Perils of Poo

I'm going to talk about something us men seem to talk about a lot - least I do with my pals and they do with me - and this is "thinking".  No not the brain kind of think, the BUM kind of think... Where you strike a pose not unlike a certain statue by Rodin and let things happen... *cough*.

Well, last night I had a curry for tea, I also had about 12 cakes my wife had baked, and I had the whole evening sat down...

So by morning I had a delivery baked and ready to slide... but I could not go, not straight off, I had to get to work, I got here and literally had to dash to the gents...

Now I've spoken about the state of the facilities here before, but they've been done up recently, however as part of the doing up process they've been made more green, first off where there were eight stalls there's now four, and the flushes have gone from capable to feeble.  The upshot was me stood there hopping from foot to foot, hot to trot, but with the first stall full of un-flushed paper, the next full of water to the brim not flushing, the third full of a person already mid-think, and the fourth... The Fourth... Erg...

It was full of someone else's floater, the Bristol Stool chart doesn't go into the buoyancy of a think - I think they should, but they don't - but this thing was horrid... I tried to flush it, as clearly its father had before me, but it just surfed the feeble dribble of water these new facilities call a flush and it sat there staring up at me...

I couldn't just bare my bum to it, so a fold of paper... No it just rolled over this and let the paper sink.... But the pressure of a held curry and cakes now insisted I go, so I had to tuck myself into the bowl and ignore this thing staring up as me as I presented my produce... Not nice.

Outlook Web Mail

Here's my review of outlook web mail - which I've oft moaned I've been forced into using - from a working e-mail system to this piece of shit.... And that's my review...

ITS A PIECE OF SHIT

And just so you can see just a few of my problems with it, a picture speaks a 1000 words.

And yes, I've tried it on all the major browsers, I try to use it from different locations (i.e. different internet connections) and from different Operating Systems.  It just does not function sufficiently, and I'm fast becoming forced to have to resign myself from using it - after over 15 years using that e-mail address - which is a major MAJOR ball ache.

Work - Feeling Shit & Resurrecting Systems

I already said I feel like shit, well I soldiered through Monday and went home, but it was clear it was a total struggle, and come Monday night I was suffering, could not see - eyes streaming - could not even close them to sleep and then even when I did sleep I kept sneezing myself awake, so Tuesday was a no show, and nor was today I gave myself the day to recover a little more, I feel very much better now - I'm probably awfully contagious, but hey ho.

Right now I've got a sore nose and sore eyes, I've got a chesty cough and that heavy feeling in the center of my chest, that heavy feeling of a threatening chest infection.

So, today I was blissfully tucked up in bed, when the wife came back in from popping to her parents, and she was all panicking, she was handing me her phone, "Your work has been calling me!!!"

Mystery, her number is down as my emergency number, my own mobile is down as my own contact; checking it, its dead of battery, I've not charged it since last week the poor thing.

Anyway, I take the wife's phone from her, blow my nose take a swig of juice and call work, the main reception have no idea who is after me, the manager present in the support department - who is the most likely person to want me - has no idea who wants me, and I had already called into HR that morning, so... Mystery, no-one knew who wanted me.

An hour later HR call me, the big boss wants me, or rather one of the trio of big bosses wants me, there's an emergency project needs consulting on, its stuff only myself or my direct manager can advise on, my direct manager has been signed off work himself for over two months, so they're hoping to god I'm not going to be off long.  I reassure them telling them I'll be in tomorrow, and go back to rest.

But, then I'm mulling over, what is this work, what is the big need... I also got thinking about something else...

There's a certain other person in our department, a person whom volunteers them self to do all the strange things - such as be interim server manager - or chief communications technologist - and they're off and people sit with their thumbs up their ass not wanting to call them, or if they do call them they get answer phone and ignored.... I'm off one day... ONE FUCKING DAY... and suddenly they had to get me, they called not just my battery flattened phone, but my emergency contact's number too...

THEY NEVER CALL THIS OTHER GUY... Now, I'd be flattered, I'd think whoa, maybe I'm needed and valued and getting a little respect in my role - after a decade - but no, I think they just know I'm not going to go mental - like the other guy would - and so the boss guy got them to call me up and check when I was going to be in.

Anyway, whether I'm wanted or not, I've today set about sorting both the snuffly mess that is my head, and my software files... The problem being I've had both my main desktop machine out of action for nearly 5 months with no power supply! And I can't afford a new one - and I've had my laptop tip over with a hard drive fault just last month, so I've precariously had little backup storage and replication of my files in nearly 3 months.

Not to mention some of my files are on Virtual Machines which I hold only one copy of, or the files have not been backed up at all.... A situation which I have to remedy today, and so I've set about taking a copy of the virtual machines from one external hard drive onto another, then a copy again to use for development on my repaired laptop.

Three copies down - over 400GB a piece - that's been a good 43 minutes all around.

I've now got to look at my code back up server - its a linux machine - which has been left untouched since the main desktop PC went on the fritz, its served by a really nice 100GBit switch into my LAN, but because I used the desktop PC as a gateway for it out onto my wireless I've simply not been able to fire it up, so I'm possibly going to fit a wireless card to it, get it connected wirelessly - slow as that is - and give it updates whilst I get the virtual machines working on my laptop and then connect it to the 100GBit switch directly with a wire and we can rock and or roll.