i've been for a massive blog.....

why facebook is shit....

2007-07-11T15:44:00.000+01:00

I've resisted facebook and myspace and the like and steered clear of any sort of online social networking culture. My stance is that if I liked the person enough when I met them, I'd probably have asked for their number to keep in touch at the time. I'm certainly not bothered about meeting more people - I have plenty of friends thanks and hardly enough time in the day as it is.

Many of my friends have been to university, and for them I can kind of understand it (although the phone number theory still applies) as they may have lost touch with people when they left or whatever.

On monday a friend 'added me as a friend' on facebook (how sweet). Fine (although how this is possible when I'm not even on facebook I don't quite get - I got an email anyhoo). Then, on Tuesday, I get an email from someone I've never seen or heard of in the past telling me that they've added me as a friend on facebook. What!? Only one of my friends had added me on facebook and all of a sudden I'm fair game for nerd spam?

People of the internet.... go out more.

the smoking ban...

2007-07-03T13:41:00.000+01:00

The smoking ban is finally here. Hooray. I can now go out to pubs and not have to worry about coming home smelling like crap. It's a good thing, completely, and what I enjoy about it is it really pisses some people off.

Most smokers are fine with it as they recognise that they are subjecting others to a proven health risk with their actions, and that everyone should have the choice to socialise in a place where they are not exposed to such risks. Some people though are banging on about human rights, making comparisons with things which are completely out of context trying to justify their cause. This is funny.

"I've paid for them and I should be able to smoke wherever I like" I heard on the radio this week. Great, so I've bought this big shiny knife and therefore I'm entitled to poke anyone I like with it am I? I read over on Adem's blog a chap comparing the smoking ban to the Holocaust, which is absolutley ridiculous. Apparently we're treating smokers like Jews. Prick.

"Why aren't we banning smoking then, or banning drinking too if we're banning things" is another argument you're likely to hear. Because clearly there is much money to be made from these things for the country, obviously. I think none of us are daft enough not to realise that the government makes a hell of a lot of money out of alcohol and tobacco, so they are never going to go for making these things illegal, but in a world where people are getting smarter and human rights (which in principal is fine but in reality is also way out of hand) is more prevalent, we have at least to be responsible. The ban will no doubt cost the government in revenue from cigarettes, but the majority of smokers will continue to smoke, so it won't make that much of an impact in financial terms - but it will make a big difference to a lot of people's health and the whole social experience, in positive and negative ways.

mission accomplished....

2007-06-01T14:44:00.000+01:00

Wow, my plastering is done. I can't believe it, and in fact I won't believe it until I get home later and see it with my own eyes. If it is done, we just need to sand/fill/paint that one wall, have the remaining skirting boards fixed on (happening this monday), make sure there are no bits which need 'touching up' paint-wise and then it's done. I might even call my carpet fitting chum to see if he can come along next weekend to fit carpet in that room, then it really is done.

I'm actually quite excited again. It's been ages since anything productive happened in that room, although we have been painting it since Saturday and it has started to look nice, just that last horrid, not-quite-plastered wall has been spoiling the look. Maybe next Sunday we can spend the day putting the furniture back in the spare room that should live in there, meaning that we may actually be able to walk around our own bedroom without fear of things killing us.

After all that then it's just decorating the front bedroom and finishing off the carpeting in the hallways and front bedroom, then the whole gaff is complete. On the inside at least. Apart from re-touching some bits and pieces.... Still, it's nearly there!

Last weekend saw the arrival of the turf, as well as the laying of the turf. That is fucking hard work I can tell you. We have quite a large lawned area for a terraced house and it took about 4 hours, of which at least 3 of them are probably on your hands and knees fitting them together properly. It looks very nice to me at the moment, although we had a little scare with a section right at the back after lots of heavy rain, it had sank and created a big dip, but we unrolled the turfs and packed it out with some compost we bought from B&Q and now it appears to be ok'ish. There are a few lumps and bumps around but it was a very very uneven surface to begin with. I might end up getting a roller to flatten it out after it is properly bedded in, but we'll see how big a deal it is soon I suppose. Still a little while until we are free to walk on it willy and indeed nilly.

What is quite cool is that the folks we bought it from, onlineturf.co.uk, look as though they will send you updates letting you know when you can start to walk on it, when you should mow it, how much to water etc, quite a nice service. On top of that it didn't cost us a fortune and was delivered to the door for practically nowt (about £1.68 or something stupid). Check them out of all your turf and soil needs.

So the garden now looks quite nice, and the house is nearly finished. We just need to build the summer house in the garden now. I say just, but fuck knows how I'll do it. I was originally going to be guided by a carpenter friend of ours who gave us the summer house in the first place, he had removed it from his own garden to build a brick-built workshop. Trouble is that was about 2 years ago and now he's quite busy and doesn't really have the time to help me. So, I'm a bit stuck!!

We'll sort something out! Not long til big summer BBQ parties!!

running out of steam...

2007-05-20T19:15:00.000+01:00

Well because my sister's boyfriend is a work-shy lazy bastard who couldn't keep his word if his life depended on it my plastering is still not finished. There is so little to do it is untrue, and it's so frustrating. If I had a quid for ever time he'd failed to keep his word so far I'd at least have a score by now. Really fucks me off.

As a result of this the woodwork is also not complete as fixing skirting boards requires the surface to fix them to, and since this is not done it can't be finished. We're hoping to arrange for someone to plaster the remaining section this week ready for the return from holiday of our lovely wonderful carpenter who always keeps his word and turns up on time. I would recommend him to anyone if he wanted the work, and that's the difference.

We also have 43 square meters of turf being delivered this Friday. I was today to dig over and level the garden. Trouble is I rediscovered the 20 feet concrete path buried by soil in the section of the garden which I had unfortunately forgotten about, so all my energy today went on lifting that out. Now need to rid myself of it PDQ to allow for the planned levelling activities to take place, else my turf is going to be sitting rotting. Should be ok, provided we can get rid of all the old concrete early this week.

The very dull story continues....

work in progress....

2007-05-10T13:21:00.000+01:00

Well, a decent weekend's work actually saw the garden weeded (for about the 20th time), the holes dug out for the summer house, the posts attached to the base of the summer house framework and three of them concreted in. We also de-nailed all the wood and sorted it into same-size type piles, and the plastering is very very very nearly finished!!

I concreted in another two of the holes last night which just leaves me with one to do, and a decision to make as to whether to top up two of the first three which we did as they look a little bit low (I did one last night).

All this made me feel very good about the weekend's work, which is probably the best ever effort in the garden so far I reckon. It did also make me feel physically ruined, as it did my poor chum Chris who helped me do lots of stuff on Monday. I had to have a day off on Tuesday to allow my body recover as when I went to collect another ten bags of concrete that night I felt my back hurting rather a lot.

Tonight I aim to fix a bit of battening back to the wall in the spare room and create a batten for tacking plasterboard to the bit behind where one of my skirting boards used to be. Hopefully the plasterer will come along tonight and tidy that bit up after I've done my bit and then the room is ready for the carpenter to attack this Saturday.

It's a nice feeling knowing that the carpenter will do as he says and that provided that everything goes to plan tonight that the room will be ready to decorate by the end of Saturday. All it will need is to touch up a few bits of the plastering where the odd blemish exists and then paint it. Room done by the end of the month hopefully, possibly in time for my girlfriend's sister and family to stay in the room when they visit later this month, but we'll see.

friday afternoon - bored

2007-05-04T16:11:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting here literally looking for things to do (except work stuff) because I am so bored and can't be arsed doing any more work. My new poker chips and my Sky broadband router have turned up today at work which is cool. Sadly my copy of Eddie Murphy's Delirious is not here yet, but I can last the weekend without that.

I'm looking forward to getting home and plugging in the new router as I've been without t'internet for a few days as Sky haven't quite worked out that sending the router out only once BT have confirmed activation is a bad idea. Fingers crossed it actually works as this is the 3rd time I've actually ordered Sky broadband as they seem pretty incompetent.

It also seems apparent that my sister's boyfriend has not been in again to do our plastering. He was supposed to be there this afternoon doing it, but since my girlfriend has just got home from hospital and can't get in (because he has her key) I reckon he's probably not in. Nor is her mum, who is also supposed to be there too, and she's not answering her phone. Unfortunately I work 50 miles from home so can't just pop back to let her in. It will however serve as a useful excuse to allow me to leave work early.

Why can't people just be honest, and do what they say they are going to do. I wouldn't mind so much if he just called us to let us know what was going on, but he just doesn't turn up and never calls to let us know why. This in turn makes me feel bad for getting on to him because he is really doing it as a bit of a favour, but as I say, fine, just let me know what you're doing. Now, what was originally supposed to be a four hour job has so far taken over 4 weeks due to him not turning up and we're still not finished. Tonight I shall tell him that I'll be getting another plasterer in as I'd rather pay someone to do it than wait indefinitely, I'm getting a bit fed up with living in shit and having a bedroom containing 2 bedroom's worth of stuff.

It seems shite weather is in store for the weekend, so I had better get my gardening stuff done while I can. I shall get up early and start tomorrow. Ho hum.

booking fees

2007-05-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

What the fuck is the point of booking fees? I've just booked tickets for Ricky Gervais in Hammersmith for me, my girlfriend and two friends, and had to pay a 4.95 booking fee for every ticket. If you have to pay it for every ticket, and the only way you can buy tickets is through these agents, why not just add it on to the fucking price of the ticket??!!

That's all it is isn't it? Just inflated ticket prices? As of of my mates has just said, he'd better be proper funny! I'm sure he will be.

summer time

2007-05-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

I like the summer. I also love the winter too but summer is much better now I think of it. Everyone is smiling when the weather is good, people look healthier, it's lighter for longer, it's good to sit outside, girls hardly wear any clothes, it's just great.

I've just been on holiday with some chums of mine and our girlfriends. It was good fun mostly, but there were a couple of lax days which I reckon would have been better spent at the villa, but all in all I enjoyed it.

It's also a bank holiday on Monday in the UK which means a lovely long weekend to enjoy the good weather. I'll most likely be working in the garden to finally try to get our summer house erected, or at least get the process properly started.

One of my mates got into poker while we were on holiday and as such I've invested in some poker chips so we don't have to use matches. I'm sure we'll find some time to put them to use over the weekend, hopefully out in the sun in the garden.

Woohoo, I love summer!

good friday sevens - or getting the shite knocked out of me?

2007-03-30T15:37:00.000+01:00

I have been asked to play at this year's annual Rugby Sevens day held at Thanet Wanderers ground. This is effectively an excuse for a all day piss up, with loads of people turning up from around the area to watch grown men make complete arses of themselves attmepting to play rugby. I don't think people believe that I have had an ankle injury for the last seven years so I think I am finally going to have to conceed and play.

It's not that I'm scared or playing or getting hurt, it's just that I'm really scared of getting hurt. Who wouldn't be? Well it turns out proper rugby players and men with macho ego problems who've been topped up with ale all day wouldn't be, that's who. There are always a certain number of people who know how to play rugby out there, and there are always a certain number of people who don't know how to play rubgy but do know how to hurt people. I'd like to avoid both sets of those people if possible.

All that aside I should be looking forward to getting slashed and eating barbecue food. Hurrah.

mondays...

2007-01-08T15:37:00.000Z

I was sent to a school today to do some work. This involves altering the configuration of every PC to enable them to interoperate correctly with our network. I won't bore you with details, but it usually shouldn't be a complicated process, and today it wasn't. Schools tend to operate with two domains for historical reasons, so you do the admin side, and the curriculum side.

Today I went to the school in question to convert..... 1 PC. I made a trip to a school to configure 1 PC. I couldn't do any more because their curriculum server was being upgraded by..... us. That's communication for you. Our people are not talking to their people. The other chap who works for us who is installing their new curriculum network will do all the work, meaning that I could have talked the school through the process over the phone. Never mind, it was (very nearly) on my way to work anyway and was a reasonably pleasant distraction for an hour or so.

Still slightly annoying though. If only I ruled the world....

happy new year....

2007-01-05T14:35:00.000Z

....Happy new blog!

Back by popular demand I am going to attempt to blog a little.

I'm at work today, a quiet day on the Helpdesk as they go, particularly after starting a new school year in the last few days.

The only thing that is annoying me at the moment is that a certain person in the office thinks that everyone wants to know about her personal business all the arsing time. When she's not here, it's like a completely different place, quiet, productive and still a nice place to be. I don't give a toss about what curtains she wants for her new house, nor what furniture, paint, parrot/gerbil/other pet they are going to get, and I don't think anyone else does either. Why do some people think that everyone else needs to know their business.

The amusing thing is that this person has the mental strength of a bookmark, and there will be many tears and tantrums about this poxy house to come this year. These days tend to be the quietest, so roll on the fights!

ouch...

2006-04-30T18:45:00.000+01:00

Well I'm going to have another crack at this blogging game, I liked it before but got too busy to carry on playing, so we'll see how it goes.

I usually play football (foreign folk read soccer)on Saturdays, and Sundays recently but that's all finished for the season now. In fact Saturdays had finished too for me, but I had a call from the reserves coach asking me to play in a cup semi-final. The 2nds didn't have enough eligible players (you have to have completed at least three league games) and had a few players away so were going to be a bit short. As I usually play defence but the boss had promised me a game up top I couldn't refuse, so went along to play up the local pitches. Well I think it was about 20 minutes in when I took a huge blow to the head whilst competing for a header, and spent a little time on the ground. I carried on playing for a bit, but was utterly confused and eventually had to go off before half time.

What I actually remember of the events was kicking around before hand, nothing of the game (apart from telling Ben that I was a little confused), seeing someone I know on another pitch on the way to the changing rooms, and then being in hospital with my girlfriend and a couple of other friends (who had taken me there - I had no idea). I don't remember any of the game, how my friends came to be there at hospital with me, getting changed, and all the stupid questions I was asking everyone. I was properly jolted by the whole thing, and seemingly didn't know what month it was, or even if we had finished making the home improvements we are currently undertaking (we haven't - damn).

This was all only yesterday, and I still don't remember huge amounts of it, but I think I'm ok now. Unfortunately I didn't get to go to France today, but never mind, we'll have another opportunity. Hopefully there'll be no lasting damage, but we'll see. Thank goodness it's a bank holiday this weekend so I don't have to work tomorrow, my head is still very sore!

john butler trio.... amazing

2005-09-21T21:03:00.000+01:00

I know only really a couple of my chums read this, so I shall use it as a medium to communicate something with you (both!) and anyone else who may stumble upon this.

Open Windows Media Player, and choose the Guide tab. Search for John Butler Trio and choose to play a song called Ocean Spray (I believe it is actually called Ocean but nevertheless it is the correct songDon't be put off by how long it is (around 18 mins) and just lay back, close your eyes and enjoy an amazing event. I saw this guy and his band at Glastonbury, and saw him play this song. He said that he used to play it when he was busking, and like to play it live regularly to remind himself of where he came from.

who am i to you?

2005-09-21T13:03:00.000+01:00

Do you ever look at other people wandering around, people that you don't know, have never met and will possibly never see again, and wonder who they are, what their lives are like and where they live, what they do, what their routine is, who their family are? I do. I think other people's lives are facinating, and it's amazing how much diversity there is in the world.

Do it, just sit and watch people go by, and have a think about who they might be and what their lives are like. Maybe you'll understand what I mean, maybe you won't.

i feel low.....

2005-09-16T14:15:00.000+01:00

It's been a while (as it tends to be for me) since I bothered myself updating my blog, and this has largely been because I have been extremely busy at work. For a little while, I had good reason to show a little enthusiasm for my work, but sadly my original feelings that it is a horrible place to work, the management are inept and ruthlessly backstabbing, that the children of the modern age are awful, awful creatures and that I waste so much time doing pathetic jobs it is untrue have all come back to hit home again. I really need a new job.

This has led me to feel generally quite negative about most things, which is a trap I have been known to fall into from time to time, and one which I wish I could avoid. Despite earning a good salary, I am very poor, and this is something that some of my friends have trouble in understanding - 'But you earn loads of money, why are you such a tight-arse' etc. The reason is quite simple, I have loads of outgoings, and a debt which I am trying to relieve myself of. I don't think some of my friends appreciate that 'grown-ups' don't just have to whack out £500 a month on a mortgage and be done with it, on top of that there is life insurance, sicknesss accident and unemployment insurance, buildings insurance, contents insurance, water bills, electricity bills, gas bills, telephone bills, TV license, Council Tax, plus any loans or other things you need to pay regularly like mobile phone bills, internet access etc. There's bloody loads! Anyway, all this, plus my £3000 credit card bill which I am trying to rid myself of leaves me pretty damn near penniless all the time, and it is depressing. Hey I know that there are people out there in the world who have much less than I do, and some people right now who's entire lives have been stripped from them, but it doesn't stop you from feeling gloomy on a saturday night when your tucked up in bed reading Harry Potter and everyone you know is out there getting lashed up and having a good time.

The truth is, everyone I know has debts, but most of them are student debts. This doesn't stop the retorts of 'I have £15,000 worth of debt and I'm still out'. No it doesn't, but if I only had to pay £5 a month off of my debt at a rate of interest of about 0.0000000000003% I would probably be quite nonchalent about mine too. I do have an exception amongst my friends who is in a shit load of personal debt, and I really worry for him, but he's smart enough to work his way out of it, or at least live his life in a way which he'll be safe. Hopefully I'll win a shit load of money some day and all money troubles will be a thing of the past, and I could straighten him out too.

Lately, I feel permanently tired, this despite being in bed and asleep by around 9:30-10:30 each day and getting at least 8 hours sleep a night. I also have problems with any illness or injuries I sustain, in that it take me forever to recover from them. I have therefore visited my good old GP who packed me off for a blood test on loads of things (6 of them little bottles they filled, rock hard me). I am awaiting the results but my girlfriend tends to think I may have a degree of anemia (not sure on spelling and can't be arsed to check). This would apparently add up, but I shall have to wait and see. Whatever it is, it certainly doesn't help to improve my mood.

Then there is home, where there is always so much to do. Running your own home is exhausting and never ending. If you feel like having some time off any household chores, they just stack up and make things even worse for when you have to actually do them. My house is also only half decorated, and we are unable to any further decorating as we have no money left to do any of this with. There is only so much you can do without spending a single penny, and then you reach a point where you are just stuck. My house has been this was for probably around a year or just under, stuck in a state of semi-decoration. I do wonder if the day will ever come when I can come home from work to a completely decorated house and not have anything to do but hang the washing on the line, but it looks a long way off.

Then the biggest of all bones to pick, work, where you spend most of your waking day, and it makes you feel damn miserable! People are nasty demanding, selfish and two faced. The job is full of things that it shouldn't be, things which I stopped doing when I gave up my job as a technician at college, but things which I now find myself doing on a regular basis. Employed as a Network Manager, my role is supposed to be involved in strategy, project management and cool and interesting things like that, but I more often find myself doing cabling and tech support for people who can't read where door B is when they have a paper jam.

I can't help but feel that there must be more out there for me, but I don't know what, and if I did, I don't think I'd know how anyway. I hope that things will get better, that maybe I'll get a new job which will make me happier and afford me a better standard of living and release the pressure of financial stress, then perhaps I wouldn't need the inevitable iron tablets that I'm about to be prescribed.

it's the summer holidays

2005-08-10T13:39:00.000+01:00

It's good fun at work at the moment because it's the summer holidays and there is no-one around. No-one to annoy you, to phone you and ask you stupid questions, no-one to walk in and ask you if you keep paper supplies for the photocopier. It's really great, my favourite time to work in a school. Kids, and more so teachers, just spoil it as far as I'm concerned.

As I have previously mentioned about pianos, I shall explain the story.....

After going to Glastonbury and the Coldplay gig the day after, I was (and still am) inspired to be involved in music, and in particular being part of a band (or something similar). Read Adem's post on our friend's little brother Ollie who recently played on Brighton beach in a competition which could see him at the Leeds festival. I have always wanted to be able to play the piano, but was never allowed lessons as a child as my dad thought that it was a 'gay' thing to do, and as my mum couldn't afford it on her own I never had the chance.

When I was around 14 or so, my mum went to see a Clairvoyant, who among many other (oddly accurate, and I'm not talking the obvious stuff) things, told her that my brother was ok and was learning to play the guitar. I therefore decided that I wanted to play the guitar, and bought one from a local shop. I had to switch the strings round on it as I had decided that I would be better off left-handed (a decision which I later regretted - the choice of lefty guitars is crap, perhaps I should talk to Ned Flanders....) and bought a book to teach myself some basics. At that time I had gotten into bands such as Blur and Oasis quite a lot, and so bought mini books to learn to play their songs. I got to a reasonable level, but true to most things I attempt, I accelerate to a reasonable level quite quickly, but never really get beyond that. I suppose I must have slowly gotten better over the last 10 years, but certainly not drastically. Alongside my guitar playing I have always wanted to be in a band, but have never managed to achieve this, I think largely to never really being around people who were into music in the same sort of way that I was. I still hope to manage this one day even now.

So, armed with some very basic knowledge of music and my guitar, I can make a nice sounding noise. I can't really read music properly though, so I tend to use guitar tab more than anything, or grab the chords from transcribes off the net and work out the fiddly bits myself if they are not too difficult.

Then, at Glastonbury, which as I have mentioned previously was probably the best thing I've ever done in my life, I was inspired. I want to be a part of how these people live their lives, doing what they love day in day out. All they need worry about (obviously notwithstanding families and things) is music. I want to live a life where I can be involved in music, and in particular, playing. I love playing music and I want to get better at it. On returning from Glastonbury I enquired with the music teacher here at school if there were anyone he knew who taught piano privately, and as I expected, he did. I decided to call the lady and arranged to go to see her. In the meantime, during an email conversation with someone I used to work with I happened to mention that I was thinking of taking piano lessons, to which she replied that the lady she worked with wanted to give her piano away to anyone that would collect it. How lucky was that.

So I now have at home the most un-tuned piano in history, and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the piano tuner any day now. Getting it home was rather more difficult than I had expected, and we have had to remove our banister post downstairs to get the thing in, but I'm happy with it, and hopefully when it is tuned I shall be able to practice on it instead of using the keyboard I have. I have had two piano lessons and have a ton of practicing to do before the end of the summer before lessons resume. I am also trying to learn to read music at the same time, which I am hoping will lead me to have a better understanding of music generally, and allow me to be able to write music more fluently. I have written around 25 songs (none for ages though) which have been written simply by putting together chords which sound ok together, but I would love to know exactly how to obtain the sort of sounds that I have in my head when I am trying to put one together. I am determined to get back into writing songs, and good ones too. Then all that remains is to find a band that will have me, after that, superstardom beckons! Well, maybe low scale mediocrity, but at least I'll be doing something that I love.

i'm not dead, I'm just a crap blogger

2005-07-18T23:43:00.000+01:00

I realise I have been a bit shy on the blogging recently, and this is by no means going to break any records for length. I have sadly been very busy at work recently with the summer holidays approaching, and so have not had the time to spend during the day, and evening are always generally full anyway. I am doing this for two reasons really. One is just so that I can say I have done it, and anyone who has read my blog will know if they are slightly interested that I am still interested in keeping it going. The second is is probably not even a separate reason, but I haven't thought it through properly. It's pretty much to keep momentum going so that the next time I think about my blog, it won't have been so long since I last posted up some stuff. I have interesting stories about pianos to tell....

ok, I'm back now (ok i have been for a little while....)

2005-07-04T09:05:00.000+01:00

I have neglected the blog over this last week, apologies for that. After coming back from Glastonbury, I was still a little high on it all (the experience, not any dodgy substances!) and had to come back to work on Tuesday and plough straight into a busy week. I'm making a point of blogging this morning though to keep the momentum going, else it may just slip.

Glastonbury last weekend was probably the best thing I have ever done in my life. Fact. After some discussion my girlfriend and I drove up on Thursday evening, after stopping off in Bromley on the way (well sort of on the way) to see family. We probably arrived on site at around 2:00am and was moderately surprised to find loads of activity, I really had assumed that the majority of people would arrive on Monday morning like we had intended to. As we arrived we were directed to the John Peel stage area for camping, as this was the only place left with any space in it. Well, we couldn't find that and asked a steward which way it was, and he said something pretty much like 'err, I'm not sure, I think it's that way.' Earning his money that chap. As it was, we found a space where other people were camping, and just settled on the edge of that. Having never put up a tent in my life before, this was a little tricky, and took quite some time, and we eventually got to sleep at around 4:00am. As it turned out, we were nowhere near the John Peel stage and were right on the edge of the 'Dance Village' which meant loudness until 6:00am every day! Thankfully we managed to sleep through it every day and actually slept quite well for the whole weekend.

We were awoken at around 6:00am on Monday morning (when we had originally planned on arriving) by a massive thunder storm, and torrential rain. We thought little of it and stayed in bed until around 10:30ish when we decided that either we were going to miss everything, or just get a bit wet. I scuttled across to the toilet block in the rain in bare feet, across a patch which would eventually become a sticky mess (mud, nothing gross). We then went out, and began wandering around the site for a bit, kind of looking for places that would sell wellies, kind of just taking in what was around us. We stumbled upon the Millets store and found the queue for wellies. It must have been about 200 people long, and we slowly trudged to the back. It was only when getting nearer the front of this queue that I came across this sight:

These poor chaps had had their tents completely submerged in rain and flood water. Where they were camping is at the bottom of a big hill, and there is a bank at the bottom of the hill up to where we were standing. Basically, a huge water trap. I did hear that some people went home, but some people were buying new tents and just getting on with it, which is cool.

By the way, I never got any wellies. By the time I got to the front, they only had size 9 and below. Still, at least I hadn't queued for 2 hours, oh, hang on....

Still, off we went and for the rest of the day and we saw the John Butler Trio, The Thrills, The Zutons, a little bit of Elvis Costello and a little bit of Bloc Party before Doves, The Killers and The White Stripes. A pretty cool Friday by anyone's standards I reckon. I had basically set out to see as much music as possible while at Glastonbury and overall had an excellent first day. Apart from not being that bothered with Elvis Costello, and not really being able to form a judgment on the snippets I saw of Bloc Party, every band I saw that day was excellent, particularly The Zutons and The Killers, whom I absolutely loved, and evidently did the crowd. I was amazed at how everyone knew all the words to the Killers tracks, I really didn't think they were as popular as that. Note on the Killers, I'm a little confused. The web address is thekillers.co.uk, but the singer has an American accent. I can't be arsed to research it at the moment but may do at some stage, but if anyone has any info on this to set me straight I'd be glad of it. Anyway, Doves were great too. I also didn't know until watching them this time (I had seen Doves support Oasis at Wembley in 2000) that the chap from Doves is left-handed, but plays a right-handed guitar upside down, much like Jimi Hendrix used to. That's cool.

After amazingly managing to sleep through the constant noise of the Dance area we awoke at around 10:20 on Saturday morning, and made first use of our camping equipment, which was all brand new. I was well impressed with my little camping stove and the pots and pans we had bought, they did a really good job. Anyway, after missing Hayseed Dixie because we were eating breakfast, we strolled out to see Goldie Lookin' Chain who were quite entertaining. I've not quite worked them out fully yet, I'm assuming they are a big piss take, and am convinced that they are, but my friend Timmy says that they are a bit like Avid Merrion and never really come out of character. Anyhoo, whilst they were still on we trudged over to the Other stage and saw Athlete who were fantastic, before making our way back to the Pyramid stage to see Ash, who were pretty good. I love Athlete and was really pleased to be able to see them, even if it did mean missing the Kaiser Chiefs. Ash were not as amazing as I expected them to be but were still very enjoyable. Next up were The Coral who were really really good. I have loved them for a while now and it was good to get to see them live. They are really good to watch and the songs are again ones that a lot of people seem to love.

I can't quite remember at which point this happened during the day now, but at some point we took a wander over to the Left Field area in search of the Acoustic Stage, which we never actually made it to. There are a couple of reasons for this, one was that I had no shoes on on Saturday as my trainers were sodden and I still had no wellies, so walking on certain surfaces was a little painful (sadly including the very handy walkways laid down everywhere, which make it much safer to walk on generally, but hurt like hell when walking in bare foot). Secondly, we never made it that far to the Acoustic Stage because I was drawn into the Left Field tent by some cool sounding music coming from a group of 3 guys, who I think are a proper band, but I never got to find out their name. Anyway, we only heard maybe a minute or two of these guys before they finished. Afterwards, the singer came back and said that as they had some spare time, if anyone would like to get up and do a song with the acoustic guitar that they were more than welcome! If only one of those guys had been left handed I could have had my chance! Anyway, 3 maybe 4 people did get up and played a couple of songs each, and it was really cool to watch, guys plucked from the audience completely unprepared on stage in front of a couple of thousand people playing songs. And one of them was a 14 year old lad, who was pretty good. This was one of my favourite bits of the festival, as it was good music, but just impromptu performance.

Also during Saturday, on our way over to see Ash, my girlfriend fell over, and I didn't notice. This was shortly after we had seen Michael Eavis. As I had to concentrate so hard on walking myself without falling over, I turned around to see her all covered in mud. The results can be seen here!:

(When blogger photo upload works properly)

After The Coral came Keane, one of the highlights of the festival. Again everyone seemed to know all the songs and the band seem genuinely touched by their success, which is really nice. They put in a stonking performance and the keyboard player is brilliant to watch, a bit like Chris Martin, but more on him later. There were several touching moments watching Keane, as the crowd sang along to hit after hit, and even a couple of new songs went down very well. Not really being that bothered about seeing New Order we trudged back to the Other stage to watch Kasabian for a bit who were pretty good. My girlfriend didn't really like the fact that he swore a lot but I didn't really care, they were good. The front man does seem to be a bit cocky though.

The climax of my evening came as we made our way back to the Pyramid stage to see Coldplay, my favourite band of the moment. We got as close as possible, which was close enough, but a little off to the left of the stage. The set was amazing, as they worked through an equal measure of songs from all three albums. They really seem to enjoy themselves and have a great time performing, which is one of the things I love about them, they really look like they are giving it their all. A few lines were changed here and there with references to Glastonbury (Politk - Bring me weather that does no harm / Michael Eavis - Worthy Farm / Give me mud up to yer knees / Best festival in history!!) and lots of crowd interaction. They are an absolute pleasure to watch and the atmosphere at the stage was fantastic. I think the whole weekend experience provides such a good feeling among everyone that you can't help but have a good time, even if you are covered in mud. The set included some re-workings of older songs, particularly Clocks, which now includes a thumping drum intro, and Don't Panic, which sees the band all swap instruments around with Will Champion on piano, but also included a cover of Kylie's 'Can't get you out of my head' in a salute to the singer's absence, which was actually really good. I've since read that there were around 110,000 people at that gig. If that's true, that's pretty phenomenal. The other artists must have been a bit annoyed, but that's what you expect. I've heard that Razorlight did a really good show too, but there was no way I was going to miss Coldplay. After Coldplay it was again back to the tent for some much needed sleep.

Sunday saw a similar morning to Saturday, got some decent sleep in, and had a nic breakfast, before going over to see James Blunt on the Pyramid stage, followed by Jools Holland. I went to see James Blunt on the strength of seeing an advert for him on TV, and he was pretty good. He's being compared to Damien Rice and guys like that, but not really knowing in great detail what they are like I can't say if this is reasonable or not. I liked him anyway. Jools was also brilliant, and brought on some guest singers who really could belt it out too. He's a true gent and a great performer. After a wee break I strolled over to the Other stage (it was close to our tent) to watch some of The Bravery who were ok, and the bass player did end up naked which was interesting. After going back to collect my girlfriend we went back over the Other stage and spent the rest of the day there, watching Rufus Wainwright, The La's and Ian Brown. Rufus Wainwright was quite entertaining, and brough on his sister Marth at one point, which was nice as we had wanted to get over to see her but had kept missing her. His songs are quite refreshing, and he seems to be a well humoured bloke. The La's were a little disappointing, especially considering that this was their big comeback. They came on stage, and no-one said a word to the crowd until John Power said 'Thanks very much, cheers' when they walked off. They played I think their entire album, a couple of B-sides and maybe two new songs (although they could have also been B-sides of another single that I don't know). Whilst the songs were pretty good, their performance lacked any charisma. Ian Brown started off by playing 4 Stone Roses tracks, and did drop another one in later on. To be honest these were the high points of his set, along with F.E.A.R. which I really like. I don't actually know a lot of his own music, but it seemed alright, but just didn't have the impact of the Roses stuff. And he refused to do an encore, which had people booing, and left us all disappointed with our last night of music. Back to the tent again for not very much sleep at all....

Monday morning saw a very early rise, about 5:40am to be precise. We had already packed up most things the night before, and simply needed to put the tent away and go back to the car. We got up this early to avoid the rush, and I was surprised to see that there were plenty of people leaving at the same time. After struggling back to the car, we loaded up and left the site with the Radio 1 on so that we could continue to feel part of the festival atmosphere even though we were on our way home. After travelling for 10 minutes in the wrong direction (the Glastonbury people had put cones up which made it look like you couldn't turn right, not my fault) and a little bit of getting lsot on the way back, we got back to Bromley at around 1:30 to 2:00pm.

As I mentioned right at the beginning of all this badly written rubbish, it was probably the best thing that I have ever done, and would really love to do it all again. Just to see how much everyone else loves it and the great time that everyone has there, no matter what the circumstances, is really inspiring. If you get the chance, do it, you will not forget it and certainly not regret it.

is this the way they say the music's meant to feel, or just 20,000 people standing in a field?

2005-06-23T12:24:00.000+01:00

The day has arrived when me make our journey to the biggest festival of the year, Glastonbury! We are leaving after work tonight, stopping off in Bromley at my girlfriend's sister's place for a rest, and then making the onward journey to Glastonbury. We were going to stay overnight at our rest stop and then get up obscenely early and make our way there tomorrow morning, but now we have decided to make the journey tonight and set up camp. As I have never been before I am keen not to miss anything, and so I don't want to be messing around putting up our tent while bands I want to see are bouncing away on the main stage.

I am a little concerned that we may be trying to take too much with us, but as I have never been camping before I guess much of this will be a learning experience for me in how to and how not to camp. I really don't want to have to make 2 journeys from the car to the camp, and certainly not on the way back.

All this jollity means that there will be no blogging til Tuesday, when no doubt there will be a report of one of the best weekends of my life!

computers are rubbish

2005-06-22T13:48:00.000+01:00

Ok, so since around last autumn I've been working on a Windows XP image for our school. It has taken me that long because my only work partner was off sick for 7 months and I was left to fend for myself, so the image kind of took a back seat. He's back now and I'm now testing it in one classroom to iron out any problems before rolling it out across the whole school. This process basically involves setting up one PC exactly how you like it, running the Windows Sysprep utility to take the machine back to a pre-installed state. You then use some kind of disk imaging software such as Symantec Ghost to create an image which you can then deploy to all of the other computers (also using Ghost if you wish). This if often referred to as 'Ghosting' because of the prevalence of the Symantec software, but is also referred to as imaging.

Well, we'd done this, and so tried to roll it out in one classroom to test it. It worked fine on the majority of PCs, but at some stage more PCs were added to the room, and they were not of the original spec, they had different components. The image failed on these PCs, and simply rebooted constantly. We managed to fix this by running through the Windows XP repair process, and re-creating the image again. Well, now the same problem is happening on all of the PCs except the original 4 that didn't work, which are now fine! Great. Back to it, got to try to find a solution that doesn't involve keeping more than one image, as that is a bit of a nightmare to manage, having to update two images in exactly the same way, and keep them synchronised. Ho hum....

monday mornings.... they're shit

2005-06-20T16:00:00.000+01:00

After a glorious weekend of sunshine it was absolutely crap to return to work today, expecially as the good weather seems to be continuing. Whilst it is not as sunny today, it's still bloody hot, and really rubbish to be at work. I popped home at lunchtime to pick somthing up and getting in my car was awful. My next car will have air conditioning for definite.

Nothing much happening in the world of Network Management today. I have finally managed to place an order which I've had 2 companies fighting over for a couple of weeks. It's quite a big order for me at around £12,000 so I like to make sure that we are getting the best deal we can. Sometimes I wonder why as I don't think anyone I work for appreciates it, and everyone else here seems to just get offered a price and then pay it. I generally never take the first price I'm offered, especially if it's on a big product or a large order, as you can get silly discounts, particularly in education.

Almost time to go home now, which I've been waiting for all day to be honest. When it is as hot as it is today I just hate working as you can't get comfortable, no matter how many fans you have going and windows you have open. No chance of air conditioning in this place.

Had quite a nice weekend at home working in the garden, all day on Saturday and Sunday, and then on Sunday evening managed to get out to see my father and step-father for good old Father's Day, then scooted off to the pub to meet a friend who's birthday it was. Body is aching from all that manual labour, but nothing a goo run at the gym won't sort out!

less than a week til glastonbury....

2005-06-17T14:22:00.000+01:00

It is now less than one week til I and my girlfriend are at the Glastonbury festival, and I am very excited. I've wanted to go to Glastonbury for years but have never really been able to justify the expense, nor had anyone to go with. Then last year a couple of my friends went and they loved it, but yet again I couldn't afford it. This year, instead of a proper holiday, Nicky and I are heading off to Somerset to see the greatest fesitval of them all. There are so many bands on (check out the lineup here) and I love most of the bands that are on the main stages on each night. I hope that it is going to be a really fantastic experience, we just need to buy a tent now...

To top it all off like a cherry on a cake, we are then going to see Coldplay (again, it'll be twice within 48 hours) on the Monday night at Crystal Palace. Most people that know me know that I am a massive Coldplay fan, I have already seen them twice, and am really looking forward to seeing them again. I was extremely pissed off last month when a friend of mine won 2 tickets to go to see them at a really small gig filmed by MTV in London recently, and he didn't ask me to go with him. Well annoying. Hopefully though at one of the Coldplay shows I'll be able to get close enough for a good view. I'm also hoping to see some of the Radio 1 team, as I know they tend to hang around for the duration, but they'll most likely be in VIP areas for most of the time.

It will be a shame not to see John Peel on TV (even though I won't be watching it on TV, but you get the point) this year, he has corner stoned my memories of watching Glastonbury since I first became away of it. His general nice guyness and dry humour, not to mention his absolutely amazing knowledge of music of all genres will be sorely missed, and I just can't see anyone else filling the gap.

Roll on Friday 24th.....

about big gay tom

2005-06-17T11:16:00.000+01:00

I have kind of realised that I have my URL as http://biggaytom.blogspot.com and have not explained the history of Big Gay Tom. My name is Tom, this is true, and I am quite large (around 6ft 5), but I am not actually gay. Little Tom once decided that as he was called Tom, and didn't much like being distinguished by a label of any kind, that I should be called Gay Tom. In fact, on my first date with my girlfriend I happened to bump into Tom and Andy, and the cry came 'Alright big gay Tom, how's yer aids?' I of course don't have aids, but it did manage to break the ice a little I suppose, so never mind. Tom also managed to convince Nicky to say the word cunt, one of his favourite words. For a while after that no-one really seemed to bother with the Gay Tom label until about a year ago, when it seemed to re-appear from no-where, and I am now universally known amongst friends as either Big Gay Tom, Gay Tom, or GT for short. Cracking. Not the most endearing of labellings, but I don't really care. Everyone knows me, and they know it's all a bit of a piss take, so it doesn't matter.

It at least does help to distinguish between Little Tom and Gay Tom during conversation, which is helpful.

tom's a twat

2005-06-17T11:04:00.000+01:00

This morning saw a rather embarrasing incident, one which I should never have let happen having had it happen to me in the past. I attended the gym this morning with young Chris, stopped off at home on the way to work to pick up my lunch and have a quick breakfast, and then proceeded to work. I have needed to fill up for a couple of days, but each time have passed the petrol station and thought 'I've left that 5p off per litre coupon at home, I'll do it later.' Upon passing the local primary school this morning I realised I was about to run out of petrol, and so tried just to get to a decent stopping place, but couldn't actually manage that. Instead I stopped outside of the primary school with cars queued up behind me, and cars waiting patiently to come from the opposite direction. I had to wait for sufficient space behind so that I could push the car backwards into the entrance area of the school car park. Luckily Chris was coming in to work with us to day, and he brilliantly went on the hunt for a petrol can and some unleaded for me, and brought it back to me sitting in my car whilst looking stupid. Good start to the day!

kitty arrival

2005-06-15T13:40:00.000+01:00

We picked up our kitten last night, a female black gorgeous little thing. She has however already managed to find her way in behind the skirts in the kitchen, which is a touch annoying as I had to dismantle it all to try to get her out, by which time she had hopped out on her own anyway. She is good fun though, although I did feel sad when we took her yesterday. Her mum was miaowing away so I put the kitty near her and she started cleaning her, but sadly then we had to take her away. I do see it as a shame that we drag animals away from their parents, and that the parents have to lose their children. If it were humans people would go nuts, but it seems somehow ok that we tear apart the families of animals.

Anyway, we will be on the lookout for a play friend for our new (still unnamed) kitten else I will have yet more guilty feelings about leaving the poor thing alone all day long. Any suggestions for names are welcome, although I doubt that anyone actually reads my blog at all so I shant hold out much hope!

why do people never do what they say they are going to do?

2005-06-15T11:18:00.000+01:00

I've been waiting for Sophos Technical Support to call me back since yesterday, so I'm now on hold to them. In actual fact I've been waiting to hear from them since May 12th, as they are supposed to be helping me with problems we are having with the 'new and improved' Sophos Anti-Virus along with its Enterprise Console. Machines are not reporting to the Console properly, some are not updating, when machines are 'syspreped' and 'ghosted' Sophos does not run properly and has to be re-installed, sometimes it informs you you are not a member of one of the Sophos groups and so it cannot run (but you are a member of the SophosAdministrators group). Generally it's a complete mess, which really upsets me as I've always loved Sophos and championed it greatly. (Incidentally they just answered, then cut me off, but they did have the decency to call back. Sadly the chap I need to speak to is on the phone at present remoting into someone else's site, so I can't speak to him. He'll call back though, Scout's Honour).

I have always thought of Sophos as being a really professional company, and still do, but this has really annoyed me about them, as they have clearly released a product which is not ready, and is not able to cope with variations in installation scenario. I seriously hope that they sort out the problems quickly, as I like the products, but I can't go on using anti-virus which don't work properly for much longer, as it's just not worth the risk for the sake of loyalty to a brand.

Another company that continually release stuff which is not fit for release are Capita. This outfit write the software that schools use for Student Information Management, called SIMS. This contains all possible information about students from home details to assessment and attendance data. The problem is that they never ever get it right. When they do do something positive, it usually knocks on something else and takes out a feature which previously was working. Perhaps they need to implement FogBugz, another cool piece of software from FogCreek. If you haven't already read about FogCreek I suggest you do, they are the example in how to write software properly. Reading their site, plus Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky is the founder and owner of FogCreek) just makes me want to create a company of my very own, just like this one. Whilst they have come from the route of being an initially home-based company, Joel has taken the first opporunity to create the dream workplace for his team, with private offices for developers, the most comfy chairs and serious PCs to work on, plus an amazing staff communal area.

At the moment Joel has hired 4 interns for the summer, and given them the task of creating a piece of software from start to finish. There is an ongoing blog of this project, called Project Aardvark, read and keep up with developments, plus you get to see more about how much of a cool guy Joel is to work for and how brilliant it would be to work for him. Joel, if you ever read this, I'll work for you, as long as you don't mind throwing a couple of courses on .net my way to bring me up to speed, or perhaps I could be a tester. Failing that I'll make drinks and snacks for people all day long, honestly, I'll do anything!

fishing

2005-06-14T14:22:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I went fishing with my good friend Adem at Deal Pier. We spent 4 hours on the first section of the pier where Adem caught the smallest ugliest fish in the world, and I caught nothing (during which time I also spent about an hour looking for a fish and chip shop - found it eventually, lovely drop of cod). We then moved to the very end of the pier where I caught with my first cast and 'harry the hand-line' proved quite successful, and I believe that Adem caught something on his big fella too. All in all it was a lovely day, and didn't rain at all despite looking like it was going to all day. It was very windy though, which does play havoc with my shit hair and vision abilities.

Thoroughly looking forward to another romantic day out with Adem now, I think on our next date he is going to take me to a golf course, he said something about banging one up the back nine, I assume that's what he's talking about.

poor kitty

2005-06-14T14:08:00.000+01:00

I have mentioned previously that we were due to pick up a couple of kittens recently, but one of them was ill so we were waiting to see the outcome. Unfortunately the little fella didn't make it through an operation and never awoke from anesthetic, which is a bit of a shame. Poor little fella was only about 8 weeks old. We shall be going to pick up the other kitten today, but he/she will not have a friend to play with now. We'll be on the look out for kittens of a similar ages so that the little fella will have someone to play with during the day. Hopefully the kitten we are picking up today will not have any problems, and we'll be able to find a play friend for them soon.

i can speak

2005-06-14T13:51:00.000+01:00

My voice has now almost fully recovered, which is cool. I like speaking. I also like to have a bash at singing when at home with the acoustic guitar, and that is now almost very nearly possible again. Still finding myself coughing up up some real nasty shit in the mornings at the moment though. I do seem to take simply ages to recover from any sort of illness which is really rubbish. Most people have a cold for about 2-3 days, I tend to have them for a couple of weeks minimum. I also have a peculiar problem with my left arm at the moment. I play football on saturdays and at the same time as being downright cracking at the whole affair, I am fairly handy with a long throw. Except at the moment, this seems to seriously hurt my left upper arm around the top of the bicep, and I've no idea why (any help welcome). I also have a weak right foot, which I have never broken, but feels suspect from time to time. Lastly, I injured my right wrist playing football in February (it was bent back double from a flying foot, which had first hit my face - nice). This is also still quite weak now, and I can definitely still feel it sometimes. Generally I think my body must just be a bit shit.

i can't speak

2005-06-10T12:34:00.000+01:00

I have now been losing my voice since yesterday afternoon, and it just seems to be getting worse. My girlfriend had a similar throat problem over last weekend, and it now seems to have passed on to me, which is chuffing brilliant. I also have the remnents of Monday's illness still hanging over me, which has made the whole experience much more enjoyable. Still, it's nearly time for home for the weekend, and time to go visit the kittens, or at least one of them....

We agreed to take a couple of kittens from a girl who attends school here and went to see them about 5 weeks ago. Unfortunately one of them is now i'll and is in permantent residence at the vet. Hopefully it will be alright, but harsh as it may sound, I don't want to be paying vets bills for the next 12 years because we bought an unhealthy kitten, and I also don't think it is fair to house one kitten alone when everyone in the house is at work all day (a reason why we recently bought a female companion for our male rabbit, and he seems much happier now, although she's not all that keen on the humping that he tries to do occasionally). What to do eh, we should be going to see the not so ill kitten later, and perhaps I'll ask for the vet's number so I can guage if the poor little fella will make it.

Another thing that I may be doing this weekend is visiting our exciting new shopping development called Westwood Cross. This is quite a big thing in our pikey little corner of the country, as we have to travel to get to any decent shops as our town centres are becoming more and more irrelevent, and I suppose this will only make things worse. But, at least we won't have to travel to Canterbury or Ashford or Bluewater or Lakeside to find some decent stores and more. T'interweb shopping is all very well, but you can't try stuff on can you, and it takes ages messing about sending stuff back and getting refunds.

Yet another thing that I will hopefully be doing if it doesn't lash down is going fishing on Sunday with a friend of mine. I've not been for ages and I don't think he has either, and I'm quite looking forward to it. More on that after the event....

the sun is shining

2005-06-08T13:27:00.000+01:00

....and I'm stuck in this hell hole. I have just been out to lunch which is cool, but all I seem to do is take my lunch with me an sit by the seaside in my car eating it. And because I have the motivation to come to work of an agrophobic long-distance runner (and therefore am in for work at 8:30 instead of 8 every day), it means that I can only take half an hour anyway or else I shall have to stay even later in the afternoon that I would normally. Great.

I have applied for a couple of jobs today, which I haven't done for a while, but like all the others I expect nothing to come of them. It is at points like this in my life where I consider careers changes. Maybe I don't want to be stuck in IT dealing with whingers and people who don't understand what you do for a living, people who refer to a computer as a hard-drive, people who when asked to switch their computer on instead cycle the power for their monitor, people who are really simply far too thick to be employable in any capacity. Another side of me then thinks that perhaps it will all be different in a lovely, different company, one which understands a persons needs. Check out Fog Creek for an idea of what I'm talking about.

To give you a bit more of an insight into why I hate working here, I'll let you in on something we discovered today. Kids are stealing RAM from the PCs. We bought Dell PCs, because frankly, I have worked with them a lot over the years and I think they are top stuff, and I've found Compaq and HP to be rather poor, particularly on customer service. Anyway, that's all besides the point. Most of our PCs now have screwless cases, but Dell have been bright about it and provided a spot on the back of the case to allow you to padlock it together, so we've spent probably around £600 in total on luggage sized padlocks to secure the cases, as we were fearful of the thieving little idiots that inhabit our school. Seemingly that's not enough. The little bastards are removing the front blanking plates of PCs which don't have CD-ROM drives (we stopped buying those because they were trashing them too), fishing around inside and stealing the RAM. Pikey little tossers, I absolutely have virtually no time for the children in this school at all. In the time that I have been at this school I've replaced over 260 PCs (we only have about 50 that I've not replaced). They complained about the shite old PCs, so they got new ones. Then they trash the new ones, making them shite too. Only having 256MB RAM in those that have had their memory halved will seriously bugger up our plans for XP, so I guess many PCs will have to stick with 2000 until they are obsolete now. Still, hopefully by then I'll be somewhere new, in whatever job, and the little nobs who ruin everything for everyone will be busy sweeping dog poo into little plastic bags whilst wearing orange 'uniforms', and emptying my bins of a monday morning.

getting started

2005-06-07T22:32:00.000+01:00

I've decided to start a blog as I basically hate my job to the extent where I can't be arsed to do any work. I work at a secondary school in Kent as Network Manager, and it's toss, really really toss. Hopefully this should pass the time at school as I am interrupted by idiot staff and pupils.

My hatred of my jobs seems to stem from either boredom, or crappy management. I've previously worked at a college, where I suppose I learned my trade so to speak, and fairly quickly got bored as there was no-where to go. After that I worked as a VB6/SQL programmer (I'm not particularly brilliant at either, but can hold my own. Don't ask about .net though, as it scares me). There, the management was so pathetic that these guys literally need not have bothered coming in to work, as they had no input whatsoever. As I (and lots of other people there, most of which have strangely also left) had bigger ambitions for ourselves, and were frustrated as we thought that the company could have been global if it could be arsed (the MD had made his millions, not interested, has since sold the company), I moved on after about 16 months (was at the college for about 14 months). I''ve now been here for nearly 3 years, and I'm starting to go mental.

This time I think it's a combination of the two factors, largely, management have no idea whatsoever. I've bascially concluded that in schools, the people who run them should not be allowed, after all, what is their management experience? They come out of uni, get a teaching job, become a department head, become a head of year perhaps, an assistant or deputy head then bam, head teacher. What part of that process has qualified them to manage anyone? The other side of the coin is the boredom, which is a knock on of the management problems. Because simply put, these people don't understand, they won't give me the people required to successfully run IT as it should be run (I have 1 tech, and nearing 300 computers in 3 building network), I have to do a lot of the mundane crappy jobs myself, which I thought I had left behind 5 years ago at the college.

An example: Due to the technical ineptitude of a number of staff, and in particular the head, whenever the head does a presentation using a laptop and projector, I am required to stand and watch the whole thing on the off chance that something will go wrong and I will be on hand to fix it up. Sometimes these things go on for ages. An excellent use of £25k a year I reckon. Now I'm not banging on about how much money I get, just that for someone who is employed on that sort of scale, standing and watching someone do powerpoint for an hour is just a touch below the limits required to challenge me.

Suppose I should do some work, or browse the job websites for a bit at least.