Time To Blog

Well, let's just see what this looks like, shall we?
I'm sat at work; Blogger.com is blocked so there's no chance of posting something through the website or by using Windows Live Writer so I've resorted to blogging by email. It sometimes works but sometimes looks
funny so I have to edit it later on. Am I rambling?

It's been a steady couple of days so far. All servers have been working normally. Nothing has appeared to be out of the ordinary. Work has plodded on as it should be. Unfortunately, the "not well"-ness of the servers last week has past on to me - I am not well.
I started with a sore throat on Friday evening and I knew something was coming. On Saturday morning, I woke up to not being able to say a word and razor blades in my throat. The sore throat continued on Sunday and started turning into the ridiculous cold I currently have. I'm stocked up with tissues laced with Olbas oil, several packets of Halls Soothers and plenty of hot drinks. I'm one of these people who only take
medication when it's absolutely necessary so, when it comes to colds and the like, I ride it out until it's gone. I can be a moany git during that time but people have learned to live with that when I'm not suffering anyway.

16:08 - Ten minutes or so but I might leave early. Feeling very stuffed. I'd considered tidying my office because it's not possible to see my desk at the moment. However, the sophisticated filing system that, to the untrained eye, looks like piles of paper will do me for now. Friday can be a tidy day.

I think I'll go home, have meatloaf for tea (if there's any left) along with a few hot drinks before going to meet my girlfriend from work. I'm good like that. I'm especially looking forward to meeting
her tonight because she's had her hair done and looks amazing.

I think now may be the time to give up and pack up. Nothing more for me to do here until tomorrow.

Problem Solved?

It’s Saturday morning and I’m up writing a blog post because I couldn’t sleep anymore. I’m suffering today. A combination of a ridiculous sore throat (as mentioned on Twitter and Facebook, if anyone needs any film trailer voiceover work done, I’m your man) and one of the more horrendous weeks in work I’ve had for a long time. The lack of sleep was mainly due to the sore throat. Hate having sore throats. It’s one of those where it feels you have something wedged at the back and it won’t come out. I’m not necessarily coughing all the time. It’s just there and I’m just going to sit it out until it’s gone.

“Hell” is not a word I would describe this week but, since there can’t really be anything worse than hell, that word will have to do. “Really bad” is an understatement.
I don’t think I’ve blogged about it before but we’ve had an ongoing problem at work with our servers. It’s something that has completely stumped us and our maintenance company for a few months now.
It’s a very long story so, to prevent you all from being bored by technical rubbish, I’m going to try and keep it short.

Read more >>>

RINGTONE!

A pointless post but this always makes me laugh.
Something silly, stupid, pointless and I’m even sad enough to have the chorus as my mobile ringtone. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t like me embedding the video so you’ll have to click the link. Enjoy…

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Ringtone

Raise money for B-eat

Read this:

“Hello! My name is Lucy Taylor and I have suffered from anorexia for nearly 5 years now. I have been in and out of hospitals, and seen several psychiatrists, psychologists and other therapists, none of which have helped.

Since finding Twitter (and all the great people that it reaches) I have decided to grab the bull by the horns and just go for it, and get better!!

I am now on a weight gain menu plan, and although it will be slow, I have decided to aim for a starting weight of 7 stone by December 2010 (right now I am 6 stone/38kg and am 5ft 11inches tall which gives me a BMI of 11.6 ). My next weigh in is on the 17th March so stay tuned. I can't believe I'm about to write this but I can't wait! Haha!

All I'm asking for is £1 for every 1lb 1 gain, or more if you can! Lets B-eat it by helping me beat it!

If you want to wait until I have revealed what my weight gain is (which will be every month) then you don't have to sponsor me now, but can wait to see how much I have gained and then sponsor. It is entirely up to you! SO, if you want to sponsor me, that would be amazing and would raise much needed money for the Eating Disorder charity B-eat! Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

P.S My profile picture is my motivational picture - that is how I look when I am well, and it is what I am aiming for :-D The reason I have posted a picture of myself looking healthy, rather than how I look now, is because 1) its give me motivation to see myself look healthy and happy 2) I dont want it to be triggering for other eating disorder sufferers, and 3) frankly, it is not a very pretty sight!! LOL.Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to read this!

Love Lucy xxx xxx”

Lucy (@littlemunchkin) is a very good friend of a lot of people, not just me. She’s funny, kind and, just in 140 characters on Twitter, can make your day through one simple sentence despite all she’s been through above.
She’s on a mission now to get through everything and, with the help of everyone she can reach out to, she can do it as well as raise lots of money for a really good charity.

Instead of me babbling on about it, get in touch with her through Twitter (@littlemunchkin) or, better still, donate some money to B-eat through her page on JustGiving.com.

Go for it, Lucy.
You’re an amazing person and you give a lot of love through Twitter and Digital Spy. Let’s pay you back by raising lots of money and giving you a boost to get you better.

All the very best :-)

Hating Technology

Today hasn’t exactly been the Monday I’d been hoping for towards the end of last week.

After a slow but marginally successful half term, I left the network in a reasonable state and was quietly confident that when everyone returned this morning they would be impressed, pleased and possibly complimentary at the improvements that had been made.

Unfortunately, the compliments and praise would have to wait because there would be no way they could experience the improvements as the entire network was down… again… for the millionth time!

I had suspected something was amiss when I went to check my work email from home on Saturday morning and noticed that nothing was happening. No web page, no email, no nothing – even the school website was down. Considering our recent problems, I was surprised I hadn’t thought the worst straight away. However, I was aware the local authority had a few problems with our website during half term week and so assumed it was something to do with that – I couldn’t really have been more wrong.

Walking into work this morning, I didn’t know what to expect. I still assumed (or hoped) a simple Internet problem easily solved. Why I had even come up with these ridiculous assumptions, I don’t know. I usually think the worst and then at least when it’s not that bad, I can feel better. Unfortunately, today was that bad.

Walking Into Red

It’s always a good sign when I open the server room door to be greeted with a sea of green lights blinking at me from the servers. I breathe a sigh of relief knowing everything is ok and I can continue  with my job. They’ll take care of themselves.
It’s a different story on days such as today when, instead of green, the servers look like they’ve just turned into Satan’s Servers, staring at me through blood red eyes. It wasn’t a pretty sight and I knew I’d have something hefty to deal with.

Red lights indicate just one thing on server hard drives – corruption. And a total of 8 red lights means that something is very, very wrong. Without even thinking, I called our maintenance company and logged a problem then settled down in front of the angry machines to check logs and work out what went wrong this time (I still don’t know).

… and now it’s Tuesday

… and I’m not looking forward to walking into work again.

Servers are supposed to be reliable and something you can, more or less, leave to it while you get on with the rest of the day. When they don’t get on with what they’re supposed to be doing and become unreliable then you lose trust in them.
Walking into work after a complete failure is always a worry, especially when there are still things that still aren’t working properly which means I can’t check on the condition of the servers until I open the dreaded server room door and see which colour I’m going to be flooded with. My hope is green; my fear is red. I also won’t be impressed with orange.

We shall see.