Wahay! I’ve managed to complete an entry for every day since New Year’s Day! That’s more blogging than I’ve done before, ever. Its not always been good, or interesting, but that’s besides the point. More than anything, this blog is a record for me.
Unfortunately – another ‘nothing’ day, really. Oh, Aimee’s replacement ‘bunny’ came today, and she appears to have accepted it. This is good news indeed. I think we’ll buy another and keep it hidden away, for the next time she decides to jettison the bunny from her stroller.
I watched an interesting documentary today about insurance scams – ‘Scams, Fiddles and Honest Claims’. It follows a team of insurance company fraud investigators – trying to track down the insurance cheats that claim on their insurance policies for things that might not necessarily be 100% true.
One of the highlights was the investigator who was tracking a lady who’d reported her £2,500 engagement ring as lost or stolen. The investigator had done some background checks, and had even spoken to the policyholder’s ex-fiance – who, it turns out, actually has the ring. He’d left the policyholder, and took the ring with him! FAIL!
The car started this morning, so that was a good start. About the only positive thing to happen in an otherwise dull as ditchwater day.
Sorry, it’s a short entry today. Perhaps more interesting things will happen tomorrow?
Leading on from yesterday’s entry… Of course, ‘snoozing’ an alarm clock implies that it was actually set in the first place. Which was not the case this morning, and I awoke with a start at 8:30 realising that we’d all overslept – even Aimee was still asleep!
We scrabbled to get Aimee and ourselves sorted, and Emma dashed off with the monster to take her to nursery, and herself to work, whilst I dashed out of the house to the car to get to work, late.
At least I’d be ‘late’ if the car actually started. Gah! Again. This is ridiculous. I call Mazda Assist again and yet another mechanic is out to the car, and I lose half a day’s work. He gets it started again, and says that the engine had flooded, and the battery is knackered – the latter is exactly what the last guy said, and apparently exactly what the dealer ‘replaced’ the other day…. Can anyone else smell bullshit? The car’s back in at the excellent dealers on Monday, so hopefully that’ll be the end of it.
Back in Sheffield after another trek ‘darn sarf’. Found it very difficult to drag myself out of the very comfortable (if a little small!) hotel bed this morning and managed to stretch out the snooze on the alarm from 8am til 8.45am. The 45 minutes extra in bed are all well and good, but it meant I missed breakfast and had to get to the datacentre pronto.
There are no ‘wardrobe malfunctions‘ this time, thankfully and the required 3rd party integration work goes well. It was a long day, and with no food in mah belly by the time 6pm came round, I was very glad when the 3rd party integrator announced he was finished, and had gotten his software over its problems with our application.
Had just about enough time before the train to grab a bite for dinner. Jumped off the DLR at Canary Wharf and nipped to the upmarket burger joint Comments (1)
My predicted hangover doesn’t materialise! Hurrah! Frankly, I’m stunned because we were drinking cocktails last night like they were going out of fashion. Well, I’m not one to complain!
A lazy day spent watching the FA Cup 4th Round tie with Spurs at Man United. United end up winning 3-1, but the scoreline is exceptionally flattering. Dawson sent off and penalty given for what appeared to be tripping over himself and Ronaldo scoring a goal that Cerny really should have saved. United had 2 shots on goal and a penalty, and they scored them all. We, on the other hand, had a hat-ful of chances and had the ball cleared off the line and were denied by the post – it could very easily have gone the other way.
I’ve got to go back down to London today, and have my train ticket booked for 18:51. Rather depressingly, East Midlands Trains seem to think that it is acceptable for their Sunday service to take an hour and a half longer than their weekday service to travel from Sheffield to St Pancras. I get into St Pancras at 22:24 and spend the next hour getting across to South Quay – there’s engineering work on the DLR and things are generally chaos – even for this time of night!
Back in Sheffield for the Saturday night knees-up to celebrate Emma’s 30th, and also my sister’s 24th and also also also Catriona’s upcoming birthday which is just round the corner! Too many Birthday’s in January, for my liking!
We kicked off at the Hollywood Bowl place in Attercliffe – just as well we’d booked, as it was packed full of kids. 9 of us bowled, Craig took the 1st prize and Emma’s wee brother picked up the wooden spoon. I thought it was hilarious when Ian went up to bowl, only to have the ball spill out of his hand and fly backwards towards us – hilarious, that is, until I did exactly the same thing. Bowling is not my forte!
We then moved on to the restaurant for the night – the very oddly named Aagrah. Of course, this was quickly re-dubbed the ‘Arrgh!’, which I’m sure the staff never, ever tire of.
The ‘Arrrghh!’ is one of a cluster of new restaurants that have popped up in Leopold Square, and is part of a small Yorkshire-based chain of Indian eateries. The restaurant is very nicely decorated, and does seem a cut-above yer average Indian restaurant. There’s been some money spent here, and consequently expectations are high – well, mine are, anyhow.
Another day’s slog at the datacentre today. The usual sort of stuff – building and racking boxes, fixing this and that. All was going swimmingly well until I was leaning through a cabinet to install a rail kit and rrrrrrrrrip… I didn’t think much of it at that precise second, and just got on with racking up the box I was working on.
It was only when I was sat at the mobile desk we’ve got down there when I noticed a certain ‘chill’ down in my deep nether regions. The aircon was blowing up icy cold air from the raised flooring – right onto my nads! My trousers had ripped right open! From half-way down the zip all the way down to my right knee! Fuck!
Now. I came down to do these few jobs down here last night, so I brought a change of t-shirt, some clean pants and socks and some toiletries. What I neglected to bring was… a spare pair of trousers or jeans. So, I’m stuck in a datacentre 100 miles from home with my balls dangling out of my trousers. Great!
There’s a shopping centre about half a mile away in Canary Wharf, but half a mile is an awful long way to walk when you’ve got half of the front of your jeans missing. I had a jumper with me, so my immediate idea was to tie it round my waist, as you do on a hot day.
Not something one wants to do at the best of times. I’m in our datacentre in London and have been working on one of our critical database boxes – rebuilding a failed RAID array – by destroying another unused array, nicking the disk, and swapping the bays. There’s nothing quite like the excruciating tension you get when doing stuff like this on live systems for multi-million pound businesses. 
The train down was pretty dull – and it’s made me notice that my MacBook Pro’s battery is on its last legs – I got an hour and a half out of it. Gah! I shall have to get a replacement – good job it’s not a MacBook Air, eh, sprockers?
I’ve checked into the International on Marsh Wall tonight, which is something I swore I wouldn’t do again after the last time when I got a grubby damp room, a ‘double’ bed which was two singles pushed together, and located right opposite the exceptionally loud DLR, for about 160 quid a night.
It was considerably cheaper this time, and the proximity to the datacentre makes it the sane choice. I’m pleasantly surprised – the room I have is nothing short of ginormous! King size bed, too! Not just two singles pushed together, like they’ve done before. And free wifi! I must be being spoilt!
Woke today fairly early – it’s Emma’s birthday, and I dealt with Aimee, made a cuppa for us and give Emma her long-time-hidden presents and cards before trundling off to work. I think she’s pleased with things, at least, I hope so!
Just in case she wasn’t, I organised an ‘Aquarius’ bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her work, too. Such a smooth bastard, me!
My shiny new Nokia E90 has arrived, and I’m spending some time getting acquainted with my new baby. My trusty E61 has served me well, but the difference in performance against the E90 is very noticeable. Series 60 actually feels…”zippy” on the E90, and that’s got to be a first! Series 60 phones have always been as sluggish as hell.
Of course, the very first thing I did when the E90 arrived was to download the Nemesis Service Suite and the official Nokia Firmware Updater and proceeded to remove the cruft that O2 pre-install on the phone, and to update the firmware to the most recent version. In order to do this, you must change the phone’s ‘Product Code’, which is a total doddle with NSS. A valid UK product code for a SIM-free Mocha coloured E90 is 0533332. Be aware that once you change this, you’ve technically invalidated your warranty. I didn’t tell you to do this, kapiche?!
5-1. Against the red filth! Wembley here we come! Too delirously happy to write anything else! ttfn!