Sometimes I wonder if the pressures of my job are really worth it...
Made a mistake today, not entirely of my own making, but it was me that clicked the button which didn't give me a warning before the deed was done. I've now got to spend time making notes for my defence, before they throw me into the lake to see whether or not I float...
Just what I need before I Bank Holiday weekend, where instead of relaxing, or mowing the lawn, I'll be in for two days carrying out some mission critical testing, one day of which involves a trip to another site. Whoopee! (Not!)
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Monday, 13 April 2009
Swingball Wizards
Gran and Grandad had a Swingball at their house. The boys really enjoyed it. Guess what I'm going to have to buy for the back garden soon...
Angel of the North
I've admired this sculpture since it was erected over 10 years ago, and have passed it by car and train, but have never stopped off for a closer look until last week.
It's pretty easy to get to it by car. Travelling North up the A1, after your first glimpse take the A167 sliproad and follow the brown signs until you reach a small car park at the side of the road (for about 20 cars, plus a couple of coaches and with 4 disabled bays in addition).
Up close you can really appreciate what an awesome piece of work this is. You feel dizzy just looking up at it. Everybody seems to get the urge just to stand their with their arms out for a bit.
Our little angels enjoyed the experience, and were particularly impressed that they could slide down the Angel's foot. Samwise (Desert in a cultural Oasis) was amused that you could see it's bum from a particular angle.
It's pretty easy to get to it by car. Travelling North up the A1, after your first glimpse take the A167 sliproad and follow the brown signs until you reach a small car park at the side of the road (for about 20 cars, plus a couple of coaches and with 4 disabled bays in addition).
Up close you can really appreciate what an awesome piece of work this is. You feel dizzy just looking up at it. Everybody seems to get the urge just to stand their with their arms out for a bit.
Our little angels enjoyed the experience, and were particularly impressed that they could slide down the Angel's foot. Samwise (Desert in a cultural Oasis) was amused that you could see it's bum from a particular angle.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Easter Holidays
Spending this Easter relaxing at my parents place in the North Yorkshire countryside for a week.
Even more relaxing than usual, as we've spent two days with my parents, helped them pack their caravan and waved them off to their Caravan Club rally.
We now have the house to ourselves, and are planning a few trips out and about over the next few days. So it's a bit like having a holiday cottage.
Even more relaxing than usual, as we've spent two days with my parents, helped them pack their caravan and waved them off to their Caravan Club rally.
We now have the house to ourselves, and are planning a few trips out and about over the next few days. So it's a bit like having a holiday cottage.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Free Beer
Had a work night out last night, to celebrate the succesful completion, delivery and release of a couple of high profile projects.
They had a free bar from 17:30 to 22:00, plus snacks, so I thought it would be worth attending.
I had a parents evening for Samwise (his teacher said that he's working well at school, and is starting to get a bit cheeky), and had to pick Frodo up from his first session at a new After School club for kids with Special Needs (which he enjoyed), so I didn't get there until 19:15.
Managed to make up for lost time all the same. Had a good night drinking, munching and gossiping - those of us who were left when the bar was closing all threw in a fiver each, to tip the barman. Rolled into a black cab with dodgy suspension and bounced all the way home.
They had a free bar from 17:30 to 22:00, plus snacks, so I thought it would be worth attending.
I had a parents evening for Samwise (his teacher said that he's working well at school, and is starting to get a bit cheeky), and had to pick Frodo up from his first session at a new After School club for kids with Special Needs (which he enjoyed), so I didn't get there until 19:15.
Managed to make up for lost time all the same. Had a good night drinking, munching and gossiping - those of us who were left when the bar was closing all threw in a fiver each, to tip the barman. Rolled into a black cab with dodgy suspension and bounced all the way home.
Friday, 13 March 2009
Red Nose Day
Watched the celebrity team struggle up Kilimanjaro last night, which inspired me to get off my backside and drive to Sainsbury's to spend a few quid on a red nose for each of us, plus one for the car.
Watching the main event tonight and after a few laughs, and a few tears, I bunged off our main donation. Pleased to see that last years record total was broken just after I did this.
Watching the main event tonight and after a few laughs, and a few tears, I bunged off our main donation. Pleased to see that last years record total was broken just after I did this.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
World Book Day
It was World Book Day on Thursday. The boys school asked all of the children to come in dressed as their favourite book characters. It was quite a sight seeing all of the kids, and the teachers arrive in fancy dress. Our two both went as Dirty Bertie.
They got a WBD book voucher each entitling them to a quid off a new book each. Went out to Borders today and bought two more Dirty Bertie books and a two about a new character for us Zac Power - a boy Secret Agent / Rock Star. We read the first chapter of "Poison Island" tonight, which ended with Zac jumping out of an aeroplane.
They got a WBD book voucher each entitling them to a quid off a new book each. Went out to Borders today and bought two more Dirty Bertie books and a two about a new character for us Zac Power - a boy Secret Agent / Rock Star. We read the first chapter of "Poison Island" tonight, which ended with Zac jumping out of an aeroplane.
Monday, 2 March 2009
For Those About To Rock
On Saturday, we dropped the boys at their Grandma's and headed off to Nottingham for an old friends 40th Birthday bash, which was also a bit of a Wolves Poly Rock Soc re-union.
We had a splendid time, swapping stories, catching up, tattoo admiration, "where did your hair go?", "where did your hair come from?", sinking bevvies, boogie and bacon butties. Pushed the boat out and sank it again.
We had a splendid time, swapping stories, catching up, tattoo admiration, "where did your hair go?", "where did your hair come from?", sinking bevvies, boogie and bacon butties. Pushed the boat out and sank it again.
Break Step
On day 4 I got so brassed off with the reset button on the pedometer constantly resetting my step count that I ripped off the button. After this, about half a day later the pedometer missed so many step counts that I gave up on the cheap, promotional piece of junk. I'm still going to carry on the walking though. Hiked out to Zavvi's today and picked up a pile of CD's in their "everything must go" closing down sale.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Steps
No not the terrible popular singing group!
I've entered the Get Active challenge at work, to get up to walking at least 10,000 steps every day.
Every entrant who signs up is issued with a small, cheapo LCD pedometer (badly designed as the Reset button is a great big thing on the front, so you keep accidentally resetting it as you wear the thing).
You then measure the number of steps that you take each day, with a view to building up the number that you take on average to be 10,000.
According to the blurb that we were given most people take 3 to 5000 steps a day.
On day 1 (Monday) I got the pedometer around 10am and by the time I went to bed around midnight I'd done 4,900 steps.
On day 2 I went for a walk at lunctime to buy fruit, and buy the end of the day had notched up around 10,300 steps.
Today I went shopping at lunchtime. Checking the pedometer now I've done 9,300 steps.
So going for at least half an hour walk every day, and using the stairs rather than the lift seems to be the key. I'm feeling a bit fitter too.
I've entered the Get Active challenge at work, to get up to walking at least 10,000 steps every day.
Every entrant who signs up is issued with a small, cheapo LCD pedometer (badly designed as the Reset button is a great big thing on the front, so you keep accidentally resetting it as you wear the thing).
You then measure the number of steps that you take each day, with a view to building up the number that you take on average to be 10,000.
According to the blurb that we were given most people take 3 to 5000 steps a day.
On day 1 (Monday) I got the pedometer around 10am and by the time I went to bed around midnight I'd done 4,900 steps.
On day 2 I went for a walk at lunctime to buy fruit, and buy the end of the day had notched up around 10,300 steps.
Today I went shopping at lunchtime. Checking the pedometer now I've done 9,300 steps.
So going for at least half an hour walk every day, and using the stairs rather than the lift seems to be the key. I'm feeling a bit fitter too.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Day Off Work
It's half term, so I took a day off work today.
Spent the morning with the kids in UnderWaterStreet.
Then we went for a walk around town to view an oversized Spider, "Turning the Place Over" and SuperLambBanana.
Spent the morning with the kids in UnderWaterStreet.
Then we went for a walk around town to view an oversized Spider, "Turning the Place Over" and SuperLambBanana.
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Walkie Talkies
For a Valentine's day treat I bought Frodo and Samwise a set of decent little Binatone Latitude 100 walkie-talkies.
They've been running round the house on rescue missions all weekend calling each other up and ending every sentence with "Over", or "Over and Out".
They've been running round the house on rescue missions all weekend calling each other up and ending every sentence with "Over", or "Over and Out".
Monday, 9 February 2009
Wii Fit Obsession
I'm becoming hooked on Wii Fit.
I'm at the -starting to hallucinate whilst jogging around the Wii Fit island- stage.
Why do I find myself waving back at the Mii's who wave at mine on the roadside?
Why do I laugh as other Mii's fall on their faces?
Did that cute blonde Mii really flutter her eyes at my Mii as she went past? Look she did it again! Why did she ignore me the third time?
Why do I start to loathe the supercilious grins on the faces of the faster Mii's who overtake mine?
I'm at the -starting to hallucinate whilst jogging around the Wii Fit island- stage.
Why do I find myself waving back at the Mii's who wave at mine on the roadside?
Why do I laugh as other Mii's fall on their faces?
Did that cute blonde Mii really flutter her eyes at my Mii as she went past? Look she did it again! Why did she ignore me the third time?
Why do I start to loathe the supercilious grins on the faces of the faster Mii's who overtake mine?
Monday, 19 January 2009
I'm not the only person with connectivity problems...
I picked this little gem up from a tweet by cha0tic
No Twitter for Hitler
There's loads of different interpretations of the same scene on YouTube
including
Hitler is invaded by Mexicans
Hitler gets banned from World of Warcraft
Somebody Stole Hitlers Car
etc.
No Twitter for Hitler
There's loads of different interpretations of the same scene on YouTube
including
Hitler is invaded by Mexicans
Hitler gets banned from World of Warcraft
Somebody Stole Hitlers Car
etc.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
And Now, The Gallery...
First of all Oliver Postgate* takes the music boat to the Iron Chicken and dies just before Christmas, and now Tony Hart packs up his paint box.
There's a lot of obituaries out there saying how he inspired a generation of children. Far from inspiring me to artistic achievements, he made me realise that I would never, ever be as good as that, so why bother trying :)
* Something I never knew before. I spotted a link on Oliver Postgate's wikipedia page that looked like it might be out of place, but discovered that in fact it wasn't.
Oliver Postgate had a hand in creating Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines!!
There's a lot of obituaries out there saying how he inspired a generation of children. Far from inspiring me to artistic achievements, he made me realise that I would never, ever be as good as that, so why bother trying :)
* Something I never knew before. I spotted a link on Oliver Postgate's wikipedia page that looked like it might be out of place, but discovered that in fact it wasn't.
Oliver Postgate had a hand in creating Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines!!
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Disconnected (2)
I spoke to soon in my Disconnected post - the broadband connection went down the day after, just after midday.
Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support, back through the "diagnostics" umpteen times again. They told me to wait for the replacement router that was in it's way, and the callback that was due on Tuesday 13th at 7pm.
8pm on Tuesday 13th. No replacement router and No callback! Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support who passed the buck to Customer Services. Customer Services, who also sounded like they might be in India, told me that there didn't appear to be an order for a router. They passed me to the escalation team.
The chap on the escalation team sounded very sheepish when I asked him why there had been no callback at 7pm. He told me that not only had the callback been missed, but they hadn't ordered the replacement router! (What a bunch of numpties?) He said that he'd immediately ordered the router, which should arrive on Friday.
Thursday morning and the new router arrived. Tried it out on Thursday night, and as I suspected no connection. Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support - ran through the usual diagnostics. Tried to pass me back to the escalation team, who tried to fob me off as a courtesy callback was due on 19th Jan. I demanded to speak to them so I was put through. The lady who answered told me that all diagnostics had been done, so she couldn't help and that I should await the callback on the 19th Jan. I demanded an earlier callback, so the best she could do was 09:30 on 17th Jan.
09:30 am today and I found myself speaking to the chap who had forgotten to call on Tuesday. He said that he would now ask BT to investigate and arranged a follow up callback on Monday 19th to let me know what they had found out.
10:45 am and we noticed the internet connection come back online for a minute or so. Looks like somebody is doing some testing on the network.
13:00 and we're back online, and have been so since then.
Why oh why oh why can't the numpties at Orange involve BT at an earlier stage? I explained to them the history of this case. They should have been able to see for themselves that we'd had a similar situation in May last year, where the Orange customer equipment and connection diagnostics all check out OK, but the BT line tests show "no fault".
They seem to have a reluctance to escalate to BT. It should not take 15 days to get to this stage.
I'm going to wait for their callback on the 19th and ask for an explanation as to what BT said the problem was. My own suspicion is that maintenance work in the exchange around Bank Holidays causes a configuration change that affects our service. There's probably a special set up for our line, or for Orange customers (and I bet that there's not many left in Liverpool) that they keep resetting and forgetting to reconfigure.
I'd like to know as I believe the root cause lies with BT. This is compounded by Orange's inability to quickly establish that the fault is not with the customer's setup or equipment, and not with them.
Then I'll be calling Orange Customer Services and asking for my MAC code.
Originally we used Demon, but when free dial up access became available, we opted for Freeserve. Freeserve were OK and then were taken over by Wanadoo who gave us our first taste of broadband. We had no problems with Wanadoo. Our experience of the service has gone downhill since Orange took over.
We're now both suffering from online access withdrawal and need a heavy fix of email, web and download time to feel normal again :) It's actually a little scary - you don't realise how much you depend on something like the internet access from home, until it's not there. The local library and work is no substitute.
Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support, back through the "diagnostics" umpteen times again. They told me to wait for the replacement router that was in it's way, and the callback that was due on Tuesday 13th at 7pm.
8pm on Tuesday 13th. No replacement router and No callback! Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support who passed the buck to Customer Services. Customer Services, who also sounded like they might be in India, told me that there didn't appear to be an order for a router. They passed me to the escalation team.
The chap on the escalation team sounded very sheepish when I asked him why there had been no callback at 7pm. He told me that not only had the callback been missed, but they hadn't ordered the replacement router! (What a bunch of numpties?) He said that he'd immediately ordered the router, which should arrive on Friday.
Thursday morning and the new router arrived. Tried it out on Thursday night, and as I suspected no connection. Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support - ran through the usual diagnostics. Tried to pass me back to the escalation team, who tried to fob me off as a courtesy callback was due on 19th Jan. I demanded to speak to them so I was put through. The lady who answered told me that all diagnostics had been done, so she couldn't help and that I should await the callback on the 19th Jan. I demanded an earlier callback, so the best she could do was 09:30 on 17th Jan.
09:30 am today and I found myself speaking to the chap who had forgotten to call on Tuesday. He said that he would now ask BT to investigate and arranged a follow up callback on Monday 19th to let me know what they had found out.
10:45 am and we noticed the internet connection come back online for a minute or so. Looks like somebody is doing some testing on the network.
13:00 and we're back online, and have been so since then.
Why oh why oh why can't the numpties at Orange involve BT at an earlier stage? I explained to them the history of this case. They should have been able to see for themselves that we'd had a similar situation in May last year, where the Orange customer equipment and connection diagnostics all check out OK, but the BT line tests show "no fault".
They seem to have a reluctance to escalate to BT. It should not take 15 days to get to this stage.
I'm going to wait for their callback on the 19th and ask for an explanation as to what BT said the problem was. My own suspicion is that maintenance work in the exchange around Bank Holidays causes a configuration change that affects our service. There's probably a special set up for our line, or for Orange customers (and I bet that there's not many left in Liverpool) that they keep resetting and forgetting to reconfigure.
I'd like to know as I believe the root cause lies with BT. This is compounded by Orange's inability to quickly establish that the fault is not with the customer's setup or equipment, and not with them.
Then I'll be calling Orange Customer Services and asking for my MAC code.
Originally we used Demon, but when free dial up access became available, we opted for Freeserve. Freeserve were OK and then were taken over by Wanadoo who gave us our first taste of broadband. We had no problems with Wanadoo. Our experience of the service has gone downhill since Orange took over.
We're now both suffering from online access withdrawal and need a heavy fix of email, web and download time to feel normal again :) It's actually a little scary - you don't realise how much you depend on something like the internet access from home, until it's not there. The local library and work is no substitute.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Tired and Emotional
Novelist Supermum came back from hospital today after her operation
She went in on Monday and had the op on Tuesday.
Frodo and Samwise were in tears when we left her in the ward on Monday night. When I asked in the car why they were crying the reply was "because we wanted Spaghetti for tea!"
She went in on Monday and had the op on Tuesday.
Frodo and Samwise were in tears when we left her in the ward on Monday night. When I asked in the car why they were crying the reply was "because we wanted Spaghetti for tea!"
Disconnected
I've only just got the internet connection back after a 6 day outage.
This time it took me 5 days to exhaust all of the possibilities for a fault at my end with the Indian call centre before I finally persuaded them to pass the case onto the "Escalation Team" i.e. the technical staff in the UK.
Went through a set of diagnostics, and a couple of router reboots, with a helpful chap last night, who then told me that someone would call this morning. At 11 am today a pleasant lady informed me that the technicians could not identify the fault, as the line test showed 'no fault' (as it has done on other occasions) and could only conclude that my router might be faulty. They have despatched a replacement router to me.
Just after this phone call I thought that I'd give my current router one last reboot - and it connected! Hmmmm.
I immediately rang the call centre and got them to update the case with this information.
So either the router has an intermittent fault, or (as I strongly suspect) it's a case of good old Orange or BT not admitting that they've screwed up something on the network again, and have quietly corrected it. It's notable that I seem to get these issues around, or just after a Bank Holiday.
My 12 month contract with Orange is now up, so I think that it's time to switch broadband suppliers. Might not make any difference if it's BT who's causing this, but at least I might get the same amount of frustration for a cheaper price :)
This time it took me 5 days to exhaust all of the possibilities for a fault at my end with the Indian call centre before I finally persuaded them to pass the case onto the "Escalation Team" i.e. the technical staff in the UK.
Went through a set of diagnostics, and a couple of router reboots, with a helpful chap last night, who then told me that someone would call this morning. At 11 am today a pleasant lady informed me that the technicians could not identify the fault, as the line test showed 'no fault' (as it has done on other occasions) and could only conclude that my router might be faulty. They have despatched a replacement router to me.
Just after this phone call I thought that I'd give my current router one last reboot - and it connected! Hmmmm.
I immediately rang the call centre and got them to update the case with this information.
So either the router has an intermittent fault, or (as I strongly suspect) it's a case of good old Orange or BT not admitting that they've screwed up something on the network again, and have quietly corrected it. It's notable that I seem to get these issues around, or just after a Bank Holiday.
My 12 month contract with Orange is now up, so I think that it's time to switch broadband suppliers. Might not make any difference if it's BT who's causing this, but at least I might get the same amount of frustration for a cheaper price :)
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Happy New Year
Whoosh! What was that?"
"2008 mate".
"Do I get another one?"
"'Fraid not".
Happy New Year everybody! All the best for 2009.
"2008 mate".
"Do I get another one?"
"'Fraid not".
Happy New Year everybody! All the best for 2009.
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