Once again I've no idea what to post about. My Bro's arriving from Dubai on Sunday with his wife and my Nephew, so that should be a laugh. Generally when me, my Bro and Nephew get together we indulge in innocently boyish pleasures - When I was in Dubai it was quad bikes, but in the more confined habitat of British Suburbia we'll have to think a bit smaller. Fortunately I have at my disposal two descent remote control cars, one electric one petrol, and a remote control hovercraft, so we should have a laugh.
To make up for this post's lack of bulk, I'll fill it out with some videos.
Wednesday 22 April 2009
Tuesday 21 April 2009
At a loss again
Not sure what to post about, but work's fairly quiet so I have nothing better to do. I just found out technical support where I work is moving to a different office miles away. While that sucks for everyone else here, it's actually quite lucky for me for two reasons. Firstly, the final date that support down in this office will officially cease to exist is the day I leave. Secondly, we have a couple of guys down here this week getting trained up to take over the incoming calls as of Monday, which means I’ll be able to kick back, relax and wait for my notice to be up. Good times.
That's... about all I have to report.
That's... about all I have to report.
Monday 20 April 2009
Neglection
Well now I feel bad, neglecting the blog for almost a whole week. Fact is, I've not had much to post about. There isn't much interesting crap left that I can think of, and I'm trying to avoid making this one of those disgustingly self indulgent diary blogs where people write down what they did today and how it makes them feel under the pretense that someone, somewhere gives a flying fuck about what they ate for lunch.
With that in mind, I'll keep to the juicy bits. The girl I went to the fair with, mentioned in a previous post, came out with me on Friday and we went back to my place afterwards. Suffice to say that it was a very fun evening, and morning after, and I have some epic scratches on my back to prove it. I'll be seeing this one again.
I've handed in my notice at work, so I’m officially finishing on the 5th of June. There’s no turning back now, and that's only a month and a half away. I need to get my flights and first few nights accommodation booked for the EVT, the sooner the cheaper, so I'll probably do it at the weekend as Friday's payday.
Band of the moment is Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. They used to be a lot heavier than they are now, but I still like them.
With that in mind, I'll keep to the juicy bits. The girl I went to the fair with, mentioned in a previous post, came out with me on Friday and we went back to my place afterwards. Suffice to say that it was a very fun evening, and morning after, and I have some epic scratches on my back to prove it. I'll be seeing this one again.
I've handed in my notice at work, so I’m officially finishing on the 5th of June. There’s no turning back now, and that's only a month and a half away. I need to get my flights and first few nights accommodation booked for the EVT, the sooner the cheaper, so I'll probably do it at the weekend as Friday's payday.
Band of the moment is Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. They used to be a lot heavier than they are now, but I still like them.
Tuesday 14 April 2009
FFFFFU
This morning I walked into a world of shit. As previously mentioned, I work for an ISP, and it looks like last night our radius servers committed suicide. This means NONE of our DSL connections work. That's over 11,000 very irritated users trying to call a helpdesk manned by only two people, all at once. I'm typing this while some inbred retard from the Isle of White yells down the phone at me about how his business is suffering because his internet connection has been down for an hour or so. There are a number of reasons why I hate people like this, the most prominent of these being:
1) Getting shitty with me personally or anyone at this company will not help their situation, and only serves to make them look petty and unprofessional. If you want to throw your toys out the pram, do it on your own time. Mine is valuable.
2) They're universally ignorant. Even when a company has hired an "IT Professional" to give them support on their network and talk to us on their behalf, the complete lack of knowledge is staggering. Stay away from anyone who has "IT Professional", or anything equally ambiguous, on their business card - This is a synonym for "Poisonous retard". Generally speaking, if they don't have a CCNA, they don't know shit.
3) Because of their lack of knowledge, they don't understand what "Service level agreement" means. In the UK, the only two providers offering independent services are BT and Tiscali. All other ISPs just buy connections from either of these two and resell them to end users and other resellers. So, all connections conform to the same two service level agreement contracts, as both BT and Tiscali offer the same ones: Standard Care, and Enhanced Care. Enhanced care is a 20 hour fix. Standard care has no time constraint at all and generally takes about 2 weeks to get fixed. Most people just get standard care because it’s a little bit cheaper, then go apeshit when their connection goes down and i tell them it's going to take forever to fix.
4) As another knock on effect of their stupidity, they don't understand what "demarcation point" means. There are a number of people who continually call in with dumbass problems with software and hardware not supported by us. When we provide an internet connection, if the router can connect, that is all we care about. If you can't get your laptop connected wirelessly, that's your problem. If you're server isn't working properly, that's your problem. If you can't configure MS Outlook, talk to Microsoft. If you can't configure wifi on your iPhone, talk to Apple.
5) They often get annoyed when they're expected to do something. Even things as trivial as rebooting the router can cause an uproar of complaints and stupid questions. "Why can't you do this remotely?", "Why can't you send an engineer to do it for me?", "Why should i have to find this out?” They don't seem to understand that it's their responsibility to provide us with any info we need, or that if they don't, we can do shit all to fix their faults.
At least the weekend was entertaining. Didn't go to the fair when I was planning to, as it was raining, so we went to IKEA instead. Fun. Went yesterday instead when it was sunny, was fun. House party was... crazy. I don't remember most of it, but I’m told there was excessive drunkenness, nudity and making out with minors. Curse my lack of sexual inhibitions while drunk.
1) Getting shitty with me personally or anyone at this company will not help their situation, and only serves to make them look petty and unprofessional. If you want to throw your toys out the pram, do it on your own time. Mine is valuable.
2) They're universally ignorant. Even when a company has hired an "IT Professional" to give them support on their network and talk to us on their behalf, the complete lack of knowledge is staggering. Stay away from anyone who has "IT Professional", or anything equally ambiguous, on their business card - This is a synonym for "Poisonous retard". Generally speaking, if they don't have a CCNA, they don't know shit.
3) Because of their lack of knowledge, they don't understand what "Service level agreement" means. In the UK, the only two providers offering independent services are BT and Tiscali. All other ISPs just buy connections from either of these two and resell them to end users and other resellers. So, all connections conform to the same two service level agreement contracts, as both BT and Tiscali offer the same ones: Standard Care, and Enhanced Care. Enhanced care is a 20 hour fix. Standard care has no time constraint at all and generally takes about 2 weeks to get fixed. Most people just get standard care because it’s a little bit cheaper, then go apeshit when their connection goes down and i tell them it's going to take forever to fix.
4) As another knock on effect of their stupidity, they don't understand what "demarcation point" means. There are a number of people who continually call in with dumbass problems with software and hardware not supported by us. When we provide an internet connection, if the router can connect, that is all we care about. If you can't get your laptop connected wirelessly, that's your problem. If you're server isn't working properly, that's your problem. If you can't configure MS Outlook, talk to Microsoft. If you can't configure wifi on your iPhone, talk to Apple.
5) They often get annoyed when they're expected to do something. Even things as trivial as rebooting the router can cause an uproar of complaints and stupid questions. "Why can't you do this remotely?", "Why can't you send an engineer to do it for me?", "Why should i have to find this out?” They don't seem to understand that it's their responsibility to provide us with any info we need, or that if they don't, we can do shit all to fix their faults.
At least the weekend was entertaining. Didn't go to the fair when I was planning to, as it was raining, so we went to IKEA instead. Fun. Went yesterday instead when it was sunny, was fun. House party was... crazy. I don't remember most of it, but I’m told there was excessive drunkenness, nudity and making out with minors. Curse my lack of sexual inhibitions while drunk.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Rain Rain Rain
It's raining today. You can tell I have absolutely nothing to write about when I start commenting on the weather. It's annoying because the weather’s been fine for the last week; it only started raining today just when a fun fair comes to town. Apparently it's going to be even worse tomorrow too, but I’m going to go to the fair anyway. Maybe the rain will scare people off and it won't be quite so packed, if it's open at all. Got a girl coming with me, and while I would normally hate to conform to such a cultural cliché as "dating", I feel it'll be worth the exception. In the worst case scenario I get some free candy floss out of it (she's loaded and insists on paying for everything, and who am I to deny her that?).
After I'm done with the fair I'll be heading for a house party, hosted by a very good friend of mine. He had one seven or eight months ago, and if the last one's anything to go by this should be an extremely messy evening. Last time, I arrived late, started drinking furiously, and by the morning my sins included jumping in his swimming pool fully clothed (with my phone and mp3 player in my pockets), making out with my ex, making out with some random guy, running around the house bollock naked, reducing his kitchen table to splinters by jumping up and down on it, throwing up all over his garden, getting locked outside for about an hour around 3am when everyone else had either left or gone upstairs, soaking wet and almost naked, and being forcefully raped (no exaggeration) while still shivering and barely conscious by this girl I'd only met once before. Epic times.
That’s my plan for Tomorrow anyway, as it’s Good Friday and I don’t have work. I may just keep drinking through Saturday, if there’s enough alcohol left in the house when I wake up to hang about for a bit tanking up before heading home for a shower and something to eat then back out to town for another friends birthday bash. Everyone knows the hangover can’t get you if you never sober up!
Anyway, just so I feel like this wasn't a completely pointless post: Here's a video I found today from when I was at college (about 3 years ago now), of a traditional event, Penny Wrestling. It consists of someone throwing a coin on the floor, and everyone else trying to get it. I'm the guy with the long blonde hair, now you know what I look like.
After I'm done with the fair I'll be heading for a house party, hosted by a very good friend of mine. He had one seven or eight months ago, and if the last one's anything to go by this should be an extremely messy evening. Last time, I arrived late, started drinking furiously, and by the morning my sins included jumping in his swimming pool fully clothed (with my phone and mp3 player in my pockets), making out with my ex, making out with some random guy, running around the house bollock naked, reducing his kitchen table to splinters by jumping up and down on it, throwing up all over his garden, getting locked outside for about an hour around 3am when everyone else had either left or gone upstairs, soaking wet and almost naked, and being forcefully raped (no exaggeration) while still shivering and barely conscious by this girl I'd only met once before. Epic times.
That’s my plan for Tomorrow anyway, as it’s Good Friday and I don’t have work. I may just keep drinking through Saturday, if there’s enough alcohol left in the house when I wake up to hang about for a bit tanking up before heading home for a shower and something to eat then back out to town for another friends birthday bash. Everyone knows the hangover can’t get you if you never sober up!
Anyway, just so I feel like this wasn't a completely pointless post: Here's a video I found today from when I was at college (about 3 years ago now), of a traditional event, Penny Wrestling. It consists of someone throwing a coin on the floor, and everyone else trying to get it. I'm the guy with the long blonde hair, now you know what I look like.
Tuesday 7 April 2009
More Metals
Today I think, another list of what I've been listening to over the last week or so.
As I mentioned yesterday, Brain Drill are amazing. Technical Death Metal with old school Brutal Death Metal sensibilities. Obscenely fast, gore obsessed and dangerously nihilistic, Brain Drill were formed by Dylan Ruskin after his ill fated band Burn At The Stake bit the dust, and also originally featured Marco Pitruzella, formerly of Vital Remains and The Faceless. The weird thing is, their songs are strangely catchy and don't bleed into one another as happens with a lot of death metal bands. Their lineup is now complete again after a few changes, so I'm hoping to see them live sometime this year if they come to the UK.
It is proven fact that everyone, even hardened metallers, love The Prodigy. They're undeniably drum'n'bass, but have just enough originality and eccentricity to tickle the more subversive tastes without losing mainstream appeal. Unfortunately, I fear the latest installment Invaders Must Die has lost some of their eclectic inventiveness, although there is defiantly still a spark of genius there. Turns out I've been hearing songs off this album for months at clubs and in shops and just assumed they were by Pendulum or some other run-of-the-mill rock'n'rave band, and only realized what I'd been hearing when I got my copy. Don't get me wrong, they're all good tracks, but they seem a little tame and overproduced. I realize calling something "overproduced" in a genre that is, by definition, more reliant on computers and technology in making music than actual musical instruments is a bit of a moot point, but if you compare this album with classics like Spitfire or Firestarter you'll notice a distinct lack of Prodigy's old edge. I can't help but think that most of these songs sound a little too much like something you might hear in a TV advert, but on the other hand I would never accuse The Prodigy of playing "safe" music. All it needs is more of Kieth Flint yelling shit and acting crazy.
Ravnenes Saga by Svartsot is a good solid Melodic Death/Folk Metal album from Denmark. Imagine a band with the guitar and vocal styles of Amon Amarth, playing songs written by Eluveitie and Korpiklaani and you won't be far off Svartsot's sound. Don't let the guttural vocals and bleak album cover deceive you, these songs are mostly about feasting and drinking, both things I hope to do excessively while I'm in Denmark. Looking at their current live dates, they seem to play a lot of shows around Denmark, so maybe I’ll get to see them live if I can time it right.
Blues/southern rock/grunge/punk isn't usually at the top of my favorites, but Supersuckers have made it up there somehow. Comedic, feel good blues rock is done better by few bands, and tracks like "I'm a Fucking Genius" and "Paid" pack enough punch to keep me entertained through the quieter moments, along with a few epic bluesy solos performed with true Lynyrd Skynyrd dexterity. Bands like this often seem to put on great live shows too, and their current tour stops off in my town very soon so I may have to put on my cowboy hat, grab a bottle of Uncle Jack and go check them out.
As I mentioned yesterday, Brain Drill are amazing. Technical Death Metal with old school Brutal Death Metal sensibilities. Obscenely fast, gore obsessed and dangerously nihilistic, Brain Drill were formed by Dylan Ruskin after his ill fated band Burn At The Stake bit the dust, and also originally featured Marco Pitruzella, formerly of Vital Remains and The Faceless. The weird thing is, their songs are strangely catchy and don't bleed into one another as happens with a lot of death metal bands. Their lineup is now complete again after a few changes, so I'm hoping to see them live sometime this year if they come to the UK.
It is proven fact that everyone, even hardened metallers, love The Prodigy. They're undeniably drum'n'bass, but have just enough originality and eccentricity to tickle the more subversive tastes without losing mainstream appeal. Unfortunately, I fear the latest installment Invaders Must Die has lost some of their eclectic inventiveness, although there is defiantly still a spark of genius there. Turns out I've been hearing songs off this album for months at clubs and in shops and just assumed they were by Pendulum or some other run-of-the-mill rock'n'rave band, and only realized what I'd been hearing when I got my copy. Don't get me wrong, they're all good tracks, but they seem a little tame and overproduced. I realize calling something "overproduced" in a genre that is, by definition, more reliant on computers and technology in making music than actual musical instruments is a bit of a moot point, but if you compare this album with classics like Spitfire or Firestarter you'll notice a distinct lack of Prodigy's old edge. I can't help but think that most of these songs sound a little too much like something you might hear in a TV advert, but on the other hand I would never accuse The Prodigy of playing "safe" music. All it needs is more of Kieth Flint yelling shit and acting crazy.
Ravnenes Saga by Svartsot is a good solid Melodic Death/Folk Metal album from Denmark. Imagine a band with the guitar and vocal styles of Amon Amarth, playing songs written by Eluveitie and Korpiklaani and you won't be far off Svartsot's sound. Don't let the guttural vocals and bleak album cover deceive you, these songs are mostly about feasting and drinking, both things I hope to do excessively while I'm in Denmark. Looking at their current live dates, they seem to play a lot of shows around Denmark, so maybe I’ll get to see them live if I can time it right.
Blues/southern rock/grunge/punk isn't usually at the top of my favorites, but Supersuckers have made it up there somehow. Comedic, feel good blues rock is done better by few bands, and tracks like "I'm a Fucking Genius" and "Paid" pack enough punch to keep me entertained through the quieter moments, along with a few epic bluesy solos performed with true Lynyrd Skynyrd dexterity. Bands like this often seem to put on great live shows too, and their current tour stops off in my town very soon so I may have to put on my cowboy hat, grab a bottle of Uncle Jack and go check them out.
Monday 6 April 2009
Frakking hell, another week.
Well I've had a fairly eventful weekend, in my love life at least. I came dangerously close to getting back together with my ex on Friday night, by which i mean i almost slept with her, then realized that would be a chronically bad idea and extremely hazardous for my mental health and made myself scarce sharpish. This decision obviously caused her to throw a massive tantrum, from which she is still recovering today. So then, feeling kind of low, I started talking to another girl and got myself a date later on in the week. Happy days, so long as i can keep the ex from scaring her off, which she's managed to do in the past. Hell hath no fury... But other than that a pretty standard weekend, I drank and spent too much as usual. I really need to learn to spend less money.
On a lighter note, I found out today that Hitler had a dog called Blondi, which is what a lot of people call me (although usually spelt Blondey or Blondie) due to the color of my hair. This amused me, being immature and un-politically correct.
For lack of anything better to write about; My current favorite lunchtime distraction is Crossfire, a free FPS based around multiplayer battles between terrorist and counter-terrorist squads. It plays like Unreal Tournament crossed with Counter Strike - Realistic weapons, exp points to spend on equipment and bomb disposal missions, but with large health bars, continuous respawning and fast paced gameplay. The graphics leave something to be desired, but that's just as well as my work PC has an Nvidia 5500 GPU (mid-range when it first came out, now 6 years old). Aside from the clunky graphics, a lot of the character animations look stupid, there's no physics that I've noticed and it takes a little too long to build up the EXP to buy new weapons. All in all it isn't a brilliant game, but you get what you pay for and it passes the time.
Also, Brain Drill are officially fucking awesome and everyone who doesn't already have it should rush out right now and buy Apocalyptic Feasting because it's amazing.
On a lighter note, I found out today that Hitler had a dog called Blondi, which is what a lot of people call me (although usually spelt Blondey or Blondie) due to the color of my hair. This amused me, being immature and un-politically correct.For lack of anything better to write about; My current favorite lunchtime distraction is Crossfire, a free FPS based around multiplayer battles between terrorist and counter-terrorist squads. It plays like Unreal Tournament crossed with Counter Strike - Realistic weapons, exp points to spend on equipment and bomb disposal missions, but with large health bars, continuous respawning and fast paced gameplay. The graphics leave something to be desired, but that's just as well as my work PC has an Nvidia 5500 GPU (mid-range when it first came out, now 6 years old). Aside from the clunky graphics, a lot of the character animations look stupid, there's no physics that I've noticed and it takes a little too long to build up the EXP to buy new weapons. All in all it isn't a brilliant game, but you get what you pay for and it passes the time.
Also, Brain Drill are officially fucking awesome and everyone who doesn't already have it should rush out right now and buy Apocalyptic Feasting because it's amazing.
Friday 3 April 2009
That Friday Feeling
Good morning my imaginary friends, how's life in fabricationville? Things are well out here in the real world. I've been off work for the last two days with an acute inability to keep food inside me, an ailment i suspect can be attributed to the barely warm (temperature wise anyway) Vindaloo I consumed on Tuesday evening. Perversely however, I've been mostly free of the typical symptoms of food poisoning, specifically those relating to fecal matter and it's lack of solidity, so it hasn't been too bad. I'm one of those strange people who actually enjoys vomiting. There's something enormously satisfying about it, almost cleansing, your body convulsing and rejecting all the bad stuff inside. Afterwards you're left with a bizarre euphoria, glad the ordeal is over and feeling empty yet brimming with potential. There must be some kind of chemical release immediately after throwing up, because you always feel like you could punch through a brick wall. Then again, maybe that's just me.
Apparently there's a fire on the London Underground today. I can't see anything on the website, the only delay announced there is due to a signal failure on the Bakerloo Line, but I've been handling a fault on a point-to-point leased line near London Bridge today which I'm reliably informed is part of a major service outage caused by a fire on the tube. This one’s probably going to drag out for ages too, as the engineers who are supposed to be fixing it can't get access until the fire service give the all clear that the area is safe, which is going to take about five days. The upside of that is, if I can talk my boss into letting me be on call this weekend, I could have 62 hours of overtime. That's... A whole lot of money for doing fuck all. It does mean I won't be going out this weekend, but the money's so worth it.
This is kind of old now but it still makes me lol. COWS GO MOOOOO WHEN THEY POOOOO!!!
Apparently there's a fire on the London Underground today. I can't see anything on the website, the only delay announced there is due to a signal failure on the Bakerloo Line, but I've been handling a fault on a point-to-point leased line near London Bridge today which I'm reliably informed is part of a major service outage caused by a fire on the tube. This one’s probably going to drag out for ages too, as the engineers who are supposed to be fixing it can't get access until the fire service give the all clear that the area is safe, which is going to take about five days. The upside of that is, if I can talk my boss into letting me be on call this weekend, I could have 62 hours of overtime. That's... A whole lot of money for doing fuck all. It does mean I won't be going out this weekend, but the money's so worth it.
This is kind of old now but it still makes me lol. COWS GO MOOOOO WHEN THEY POOOOO!!!
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