Bloody Tourists

Work has been mad recently, I've had so much to do. On Friday I left work at lunch to get my hair cut, do some laundry and then dive in the car and drive to Liz's new place where I met her Dad for the first time. It seemed to go well, Liz thinks he likes me and his wife (also called Liz) thinks he likes me, so not a bad result. Only thing that went wrong was when Liz was opening a door using her elbow (as her hands were covered in paint) and I remarked "nice bit of elbow work there!" It must have sounded so dodgy and he gave me a rather strange look.

The weekend was spent decorating the new flat. The front room wasn't a problem, Brian (Liz's Dad) dealt with that. It was being painted from a lemony yellow colour to a brighter sunshine yellow. In the bedroom however things were less simple. We were painting Magnolia (labelled on the tin as "Really Magnolia") over a rather over-the-top shade of Lilac; without backing paper. 20,000* coats later we had a magnolia wall.

I stayed through until Monday to help with various other things that needed doing. Really I shouldn't be taking time off work as I am the only computer literate person in the building now, but I couldn't give a toss. Things needed doing. I drove back this morning and it took 5 bloody hours. You name any kind of road delay possible and I was affected by it today. The biggest problem was the hordes of moron tourists with their stupid bloody caravans swaying down the A44 at 40 miles per bloody hour. And the idiot who drove at 40 Mph and braked randomly every so often for no reason at all, and who randomly blasted their horn at me as I overtook them. God only knows what that was about.

Anyway I am now back at work and have stuff to do again, so I'd better get on.

* Figure may be exaggerated

Chaotic Work

I've been somewhat busy at work today and yesterday. John wanted to start entering staff's publications into the database via a frontend I built ages ago. It turns out, however, that my frontend was broken and I hadn't realised. I'd tested it to destruction when I originaly finished it, but since then it's been moved to a new location, been added to another website, moved to another new location, had it's DSN connection's name changed, and generally been prodded and poked at.

During the various moves etc I gave it a quick check each time and it seemed to be working fine, but it had managed to pick up some very odd bugs along the way, mostly relating to the database code and the session handling. Yesterday it wouldn't let anyone add more than one publication per login. If we wanted to add 2 publications we had to log in to add the first then log out. Log into add the second then log out ... Woe betide anyone who tried to edit an existing publication.

So I was running around like something demented fixing everything as it went wrong. Now it seems to be quite stable, so I'm having the fun task of inputting publications. Yes, that's right - Data Entry. Mind you, it's not so bad when you know that your boss is also doing the same data entry.

Hit By A Bus

"Today I are been mostly feeling like I wuz hit by a bus."

Last night I had a nightmare where my laptop was stolen. It might sound stupid, but it was actually really scary. Had another nightmare not long after which I won't go into. Plus I had a number of weird dreams that meant I didn't get much quality sleep last night. This morning I felt sick, had a headache and wasn't at all with it. I'm finally starting to feel a little more human now. Not sure what caused it though. When I first got up I thought I was ill, but it seems to be going now so I can't be ill ...

Lowe, M, I Hate All Citations. LoweyBlog, July 2004. Available from http://nic-nac-project.de/~lowey/cgi-bin/blog.cgi?lower=248&upper=248

Morons

Just got to work and logged in. Tried to reconnect my M: drive, but it just keeps asking for the password. I give up and try logging into Central. Access Denied.

"Oh arse", I thought and rang the Helpdesk. The rang back about 5 minutes ago. After checking my details they concluded that I had left the University. "No, I don't complete for another 2 years" (at least, that's what my details used to say, really it'll only be another year now).

"Well you'll need to ring the academic office then to get your details changed." I couldn't believe that I had to ring a different office, surely they could just remove the lock and be done with the bloody thing. Well I rang anyway. After checking my details again she put me on hold and said "yes there's a problem and we're working to resolve it". Turns out they've managed to lock every Industrial Year student's accounts. Fucking geniuses.

Killed In Action

I've written a song using Jeskola BUZZ and considering I'm only just getting started with it I'm pretty bloody proud of it. In fact I am so proud I even encoded it as an MP3 rather than an OGG to make sure that everybody can hear it.

Killed In Action (2.35 Mb)

It WORKS!

Much faffing later and I have a wireless access connection. This blog comes to you live from just outside of the Great Hall. Once the RAS/VPN password went through (it takes a while) I was able to access the wireless access in B23. Which is all very well and good except I was only using it for about 6 seconds before it completely died. So I came back up to the Arts Centre and here I am, connected at a healthy 1.0 Mbps and enjoying the melodic sounds of a distant saxophone intertwined with the cleaner hoovering the floor.

And after all this effort to get connected I can't hang around much longer because I only paid for 2 hours in the carpark, and I've only got 15 minutes of it left. It's all IS's fault I tell ya!

GAH!

I get so angry with Information Services sometimes. I know that they are severely understaffed and overworked and everything, but sometimes I swear they just make extra work for themselves and the rest of us. All I want to do is connect my laptop to the wireless LAN. It seems like this shouldn't be a complicated task, but the amount of work you have to do just to get to the stage where you can connect is ridiculous. I've had to set a VPN/RAS password in order to connect and it refused everything I tried. Apparrently tn07813 is a dictionary word. I've never seen or heard that used in conversation ... Grrrr. Anyway after a thousand attempts or so I eventually got a password that works, but I've not got a hope in hell of being able to remember it so I've had to write it on my hand. In a while I shall store it on the computer's hard drive out of the way, but until then I will be walking around with my login written in ink on my hand.

That's secure, that is.

Holy Fucking Christ

Linked off the YakYak forums (before you ask):

Ananova: Surgeon messes up penis op

He should be imprisoned for that, not just suspended. Jesus Aitch Christ!

Rhythm is a Dancer

I really need to get back into the swing of blogging. I've been busy at work lately and as work is my only access to the 'net at the moment it has made it difficult to do any proper blogs. I've not really been reading anyboody else's blogs either, so that's something I need to catch up on too.

I've been so busy because I want to get the website out of the way at last and do something different. It's very much time for a change. So I've spoken to my boss, he has agreed a list of things that need finalising with the website, and then when they are done I can start doing something else (he mentioned some sort of automated reports in Excel tied to some VBScript).

It's not all work though. On Tuesday I met up with Tom for a beer or two. I went out for a drink with Burt and co. on Wednesday before they all went to the graduate ball. Then I went out last night with Burt, Dave and Randy. I now have a slight headache from the beer. D'oh. Tonight I will be out for my colleague's open-to-all Hen Night, and there's a possibility I will be out for a beer tomorrow night too with Tom, and maybe Burt if he's still around and fancies a pint (he can't decide).

Tonight shall be interesting. With Liz's flat not completing by today (like it was supposed to) I won't be able to move her in this weekend, so I shall be doing so next weekend instead. Therefore I won't be going to the colleague's wedding. To make up for this I told her I would dance at her hen night. She's not stopped going about the fact I don't dance, so it's my wedding present for her. I shall make a complete fool of myself on the dancefloor for her entertainment.

Last night I got a new toy: A Dell Latitude laptop. Mmmmm nice, many thanks to Burt :D Had a few minor hicups, but nothing serious. Windows doesn't want to let me log in as anybody other than "chris", it simply hangs if I try to log in as "matt". Stupidly I removed administrator privellages from the "chris" account (before I found out I couldn't log in as myself, I might add) so I'm a little bit stuck now. It looks like it might be a permissions issue, so I shall be faffing around with it tonight to see if I can fix it. The other problem is interference on the sound. It seems to be worst when I use the trackpad, and better when I press a key. This person seems to have had the same problem, and describes some mental procedure of opening it up and ripping cables out and stuff. I think I'll just live with the sound problems if that's the only solution; I just don't trust myself inside a laptop.

The best thing about having the laptop is that I can now install Jeskola Buzz and play with some excellent Buzz Machines which allow all manner of effects to be produced. Hopefully I'll be able to make some great tunes with it.

Speaking of tunes, I've made some more recently which I must put online somewhere. It's a question of finding space, though.

Now I must do some work.

What- the- fuck- ?

I think someone got the wrong address. I seem to get a lot of random emails on my staff account:

Mkay *reply*