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Soon, I am going off, on work, to a faraway foreign land for about six months (again - same place as last). It is a place famous for freezing desert colds and searing desert heats. Anyway, I picked up the box of personal kit that my work are giving to everyone going this year. In 2006, I was pretty impressed with some of the stuff: Expensive anti-sun, anti-radiation sunglasses, strong bags and all sorts (beside uniforms). This year... as I will be there when it is much colder... I have "extreme cold weather" socks and boots... wristlets (long socks for the arms!), and a pair of inner/outer mittens that are so big they would look good with a spacesuit. Even tough sandals (which I am unlikely to wear, given the fearsome and aggressive insects out there). It made me blurt out to Mrs Crabtree that "someone cares!". I don't often have such a feeling when it comes to work! Tags: work
Current Location: Mönchengladbach, Germany
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For the next two weeks I'm staying in Dorset, UK... an hours' bus journey from Salisbury. My accomodation is quite poor; no mobile phone reception within a km, an internet cafe that never seems to be open, etc... and the shower has no temperature control... this morning, I turned all the hot-water taps on to full, put all the showers on and it didn't make the shower I wanted come down to a less-than-scolding temperature. Ridiculous. I expect temporary accomodation to have dribbling lukewarm showers that I can at least try to wash under... not high-powered, scalding water that I can't bear! Anyway, I'm not very mobile so don't think I'll be able to meet anyone apart from a few work colleagues who are in the area. Tags: blandford, dorset, internet access, showers, uk, work
Current Location: Starbucks, Salisbury, UK
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I've been doing a computer course at work for the past month, as part of the training for a possible task next year. Technically, I have always been a telecommunications technician - fixing radios, receivers, transmitters, radio net bandwidth management hardware and settings, modems, fibre-optics, satellite connections, DLOS links, etc... but in reality, I've always been the bright software specialist. Finally, my work have realised that my talents lie in computers, and are now 'training' me for that role. Unfortunately, my workplace is both beurocratic and slow in realizing what century it is. So, in their wisdom, all Information Systems personell must have ECDL. Yes, ECDL. The computer qualification designed for the long-term unemployed and immigrants who aren't so hot with anything computery. So, basically, I skived for a week, sat the 7 modules one afternoon and pretended I'd been working hard all week. What a farce... me, doing ECDL??? My seniors all thought it ridiculous that after years as a computer professional, programmer, server maintainer, etc... I was doing a course that involved tasks like "Here are 4 pictures. Click on the two which you think are input devices". Well done! Thankfully the course moved on... we've done weeks of genuinely good stuff, like N+, A+ (which I already had), MCSA and MCSE courses, etc. There's even talk of putting some people on CCNA, later (another one I already have, but that was 5 stagnant years ago). We've all been given half a shelf of expensive MS 2003 server books; it's a shame many of the others on the course don't appreciate their 5-year worth. For me, this course is mostly revision, but there are various MS features that I haven't used before (although working it out would be a diddle), such as Compatability modes, volume shadowing, folder and file encryption, etc. And lots which I'm familiar with; IIS, disk management, Active Directory, server software, NTFS kung-fu, and lots besides. I'm the "cone-head" of the course. They all consider me an expert, although I have so many intelligent friends that I think its truer to say that I'm more like the one-eyed man amongst the blind. Tags: computers, ecdl, geekery, geeky, microsoft, servers, windows, work
Current Location: Mönchengladbach
Listening To: "The line to the dead" by Combichrist
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