National Blog Posting Month 2008

It's that time of year again. Here we go again, let's see if I can manage 30 posts in 30 days for NaBloPoMo...

Hallowe'en last night. Did the traditional carving of a pumpkin lantern, bobbing for apples and disconnecting the doorbell to avoid the "Trick or Treaters".

Heard this rant on Radio 4 last night - "When I was a boy we didn't go knocking on doors, begging for sweets. No we used to create a straw effigy and go out on the streets begging for money instead." :)

Dropped the boys off at their Grandma's this morning and went off to do some early Christmas shopping. Not doing too badly considering it's only the beginning of November - only a few more to get.

Going to see the new James Bond film "Quantum of Solace" tonight. Hope it's as good as the last one.

There's a panic on at work, and we're trying to recover a failed system - so I've got to go in at 04:00 on Sunday morning to help nurse the recovery along. At least I'll get a good view of the Church of the Bright Green Neon Rabbit on my way past at that time in the morning.

Slimline Salad Dressing?

Last weekend I finally got round to dusting down the hi-fi amp and speakers that I bought 24 years ago and connected them up to the brand new CD player that I bought last year, but had packed away until I could get covers to prevent small fingers from damaging the speakers.

I couldn't really get a satisfactory metal grille solution, so the reason that I connected everything up last weekend was that I'd decided that I could trust the kids.
They've never really touched the surround sound system in the front room.

One of the speakers has a cloth cover. The cloth cover had come off the other speaker.

To my dismay this morning I discovered that Frodo had poked in the centre dome of the woofer. I knew it was him, as he ran a mile when I discovered it. After a good telling off I established that he'd pushed it, thinking it was a button (he was trying to figure out how to turn the music on).
Luckily he hadn't touched the tweeter.

I got him to help me fix it tonight - he helped me turn a few screws whilst I took the speaker out to examine it from all sides.

Googling for a solution suggested the following options.

i) Suck the dome back into shape with a hoover.
ii) Pierce the dome with a pin and hook it back into shape.
iii) Use a piece of sticky tape to pull the dome back into shape - start with say masking tape and work your way through sellotape, parcel tape, gaffer tape etc until you find something just sticky enough.

I decided that option i) could work, but a Dyson might just rip the dome right off.
Option ii) would leave a small hole, that might degrade the sound.

Therefore I went for option iii).
Masking tape, and sellotape were no good, but a piece of parcel tape did the trick. Hooray!

The speaker is now working as well as before (warm bass sound with plenty of middle and crisp clear high's), and has a taught cloth cover protecting it from further mishaps.

For those that don't understand, the title of this post refers to the Not the Nine O'Clock News Gramophone Sketch :-

Food Poisoning?

Fish chips and mushy peas from the local chippy on Friday night. Mmmm!

Fishcake for Novelist Supermum and Sausages for Frodo and Samwise. Samwise had some mushy peas too.

Samwise had a tummy ache in the middle of the night - but was OK otherwise.
I woke up at 3am and threw up. I then threw up again in the morning.

Spent all day Saturday not being able to eat much, sleeping on the couch and rehydrating myself with blackcurrant juice. Felt like I had the aches, headache and shivers of flu, but without the sneezing. Of course I was accused of having "Man Flu" :)

Novelist Supermum and Frodo were OK.

After sleeping all day, I slept all night too. Got up about 10:30 this morning and felt fine again.
Samwise was a little sick on Saturday night, but was fine again today.

So it looks like the mushy peas were the culprit.
Never had a problem with that chippy before, but I think it will be a while before I visit it again.

Narnia at the Anglican Cathedral

I took these photo's at Narnia event for children, held at the Anglican Cathedral last month.

A question for cha0tic - is this any better than the "Pirate Bishops" in the previous post?

Son of Adam and a Beaver, or Cylon and a Werepig? :)

Family Fun on the Ferry

Ferry up and down the Mersey today. Who wants to cross it and go to the Wirral anyway? :) Free trip (we applied for a ticket after seeing a flier sent by Frodo and Samwise school) with activities for children organised by "Adult Education Services".

QE2 II

People are getting a little excited at work, because the QE2 is heading into the Mersey on it's final voyage, before going off to become a hotel in Dubai.

I managed to see it go past the Baycam Web Camera at 11:05 - it's just showing the sea now.

It's just passed the entrance to the Mersey. Should be docked outside work around 12:30

Didn't bring my camera with me this time, but then I did get a few snaps of it last year

There's a bit more commercialism going on this time. Last year it was a just a few programs being sold. This year, as the crowd is gathering, I can see coffee stalls, hot dog stands, carriage rides etc.

No Stabilisers

Had one of those classic Father-Son moments in the park today.

Frodo's been riding his bike on one stabiliser for a while now. The result is that he's riding it leaning out to one side to provide counter-balance.

Went up to the park with him and took the stabiliser off.

Ran with him a few times, holding onto the handlebar and shouting "pedal, pedal, pedal" before letting go. Keeled over a couple of times at first, then he started to get it.

At first about 6 turns of the pedals before he either wobbled out of control, came off or put his foot down.

After an hour or so he'd increased this to about 20. Showed off his new found skill to Mum up and down the path outside the house a few times, before he came in.

I'm dead proud of him - quite an achievement given that he has difficulties with balance and coordination. He's going to tell his physio teacher tomorrow.

Tooth Fairy - 4

Frodo's other front tooth was hanging on by a very strong gum-thread on Thursday night.
I got him to wobble it a lot until finally, as I was examining how he was doing, it pinged out and landed on his bed.

Popped it in an envelope with a note to the Tooth Fairy to come and get it.

This time she left a small Lightning McQueen car under his pillow.



Samwise has been observing this activity closely. We found out at a children's party on Saturday that he's been giving some small white nuts to the kids in his school class to try and "trick the tooth fairy" with. So far she hasn't been fooled :)

Tooth Fairy - 3

Frodo lost his third tooth on Saturday. One of his front teeth this time. Looks like the other one will be soon to follow.

The Tooth Fairy that visits our house tends to deliver small toys, rather than money, in exchange for children's milk teeth. Last time she left a small "bumblebee" transformer.

This time she left a tiny Optimus Prime.

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool 3

We all went out again to see the spider leave Liverpool.
Here's the last still pics that I took. Had to switch to the video camera, as the snap camera is useless outside after dark.

We knew that had returned to it's nest on the Concourse tower, and would probably move as dusk approached. We got there at 18:30 and stood on a traffic island between St John's shopping centre car park and St George's hall and waited.

Spotted a couple of friends who live on the Wirral waiting nearby, so we shouted them over and had a chat. The Penny Farthing pub was blasting out music. Every now and again the DJ played the spiderman theme from the 60's cartoon.

Around 19:30 the French chaps in the fancy fencing jackets - I've since learned that they are called "Les Manipulateurs" - abseiled down from the top of the building, and strapped themselves onto La Princesse, as the spider is known.

The monster then slowly descended, as musicians mounted on cherry-pickers arrived and played. Gradually the creature was lowered to the ground, then it slowly turned and began to move along William-Brown street.

We watched it go, with the musicians leading the way, at which point darkness had fallen, so I switched to my video camera. We decided to dodge around the back of St George's Hall and meet up with the creature on the other side. We lost our friends, but I think that they opted to follow the spider in the other direction, as they hadn't seen it yet.

We stood at the back of a line of people and watched the musicians go past, then saw the spider coming. This time a number of "Les Manipulateurs" were leaping onto it's legs and allowing themselves to be carried up into the air, and back down again.

The spider became interested in the people sitting on the walls of the hall for a bit, then came right past us.
There was enough of a gap at the back of the crowd to walk along, so we found ourselves once again walking with the spider. I walked along with a small boy on my shoulders and holding up the video camera, whilst keeping pace with the arachnid, which was putting on a spectacle as it hissed and sprayed the crowd.

Down towards the Queensway tunnel the crowd got a lot thicker. We managed to squeeze our way into a spot beside the roundabout where the final action took place. We had to alternately pick up Frodo and Samwise for short periods, to make sure that they got a view of the action.

We really felt the heat of the flames that frightened the creature into leaving, and were doused by the water cannons. There was a fusillade of fireworks, and then it began to snow. The spider squatted down, curled up and began to disappear into the tunnel.

Frodo and Samwise were waving goodbye frantically. Samwise was sobbing, and tears were rolling down down his cheeks because he "didn't want the spider to go". He kept on waving and crying as I held him up, right to the end - people were nudging each other around us and going "aahhh!" when they saw him.

Finally around 22:00 it was all over, the spider's snow was still falling, and the music still playing as we headed back to the bus station. Feeling a little guilty for letting the boys stay up so late, but really glad that we'd managed to go out as a family four times to see this marvellous creation, since it's unlikely to come here again.

I'll have to get the video off-tape and post some here sometime.
There's loads of good pictures on the La Machine website. I'm off to buy the poster and the T-shirt.

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool 2

I was on the early shift this morning. The spider had moved in the night and had settled down to "sleep" on the concourse outside the Echo Arena.
Got there at about 07:15 and took a few photos. There was just myself and a camera crew there. As I was leaving a man turned up dragging along a small boy wearing a coat over his pyjamas.






Took the boys back later at 18:00. We waited for about an hour in the pouring rain. Then some musicians appeared, pushing through the crowd and climbing into elevated platforms. They tuned up for a bit, then their platforms rose higher and they struck up a rhythmic tune.

Three scientists/operators/riders clad in what looked like white fencing jackets climbed into seats on top of the spider and the machine-beast began to wake...

Numerous eyes lit up. The legs opened and rose with a hiss to reveal a ring of scientists/operators/riders riding underneath the spider. The mandibles opened and steam/foam sprayed out. Jets of liquid squirted out of the abdomen.

One small girl freaked and ran off shrieking - her mother ran to catch her and calm her down.

The creature/mechanoid rose, turned and began to stride away.



We found ourselves following the spider, walking alongside the spider, climbing up steps to get level with it, going down another set of steps and ended up in front of it as it approached.

Everyone was grinning, laughing, staring and running along with delight. The musicians cacaphonic medley continued whilst the beasts limbs waved close above people's heads, bumped lamposts, stepped on walls and brushed the tops of trees.

We legged along just in front of the spider, pausing now and again to take many photos.







We realised that the rain had stopped when the spider began to move. It came back every now and again, but wasn't as bad as earlier. We watched the monster do a circuit of Salthouse Dock, walking out along The Strand, and then back in through the main gates that lead to the Albert Dock.
It's legs hovered just above the heads of the crowd. People were reaching out and touching the base of the feet.




Finally the spider was hoisted into the air and swung out over the waters of the dock. It dipped it's toes into the water and then was showered by a number of water cannons. It disappeared in a mist of spray for a short while, then, after returning the water cannon salute with a burst of spray from it's abdomen it swung back onto the land, and headed off for the Cunard Building.



By this time it was 21:00, so we called it a day and carried 2 tired, wet, happy boys onto a bus home. I think that we were really lucky to be in the right spot at the right time when it woke up for it's first major outing.

It's off for a walk around the city tomorrow. We're going to miss this, but hoping to see some more on Sunday, when the spider leaves the city.

New Swing Bridge

Liverpool get's a new swing bridge - however it's one time only.

This is the return leg of it's one and only swing. They're raising the footbridge at Princes dock to allow canal boats to pass underneath so that the Leeds-Liverpool canal extension can now take boats all the way to the Pier Head. It was swung out to a temporary resting point a few weeks ago. They've built supports to raise the bridge, and now they're swinging it back.

I've always liked this bridge, with it's whale-bone look, so I'm glad they're keeping it. I think that it cost a lot to build in the first place, which is why they're conducting this feat of engineering, rather than demolishing it and making a new one.

They just started to swing the bridge back in place at 15:00 today, as I was leaving work to go and pick up Frodo from school. I persuaded one of the builders/engineers to let me leg it across the temporary footway, moments before the bridge started swinging, otherwise I'd have been really late if I had to walk the long way round. (Hope he didn't notice me pausing to take the photo's).

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool

We've been looking forward to this one for a while. Picked Frodo from his first day back at school, then collected Samwise and Novelist Supermum and told the boys that we were going into town. Parked up and I asked them if they thought that we would see any giant spiders.

They just thought that Daddy was fibbing again. Then they saw this...



It's all part of the latest, and probably one of the best, Capital of Culture Events.
It's being staged by La Machine and Artichoke, who put on The Sultan's Elephant in London a couple of years ago.

There's more on BBC News - but their photos aren't as good as ours :P

The plot over the next few days is that scientists will experiment on the creature, which will then wake up and move around the city. It will then finish in a spectacular finale on Sunday night. Looks to us like the creature is going to exit via the old Mersey Tunnel.

Unfortunately we're commited to a family event on Saturday, so we'll miss what's going on that day, but we're hoping to see as much as we can with 2 excitable, and possibly very tired boys on Friday and Sunday.

Klimt at the Tate

Went to the Gustav Klimt exhibition at the Tate today.

Enjoyed the exhibition - although at times we felt that it should have been titled "Klimt and a bunch of other stuff by his best mates".

Although I'm familiar with some of his work, I didn't know much about the artist.

He appeared to live most of his life wearing a large, comfy blue smock. We could see that he had several of these, as the designs on the shoulders varied. There was even one on display at the exhibition.

There were a few photos of him in a suit - he looked extremely uncomfortable - probably couldn't wait to get the smock back on.

Pedal to the Metal

Resolution: - I must get back to blogging more often and not let life, the universe and everything hinder leisure activities. (Also I must make time for leisure activities other than falling asleep and snoring zzzZZZZ!)

Stuck in work most of this weekend doing various jobs. Not so bad yesterday as the weather was dismal. Typically I'm on a deadline to finish putting together the boys Stockade Playhouse and I'd planned to do some more work on it yesterday morning when the heavens opened! Today the weather has improved and I've been stuck here for the best part of the day waiting for hardware techies to do their stuff so I can stop and start system services.

The title of this post refers to the latest problem that we had with our vehicle, which is a about a month off being 1 year old. I'd loaded up 4 rather heavy rubble sacks to take to the tip, and had gone about quarter of a mile when an Engine Problem warning light lit up and "Go Straight to the Garage!" appeared on the on-board computer.

Hoping it might be something to do with the weight being pulled, I got to the tip, unloaded, started up again and the fault cleared. It came back again about a mile or so later. Car still going but in "limp home" mode.

Arrived at work and switched off. Later that evening I headed for home and found that I still had the fault, so I parked up and called the RAC, to check it before I did any more damage. The RAC man came and thrashed the accelerator for a bit. His diagnostic kit showed the fault had cleared. He advised me to take it to VW to be checked.

Got the car booked in a couple of days later, which steadily began to get worse - back to limp home mode on starting, with an exhaust problem warning lighting up alongside the first one.

Got the car back on Friday night. It turned out to be a problem with the accelerator pedal. They've fitted a shiny new one and the problem has gone. Apparently accelerator pedals no longer pull on a cable. Mine pushes on a potentiometer (variable resistor) that drives some electronics to tell the car how fast to go. The electronics had failed.

Oh well. At least they found and fixed the fault quickly this time.

Ouch! and Ouch! again.

A couple of weeks ago we woke up to find that our car had been vandalised, along with about 30 or so cars in the immediate area. Some idiot(s) had gone around in the late/early hours scoring a number deep scratches into every vehicle in the neigbourhood.

Yesterday I put our car in for repair. I was given a courtesy car which I had to reverse out of a tight car park. Unfortunately one of the managers of the repair shop had parked his long Silver Mercedes in one of the courtesy car parking bays. This being far too big for the bay resulted in a chicane to negotiate, and with me reversing a car I'm not used to I totally misjudged it and clipped the rear wing on my courtesy car, and his Merc.

Quote from the manager of the repair shop - "Let's just see which one you've hit. Oh No! It's mine!".

Ouch! Sorted it out with the insurance, so the excess payment is now twice what it was going to be. Ouch again!

Artist at Work

I love this picture. It's an artist friend of mine at work in his "studio". If ever a photo summed up what his work is all about, then this is the one.



More about him and his work here

Rain Gods?

A couple of weeks ago...

I bought a Stockade Playhouse that needs a level base preparing, painting and assembling outside in the garden.

Novelist Supermum bought a new clothes line/dryer.

And then the heavens opened... it's all our fault isn't it?

Crazy Nights

An old friend, who I haven't seen for a few years (but have known for about 26!) surprised me with an email today, just as I was about to leave work to fetch Frodo from school.

He's down from Glasgow to attend a conference tomorrow, so I managed to get a "pass out" from home to go out for a few beers with him at short notice tonight.

I'm really glad that I did, as it was truly great to see him again. Lots of catching up and reminiscing. Beer, burgers and chips at Blue in the Albert Dock.

(He went to see KISS in Mannheim last week - hence the title of this post).

Air Guitar that really works!

here and here

Invisible Guinea Pig

Samwise has invented himself a new pet - an invisible guinea pig. He takes it for walks on an imaginary lead. It sits on the spare seat in the car, and wears an invisible seat belt. It wears invisible pyjamas, and has pretend pizza for tea!

I'm going to have to make an imaginary hutch for it.

Guess who'll be left to feed it and change the invisible straw when his imagination gives up on it :)

Floating Hotel - Grand Princess

This monstrous vessel arrived early this morning and moored outside of the office.

It's a bit like having a block of flats suddenly appear overnight.

The extra bits of superstructure at each end make it look like it should be floating in outer space, rather than the high seas. Perhaps it's on it's way to Fhloston Paradise?

HMS Ark Royal

Another battleship anchored outside of work today. HMS Ark Royal visiting Liverpool

It was supposed to be here in September, however the Royal Navy was too afraid to dock at the new landing stage until it had passed a safety check!

It's no wonder that we don't "Rule the Waves" anymore...

Aaaarrrgh!

Finished work at 03:00 with a successful release in the bag, after resolving a few problems encountered during the implementation.

Got back home around 03:30 feeling a bit too wound up to go to bed immediately, so with the dawn breaking and the dawn chorus birdies tweeting I spent about half an hour reading the second of Charlie Higson's Young Bond books.

Went to sleep at 04:00 and was woken up at 10:30 by the phone ringing. A heads up warning that a development/test server had a fault, and could I go in to escort the engineer into the secure server room when he and the part arrived?

14:00 and I was back in work. 15:00 and the engineer arrived, but he only had 1 part and needed 2. 17:15 the part arrived. Installed, tested and server booted and at 18:00 he left. 18:10 and the server crashed again. We managed to get it back up by disabling a memory board. The Engineer will be back next week.

I managed to bring up all of the environments on the server and dashed back home to arrive at 20:10, having missed the first 10 minutes of the Dr Who repeat (the first showing of which I of course had completely missed last night).

Then I found this response to my complaint to Orange in my Inbox...

Customer Service wrote:
> Hello [DarkDwarf],
>
> Thank you for your email.
>
> We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.
>
> We request you to follow the steps given below in order to improve the
> slow connection speed:
>
> Check if the equipment is setup correctly and connected to the master BT
> socket. Follow the link below for help:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb327
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb264
>
> Follow the link below to perform diagnostics:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb165
>
> Follow the link below to reset your Livebox:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb18901
>
> If the issue persists then swap the filters as is possible that the
> filters could be corrupt and provide us with the following information:
>
> * Status of @ light?
> * Status of ! light?
> * Status of >> light?
> * Status of telephone light?
> * Status of antenna light?
> * Do you have Wired or Wireless connection?
> * What is the make of the Wireless adapter (speedtouch 121g adapter,
> speedtouch 122g or inventel adapter)?
> * Brief description of when problem occurred and time it affects the
> most?
> * Have you made any recent changes on your computer or internal wiring
> of your house?
> * Do you have Antivirus/firewall installed on your computer?
> * How many BT sockets do you have in use?
> * Do you have a splitter or an extension cable(If yes, specify the
> length)?
> * Is the equipment connected to the main BT socket?
> * Are the device filtered?
> * Do you have additional telephony devices like sky tv, digital phone,
> fax machine, etc?
>
> As soon as we hear back from you we can sort the problem out.
>
> If you wish to make a complain, we request you to contact our Broadband
> Customer Support Team on the number 0844 873 8586(IVR options 1-4) (they
> are open 7am -11pm, 7 days a week, calls are charged at National rate.)
>
> If you have any further queries then please do not hesitate to get in
> contact with us again.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Shraddha
>
> Broadband Support
> REF:WOOBB

3 Haircuts

I'm in for a long night at work tonight watching and praying that a couple of database building processes run to completion...

I took Frodo and Samwise for a back-to-school half termly haircut this morning - and had mine chopped at the same time too. They really know the routine at the barbers, so aren't at all fazed by it, like other kids are that I've seen. I've always thought that it's a good exercise in social interaction, so I've been taking them since they were young. They also get a much better haircut than any that I could do, armed with a pudding basin and a pair of shears ;)

My brother popped in for a cup of tea, on his way back to Blackburn. His wife had entered some sort of cookery competition that was being judged at St Georges Hall this morning. Unfortunately the judging lasted longer than they anticipated, so I only got to see them for 5 minutes before I had to dash off to work.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Broadband Connection II

I've sent off a four page letter of complaint to Orange after being back online for 10 days, followed by another outage of 5 days before coming back online again, but at a much reduced download speed.

I've got a 12.5 hour or so release to do at work on Saturday afternoon/evening/Sunday morning. I reckon that I might find the time to do a "catch up" blog post on Sunday night - assuming that our internet connection stays for that long...

Meanwhile we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the local fleapit yesterday afternoon.
From what I'd heard from the critics I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Not as good as Raiders, or Last Crusade, but probably better than Temple of Doom.

I know that there's no way the hero should survive most of the things that happen to him in a flick like this, but there was one scene in particular that I thought - absolutely no way!

Harrison Ford plays an ageing, but has-still-got-what-it-takes Indy, although he's got to be the most destructive archaeologist since Auguste Mariette used dynamite to help locate the Apis Bulls.

Back Online

3 Week Outage!

I've lost count of the daily phone calls to Orange with them saying that the line should be OK, but with no internet connection at our end.

Eventually they agreed to send an engineer round to our house. He was due this afternoon. Mysteriously at 6am our internet connection came back!

I called Tech Support around 9am and asked them to update the case with this information. They said that the engineer would call anyway.

I called again at 10am to check that the case had been updated. No it hadn't. The engineer is coming at no charge... I insisted that they still update the case (getting paranoid here, but I didn't trust them not to claim that the chap fixed it our end when he turns up).

The engineer came at 3 or 4pm. He told Novelist Supermum that our setup was perfectly OK and that somebody had definitely fixed something at the exchange - but he wasn't allowed to say who or what.

I'm now too busy composing my letter of complaint to Orange Customer Services to be able to blog further.

Orange Outage

Not much blogging here of late.

Partly due to much family activity going on around the time of Samwise' Birthday - I'll catchup with an update on this at a later date.

Mainly due to having no Broadband at home for over a week!! 4 frustrating calls to a call centre in Mumbai, plus one to BT to confirm that there's nothing wrong with the line, until I finally got an operative that knew what they were talking about.
Basically Orange have been doing some maintenance work, and they've botched the job, resulting in no internet access for us.

I could understand this, but the frustrating thing was the lies that I was given during the first 4 calls. They said they were doing a line check, but in the meantime could I just try resetting my router?
I went through this activity four times. The last operative said that in fact no line check had been made, so the router resets were just a stalling tactic, based on a supposition that most problems are at the user end.

I was told that in fact Orange had carried out maintenance activities at 3 different times over the past week. Looks like they still haven't got it right.
I've got the name of the last operative, who has made a lot of re-assuring noises, and will be calling me back with a status update whilst further maintenance activities are carried out to repair the problem.

(As you might guess I'm not blogging from home right now).

Hopefully we'll be back online soon - although there is a Bank Holiday coming up - what's the bet it won't be resolved until after Monday?

Everything until now has been shit.

A much used line in Omid Djalili's stand up show.
I went to see him tonight with Novelist Supermum and impworks, who has posted a mini review

An hour and a half of laughter. He gets away with a lot that other comedians can't.
He's also the world's greatest "Dad Dancer".

Another Place (Again)

Brother, his family and Sister paid us a visit yesterday - prior to Samwise' Birthday. We went for a trip to Crosby beach for another viewing of Antony Gormley's Another Place (we've seen it before, but they hadn't".

Despite the day starting with a couple of showers of hail, the sun came out by the time we got to the beach in the afternoon.

Took a couple of snaps of Brother, Sister and an Iron Man (plus an artistically placed branch, that someone else had planted earlier). Brother and Sister are the one's who look like they're dressed for an expedition to the Gobi Desert.



They insisted on posing for the second snap, but I think I prefer the first one.



The kids enjoyed the beach - despite the big windmills in the sea that were making the wind blow - at least that's what I told them ;-)



Samwise' cousins gave him a remote controlled crane for his Birthday present.



It has a working winch which can be moved back and forth along the gantry, it also rotates. You also need to add counterweight ballast, as with a real crane, to stop it from toppling over with a heavy load.

Samwise, Frodo and his cousins quickly got the hang of it, but they must have been giving it some abuse because today the winch stopped moving back and forth along the gantry. Frodo initially got the blame for this, since he'd tried to move the winch along the gantry - had to apologise to him later as although he'd done the wrong thing, it wasn't his fault.

I spent about 3.5 hours this afternoon dismantling various pieces, and tracing the fault. I discovered that a weak solder joint on a connector in the rotating base had caused a wire to snap off from the connector.

I took my trusty soldering iron to the rescue, and now it's fully functional again.
I can now add crane repair man to my skill set :)

King Size Homer

What a night at work! I was asked to implement some software patches last night on the live system.

This usually involves starting around 16:00 and finishing about 21:30 (backups have to be taken, the system stopped, brought up for patching, patches applied, system brought down and restarted, tests and checks carried out).

I was told that I couldn't start the patching until an email arrived that contains files to be processed by the software that was being patched.

The email is automated and was expected to arrive around 17:15 - but not guaranteed.
Apparently it was not possible to arrange to have a person at the other end send the email through.

I spent 5.5 hours waiting for the email arrived, before the release manager asked me to abandon the work and restart the system.

I had to check the mailbox every 5 minutes or so - I could have really done with King Size Homer's drinking bird to press a 'check mail' button. I ended up devising a shell script loop to do the job for me, which whiled away about 10 minutes or so.

Net result - missed the first episode of the latest Dr Who series for 8 hours of tediom. At least I get paid "ovies" for it - and I caught up with "The Doctor" tonight on BBC3

Poisson D'Avril

"We are talking jape of the century..."

A day early perhaps, but a good one all the same.

Yesterday one of the chaps at work used AT&T Labs Text to Speech tool to create some sound files containing various wind up voice messages. He loaded these into a mobile phone and used them to make some calls.

We have a support call logging desk that is based in Mumbai (yes to ask the person who sits on the next desk to do something for us, we have to call Bombay!), so the "Anjali" voice was used.

e.g.
"Please close you're call now".
"Why have you not closed your call yet?".
"Please stop disrespecting me and close your call".
etc gradually getting more abusive (and more obviously a wind up).

Three of us were in on the wheeze, and had difficulty keeping a straight face whilst the two chosen victims took the bait, hook line and sinker. On the final call they were demanding to know the name of the person who was calling them, and who their manager was.

Then they looked up and noticed the sniggering....I'm half expecting some form of retribution today - nothing so far...

Knee Pads

A long time ago I bought a set of knee pads to help minimise skateboarding injuries.

Every now and again they turn up, usually when I'm looking for something else.

I've got no idea where they are right now, but I could really use them - I'm busy laying some oak flooring, which involves a lot of kneeling on a hard surface.

Perhaps I'll just strap on a couple of cushions?

Bitstrips

You can blame cha0tic for this post
Another truly great way to waste hours of your time on the internet...

Proof of the Existence of God 2

Further proof of the existence of god, or at least, that is, of the God of Vending Machines...

Doing some night time system patching at work tonight, and one of the code patches failed to stitch itself onto the system. Waiting for an on-call developer to show up, so I decided to purchase some sustainance (spelling?) from a nearby vending machine.

I selected and paid for a packet of smoky bacon flavoured crisps. Two dropped down from the rack into the collection tray. An unexpected and welcome Twofor (Two For the price of one), or BOGOFF (Buy One, Get One Free)!

Felt like Hodges Lucky Day in CSI (around 00:50 in this clip).

I walked away from the machine whistling "Mr Blue Sky" :)

St Patrick's Day

I've just been shopping on my lunchbreak and found that the middle of town is already filled with oversize leprechauns who have donned green hats and fake beards in the name of the patron saint of the country who used to supply us with builders and labourers.
This is going to have to change soon - who is the patron saint of Poland? :)

I'm getting lazy in this age of technology. Sent Birthday greetings by text to a couple of different pals, mainly because the date crept up on me before I could even think about sending a card. Ended up having a textual chit-chat with one of them, so it was worth it, for a little bit of not being a stranger and keeping in touch.

My boss is fleeing the country an a couple of weeks, and emigrating to Dubai. He threw a leaving bash for family, friends and a few work colleagues yesterday afternoon. We went along for a couple of hours, and quite enjoyed ourselves. Possibly because our two kiddywinkies were at their Grandma's, so we could actually spend some time chatting, rather than chasing them around the room, and preventing their antics.

The boys are off school for the Easter hols. I've just been told that I left my hosepipe out in the back garden. They've found it, and have been playing "Fireman Sam", so they've drenched each other through. I'm on the late shift this week, so I'm hoping to take them for a couple of early morning swimming sessions, to try and expend their energies a little.

Dr Who Exhibition number 3 - Blackpool

Yesterday we found ourselves visiting our third Dr Who exhibition in the past two years - this time in Blackpool. We were there for my nephews Birthday treat.

The Blackpool Exhibition has been in Blackpool since 1974 (I remembering wanting to go and see it when I was 10, but never got the chance).
It moved to new premises in 2004.

They've got props going right back to 1962, with the majority being from the seventies and eighties. Loads of costumes, masks and models that you'll recognise from across the years. The most impressive are a Tardis interior set, a cyberman diorama and a dalek diorama. There's also a display of costumes and props from series 1 of the new series.

The exhibition is darkened, and you have to light up most of the display cabinets, to view the contents, by pressing a button. This is on an extremely short time switch, which gets a bit irritating after a while.
There's a few interactive displays, plus a little animation on some of the models. A number don't work very well, or not at all.

The overall impression is of a slightly run down seaside feature - which I guess it is.

I didn't have my camera on me this time (technological breakdown - the digital snap machine is in for repair). I've found a few photos, that show what it's like here.

They've also got a display of merchandise from over the years. The shop has a good stock too - with some items that we know are hard to get.
Bought Samwise and Frodo a new action figure each.

The chap who runs the exhibition (David Boyle) had a chat with us about how we had enjoyed it - he'd spotted Samwise running about excitedly pointing things out.
He helped me to hide two more action figures (I'd bought them for Samwise Birthday next month) by taking the figures out of sight of Samwise and wrapping three carrier bags around them, so you couldn't see through the bags.

Gary Gygax has failed to make his last saving throw

It's been a long time since I camped out in the Caves of Chaos, with my pals, and it's probably oldish news now, but I've just heard (via cha0tic on twitter) that Gary Gygax has gone to meet his Dungeon Master.

Frodo - yet another Joint Assessment

We had what's now becoming the annual joint assessment for Frodo yesterday afternoon at Frodo's school.

Present this time were 2 teachers from Frodo's school (Special Needs Coordinator and Class Teacher), Outreach support assistant, and headteacher (who now aren't officially involved, but came along to 'assist'), Consultant Paediatrican, Educational Psychologist, Speech and Language Therapist, Parent Partnership volunteer and us.

All of these professionals, who were notified months in advance of the meeting, and what was the result? "We haven't quite got our act together". (The Ed Psych and Speech and Language hadn't met Frodo before) - "We'll do another joint assessment in April."

Aaargh! Novelist Supermum has a rant about this too.

We've decided that in the absence of any concrete diagnosis of his condition we're trying to achieve daily, full time One to One support for Frodo in the setting of his mainstream school (this has been recommended by several of the above "professionals").

We've been refused to have him assessed for a statement of special needs. We're now about to go ahead with appealing this decision.

Earthquake

I think that I slept right through last night's earthquake.

I guess that my snoring must have been louder :-)

I've seen reports of it on the net from friends who who live in
Liverpool and Wolverhampton, and a chap from work who lives near Glossop said that he felt it too.

Orange Broadband Outage

I arrived home from work on Friday night to be told by Novelist Supermum that our Internet Connection was not working.

Checked it out and discovered that web browsers weren't loading pages, email was hanging and I could only barely connect to an ftp site - which timed out fairly quickly.

Our PC's (1 Windows and 1 Mac) were connecting OK to our wireless router and the router was connected to the internet.

Pinging a few servers that I often connect to showed me that 50 to 75% of requests were timing out. Looked suspiciously like a network or line problem to me.

Decided to wait until morning, then try again.

Same problem again in the morning so I called Orange Customer Support at 09:45

I got the sort feeling that you get when you hear an alarm clock ringing in the middle of the day - i.e. slight depression on hearing a familiar sound - when I heard an Indian accent on the other end of the phone. I usually find that the language and cultural differences when dealing with Indian Call Centre staff require great patience, and cause a good deal of frustration.

The chap at the other end was very helpful. As I expected he ran me through power cycling the router, resetting the router, checking the configuration, checking the wires, plugging in directly to the network, rather than the wireless connection - all of which I had tried the night before. I stuck with him and tried again.

Finally at 10:15 he came to the conclusion that this was due to a possible network or line problem. He said that he was requesting a line check, which would take about 2 hours. He stressed that I shouldn't call again, and that they would update me by text message with the result of the line check.

Waited for about 4 hours, and no text message. Went to pick the kids up from their Grandmas. Half an hour later at 16:00 a text message comes through saying "Hello, we tried to call you about the fault you registered but couldn't get hold of you. Please call technical support or we'll have to close the fault. Thanks.".

I sent a text back explaining that I was out and didn't have their contact number. I told them that I'd be back in a couple of hours, and asked them to give me time to return home, or text me their phone number.

I got back home and called them again about 17:45. A different Indian chap on the other end again. This one told me that the line check had been done and shown that the line was OK. He made me jump through hoops with the checking and configuration. After half an hour of this he paused for a moment (I think somebody may have been whispering in his ear). He announced that the cause was on Orange server which was down for "maintenance" at 16:30. We both cheered at this point - Hooray!).

He couldn't tell me when the "maintenance" was due to finish. (Bollocks! thinks I. This is not maintenance, this is Fix on Fail!)

I had a minor rant at him, as to why wasn't the network status checked, before he embarked on a reconfiguration of the default settings on my PC. I told him that I expected to be re-imbursed with the price of the second phone call.

He advised me to wait 24 hours before checking the connection. Being impatient I checked at 21:00 and discovered that we were back on line.

The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain

I'm looking forward to seeing The Ukelele of Orchestra of Great Britain tonight at the Phil.

Thought Control

I want one of those.

... or do I?

Valentines Day

Yeah, I know that it was the day before yesterday, but I'm still reeling from the surprise that this year I got a bunch of flowers!

Wolverhampton Poly Election Night 1989

A pal sent me a link to this blast from the past video that's on You Tube.

Trip down memory lane for any of you that were there - see who you can recognise. Blurred and out of focus of course - as was most of our time spent in the Student's Union.

HMS Bulwark

HMS Bulwark has been moored outside of the office for the past two days.

Apparently it's an anti-terrorism, anti-piracy amphibious assault warship. Better not fly the Jolly Roger from the office window then... :)

I've seen a few sailors and marines getting on and off, going into town and back. (No they're not singing "Shore Leave!" and tap dancing).

No sign of any helicopters using the flight deck.

Michael Phone

Just been out to a local music shop and bought a microphone for the kids to have fun with.

Didn't need anything of too good a quality, since it'll be plugged into my old Bass Guitar amp, and it's just for them to have some fun singing into.

I was given a choice of 3 by the man in the shop - 15 quid, 18 quid and 30 quid. The 30 quid was a Stagg "Professional Musician" mike, and the 15 quid one was another make that came in a cardboard box. I went for the 18 quid one, which was the bottom of the Stagg range "for home, karaoke and computers", so it fits the bill, and it came in a nice black plastic box, with a foam cut-out to keep the mike safe in.

(The title of this post is what the boys tend to call the device).