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.