Phil's Birthday do + one week

Bit late this post I've started to compose it on no les than three occasions but due to problems with internet, sleep, and work it never got written, until now!
Last Friday night I, Bruce + Nina, Nick & Bec's and Joe + Holly went to Casa Tapas to celebrate primarily Phil's 26th birthday (though we were also celebrating for Nick on the 31st and Bruce's coming up on the 4th).
Tapas is great especially with beer, lots of beer :) The mood was good we all eat drank and chatted whilst course after course of tapas (and jugs of beer) were delivered to our table.
After the meal we decamped to the Slug and Lettuce for more drinks (I went to Scotch Phil Bourbon) on closing time Phil and I went off into Manchester on the number 42 bus leaving the rest to get an early night. In a kind of blast from he past was drunkenly headed to Deansgate locks for further alcohol consumption we moved onto double vodka and oranges oh dear. The rest was a blur loud music downstairs and too crowded upstairs more and more drinks.
I felt terrible Saturday spent the entire day nursing my hangover, still felt pretty tired Sunday too, but it had been a good time, pity I forgot my camera would have been some ace photos.
Not much happened in the week, saw Nick and Bec's Tuesday had a few drinks watched Nick squirm while Becky talked about children's names (she really knows how to wind him up). Went to the Gym last night it was 29C according to the exercise bikes very hot felt like a sauna in the main room I think I should have complained, spoke to Martin (who has buggered off to the download festival) and he has suspended his membership until the autumn to work on his house and Charlotte ;)

Programmers Fight Club

Phil just sent me a link to this I think I can understand the need for it after a few minutes talking to the lusers.

I see wires

Some days are just frustrating, no matter what you do its wrong today I had promised Russell I would go round and look at putting in some cables to the rooms in his new (parents) bed and breakfast.
What a nightmare, after initial examination the building is an old cottage which has been extended and changed internally several times, so there are all sorts of voids and road blocks in the way of laying cables. Both I and Bruce have been telling Russ for ages just to use wireless and to some extent he agreed but was still adamant certain areas of the house needed wires so we spend ages trying to find a way to squeeze the cable through only to find it was nigh impossible without ripping half the bathroom out.
So in the end we left having acheieved very little for a tiring days work :S

Lan gaming, late night chats and hangovers

Yesterday was terminal tournaments 9 the most popular so far with 16 people present, it went pretty well except for failures with steam. I really wonder why Valve make it so hard to run events off line it just seems like they went totally overboard piracy is a problem but must we all suffer? Had a few new people turn up which is great and generally I think people had a good time.

After the lan I went round to see Ian, Faye is on Holiday so we were able to have a good chat and a few drinks, Nick and Becky were there, she had been out drinking with Nikkie. Nikkie has split up from her long term boyfriend Neil so she and Becs had been drinking and setting the world to rights, I dont think I have ever seen Becky so drunk before. She was on form embarrasing Nick talkign aboutm marrage, and other things. I did take a rather sick pleasure in watching him squirm me bad!

We watched 3 kings together and drank chatting about Frahas birthday which Ina had done providing the bar for her but apparently a load of people started causing trouble so much so the party was stopped early, not a good scene for a memorable birthday. Once the film was over Nick took Becky to bed, and Ian and I stayed up chatting and drinking, we had all the beer than went onto Jonny Walker great stuff. I cant even remeber what we were sayng but by the time i set off home it was getting light.

Today I feel like ive been run over by a train my room is a top, my server imaking horrible noises think it need replacing more money sigh.

Failed Upgrades / Server Failures and other ways to ruin a week

Liz (yes we still talk dispite my best efforts to put her off) wondered why I had stopped blogging, well I havent quiet I have just been very busy. Unfortunatly what I havent been busy with is exicintg life changing things instead I have been working on the things for work.
Sunday night went out for a few drinks felt tired all day Monday but managed to get some decent work done on the discount product, if I could just get the APR correct it would be nearly there.

Monday my server went down again they had a problem with a poweroutage at the server room. It is a little galling my once supurb uptime graph has been decimated by failures out of my control. Oh well.

Wednesday a simple software rollout went bad because testing hadnt been correctly carried out this means more flak for us it couldnt come at a worse time. I am working with my collegue Mike on some new projects visual studio 2005 is really good though I am nowhere near upto Mikes level quiet yet, I think Ill get there eventually though.

I got the one day Spanish guide from the independant I have been trying to learn but I am rubbish at languages.

Last night I went out for a few drinks with Ian Dan Phil Bruce and Nina, we went to the John Millington it was really nice to see Ian its been a while, Danny just kept labouring on about his new car (im going to write an entire blog on that sometime).

Spoke to Lulu today she has a rather ironic post on her blog about losing touch with people and their reactions, at first I felt sad because I konw how the other guy felt then I thought well I guess people make all sort of assumptions about each other all the time, is it fair to prejugde and assume or do you have to in order to get on with you life, I just dont know. Im rambling must be time for bed.

Night.

Weird Requests

Today had a nightmare scenario at work, firstly yesterday Phil Myself Paul Jo Pippa and Holly went for lunch. We had a great time, apart from the dodgy eyed barmaid ripping me off. Basically we all had a nice meal a chat and that was great then Paul and Pippa left for Leamington, and Jo and Holly left ot go shed shopping. So Phil and I stayed for a few pints then some more pints then some more Opps I ended up being so pissed somehw I was chatting incoherently to Nick and becky its all a bit of a blur.
So anyway I am sat at work feeling totally lousey just about able to focus on the lastest project stuff, when I am quiet literally asked out of the blue to give out copies of our source code so the IS manager can assess how it works. Now given this is the guts of our system and tool Andrew Ian and Mike months to write there was no way I could just give it to him, but because I am only a lowly trainee I had to contact my superiours and make them aware, in case he figures out how to print it himself. I dont know whether he really needs to see it or whether he has deicided to hand it over to our competitors either way my boss thought he was out of order for even asking.
I dont know what will happen next

Radiohead

Last night Paul, Phil myself and Pauls Girlfriend Pippa went to see Radiohead at the Blackpool Empress Ballroom, it was a spectacular gig the band were on perfect form totally together and really into the music. I especially loved Thom dancing like a loon to idioteque and playing with the camera whilst on the piano.
Stand out tunes included the excellent nude aka Big Ideas dont get any, Street Spirit (my personal favourite) the new song were sounding good except for one instrumental one which didnt really seem to do anything. They played a lot of Kid A, and several songs off The Bends and OK Computer Concluding the show with Paranoid Android.
As usual for a Radiohead show the sound stage setup was phenomenal the quality of the audio was brilliant
Phil and I managed to get to four rows from the front it was unbelievable dancing like a maniac only a few feet from the band. The crowd were pretty wild not quiet as dangerous as the one at the Streets but I was battered around and had at least one beverage poured over me, despite all that its was a great gig the music was unbelievable.

Setlist: (from atease coulnt quiet remember myself)
01 Everything In Its Right Place
02 The National Anthem
03 2+2=5
04 15 Step
05 Morning Bell
06 Pyramid Song
07 Go Slowly
08 Bangers N Mash
09 Dollars And Cents
10 How To Disappear Completely
11 Nude
12 Karma Police
13 You And Whose Army?
14 Airbag
15 Spooks
16 Idioteque
17 There There

Encore 1:
18 Just
19 Four Minute Warning
20 The Bends
21 Street Spirit

Encore 2:
22 I Want None Of This
23 Paranoid Android

Two Films That Changed My Life

I was going to title this piece "the long slow death of my blog", but I dont want to kill it just yet. You might have noticed the number of posts has been steadily declining so some time, this is in part due to the fact ive been fairly busy but also with less feedback and less interesting to write about I feel that everything I have to say has been said elsewhere. I have also somewhat drifted apart from Lulu to a point where she is no longer an influence on making me want to write. Pity as I received lonely planet Shanghai travel guide this morning.

Tonight I watched two mega films both older the first was good will hunting somehow I never saw this when it came out I am a bit sad really its an excellent movie Robin Williams excels as a jaded psychologist and Matt Damon plays being a genius well. I think it spoke to me because I have some of the same attitudes as Damons character (not that I am a genius sadly) but I do always see plenty of obstacles which stop me from choosing certain paths in life.

The second film was the seventh seal a black and white Swedish film about death and faith, the whole film works on so many levels I dont want to discuss here. The whole film is a metaphor for the struggle between good and evil and between belief in god and the emptiness of doubt. Its an excellent film well worth a watch despite the foreign language and black and white.

Myth

More Myth fun this time it was Phils turn to try and build a box. Using Fedora Core 5 and with the help of myself (and an excellent internet guide)

This was my first chance to use Fedora Core 5 and I must say im impresed, it was faster prettier more simple to use and had better tools (check out the new lvm tool it actually works though still dosnt let you create filesystems other than ext2/3).

It took three nights to perfect one to install Fedora, one to install Myth and run mythfilldatabase, this took a long long time! Finally we got an output just need to sort out changing the channel on SKY which apparently isnt too hard with an IR emitter and job is a gooden!

The Streets

Tonight Bruce and myself went to see the streets at the Apollo Manchester. I quiet like the Streets though their new material is a bit more of the same the original album was great as was most of the second.
The Apollo is always a good venue I much prefer it to the likes of the MEN so I was looking forward to a great gig. The supporting act was some rapper he was ok got the crowd worked up made a rap about kazza being bizarre and wrong but I dont think ill be downloading or buying his album!

There was a long pause for the streets to set up, to be fair they had an amazing stage setup with really cool lighting lots of led animations and visual tricks.

Mike Skinner was either drunk or high he seemed to love the audience applause but couldnt remember the words to any of he songs to start with and could bearly string together a song, Leon was all too eager to carry the show and was really annoying me fortunately after drinking a couple of mugs of some liquid (it was in a tea cup but I dread to think what is was) his voiced picked up and doing some of the crowd pleasers like 'could well be in' and 'blinded by the lights' his voice improved and crowd went wild. To be fair to him once he warmed up he was great at stirring the crowd a little too much as some people started throwing beer about and Bruce and I took a direct hit.

All in all a decent night entertainment some excellent songs I wish I could have seen him a little more sober / less horse though.

---

Jon sent me an excellent funny site link of some Manchester rappers ;-) www.digitaltoast.co.uk/2006/03/27/kersal-massive/ I nearly died laughing after hearing the little one sing 'got on the bus wiv ma day-sa-va!'

Coal + Water = BADNESS!

Dispite all the work which had already been done on the house on corner of the living room the damp problem was refusing to shift we couldnt work out why. So the builder Paul proped the wall on arcos and a steel bar so he could take out some bricks. What we found was rather amusing, pre 1960 the house was modeled in a different way the bit underneath the stairs was a coal store, thought its not been used as that since then the remaining dust mixed with moisture to produce sulpuric acid which has been turning the bricks into sponge. You can see the discolouration of the brick its black.
Ever the chemist my dad rushed out bought bicarbonate of soda and threw it on sure enough it fizzed and bublled neutralising the acid. 

Diggin it

Today I ache really really ache I feel like my back is sore all over, why you might ask should I feel this way on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Manchester?

With he lan being cancelled Jo Bergers asked us to help him dig up his garden, I assumed rather naïvely this meant a little digging of topsoil and general gardening however it turned into a mammoth all day digging session removing about 9 tons of soil from his "garden". To put it into context Jo lives in a small Victorian terraced house in Levenshulme, his back garden was a little patch of grass it looked ugly and as he dosnt have a shed he dosnt want a lawn mower. Also the grass are was raised about 1.5 feet from the ground surrounded by a little wall.

A few things were far from optimal about the job the first skip was so small we filled it in an hour and a half (it holds 3 tons thats a quiet a bit of earth) the wheelbarrow was flimsy and started to fall to bits under the heavy load. To make matters worse a previous occupant or builder had modernised it but simply buried a lot of rubbish in the garden including the old window frames which had been burned and a whole load of bricks and rubble.
In all we worked from 11 - 5 with a few breaks in total we shifted a small skips worth (3-tons) and nearly filled a larger skip in total I think about 7-8 tons of soil. It was hard going fortunately Jos neighbour lent us a decent wheelbarrow.

The rewards was a curry and beer :-D Ian managed to avoid the hard work and turn up for beer a nice move think Ill try that next time. Hopefully the exertion makes up for the curry beer and breakfast at Jos thanks to drinking too much.

Leamington Spa

Just got back after spending a few days with Paul in Leamington Spa the origonal plan had been to go to London but things changed. Paul has quiet a nice little flat in Leamington since I was there last he has converted the spare room into a recording studio thouhg I think he spends more time on Myspace than recording. Though he did play me a few of his new songs which I must say I enjoyed. I also went with him to his dads studio complete with the sickest apple computer I was in my element playing with it chilling out listening to some of Pauls tracks. His dad is really easy going so it was quiet a chilled out afternoon.

Paul introduced me to magners an Irish cider drunk with ice, its pretty refreshing but I dont recomment drinking large volumes as Paul and I did. Howevr it you do choose to drink a lot there comes a pint when you can tolerate no more, I recomment fosters as the beverage of choice at this point.

During the time I was there he was sorting out some things currently he has a few options on the table for getting a recording deal, I really hope things work out for him.

It had a really good time chilling out listening to music and listening to stories from New York, its been too long since I last saw him. Shame I still havent met Pippa though. Paul seemed bored with Leamington and kept extoiling the virtues of London to me. Havent been to London serveral times I still fail to see why its so great, last time I was there sat on the tube surrounded by people all talking in different forign langagues I felt really weird, it was almost like being on the Hungarian underground. I also found London dirty busy and the people generally rude and unhelpful. I know Manchester isnt great but where I live is nice and given I dont lead the artistic lifestyle that enables me to sleep in late go out to bars and clubs everynight I can live without London for the time being anyway.

WTF

After a recent crash of one of the partner systems I receved a very very biarrare email explaining what went wrong

The problem occurs when a configuration diverges and sets common workflow pipe elements in different parallel flows, a situation can occur where the convergent activity fails to evaluate correctly. When this happens an overlay cache copy of the workflow pipe remains in the convergence cache, which ultimately builds up to a memory shortage. Because convergence is a new feature some of the existing configuration is causing some unexpected results.
Our suggestion to overcome this issue is to provide a timeout for the convergence cache to do a controlled garbage collection.

Clear as mud then! I think he is trying to say there is a timing issue when memory is short but I really cant say for sure.

Lan cancelled :-(

I spend most of today rebuilding reinstalling and copying data back onto my pc. I always forget how long its takes all the little utilities and programs I need.

On the plus side games like Counter strike are running really well. Its certainly a heck of a lot faster than my old XP2400 and the 7600 whilst cheap seems a perfectly capable graphics card. Unfortunatly howevr Martin, David and Kev have dropped out of the lan with Bruce having to go to a stag do it means there simply wont be enough people to make running a lan viable.

Jon Cotton begame the latest customer for the server, I think he will take me into the break even stage only a couple more and I might be able to start affording to expand and pay for a new server :-D He is working on sme interesting sites I hope to leanr some PHP and have a go at doing some customisation of them it could be a potencial source of revenue in a not too distant future hopefully.

This evening I went round to Philip's house with Bruce we coudlnt get my laptop to output to his tv so we ended up watching Bruces favorite film who dares wins. Its wasnt as bad as I feared especially after a few beers.

New PC

Over the last couple of weeks I have had problem after problem with my PC. I tried replacing the hard disks only for the motherboard fan to fail causing everything to overheat. I finally reached the end I needed to work on something in windows and I couldn't get my PC to stay on for more that 5 minutes so I have finally bitten the bullet and upgraded.

Scan were doing an offer for 2ghz processor motherboard and 1gb or ram for £209 which seems a pretty good deal and my dad was kind enough to go down and get it whilst I was at work. So I am now the proud owner of a 64bit computer, kind of strange really going back I used to run a 64bit Sun ultra 5 a few years ago its takes years for the x86 world to catch up. Once I get Windows running Ill be interested to find out how well Linux runs :-)

Work was pretty good today thanks to Easter weekend everyone was chilled out looking forward to a nice long weekend or in fact a week off for me I cant wait. I have arrange to go and see my friend Paul for a few days. I even went for a pint after work with the IT crowd a rare treat indeed.

Its Just Computers

I was woken up this morning way too early by a phone call from David, due to my lack hangover from the comedy night it took me a long time to work out who in the heck I was talking too, eventually the penny dropped. David is the father of the ex owner of Woodford post office he occasionally calls on me to fix up his pc, this time he was having issues with security updates and wanted some help. As I try and never turn down work despite the fact my own computer is in bits spread across my room and I have a raging cold I offered to sort it out and did only took and hour.

This evening went out to see Sandbox at the academy and was chatting to Emily about her job in London and life with a mouse (thats a whole other blog entirely). She asked me what I had been upto and nothing much really sprang to mind, despite the fact I feel like every minute is filled with something or other I dont seem to have done anything worth talking about in years (unless your the sort of person interested in my chatting about the Samba server I configured as a windows PDC today?) Somehow although each day seems to drag an eternity the weeks and months seem to fly by at a rapid rate. Before I know it I have spoke to people for weeks and our lives have moved that bit further apart. I really need to start making more of an effort to keep in touch with people.

Anyway I thought Sandbox were really good though Andy didnt seem too pleased I guess he is just being perfectionist about the whole thing. The roadhouse seem to have put in a new mega powerful PA system it was nearly blowing my ears out and the American band was really rather dull but I enjoyed myself.

Cube World

I spent virtually the entire day trying to get my dads pc rebuilt with XP after replacing his hard disk in between loaders going back to look at my PC which seems to not want to play ball regardless of what I do. My so called quiet case well isnt, its not helped by the fact that one of the fans is going whining bearings sounds very knarly.

My room is a complete tip bits of computer spread all over the place and my mac has decided to go weird key chain no longer works all the passwords have disappeared and my mail store is corrupt (fortunately most of my email is on imap).

Tonight went to the comedy night, it wasnt as well attended as the last couple, Martin got the dates mixed up and when I texted him to ask if he were coming he replied yes, I then texted him in the first act to which he replied shit I thought you meant next week. It had some great comics the scouse compare was on top form taking the mick out of everyone Bruce got well attacked as did Becky.

Phil got back just before the comedy night and turned up for about an hour until jet lag got the better of him. Sounded like he had an ace time in Japan, he brought back some pretty cool toys for Bruce and myself these little cube toys which you can plug together and little stick men interact. I was well impressed with the animations going to take them into work for my desk.

Lulus having to work this weekend it only seem five minutes since we were chatting on skype but its already a week ago, I hope it wasnt too bad for her, she sounded stressed out last time we spoke. A little like I was feeling a month ago, my advice is try not to take it too seriously and make sure you arent taken for granted, I try and live by that myself, its not always easy though.

Recommendation of the week

Its a rainy dull Thursday evening and I am feeling especially tired, had an arguement with my dad before, I see him make all the same mistakes again and in a way it highlights the bad things in my own life the feelings of underachievement. I just wish I could do something, but in the end I can only help myself I cant make him buck his ideas up.

In one of lifes subtle ironys way this arguement was kind of given a new slant by the excellent film I watched this evening called Goodbye Lenin. Ostensibly the film is about the end of the communist era in East Germany but it plays out in a beautiful way. After being deserted by his father as a child Alex<'>s mother devotes her life to the socialist ideal. Years later in 1990 after a shock Alex mother if in a coma during the fall of the wall, when she awakes afraid that the shock the new capitalist era will be the death of her Alex maintinas the socialist republic or at least a idealist bubble of it. The direction is excellent though you can believe Alex not only need to hold onto the past for his mother but also its becomes imperative for Alex to hold onto the past for himself the lie becomes snowballs and becomes the truth.

Vote of Confidence

Martin Flower came into work today, he apologised for the lack of communications and set a loads of issues straight which was really good of him nd it certainly made me feel a heck of a lot better. I even got praise from people whom always gave me the impression they thought I was totally useless. Given the recent working environment I had really started to question whether I was really achieveing anything at all so sometimes its really great just to be told yeah your not useless in fact your doing a really great job. Hopefully I might either be able to scam a pay rise or get some training / benifit in return for my hard work we will see after the annual review at the end of the month.

This evening I went round to Bergers he bought himself a new sound card which has better midi support and he wanted me to fit it. He also told me about his latest scheme to buy and run a club, in theory I can see it could be great but somehow it seems a little pie in the sky the sorts of investment he was alking about seem rather extream for a first venture.

Also caught up with Bruce his evening he seemed in fine form dispite the problems he has had working weekends to finish a building only to find only 6 of the planned 90 staff start there this week. I think I would have been a little be more upset with the revalation.

Opps

Today was a bad bad day at work, after a very stressful period working on the workflow project the end was finally in sight the last major update was to go live today. It did, I was also asked to put some work of Mikes live, it didnt work :S Basically there was another older mod hiding in the code and and it went live everything fail the call centre was titups oh dear. To be honest recently I have really been pushed to the limit by the demands on my time and abilities I am suppose to be a trainee not in charge of a site the size of Freedom, I dont think I have felt so pressureed before its not a good feeling. Martin is apparently going to be in tommorrow so hopfully I can vent some of my frustration.

This evening I went round to Martin Gs house to play with Myth, finally got to grips with LVM, managed to make the Nvidia card do TV output and even got the remote control working. I think I understand a lot of things better now, hopefully some time in the future I will put some sort of guide or link to all the various guides we hav used in getting it all working.

I just dont know what to do with myself

Its Monday Phils on holiday Bruce is working, my pc is dead and I am bored, the front room is still a mess so I can't watch any tv.
Ended up looking into something my dad put together ages ago for the gear calculation system.

arghh Hard disk pop!

Oh dear tonight the hard disk in my pcs expired, its about 3 /4 years old now so it wasn't too much of a surprise. I had been doing some work on Glenfern's website when a smart warning popped up advising me to that the disk was about to fail and that I should backup immediately, so I opened nero to do the back when clunk disk gone bsod :-S Oh well it wasnt that long since my last backup its not too much of a disaster. Ive got two new disks on order on £60 for 250gb sata II with 6mb of cache, I aslo decided that it was time to downsize my case, having a pc thats so big is ok except going back and foward to lan parties is a big of a pain carting it around, so I decided to get myself an Antec 180 which apparently is very quiet as well as looking rather nice. Unfortunatly thanks to this disk crash and the isa deadline I am now back to square one saving up for a new monitor so Ill be sticking witht he 17" IIyama for a while.

Murial's Wedding

I spent this evening trying to bodge my dads web-site into shape he had the leaflet guy design it and it looks alright but is its a real mess behind the scenes. My dad wants it to work now so I simply changed the things he wanted. If only I were good at the visual design as well as code I could make a killing.

Two things tonight really reminded me of being in Australia particularly the month spent in Mission Beach Firstly I watched Murial's Wedding my latest movie from Love Film. It is an an excellent film of Murial's voyage of self discover from lonely Abba obsessed singleton dreaming of her wedding day. Trapped in a drab small Australian town of Porpoise Spit. Along the way she find real friendship, discovers new depths in her life and has some interesting adventures. The film totally reminded me of a girl I met in the backpackers, like the Murial she was from Perth and was a huge Muriel's Wedding fan. She had split up with her boyfriend and headed off traveling round Australia. We got on really well I quiet fancied her if truth be told but unfortunately she had to move on and Phil and I were stuck waiting for Phil's van to be repaired.
The was one other thing one night I was making great progress we were really getting on well then Phil came over e had been speaking to his mum and found out his dog had died and was very upset, it kind of destroyed the mood and I ended up having to console him.

The next trip down memory lane was courtesy of Aerdna a random ICQ user from Vienna. She reminded me of a couple I met in Mission Beach, Christian and Isabelle. They were two of the nicest people I have ever met, I did try to keep in touch for a while but it is always difficult. They were constant companions at the lodge but also the cause of a rather dark night. We were all having drinks cocktails I think when two new people joined us, they were properly red neck Aussies and were pretty brash and arrogant. When they found out where Christian was from they took him to one side to show him their tattoos. They were neo Nazis with Swastikas on their arms proud to show him because Austria had recently elected a right wing leader...

Well enough of my reminiscing, I need to get back out there somehow, I ever had a quick look at property in Budapest today, it's the *new* growth area. To be honest I was impressed I can see there is room for growth but by the same token room for collapse I think it's a little risky considering my capital resources are low at the moment

Living Room Update

The living room is progressing, all the old wood has been removed as has the debris and some of the new concrete has been laid.
The first picture is of Nick standing having a look its been the first time he has seen the job he was very interested if only for his own benifit :-)




Nick myself and Becs went for a drink in the Thieves neck tonight its was a pleasant if brief treat after an otherwise difficult day. Becs was very amused to find out that I had used internet dating in the past. I felt pretty embarrassed to be honest, oh well. Wonder how Phil is enjoying Japan, hope he is having a great time out there. I need a holiday to be honest wish I was out there in a way though I dont think I could stomach the ritual side. I have been thinking about going to see Lulu in China but I am worried about going to somewhere so far remove from my own culture on my own effectively. I know it stupid to be afraid of the unknown, I have been other far away places, but then I was always travelling with someone not on my own, hopefully I can gather the courage and organise things soon.

Today, I sort-out out my isa, used put in the last of this years allowance before the 4th of April, it was quiet hard putting £1000 away it could have bought me a 24-inch widescreen high definition widescreen monitor like Phil and Bruce have but then I also want to buy a house so I have to make choices buy electronics or save up a deposit.

I Hate Touts / Living Room Update

After missing out getting hold of Radiohead tickets yesterday I thought I would try and get some from ebay, well surprise surpise there were loads for sale, what a joke people totally exploiting the ticket system grr they make me so angry but unfortunatly there isnt a lot I can do, I really want to see them and it look like it means either going to another country or buying off the black market which is totally against my principles sigh.

I spent today doing well not a lot really catching up on life reading the paper, tiding my room going for a run and cleaning out the fish. I really need to catch up with some stuff my website is a shambols outdated and unfinished I really need to fix it up a bit. I did manage to add some new photo sets to the ejected brass galleries :-D

Ive got a bit of a living room update, the builder has ripped about half the room out including digging out the crap top clay next on top of which is going a visquine layer then two inches of site concrete that should stop the damp rising. He has left a drain hole in place to allow any water on the conrete to drain out into the ground.


When thats done he is going to repair the brickwork including the unsafe fireplace! It was never properly sealed and so hot ash has been escaping there was a pile of the stuff under the floor its a wonder the house didnt set on fire apparently :-S Ill keep you updated with the progress hopfully by next week I might have a bit o the house back.

Mothers Day Curry!

Tommorrow is mothers day, and whilst its traditional to buy flowers and take mums out for a meal then we decided it would be more fun to go out for a meal tonight. Given the house is in bits its not really great for making meals at the moment. Indian food might not seem like the obviouse choice however mum suggested it so off we went to the La Quila II in Handforth our favorite Asian resturant. It was actually very busy we didnt think we could get a table but they managed to squeeze us in which was really nice. I had a chicken tika sizzler with jalfrezi sauce mmm so tasty.

After the meal I dropped my parents off at home and ran round to Bruces origonally we planned to go meet up with Paul and co in Wilmslow but they decied to mooch to Manchester we didnt really fancy that. I was pretty annoyed at Danny he was being a complete twat on the phone, anyhow instead we ended up at the Hesketh. It was a pleasent evening Nina seemed in a good mood I had recovered from my hangover after th pub we watched the latest lost and I went home for a sleep. The clocks changed in the night so an hour went missing somewhere.

Wasted Saturday morning

Went out with work last night, initcially we wet bowling at which well I was ok not great no the worst so that was ok. I think over two games my score was 206 pretty rubbish but better than some.

Then I went on with some of the IT crowd to didsbury I dont really know them that well I got pretty drunk not exactly sure what I said to the finance director... Notable for meeting up with a guy from school Chris Pagan also saw Big Col and Gilly in the Picture and Piano.

Living room hell!

For a while there has been a little bit of a problem in our lounge, the floorboards near the window have been a bit spongy, we thought that the joist migh have aged, unfortunatly it turned out to be a lot worse than that.
When I got home the first thing that hit me was the smell, once the floor was lifted the smell of rotton wood was very strong. The whole floor needed replacing there was wet and some patches of dry rot. There was also signs of plant growth under the floor!!!





Oh dear, it going to mean a weeks worth of disruption not just in the lounge but also the rest of the house as the contents of the lounge are now spread across the rest of the house.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

There are now several people who depend on my server for email including Ian Bruce and Nick they have all been complaining about the amount of spam mail reiceved so I finally decided to bit the bullet and have found a great guide which I followed and as of now all mail is parsed by spamassasin and clamav.

Hopefully it should start to make an impact on spam, I aisde from the guide I also turned on a few extra option to make spamassasin more effective, I installed razor an online spam database

Razor

To install razor
apt-get install razor

You need to register by running
razor-client [creates symbolic links]
razor-admin --create [creates the razor home]
razor-admin --register [registers an account]

Baysian Filtering

To add baysian filtering to spamassasin

Create a directory
mkdir /var/spool/spamassassin/bayes
it need to be world writable so
chmod 666 /var/spool/spamassassin/bayes
Finally add the following to /etc/spamassasin/local.cf
bayes_path /var/spool/spamassassin/bayes
bayes_file_mode 0666

Guinness Hats Sandbox and Sisters I never had

It is Saturday night I am tired but happy so far its a its been a great weekend.

Friday night was the end of a very long and painful week of work all I wanted to do was go out and celebrate it being over. Fortunately this coincided with St Patrick's day so and Endo and his girlfriend Jo wanted to see some of Wilmslow. I thought it might be fun to go to the hat pub :) It had changed a bit since I was last in with Ali Nick and Mike but was still a fun pub.

Out were myself Martin, Jo Endo, Bruce, Nina and Phil we drank Guinness chatted about all sorts well mainly the usual rubbish. I had a good chat with Jo she was very interesting company, I can see why Endo is so smitten. I generally got very drunk chatted to everyone but it was all good humoured :-D Also wore a stupid Guinness hat all evening oh I love paddies day.

Today, first thing a hung over Phil and I went off to Cheshire Oaks designer outlet to shop, I got a few things some new running shoes and some t-shirts I was trying to find jeans but there wasn't anything I liked in my size.

From their straight to this months manlug Bruce Martin and myself were supposed to be going but thanks to road works Bruce and Martin didn't make it. The meeting was about Myth TV and we learned some cool stuff about how powerful it is, my favourite slide though was one that simply read ATI = bad Nvidia = good!

After a short break and some dinner it was off out to see sandbox at the Rampant Lion in Manchester. They were really good, I liked the new songs and Greg is a better guitarist than Righini. Though some of the rockier elements have gone, the sound was good. It was very loud though, my ears are ringing! I also had a chance to wish Emily a happy birthday hope she had a good one.

From Sandbox straight to Wilmslow to meet up with Ali Brook (really wishing by this point I had brought my camera out so many missed pictures). She was in usually great mood with her mates all have a drink. I could keep up to be honest had to bail out while they went off to Manchester all in all a good weekend so far though.

Sitemaps

I discovered google site maps whilst listing my dads website on Google https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?hl=en_GB you can add your sites for google to index, or you can down load and run googles sitemap generator that creates an xml files of your site indexing all the pages just in case the web crawler missed any it also shows you some sites stats google hold about your site all in all very cool :-)

Give and Take

I got very annoyed today at work, since the support contract was cut I have been working harder than ever before doing extra hours including two Sundays one of which was 14 hours long. I have also stayed late and or come in early on countless days but when I put in a holiday request I am told no becasue other people are away. Well they are but fuck knows what differene that makes they work in completly different areas of the business to me so its not like I answer the phone or do crystal reports.

To be honest I am so tired and with no end in site I just feel totally demoralised, I hate the disconnected aspect of my job feeling like an outsider to both companies, sometimes I just feel like packing my bags and taking off somewhere. Its not like I have any career path I am escencailly in a dead end.

Added to work stress dealing with Jos pc has been a total nightmare I have phoned up, email and check the website every day for over a week. Their customer service is appalling and though I now have replacement bits on order they have lost Jos windows licence *sigh*.

I also have another dialemma, I have promised Ali I would go out for her birthday this Saturday (this was a few weeks back) I forgto stupid me then Its also Emilys birthday and a sandbox gig, the gig is in Manchester and Ali is going out in Wilmslow arghh what to do what to do, both good friends both good times :-S

Rain Sand and Numbers

I am getting confused, felt over tired and slightly ill today, not helped by the stream of confusing conflicting things going on at work. Last night I had an interesting conversation with a Czech girl, kind of random really considering I had just been moving the Prague photos to the gallery the other day. We chatted about olives mainly but it was kind of interesting the first time in a while someone normal contacted me rather than the reams of weird Germans and Russians of late.

This Sunday is another go live I am not really looking forward to it after last time I just hope things go better. Mike will be around though I feel slightly upset I wasnt able to handel things without help I am still only at the beginning of learning. In time all things will happen. I hope.

Tonight I watched Sahara, it was erm ok passed the time a bit like the mummy, with pretentions to be indian jones. I didnt really feel like doing much I hopefully tomorrow ill feel well enough for a gym not been for a few days, I need to keep up with it I kind of feel like its starting to pa off a bit. If I can survive this month hopfully next I can buy ome new clothers show off my slightly trimmer more toned figure.

Hazy

Had a strange day today lot of things going on at work I am not party to, today I was sent out of the office whilst they had a annocement, all very clandestine. I felt like phoning my boss but chickened out and went for a walk round Wilmslow.

This evening I moved my dads webspace to mars as due to the trouble contacting Lee I am still unable to create new user account on the main server. Had a failure on the raid device I am not sure why but one of the mirrored disks fell out of the array. Fortunalty now I have sorted out email I recieved the warning message

cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 sda5[0] sdb5[1]
4883648 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 sda6[0] sdb6[1]
2931712 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md3 : active raid1 sda8[0]
23438720 blocks [2/1] [U_]

md0 : active raid1 sdb8[2] sda1[0] sdb1[1]
272960 blocks [2/2] [UU]
Uh oh missiong the second disk on the most important volume home!!

A quick mdadm /dev/md3 -a /dev/sdb8
mdadm: hot added /dev/sdb8
mars:/etc/postfix# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 sda5[0] sdb5[1]
4883648 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 sda6[0] sdb6[1]
2931712 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md3 : active raid1 sdb8[2] sda8[0]
23438720 blocks [2/1] [U_]
[>....................] recovery = 1.0% (236544/23438720) finish=16.3min speed=23654K/sec
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
272960 blocks [2/2] [UU]

Hurrah at least it shows the array is fault tolerant, now all I need is to find a new dlt tape drive.

Tonight I put away Childish Things

Throughout my life such that it is I have alway tried to stnad up for what I believe in because if you dont well who will?
A long time ago I used to smoke and well now im a non believer it dosnt matter to me if people smoke or not but tonight I was out in the rectory with my friends who dont believe in such things, and someone sparked up nearby so I felt compelled to speak out. I hope I never give up never surrender and alway speak up no matter what thats what life is about to me carving out our own path but upholding our own moral code, it might not be the same as other peoples however thats not the point different views are allow encouraged even the point is if your believe in somthing you should be able to have your say no matter what.

Locked out

Today Bruce and I tried to get access to the colocated server held at the datacentre in Manchester in order to restart a failed service and do some maintaince I have been trying to contact Lee our provider for sometime but he is priving ellusive at best and evasive at worst.

A few days ago Ian remarked to me he was worried about the amount of spam he is recieving ever loyal to a customer I decided to have a go at improving things. Last night after sorting out the dead fan dead tape drive problems started working on Mars as a sandbox before takign it live onto alpha. Last night I added the free clamav which will virus check on e-mail relayed through mars.

I have been following the tutorial on the excellent debian administration site.

Had a couple of hiccops when setting up maildrop I kept getting the following error

status=deferred (temporary failure. Command output: /usr/bin/maildrop: Invalid home directory permissions - world writable. )

In /var/log/mail.log after much messing about I found that root can receive mail in this sort of scenario using another user as an alias for root and everything worked fine.

Next is to implment on alpha, then future work move the domain handling to a database that should make things a lot easier to handle than the text file structure it would also mean we could replicate the set up much faster.

Technology Hates me

Some days no matter how hard you try everything goes wrong, for example you come to the end of a long and tricky project at to be told the staekholders have changed their minds and want different outcomes.
Or worse the backup drive fails rather horrifically, you reboot, still failed the error is physical so take the option to remove the drive only when you boot up afterward the system just beeps at you. Well that was my day, I had to take the secondary server to bits eventually I found a littlle iny fan had failed and the system wouldnt boot properly without it :-S After much decontruction I filnally got to the bottom of it, I also took the opportunty to add clam av to the mail relay, just need to get some spam checking I have been recieveing a lot recently and Ina has been complaining too, so I guess I should do something.

I am a little drunk writing tis it didnt take much I havent been getting much slep recently, saw Claire for the 3 time this week I think I am handling it outwardsly but on the inside its hard I cant drop my feelings for her not matter how craply she treated me nor how long ago on an intellectual level I know its completely stupid and I have control of the feelings now but, it dosnt stop me feeling them. I guess I am just lonely its been so so long since I had a meaningful relationship, and with so many of my friend in them its like a double blow.

Finally recieved my copy of soviet kitsch today I ordered it weeks ago, so good to be able to listen to it without pops and crackles though. Damn its cold sat typing this there is snow and ice outside must be well below freezing.

Deep Freeze

Wow its gone so cold this week my snowing all day today it didnt really stick though. When I got out of the gym it was bitter -2c by my car's thermometer but it felt colder.
Watched Domino tonight it was well different than I expected certainly not as bad as I feared it passed the time on a cold winters evening. Basically Domino is a bounty hunter, the film starts with her in a prison cell, the recounts her life as a bounty hunter interspersed with the last few day events. A tangled web of personal lives, armour car robberies and the mob, its very long and winding but the ending played out way too fast. Personally my favorite character was Christopher Walking as the hollywood guy producing a reality tv show about the bounty hunters.
I can hardly believe its already march seems that time is flying by and yet I dont seem to be moving on, been doing a few things to get inspiration reading the Intellegent invesor at the moment I am only a third thrrough but I can already say its an excellent read and well worth it for any budding investor. Its taught me that at least a few of my deals are more speculation than investment, which isnt a bad thing in itself as long as its onl a part of my portfolio. Ill write some more of II when I have finished reading it, bu value investment all the way from here!

Delayed

Tonight Danny and I went to see the Delays at the academy 3, it was a pretty damn good gig. The supporting act captain were ok a kind of electro pop ensamble they had a couple of pretty good tunes.
In a kind of post modern irony there was a delay in them coming on stage, whilst the most thorough sound check I have every watched was carried out, it didnt stop things messing up on the last song though.
The Delays were fab, his voice is simply mesmerising to listen to, they also did the best recovery from technical failure ive heard since a broken guitar forced Radiohead to played Creep at South Park. My particular favorites were the solo job on bedroom scene and Nearer than heaven. On was a great crowd thumping tine and Valentine was amwsome as well.

Danny was good company for a change he seems a little more mellow though he still never lets me get a word in edgeways :P Seems is back with Lyn or he? I couldnt really tell what was going on to be honest I guess he enjoys the complexity, he kept gong on how g4reat the "physical side" was, whilst pushing the revolting mental images out it made me kind of jelious. Well not jelious in the sense I want what he has but more worried that everyone is settled but not me.

Whilst enjoying the evening emensly one thing put me in a downer, standing in front of my was a pretty nice girl she kept leaning back into me, her hair in my face the sweet smell of her perfune was intoxicating, I really longed to reach forward and wrap my arms around her, but I couldnt even pluct up the courage to speak. I am not sure if it was in my head or not but I am fairly sure she was insterested given there was not eason for her to press up so close there was plenty of room. Another wasted opportunity maybe or did I prevent myself from getting mugged on display, I will never know the truth. Sometimes I live too much inside my head and not enough in the real world I just wish I could find the courage and works to comminicate and build relationships, Danny's lovelife is going well why I am alone?

Mums Birthday

It is my Mums bithday today, got her a card and took her and my dad out to te La Quila 2 in Handforth for a curry, it was as usual up to a high standard and we all had a good time. It was nice after such a horrific week of computer problems and general working too much. Friday was the Trade Union Congress national work you real hours day so I did, I think it was well deserved after doing 14 hours sunday, and an extra two hours Monday.
I feel so tired and full now at least I am warm sat with map laptop by the fire with the cat laid on the arm of the chair, on tv is the rather dreadful movie Island, it started off well but unfortunatly it descended into hollywood trash fairly quickly.

I started reading the rather excellent Intellegent Investor by Ben Graham its amazing reading about the markets of the 50s, 60s and 70s and realising nothing really changes. Ben Graham was a profetic figure, rather than predicting hot shares he gives excellent advice on how not to lose money, a strange conept maybe but a lot of hs advice seems to be more about how not to lose money rather and how to make money. So far the chapters I have read cover nitial ideas inflaion and the different types of investor, I think its proved some of my "investments" thus far are mere speculation rather than investing. I think that cash in isas and dollar cost averaging of the trakers funds would count as intellgent defensive stratergies though.

Phil and I went to the gm and played squash today, I think it must be a year since we last went togther, I really enjoyed it was very relaxing. Except for seeing Clare running round the track, perhaps she is the universe laughing at me for what I have done to others. I dont really believe that though, I think what upsets me the most is that she is still single an yet somehow I wasn' good enough. In her eyes anyway, in mine I am alway good enough I just wish more people could see it.

311

After a very long two days at work I was feeling very very tired however it was Faye's birthay party (her actual birthday was on Saturday). She hasnt been well recently so it was good to see her back on form, also a load of the people I know / vaugly know were about. I wish I had taken my camera but after the weekend and day I had my brain was not working 100%
It was good to see everyone but alcohol and fatiuge made me chat jibberish and generally not remember what i said, it was a good evening though.

Hurrah not my fault

I arrived at 7.30 after a troubled nights sleep, there were issues for me to lookinto and sql replication was turned off becuase speed was such an issue. Andrew was called in to do some diagnostic work on it (thankfully because I was totally out of my depth). He found there was a problem with the index missing on one of the tables, one of the IS staff had neglected to create it when the schema was changed, that meant 1.5million records had to be searched each update with no key oops!
Thankfully I and the project plan were vindicated, I still feel I need ot be given a higher level of training or supervisions on upgrads of this importance but thats a topic of conversation for my next review.

Upgrade / Downgrade

Some days things go bad not matter how hard you plan and work, today was a major upgrade in order to implement the new workflow system There were major changes to the schema, programs and data. This was also the first major upgrade to be project managed, there was a full implementation plan. We all came in at 7.30am to begin, the changes and get everything ticked off before 12noon so as the call centre could get back to work.
Initially it seemed to go ok, there were a few bugs with the workflow but these wee checked off then problems with speed started occuring, we tried many different way to fix this but it was too slow. Eventually we tracked the problem to a fault with replication to the sql databases. At 5pm we decided to restore the system to the origonal state which was done but the problems persisted. I stayed until 9.30pm with a short breka to go home and get some dinner but there were still faults. Tommorrow is going to be a killer day.

Office Space

Today we moved offices, which was a little bit traumatic especially as I have been so busy trying to fix some last minute bugs before Sundays go live. The good thing is I now have a seat next to the window which is much nicer than being sat in the middle of the office.

Ive just spent another Friday night say behind my computer sorting out things for the ejected brass lan, the server seems to be running well now, I hope it alls goes well tomorrow it promises to be a busy lan if nothing else a lot of people have said they are coming if they all turn up we could be pushed for space.

Talking of space I had a look on Pauls myspace before lots of positive things about his music and his life, I am pleased things are working out. I would really like to meet this Pippa girl I hear so much about, and here the new band. I guess he is a little t busy at the moment though. I think I need some goal and blue sky thought I am falling into the mundane drudgery of the 9-5.30 world and it sucks.

Only one more week until payday, man this month has been a long one, lots of bills like my car insurance and gym membership at least I managed to get that at corporate rate. I should on paper have loads of spare cash but in reality i never seem to have any.

I had an argument with my dad before he really frustrates and annoys me coming in showing off yet another design of his document to my friends, how many pints of view does he need he spends so much time and effort procrastinating if he spent half as much time doing anything he might actually achieve something I really want to get away from my parents they just talk and talk but it never seems to go anywhere there is always another excuse another good reason. Sometimes I feel myself falling into their routine but its not what I want. I might not be as clever but I want fall into the malaise of inaction.

Weight Loss?

Think I finally got the damn deferred product work done, I ended up having to back Mikes changes out and go back to my versions, they might not be the standard way however they appear to work for all circumstances whereas the A programs fails to work under all circumstances. Personally I think its the lender whos wrong but management just want the project finished so in this instance I just did, and hopfully the gamble paid off this time.

Went to the gym tongith for the usuall session actually saw Martin there he is all shook up about the rather tragic death of Charlottes mother. Its realy sad for them, but unfortunatly its the way of the universe its cruel and unfair, but hard as it was at least she died happy and peacfully at home surrounded by a loving family.

Anyway so as not to dwell on the negative for once, did a test tonight and looks like the gym is begining to pay off quiet apart from the increased fitness I was starting to worry I havent lost any weight, howevr today I proved I have lost some fat, did the hips to waist ratio and for the first time im under the 0.92 ratio which means you aint too bad hurrah and ya boo sucks to body mass index rubbish by which scale im obese, I know im carry a few extra kg's but I do not think I am that bad.

Run John Run

I finally caught up with the film Run Lola Run today. It's been one of those films that I have wanted to watch for ages, but for one reason or another haven't. Thanks to love film I finally have finally watched it. It pretty damn good too initially I started watching the English dub but it was so poor I switched back to German with subtitles. Essentially the film is about a girl whose world is turned upside down when a deal goes wrong, it plays the story out in several ways each time showing how minor changes in people actions actions cascade out into the world and cause very different outcomes.

It is a bit like the theory which states a the butterfly flapping wings and causes a hurricane. Its impossible to predict how and what minor changes cause chain reactions through complex systems like the weather or in the case of the film peoples lives.

I am not sure whether to stay with love film though. My major gripe is that they don't send out new films until you return both the old ones whereas the last club sent everything individually which I much preferred. Mind you they sent me a stream of dodgy disks so I'll stick with Love Film a bit longer.

Bruce popped over and we had a bash at the game server in preparation for the lanparty on Saturday. Think I finally got to the bottom of the slow logon in steam also with the help of manlug mailing list might even have sorted the bind problem we shall see on Saturday.

Where is my mind?

Its 11:30, and I have to be back in work I should be in bed asleep already, but then I wouldn't be blogging and you wouldn't get to hear about my day so I am keeping it real.

Today was well pretty good mostly finally got the workflow to a decent level, they had to get Mike in so I guess I felt slightly sidelined as he seemed to manage to make the most difficult things seem simple but he is after all the lead programmer with years of experience on me, I think recently I have become a much better programmer and valuable asset. I guess in a sick way FF must feel like that too or else they would have kept someone else instead of me.
Personally I think given the nature of the beast and the loss of the one third of the development teams it amazing we have got to this stage and shows how hard myself, Mike, Natasha and Andrew have worked.

Turns out the new girl I had been chatting to on msn wasn't all she seemed, though I don't mind being a shoulder to cry on I don't like to be made meaningless after the event I spend far too much time like that, I guess on the personal front its another lonely valentines day. I went to the pub tonight with Phil and watched all the happy couples inside I felt a pretty big pang that I am alone yet everyone else is successful, I just hope my time comes someday.

Phil wants to start up a share club, he has been reading the fool and thinks we can be budding buffets, time to order my copy of the intelligent investor I think!

The wind and rain are drumming on my roof I really hope its not an omen about tomorrows program changes, I am going to put a few things live pre the weekend to hopefully cut down the amount of time spent on Sunday, time for bed I think.

this coming V day...

cookie's world is my last but safest place for blogging, thx cookie for authorising me as one of the contributors here :)))
i always believe that distance can be a kind of beauty as well as treasures, cuz sometimes i just can't tell any friends no matter how close they are. now i understand why we both rely on our conversation and cherish our friendship.
as i said in your blog of "Friday night", i'm in a relationship with no future, i don't want to dwell on this too much, but this coming V day forces me to make a decision, thats why i wrote my blog "deadline". parents have their point that he would never bring happiness to me, mom complains so many times "you can just be his friend, but never girlfriend".
lulu was so pressured...
thinking of his care & love, every friday he would come and wait for my time for offwork, sometimes even no dinner together, just to send me home. but i know i was moved and touched, passively, its not love.
anyways, happy Valentine day tomorrow cookie*

Fixed Pc

Felt very tired this morning didnt sleep to well thanks to the excessive alcohol and curry consumption last night. The comedy night was good though escpecially as so many people turned up. I finally got to have a decent chat with Charlotte Martins girlfriend she seems nice, though her and endos missus and endo started questioning my lack of companion. T a hanks for adding insult to injury guys :P
Finally finished Emily's pc and got it back to her today, she was pleased though she managed to hurt her hand yesterday in a weird food processor related accident, fortunatly its not too bad a fingers still attached :)
Think she was happy to be able to play the Sims again, I got the impression there was a bit of tension in the house for whatever reason so I didnt stay too long.
Went to the pub tonight with Nick and Jono was quite fun Nick was on good form, as was Jono I felt a bit tired after going to the gym, think I might have been a bit ambitious. However its been a few days since I last went so needed to have a decent session. Mens health have finally got a conversion to metric so I no longer have to go through and recalculate my workout which is a real bonus.

I heart Life?

This evening watched a film call I heart Huckabees A surreal film based around existensial dectectives examining the interactions between a seris of characters and the universe. I guess watching fimls that examine life so much was maybe overkill for me I guess I indentified a little too much with the central character Albert, a nerotic self obsessed nut (though he identifed through poetry and social action whereas I blog and simply feel agnst about real world issues;of course I am real whereas this was just a film, mind you if you are reading this blog then I guess a film is just as real as my online persona (you get where I am going right?).

So in order to balance this post I am going to start with a success, at the minute I am writing this post on Emily freshly built PC, its working really well and is surprisingly quiet I hope she likes it. Unfortunatly I am going to temper this good news with some darker stuff. My dad is currently working on his own projects and has been getting advice off his old friend Tony. Over the years I have on occasion helped Tony and his wife out with PC issues just like a number of people I know, I *had* alwyas thought they were happy with my work having recieved no complaint and sometimes praise. However my dad relayed to me that Tony was very unhappy with what I had done for Nick and that basically I ripped him off, only one thing last time I spoke to Nick was about 3 years ago when he carried his pc out of my place after I had rebuilt it and shown him how to use his keyboard. Now fogive me but he left happy handing over some dosh (£20 if I remember rightly took about 5 hours for a total rebuild and mess about getting his keyboard to work). I never had a call back to tell me anything was wrong and I ahe done work for Tony since and in fact been for a meal with him. So I was somewhat shicked and upset after all this time he decided to launch into an attack on my dad of all people. I am sure if Nick told me at the time there was an issue I would have sorted it but he didnt and I do not really see what having a go years after the fact can achieve.

Work was up and down today, succeeded kind of at getting the training system updated thought it proved difficult due to the amount of information going across. I still feel very pressured and not really prepared, also some of the other work I have done has a few issues which is a real pain. Martin failed to arrive so I wasn't able to have a discussion with him about the current situation which upset me quiet a bit given our conversation earlier this week. Not really sure where I stand now but I certainly don't feel very valued at the moment.

Murphy's Law

Today was a real pain I was mad busy finishing off all the little bit in order that some programs can be put on the training system and trained out in time for next weeks go live.

Somehow at problems only appear at the most inopportune moment just as in Murphy's law "whatever can go wrong will go wrong" somehow at 5 pm after a ong and hard but productive day of fixing bug the server decided to through a wobbler. Bizarre errors started to appear programs wouldn&pos;t compile with out of disk space errors. Last time this happened it was a permissioning issue and on running df showed 31% free space on device. It tooke hours to sort out and find the disk was incorrectly set up so displayed free space incorrectly :-S I didn't leave work until 19.15 what a pain.

Tomorrow is another day, hopefully the transfer to training will go smoothly then I can have a more relaxed weekend. Though I do now have a large pile of papers for NPF to dig through and try to decipher how in the heck their fees work.

Started building Emily's PC tonight and realised to me horror after horseshoeing the motherboard in that it was a very old ATX supply without an extra power connector so Ill need to get hold of a replacement. Should be a nice pc when its all done though.

Another Bad Day

As a wage slave I find everyday is basically a compromise between the conflicting desires of the need to earn money and the need not to be exploited. Recently the exploitation side has been rather overtaking the money side. Additionally my worth as an employee and faith in the company has been seriously devalued by a number of event and a lack of communication of these.
Firstly on Monday I went into work early to put some software live on the request of FF, only to find my account locked out. When questioned about this I am given a very abusive answer along the lines of it being a new policy well if that is a new policy then my new policy is not to bother coming in early!
Next I am told that although we are already overstretched FF have cut down the number of hours Tbred staff work so that instead of having two other tbred people working 3 days each Mike will be working one day. This means my workload has dramatically increased to a point where I now no longer feel I am able to cope and though I am still officially a trainee I now no longer have other people I can turn too. Though this might be a fun challenge if the workload was managed FF's current wheeze is too increase the work and cut the time estimates for completion, whilst Mike might be able to deal with that I am finding it increasingly difficult especially with an increasingly confrontational attitude from FF management especially the line manager he is acting like a real pigeon at the moment. I hope if I ever reach that level I will not treat my staff with such contempt and have the balls to stand up to the other management rather than always capitulating.

All the while with Tbred I feel totally out of the loop completely excluded from the ProvideX project barely kept informed about anything that's going on all the promises of training and development have proved to be empty. There has also been no talk of this years annual reviews yet thought it has been a year since the last one. To be honest I think I have reached the end of my goodwill and if changes don't happen soon then I will have to make some of my own.

Tonight I went round to pick up some pc bits E new parts have arrived so I needed the case and hard drive. Spent a pleasant evening having a chat it was a very welcome change after such a hard day, though I now have a pile of pc gear in the corner of my room.

The last few night I have been speaking to a new friend on MSN a student of Salford she has been pretty interesting company and has tolerated my whining about work and life which is incredible. Talking to people like her and Emily makes me miss university life the debate interesting conversations and ideas, but there was always the flip side the one up-manship arguments and arrogance of some of the people. Coupled with the deliberate obtrusification and wording in order to protect the image of intelligence and I think no maybe not for me after all.

Jazzy Kecks

Today was a pretty productive day finally sorted out my backup strategy rsyncing the websites automatically by cron job and creating a weekly tar of the config and log files. I also finally managed (I think) to get the backup mail server to relay mail not delivered to the main server. Result ;-)
This evening went to Matt and Phreds with Joe, Holly, Phil, Bruce, Nina, Nick, Becs and some of Joes friends. It was another great night for food and jazz, had a good chat with Phil was nice to find we haven't totally grown apart. Becky wondered why myself and Phil didn't try to pickup, I cant speak for Phil but I personally I have never really been able to talk or bravado my way into conversation despite my abilities or in spite of them I am really bad at meeting people and I guess people (read women) pick up on this and don't want to talk to me.

I have been talking to Lulu about going to meet her and see some of China my main worry being I won't be able to get away without knowing Mandarin or Cantonese. She thinks Ill be fine but you know me alway's stressing about things. I think I would love it thought I always seem to like going to the places that are not quiet as mainstream. I think it would be really great to meet her even though it does stress me out that she likes the idea of me rather than the person I am. Mind you somtimes I think far too much about things rather than doing them.

£48,000 Fuckup

I think at one point today I came closest to mental breakdown I have ever been. There was a period of pacing back and forth whilst on hold waiting to hear if I really owed nearly £50,000s.

OK I'll start at the beginning, earlier today I got a share tip from Jo, whilst I am not usually brave enough to act upon tips, had a quick look and decided it was worth a few quid for a punt, bit like a lottery ticket. In my lunch hour I fired up my share dealing site and placed an order for £500 as usual it presented me with an in principle contract to buy 415 shares at 1.16 what happened next though completely took me by surprise, it was showing 416 shares, but the cash balance was £-48,000 I and when I looked at the dealing form I had paid not 116 pence a share but 1160 ten time the market rate. Given my account limit is £5000 it shouldn't have been able to go through.

At this stage I was totally panicking losing 400 was bad but 50000 would be catastrophic I might as well forget the next 10 years saving for a house :-S, I basically run out of the office got sat in my car shaking partly because it was -1c partly from the fear I eventually got through to an operator explained the problem then waited on hold whilst she went off to find out what had happened. I think the next few minutes were the longest of my life sat listening to hold music pacing about the car park.

After about 10 minutes of listening to the company hold music looping every 30 seconds of so I was very stressed out, all sorts of thoughts were going through my head, I wondered whether I could declare myself bankrupt or fake my pc getting hacked or jump off a cliff. By the time she got back I was pretty worked up at first I thought she was going to pt the blame on me, but after a short explanation she told me they had made a mistake, I was very relieved so much so I didn't ask questions like, how did this happen, how could you let me trade so very far over my limit? How do I stop it happening again?

I got back into the office and I must of checked about once every thirty minutes to see if the share site updated, finally at 5.15 it did, what a relief.

Personally I am not sure where I would have stood had they tried to foist the blame onto me, I had no evidence of the site (in future I'll print each page off). I might have been able to wriggle out given the amount of money as so extremely high way beyond my limits. I think I'll brokers as well try might be a one of the worlds largest banks but they sure fucked up my trade. Oh well at least I don't owe £50000!

3 Films

Stayed in tonight and watched movies, its cold and I am poor so I decided to have a night in save cash, so went straight out and rented movies, oh well cheaper than the pub.
First film was a Korean anime called blue sky. It was fairly entertaining, in a post apocalyptic world (Anime and the end of the world seem to go hand in hand don't they) one city remains surrounded by a rag tag of oppressed people called the diggers, has the time come for a revolutions. Then rendering and mixture of traditional and modern graphics were in places breathtaking. As usual from anime though I wasn't sure which side was really correct the decadent citizens or the peasant diggers anime make me think even if all them films end up being so abstract they are bearly followable.
The second film was “Made in Britain” in which Tim Roth plays a young nationalist youth trapped into a steady decline highlighting some of the social problem in Britain had in the 70s. Its a rather grim look at the UK kind of in the same vein of Romper Stomper in the UK
The third film was one I watched on tv, Phil went home before the end of Made in Britain and when it finished I kind of flicked over and started watching TV, just caught the start of Best Laid Plans, it then got into the twisty plot in which Resse Wetherspoon was excellent, as the long suffering girlfriend prepared to do anything for her man, its also a film that demonstrates how white lies spiral out of control.

Friday night

Once upon a time Friday night used to mean party night each one spent at the footage or 5 Avenue or 42nd street. Recently Friday night means a break from work, too tired or cowardly to still make it out into town.
Nowadays I seem to be lucky to make it out to the unicorn for a few drinks before tiredness overtakes me. Lucking at the girls I will never have, feeling more and more alone and wondering why nothing ever happens for me.

Tonight I chatted about money and the FTSE because its something I know a little about I guess I am becoming more divorce from what "normal people" are interested in. I hate evening they always seem t hold a mirror up to me which reflects back all my faults, why do I always go to sleep alone is their no one out there that could love someone like me?

Nick invited me over before but I went to the unicorn instead I wonder which would have been more torturous. Being with Nick and Beck as a gooseberry, or sat at the Unicorn watching Claire. Academic anyway, I feel so dark tonight. What is the point of this sort of life? There is no future, no love only existence. I am I coward for continuing or is it the right thing to do?

What's a pound of flesh between friends?

I wanted to post last night but for some bizarre reason I couldn't get onto blogger.

Last night I went to see Regina Spektor at academy 3 in Manchester it was a truly amazing event Regina was completely captivating, vocally brilliant and talented piano and guitarist. She did a pretty great set mixing old of new from the sublime carbon monoxide to out There was a phenomenal crowd all in all on of the best gigs I have ever been to. If you're wondering the title of this article is a line from one of the songs. I really hope she is successful, and comes back to Manchester again soon.

I am so glad this week is over my head has been taxed to the limit by long days and complicated programs; I think I am finally getting to the bottom of things.

As I write this there is a program on channel 4 about pensions it's made me quite angry according to the program council tax rises are mostly to blame on central government putting the pension black hole onto local government causing council tax rises. Over 26% of council tax goes to pay civil service pensions!!

Right I am off out for a drink with Phil and Bruce laters all

LETTER ARRIVED~

finally got your letter! sooooooo happy this morning~
i love that goat and that lovely chinese character, really a good job, where did you get it by the way? n__n
thanks so much i like your letter, i'll keep it and lets see if we exchanged one letter every year how many of them i would get from cookie... hehe, maybe you can even improve your handwriting gradually ;-)

Longs days and Computer repairs

Today was an up and down day, good things included getting an email from an old colleague it was great to hear from Becky M. Also went round to the chief's house Emily Chiefs girlfriend is having Pc trouble, managed to save her data even though I think the pc is a total write off, either a motherboard of CPU failure. At least I managed to save her university work and get Andy's PC on the net so at least its all usable.

Work was a real pain today I went in early so I could leave and be in Manchester in time for the British Computer Society, Turing lecture. However thanks to a business reorganisation which wasn't even mentioned until 3.30 I had to make a series of quick system changes and left late, I also have to go in early tomorrow 8am in stead of the usual 9, at least the changes fairly straight forward hopefully won't be too difficult to

I have just installed the Mac version of Google and have been looking at Shanghai on Google Earth (whist listening to the latest c64 takeaway podcast) I wasn't able to find the address of Lulu's work, perhaps if your reading this Lulu you can post me a place location? I must say the Mac version is very slow. My Powerbook not very powerful but then again neither is my work laptop and that runs Google Earth without any problems.

The Most Depressing Time of Year

Apparently scientists believe this is the most depressing time of year, a number of factors including financial (Christmas overspend), psychological (new years resolutions broken) and environmental (bad weather) combine to make January a very dull month. I think this effect might have aught up with me I feel irrationally depressed at the moment, on the face of it I have had a pleasant evening with Mike and Ali. After going to the gym I popped over to install some software on Mikes PC, I was invited to dinner, and had a tasty meal. I got to see Frank the Dashound, who is pretty cute, but somehow I came away feeling upset. Somewhere at the back of my mind the darkness inside pushed it way to the fore drowning out my feelings dulling logic until all I felt is alone.

I left and came home alone to sleep alone, in my little corner or my parent's house cold tired unfulfilled and uncertain about the future. The darkness and paranoia worsen did he invite me because I am cheap, is my worth only measurable by the favours I can do for people. The more agonising why do I fee like this?

Now I sit alone and cold wondering what is wrong why can';t I find happiness am I strange or worse am I crazy I am not sure I even know who I am anymore. I have always worked towards a goal now stuck in a job with seemingly no future, as my friend are finding who they are and who they want to be with I am more alone than I have ever been. I think about the people I chat to online and realise only a couple I have ever met in persons. Some refuse, and yet I do not more on, with others seem like we are close but when it gets down to it we could not be further apart.

I must change I must find a new way living like this is tearing me apart each day I step further into the machine just another pawn another cog in the machine. I was never popular at school in fact other than Phil I no longer am in touch with anyone from school or college, neither do I see anyone from university, Salma talks to me sometimes but it always seem like she wants to get away back to her friends.

Crash Screens

Found these whilst going through some photos I found these amusing crash screens photos by myself and Bruce. Unfortunatly they were all taken with camera phones so please excuse the poor quality.

The first photo was taken at Manchester airport by Bruce looks like they use Mandrivia there.

 

Photo 2 is of a Nationwide cash machine. It looks like somethings gone wrong.

 

I took this one at a service station was amausing walking to be confronted by in on the big plasma.

More Linux, and Lost

I felt so tired waking up this morning; fortunately to cheer me up I received Lulu's new year card today, was such a welcome surprise hiding in amongst my junk mail. It was lovely to read and made me smile a lot. I wish I had been able to put the same level of sentiment into my letter t her I guess I am just not as good at expressing my feelings as she.

I decided to do something productive with my, so I read some of my latest buy does anything eat wasps a book published from the last word articles from the back of New Scientist. There are some really freaking / interesting questions and answers well worth an afternoon read. I also managed to clean the layer of dirt off my car its black again now!

After that I went to the gym for my first weights routine of 2006, a month off weights certainly makes a massive difference I was a lot weaker, hopefully I should be able to build back up fairly rapidly though.
I the evening Bruce and Phil came over we upgraded the memory in the terminal tournaments server and also built a new Linux kernel optimised for the server. Hopefully this will give a significant performance benefit. I also started downloading a fresh steam installation in an effort to fix the weird start-up issues we had at the last Lan. The next one should probably be the biggest yet with a load of returnees who couldn't make it to the Christmas bash and some of the new Christmas players coming back for more. I can't wait!

Whilst it was downloading we watched episodes 10 and 11 of lost series two, I know I have said it before but lost is getting more and more weird diverging from what I liked about it in the first place. It's still enjoyable to watch just not quiet as cool as series one. We also watched a bizarre Japanese film called Dead or Alive it was violent weird and visual Phil's going to have a great time when he visits there in March.

Martins PVR

Its been a long, long week at work. I have been trying to decipher a lenders calculations. It has kept me very busy both at work and some nights at home. My January of cutting down drinking meaning I have been going out much less.

Today was successful in a couple of ways, firstly with Keith's help finally managed to get my APR to match the banks so hopefully that can be tested next week. in parallel we have attempted to tick off a couple of annoying bugs for the workflow project..

Then in the evening went round to Martins house to have a look at building a PVR. Some time last year we stared installing SuSE on and old AMD 800 with a Hauppauge PVR 350, at first tried SuSE 9 which for various reasons never really worked since then about 5 months ago its sat in the corner of Martins lounge. He has been rumbling about installing media centre so I decided fuck it I will get Linux working especially after recent successes with SuSE 10 on my laptop and Debian on the various servers.

So one SuSE installation later and hours spent pissing about with various guides found ivtvs own install guides the most useful. Unfortunately SuSE 10 comes with old ivtv drivers which didn’t work with the extracted firmware, and worse SuSE 10 comes with GCC 4 which wont compile ivtv new drivers, so after several hours I gave up on SuSE as a bust. Fortunately Januarys edition of Linux format had a Mythtv special and they recommended knoppmyth a version of Knoppix especially configured to run myth tv. One download later and it was installing, the install is a little rough round the edges simply wiping out whatever is on the driver (which was ok in our case). The system installs runs through a series of configurations dialogues which guide setting up Mythtv. The setup is mostly command line based, but fairly straightforward. A couple of bugs later and I was in the myth setup I chose the card and the TV guide feed restarted the interface and hey presto working myth. Event the remote that came with the card worked yay!

There was an issue with the XML download for the TV guide not working but given it was 1.30am and I was tired I decided to call it a night. At least the PVR works recording pausing live TV and all that.

Whilst that was going on Martin Jim (Phil's Brother) and Endo were building and testing Endo's speakers with Clio what a weird program it does various tests on speakers all very cool.

funny dressing link ;-)

have to post a new blog as i couldn't do the comment for no reason :"(
just read your "Coding Hell" and clicked into that dressing room link, it was pretty funny. that dance was okay but now it has become a tool for creating the image of my prince charming, like his hair, eyes, nose, lip and what he dresses~~~ so interesting! :DDD

Coding Hell

Sometimes the world can be a very weird place, In my function as a code monkey I have dome some pretty boring stuff. This week I have mostly been busy writing a system which calculates apr and repayments changes them in fact so they are much less accurate! Believe it or not one of the lenders systems it actually less accurate than ours and they refuse to believe our figures so I have been copiing their web calculator which as far as I can see has three major areas in which mathmatically it is far less preceise than advances. Apart from the fact its very difficult to follow the mess of java script and bizzaro way in which they round figures or choose not to round others; division by 12 on a number which is not divisable by three leaving trailing 3 or 6 into infinty is not smart.
Anyway I am fed up this has taken so long and my figures still don't match they rubbish its driving me to distraction. Add into that the volume of work sat for me to do and its not a very happy John writing this.

Rant over, Liz sent me a funny link to dressing room website which made me smile, thanks.

Other amusment includes my boss and his son also on staff entering the London marathon, I hope theyy make it must be some serious training going on they neither struck me as the marathon type, but I wish them luck wish I was fit or motivated enough. Even the Manchester 10k seemed scary to me.

Becky's Birthday

To celebrate Becky's 24th birthday (pictures here) we went to the Merlin bar / restaurant in Alderley Edge. It was a great evening, eating too much, drinking too much chatting and generally having fun. The food was excellent; I had a Salmon Wasabi dish, and a Chicken and Spice ham pasta dish with were excellent and I feel well stuffed now. It's a good job I managed to get to the gym for a run today. Hopefully the intake / output evens out somewhere…

Becky Nick's girlfriend has been talking about how she loves the Caribbean for a while. So I bought her a Lonely Planet Caribbean guide and highlighted the Antigua section, she was amused and liked it I think. Nick on the other hand thinks it's going to cause him to spend money. Personally I don't think Nick needs anymore reason to hoard money, he needs to learn to enjoy life a little more.

Website Madness

Spent the evening working on Ian website, Zanshin (in case you are wondering it Japanese for "fighting spirit", the business is mobile bartending and flair hence the spirit ;-) I think it looks a lot better now some subtle changes and a load more images. So its not all text now, please give me your thoughts.

Work dragged today got a problem hidden away in the depths of the system, the lenders have started to introduce deferred products in which you get a holiday period before repayments begin, unfortunatly as usual each lender does it in a slightly different way causeing me headaches.

Posted my return letter to the sudent loans company and a begging letter to Business Link to see if they will confirm my payments, I really think it should be the SLCs responsibility but hey who am I to comment just another government shambles.

Men are from Mars

Ah blogging, I dont think I have ever done anything as contnsious as starting off this blog. So far I have managed to upset two exs, a friend, and even some random weirdo off the net who took exception to something I said.

Tonight I spent a good hour talking to one of the exs (via msn) it was a very long drawn out and painful conversation, of which there was no real point. Whilst we might have esablished she was out of order, that niether of us communicated and that I cannot read directions, it just added to the misery. I didnt want to go over those feeling again, I felt angry and upset enough at the time without having to remind myself about it all, at this later date.

I guess maybe I am just not meant to be in a relationship, when look at Nick and Becky or Bruce and Nina I can see all the great things about relationships but could I really compromise so much? I have done the dutiful boyfriend stuff and had it thrown in my face far too often, I am not enough of a bastard to treat someone else like crap (though from what I have seen a lot of girls confuse this for love go figure!) . I suppose time and space and maybe losing a few pounds will help me feel better, I also really would like to get my own place so I dont have the embarressment of telling people I live with my parents, its not really cool at 26, but thats a whole other blog in itself.