Machu Picchu

Its been a crazy week. Last weekend Kath was here, we had an amazing time together. Friday night we had a cuddly evening with Fish and chips from the new chips shop in Handforth. They were very tasty. Amusingly as we walked back with dinner, there was a gaggle of young girls outside my neighbours house having a party. We decided not to join them, and went inside to devour our dinner and enjoy a few beers cuddled up on the sofa.

On Saturday Kath and I headed into Manchester. We had a ticket for Afternoon tea at Cloud 23 bar in the Hilton Hotel. The views are pretty spectacular, and the tea and cake were very tasty. Some photos here After the tea we wondered into Manchester to do some shopping. I got myself some new trainers, and Kath got some things from Primark. We had dinner in Chiquito, then met up with Phil and Caroline for a drink.
We took the train back to Handforth and had a beer in the Railway before meeting up with Bruce for a drink in the renovated Bulls Head.
On Monday I had the day off and we went to visit Dunham Massey. A National trust property, we walked around the grounds. In an effort to find a place to park were I didn't have to pay £5 I managed to stupidly hurt my back. So I was slightly hobbling around. It was a nice walk though, the day was beautiful Spring had arrived, cherry blossoms have come out. We saw lots of deer running around. Heading into Altrincham for lunch at the Slug and Lettuce slightly spoiled by the young women on the next table who was having an argument with her dad. Moaning about the unfairness of the world. I resisted the temptation to slap her and have a rant about her!
Tuesday Kath went home, I was very sad to say goodbye, it seems to get harder everytime.
Wednesday I met up with my previous work colleagues for a sort of goodbye meal. It was a very pleasant evening at the bulls head.
Thursday I had a random message from Paul to tell me that he was coming up to see Ian. I met him Danny Jo Berger and Woller at TGI Friday at the Trafford Centre. Was really good to catch up with everyone. Having chat about what we have been upto. Jo bought Ian a wonderful book full of breasts which will make an interesting coffee table material. Wonder how Nicks' Char will think about that on the coffee table?

The Magic Treehouse

Started my new job last week, quite a different environment to the last place. From a tiny office sat with one guy to one corner of a huge open plan space. So Far I have met all my new colleagues, and busied myself learning about the project I will be working on. At this stage its all a bit overwhelming, hopefully in time I will get into the swing of things.

One of the biggest departures is that I am now dependant on an IT department. In the past I have always been an administrator able to set up things as I wanted. Now I am merely another sheep, I have to go cap in hand and ask the helpdesk to give me access to servers. Its quite strange, and more than a little frustrating. I guess it is the problem with large companies, they have to protect themselves from potentials rogues.

Adding a disk to VMWare Centos

First add the disk from the VMWare server manager

1. From the VMWare Server select the VM.
2. Choose "Add Hardware"
3. Create a new virtual disk.
4. Choose the capacity for the example 20GB.
5. Finish off

Next to get the Linux guest to recognize the disk. Assuming you already have one physical volume mounted using LVM the new disk should be /dev/sdb NB I had to reboot before the new disk was recognised. I wanted to add the new drive as an extra block of contiguous space.

1. fdisk /dev/sdb
2. n
3. primary partition
4. 1
5. accept the defaults for first and last cylinders 
6. w

Add the disk to the LVM Volume. The current disk is 20GB and I am adding an additional 20GB

1. vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sdb1
2. lvextend -l 40GB /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
3. resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

Mirage

Yesterday was notable for two things. A massive earthquake hit Japan, the 6th biggest recorded since records began. The pictures of the following Tsunami sweeping houses, cars, and roads away creeping across Japan was incredibly scary. My thoughts go out to the people affected by the quake.

Life in the UK goes on though and it was my last day at my current job. What a last day so many issues at one point I had to switch off my phone and email just to try and focus. I was so stressed trying to keep everyone happy. Its one of the main reasons I decided to leave. The company policy seemed to be if someone was good at their job just give them more and more work until they drown. Still I did not want to leave with work unfinished to I pressured on and I managed to fix the final two pieces of development about 4.30pm packed up my stuff and said goodbye to everyone.

Monday morning I start off at Close Asset Management I am finding it pretty scary starting a new job after so many years working for my current company. I just hope that I am able to do a good job for them and improve my career.

Ready to start

I spent most of the weekend fixing computers, first for Charlotte then Alison. Al's pc was particularly bad lots of viruses and a lot of missing data. I used NTFS undelete to restore her music collection.

Last night I went out with Nick, Ian and Danny. Heading to the Governors house in Cheadle Hulme. Hadn't seen him for ages. It was a very funny evening, as usual blokes spent in light hearted banter.

We arrived at the bar and while I was queuing for a drink whom should appear but Hannah Fairhurst. We had a good catch up, she is getting married in only a few weeks. It seems like another lifetime when I used to hang around with them.

Ian told me about his business partners plan for a Nuclear powered cruise ship. Personally don't think it is much of a goer, a reactor might be cheap to run but would cost millions to buy, not to mention the paperwork required!

Danny made us laugh unintentionally with he stories about trying to get a test drive of a BMW. The moral of the story for me was don't kid a kidda ;)

Something strange happened on the way home, the Police pulled us over. Nick was sober so all was OK. I was last pulled over when I was a teenager!

I got home made a drunken phone call to Kath, then watched an episode of the killing. Its the first crime drama that has really gripped me in ages. The whole series is the investigation of one murder. The effects of the crime on the varies protagonists including the family friends and suspects is excellently played out.

Today I finished offf Als pc and handed it to Ian, then had an incredibly lazy day. Basically chilled out with Cocoa watching TV and reading Time. At some point in the afternoon the doorbell rang. It was neighbours kids rang my bell asking if I knew how dirty my cars was and whether I would like them to clean it. I must admit I was slightly peeved but it is very dirty. Keeping the car clean hasnt been high on my agenda. Anyway given that Cocoa had just thrown up on the floor I gave it a pass. Hope I'm not regarded as a terrible reclusive neighbour. Sometimes I think I am the wrong demographic to live in this neighbourhood. There are a lot of older people who spend a lot of time on their gardens.