas dinner in the canteen on the 14th, them all having thrown a wobbly at my giving back the tickets, since none of them were showing any signs of wanting to go…it’s amazing what a free lunch will do to people…Now I’m good enough, now I’m invited, but when I mention it before, I’m not…Since my experience of the canteen food isn’t the greatest (took me back 20 years to school) I decline and suffer the abuse that that declination then ensues, well what do they expect huh ? Treat me like a bloody after-thought…I’ll teach ‘em ;-)…or prapps I won’t…I am going to the proper one on the 20th that’s at a proper restaurant, where they’re able to cook (I hope), without using gallons of chip fat..even better I don’t have to pay for the privilege, so that has to be a good thing.
16:00: Off to collect POD now from Spitfire Dave’s…I can’t inflict him on them for too long….
Thursday 8th December 2005
09:00: Made it in having dropped the sprogs off at school.
Mandy still isn’t out of bed and she’s only just conscious….
10:00: Not much to report today, the hiccups are in a bit of a mess, but that’s to be accepted, every now and then…
15:00 Looking on the bright side (as you have to), Nunob is packing his stuff away, he’s going home (Portugal) now and won’t be back until Monday..you have to thank heaven for small mercies now don’t you…
Friday 9th December 2005
09:00: Once again, dropped the kids off…I’m getting almost average at this now…It’s absolutely dead….no one is in the tumble weeds are well err tumbling down the corridor and someone has neglected to turn on the lights…This will mean at some point someone will do their impression of a lighting engineer during a rock opera, and we’ll all collapse with epileptic fits, because rather than just turn on all the lights, they’ll decide to just try and find their one’s meaning that every light in the office will be switch off and back on rapidly for at least five minutes….
10:30: The disco without music has started…it’s getting harder and harder to see my screen..the hiccups appear to be in a right mess again (cuh!)…and my idea of using a DHCP server to allocate server IP addresses has been smacked down by that Portuguese git….time to put my eyes in, nothing else can go wrong today…
11:30: Just heading out the door, since I managed to drop one of my contact lenses…somewhere in the loo.. Trouble is I can see it, worst of all is the fact that I’d already got one of my lenses in no probs, so I then had to take that one out and try and get it back in it’s little pot…So I’m going home to get another one for my left eye..
12:00: Just made it back…eyes are back in and the world doesn’t seem such a dark place…To improve things further, Richman has phoned to say that my Flaky Drive has been repaired and sent back to them…He’s going to get Tossy to drive it back to me in about 5 mins….
12:25: Sure enough, Lin Console 2 has phoned (that’s what it comes up with on my phone when reception ring through), to say a box has been delivered for me…
12:30: Lunch + Flaky drive.
13:30: Back from the land of the dead…looking forward to plugging in my 300GB of storage….
14:30: Not much else happening, Brenty is in a silly mood which is fairly infectious…so we’re talking about movies and great stuff like that..well it passes the time…
15:30: Half an hour to go, (gotta pick up Jack again), the phone rings and it’s Mandy, to say that Ryan has been sent home from school…with the FLU !!! Oh triffic I can sense the claws of illness closing around on me…I’ll use POD as a shield, they’ll never infect us both…..
16:30: Been home about 10 minutes or so, so I figure I’ll plug in my Flaky drive and make sure it works…guess what..it doesn’t…really really not very happy about this…since the fault it went away with doesn’t seem to have been fixed…stroppy email is quickly writtend and sent….
16:45: Since I have my work Flaky at home I figure I’ll give that a try..only to discover that it also doesn’t seem to work..curiously with the same problem as the other one. I plug it in again, this time using it’s power supply and voila the problem goes away…So just to make sure I plug in my own Flaky to the work power supply and….the problem goes away. Therefore the problem isn’t the drive so much as the power supply, which I’d never sent them (their request not to send it)….damn…gotta write an apology email to Flaky now…bugger!...I simply explain the resolution to the problem, with a “please accept my apologies” then hit send…..
17:00: Normally you look forward to the weekend…but this one could be a hard one, with 50% of the family down..it’s looking like it could be hard work…. Still day off again on Monday…
5th December 2005
“like a scene from the exorcist….” Right well it’s Monday again that can mean only one thing…depression central t’business…
Monday 5th December 2005
09:00: Not much to report, since there’s no one in, Mandy is complaining she’s coming down with my cold, well, it’s good to share…I’ve got tomorrow off thank god, however that’s tinged with the undoubted certainty that my wallet will be attacked from the various angles that Mandy can get to it by….as such there’s not really anything else to report…
Tuesday 6th December 2005
06:bloody:00am ! Yup it’s Tuesday and that means Basketball…oh great…So I’ve managed to get up and get Ryan up and he looks like I’m feeling. I make his breakfast and go back to bed…
07:00: Up with a start…I hear the tones of Ryans friends mum’s People carrier, she’s early…Ryan is rushing about like a mad thing…”She’s early” I grunt at him, “yeah I know” comes his reply…”Has Mark knocked on the door yet ?” I ask him, “yes a few times” comes his inspired response….”and you haven’t answered the door ?”, “no not yet”…luckily they’re used to this response from Ryan and he’s quickly out the door and away…ahhh 30 minutes and I have to get Jack up….
08:00: Damn it! Must reset the alarm next time…I drag Jack kicking and screaming out of bed and downstairs (thump thump thump), I force feed him some cookie crisps, because he’s really not awake and make sure he get’s dressed…I take Mandy a cup of tea up…
08:30: Mandy has the dreaded lurgy…namely Flu…she’s in bed and so I’m having to take Jack to school….so much for the “on leave” lie-in…
09:00: The one good thing to come out of Mandy being too ill to get out of bed is that my wallet is safe (for now)….
10:00: I figure I should do the washing up which now consists of every cup and bowl that we possess, I swear we have people coming in over night making themselves sandwiches etc…
10:30: Alan (the cat) is sat by the door and since there doesn’t seem to be much of a hope of him giving up I give in and feed him…Not an easy trick since Alan likes to try and trip you up…He seems to now have taken up residence in the garage since every time I go in there now for something other than to feed him, he has a look on his face like “what the hell are you doing here ??”….
12:00: It’s no good…I submit to making some lunch…Mandy doesn’t want anything, so I make my tuna sandwich, packet of crisps and chocolate bar and a cup of tea and coffee and go and eat it in front of her (god I’m kind aren’t I ?)
14:00: One hour until I have to get Jack…the time just vanishes…I go in to the kitchen to discover that our invisible friends have been back, since all the cups and bowls and cutlery that I washed up this morning are back on the kitchen side again requiring my washing up skills….
15:00: Up at the school waiting for Jack. David Cameron has just been voted in as Tory leader, and with that news ringing in my ears I make my way down to the school to wait for Jack. The other mums (in the main) and the odd dad are busy pacing up and down, their 4x4’s and people carriers extending their way up the hill by the school like a steel and glass python, predominantly grey with the odd flash of green and red…Jack hands me his lunchbox and book bag…and we’re off up the hill…back to the car which is now completely boxed in.
15:30: Just about to turn in to our road when Jack spot’s Ryan getting off the bus. He’s obviously spotted us because now it’s…..A RACE…I turn in to our drive, Ryan is running across the road, I pull up to our drive, Ryan is just approaching the front garden…I stop the car, Jack leaps out and touches the door first…we all end up laughing on the door step..(strange our family)…I explain to the kids that Mum isn’t well and could they keep the noise down accordingly, so of course that means that Ryan can go up to his room and turn on his music, which then requires Jack to go and shout at him from his room to turn it down “BECAUSE MUM’S NOT WELL”…well done that man…
Nothing much else to report…it was a day I had to take to use up my leave so I wasn’t overly bothered….but it’s a shame Mandy wasn’t feeling so great…
Wednesday 7th December 2005
09:00: I’d emailed Mary Tyrant last night to explain that I needed to take both Jack and Ryan to school and so I was going to be in a bit late…I’d also asked that if it was possible “could I work from home ?” but I got a cryptic reponse that due to the fact there was a “staffing crisis” this wouldn’t be possible…odd…very odd…So I emailed In and said could I just come in a little later and leave a little earlier…I got a “that’s fine” response…having been fairly frantic for the last hour or so, it was good to get to work, for a bit of a rest. Basra, Quiet Rob and Brenty are all in, some staffing crisis…as is Nunob (worst luck) and Mary…11:30: Mary comes over to me and asks me to step in to the office recently vacated by a very cheery Bill Zunpronoucable. I’m guessing he’s going home for the Christmas break….and he was “happy holiday”-ing everyone on his way out, which I guess is the give away.
11:45: I’m in the office now…I’m fairly sure I haven’t done anything wrong…Mary comes in and explains that one of the 2nd line guys who used to commute from Posthumouth to Overdone, has handed in his notice. Further “tha blaggard” has announced that he isn’t going to work until the 23rd of December as they’d hoped but in fact wouldn’t be coming back on Monday.
Well hold the back page, I’m stunned (ok I’m not). So in a fit of peak and retribution, they’ve moved him from Overdone to Backofbeyond and put him in CD2 to do some really meaningless work..and the legal department are and I quote “going to throw the book at him”. I fully expect that that’s all they’ll do in fact since throwing some large heavy books at the guy is going to be a lot cheaper than taking him to court for breach of con-trick. Still at least putting him CD2 with meaningless jobs to do, is holding up the true professional behaviour you’d expect of a company as big as Dbd. At least we’re not sinking to childish behaviour to make a point…..
12:20: The day so far is going ok…the hiccups have been fine so far.
12:30: Lunch…and the land of the dead…There’s something quite odd about eating your lunch in bed…
13:30: Back now…As are the boys…
14:30: “So cre8, have you got the raffle ticket ?”, brenty asks, “err what raffle ticket is that then ?”, he seems quite concerned, “the one for Christmas Dinner” he explains somewhat curtly, “no, I gave them back” I reply, “Why did you do that ?” he asks again….”well I had the wrong Christmas dinner, you were on leave, Rob was off that day, Basra, was going to be somewhere else and Corvette didn’t want to go, so I figured, my holding on to the tickets and the prospect of me going and sitting there on my own like a prick at a wedding was all a bit pointless…” I’m getting my own back now, he just sighs and makes for the exit, so he can go and get his free school dinner ticket…Rob who’s had his leave cancelled for that day is following him as is now Basra and Corvette…must have been something I said….
15:00: My mobile is ringing…another bloody agency no doubt, but no, just goes to show how wrong you can be doesn’t it. It’s QRob, he want’s to know if I want to now come with them to Christmas dinner in the canteen on the 14th, them all having thrown a wobbly at my giving back the tickets, since none of them were showing any signs of wanting to go…it’s amazing what a free lunch will do to people…Now I’m good enough, now I’m invited, but when I mention it before, I’m not…Since my experience of the canteen food isn’t the greatest (took me back 20 years to school) I decline and suffer the abuse that that declination then ensues, well what do they expect huh ? Treat me like a bloody after-thought…I’ll teach ‘em ;-)…or prapps I won’t…I am going to the proper one on the 20th that’s at a proper restaurant, where they’re able to cook (I hope), without using gallons of chip fat..even better I don’t have to pay for the privilege, so that has to be a good thing.
16:00: Off to collect POD now from Spitfire Dave’s…I can’t inflict him on them for too long….
Thursday 8th December 2005
09:00: Made it in having dropped the sprogs off at school.
Mandy still isn’t out of bed and she’s only just conscious….
10:00: Not much to report today, the hiccups are in a bit of a mess, but that’s to be accepted, every now and then…
15:00 Looking on the bright side (as you have to), Nunob is packing his stuff away, he’s going home (Portugal) now and won’t be back until Monday..you have to thank heaven for small mercies now don’t you…
Friday 9th December 2005
09:00: Once again, dropped the kids off…I’m getting almost average at this now…It’s absolutely dead….no one is in the tumble weeds are well err tumbling down the corridor and someone has neglected to turn on the lights…This will mean at some point someone will do their impression of a lighting engineer during a rock opera, and we’ll all collapse with epileptic fits, because rather than just turn on all the lights, they’ll decide to just try and find their one’s meaning that every light in the office will be switch off and back on rapidly for at least five minutes….
10:30: The disco without music has started…it’s getting harder and harder to see my screen..the hiccups appear to be in a right mess again (cuh!)…and my idea of using a DHCP server to allocate server IP addresses has been smacked down by that Portuguese git….time to put my eyes in, nothing else can go wrong today…
11:30: Just heading out the door, since I managed to drop one of my contact lenses…somewhere in the loo.. Trouble is I can see it, worst of all is the fact that I’d already got one of my lenses in no probs, so I then had to take that one out and try and get it back in it’s little pot…So I’m going home to get another one for my left eye..
12:00: Just made it back…eyes are back in and the world doesn’t seem such a dark place…To improve things further, Richman has phoned to say that my Flaky Drive has been repaired and sent back to them…He’s going to get Tossy to drive it back to me in about 5 mins….
12:25: Sure enough, Lin Console 2 has phoned (that’s what it comes up with on my phone when reception ring through), to say a box has been delivered for me…
12:30: Lunch + Flaky drive.
13:30: Back from the land of the dead…looking forward to plugging in my 300GB of storage….
14:30: Not much else happening, Brenty is in a silly mood which is fairly infectious…so we’re talking about movies and great stuff like that..well it passes the time…
15:30: Half an hour to go, (gotta pick up Jack again), the phone rings and it’s Mandy, to say that Ryan has been sent home from school…with the FLU !!! Oh triffic I can sense the claws of illness closing around on me…I’ll use POD as a shield, they’ll never infect us both…..
16:30: Been home about 10 minutes or so, so I figure I’ll plug in my Flaky drive and make sure it works…guess what..it doesn’t…really really not very happy about this…since the fault it went away with doesn’t seem to have been fixed…stroppy email is quickly writtend and sent….
16:45: Since I have my work Flaky at home I figure I’ll give that a try..only to discover that it also doesn’t seem to work..curiously with the same problem as the other one. I plug it in again, this time using it’s power supply and voila the problem goes away…So just to make sure I plug in my own Flaky to the work power supply and….the problem goes away. Therefore the problem isn’t the drive so much as the power supply, which I’d never sent them (their request not to send it)….damn…gotta write an apology email to Flaky now…bugger!...I simply explain the resolution to the problem, with a “please accept my apologies” then hit send…..
17:00: Normally you look forward to the weekend…but this one could be a hard one, with 50% of the family down..it’s looking like it could be hard work…. Still day off again on Monday…
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Adventure 43: 28th November 2005
“And so he’s back….from outa Portugal….”, yup he’s back, back to make our lives a misery once again….apparently he was in Switzerland working but we’ve no evidence to support that theory, so who knows…This week has struggled to start so to business….
Monday 28th November 2005
09:00: I’ve been in about an 40 minutes, I really don’t want to be here, but since I’ve unloaded my various accoutrements, Mobile phone, pass, chewing gum, contact lenses, 150,000 odd bit’s of paper etc etc…oh and set up my laptop in it’s docking station, in the vane hope that it’ll fire up the screen first time of asking, I figure I’m here for the duration….
09:30: Nunob is his happy jolly self, Mary is flitting around like a woman possessed (who knows right ?), and Brenty is sat slumped or more like poured into his seat. There’s a head poking out of a Don’tBeDaft fleece top that he swindled out of one of the senior secretaries a few months ago and he’s looking less like he want’s to be here than I do….
10:00: We pop out for a non smoke..since we’re both being good on the giving up theme…inhaling stale smoke smell is about as close as I’m actually going to get to smoking a cigarette today….
11:00: Honest we were only away for 5 minutes, just couldn’t fill the time in with anything sensationally wonderful.
11:15: Just got an email from my old boss Pester, nice to hear from him, though not nice to hear that his boat yard is about to close because the council has decided to build a new bridge, right where his yard is….may be a discount on the old council tax will be in the offing….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back now…Almost as soon as I sit down…”Cre8….are the CoLo proxies installed ?”, he asks in that way that he asks things, like he knows the answer, but wants you to confirm it so he can have a go at you, “No not yet, I’ve managed to pin Basra down to Thursday”…I fend…you have to feel a bit sorry for Basra..he’s off here and there down to Posthumouth, up to Gate Shed, back to backofbeyond…he’s never here…except for Thursday, so since it’s his turn to babysit Mr Numbnuts or me as I’m better known, that’s the day we’re going to go.
14:00: I manage to escape to CD2 (Complete Disaster) where our “Test, soon to become live even though they’re really really crap and old” servers are housed, to do some surfing, looking for jobs and generally work avoidance at all costs….well it is the afternoon and I could really do with a nap…
14:30: Back at my desk now, guilt taking it’s toll. I log in to the Smear Desk “help”desk software and check out if any of my calls have moved from “urgent, past deadline” to “no really really urgent now, someone is going to die if you don’t help me” but just one hit’s my “can I do it ?, do I give a toss ?, will anyone notice if I ignore this” radar….this one has been bubbling around for about 2-3 months and I take it upon myself to do something about it….I have to email this guy called Mikael in our Radish office, and see if he still needs his FTP site setting up, now we’ve finally managed to get the new server up and running.
15:00: The message is sent, time to get a coffee ,do the tapes, get another coffee, surf the net, get a coffee……..
16:00: hmmm I could be in luck…auto response (not that auto if you ask me it’s only taken 1 ½ hours to send a response), from this guy Mikael or rather the email server on his behalf…..apparently he’s left the company…well you can’t say I didn’t try…I close the call…..tomorrows another day…I might go for a personal record tomorrow and answer more than one call…well you have to give people some hope to cling to, now don’t you……
Tuesday 29th November 2005
10:00: He’s working away on something, I daren’t ask….So far so good, the hiccups have all worked wonderfully this week and there aren’t any jobs still running, so all I have to do now is document the fact…Basraman is in but his sidekick is off fighting crime somewhere on his own (QuietRob-in)
10:30: Brenty’s looking confused he keeps disappearing off in to the data centre then coming out looking more and more confused….I know there’s going to be a reason for this…”I don’t seem to be able to get the two MacroShaft servers to talk to each other…” he bleats at me…I look at him blankly it normally does the trick, but then guilt catches up with me and I agree to look at the Firewall…….shit! yeah mmmm…a quick re-enable of the rule that stops those two servers talking to each other …no one will notice, quick slope under the rock you came out of….
11:30: Jady Browntan, (Sod Off Desk Manager (1st haven’t got a bloody clue line)) pops her head over my partition (she’s not very tall)…”Just picked up a call about the Macroshaft servers…”, she queries…”Errr…yes that’s all sorted now I think….”, I may have just about got away with my little miscalculation….”ok shall I phone Dubry sprocket (I can’t remember his name), and make sure”..she presses, “good idea”, I’m bloody good at this aren’t I….
12:00: Jady is walking over again…but not to talk to me oh no, Nunob is her target..and in her best “please mr teacher, spank me ‘till I beg you to stop” voice…she informs him that the reason for the outage on the very important Macroshaft servers, was according to the call log, because “someone had changed the firewall” !!!!!! The caller then asks why it is we aren’t using change control…Oh joy….
12:15: “Cre8, has anything been changed on the firewall ???”, comes the inevitable question from Nunob…I think for a couple of seconds but there’s no escape, so I offer up my sword, position myself over it and get prepared to splice my heart in two…or put another way “Yes, that was me, I was housekeeping the rules and I disabled the wrong rule…”, “ahhhhh ok…” he sighs…with a this isn’t going to get any easier sigh…then curiously nothing..I suspect it’ll be stored up for another one of his fantabulous meetings.. I can’t wait…so rather under a cloud of guilt and annoyance at being dropped in it by a so called bleeding mate…you wait ‘till I see him….lunch is beckoning.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…nothing to report….
14:00: Brenty asks me if I want to go for another non smoke break…I agree…Once we’re out, I query why it was HE BLOODY DROPPED ME IN IT…”what else was I supposed to put in the call ?” he asks innocently, “well anything like the cable fell out of it again or someone had knocked the power cable or anything but “someone changed the firewall”” I mean Christ !!!...I can’t stay annoyed for long…since he claims it was an innocent mistake and he didn’t really mean to drop me in it…still, I’ll make him pay…..one day…..;-))
Wednesday 30th November 2005
09:00: Well I’m here…but only just….I haven’t even had a chance to put my eyes in yet….
10:00: Eyes are truly in, apart from the one that insisted not sticking either to my eyeball or my finger when I wanted them to, and when I didn’t want them to they did…if you see my meaning…I managed to somehow unfold it on to my eyeball eventually though and now everything is in focus….
10:30: The hiccups have been surprisingly well behaved for a change today….only the usual one’s have failed i.e. the one’s that we shouldn’t be doing anymore since the servers don’t actually exist !..I’ll get to cancelling those jobs one day I just know it…
11:30: Preparations for tomorrows OhNo visit are truly underway..I comment that MFI must have had a particularly difficult decision to make…should they put their hosting centre in Baghdad or the centre of London…tricky one but they went for London, even though it’s actually marginally harder to get to than Baghdad…even Nunob laughs…that’s got to be a first….
12:00: The servers are boxed, I’ve even managed to put labels on them and hopefully they’ll get to their destination on time…I should really do some calls but I’m really not in the mood for helping people today…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Basraman and Quiet Rob-in are in Posthumous again today..”checking out the new site”…mmm code for having a skive if you ask me….so it’s just me and Brenty…all very quiet…
The rest of the day drifts by, nothing much left to report…
Thursday 31st November 2005
08:30: I’ve driven the Mondeo in today..since it’s a bit leaner on the old juice, so I can make a bit more on the expenses claim…(it has to be done)
09:00: Basra is on the phone (as always) explaining the complexities of something to do with the networks to someone who’s also explaining back to him the complexities of something else…this could take a while…so I go an get a coffee…
09:30: Finally I’ve managed to drag him away from the phone and we’re on our way down the motorway into the hell hole that is London…
10:30: An hour in and it’s all going far to well…”I think”, he says, “ we should turn left here”, just past the lights is a turning on the left..but it doesn’t look like the left turn he’s talking about so I drive past it…”ok perhaps not then”, all too late I realise my mistake, and offer to turn around but Basra is confident he can navigate us to the right destination….
12:30: Ok we’re really crawling along now…the last two hours have been spent behind a queue of traffic, all queued up because a bus has broken down in the middle of the road….3 bloody hours…
12:45: Finally we’ve made it…The unofficial “keep it under yer hat” parking spaces have all been taken so damn it we have to pay to park £3.50 !!! That gives us just about 2 hours to get the three servers racked, configured and access tested…doddle no probs….
14:45: Back in the car now with 10 minutes to spare…that was lucky…Basra is disintegrating since he hasn’t had his statutory 27 sandwiches and 300 packets of crisps that he normally has…out of pity I decide to stop at a garage so he can stock up…I buy a sausage roll and a packet of Sweet chilli crisps (maxi pack obviously)…
15:15: He’s not bad at this holding the crisp packet business and I think we’re both now refuelled…
15:30: We’re bombing it down the motorway…Basra nudges me and I wake up..lucky really since I was driving !!!!
16:00: We’ve made it back to work…that’s a bit of a pain really, as now for 1 hour I have to find something else to do…I check the hiccups…nope they’re all fine…storage, yup we’re bound to be running out of that…nope all fine…there’s a stack of calls I could start going through…but no…well I wouldn’t want to give anyone any false hope now would I ?......
Friday 1st December 2005
Well it’ Friday, there has to be lots of good stuff happening…but there isn’t….
Saturday tomorrow and I’ve got an 8 year olds disco to do, should be good fun…not least fitting both Ryan and Jack in the car along with 4 speakers 2 amps and all my lights…not to mention my light board (newly made especially)….
Monday 28th November 2005
09:00: I’ve been in about an 40 minutes, I really don’t want to be here, but since I’ve unloaded my various accoutrements, Mobile phone, pass, chewing gum, contact lenses, 150,000 odd bit’s of paper etc etc…oh and set up my laptop in it’s docking station, in the vane hope that it’ll fire up the screen first time of asking, I figure I’m here for the duration….
09:30: Nunob is his happy jolly self, Mary is flitting around like a woman possessed (who knows right ?), and Brenty is sat slumped or more like poured into his seat. There’s a head poking out of a Don’tBeDaft fleece top that he swindled out of one of the senior secretaries a few months ago and he’s looking less like he want’s to be here than I do….
10:00: We pop out for a non smoke..since we’re both being good on the giving up theme…inhaling stale smoke smell is about as close as I’m actually going to get to smoking a cigarette today….
11:00: Honest we were only away for 5 minutes, just couldn’t fill the time in with anything sensationally wonderful.
11:15: Just got an email from my old boss Pester, nice to hear from him, though not nice to hear that his boat yard is about to close because the council has decided to build a new bridge, right where his yard is….may be a discount on the old council tax will be in the offing….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back now…Almost as soon as I sit down…”Cre8….are the CoLo proxies installed ?”, he asks in that way that he asks things, like he knows the answer, but wants you to confirm it so he can have a go at you, “No not yet, I’ve managed to pin Basra down to Thursday”…I fend…you have to feel a bit sorry for Basra..he’s off here and there down to Posthumouth, up to Gate Shed, back to backofbeyond…he’s never here…except for Thursday, so since it’s his turn to babysit Mr Numbnuts or me as I’m better known, that’s the day we’re going to go.
14:00: I manage to escape to CD2 (Complete Disaster) where our “Test, soon to become live even though they’re really really crap and old” servers are housed, to do some surfing, looking for jobs and generally work avoidance at all costs….well it is the afternoon and I could really do with a nap…
14:30: Back at my desk now, guilt taking it’s toll. I log in to the Smear Desk “help”desk software and check out if any of my calls have moved from “urgent, past deadline” to “no really really urgent now, someone is going to die if you don’t help me” but just one hit’s my “can I do it ?, do I give a toss ?, will anyone notice if I ignore this” radar….this one has been bubbling around for about 2-3 months and I take it upon myself to do something about it….I have to email this guy called Mikael in our Radish office, and see if he still needs his FTP site setting up, now we’ve finally managed to get the new server up and running.
15:00: The message is sent, time to get a coffee ,do the tapes, get another coffee, surf the net, get a coffee……..
16:00: hmmm I could be in luck…auto response (not that auto if you ask me it’s only taken 1 ½ hours to send a response), from this guy Mikael or rather the email server on his behalf…..apparently he’s left the company…well you can’t say I didn’t try…I close the call…..tomorrows another day…I might go for a personal record tomorrow and answer more than one call…well you have to give people some hope to cling to, now don’t you……
Tuesday 29th November 2005
10:00: He’s working away on something, I daren’t ask….So far so good, the hiccups have all worked wonderfully this week and there aren’t any jobs still running, so all I have to do now is document the fact…Basraman is in but his sidekick is off fighting crime somewhere on his own (QuietRob-in)
10:30: Brenty’s looking confused he keeps disappearing off in to the data centre then coming out looking more and more confused….I know there’s going to be a reason for this…”I don’t seem to be able to get the two MacroShaft servers to talk to each other…” he bleats at me…I look at him blankly it normally does the trick, but then guilt catches up with me and I agree to look at the Firewall…….shit! yeah mmmm…a quick re-enable of the rule that stops those two servers talking to each other …no one will notice, quick slope under the rock you came out of….
11:30: Jady Browntan, (Sod Off Desk Manager (1st haven’t got a bloody clue line)) pops her head over my partition (she’s not very tall)…”Just picked up a call about the Macroshaft servers…”, she queries…”Errr…yes that’s all sorted now I think….”, I may have just about got away with my little miscalculation….”ok shall I phone Dubry sprocket (I can’t remember his name), and make sure”..she presses, “good idea”, I’m bloody good at this aren’t I….
12:00: Jady is walking over again…but not to talk to me oh no, Nunob is her target..and in her best “please mr teacher, spank me ‘till I beg you to stop” voice…she informs him that the reason for the outage on the very important Macroshaft servers, was according to the call log, because “someone had changed the firewall” !!!!!! The caller then asks why it is we aren’t using change control…Oh joy….
12:15: “Cre8, has anything been changed on the firewall ???”, comes the inevitable question from Nunob…I think for a couple of seconds but there’s no escape, so I offer up my sword, position myself over it and get prepared to splice my heart in two…or put another way “Yes, that was me, I was housekeeping the rules and I disabled the wrong rule…”, “ahhhhh ok…” he sighs…with a this isn’t going to get any easier sigh…then curiously nothing..I suspect it’ll be stored up for another one of his fantabulous meetings.. I can’t wait…so rather under a cloud of guilt and annoyance at being dropped in it by a so called bleeding mate…you wait ‘till I see him….lunch is beckoning.
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…nothing to report….
14:00: Brenty asks me if I want to go for another non smoke break…I agree…Once we’re out, I query why it was HE BLOODY DROPPED ME IN IT…”what else was I supposed to put in the call ?” he asks innocently, “well anything like the cable fell out of it again or someone had knocked the power cable or anything but “someone changed the firewall”” I mean Christ !!!...I can’t stay annoyed for long…since he claims it was an innocent mistake and he didn’t really mean to drop me in it…still, I’ll make him pay…..one day…..;-))
Wednesday 30th November 2005
09:00: Well I’m here…but only just….I haven’t even had a chance to put my eyes in yet….
10:00: Eyes are truly in, apart from the one that insisted not sticking either to my eyeball or my finger when I wanted them to, and when I didn’t want them to they did…if you see my meaning…I managed to somehow unfold it on to my eyeball eventually though and now everything is in focus….
10:30: The hiccups have been surprisingly well behaved for a change today….only the usual one’s have failed i.e. the one’s that we shouldn’t be doing anymore since the servers don’t actually exist !..I’ll get to cancelling those jobs one day I just know it…
11:30: Preparations for tomorrows OhNo visit are truly underway..I comment that MFI must have had a particularly difficult decision to make…should they put their hosting centre in Baghdad or the centre of London…tricky one but they went for London, even though it’s actually marginally harder to get to than Baghdad…even Nunob laughs…that’s got to be a first….
12:00: The servers are boxed, I’ve even managed to put labels on them and hopefully they’ll get to their destination on time…I should really do some calls but I’m really not in the mood for helping people today…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Basraman and Quiet Rob-in are in Posthumous again today..”checking out the new site”…mmm code for having a skive if you ask me….so it’s just me and Brenty…all very quiet…
The rest of the day drifts by, nothing much left to report…
Thursday 31st November 2005
08:30: I’ve driven the Mondeo in today..since it’s a bit leaner on the old juice, so I can make a bit more on the expenses claim…(it has to be done)
09:00: Basra is on the phone (as always) explaining the complexities of something to do with the networks to someone who’s also explaining back to him the complexities of something else…this could take a while…so I go an get a coffee…
09:30: Finally I’ve managed to drag him away from the phone and we’re on our way down the motorway into the hell hole that is London…
10:30: An hour in and it’s all going far to well…”I think”, he says, “ we should turn left here”, just past the lights is a turning on the left..but it doesn’t look like the left turn he’s talking about so I drive past it…”ok perhaps not then”, all too late I realise my mistake, and offer to turn around but Basra is confident he can navigate us to the right destination….
12:30: Ok we’re really crawling along now…the last two hours have been spent behind a queue of traffic, all queued up because a bus has broken down in the middle of the road….3 bloody hours…
12:45: Finally we’ve made it…The unofficial “keep it under yer hat” parking spaces have all been taken so damn it we have to pay to park £3.50 !!! That gives us just about 2 hours to get the three servers racked, configured and access tested…doddle no probs….
14:45: Back in the car now with 10 minutes to spare…that was lucky…Basra is disintegrating since he hasn’t had his statutory 27 sandwiches and 300 packets of crisps that he normally has…out of pity I decide to stop at a garage so he can stock up…I buy a sausage roll and a packet of Sweet chilli crisps (maxi pack obviously)…
15:15: He’s not bad at this holding the crisp packet business and I think we’re both now refuelled…
15:30: We’re bombing it down the motorway…Basra nudges me and I wake up..lucky really since I was driving !!!!
16:00: We’ve made it back to work…that’s a bit of a pain really, as now for 1 hour I have to find something else to do…I check the hiccups…nope they’re all fine…storage, yup we’re bound to be running out of that…nope all fine…there’s a stack of calls I could start going through…but no…well I wouldn’t want to give anyone any false hope now would I ?......
Friday 1st December 2005
Well it’ Friday, there has to be lots of good stuff happening…but there isn’t….
Saturday tomorrow and I’ve got an 8 year olds disco to do, should be good fun…not least fitting both Ryan and Jack in the car along with 4 speakers 2 amps and all my lights…not to mention my light board (newly made especially)….
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Adventure 42 - 21st November 2005
“I can sort of see if I squint..and don’t blink…how do you get these suckers out ?....”, Lo all yup me again, yer resident vision expert…I am now an expert on vision and lenses of all types…you’ve got to do something while your waiting for these people….
Monday 21st November 2005:
Monday, Monday, Monday so good they named it once….
08:30: Made it to work…gotta get these new servers configured and up to the MFI Co Lo before Nunob gets back.
That’s right the two weeks of bliss and actually getting something done at work are in to the last week. Brenty, like a fool has taken this week off...therefore breaking rule number 358, never take the same week off as your annoying portuguese boss.
09:00: Quiet Rob, is in and so is Basra, the name change was just to wind him up so I’m reverting it to the proper one from now on.
10:30: Getting slightly fed up with New Year’s Eve party we’re trying to organise again. It’s the same every year…Funny though that people who said things like “oh you’ve got to do this again” and “we really enjoyed ourselves are you booking the hall for next year”, are now the one’s who’re to say the least being a little bit cagey on the subject ….Ok I expect nothing more from people at work Brenty excluded.
11:00: Forgot to mention, POD is off school sick today…finally the “friendly bacteria” have caught up with him…he’s got a hacking cough and seems to spend most of the day in fact coughing, which can’t be fun. Still at least Drama King, Ryan’s next big production isn’t until NEXT SATURDAY, so he should be ok, gulp…
The production being The Wizard of Oz…and somehow he’s managed to land the part of the scarecrow…I don’t know what it is about him that makes people think that !!!
12:00: The backups have had another epi fit so, most of today I know will be spent sorting them out…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back now..nothing much more to report….
Tuesday 22nd November 2005:
Just checked my bank balance..and it’s not good, little too much month at the end of the money, so I fully intend on winning the lottery some time soon.
06:Bloody:30: Yup up with other nocturnal creatures…somehow I have to manage to get Ryan up, make his breakfast and get him out of the door by 7:20 when he’s being picked up for Basketball practice..I don’t know how I managed to achieve that but I do…just…
08:00: Alan, the cat is still with us…several phone calls to the RSPCA and a snotty email, (which is probably why they’ve not come round to pick him up), later, he’s still camped outside our back door. So much so that Mandy has now taken to buying cat food, since it was cheaper than the sandwich ham she had been feeding him…We’re also buying an extra pint of milk a week too..well he’s almost one of the family….I say one of the family..not a close relative I hasten to add, more a sort of long lost, distant cousin, who’s just finished doing a 20 year stretch and you can’t quite remember what they were put away for…
08:30: Well I’ve arrived…this week has been particularly cold and Ryan informs me that we’ll have snow by Friday..yeah right…like we ever get anything like that. It snows all day and all we end up with is some slushy puddles on the floor and damp car mats…I’ll believe it when I see it…
09:00: All a bit quiet and boring today..too much stuff to do, too many agent’s trying to touch my base and do their updates…One had even considered me for a job….in Lancashire…oh well done them…that’s all I can say..
10:00: Quiet Rob and Basra are off to Posthumouth today (so they say…Gasra is looking distinctly jealous)…they're now to be known as the dynamic duo, Basraman and Quiet Rob-in..I hasten to add that Brenty has decided this all on his own...still Basra is a little more happy with this than his last name....
11:00: All quiet on the western front so I decide to go and try my luck at restoring one of our SQL databases using our test server imaginatively named DR-TEST and our spare LTO-2 tape drive....fat chance....
11:30: Two restores later…and both have failed, I’m getting more and more riled up now..
12:00: In a fit of peak I decide…to email support at Vertebrate Systems the vendor of our much beloved backup software to ask them why…
12:10: That’s quick…and yes they’ve responded with their oh so typical “can you send us a binary log file” standard response email…to which they get a sarcastic response from me, mentioning the similarity between their binary logs and a urine sample that I might have to take to a hospital appointment.
12:25: Just before lunch (they really are cooking with gas now) I get another response, basically thanking me for the binary log which they’ll have a look at over the next couple of weeks !!! But importantly stressing that they had no use for a urine sample on this occasion…gotta love helpdesks haven’t you…
Wednesday 23rd November 2005
08:30: Made it in to work in record time today and it’s still cold…
09:00 Basraman and Quiet Rob-in are in so at least today I have someone to talk at.
09:30: I’m desperately trying to pin Basra down to a date to take the new servers to the Co Lo…no luck so far…He's far too in love with Quiet Rob...
10:00: Quiet Rob has had a tango and is being a bit lary..I might have to give him a slap if he doesn’t stop…In the mean time I’ve emailed Mary Tyrant with the suggestion that since the Verishagged No Backups software they’re using in the Overdone office is in need of replacement (and they’ve got a project manager for that…what I’d give to have a project manager), "why not ",I say "save the money it’ll cost to do the upgrade and use the NetVolox software we use here in Backofbeyond.., we can control all the backups from here”, I say..well let the heavens open and the sky fall in and there be much grinding and gnashing of teeth on the subject…why oh why would we want to use some software that actually does backups…how will we control our destiny if you’re controlling our backups and what will we do with the money that we’ve saved…all themes coming through in the response from Mary…
I thought about replying, but then I’d have to give a damn and since I don’t I won’t ;-))
11:00: Turns out that Quiet Rob got Basra to pull over on the way back from Posthumouth to “clean his headlights” ok…Gasra is now looking more jealous than ever….looking longingly over…I don’t know…young love….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…The PM in charge of the Overdone storage project comes over to me fairly distraught to say that Net Vollox can’t be used there because…because the big scary man said we couldn’t (I thought he was in Portugal but never mind) ah well I can but try…
14:30: Just got off the phone from Richman, owner of a small supplier of ours namely Copper Nitrate Centre…I did have to explain to him that in order for them to make money, it was fairly important that they provide their prospective customers with quotes for the kit they wanted to buy…a small but I think you’ll agree beautifully formed argument, even if I do say so myself….
15:30: Quiet Rob has informed us that on Friday it’ll be 1 month until Christmas…I couldn’t resist a little wind up…
“Sorry bob, but you’re wrong mate…”, here I go…”No I’m not” he indignantly replies…”You said it’s one month to Christmas, but you haven’t specified which month it is… since we’re already in the middle of November, it can’t actually be any amount of months now can it..”, he’s looking confused now “err” yup that confirms it…” you can say it’s 4 weeks until Christmas…but you can’t say it’s a month…” great he’s completely lost…and just gets on with his work…I love it when a plan comes together….
Thursday 24th November 2005:
08:00 Up with a complete shock since we’re going out on Friday (shock horror, married couple go out, hold the back page)…I need to have a hair cut…not much off but just a tidy up…so I’ve booked up to go tonight..which means…..I have to wash my hair (or get a very wet flannel and wash it that way) this morning, which means, I have to go to work without gel in, which means I will have to suffer the derision of my colleagues and countless individuals like Mr Clever pants, Crispin Spider, likening me to one of the beatles..I will of course retort with things like “at least I’ve got hair” etc but somehow they’ve been done…
The good thing with this is that since I’m not wearing my glasses at the moment they may not recognise me, or they may do that pretending not to recognise me thing an all too familiar tactic of Adey Suarvey…
09:00: Yup I was right, three people asked me about my hair, Crispin Spider, mentioned the beatles and Mr Suarvey cleverly pretended to not know who I am…anyone would think I wrote this after it had happened !!!!
10:00: Ah the trials…Not much else happening apart from work so I try and get on with some of it…The Hiccups are In a bit of mess, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to spend some time again sorting these out….
I did mean to mention that the reason for Basra and Quiet Rob’s (the dynamic duo's) trip on Tuesday was to investigate how to get our backup system to backup theirs..the very thought of sending someone down their who, actually knew a thing or two about the backup system used here, didn't even cross their minds, I'm sure...I mean I know I'm going to be doing most of the work, getting prices etc...they could've saved Basra some time and trouble going down to the site, but when did they ever do the sensible thing ?
Monday 21st November 2005:
Monday, Monday, Monday so good they named it once….
08:30: Made it to work…gotta get these new servers configured and up to the MFI Co Lo before Nunob gets back.
That’s right the two weeks of bliss and actually getting something done at work are in to the last week. Brenty, like a fool has taken this week off...therefore breaking rule number 358, never take the same week off as your annoying portuguese boss.
09:00: Quiet Rob, is in and so is Basra, the name change was just to wind him up so I’m reverting it to the proper one from now on.
10:30: Getting slightly fed up with New Year’s Eve party we’re trying to organise again. It’s the same every year…Funny though that people who said things like “oh you’ve got to do this again” and “we really enjoyed ourselves are you booking the hall for next year”, are now the one’s who’re to say the least being a little bit cagey on the subject ….Ok I expect nothing more from people at work Brenty excluded.
11:00: Forgot to mention, POD is off school sick today…finally the “friendly bacteria” have caught up with him…he’s got a hacking cough and seems to spend most of the day in fact coughing, which can’t be fun. Still at least Drama King, Ryan’s next big production isn’t until NEXT SATURDAY, so he should be ok, gulp…
The production being The Wizard of Oz…and somehow he’s managed to land the part of the scarecrow…I don’t know what it is about him that makes people think that !!!
12:00: The backups have had another epi fit so, most of today I know will be spent sorting them out…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back now..nothing much more to report….
Tuesday 22nd November 2005:
Just checked my bank balance..and it’s not good, little too much month at the end of the money, so I fully intend on winning the lottery some time soon.
06:Bloody:30: Yup up with other nocturnal creatures…somehow I have to manage to get Ryan up, make his breakfast and get him out of the door by 7:20 when he’s being picked up for Basketball practice..I don’t know how I managed to achieve that but I do…just…
08:00: Alan, the cat is still with us…several phone calls to the RSPCA and a snotty email, (which is probably why they’ve not come round to pick him up), later, he’s still camped outside our back door. So much so that Mandy has now taken to buying cat food, since it was cheaper than the sandwich ham she had been feeding him…We’re also buying an extra pint of milk a week too..well he’s almost one of the family….I say one of the family..not a close relative I hasten to add, more a sort of long lost, distant cousin, who’s just finished doing a 20 year stretch and you can’t quite remember what they were put away for…
08:30: Well I’ve arrived…this week has been particularly cold and Ryan informs me that we’ll have snow by Friday..yeah right…like we ever get anything like that. It snows all day and all we end up with is some slushy puddles on the floor and damp car mats…I’ll believe it when I see it…
09:00: All a bit quiet and boring today..too much stuff to do, too many agent’s trying to touch my base and do their updates…One had even considered me for a job….in Lancashire…oh well done them…that’s all I can say..
10:00: Quiet Rob and Basra are off to Posthumouth today (so they say…Gasra is looking distinctly jealous)…they're now to be known as the dynamic duo, Basraman and Quiet Rob-in..I hasten to add that Brenty has decided this all on his own...still Basra is a little more happy with this than his last name....
11:00: All quiet on the western front so I decide to go and try my luck at restoring one of our SQL databases using our test server imaginatively named DR-TEST and our spare LTO-2 tape drive....fat chance....
11:30: Two restores later…and both have failed, I’m getting more and more riled up now..
12:00: In a fit of peak I decide…to email support at Vertebrate Systems the vendor of our much beloved backup software to ask them why…
12:10: That’s quick…and yes they’ve responded with their oh so typical “can you send us a binary log file” standard response email…to which they get a sarcastic response from me, mentioning the similarity between their binary logs and a urine sample that I might have to take to a hospital appointment.
12:25: Just before lunch (they really are cooking with gas now) I get another response, basically thanking me for the binary log which they’ll have a look at over the next couple of weeks !!! But importantly stressing that they had no use for a urine sample on this occasion…gotta love helpdesks haven’t you…
Wednesday 23rd November 2005
08:30: Made it in to work in record time today and it’s still cold…
09:00 Basraman and Quiet Rob-in are in so at least today I have someone to talk at.
09:30: I’m desperately trying to pin Basra down to a date to take the new servers to the Co Lo…no luck so far…He's far too in love with Quiet Rob...
10:00: Quiet Rob has had a tango and is being a bit lary..I might have to give him a slap if he doesn’t stop…In the mean time I’ve emailed Mary Tyrant with the suggestion that since the Verishagged No Backups software they’re using in the Overdone office is in need of replacement (and they’ve got a project manager for that…what I’d give to have a project manager), "why not ",I say "save the money it’ll cost to do the upgrade and use the NetVolox software we use here in Backofbeyond.., we can control all the backups from here”, I say..well let the heavens open and the sky fall in and there be much grinding and gnashing of teeth on the subject…why oh why would we want to use some software that actually does backups…how will we control our destiny if you’re controlling our backups and what will we do with the money that we’ve saved…all themes coming through in the response from Mary…
I thought about replying, but then I’d have to give a damn and since I don’t I won’t ;-))
11:00: Turns out that Quiet Rob got Basra to pull over on the way back from Posthumouth to “clean his headlights” ok…Gasra is now looking more jealous than ever….looking longingly over…I don’t know…young love….
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back from lunch…The PM in charge of the Overdone storage project comes over to me fairly distraught to say that Net Vollox can’t be used there because…because the big scary man said we couldn’t (I thought he was in Portugal but never mind) ah well I can but try…
14:30: Just got off the phone from Richman, owner of a small supplier of ours namely Copper Nitrate Centre…I did have to explain to him that in order for them to make money, it was fairly important that they provide their prospective customers with quotes for the kit they wanted to buy…a small but I think you’ll agree beautifully formed argument, even if I do say so myself….
15:30: Quiet Rob has informed us that on Friday it’ll be 1 month until Christmas…I couldn’t resist a little wind up…
“Sorry bob, but you’re wrong mate…”, here I go…”No I’m not” he indignantly replies…”You said it’s one month to Christmas, but you haven’t specified which month it is… since we’re already in the middle of November, it can’t actually be any amount of months now can it..”, he’s looking confused now “err” yup that confirms it…” you can say it’s 4 weeks until Christmas…but you can’t say it’s a month…” great he’s completely lost…and just gets on with his work…I love it when a plan comes together….
Thursday 24th November 2005:
08:00 Up with a complete shock since we’re going out on Friday (shock horror, married couple go out, hold the back page)…I need to have a hair cut…not much off but just a tidy up…so I’ve booked up to go tonight..which means…..I have to wash my hair (or get a very wet flannel and wash it that way) this morning, which means, I have to go to work without gel in, which means I will have to suffer the derision of my colleagues and countless individuals like Mr Clever pants, Crispin Spider, likening me to one of the beatles..I will of course retort with things like “at least I’ve got hair” etc but somehow they’ve been done…
The good thing with this is that since I’m not wearing my glasses at the moment they may not recognise me, or they may do that pretending not to recognise me thing an all too familiar tactic of Adey Suarvey…
09:00: Yup I was right, three people asked me about my hair, Crispin Spider, mentioned the beatles and Mr Suarvey cleverly pretended to not know who I am…anyone would think I wrote this after it had happened !!!!
10:00: Ah the trials…Not much else happening apart from work so I try and get on with some of it…The Hiccups are In a bit of mess, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to spend some time again sorting these out….
I did mean to mention that the reason for Basra and Quiet Rob’s (the dynamic duo's) trip on Tuesday was to investigate how to get our backup system to backup theirs..the very thought of sending someone down their who, actually knew a thing or two about the backup system used here, didn't even cross their minds, I'm sure...I mean I know I'm going to be doing most of the work, getting prices etc...they could've saved Basra some time and trouble going down to the site, but when did they ever do the sensible thing ?
Saturday 26th November 2005
Sorry bit of a jump, but since I can't remember the none event that was Friday, I'm not going to make anything up...Basically just an entry to say that Ryan's Wizard of Oz was fantastic again. His scarecrow magnificent, even if I am biased....for the record I've no idea why the text has gone smaller, maybe it's your eyes...
We're having a bit of a time of it with Ryan...growing up..becomming a teenager with all the strops, back chat, arrogance etc etc that comes with it...couple of pep talks coming I think...I won't bore you with the detail...it'll soon be monday, oh joy....
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Adventure 41: Covert Special: 17th November 2005
“Ok…so the DR special is gone..damn it…if anyone has it saved somewhere please email it to me….”…Yup this one Is gonna be tricky…gonna try and do at least some of this…at work…da da, dadaaaa….
17th November 2005:
08:30: Just got in…thought “I know I’ll check my orders…”, you know when you get that sinking feeling…I check the Amaskint web page, click the “Where the bloody hell are my orders” button and log in with Mandy’s account details. There are my orders, and there’s the delivery address I clicked on. The mother in law’s address,….before she moved !!!! Buggger!!!!. I check the ParcelDropped (sorry), website to discover that they don’t have telephone numbers to ring under the category “I’ve sent my parcels to the wrong address” caption, so I figure I can blag it by phoning their “any enquiries” “hot line”…nope it’s all automated “press this button”, then we’re off into fantasy voice recognition mode, so I try saying “yes” every way I can only to discover that the “recognition” bit of the system isn’t quite up to scratch. Still I seem to have redirected some video shaped brown paper covered parcels to the pope, ah well, he needs em more than me….
0845: Gave Spitfire Dave a ring, and explained, suffered the almost inevitable abuse, and then he said he’d ring the new owners of his old house and sort it out for me…phew…(well let’s hope it’s a phew)…
09:00: Just checking my email and discover one from the S.O.D. at CounterStrike….no word of a lie this is the actual email;
-----Original Message-----
From: S.O.D [mailto:soc@counterstrike.com]
Sent: 16 November 2005 11:26
To: cre8
Cc: sod@counterstrike.com
Subject: Analyst Alert / Relevant / Ticket ID DC2000001566434 / Sensor 10.8.0.2 / delarue-002 / Aggressive Mode local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses
Greetings,
On 11/16/2005 at 11:00 GMT our monitoring system created Problem Ticket DC2000001566434.
Analysis
-------------
This message reports the rejection of inbound traffic because the local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses and the cause of rejection is IPsec key rejection.
Symptom Name: Aggressive Mode local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses Severity Level: Relevant Number of Events: 1 ….
<snip>…….
Yup so that’s clear and obvious then….I send a reply….which basically says “please can you send the details through to me in plain English, i.e. what do we have to do….”
I then get the following reply…..
From: S.O.D. [mailto:sod@counterstrike.com]
Sent: 16 November 2005 14:29
To: Cre8
Subject: RE: Ticket DC2000001566434
Cre8,
This how to validate this symptom:
The following three claims regarding the Check Point implementation of IKE Aggressive Mode in VPN-1 4.1 have been made; two of these basically document known IKE limitations, and the third is addressed by the publicly available hotfix. 1.> Usernames are passed in cleartext using IKE Aggressive Mode 2.> Usernames are susceptible to brute-force guessing when using IKE Aggressive Mode 3.> VPN-1 4.1 incorrectly responds to IKE Aggressive Mode requests. LEA ( Log Export API ) is an API for accessing Checkpoint binary log files which are usually not in a clear text format.LEA is a pull mechanism by which a client retrieves the logs from the Check Point management station for real-time remote log analysis.
What to do
A hotfix is available at the Check Point software download site for the third item, in which the VPN-1 4.1 gateway would respond to IKE Aggressive Mode requests even when configured not to respond……
<snip>….
Well that’s clear then….after much deciphering I come to the conclusion that they reckon we should install a patch on our firewall…quite why they couldn’t say that is anyone’s guess….ah well, that’s techies for you…
10:45: Just out on a trip (good eh) to the Hopticians. I went for my two year sight test yesterday, with a smidge of an alterior motive. Basically I’ve been thinking about contact lenses for a little while, not for cosmetic reasons at all, but mainly because my ears have decided they don’t like my glasses and have come up in nasty little sores, also because I can’t wear my glasses playing football I tend to get hit in the face by the ball quite a lot..so today I had to go back for my consultation, and fit and trial 5 pairs of lenses…
11:00: Made it through the labyrinth that is the multi storey car park and I’ve arrived at my destination, lucky me forgot that Thursday is pension / pensioner shopping day…and town is full of doddery old people just stopping in front of me, when they dimly recognise someone who they once said hello to at the local post office 30 years ago….ah bless em…still I’m on time so I don’t care too much.
11:30: Ok been here 30 minutes (Clue’s in the company name…Aversion Express) should have guessed the name is ironic, cuh stupid me eh ?
11:40: Finally get to go in to the examination room where the same South African Optician proceeds to prod my eyeball and squirt some type of fluorine in my eyes. That all done he gets a pair of contact lenses and tries to fit them to my eyes, which are having none of it…”Try not to blink” he advises…hmmm..I wasn’t trying to blink so the chances of me trying not to blink are fairly slim, given that he’s got hold of my eyelid I’m not of a mind to tell him that blinking isn’t something you think about doing…it’s just something that happens….especially when someone is trying to stick foreign bodies in your eyeballs….Finally they’re fitted and it’s really weird…I can like see without glasses.
12:00: He’s wobbling on about the different sorts of lenses I can buy daily or monthly basically seem to be the options..but he’s only recommending daily’s because…they’re more expensive (big shock there)…he didn’t actually say that he said he thought they’d be better to start with but I know what he meant !!! “Right then” he announces, I’ll just go and see if there’s someone who can “teach” me how to put the lenses in and take them out again…should be fun. He’s gone for about 5 minutes then comes back and asks if It’s possible I can come back a little later on today…hmm…I think for a bout a millisecond and reply “sorry no, I can’t”, “how about tomorrow”, slightly confused I agree to go back at 11am tomorrow…kind of well planned out these people…I think they have shares in the car park since, with tomorrow’s appointment it’ll have cost me £6 in parking….hmmmm…..
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Back to work and I have to break the news to Mary….luckily she’s feeling friendly (which she usually is to be fair) and says that it’s fine…apparently though I owe her “presents” whatever that means…..
14:30: Not much to report now…I’m a bit deflated since I wanted to get everything sorted today…Brenty’s off now, because apparently (though no one can confirm it) he was in at 6am “ensuring” all the servers were up and working following last night’s power failure….hmmm..sounds like an excuse to leave early to me, but hey what do I care, good look to him….
15:30: Nothin’ much doing now…
17:00: Time to bloody go home…it’s been a frustrating day one way and another, so home to some good old fashioned home cooking, some kids screaming at each other, a double bill Eastenders wahay…life couldn’t get any better…
19:00: I’m getting a bit peeved…since there seems to be a bit of a sway away from our New Years Eve party. It might be that it’s only mid November and no one wants to think about New Year just yet or it might be that no one wants to come, despite them all saying how good it was last year and how we just simply had to do it all again this…mind you I remember having the same response last year, except people who said that they’d come are now saying that all of a sudden they can’t, it’s not like they were doing me a favour for Christ sake, but I do have costs to cover and if there aren’t going to be enough takers then we’ll have to cancel before we pay for the hall outright, and that would be really really annoying, for two reasons, 1. because I bought £500 worth of disco equipment and 2. because we’ll be stuck at home again, wishing away the hours until it’s midnight, so we can all go to bed..and how sad would that be…. Time to start pressing people for definitive answers I think…
Friday 18th November 2005
“oh yeah it’s really easy isn’t….not….” Lo all well here we go again…Not only have my attempt at getting some contact lenses finally come to fruition…and it only cost me £6 to park and three days to do it…but I have to go again to get “signed off” Signed up more like by the sounds of it….
08:30: Brenty was in bright and early again today (or so he says) so he’s going early too…oh yeah and it’s Friday…no coincidence there at all….
10:00: 1 hour to go until I go and get fitted up….
10:45: Keith our resident cheery bloke (the blissfully unaware) has expressed an interest in our New Years Eve party, so who knows we might have some more attendees…I’m not holding my breath at the moment though….
Just a quick mention Mandy is being very brave and going to the dentist….I don’t know why she worries but she does, so she’s spent a lovely sleepless night worrying about it…
11:10: Made it…bloody car park…why do all the doddery old f$ckers have to go to town the same time as me…I mean they’ve got arrows on the bloody floor, it’s not difficult to work out which way to go….god…for the second day running I’ve circumvented that by driving straight to the top of the car park…I can’t be bothered searching for a space…but it still took me 15 minutes to get parked…
Anyhow like I said I made it and as organised as ever I’m asked to go and sit on the orange waiting chairs…I don’t know what the chairs are waiting for, but I’m hoping It’s not an eye exam since there are loads of them…A little girl about 3 looks up at me and smiles..I smile back and she runs and hides in her mum’s lap…Well she didn’t have to smile at me…I wasn’t going to do anything mental like try and discuss the origins of the universe with her…15 minutes later I’m called through to have my “teaching” session…This is where they teach you to poke yourself in the eye and vainly try and insert a contact lens in each one, having only dropped them on the floor 3 times…the “teacher” says things like, “you know it’s really really easy once you get used to doing it” as she flicks her wrists and twiddles her fingers taking her lenses in and out each time…that really is showing off….finally we’re done and I can go to lunch…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back again…not much to report, Brenty and me moving servers from one room to another…
15:30: Brenty’s off he’s got a week off too lucky bugger…….
17:00: The weekend approaches so at least I’ll get a lie in …until 8am…cuh thank heaven for small mercies eh ?
17th November 2005:
08:30: Just got in…thought “I know I’ll check my orders…”, you know when you get that sinking feeling…I check the Amaskint web page, click the “Where the bloody hell are my orders” button and log in with Mandy’s account details. There are my orders, and there’s the delivery address I clicked on. The mother in law’s address,….before she moved !!!! Buggger!!!!. I check the ParcelDropped (sorry), website to discover that they don’t have telephone numbers to ring under the category “I’ve sent my parcels to the wrong address” caption, so I figure I can blag it by phoning their “any enquiries” “hot line”…nope it’s all automated “press this button”, then we’re off into fantasy voice recognition mode, so I try saying “yes” every way I can only to discover that the “recognition” bit of the system isn’t quite up to scratch. Still I seem to have redirected some video shaped brown paper covered parcels to the pope, ah well, he needs em more than me….
0845: Gave Spitfire Dave a ring, and explained, suffered the almost inevitable abuse, and then he said he’d ring the new owners of his old house and sort it out for me…phew…(well let’s hope it’s a phew)…
09:00: Just checking my email and discover one from the S.O.D. at CounterStrike….no word of a lie this is the actual email;
-----Original Message-----
From: S.O.D [mailto:soc@counterstrike.com]
Sent: 16 November 2005 11:26
To: cre8
Cc: sod@counterstrike.com
Subject: Analyst Alert / Relevant / Ticket ID DC2000001566434 / Sensor 10.8.0.2 / delarue-002 / Aggressive Mode local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses
Greetings,
On 11/16/2005 at 11:00 GMT our monitoring system created Problem Ticket DC2000001566434.
Analysis
-------------
This message reports the rejection of inbound traffic because the local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses and the cause of rejection is IPsec key rejection.
Symptom Name: Aggressive Mode local machine configured not to respond to unknown IP addresses Severity Level: Relevant Number of Events: 1 ….
<snip>…….
Yup so that’s clear and obvious then….I send a reply….which basically says “please can you send the details through to me in plain English, i.e. what do we have to do….”
I then get the following reply…..
From: S.O.D. [mailto:sod@counterstrike.com]
Sent: 16 November 2005 14:29
To: Cre8
Subject: RE: Ticket DC2000001566434
Cre8,
This how to validate this symptom:
The following three claims regarding the Check Point implementation of IKE Aggressive Mode in VPN-1 4.1 have been made; two of these basically document known IKE limitations, and the third is addressed by the publicly available hotfix. 1.> Usernames are passed in cleartext using IKE Aggressive Mode 2.> Usernames are susceptible to brute-force guessing when using IKE Aggressive Mode 3.> VPN-1 4.1 incorrectly responds to IKE Aggressive Mode requests. LEA ( Log Export API ) is an API for accessing Checkpoint binary log files which are usually not in a clear text format.LEA is a pull mechanism by which a client retrieves the logs from the Check Point management station for real-time remote log analysis.
What to do
A hotfix is available at the Check Point software download site for the third item, in which the VPN-1 4.1 gateway would respond to IKE Aggressive Mode requests even when configured not to respond……
<snip>….
Well that’s clear then….after much deciphering I come to the conclusion that they reckon we should install a patch on our firewall…quite why they couldn’t say that is anyone’s guess….ah well, that’s techies for you…
10:45: Just out on a trip (good eh) to the Hopticians. I went for my two year sight test yesterday, with a smidge of an alterior motive. Basically I’ve been thinking about contact lenses for a little while, not for cosmetic reasons at all, but mainly because my ears have decided they don’t like my glasses and have come up in nasty little sores, also because I can’t wear my glasses playing football I tend to get hit in the face by the ball quite a lot..so today I had to go back for my consultation, and fit and trial 5 pairs of lenses…
11:00: Made it through the labyrinth that is the multi storey car park and I’ve arrived at my destination, lucky me forgot that Thursday is pension / pensioner shopping day…and town is full of doddery old people just stopping in front of me, when they dimly recognise someone who they once said hello to at the local post office 30 years ago….ah bless em…still I’m on time so I don’t care too much.
11:30: Ok been here 30 minutes (Clue’s in the company name…Aversion Express) should have guessed the name is ironic, cuh stupid me eh ?
11:40: Finally get to go in to the examination room where the same South African Optician proceeds to prod my eyeball and squirt some type of fluorine in my eyes. That all done he gets a pair of contact lenses and tries to fit them to my eyes, which are having none of it…”Try not to blink” he advises…hmmm..I wasn’t trying to blink so the chances of me trying not to blink are fairly slim, given that he’s got hold of my eyelid I’m not of a mind to tell him that blinking isn’t something you think about doing…it’s just something that happens….especially when someone is trying to stick foreign bodies in your eyeballs….Finally they’re fitted and it’s really weird…I can like see without glasses.
12:00: He’s wobbling on about the different sorts of lenses I can buy daily or monthly basically seem to be the options..but he’s only recommending daily’s because…they’re more expensive (big shock there)…he didn’t actually say that he said he thought they’d be better to start with but I know what he meant !!! “Right then” he announces, I’ll just go and see if there’s someone who can “teach” me how to put the lenses in and take them out again…should be fun. He’s gone for about 5 minutes then comes back and asks if It’s possible I can come back a little later on today…hmm…I think for a bout a millisecond and reply “sorry no, I can’t”, “how about tomorrow”, slightly confused I agree to go back at 11am tomorrow…kind of well planned out these people…I think they have shares in the car park since, with tomorrow’s appointment it’ll have cost me £6 in parking….hmmmm…..
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Back to work and I have to break the news to Mary….luckily she’s feeling friendly (which she usually is to be fair) and says that it’s fine…apparently though I owe her “presents” whatever that means…..
14:30: Not much to report now…I’m a bit deflated since I wanted to get everything sorted today…Brenty’s off now, because apparently (though no one can confirm it) he was in at 6am “ensuring” all the servers were up and working following last night’s power failure….hmmm..sounds like an excuse to leave early to me, but hey what do I care, good look to him….
15:30: Nothin’ much doing now…
17:00: Time to bloody go home…it’s been a frustrating day one way and another, so home to some good old fashioned home cooking, some kids screaming at each other, a double bill Eastenders wahay…life couldn’t get any better…
19:00: I’m getting a bit peeved…since there seems to be a bit of a sway away from our New Years Eve party. It might be that it’s only mid November and no one wants to think about New Year just yet or it might be that no one wants to come, despite them all saying how good it was last year and how we just simply had to do it all again this…mind you I remember having the same response last year, except people who said that they’d come are now saying that all of a sudden they can’t, it’s not like they were doing me a favour for Christ sake, but I do have costs to cover and if there aren’t going to be enough takers then we’ll have to cancel before we pay for the hall outright, and that would be really really annoying, for two reasons, 1. because I bought £500 worth of disco equipment and 2. because we’ll be stuck at home again, wishing away the hours until it’s midnight, so we can all go to bed..and how sad would that be…. Time to start pressing people for definitive answers I think…
Friday 18th November 2005
“oh yeah it’s really easy isn’t….not….” Lo all well here we go again…Not only have my attempt at getting some contact lenses finally come to fruition…and it only cost me £6 to park and three days to do it…but I have to go again to get “signed off” Signed up more like by the sounds of it….
08:30: Brenty was in bright and early again today (or so he says) so he’s going early too…oh yeah and it’s Friday…no coincidence there at all….
10:00: 1 hour to go until I go and get fitted up….
10:45: Keith our resident cheery bloke (the blissfully unaware) has expressed an interest in our New Years Eve party, so who knows we might have some more attendees…I’m not holding my breath at the moment though….
Just a quick mention Mandy is being very brave and going to the dentist….I don’t know why she worries but she does, so she’s spent a lovely sleepless night worrying about it…
11:10: Made it…bloody car park…why do all the doddery old f$ckers have to go to town the same time as me…I mean they’ve got arrows on the bloody floor, it’s not difficult to work out which way to go….god…for the second day running I’ve circumvented that by driving straight to the top of the car park…I can’t be bothered searching for a space…but it still took me 15 minutes to get parked…
Anyhow like I said I made it and as organised as ever I’m asked to go and sit on the orange waiting chairs…I don’t know what the chairs are waiting for, but I’m hoping It’s not an eye exam since there are loads of them…A little girl about 3 looks up at me and smiles..I smile back and she runs and hides in her mum’s lap…Well she didn’t have to smile at me…I wasn’t going to do anything mental like try and discuss the origins of the universe with her…15 minutes later I’m called through to have my “teaching” session…This is where they teach you to poke yourself in the eye and vainly try and insert a contact lens in each one, having only dropped them on the floor 3 times…the “teacher” says things like, “you know it’s really really easy once you get used to doing it” as she flicks her wrists and twiddles her fingers taking her lenses in and out each time…that really is showing off….finally we’re done and I can go to lunch…
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Back again…not much to report, Brenty and me moving servers from one room to another…
15:30: Brenty’s off he’s got a week off too lucky bugger…….
17:00: The weekend approaches so at least I’ll get a lie in …until 8am…cuh thank heaven for small mercies eh ?
