Dear Diary... August 2022
Wednesday 31st August – Haaland Hat Trick (Again)
It was a half day at work for me today as I was heading off to Manchester later to see Manchester City against Nottingham Forest (remember folks, do not call Forest Notts!) – and hopefully another win after the dramatic comeback on Saturday against Crystal Palace. I headed off to the office and its lovely air conditioning to be able to crack on with a few things, including writing the weekly report I submit but also getting some useful stats to those in the know in order to get a few things chased. It’s also been good that I’ve been able to road test a couple of new packages, and also send over a sample inventory collection to our vendor in order for them to work on a possible new query or report accordingly.
With that done, it was off on the 59 bus to Euston – in good time for the 1420 train to Manchester. My original 1356 train had been cancelled due to Avanti running one train an hour during the day, so made sure I was at the right platform in good time to get on and get a seat in Coach C (top tip: always know where the unreserved carriages are and head for those if this happens, normally on Avanti it’s C on a 9 car and C and U on an 11 car, with the new refurb trains also having G next to U) and that was all good as I sped through the countryside and onwards to Manchester Piccadilly.
As it transpired The Love In My Heart was on an early shift and so had finished in time to come and collect me from the station, and we thought we’d treat ourselves to a post-work drink (which we used to do in Sandbar quite a bit) so it was off to the Cloudwater tap room where The Love had the helles and I had their Happy ale, which during 4-6pm happy hour is a mere £3.50 a pint, and it’s very nice too, so definitely was all good. We chatted for a while (and I also had a phone call from Mum!) and that soon passed the time well, and it was back to The Love’s place in order to feed Brian the cat for his tea (and indeed a pasta bake for us both for our tea too!)
I headed off later to meet my friend and we were hoping for a bit less coming back from two goals down (we’d done that in four of the last six Premier League games) and a bit more of a simple game this time. It was good to take our spots and have a really good natter whilst the warm ups were on – and that’s one good thing I always try to do is to make time for us to catch up. All seemed well with him and the victory on Saturday (and hopefully a win tonight) would mean either side of his birthday he’d see City win, which would be nice of course. Here was hoping, anyway.
City kicked off and it was soon apparent that Nottingham Forest were playing some decent football and not putting eleven men behind the ball, so kudos to them and manager Steve Cooper, and their fans were singing all the way through – they deserve a lot of credit for that. City started well and after twelve minutes a nice Phil Foden ball made its way into the six yard area where Erling Haaland got in front of the defender and poked it home for 1-0. A good start, made even more so after a bad clearance from Dean Henderson was collected by the City midfield, and although Phil Foden was muscled out of it by three Forest defenders, the ball went to Haaland – and well we know what happens, right? 2-0.
My friend and I were impressed too by the energy, pace and the overall play of Julian Alvarez, who deserved a goal for giving their defenders something else to think about. He did hit the post with a rasping shot first half, and later on after the ref got in the way of Bernardo Silva, the ball came in, headed across goal, back across goal by John Stones and Haaland was there again for 3-0 and his second hat trick on the bounce – only five other players have ever done that and not even the mighty Sergio Aguero managed it, which says something. And a perfect hat trick too (left foot, right foot, header) which is not a bad way to show you mean business. Nine goals in his first five games was also a Premier League record!
City didn’t let up at all during the second half – a lovely cross field ball from Bernardo Silva found Joao Cancelo, who struck a beauty into the top corner. 4-0. Then it was time for Julian Alvarez to show his stuff, and after a through ball from Riad Mahrez, Alvarez slotted it under the legs of Dean Henderson for 5-0. Near the end, as City broke forward with Kevin de Bruyne leading the break, the ball went right side and across the box via a defender to Alvarez, who struck it true into the top corner for 6-0. We were both pleased for Alvarez and he deserved those goals, played really well and for me was man of the match (even more so than Haaland which says something) – so was really pleased to see him perform. Tune of the day simply has to be Collapsed Lung’s 90s classic Eat My Goal , which certainly we’re doing a lot of as of late. Nineteen goals in the first five league games, nine from Haaland. Mental!
Tuesday 30th August – Game Time
After a busy and productive day working from home (and indeed alleviating some issues on some Macs at the same time) I decided it was high time to test out the games from a recent Commodore 64 bundle that I had, plus another delivery I’d also had in the post of a single game. Admittedly, I may be selling some of these on due to some duplicates (always a thing when you get bundles – you’ll get a game you have) but I always like to make sure that anything like that has been play tested properly and loads without issues – and at least then it’s a bit more confidence in those that purchase accordingly.
So, with that in mind, it was on with the C64 and on first of all with the single cassette budget games. All sorts here including some management games, the likes of Football Director from D&H games (which works nicely) and the Hi-Tec reissue of Tracksuit Manager, which for me is the best football management game on the C64 (and I have the original release of that already) and the fact you can speed up the commentary, which is very detailed, during the games you play is really appreciated if you want to play it quicker – it’s a case of whatever you want in terms of suspense, and it’s superb for that with the pauses when you or the opposition takes a shot at goal – like radio commentary almost.
Another management game was an American Football one called Endzone, where after two weeks of the Chicago Bears getting battered I ran out of money because I bought an expensive player – so maybe not that realistic then. It was then on to some other sports games, so the Alternative re-release of Championship Baseball with its nice graphics with the pitcher and batter when you’re attempting to knock it out of the park, and Jonah Barrington’s Squash, which takes ages to load but does have some impressive speech of the man himself with all the phrases such as “not up”, “hand out” and so on, and it’s a decent sports sim to be fair.
Away from the sports games, there were some Mastertronic cheapies, including an early game, Magic Carpet, that had the hallmarks of a Richard and David Darling Games Creator special all over it, and the MAD release of the a licenced Flash Gordon game with three multi load stages, and some rather god Rob Hubbard music to go with it. Notably in the US it got a release as Captain Zapp, maybe because the licencing agreement for Flash was possibly only Europe-wide when any contracts were signed? I’d love to know the true story of that one. Either way of course it did make me think of the epic Queen soundtrack to said film and Brian Blessed’s infamous “Gordon’s ALIVE?” line.
Next up were some of the bigger box games, which included Virgin’s licence of World Cup Soccer Italia 90, programmed in Hungary by Novotrade for them. It’s okay but if you want football on the 64, there are better options. An even bigger box was for The Cycles by Accolade, think of their earlier release Grand Prix Circuit but with motorbikes, and pretty playable too with some good 3D effects and nice circuit layouts (including Donington for the UK) and some very good Kris Hatlelid music which has some meaty samples along the way. Nice. And even bigger box: Armageddon Man from Martech, which still has the sticker transfer sheets intact with the instructions (no map though) – and that has some good David Whittaker music along the way which is appreciated.
There were more in that bundle which all worked, so happy times there, and I then went to load up Armalyte, a classic shoot em up from Thalamus which I purchased recently for a price lower than it normally goes for, which was good (I was the only bidder in fact). The game loaded and the rather superb Martin Walker loading theme came on (make that tune of the day) which sets the tone perfectly. And it still plays excellently, the collision detection is very fair and you feel properly in control and even in the tight spots you do feel that element of playing well. I got to level three before losing my lives, so need to go back again and give that another blast, but good to see all was working well. And that was a good way to spend an evening.
Sunday 29th August - Just In Time At Stockport
It was a nice relaxing lie in this morning for me, although Brian the cat had decided that he wanted to play tippy tappy with The Love In My Heart until she got up. It was nice though when I did get up that we did watch a bit of nice relaxing telly, a thing that The Love watched on Really where an auctioneer from Yorkshire visits people who want to clear their house of stuff, and he gets it all auctioned off and sometimes makes some money. One of the house visits showed this unopened £5 commemorative coin, which fetched around £1500 during auction. It's a fascinating watch, honestly!
We headed over to my Mum's later as she wanted to see us, and it was nice also that my youngest sister popped over (as it transpired, she'd sold a fair number of Funko Pops figures online and someone was colectig them from there) - and had a good chat with Mum. She'd been sprucing up the house a bit to make it all nice and mainly with some white paint here and there to touch up, and looked the part. We were both impressed with the fact it looked nice and neutral and definitely since my sister had moved out, it meant a more peaceful calm look to the place.
Later on The Love and I headed off for a later lunch at the Elizabethan in Heaton Moor. In fact we wondered why the place was relatively empty as normally it's pretty busy all the time, but we figured that the Bank Holiday plus the school holidays might mean people are still away at present. In fact, the member of staff who served us did tell us that it was closing on Friday for six weeks whilst a refurb took place inside, and to make the place a lot more open plan than it is currently - so the nice little snug area we sat at today was probably the last time we'd have that table - boo!
Anyway, we both ended up having the fish and chips, because as we thought might happen, some of the items from the food menu were not in stock and it wouldn't make sense for them to get it back in (and understandable to be perfectly honest) - so all good there. It was nice to have a pint of MPA and natter, and as The Love was very kindly getting the lunch (as I had done yesterday) I did note that in fact the planned Transport for Wales train to Crewe at 1730 was cancelled, but we had a plan!
The Love very kindly from The Elizbethan went to Stockport station instead, which meant that I could actually board what was the 1630 departure from Manchester which arrived on time there at 1640. I made it with two minutes to spare before the train arrived, headed to Crewe and got on the 1733 London Northwestern train without any issues either, and had the headphones on to listen to some tunes including Neon by John Mayer which was very nice and relaxing for the journey, so tune of the day there no question. I was ever so pleased that The Love had saved me lots of time and we'd had a lovely weekend too!
Sunday 28th August - Cheshire Day Out
The Love In My Heart and I had some breakfast, and fussed over Brian the cat (as you do) and we decided that it'd be nice to head off for the day, seeing as I didn't have a train to head for later on and it meant that I was also able to have the whole day out as we needed, so that was nice. We thought it would be good to head to Snugburys near Nantwich and see the new wildflower meadow that they had put in, along with some woodland creatures in wicker along the way. And of course, I'd just have to have their rather fab ice cream wouldn't I?
So The Love and I headed along the M56 to junction 10 to join the A49, with a nice set of warnings for those heading to the Creamfields festival not to come off here, but use the next two junctions. We soon made our way past Acton Bridge and Weaverham and then followed the A51 towards Hurleston, just before Nantwich, where Snugburys is. With the weather being nice there was a queue for the ice cream, and so we decided it'd make sense to go there first and get the ice cream for myself. I went for the raspberry pavlova and the creme brulee, both of which were rather lovely.
In fact I ate that whilst we walked to the field and followed the wildflower meadow path, which was rather nice actually. It did have some woodland creatures in wicker and lots of families with their children were following it to see all of those, which included a fox, an owl, a hare and a deer in the middle of the meadow which you could see from a distance, and a hedgehog later on. The path did take you to where they have their straw sculpture, which is still a giant bee overlooking the fields and rather good too. We also saw the kunekune pigs and the goat in the farm land at the front too, so all in all, very enjoyable and a good place for families to go.
We had noted a nice farm shop on the way down and we'd never been to it before, so once back on the A49 on the way back we stopped off there, at The Hollies. It was very nice indeed with lots of fresh produce, some really nice meats and cheeses, and a new thing they have now - a deli bar. So you can have some nice deli salads and sandwiches in there but also a drink there, so we thought "well why not?" The Love had a glass of wine and I had one of the local ales, an amber ale called Eastgate Ale from the Weetwood Brewery, and it was stunningly nice!
We then headed over to The Riverside at Acton Bridge, and got ourselves an outside table there by the River Weaver. We could order from the table so that was much easier, and had a very nice lovely lunch there. I had the chicken pie which was a proper pie and the nicest mash I've had with a pie in ages, plentiful too. The Love had the rather good chicken and chorizo kebab, which was served on some flatbread with pomegranate and feta cheese, and right up her street. She loved it, and we loved the view of the river with the ducks watching us all as they swam along. All in all, a Perfect Day, as Lou Reed might have said, so said song is tune of the day for me.
Saturday 27th August - Haaland Hat Trick
After having a nice relaxing morning with The Love In My Heart, I did get to see The Love's sister, and the daughter-in-law along with The Cute Little One, who was being her usual adorable self. She had not long been awake but was happy to be around and having some love and attention, especially when there was food to be had - even putting the peeled banana into The Love's bin by herself. That was nice to see that she's becoming domesticated but also now knows to say hello to Brian the cat but to keep her distance to make sure there's no hissing or growling at her. She just points and says "cat!" cutely.
I headed off to meet my friend and it was the turn of Crystal Palace to visit the Etihad Stadium today. Of course after last season where they had beaten us 2-0 at home and drawn 0-0 away, I wasn't seeing this as an easy game whatsoever and wanted to be able to see what we'd do today, especially of course with Erling Haaland up front as an outlet for goals. My friend and I were a little nervous but got settled into our location and with the cloud cover meaning it was far less hot than it was last time out, hopes were positive for a good result.
And those hopes looked frail during the first half. A free kick came over and it rebounded off the knee of John Stones and past Ederson in the City goal for 1-0 - with just three minutes gone on the clock. In fact Palace did look dangerous in their set pieces, and their best player by far was Eberechi Eze, who was making a number of runs and going at the City defence whenever he felt like it. His cross from a corner was met by Joachim Andersen for 2-0, and that wasn't so good either. In fact it could have been 3-0 if the referee hadn't deemed one of the Palace players had kicked the ball out during a release from the City keeper.
I was only hoping for better second half but my friend and I knew we needed the first goal after the break. A few switches happened including putting Bernardo Silva on the right wing, and he had the freedom to go at defenders. We looked a lot better and it was no surprise when he cut inside from the wing and with the aid of a deflection slotted it home for 2-1. That made it more respectable and now we got one, could we go on and possibly get some more? Hopes were a little rekindled, and City brought on Ilkay Gundogan and Julian Alvarez in place of Joao Cancelo and Riyad Mahrez.
Straight away we looked better, and the cross came in on the right, Alvarez headed it to Phil Foden, and his cross to the edge of the six yard box was perfect for Erling Haaland to score his first City goal at the Etihad, and 2-2. We knew we weren't done yet but I felt there was only one winner now as Palace retreated. Indeed, eight minutes later, more good work down the right from Bernardo Silva following a City corner meant the ball went to John Stones, and not sure if was a pass or a scuffed shot, but it got to Erling Haaland, and well, he doesn't miss those! 3-2 to City and comeback complete, which pleased us both immensely.
We weren't done there either, and a few minutes later Haaland was running down the middle. Gundogan found him with a perfect slide rule pass, and Haaland just muscled the defenders off the ball and slotted the ball in the bottom corner for 4-2 to City and game over - and his first hat trick of the season (and first in the Premier League this season also) and I can see that being the first of many. The boys in blue never give in, as the classic Manchester City anthem goes (and make that tune of the day) and the two of us were pleased - especially as I also had him as captain in Fantasy League and so racked up a shed load of points into the bargain!
Friday 26th August - Friday Night Fun
It was nice to be able to head to the office today and be in the knowledge that today was an early finish, primarily to get some quality time back for the Bank Holiday weekend, but also due to the fact that it'd been a pretty busy week and that I'd been able to get loads done. And it was pay day (due to the day we get paid being a Sunday and so get it earlier) so all was well with the world. In fact, that meant I was able to get to the desk, log on and get all readied for the day, and head to Pret next door for a breakfast bacon and egg roll, because I can and I felt like it!
The morning went by well and I was keeping an eye on a few things as well as monitoring some connectivity between sites to see what would prove more reliable over time in sending content over to some of the branch offices in China. Either way it seemed like that there was a limit sending somewhere, and even though I did rate limit the content distribution to one DP in order for it to be not swamping everything, it was still taking some considerable time out. Might have to re-think things for next week and go from there.
Anyway, the good news of sorts was that it looked like some of the Macs which needed to install the latest update had been doing after some prompting, and I had been monitoring this to ensure that all was good and enforcable next week where we didn't get a suitable response. What I think it has shown though is that there's still an illusion amongst some Mac users is that "oh, we use a Mac, it is secure!" when actually what recent events have proven is that actually it's the other way round now, and hackers are inevitably targeting those who seem to have less of an awareness.
It was off to Euston later and got on the London Northwestern train to Crewe, followed by the Transport for Wales train from there to Manchester. This did mean of course I could use the super off peak cheap return for this (which incidentally is also a walk on fare!) so that does help keep costs down. When I got to Piccadilly it was straight on to the tram and off to meet The Love In My Heart after her late shift at work, and so once I got to the tram destination I headed over to Wine and Wallop and got an outside table, and ordered us some drinks there for when she arrived, which was nice.
We had a lovely chatter for a while and with the sun still out it was just nice to be outside and enjoying ourselves after the weeks at work, and we later headed off to The Gateway for some tea - again sat outside and enjoying the evening together. We don't often get Friday evenings to ourselves so definitely we wanted to make the most of it, and definitely being sat together with the evening sun still out was lovely. I had the fish and chips and it was spot on, and The Love had the boneless basket, which was also good too. It was also really nice that we were just able to chatter and catch up and feel more relaxed.
We got back to The Love's place and after we had fed Brian the cat, who was more than happy to have his tuna, The Love headed to Asda to get a bit of shopping and Brian sat on the pouffle with his cute face on, and, he wanted to play ball! So that cheered me up no end and he was all being so playful and adorable, awww. The Love arrived back and we ended up watching the likes of The Last Leg on the telly which was hilarious, and the theme tune to that (Harder Than You Think by Public Enemy) has to be tune of the day for me.
Thursday 25th August - Haircut Diversion
After work it was off to my usual barbers, James Barbers in Wimbledon Park, to get the hair cut. However, due to TfL doing maintenance work on the trams this week, it meant that no trams were running from Therapia Lane to Wimbledon, and so the tram replacement buses would take ages. Not ideal when you have an appointment to meet. So instead it was the walk to East Croydon and then take the train from there to Clapham Junction, swap platforms from 12 to 11 on the same island, and get the train to Wimbledon instead. It didn't work out too bad and was less busy than I thought it might be during commuter time, but then again it is the school holidays and all that.
All was well and the staff were cutting the haircuts before mine, but that did mean we had a good conversation about football in general. The bloke who normally cuts my hair, Joe, is an Arsenal fan, so as you can imagine, he was loving life at the moment being top of the league, and we did discuss the impact that Zinchenko and Jesús have made since they went over to Arsenal from City, and he did say that the fact they've won things and have that mentality is rubbing off well on the squad too, which has to be a positive thing.
With all the hair and football chat sorted, I must admit I did feel a lot better for having the hair chopped nice and short - especially as part of the sides near the ears are, I admit, getting a little bit greyer in places, and keeping it short helps make it look less like I'm that old a person (and yes, I am old!) - so that has to be something. I must admit that I am getting to the point where these days it's a 2 and 3 clipper cut instead of 2 and 4, and keeping things really short as possible - my hair grows back quite thick and can be a pain in the backside to be honest!
When I got back home I decided to treat myself to a pizza from Dominos for tea, primarily because the nearest one is close by so I can simply click and collect and have what I'd like - and the small size is more than big enough for me to be honest, and with two toppings represents good value for what it is. I did also see some old Formula 1 tonight as there's a nice channel out there uploading the old races, and it was the 1981 season so got to see the San Marino Grand Prix complete with very wet conditions, looked a difficult race to finish and win but that's in fact what Nelson Piquet did!
Of course, the old F1 also does have the classic iconic bit of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain as its opening theme (make that tune of the day of course) and on top of that, Murray Walker and James Hunt in the commentary box. I do miss that a lot primarily because although they were chalk and cheese personality wise, and very different, they both shared that passion and love for motorsport, and with Hunt being a former World Champion, if he said a driver was bobbins then they had to take it!
Wednesday 24th August - Office Space
It was back to the office for me today, and I must admit that I think that the hybrid model I've been doing of two days or three in the office along with working at home has worked pretty well for me thus far, it has to be said. I think this is primarily due to the fact that it gives a decent sense of balance and with the office being reachable by an express bus, the commute isn't costing that much either (a mere £3.30 there and back) which has to be at least worth something. I do generally find too that it's a more relaxing journey because I'm not having to battle for train seats and so on either.
With all that in mind, the driver of the X68 bus this morning didn't do the usual left turn at the Tulse Hill gyratory and head off towards Brixton (and then follow the 59 route to Waterloo and so on) but decided instead to go the way the 68 itself does - so effectively running alongside Brockwell Park to Herne Hill, up towards Denmark Hill station and then through Camberwell towards Elephant and Castle. It did mean I got to the office a little later than planned but at least it was still well on time, so settled myself in with a coffee and was ready to face the long day ahead.
I did spend most of the morning sorting out the weekly report and also putting together all the info from our Mac management system as to what Macs were being used by which last user and from that which OS they were on etc, so our head of service team could get some useful communications out to some of the users, and be able to target those on certain versions. It also proved that having an AD lookup table which I was able to run some Powershell to get out to a CSV was useful, not least because this also gave me any accounts which weren't live (so we could spot any leavers too)
That all done, it was off home after a busy afternoon of additional testing and catching up with our resident Newcastle United fan about the game Sunday, where he admitted he was gutted City came back from 3-1 down but at the same would have taken a 3-3 draw before the game, so those are the breaks of course. I for one noted it was a sticky warm day outside and definitely felt that on the bus going home, and the swap for the 468 at the top of Crown Point (so Hopper Fare kicks in) was well worth it just to be on a cooler bus if nothing else to be honest.
At home I spent some time transferring some of the new CDs to MP3 format and for the trusty iPod for travelling too - it's always nice to have the new stuff to listen to when doing the trains and so on, and just makes the journey seem a little less monotonous. The Love's niece did ask me how many times I did that journey over a year, and I reckon at least 30-35 return journeys between London and Manchester, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Tune of the day in fact is Kraftwerk's seminal title track for Trans-Europa Express (yes I went with the German version) primarily as listening to that on a train just sounds so right!
Tuesday 23rd August - Dub War Day
It did feel a little humid today even when working from home and having some amount of fresh air (although admittedly not that much) and it was definitely a day to get plenty of washing done so that I'd have some nice clothes to wear over the weekend with The Love In My Heart. In fact I also washed the bath towel at the same time as the shirts to combine those in one wash and therefore minimise the energy use (made sense) and had the laptop set up for work and ready to go with a busy day ahead as well.
In fact one of the first queries I had was from our team over in China, about a piece of software they had asked me to package around a year or so ago, and on a recent install, and run, they showed a message that it was out of date. Checking the vendor website, it turned out that yes there was a new version, but also now that it was also a licence cost involved too, so in effect it'd make sense to see what they wanted to do, but withdraw it from being able to be installed for now until a decision was made.
I did spend some time today with my Mac specialist colleague over in Salt Lake City working out some potential policy and configuration changes so that there'd be some automatic changes for setting updates on for the Mac - and indeed meaning that no one could overwrite that setting either. A road test of the config profile worked well and that meant that any periodic check would at least prompt the user and we'd then see what the take up is. I really do wish that the updating mechanism was as rock stable and solid and configurable as MECM is, but that's wishful thinking, because Apple.
At lunch I checked the post and the final package from what I'd ordered from Music Magpie had arrived, namely the new album from Dub War, their first since 1996 (and I have them both.) Westgate Under Fire finds Benji and co in absolute control and it really didn't feel like it was that long since a proper album - granted Benji's been busy with the likes of Skindred, but there was something I loved about Dub War back then and still do now. The lead off track Blackkk Man is a perfect riposte to what was happening in America, and killer line of "Afro Caribbean Cymru!" showing their pride of being Welsh and from Newport. Definitely tune of the day that one.
The album does have a couple of notables - first off, the cover version of War Inna Babylon features the very last studio recording that Ranking Roger took part in before passing away in 2019 (which also shows you how long the album was in planning!), so somewhat poignant when you listen to that. Nice version of Stay Together by Al Green but also the album closer Celtic Cross has a really more laid back feel, especially when compared to the full on metal assault of the likes of Coffin Lid with Benji going full on death metal singing in the opening part!
It's just good to have them back - especially as their 1995 debut Pain would probably be in my top 10 debut albums of all time (and I can highly recommend it, especially the likes of Mental, Gorrit, and lots of others). And as for the new album, Vibes in the Place reminds me very much of the style of the Pain album so that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Get Back Up although more laid back does have Mike Bordin of Faith No More on there too - and so that adds some lovely depth on the drums too. All in all, yep, Dub War are back!
Monday 22nd August - Checking In And Checking Out
It was off to the office today, as normally Monday is a little quieter so I can get a desk, but more importantly than that, it does mean that I can do some testing on-site that I can't do at home, so it's actually really useful to be around and in to be honest. The good news was that the X68 bus appeared to speed through with no hassle, so much nicer when it's the school holidays and much better than the announcement of "the driver has been told t wait at this bus stop for a short time to help even out the service" because hey, it's an express bus, it shouldn't need that (even though it did so last week much to my chagrin!)
Anyway, back in the office it was time to test out all the new packages for the change I've planned later this week for the Windows 10 build - new versions of Adobe Reader, 7-Zip and Chrome no less. All of those passed with flying colours during testing and it did at least mean that everything worked as intended, so that was a positive. I did also release the August updates out to the masses today so that did mean some more checking and monitoring to make sure all of that was going well, which it was. I think because the process has been well nailed over time it is solid and reliable, so will need to further document that also.
I did also check up and make sure that a process we have for some provisioning of Mac devices was up to date, and there was only one thing I really needed to do and that was to add for checks that the OS was up to date. In a number of cases what was shipped might have been an earlier version of MacOS Monterey for example, and so it would make sense to do all updates in situ prior to shipping out, especially as with the new version 12.5.1 fixing a number of issues.
Later on when I got home I noted that there was a delivery for me and that was from Music Magpie - it was four CDs that I ordered, primarily to take advantage of their 4 for £8 offer on used CDs and normally when I've bought from there before they've been spot on, so wanted to fill out some gaps in the back catalogue, and why not? In fact the four CDs were an assortment of my varied music selection, starting off with Nouvelle Vague's Bande á Part album - lots of nice different versions of punk and new wave classics, including an all time classic Buzzcocks number, Dancing with Myself by Generation Xl and a lovely dreamy version of Waves by Blancmange as well - in fact make that tune of the day.
As for the rock and metal side, I picked up Dream Theater's A Change of Seasons, there's only five tracks on there but all of them are pretty long: there's also a medley of various songs including Carry On My Wayward Son, Bohemian Rhapsody and Turn it On Again amongst others. The band themselves call it an EP despite there being a fifty seven minute running time, and the title track being a mere twenty three minutes long to start it off, classic Dream Theater doing what they do there. I also had the 9 track Pixies EP released by Cooking Vinyl which were the remaining songs from "The Purple Tape" which didn't make it on to Come On Pilgrim back in the day. This does include early versions of songs later recorded on other Pixies albums too.
Finally, the second of the four albums from the band Chvrches completed the set, with Every Open Eye. The standard edition is what I got (seemed daft getting the extended one for lots more when it worked out £2 for the standard one) and full of joyous and intelligent synth pop. The single Bury It from here was also recorded with Hayley Williams from Paramore when released as a single, and even the album version here is punchy and catchy. Clearest Blue, one of the other singles here, is also klller too, and infectiously so. Just need to get one more album to have all four of theirs now.
Sunday 21st August - Sunday Afternoon Matinee
It was nice to do something different today - a Sunday afternoon matinee type gig, and that would happen to also feature one of my all time favourite musicians, Kristin Hersh. I was a little gutted that tickets had sold out for the evening performance, but when a notification came that an afternoon show was being played, I was on it and got that booked, and at the Lexington, on Pentonville Road just up the hill from Kings Cross. I had been to that venue before many years ago to see MJ Hibbett (2011 in fact) and unbelieably not since then. Still, I am sure it'd be as good I may have remembered it.
I got myself showered and changed and headed off on the train to St Pancras from East Croydon and it was pretty busy all the way to London Bridge, where the train emptied nicely and felt much more comfortable as I headed towards St Pancras, walking through Kings Cross station and then along Pentonville Road. In fact I spotted the venue at the top of the hill and walked on towards Angel tube station to stop for some well earned lunch and a drink there, before I had a nice walk around Chapel Market and followed part of the Jubilee Greenway in reverse to the Regents Canal.
It was then back over to the Lexington where a pint of their own American IPA was to be had, and it was actually pretty nice all told - full of flavour too. The doors opened to head upstairs and once checked in, I managed to get a decent enough spot. The aircon inside the venue was lovely and really dikd make me feel a little less claustrophobic inside (too much heat would be bad) and the fact it was a smaller venue meant it'd feel a more intimate gig. Effectively, Kristin was doing two halves with an interval in between, so was looking foward to hearing some of the songs I loved.
On came Kristin and it was just her and an acoustic guitar. I have to say as well that the whole audience did not chatter at all during her playing, they were respectful, and that for me made it feel intimate and more lovely. What I didn't expect of course was to get some of my favourites during the first half, but that I did, starting with Sundrops from the Hips and Makers album and later a lovely version of Gazebo Tree, a definite fan favourite that one. There was also a rather lovely version of the Thowing Muses B-side Cottonmouth, which I really like and it was a pleasure to hear that being played.
Kristin was also reciting little stories from her book released last year, Seeing Sideways, detailing the memoirs of both music and motherhood and various stories from locations and tours over the years - a book I do still need to purchase to be fair. It was nice to hear those and it certainly made a nice break during the set too. Of course the first half culminated in another of my favourites, namely Your Dirty Answer, the vicious barb still intact even with just an acoustic version and Kristin on excellent vocal form, so that was me happy as I headed to the bar to get a drink at half time.
For the second half I had managed to move down towards the front, but left of the actual stage but with a spot on view, not quite side on to Kristin but I could see really well, and that meant I could enjoy the second half even more. And so it proved: the beautifully emotional Flooding is still wonderful to this day and so that is tune of the day for me. There was also a nice touch of Mississippi Kite as well which sounded glorious, and the first solo single Your Ghost also had a lovely airing too - I always loved that one because of the purely lovely acoustics an strings, but here just stripped back? Absolutely spot on.
We also got an encore of a couple of songs too - the cover version of the traditional song Cuckoo from the Hips and Makers album and last but definitely not least a nice rendition of Throwing Muses' City of the Dead, which really went down well with everyone too. It was a really nice set overall and really did showcase Kristin's work really well too. It was warm outside as I walked back towards St Pancras to get the train home, but it was a lovely afternoon with good people seeing a musician I like - so an epic win all round.
Saturday 20th August - Putney Pints
It was a nice relaxing morning for me as I spent some time sorting out some cleaning, but also then managed to get some time free to play some old Commodore 16 and Plus/4 games, as I had the Plus/4 out - I had been testing some duplicate games the other night and so with those done, it was nice to fire the machine up and get playing. In fact I had a good blast of Timeslip, a game by English Software which really is unique, three split screens of action to shoot all the orbs and let the clock on each run down to zero, before the master time runs out. It's really impressive and plays ever so well - a must get.
I also did have a full play through of perhaps one of the finest games ever to grace the system, Winter Events, programmed by the legendary Udo Gertz with music from Brigitte Gertz. I really like the music in the biathlon (so that's tune of the day) and it also is immensely playable. I still to this day can do well in the downhill with its nice psuedo-3D perspective, and the bobsleigh is always a fair challenge. It would be remiss to mention its nod to Winter Games by Epyx of course, but this game is the closest you'll get to that and is also just so much fun, especially in multiplayer mode.
That all done, I got myself showered and changed and watched the remainder of the European Championship women's mountain biking from Munich - and with it raining, the track in places was sodden and very muddy, with ruts on one corner of the Munich Mamba section meaning riders had to get off and carry the bike over. In the end, a French one two but not in the order you'd expect, primarily as the initial leader had mud stuck on the chain and the chain came off, and took some time to put back on. All riders after that were using water bottles to try and keep the mud off their chains, just in case.
I was heading over to Putney so took the tram to Wimbledon and then the 93 bus via Wimbledon Village and Putney Heath. As Fulham were at home today against Brentford, the bus was busy and indeed getting into Putney the traffic was busy so got off the bus and walked from near the train station over to the Coat and Badge pub, where I'd be meeting The Love In My Heart's sister and niece for lunch. The niece lives in Putney now and the two of them were off to Wembley later to see Coldplay, so thought it good to meet up for a natter, and get some decent food down before tey headed to the gig (because food prices in Wembley and all that.)
Of course most of the outside of the pub was full of Fulham fans watching the Tottenham-Wolves game before heading off, but we got a table at the side which was quieter. Sure enough as I got us some drinks (the app that Young's have proved handy for this!) it started to empty out a fair bit and was quieter later. It sounded like the two of them had been having a good time, walking to Richmond Park on Thursday and a nice walk around central London yesterday, so that was positive. The sun had come out too so it was nice to relax with a pint of Sambrook's Wandle.
We ordered some lunch, and two of us went for the chicken escalope with a fried egg on top and some gorgeous chips, and the other did the burger, which also looked fit. The two of them weren't having fish and chips as they'd had a superb take out last night (I saw a picture, it looked fab) and we later on had another drink and it was just all lovely. I think that it shows how much I get on with The Love's family that they're quite happy to meet for lunch with just me too, so I take that as a positive. Time had sped by and so we said our farewells but it had been lovely, and I headed back on the 93 then the tram homeward.
I did spend some time this evening watching the European Championship athletics from the iconic Olympic Stadium in Munich, and that was all good. Keely Hodgkinson won the 800 metres title but it was a surprise but welcome gold for the men in the 4x400 metre relay, with the women also getting a hard fought bronze in their event too, nice to see, along with a bronze for Elizabeth Bird in the steeplechase. Of course no one was going to overthrow Armand Duplantis in the pole vault, he cleared everything with ease!
Friday 19th August - Bubble Bobble Bonus
It was good to be working from home today and actually the weather did seem a little cooler in the morning, so getting some fresh air in plus having the fan on low just to get some air circulating did seem to work wonders. I was up reasonably early and so did do the majority of dusting, cleaning and vacuuming I needed to do before I was ready for work, and that made a lot of sense to do so. In fact once all of that was done it was good to get a shower and get ready, then have the work laptop out and start work.
I had a good discussion with the manager of our networks team and underlining some possible plans for one region, and what would work. In essence we were able to thrash out a sensivle idea based on the current spoke and hub approach used, in that one main site is their hub and the remaining are spokes served by that, meaning that we can effectively make use of what links they have. He did tell me that by all accounts that it's basically trying to make the most efficient use when you don't have the most powerful external Internet connection out there, so definitely something of note.
The teams I work with did also see something which we needed to take some more swift action on than normal, and were able to not just formulate a plan as to how we'd do so technically, but also make sure we got some suitable comms out and had it worded correctly. The good thing is that we were able to at least push out some commands to machines and to drop hints to make sure that they did what was needed in due course, so all positive there I think.
I did head off after work over to Tooting and to Crazy Thumbs - which is a very nice games shop stocking all sorts. They even had a tape deck for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 series, complete with adapter so you can use that deck on a Commodore 64 also. I also did notice some Amstrad CPC games on disk (and a pretty good Amstrad games selection too) as well as a CPC 464, and also a very nice looking Atari 7800. Lots of temptation in there that I needed to avoid spending too much on, but definitely well worth a visit if you get chance. Nothing I wanted particularly, but nice to see a good selection.
I spent the evening after Jaz Rignall's Twitter post reminding me of the game playing the Commodore 64 conversion of the Bubble Bobble arcade machine, released by Firebird and programmed by the folks at Software Creations for them. It truly is a great conversion, all the features are there, the letters to spell EXTEND, the level skips, and all the niceties, like the little bottle you pick up that turns the rest of the level into a bonus round (collect a number of the same objects for a nice 100,000 bonus points.) NQ64 in Manchester has the arcade original and that ace in game theme tune by Tadashi Kimijima was lovingly done on the '64 by Peter Clarke to a tee, so tune of the day there.
Thursday 18th August - Avoiding The Strikes
There were of course strikes on trains today, but that now doesn't affect my current route into work anyway. For me at least it means that I can still get the same bus without too many issues, although I did suspect that it might be a little busier than normal, which it was. I wasn't surprised by that really but it did at least mean I could get to the office, have a coffee, and then be able to get into the jobs I had planned for today and there were a few of those that I wanted to get done.
First of all, it was getting some new versions of applications packaged, including some of the core applications we use on Windows, which meant me packaging new versions of 7-Zip, Adobe Reader DC and also Google Chrome, and once all of those were tested I put them into a test Windows 10 build task sequence to check they were all good in there, which they were, so that was pleasing to see. I also did spend some time getting together the likes of both Tableau Desktop (which is licenced) and Tableau Reader (for those who just need to read those projects only) and all appeared well there too when I road tested them out.
After some additional application testing, it was then getting some asset management done (lots of that due to some returned and/or faulty kit) and once that was processed, I did a further road test of some additional applications I'd packaged, and checked they all worked, and responded to see some requests for some of the staff being onboarded from elsewhere and what was needed - on the whole that was good as some of the applications had already been done, but needed to look at some others and so can work on that early next week to be getting done.
It was very good timing later as I left the office and headed down to Aldwych and managed to get the slightly earlier X68 towards home, changing at West Norwood for the 468 (and thus being in Hopper Fare mode as well, always a bonus that.) It was nice to be back home and to have a rather nice steak pie for tea - it was the finest selection at Lidl where it has Old Peculier Ale in the pie - and tastes proper nice because of it, good job all round that and really did feel like I had a positive day.
The Love In My Heart was looking after The Cute Little One for a few days, and she had been with her to Dunham Massey and managed to get plenty of cute pictures of her walking around, admiring the ducks and all that. In fact The Love discovered that The Cute Little One likes victoria sponge cake (well who doesn't?) and also seemed to want to try and play with the ducks if possible. Brian the cat was being a little stand-offish later but all was good - and it was just nice to have a long chat tonight. In the meantime tune of the day is the rather majestic Last Thing by Orbital, a really nice constructed piece of electronica that just got me in the relaxed mood on the way home earlier.
Wednesday 17th August - Chuck Out That Chintz!
It was a fairly busy day working from home today, and with plenty going on. I did have to raise a call with the folks who do the maintenance on the apartments I am in, as I opened one of the kitchen cupboard doors (the ones at floor level where I store the plates and bowls) and the top hinge on the carcass side literally came out of its housing - it looked like the screws had nothing to grip on to and so fell out, not good. Thankfully the lovely Nina at the support end got the email, gave me a friendly call, and did mention a couple of the maintenance folks were in the area today, and as I was working from home, winner. They came out (in fact one of them did the last repair at mine, so a friendly face) and got it all sorted efficiently.
I must admit that's the one thing I've been appreciative of since renting the same apartment for the last six and a half years or so: any maintenance needed or any call outs are always dealt with professionally, and sorted properly. It makes me have piece of mind but also for them they are probably also appreciative that I raise these things, don't let them get worse and means that they can keep things looking nice. It's a no brainer when I come to renew to be honest because I feel safe, comfortable and happy in the surroundings I am in - so why change all of that?
After work it was time to head off to the local IKEA for a good mooch round but also to get the Pallra mini chest of drawers, which are perfect for cassette storage and as such computer games of the 80s on tape fit perfectly of course. I already got one a while back and a second one would mean I could use one for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 games, the other for the Commodore 64 ones, and they fit nicely in the Billy bookcases or the Kallax shelving units if you have them, so well worth the money - and they're not fold together - pre built and sturdy too!
As I got to IKEA I thought "Sod it, I'm treating myself for tea" and so joined the queue for the self-service restaurant. I went for the meatballs with the iconic gravy, and mash and peas to go with that, and the slice of blueberry cheesecake too for afters. And even after all these years those of you like me with a family card still get free tea and coffee Monday to Friday, well worth having just for that to be honest, so got that and had a very nice little sit down meal before deciding what items I would like, the large yellow bag in hand.
I did stop at the duvet covers and bedding primarily because when I changed the bedding this moring to my paisley set (which is from IKEA) the one I took off which is grey and white swirls looked a bit long in the tooth, and thought it'd be good time to get a nice fresh replacement. In the end, I saw the Spikvlammo blue and white checkered set, and that was decent value at £15 too. Only minus point now is that in the old days you used to get 4 pillow cases for the double bed set, you get 2 now. The Love In My Heart made a good point to maybe get some plain ones for underneath and then the patterned ones on top - which would work. Or I keep the grey and white swirl ones as the pillowcases are fine, it's the duvet cover itself which is on its last legs.
So with that and the Pallra mini chest bought, it was off to the till, and once through, it transpired that I touched in on the return tram some 58 minutes after the initial touch in on the way there, so hopper fare kicked in nicely. Happy times! I got home, and did the organisation needed with the Pallra chests, and now it's all as I'd like it. In fact because of that re-arrangement I had a little wooden box for 26 cassettes I got in Flying Tiger ages ago, so repurposed that for some more Commodore 64 games. Happy times indeed, and just all looks a lot neater. Tune of the day is the iconic IKEA advert music which told people to chuck out your chintz, it's was a staple of the late 80s for those to sing along to!
Tuesday 16th August - Upgrade Away
It was off to the office today and all the lovely aircon that it offers. It was also a good opportunity to be in and to sort out a few things quicker than I would be able to do when I would be at home, so that definitely was a positive too. So it was off on the X68 bus to work and that dropped me off near the office, and as I got in relatively early all was quiet on the front initially before the masses came in during the next hour or so. I did have a sizeable change to carry out today with a colleague, so it was definitely time to get busy as well. I was hoping that things would work well.
So the change was to upgrade the version of Windows Server OS on the main MECM site server and upgrade it from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016. The main reason is that as reliable as 2012 R2 is, it does become out of support next year, and indeed it'd be a good stepping stone to effectively look at Server 2019 in future if we wanted to. We had read through some of the upgrade guides and most of them seemed well but they also did reflect lower versions of MECM rather than the current 2203 version we're currently running at present. And with that, a few things to watch out for which I'll explain here.
First of all, once you've upgraded the server to Windows Server 2016, if you applied updates during install you may find it only applied the April 2018 update which at least does allow remote login (otherwise you'll get CredSSP errors when attempting to remote in unless you change a reg key) - and so definitely get the servicing stack and cumulative updates - and the ones from July 2022 were done - this meant that the majority of the services were up and running and the server itself appeared to be fine.
The second (and most important) thing is that Server 2016 doesn't have .NET Framework 4.8 installed by default. Now if you're running later MECM versions, you will know it's recommended to have 4.8 on all servers, and so installing that and restarting meant I could happily talk to all the distribution points and they reported green ticks on the site server statuses. It's something people forget to do, so if doing the same, that's a necessary and important step. You'll also find once that's installed that the OS works a lot better too, so there's a double win to be had.
I also then installed a recent version of SQL Server Management Studio (18.12) as version 18.10 had reported some errors on launch and wouldn't let us authenticate to any SQL databases from it (or even get to that screen) so an install sorted that, and once done, I then checked all the IIS components were running, the MECM services were running, and once I knew we had the correct rights to the SUSDB database (if you're running the software update point there for example) then the post-installation tasks for WSUS works perfectly. You may also need to check for some random files called Program in the root of C - any of those there prevents the WSUS services from starting for some odd reason with error code 193.
All in al, it went very well and did some final testing to check that I could send content to a distribution point, clients were reporting in correctly and that both a full operating system build worked along with any applications via Software Centre. One last thing to check in the morning is to make sure that the site backups worked overnight, but looking all good so far, and with that it was off on the bus home, thinking happy thoughts and happy songs such as the ace band The Icicles and La-ti-Dah, being tune of the day by some degree.
Monday 15th August - Baby, I'm Your Fan
It was good to get home last night but it did feel a little bit warm in the flat, and so was happy to at least have the window open to get some air in and at least try to get a little bit of sleep. I did manage to a degree, and once I was up and showered this morning ready for work, I had noted that the Dyson AM-07 fan I had ordered had been delivered to next door - thankfully I get on fine with the neighbour who presented me with a big box, and one I thought may have been heavier, but it was all good.
I unpacked and assembled easily enough, slide the main body on to the base, and then the loop on to the main body and once done, all should be well. I powered it on, and got used to the remote control and soon had the fan oscillating around blowing some cooler air around me whilst I worked. It did feel pretty nice although realistically of course it's not going to do the same job as an aircon unit, but to keep me cooler, absolutely, that appeared to be working nicely overall so can't complain. Might try it on a sleep timer tonight and see how I do with sleeping that way.
In terms of work, plenty to do today that is for sure. I was able to at least get a number of things done and one of them was working on a document to make sure that one of the China team was able to add machines to a collection to be sure that they could do a task tomorrow. I was also able to see that some machines needed to update to the right version of Windows too, and so liaised with some of the staff there in order so that it could be sorted: it's getting there to as it should be which is a positive.
It did feel a little more humid this afternoon so I must admit having the fan around did help me feel less meithered and sweaty, and I am in the office tomorrow so at least that's going to be good with the aircon on (and I've got a few tasks that I need to be doing tomorrow anyway so all good there) - so already I am feeling some of the benefits without a lot of the hassle. Can't complain there really, and managed to also get plenty done tonight too, so epic win there.
As for tune of the day I had been listening a lot today to the likes of New Order, especially as I felt in the mood for all the nice 12" mixes on the likes of the Substance 1987 compilation and then some. Of course for that compilation, some of those weren't the original 12" versions, some had edits, some were re-done (see Temptation and Confusion) and others were left thankfully alone, and one that was had to be True Faith, as the lead off single for that. It's still great as is the video too!
Sunday 14th August - Smithfield Social Sunday
The Love In My Heart and I were heading out later today so we decided to leave the showering and getting ready til later in the morning, and so had some breakfast and pottered around watching some George Clarke on More4. In fact I had got up earlier and put Channel 4 on as it was the final round of the Formula E season from Seoul, with only Stoffel Vandoorne and Mitch Evans now able to win the title. The odds were massively stocked in Vandoorne's favour though and he didn't take any risks and ended up finishing second after Jake Dennis incurred a penalty, sealing the crown for him.
Once it was time we both had a refreshing shower and got ourselves ready to face the nice afternoon ahead, in still more heat. I did hope that where we were going had some aircon, as that'd help, and The Love and I took the tram into central Manchester - and me with case packed because I knew that I'd be heading home on the train later in the day. It was good to be able to have a walk around the city centre and as we had arrived there early, a drink in Fierce Beer was on the cards and I had their Infinity Pool table beer, which was really light and lovely actually.
We headed next door to Smithfield Social and our friends had arrived, so all was well. It was lovely to catch up and in fact we had delayed ordering the food a little bit because of so much chattering we were doing. I have to say though that the staff were lovely and friendly, and that really did make a difference too. I ordered the Sunday roast pork as did one of our friends, The Love had the lamb and our other friend went for the vegan wellington, which he said was one of the best things he had in absolutely ages, showing that actually if you make the effort to make something tasty, anyone vegan will come back (one of The Love's friends is also vegan and it's a place the two of them go because the lunch selection is so good.)
So that all went down well as expected of course, and then it was the dessert - which was also rather gorgeous! It was a very nice little sundae with meringue, cream and also lemon sorbet and little lemon pieces. Absolutely divine, as was their own Social Pils ale to go with it, so can't argue with that either - all quality stuff to be had and definitely well worth it. We did of course have a few drinks in there too with the lovely aircon and some nice tunes, so definitely felt well worth it.
We relocated to Fierce Beer for some more drinks and had a table outside in the shade (hurrah) and that was nice. I did have the Moose Mousse stout which was lovely, but also tried the 0.5% low alcohol version that they did as a co-op with another brewery, and called it Very Small Moose, and that was stunningly nice. I didn't want to head off for the train but the time had gone by far too quickly, so it was off for the train and it was packed going to Crewe before being more chilled out heading off to Euston, and had some Yellow Magic Orchestra on, so Behind the Mask is tune of the day.
Saturday 13th August - Boiling Bournemouth
My friend and I were meeting up this afternoon as Manchester City would be taking on Bournemouth in the first game at the Etihad Stadium this season. Optimism was good after the 2-0 away win at West Ham United last week and with the heat set to be very hot indeed, it really was going to be a case of seeing how we could keep the cool and yet cheer on City to another win (so we hoped). I had a nice breakfast with The Love In My Heart before she would be heading off to see her sister for the afternoon and I would be taking on a number of cold drinks to try and keep cool before heading out!
I headed out later and it felt really warm, in fact almost as warm as the last heatwave, primarily because of the fact that the humidity seemed to be a lot closer this time around and that doesn't always help to be perfectly honest. I got to the bus stop and waited for my friend, and I could tell that he was trying to at least get some cool airflow around with a looser fitting top and some shorts on (although the flip side of that meant sun cream for the legs as well which needed to be applied so that's something.) We got to the ground, and where we sit isn't in the shade, so not ideal.
The game was going to have scheduled water breaks during each half due to the heat, so that did show how warm it was out there. City though were not taking any prisoners and were knocking the ball around well with Erling Haaland close to a couple of crosses. That said, he did a lovely one two with new City captain Ilkay Gundogan and the German scored a lovely finish to open the scoring - nice to see Haaland getting an assist, and be even nicer for a home debut goal of course.
City really were pressing home the advantage well and with some drawing away defenders from the likes of Haaland and Phil Foden, Kevin de Bruyne decided to take matters into his own hands with a run and shot from distance that rifled into the bottom corner for 2-0, and later in the half de Bruyne combined well with Phil Foden on the left and the Stockport Iniesta did the rest and planted the ball home (the Bournemouth goalkeeper should have saved it though) for 3-0 at half time. We did go into the concourse which was a little cooler and try and stay out of the heat, as it was pretty intense.
The second half was a case of going through the motions and City at least pressed for another goal, and made a number of changes too - notably to massive cheers from the City fans when Bernardo Silva came on. No one wants him to go anywhere and the fans showed and sang the chant (to the tune of Abba's Voulez-Vous, so make that tune of the day for me) as he played. City did add another goal later on via an own goal from a deflected cross for 4-0, but my friend and I saw that on the concourse as the heat was getting to my friend - and the stewards very kindly got an ice cold water for him to help out.
The sun had at least gone behind a cloud enough for my friend and I to head to the bus stop and get him safely home later and thankfully it was at least just more muggy and humid than outright sun, and the arms did catch it a bit it has to be said. The good thing was though that City's win would send us top and coupled with Brentford hammering Man United 4-0 later on it meant that United were bottom - pretty much a perfect day for all us City fans, never felt more like singing the Blues, City win and United lose (heavily!)
Friday 12th August - Building My Way Up North
It was a busy day in work today and I spent some time working on a potential way going forward with a potential new print server. Authentication had seemed to work fine in Windows but not in Mac, and so with the test Mac being available for me to road test on, it was a case of seeing what my colleagues had instructed really did work well. And actually, what they said had made sense, but what if I was to make the print queue name the same upper case first name of the domain for its SMB connection and authenticate normally? Well, that did seem to work nicely actually.
So I had some progress there and I also remembered (after rebuilding my work laptop with the standard build last Friday to try and iron out some issues) that I needed to recreate my Hyper-V virtual machine which I use to create the WIM images with as it boots to MDT in order to do so. Anyway, I got that one all nicely sorted and booted up, and as a bonus I added the July updates as well as the most recent version of Visual C++ libraries (primarily because a lot of applications including the MECM client use it anyway, so I tend to add them in and save some time later.)
All seemed well when I gave that a good test later on and the WIM was happily created, so that meant over next week I could distribute that as needed and then road test the OS deployment with that, so all happy there. It was then time to head over to Euston to get the train up to Manchester, with again the cheaper route being deployed. I made it in good time for the London Northwestern train to Crewe and it was pretty busy, and the front four coaches were the ones without the tables (not even the flip down ones in airline seats) so good job I only had the Sainsburys meal deal with me really.
I listened to some tunes on the train (so make the classic 80s tune Rio by Duran Duran tune of the day) and arrived at Crewe - and in fact a late running Transport for Wales train might have been possible to board if it wasn't so rammed, so waited for the next one (which was the one I was going to get anyway). That was busy but at least there was some sort of aircon on board too and so sped over to Manchester on time and then took the tram over to The Love In My Heart's place - she was on a later shift at work so I made sure Brian the cat was all fed, watered and happy, and he certainly was that which was a bonus at least!
Later on The Love arrived back and we had some tea together which was nice - always nice to do that on a Friday evening and indeed spend some time together chattering and watching some telly. In fact we did see that the European Championships were on with some good events on, and also that the indulgence of the soaps for The Love had to be done - it's what she'd so if I was on a later train anyway. And of course always good to see 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, still funny although of course Sean Lock is sadly missed there it has to be said.
Thursday 11th August - Budgeting For A New Fan
So I had decided after working today from home and somehow not managing to get the respite from the humidity and heat that I might have got from staying indoors, I thought it best to get some sort of cooling solution to be able to at least have some cooling feeling working from home. I did think about whether a portable aircon unit complete with pipe to chuck out of one of the windows might work well or not, but then I realised that it'd be pretty cumbersome to do that and also not ideal if I wanted to be able to get something easier to carry.
After some thought, and checking in with both The Love In My Heart and also a friend of mine who already had one (and really does use it well for the heat) it was a case of looking around for the best price for said item and finding that in fact that said manufacturer had their own eBay outlet store. Not just that either of course, but it would also mean it would be a nice 20% off on top of the reduction already, so it'd be £239. Not cheap I know, but when you consider that said item is a Dyson AM-07, then definitely thought to get something. Now, bear in mind, yes it's not an air con unit, and it's mainly to cool parts of the room you're in in order to be more comfortable, then I see it more as an investment over the longer term to help me keep regulated.
So I ordered it - and yes I know, still not cheap even at the reduced price. But unless the whole block of apartments gets aircon installed (and even then I can't drill holes in the walls etc as per contract) this should at least help out a bit and get some essential cooler air flowing around me, we shall see how it performs when it arrives. I was though thinking that no one can really look at sealing windows off with air conditioning pipes otherwise (as just opening the window for the pipe lets the hot air in, and that sort of defeats the object doesn't it really?)
Anyway, I did spend some time tonight recording some audio along with someone as a sort of sequel to a series that I recently participated in. It was definitely good fun to do and I have to say that it was nice to be able to have the headset on, with no distractions, and effectively even in the intense heat crack on and be able to do what was needed to be done. I also had done some research beforehand, so it was definitely a positive to be able to put some of that knowledge into what I was recording too. The final results will be available soon I hope, and it was lovely to get done.
I then settled in for the rest of the evening and I have to say it did feel rather sticky and humid overall, so definitely for me one evening that I was drinking lots of water and also listening to some tunes before putting them on the iPod for the train journey up to Manchester tomorrow. As for tune of the day somehow I spent some time last night listening to Swing Out Sister's debut album, and so the instrumental theme from title track, It's Better To Travel, is that. It's rather nice and it wouldn't have looked out of place in a 1980s drama series on BBC somehow. Lovely work.
Wednesday 10th August - I Can't Get No Sleep
Another visit to the office today (and gradually I've been doing three days a week, more so when it's been so warm at home and the aircon of course is a good incentive to go) and that did mean a nice pretty quiet X68 express bus too, so that is always appreciated. It's actually more noticable just how much quieter the roads are in general when the school holidays are on - I reckon there's at least 15 minutes or so quicker time at present, although the dreaded voice that says "The driver has been told to wait at this bus stop for a short time to help even out the service" makes no sense when it's an express bus and it's waiting at the last bus stop in West Norwood before the 5 miles or so non-stop to Waterloo. Meh.
Anyway, the office was all good, and quite a few people I knew in the office today, and one of them who is based in our central communications team and whom I helped out with the new corporate fonts a while ago was around, and she is always good to talk to. We had a good natter about holidays and was mentioning how nice mine was, and that Sandringham for me and The Love In My Heart was a disappointment, especially for the price compared to say Castle Howard or Chatsworth. My colleague had been to Chatsworth and agreed: it always feels like you get your money's worth in there when you visit, and it's hard to disagree with that.
I was also able to help a couple of colleagues work out some issues today: one of them appeared to be that when you attempted to attach a file when using Google Mail (and either in Firefox or Chrome incidentally) the explorer window crashed. What I worked out was that when it looked at the downloads folder, it was attempting to preview the first thing it saw (which was most likely an executable) and bombed out. Easy solution: move all the files in that folder elsewhere, and then see what happened - and it worked. Sometimes the easier method is just to sort of start again and that worked well here.
I did also do the training session this morning as planned to be done, and that worked out well overall, and then from there I also liaised with my colleague over in China about the current state of play with one of the sites in Singapore that we had resolved some issues with, and how that would work out if we were able to reinstate some of the things we needed to roll back to have compatibility with their old equipment. We'll hopefully get an answer so we can push out some updates to those machines, here's hoping as well that it would be the case!
The journey home was fairly warm and I had managed to keep some of the heat out of the flat but not all, so once it got darker the windows were opened and tried to let in some cool air to help me sleep overnight - that's the thing at present, it's not necessarily the heat during the day (more so if in a nice cool office of course) but the stillness of the night air that doesn't help. I might have some ideas to remedy that but Faithless' classic Isomnia seems appropriate to be tune of the day.
Tuesday 9th August - I Feel It In The Aircon Today
So having watched the remainder of the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony last night, I have to say I was very perturbed by what one artist was doing, utilising the excellent guitar riffs from Judas Priest's Breaking the Law and putting all sorts round it. Nice idea, but poorly executed. More to the point, as the mighty Priest are from the Midlands, why didn't the organisers invite the band on, get Rob Halford coming on stage on a motorbike (as he often does) and then get the crowd going with yelling out "Breaking the WHAT?" before going full on into said rendition of classic Breaking The Law. Surely that would have been proper, and as it is, that has to be tune of the day as I had that in my head all the way to the office.
There was't just that, it was also the fact that the "surprise" guests at the end were whom I suspected: basically most of Black Sabbath (well, Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne at least) on stage and rocking out the intro to Iron Man before then belting into Paranoid. The Love In My Heart did hear Ozzy hadn't been fully well as of late, but he certainly rocked it out and at the end yelled out "Birmingham forever!" in only a way that the Prince of Darkness could possibly do so. It would have been good to get full Iron Man, and me doing the Beavis and Butt-head impersonation of said riff. But there you go.
It was off to the office today and the lovely aircon greeted me as I checked in to the desk. It was good and positive too as I had managed to re-arrange a training session for one of the staff in China until tomorrow, and from there it was a good productive day too. I had a positive one to one meeting with my line manager, formulated a plan of action for the server upgrades to happen next week, and also was checking out a number of machines where I wanted to give them a gentle push to get the new VPN client as well - which appeared to be doing well in terms of numbers, so can't argue there really.
I headed out to the Co-Op to get some lunch and once consumed, it was on with the afternoon and more lovely aircon whilst I also had some other plans in action. We had a positive team meeting and I had also helped out a colleague resolve an issue with a software installation. What it seems that had happened was that when the installation had originally downloaded, it had in some way corrupted the file (possibly a network outage) and so when installed it failed to detect the MSI had installed correctly. So removing all the MECM client cache, and then refreshing the policy meant on next install it downloaded the installer cleanly, did the install and it all worked as intended. Hurrah for that!
It was a little bit warm on the bus heading home, and so switched over at Crown Point to get the 468 which was cooler and also meant I could be dropped off nearer to home too, so a win all round really. I had a lovely chat with The Love In My Heart after some tea, and then settled in for the evening with some telly and ended up playing the DOS version of the classic 90s game Pinball Fantasies in DOSBox. And I surprised myself immensely by beating my own best score on the Stones n Bones table. Naturally this game is better played on an Amiga (and I need to dig out my Amiga A600 for this!) but the PC version was the one I had for my first PC back in 1997.
Monday 8th August - Next, The Closing Ceremony
Another week, and another hot week by the look of it too. I have to say that I was glad that I was able to book some space in the office this week, primarily because of the fact that I knew that it was going to get above 30 degrees centigrade, and thought it better to be somewhere with aircon. Today though it was a case of me working from home, primarily because I needed to pick up a couple of shopping orders via click and collect later, but also because I still felt a little tired from what had been a busy but good weekend.
I spent most of this morning recreating a driver package for one of the Intel NUC models that we have for some of the meeting rooms - it's nice and small and perfectly formed. For some reason though it looked like one of the driver packages wasn't playing ball, so it was easier to get all the drivers from the Intel site and recreate it. That worked perfectly and I was able to effectively send that over to the MECM server, create the driver package and distribute that accordingly. I can road test that tomorrow on the particular model to make sure it's all good, but I suspect it'll be fine.
I also had some time in the afternoon spent with some of the team members and giving them a quick tutorial on the inventory system and what they can do in terms of reporting and being able to locate the inventory on the devices we have, as well as applications that may have little or no use. I think I've got some of the training down to a degree now and will need to follow that up with some documentation for reference which might be useful for everyone to refer to if they forget what to do, so will look at getting that sorted.
It was a nice painless trip out to Next during the lunch break and headed over to collect three packages in all, one order had been split into two packages for whatever reason. Thankfully once I provided one reference number the staff could see I had all three, so got them all for me in one go nice and easy, so that was good. In fact it was some jeans for me and a couple of shirts too, so that was a positive. It was pretty warm outside so at least it was good to be back home where it was at least a little less intense in the shade.
I watched the closing ceremony from the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham later. The weather had relented and was sunny for it, and lots of bands from the area came on and did their thing, including Dexy's Midnight Runners, UB40, and even Musical Youth (obviously not youths any more, but you know what I mean!) - and the city and surrounding areas had put on a spectactular Games, well done them. As for tune of the day - Led Zeppelin's Kashmir played during one segment and it's still pretty epic for me. Probably too much to ask to get Robert Plant there on stage of course, but still!
Sunday 7th August - Shopping Sunday
It was an early rise this morning, as The Cute Little One was stretching herself out all over the bed before The Love In My Heart moved her back into a more standard position. As I woke up her little smile greeted me which was nice, and a little tummy tickle made her giggle. Awww. Her Mum came to collect her later and I could tell she was just a happy little girl, because she had spent some time with us and was happily dancing around to songs from The Greatest Showman that I had located on Youtube for her - and the little dance to This Is Me was rather lovely all round, aww bless.
The Love In My Heart and I then made ourselves some breakfast, and we had already got ourselves changed this morning and ready early, and The Love changed into a Summer dress later (just in case The Cute Little One had spilled anything), and we decided that some shopping would be in order, primarily as we had a couple of birthday presents to get as well as some cards, and with that in mind, it was off to John Lewis and Partners in Cheadle, as the store is big and the aircon is also on in there - which is always appreciated.
All in all, that did prove to be very useful. The Love did get a nice present and card for a forthcoming birthday, and I also got a nice card as well as one of my relations has moved into a new place this weekend, so wanted to send over a little card just to feel a little bit more welcoming for them as they move in. All was well on the card section so no complaints there, and the gift sections did have some offers on, but it did seem like a bit of a stock clearout in places, but got something very nice in the regular priced section.
We decided that as the weather was nice that we would head out to the Ashlea in Cheadle for a nice Sunday lunch together, and there was an outside table for us to sit at, so all was well there. In fact, whoever had sat at the table before us had opened up a tab and the bar and looked like they'd snuck off without paying, so The Love had to mention to the staff that we weren't them - and one of the staff confirmed, and we were paying there and then for the food anyway so all was good in the end!
There were some 80s tunes playing in the background including Don't You Want Me by The Human League (make that tune of the day) and I had a nice pint of the Unicorn beer, and a very nice chicken and ham hock pie for lunch, together with some mash, vegetables and gravy, all spot on. The Love had the pork belly as the Sunday roast of choice complete with all the trimmings, and that did look completely fab, so that was definitely enjoyed by us both, and a little drink at the Gateway later including a very nice Brightside 0161 Blonde ale too, which I'll have to look out for again.
I did feel sad later as I headed to Manchester Piccadilly, but was cheered up by seeing all the Man United fans visibly upset after their 2-1 loss at home to Brighton and Hove Albion. I was on the 1730 train to Crewe, and that was packed with their fans (ie: not from Manchester) and I swapped over for the 1816 train to Euston, and that was pretty busy once it picked up passengers at Lichfield and Tamworth. It in fact was a relatively smooth journey home and that showed that with a cheaper fare, anything was possible.
Saturday 6th August - Cuteness Abound
The Love In My Heart and I woke up this morning and we knew that we would be up early, as The Cute Little One was being dropped off by her parents whilst they headed to a wedding, and that meant extended nice time for both myself and The Love with her, so that would be good. We had a nice breakfast and a coffee, and then was able to get the place ready for The Cute Little One's parents coming round, and we had a good chatter with both of them before they then headed off and was able to get on with their day.
We decided that it would be nice to head out to Lyme Park and have a walk around, and also we knew there was the Crow Wood play area which would have some swings, which The Cute Little One does love a lot, so we packed up the car, and with us all together, off we went. It was nice to be heading down the A6 and it wasn't too hot, so it was at least some nice weather but not stifling, and of course because Lyme Park is quite hilly, it's definitely not overly hot anyway. Good job The Love and I have a joint National Trust membership because parking would cost a fair bit otherwise, and got ourselves a space.
With The Cute Little One in her pram, we headed past the Timber Yard and over the bridge by the pond to Crow Wood. The play area was nice and we spotted that the swings were free, so of course we had a very happy little one being pushed by us both on the swings and having a really nice time of it. We did note the tree house which was a level ramp up to the top, being built into the hills there, and we walked up and the two view points meant you could see one another, so of course we had a fast walk in between the two by The Cute Little one as we waved, so that was nice.
After an extended bit of playtime we stopped off at the Timber Yard café for lunch, and there were nice little children's lunch boxes with a sausage roll, a packet of Pom Bears, a still water, an apple and a litle sweet treat too, so made sense to get The Cute Little One that and I got myself a pasty and The Love a sandwich with a drink each. What was lovely was that The Cute Little One spotted me walking back from the café towards the outside seating with the tray and waved at me as she knew what was coming. Awww. And let's just say she enjoyed her lunch, as did we all.
We also on the way back to The Love's place pop in to see my Mum, as we thought it'd be a nice surprise to have The Cute Little One there. And it was lovely. In fact, Mum made the likeness between The Love and The Cute Little One, which I guess there is a little bit, which is nice. In fact it was just good to catch up and chat and also see my sister and her husband too, and that was a bonus. The Cute Little One was on her best behaviour and being adorable, so that was also good, and after that we had a nice drink in Wine and Wallop, with The Cute Little One using her cup of water to say "cheers" to me with my drink too - which was so sweet.
We headed back later and it was on with In The Night Garden and Hey Duggee as well as Something Special with Mr Tumble too, and the version on that show of Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes is tune of the day - as The Cute Little One was doing some of the actions along the way which was nice of her. It was an extended wait for her to rest and sleep, primarily as she had been out with us all day and was happy, but also because she was still wanting to play. Once she had settled we had our own tea and relaxed in front of the telly for a bit together before feeling tired and having had a rather lovely day.
Friday 5th August - Super Off Peak Sprinting
It was off to the office this morning and that meant some nice lovely aircon in the office for during the day. In fact, I was also testing out the additions to the Windows 10 build task sequence and what better way to do so than to actually carry out the road test on my own laptop, and therefore ensure that the testing was actually working well? I needed to give it a refresh anyway after some three and a bit years of testing all sorts, so a clean slate would make more sense to be able to do so now. The good thing was that it worked perfectly well and that also meant I knew I could quantify all the testing.
In fact it was pretty quiet in the office so I was able to carry out some more checks and additional testing to see how that would all work out ready for some tasks next week. It was all good and that meant that I was able to perform some driver package checks on a new set I was asked to do (all seemed well there) and of course with that in mind, get some prep for next week. In fact the time was going by very quickly and so I had to remind myself that I needed to head off and get a train up North!
So, with an earlier Friday finish being part of something everyone at work is doing at present, it did mean I could get an earlier train to Manchester but also that did mean I could take advantage of a cheaper ticket too, the super off peak return travelling with London Northwestern and Transport for Wales only, so doing the stopper from Euston to Crewe first, then Crewe to Manchester. And the price of the super off peak return? £36.30. Yes, really. Absolute bargain when you think you're often paying more than that on Avanti West Coast one way!
All was well as I got the train out of Euston and in fact all was on time as the train stopped at Milton Keynes, Rugby, Nuneaton and throughout the Trent Valley and got into Crewe with no issues, and I had the trusty iPod on playing the likes of Dolce Vita by Ryan Paris (80s classic and so tune of the day) and once at Crewe, I noted that Stockport station was closed due to some points issues, but ticket acceptance between Crewe and Manchester was across all operators, meaning I could use my ticket on the next Avanti service into Manchester (more so as the TfW service had been cancelled) and arrived nicely at Manchester Piccadilly.
Once The Love In My Heart had collected me and we'd fed Brian the cat some tea, we headed out later to the local Chinese to be able to get some nice tea - I had the crispy chicken in schezuan sauce whilst The Love had the chicken and mushrooms, both with fried rice and some prawn crackers as well as some spring rolls. That went down nicely and we settled in to watch the likes of The Last Leg, with Brian having an extended playtime outside in the much cooler air - he was happy!
Thursday 4th August - Selling Off
It was another busy day of working - this time from home and so at least that meant I was able to sort out all the washing of clothes and so on for heading up to Manchester this weekend and spending some quality time with The Love In My Heart (and possibly also some other people too.) I think too that when it's still been quite muggy the last thing you want to do is to venture out too much when that humidity kicks in. Thankfully I had plenty to do in the day job and also decided that today would be a sensible day to be able to sell off some duplicate games that I have for the Commodore 64, primarily due to picking up some bundles of games.
I had photographed all of them on one of the tables in the flat with a white background, primarily to ensure that it looked the part. It also meant I could get them all in one picture, and annotate the picture description accordingly when I posted on to Twitter early in the day, making use of suitable hash tags and so on. In fact, I had already put aside two from one bundle as I had already arranged a sale privately with someone for two of the games, so they didn't need photographing here. And of course, they had all been tested too which is always a good thing as well as we know it'll work then.
In fact, I had a good few responses to my post, with one friendly face I know wanting to purchase one of the games - and so that was done. Someone else wanted to purchase CJ's Elephant Antics and CJ in the USA to show their children how games came back in the day (as well as play them!) which was a nice thought. And I had someone else who very kindly would take five of the games off my hands too. The good thing was that I priced them sensibly and fairly for those people: I'm not interested in charging fortunes, because that's not what I do - if it gives someone else some happiness and they get a good deal, everyone wins.
So at lunch time, as I'd received all payments from those concerned, it was a case of packaging up all the sets of games together and placing them in the post. The good thing was that I of course keep any padded envelopes I get with any packages delivered to me, and I can effectively re-use those, meaning that I don't waste environmental resources and can also print the address labels off and put them on, so all good. The post box thankfully isn't that far away and so that was a nice easy thing to do.
It made the day flow by nicely and in the evening I settled in to watch some Commonwealth Games athletics from the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. It definitely looked like a good atmosphere and reminded me of being there in Manchester twenty years ago, and having The Stone Roses' classic This Is The One as the theme tune for the coverage too (make that tune of the day). It definitely is always a positive reminder and seeing some of the excellent achievements as well as the para sport integration really shows how much things have progressed.
Wednesday 3rd August - Hello Yoto
It was still quite overcast but really muggy today, so although I was working from home and it did at least feel somwewhat fresher during the morning to some degree, once the humidity kicked in later it wasn't the nicest place in the world to be, that's for sure. I think for me it was more a case of being able to try and keep reasonably cool and I had at least managed a decent night's sleep last night, primarily because I was quite tired and wanted to try and get some rest before a busy day ahead.
And a busy day it proved to be actually. I did some of the weekly reporting I needed to do but also worked out a couple of issues for some of the Service Desk team - and was able to implement those well in order for them to get a couple of laptop print issue resolved. Thankfully one of them had spotted that in fact one of the network adapters had the incorrect DNS settings and so wasn't set to automatic - so wouldn't be assigned the right DNS addresses in order to authenticate, so fixing that was pretty essential anyway.
In the afternoon I did spend some time in a meeting with a few colleagues including our Cyber Security team and agreed some useful ways forward in terms of some of the configurations that we need to look at. On the whole, we're pretty much there in what we want to do (which is good) but it's more about discussing a way forward and to tweak and improve any existing processes we have. For me at least, that does mean that we're able to collaborate and work better together too, so only ever taking postives from that to be honest.
I did have a really nice long chat with The Love In My Heart too - and she was telling me about this audio book device for children and families where the story cards are purchased and the content for that is downloaded to the device. For those that are interested, it's called the Yoto - and there's a small travel version as well as a nice one to put on bedside tables and spaces so that you can effectively have nice bedtime stories with some graphics fed into the front of the device too. It also has story cards for the likes of the Gruaffalo, Peter Rabbit, Paddington Bear (no Miffy though, boo) so all seems really well put together.
It did make me think as well that it would make a perfect present in the future for The Cute Little One, particularly as you can actually read your own stories and then save them to a "create your own" story card to feed into the device, meaning you could at least have the child hearing the parent doing the voices too which may be preferable (and it means I could read Miffy to her which would be fab!) - and so I probably need to look at how it's done, get the headset mic out, and get recording. So many possibilities and therefore tune of the day is the theme to Chorlton and the Wheelies, I'd love to read those and get them on a Yoto. Bye bye, little old lady!!
Tuesday 2nd August - Athletic Achievements
It was back off to the office today, and of course with the weather being somewhat of a muggy nature today, having that lovely air conditioning and a nice desk to work on always works wonders for me. I did have a coffee and was able to get into the swing of things before I headed off to one of the meeting rooms, which I had booked in advance. I was doing a training session on our inventory system for our colleagues over in China, and that went down really well - they were all engaged and I deliberately did an error in the criteria, and I knew one of the team would spot it (and she did!)
It was also a good case of being able to then have a positive one to one meeting with my line manager, work out a plan of action for the next week or so, and from that be able to get several tasks done. One of them was to determine a way of seeing what versions of one piece of software was installed on a machine, and thankfully in the inventory system there's a report that actually gives you the granularity of the installed files and versions, as well as being able to specify a location where installed.
Now, that happens to be in one place for Windows and one for Mac, but I simply created one report for each (but with the same column names) and then from there was able to put them both together in one sheet, and narrow things down nicely. As it transpired we only seem to have a small number of machines currently running any unsupported versions, so that has to be a positive. In fact, some of those may even be on old outdated machines so we can effectively cross check to see if in use. Happy times, I think!
Anyway, I had to stay behind a little late as I was discussing some plans of action with a couple of colleagues in the US, so once that was done it was onwards and on the X68 bus home. Cue the usual people panicking at Waterloo because they've realised they've got on the wrong bus (and clearly didn't read the front of the signage that clearly says that the first stop is West Norwood) - and it's handy for me because it means I can get home quicker - it's non-stop via Brixton and Tulse Hill to West Norwood and even then it goes pretty quick to get towards Croydon and home.
After a good chat with The Love In My Heart, I settled in to watch the first night of action at the Commonwealth Games athletics in the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. I have to say it was really good to see some of the parasport events be included with the main programme, something pioneered by Manchester 2002 (and I was there to see that) - and this also meant that Hannah Cockroft would storm to gold in the T33/T34 100 metre race, she's a bit good and led home an English clean sweep of the medals too - really good stuff. Tune of the day has to be something Duran Duran (as that's where they are from) so the rather good Save A Prayer for me is the one to listen to.
Monday 1st August - Games Without Frontiers
It was into the office today and to be honest with the humidity potentially making it warmer than it might be, I was going to be appreciating the office's lovely air conditioning and conditions for me working in - makes me feel a lot better and am able to work smarter because of it. I actually had a couple of decent changes to plough through today which meant that it was going to be a busy day, and as I headed on the X68 bus into the office, the nice fresh morning air certainly was doing its thing of getting me all sorted and ready.
Once in, the first change was active, which was to start deploying the new version of the VPN client we use to both Windows and Mac machines after some extensive testing (and indeed deploying to a pilot group on both Windows and Mac first) - and also making sure any new builds on both got the new versions at the same time. This worked out very well indeed, and there were many successful deployments by the end of the day which was also a good thing.
I also was able to sort out the user access changes to one of our systems, as the vendor had implemented a way to use Active Directory logins and access based on group membership too - so make the user a member of a group, and off you go. In fact, I could already see that a number of users had been able to log in this morning and therefore the correct account had been created with the right level of access, so felt pretty pleased with the end result.
I headed home later on and I had a nice package that arrived - a bundle of Commodore 64 games, some of which I already owned, but several that I didn't, and amongst them three Codemasters games I didn't have, so was hoping they'd all load (which they did first go, hurrah!) and some more games to play, so did that after tea and in between a nice chatter to The Love In My Heart. Up first was Bignose's American Adventure, a platform game by the same folks who had programmed Tarzan Goes Ape. A bit lazy therefore for Codemasters to use the same Steve Barrett music from that game here, and similarly large sprites and jumping mechanic. Hmmm..
It was then on to Steg the Slug, a quite late release and also a quite nice original concept too. You had to be the slug to try and guide the young ones to safety, involving the use of bubbles and avoiding traps and pipes along the way. There's ten levels in all, and it's a nice enough puzzler game with some nice Ashley Hogg music to this day. I can still remember the cheat mode too - enter the level password as POSH MOTOR (including the space) and you can then use the F1 key to skip levels should you wish to do so!
It was then to the one I'd been looking forward to replaying the most, Kamikaze. Programmed by the legendary Ash and Dave from the demo scene (especially Compunet) this rather neat little game involves you flying planes, picking up ammo and also battling other planes. But.. the kamikaze part is to smash into a castle gate in order to free those trapped inside, so you need to be ready and have some wits about you. Superb music in this one by Johannes Bjerregaard too, so that has to be tune of the day for me - give this one a go, it's immense fun and one of the better games Codemasters published.