Journal: August 2006

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The tunes are coming again
Wed 30/8/06 (Link to this entry)

Today is a special day, as it sees me recieving my first full month's pay and therefore takes me out of my overdraft (which is free anyway so no big deal).

However, I've had to take steps to remedy the unfortunate broken mp3 player situation which I've been enduring. I've laid out for an iRiver H10 6GB at a very reasonable price of £90 (for comparison, a 4GB iPod Nano would cost around £40 more - that's with two thirds of the capacity and inferior sound quality. Bloody Apple and their ridiculous profit margins).

ooooh... silky

Back on top :)
Sun 27/8/06 (Link to this entry)

It's been a good weekend for football, Celtic's game against Hibs yesterday was really exciting end-to-end stuff and our new striker won the match for us on his debut. Also, Rangers dropped a couple of points against Killie today in another really good match, so Celtic are back on top of the SPL :D

Another quiet Sunday for me today, late nights on Friday and Saturday so I'm thinking slugging around sounds like a plan. Bank holiday tomorrow too, so looks like the laziness is going to continue :D

Hey, why'd my machine reboot?
Thu 24/8/06 (Link to this entry)

This week's been pretty good at work, I'm finally getting up to speed with what I'm supposed to be doing in the lab and I'm not having to ask people questions every five minutes (it's about ten minutes or so now :P ).

For much of this week I've been working on a large row of workstations which need to be checked for rogue PCI cards and dodgy power connections. I've already come across a couple which were plugged in to the wrong power brick, which means that if we used our remote power management tools to reset that machine we'd actually reset some other poor bugger's machine as he was trying to do something!

It's not all been smooth sailing though. I'm having continuing difficulties with fitting my lunch into my lunchbox, which isn't really designed for the kind of 'Garfield sandwiches' I've been making for myself.

Believe it or not, I actually managed to get the lid on that.

Bumper Edition
Sun 20/8/06 (Link to this entry)

I've had a busy week, so I'm afraid I've been lax with keeping this thing updated. Here's what I've been up to for the last few days...

Tuesday

In the car park at work this morning I finally got a snap of something that's been making me have 'Royal Mail advert' moments every time I see it. It's a Caterham, which as far as I can tell is like a modified Lotus Seven. I saw it, and I thought of Gus back home...

Our visit to the pub that night went a lot better than the last, on account of me actually remembering my keys and therefore being able to go home - although it was a bit wobbly on the bike given that the girls kept plying me with doubles :-/

I learned an important thing on Tuesday night - don't give people hassle for not having a balanced diet. Otherwise, as I did, you'll find yourself getting roped into agreeing to make people dinner. More on that later...

Wednesday

Our weekly poker night at home resulted in an uncharacteristic streak of luck for me. I hit a few good hands with the result that I ended up a tenner better off. The lion's share of that profit was made off Craig in a single hand, but he took it well. In unrelated news, he's now threatening to raise my rent by a tenner a week :D

Thursday

With no plans for the evening to use as an excuse, I had to make good on my forced promise to make James, Kim and Charlotte dinner. Only problem was that I had bugger-all to feed them, so a prompt trip to Tesco's on the way home was needed. This meant that I had to walk back from there on account of my bike being somewhat laden:

I think I might need to invest in some panniers at some point...

Friday

After finishing off our latest training course at work, it was off to Brighton for Kim, James and myself. Kim's sister (who I met when I was down in early July) was having a housewarming and we were invited to join Kim in going along. It was an educational drive down. James has a six-speed gearbox in his 306 rally... I didn't think you could do 60 in second gear!

The housewarming was a good laugh, it involved a barbecue in the back garden while the Big Brother final was on the telly. While not being interested in Big Brother, I was pleased to note that the guy with Tourettes won because I've been saying all along that he was blatantly going to win. My only regret is that I didn't put my money where my mouth was :-/

The craic was good (educational note for English readers: 'craic' is kind of like 'banter' and it's pronounced 'crack') and it got to be quite a late night. Thankfully we were staying over, so we managed to get at least some sleep in - although I'm told that my incredible revolving sleeping positions were a source of amusement for all in the same room.

Saturday

I awoke with a jolt on Saturday. Literally. I was having a really unpleasant dream and I had one of those wierd waking moments where you have a minor fit as you go from a deep dreamstate to wide-awake-ness in approximately half a millisecond. This, of course, would have to happen on the day when I was sleeping in the same room as four other people...

We spent the first half of Saturday having a leisurely wander around Brighton's market and seafront, which was nice and relaxing (or at least it would have been if I hadn't had a throbbing headache induced by a combination of someone's strong perfume, the seriously bright sunlight and not having had enough sleep for the past four nights).

In the afternoon we drove back home via the dreaded M25 (which wasn't actually that bad - we must have timed it well) and I was able to catch up on the sleep I'd been missing. Craig must have noted the bleary eyes because he suggested that since Spenny and Matt were coming round we could have a quick game of poker. I made him pay for his impudence by finishing the night fifteen pounds up. Gotta love going all-in with two pairs and still winning :D

Sunday

For once, I agree with Christianity. This Sunday is definitely going to be a Day Of Rest. Celtic have a tricky trip to the Caledonian Stadium to face one of our bogey teams, Caley Thistle (of 'Super-Caley-go-ballistic' fame), so I'm currently planning to fit that into today's hectic schedule of doing the absolute minimum amount possible.

Back to school
Monday 14/8/06 (Link to this entry)

Well, my brief flirtation with the world of Real Work is over and for this week I'm back in training again. Looks like it's going to be fun... The instructor at one point told us that he thinks "it's important for us to enjoy ourselves on the course because we'll learn more that way". This was perhaps a mistake in phraseology as each of us just about simultaneously started logging into each other's boxes and mucking around :D

Snigger
Sun 13/8/06 (Link to this entry)

It's cruel to laugh at others' misfortunes... but it's also funny when your rivals drop four points in three games against bottom-half-of-the-table opposition, which is precisely what Rangers have done in the first three games of the season :D

It's still wierd seeing Falkirk and St. Mirren up there, but hell, that's why the start of the season is so fun. Fair play to Dunfermline today - they had something like 8 first-team players injured and had another two injuries in the game, but they still ground out the result. A gutsy performance so well done them.

Apples
Sat 12/8/06 (Link to this entry)

I have discovered the key to getting horses to come and have their pictures taken: apples. They seem to know the drill when someone approaches with a poly bag and kindly ambled over to investigate when I shook it at them. I was much amused by the handsome fellow in the picture below who had evidently decided it really is greener on the other side.

As I write this it's half-time in the football and Celtic are one up, so hopefully that'll work out better than last week when we got a cuffing off Hearts. I'm not too bothered about that to be honest as it's nice to have a team outside the Old Firm challenging us - so long as it's the Gers and not us that ends up third! :D

And then there were Two
Fri 11/8/06 (Link to this entry)

Today was a productive day at work, we managed to finish off all of our individual projects (tidying up the lab, etc) before going off on training again next week. Well, all apart from Lewis, who was on cable tidying duties but refused to deal with a box of fibre-optic cables I found because "he'd already cleaned up those ones". Lazy git.

After receiving a powerful ribbing from the girls the other night about the state of my facial hair, I decided to try out trimming my eyebrow to see if they'd notice (according to them, "girls always notice these things"). They didn't, which means I get to be smug now whenever they talk about "needing to lose the beard" - I can just say it's pointless because they wouldn't even notice :P

Before

After

The upshot of this, however, is that I've now got two eyebrows. Hopefully if I keep trimming them regularly, I can at least remove one avenue of slagging - God knows I give people enough others...

Apparently I'm a racist
Thu 10/8/06 (Link to this entry)

It's been an eventful couple of days. On Wednesday after work I thought I'd take Maddy to meet the guys from Blackwater, as the girls have been complaining of being surrounded by geeky blokes all the time. The session at the pub was very enjoyable, apart from when a random bloke butted into our conversation and starting ranting and raving about us being "F@!$%&* racists". We hadn't said a racist word all night, of course, so we were rather bemused (although the roll-up hanging out the guy's mouth gave us a clue he wasn't totally compus mentus).

It was only after we'd fobbed the guy off that we realised that he'd heard us playing pool and going on about "sinking that damned black" and so on (it took us a few shots that frame, James kept snookering me), and that was what he'd managed to interpret as racism. The best bit was when he starting mouthing off about "bloody Scots coming down here and mouthing off" - pot / kettle / black...

It was sometime after that when I realised I'd forgotten my keys and it was too late to be going home and banging on the door (my housemates go to bed fairly early), which meant I ended up staying in Blackwater for the night. This was all well and good, apart from the hindrance inflicted upon the following day's work by:

• Not having a change of clothes or towel (although James was kind enough to furnish me with such items)
• Not having my Sun Badge (which I use for getting around the campus, logging in to our Sunray machines, paying for stuff within the campus, etc)
• Not having a lunch made up (I take food with me every day as the canteen can be a bit crap)
• Not having my notebook (in which I've been taking all my notes)
• Not having a working phone (mine ran out of juice during the night - which also meant I slept in, being deprived of its alarm function)
• Not having my bike to go home (didn't actually matter in the end as we all went out for dinner after work)
• Not having a proper night's sleep (the sofa wasn't as comfy as it looked at half one in the morning)

So yeah, that wasn't very well thought out :P

Real work? :-/
Tue 8/8/06 (Link to this entry)

This week I'm in the office and labs doing actual work, and it's all a bit bewildering so far. Because I'm starting several weeks behind the other guys, I don't really know what I'm doing at the moment, but I'm learning reasonably quickly. I've got a little personal project for this week where I have to clear out some kit from our overflow lab, so at least I'm not being completely useless...

lol @ Rangers
Sat 5/8/06 (Link to this entry)

Rangers didn't take long to drop points this season, game two today saw them drawing 2-2 with Dundee United at Ibrox. Considering that United have been the most underachieving side in the SPL for the past few seasons, that's a pretty poor result for the Currant Buns. Amusingly, with Celtic and Hearts not playing until tomorrow, it means that St. Mirren now find themselves at the top of the SPL :-p

On my way to the shops today I managed to get a decent snap of the horses down by the playing fields, who have been hiding up the other end of their field every time I've been down that way previously.

End of Week Two
Fri 4/8/06 (Link to this entry)

Today saw the end of my second week at Sun, which means that next time I'm there I won't be in training (yay), I'll be in the office doing some actual work (eek). The week after that I'll be back in training again, so it'll be a while yet before I can find my feet properly around the office and labs.

l to r: Chris (trying to wheel out of shot), Lewis (playing Mah Jongg), Anton (browsing eBay), James (waving)

This week's course was pretty cool, Anton and I were working on a server which has a list price of something like £100,000. One part of the course involved stripping this machine down to its bare bones and then putting it back together again, which was good fun if mildly unnerving. Another fun thing I did today was finally getting my relocation expenses form filled out, meaning I should shortly be recieving a sum in excess of £1000 (I got extra because I'm getting my US visa expenses back). That'll help with the overdraft, and then some :)

Serengeti Lessons
Tue 1/8/06 (Link to this entry)

This week I've been learning about Safari buses, Cheetahs, Jaguars, Panthers, and a variety of other things all under the 'Serengeti' umbrella. I haven't wandered into a geography class by mistake, though; these are the codenames given to some of the bits and pieces of hardware in Sun's midrange server range which is codenamed Serengeti (if you're interested, the Safari bus is an internal datapath and the big cats are the names of different UltraSPARC processors). The course is pretty interesting as it's stuff I've never had any experience of and we're getting to get our hands dirty with some rather cool hardware.

At home we've got a new housemate, a lassie from Oxford called Maddy. She's got a job in Camberley and will be staying with us for a few months until her boyfriend's able to move down and get a place to share with her. She seems a nice lassie so it'll be quite cool to have another person around the house :)

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