Dear Diary...

This is my diary. How things are. Or something. Please note that the diary is archived month by month, so feel free to click the links for the archives.

2010
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Oct
Sep
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May
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Mar
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003


Monday 8th March - Maiden, Monday and Crone

Well it was back to the ranch for me today, and the start of our massive network refresh hardware changeover. Other sites had gone through it and now it was our turn. In essence, all the network switches are being changed over from old to new, and they also now do dynamic DHCP rather than assign it to an IP address in a table. Amongst other things this also means that we have to ensure that all the switches are wired in the same way as before, and on top of that, they then have to be checked for any equipment that can't run full speed and knock it down accordingly. It's all pretty manic.

I was able to stay at base and be able to deal with the day to day support stuff. Mainly this was down to one user seemingly caught out by a fake antivirus warning that had somehow tried to infect a machine. However, this is the exact proof why you restrict people to be limited users - the attempted infection only got to their user account, and I was able to back up any uninfected data they'd saved to the desktop, delete the user account so it got recreated and then did some antivirus and antimalware checks to be sure any infection had gone away, which it now had. Phew. The member of staff was appreciative of us coming over which did cheer me up a fair bit, sometimes it's a thankless task.

Anyway, it was time to head home later and once I'd got home I realised I needed to return the DVD to Tesco DVD Rental, as we'd seen it and that was all good. In fact, I remembered that earlier today it had won an Oscar for Best Costume, which is thoroughly deserved in my view. Although why Nick Park didn't win with Wallace and Gromit was a little bit meh in comparison, if you ask me. Anyway, managing to return it before the last post means that they'll get it tomorrow and issue out the next disc for me to arrive hopefully on Wednesday, so it all works out well when the plan comes together.

I also cancelled Friday off work too. I didn't need it off now because originally I'd planned a weekend with my friends, but that's now being rescheduled for various reasons. I know that when we go get together later in the year, it'll be really good, and the days will be lighter too, meaning more fun for us and of course it won't be as cold, also another bonus. I know that when the four of us get together it's usually excellent and if it means we postpone it to get everyone together then so be it.

Tune of the day is the rather fab "Maiden Mother and Crone" by The Sword. I have managed this on hard bass on Guitar Hero 5, but their songs have kicked backside in Guitar Hero 2 and Greatest Hits (Freya) and Metallica (The Black River) so hearing this from their second full length album in there was essential. They remind me of how metal used to be in the 1970s and definitely it's full of great rocking. As you'll see from the official video below, they rock!

Sunday 7th March - Anyone For Coffee?

It was nice just to take things leisurely today with The Frets On My Guitar in tow. I got up and we had breakfast together, and just sauntered around for a bit whilst I did a little bit of rocking on Guitar Hero 5 just to keep me in the mood for some rock. I think I've rediscovered it a bit lately as well because of the fact that some of the tracks are ones I've listened to for real, and it gives me an incentive to get playing and see how I do. I did manage "Never Miss A Beat" by Kaiser Chiefs on hard bass, I might have to try expert later on and see if I can manage that too - so that's tune of the day for me that one.

We headed back to The Frets' place later on so we could check on things at her place and relax with a coffee before heading over to Asda. I needed to get a couple of things including a birthday card for my brother, as it's his birthday later in the week. That done, it was then us heading over to see one of our friends who lives to the North of the city. His partner was away for a few weeks and it was good to keep him company for a while and we chatted over coffee and caught up about everything. He asked us about our trip to Paris and we explained about how nice everything was and how the two of them should go - which he agreed.

He also said that the two of them should head to Cornwall, so we put on the laptop and had a look at the apartments that The Frets and I stayed at last year, and he was like "they're very nice" and we assured him that they were, and well worth the cost. Not least because of the convenience of being so close to everything and being able to travel everywhere. He quite liked the Eden Project and it wasn't quite finished when he went, so it'd be good for him to head back and see it complete. Having been, I was able to say how good it was, and we also showed him the Lost Gardens of Heligan too. The sounds of the birds from the laptop speakers as you went round the website made us think it was the telly that was doing it!

Later on I was sorting out an issue on the laptop where a Works file that they did was massive and needed to be made to PDF. Even though Open Office does have PDF export on the fly, you couldn't export the Works document to Word and open it in OpenOffice, because the exporter crashed Works. Meh. So I used the freeware PDF creator and did a "print to PDF" that way which got it sorted in works. In the future though they'll probably use OpenOffice, which is free and works just as well, and he was happy for me to have got that all sorted. In the meantime, The Frets had popped back to hers, got a couple of pizzas and we had them for tea along with more chatter.

It was a great day out and good to see our friend too, and he seemed happy that we'd come over. Later on after saying a sad farewell to The Frets (and it's always sad when she goes home) I geared up with my uncle for an online game of Tiger Woods 09, playing the tricky Sun City course. I did well to get one under, and it was pretty even apart from one par three where my uncle hit the water twice on the tee shot and ended up taking a few too many. It was really that and a couple of other holes, but we were evenly matched for the most part and it was a great game, so well done him!

Saturday 6th March - On A Secret Birthday Mission

Today I was on a bit of a secret mission, and that was to get all the birthday presents sorted out for The Frets On My Guitar. It's her birthday soon and I wanted to be sure that I could get the presents I wanted to get her without her seeing what I was going to get. I did have plenty of ideas in my head what to get for her and as ever, I'm always tempted to spend a shed load. However, we're both being very sensible and have agreed that we stick to a budget when buying for birthdays and Christmas, because we both have families and friends to buy for and it's usually quite a few people - this way we can still get everyone something nice and not feel like we have to go overboard. Besides, if you have love, isn't that the best present you could ever want?

I did though know exactly what I wanted to get for her, and where to get it - so it was off this morning to take the transport necessary to get where I needed to go, visit the shops that I needed to visit, and in total I managed to get all the presents, some nice gift wrap and indeed the birthday card to go with it. As it happened the card shops also had a very nice Mother's Day card too, and as that's not too far away either (a week on Sunday in fact) I felt it best to get that sorted at the same time. I spoke to Mum later on and she told me what she'd like for Mother's Day, so I can get that all sorted out in the week.

I did feel pleased when I arrived home later on that I'd managed to get all the presents all sorted out. I know that she will love them and appreciate the thought that I've put into it, and I do feel genuinely excited about her opening them and seeing just what she's got from me. I know it's always better to give than to receive, which is why it thrills me so much making someone happy, not least someone very special. I'm being deliberately sketchy about everything because I know that The Frets will read the diary, and I don't want to give the game away beforehand, it'd kind of spoil it. Not that she might try and get that information out of me before then!

I had a quick watch of Soccer Saturday later and as City weren't playing it was good to se how everyone else was doing. For once Jeff Stelling could smile as his beloved Hartlepool were winning 3-0 at home, and a hat trick to boot, not by James Brown though or else he'd have got the doll out I suspect! Arsenal were winning though which meant the title race was closer (and later on Man U would win 1-0 at Wolves to go back top, so it's all change up there at the moment) and it gave me chance to relax and contemplate just what that'd mean for City later on.

It was lovely as ever to see The Frets later on though and I decided that making us a three course meal was the plan of action - it'd also give me an idea of what I'd need to do next Saturday night, as I'm cooking for my Mum as a Mother's Day little treat of mine. I did us a nice minestrone soup for starter followed by some tortellini in carbonara sauce for the main with garlic bread, and I'd bought this New York cheescake which had defrosted nicely all afternoon and tasted divine - it was full of lovely vanilla and with some cream it was spot on, it really was. Gorgeous!

We did see some of that lottery quiz show with the annoying as hell Nick Knowles, and one of the questions to win £50,000 was that the two winners had to name fifteen of the British Olympic medallists at the 2008 Beijing games. To be fair, they did really well and got fifteen easily and won shed loads of dosh. I must admit I'd have probably done alright in that and got fifteen as well - maybe not the same as the ones that were given, but thinking back to how well we did, you'd have thought of the cyclists, the sailors and indeed Sarah Stevenson in the taekwondo, because of the rubbish judging error that robbed her of getting through the quarters in the first place.

I then put on The Young Victoria which I'd rented out on Tesco DVD Rental. We'd seen it at the cinema and loved the lavish style of all the costumes, as well as it being an excellent historical drama, with Emily Blunt most excellent as Victoria. It was also good to see that on the DVD release, the surround was really well used, from the doors shutting in what seemed big cavernous corridors to the gentle nuances of the classical music that would be danced to by Victoria. And Jim Broadbent doing his excellent stuff as the father figure, being a really idiosycrantic just like only he can really. It's won Baftas for costume, and we both loved it seeing it second time around.

Anyway, we had a nice little game of Scrabble later, and I even managed to put down an eight letter word and use all my letters, forming EQUATION (the N already in play, blank used as T) which scored a massive 84 points overall as I used all the letters. It's also one of the shortest words to use all five vowels as well, you know. Unless you happen to know of any shorter than that? But still, all good fun and with the lovely second album from The Icicles on in the background (best make "Crazy" tune of the day because it's such a sunny and happy album opener that you can't help smile) and all was very well in my world.

Friday 5th March - I Wanna Rock

I'd had a long day at work and I just wanted to go home, so when it was time to head homeward, I felt relieved. It had not been an easy week at all and to be perfectly honest, I just wanted to sit in front of the telly and veg out. I did though head to Tesco first to do the food shopping, as I needed to get some things in for tomorrow night when I shall be cooking for The Frets On My Guitar, only seemed right that I make the effort and make a nice meal for her. I think she'll be pleasantly surprised at what I'm trying out, but let's see what happens and go from there eh?

I then settled in and watched back the recording of the V8 Supercars that I'd recorded last night late on, it was a re-run of the two opening round races from Abu Dhabi. It did seem a little unnerving at first seeing Team Vodafone driving round in Holdens instead of Fords (the team switched manufacturer late 2009) but they were still quick, and with Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes getting a 1-2 on the first race, that couldn't be bad. In fact Whincup went on to win race two with Lowndes in fifth, so no complaints there either in terms of performance. It was pretty exciting racing all round though and definitely much more of an exciting series this time methinks.

It was then on to some rocking on Guitar Hero Greatest Hits, this time giving some of the guitar tracks a blast on medium. I did pretty well on Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" on medium bass, even hitting most of the open notes and getting 99%, so no arguments there really. I even tried Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock And Roll" on hard guitar and managed it with four stars, so that wasn't too bad either to be honest. It's just worth trying to see if I can push myself occasionally.

After doing all the pesky ironing, it was time to watch the BBC Four documentary "Heavy Metal Britannia" which detailed some of the history of heavy metal and hard rock with plenty of its protagonists being interviewed, the likes of Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward from Black Sabbath, Rob Halford and Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest, Lemmy from Motorhead, Ian Gillan and Jon Lord from Deep Purple, and so on. It was good to see that the history included just why some of the bands had their influences and how they wanted to break away from the peace and love of the late sixties. That in itself was fascinating to see.

Of course though it's all about the music, and it was intriguing to hear how Black Sabbath got their name and how the title track of their opener deals with the feelings inspired by the Boris Karloff film. It was also intriguing to see just how many people liked it now compared to how critics hated it back then. It also showed how Ian Gillan could scream a high note (a clip from "Child In Time" came to the fore to demonstrate this) and later on plenty on Judas Priest and how they inspired the whole leather and studs look into metal. And yes, it did play "Breaking The Law" later on, so make that tune of the day shall we?

Thursday 4th March - Master or Disaster?

Had a pretty good day all round at the office, sorting a few problems out and even getting to the bottom of why things wouldn't send to external addresses via the email, eventually narrowing down the problem to a rule someone had set up by accident. It was good to see what was happening and to get it all sorted out and indeed it unknowingly gave me some experience of being able to see what you could do to administer things on a server as well, so sometimes when you have to get things done under a tight timescale you need to know where to go and what to do. It's certainly been an experience.

I did spend some time when I got home playing Guitar Hero World Tour as well. I've been wanting to try out more songs on bass and so did REM's "The One I Love" on that instrument, almost getting all the notes (I think I missed one) and then later on did lead guitar on "Hotel California" by The Eagles on medium, and did every single note correctly, thus 100% FCing it (as they say) so got to make that tune of the day as it makes me the master of that tune. I just can't grasp the fifth note all the time on hard, so maybe one day I'll manage it, but I'm pleased that I'm at least able to make some progress that way.

Later on The Frets On My Guitar arrived and I was able to make us some pasta (spinach and ricotta tortelloni) with some sauce for tea, and followed that by a couple of rather nice and light raspberry turnovers too, which was good to enjoy actually. I felt as if I needed the sugar rush and wanted to enjoy every moment thoroughly. It was then a case of us relaxing and watching Masterchef. It was quite a shock in the second episode as in the first round everyone went for the pork and did something with it in some way as one of the ingredients, but some of them were pretty poor efforts. So poor in fact that for about the first time ever only two out of the six instead of three managed to get to the bit where they have to cook in a pro kitchen.

It was nice though to cuddle up later and just relax a fair bit too. I think sometimes that you know that you need to take things easy and just be together and not have to worry about anything else in the world, and that's how I certainly feel at times. It was good to do that actually and just not think about anything but what we'd done, where we'd been and what adventure we'd be getting up to at some point in time, and I felt quite philosophical about it all.

Wednesday 3rd March - All Along The Watchtower, Fighting Off The Flak

It seems like today was a constant battle with fighting flak from a few people regarding some necessary changes that we've had to make to some of the systems. It's always difficult when you have to do actions that won't make you popular, but of course you still do have to suffer the consequencs slightly when you have people who are asking plenty of questions and wanting you to deal with everything there and then. I do think though that it's a pretty tough call all round: sometimes you have to make the decisions and bite the bullet a bit while everyone's getting used to it all.

Anyway, I switched off as soon as I left work and headed home via Micro Direct. I had a PC to repair for a friend of mine and I'd soon worked out last night what it was - the power supply was duff. I therefore scootled up to Micro Direct and got a good 400W one with all the necessary connectors for not that much money, and soon swapped all the cables over, cable tied it neatly inside, powered up and all was well with the world. Well, almost. I needed to do a chkdsk as well as for some reason the PC was complaining about the boot device (Windows 2000 Pro was anyway) and once that was done and any issues fixed with the volume, it was fine since. Maybe the power supply had gone in the middle of something and not shut down properly, I was thinking.

It was then time for some rocking to really unwind nicely and let off some steam in the right way. I had Guitar Hero Metallica and did Master of Puppets on medium guitar, which was pretty hard, lots of tricky solos and riffs everywhere to try and trip you up. I also managed "War Ensemble" by Slayer on medium guitar, almost getting thrown off the stage but surviving and then really getting into it nicely. I tried it on bass too, and there were plenty of open notes to hit (where you just strum it) as well as the rest, so that proved quite good fun and did better on it as a result.

However, it was back to Guitar Hero 5 and I tried some songs on there on bass just to experiment a bit, and managed nicely to get four or five stars with solid performances, that made me feel good. What did make my day though was that a while back I'd tried Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" on hard guitar, and did it with three stars and a low score. I did it again and got the hang of all the riffs throughout, mainly holding two buttons at the same time for most of it, even being able to whack on star power too. In fact I got 96% and five stars, which is possibly one of my best ever performances on hard. Tune of the day it has to be, and go me eh? I just felt positive about it all.

And then there was England against Egypt. Rubbish in the first half, and the turnaround with Peter Crouch and Shaun Wright-Phillips in the second was great stuff. It showed that a) Frank Lampard is bobbins when playing for England as he was taken off, b) Steven Gerrard might be a good captain given time and c) maybe Crouch should be on the plane as a striker after all? His record of twenty in thirty nine is not that bad is it? I'm sure that the height scared the Egyptian defenders somewhat (although both goals were neat finishes with his feet) and with the pace being provided by Shaunie, all was well in that world. People might say "it's only Egypt" but you have to remember they are the current African Cup of Nations champions, so not to be sniffed at really.

Tuesday 2nd March - An Arcane Day

It was another busy day at work and I was glad to get home and not do much, to be honest. I did though put on Guitar Hero 5 and was about to tackle Arctic Monkeys' "Brainstorm" when a nice surprise knock came to the door, and it was The Love In My Heart, who had arrived early (I knew she was coming to visit) and that was lovely. I did play through the track and did reasonably well, but then my attention was fully focussed on her and I started to make us some tea. I had changed plan from my original thought yesterday and instead decided to do a chicken dinner. So, it was on with the chicken, and I did some new potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and gravy with it. All I needed were some stuffing balls and roasties too, but I'll save those for next time.

It was good to indulge her a little with Emmerdale on the background as we had tea, and then we sat and watched Friday's Sky Plus recording of Masterchef. Of course we were seeing Swing Out Sister when it was on and so it made perfect sense for us to catch up together. We both weren't surprised by the week's winner overall - she had passion and flair but also a deft touch, even with her sixties-style barnet that she seemed to have so really well looked after. I must admit though the main that she cooked put my relatively average cooking skills to complete shame, ah well.

I put on Beth Rowley's lovely "Little Dreamer" album and played Scrabble, which seemed a nice time and moment to just wind down and relax a fair bit. I love the album too and I know that The Love absolutely adores it, and dropped unsubtle hints to me that she might like it herself. Anyway, I'll make "So Sublime" tune of the day for us both, because it's just lovely. One of the words of the day I played in Scrabble though was ARCANE (the latter four letters already there) on triple word for 24. It was good to see that it was in the dictionary (already proving to be a good buy, that one) and it was something to remember to play in future.

It was Duke Special on later too, and it reminded me that on Friday tickets go on sale for a gig he's doing at a church in Salford, that's apparently hosting some gigs during this year. It would seem surreal seeing him there but I can well imagine the acoustics to be good, and for a performer like him I can pretty much go with that. I've seen some gigs in very different venues over the years and I think that would most likely be the most obscure venue, maybe apart from Wereneth Park in Oldham many years ago when Dodgy were headlining on a Sunday evening, that might take some beating though!

Monday 1st March - The Ides of March

It's the first day of a new month, and also a phrase that used to get bandied around is "Beware the Ides of March". When I used to read Adrian Mole books when I was younger, it was also something that Adrian's relatives would go on to him about, much to the amusement of the reader. For me though it had a real meaning today, I was making changes to the staff email system to make us fall in line with everyone else and indeed to ensure we're prepared for the rather large issue of the email changeover to an Exchange-based system later this year (oh joy, that means I have to use (ugh) Outlook!)

Anyway, the changes were made and we did have a few queries from staff, but on the whole they understood the need for change and got about their business without much of an issue, so that felt good. However what made me feel even better was helping my colleague get over a stumbling block with the way that Vectorworks on the Mac would issue its licences via the licence dongle. Normally you could run the licence manager on one Mac, and the others on the same network would see the dongle and all be good to go. However, it didn't work and wasn't playing ball whatsoever.

After a bit of research I found the answer: like the Windows version, you could specify the location of the licence server and the connection methods in a file called nethasp.ini. In Windows, you have to place this in the same folder as Vectorworks is installed and tell it where to go. On the Mac, it's different, you have to go to the hidden etc folder (Do a Go To Folder from Finder). Once there, you can copy and paste your nethasp.ini file but you need to do it as a user with sufficient rights to be able to get it copied. We then ran it, and it picked up the running licence server first go, and allowed you go across vLans as well thrown in to the bargain! It worked well, we documented how we did it and my colleague was well chuffed.

I would love this cold to go away and leave me though, it's been bugging me all day and I've felt really congested. When I've blown my nose, plenty has come out (a good thing) but my ears felt badly blocked till later today, when I heard a squeak as I blew, and all did become slightly clearer. I think it might be the last remnants of what bad infection I had previously too, so if it is leaving me, then that could well be a good thing. Tune of the day in the meantime is "On A Day Like This" by the brilliant Baskery, which shows just how much you can have happen and how to reflect on it well.