Yesterday a friend of mine was ‘installed’ as a lay Cannon at Liverpool Cathedral – a ceremony we (my GF and I) were invited to attend.
Needless to say the local weather had other plans and deposited an amount of snow anyone over the age of 30 will remember from their childhood.

This initially had the effect of destroying my night out with some girlie friends of mine and possibly of the Liverpudlian odyssey.

Come the morn of Sunday – bright and early – we braved the roads of Yorkshire in a valiant attempt to venture in to the unholy lands, west of ‘t Pennines.
Oddly, at some ungodly hour on Sunday (about 9:00 am! ) the traffic was light and we made good time – much fun being had when trying to overtake old people doing 30 mph on major roads – the outside lane was simply a river of ice.

Arrived at the Cathedral in good time and watched my friend being bedecked in an amusingly ecclesiastical cloak (she’s quite short and looked kinda like a Hobbit in a duvet! ). Got fed the second turkey dinner of the festive period. Said hellos to friends long unseen and chatted for a while. Once again braved the roads.

This time things were different…

The old Sat Nav, decided that the traffic on the M62 was going to give us a boring and mundane, slow trip home and rerouted us through Oldham and on to the non-motorway route home. This being over the Pennines through some little known villages.
“Oh what fun it is to ride in an Audi with very little directional control, up and down a bloomin’ big hill, with poor visibility, IN FRONT of a snow plough, with great drops down the side of the car on one side or the other”. (fit that one into the ‘Jingle Bells’ tune if you can )
Oddly enough we actually made it home, in one piece, not missing bits due to frostbite!

Ironically, I watched a nutter in a 4×4 slide off the road into a snow drift today!
Oh how I laughed…

Filed under : Heaven  |  Be the first to comment! »
3 views

=============== ===============

So there i was on the way back from a client, feeling a little peckish and undernourished (Those of you that know me will no doubt be chuckling that a short fat bald bloke such as i can be undernourished).

I decided to stop off at a well known pastie shop to slake my appetite, thus parked up,  in the car park and trotted over to a delightful lady who graciously furnished me with a chicken and cranberry sandwich for the princely sum of £1.

There is something to be said for the anticipation of enjoying a delightful sandwich in peace, whilst being soothed by Classic FM. So there i sat in the car taking the first bite of my much anticipated food when… CRASH !

A car had reversed out of the parking space behind me turning as if to exit the car park, when two cars ploughed into the front of it pushing it up against the barrier behind it. Eight people decamped from the the two cars and furiously set about smashing the windows of the third car, dragging the occupants out of the now smashed windows, onto the floor. (No where nearly as elegantly as the Dukes of Hazard).

(I had stopped chewing by this point) Three other people ran across the front of my car (not literally) and it was then i noticed the small ‘police’ badge draped around the neck of the people pinning the 3 unfortunate chaps to the floor. Needless to say my appetite had suddenly retreated and i sat with a gormless look on my face, cranberry on my tie and sandwich in hand watching the ‘Boys in Blue’ at there best.

I have no idea what the 3 people had been arrested for and i don’t really think i want to know frankly. However I slept well in my bed last night knowing that 3 more evidently ‘undesirable’ chaps were off the streets. Congrats Mr Plod, it was an astonishing show, reminding me that even though we live in a world where we are constantly worried about who or what is round the next corner, you guys are on the front line trying (against the odds) to keep us safe from harm.

Today Mr Police Man I salute you.

Filed under : General  |  Be the first to comment! »
3 views

=============== ===============

You know, as a techie you hear all sorts of things ~ clients sometimes see you as everything from emotional punch bag, through Samaritan, to agony aunt.
It’s kind of understandable though, as the years go on and you see clients quite often, they become like friends.

It’s in this capacity I’m hearing more and more complaints about the commercialism inherent in the festive period.

The line “Christmas is just too commercial” rings true about once every two or three days, from one client or another. Usually from those a little longer in the tooth…

The truth is of course, a little wide of the perceived.

Christmas IS still a time for friends and families to get together and share things (some people I only get to see at this time of year!). There ARE still feelings of ‘glad tidings’ about too, you just have to give them to receive them.

If you think that the commercial aspect of Christmas is all pervasive, just choose to not get involved!
You really don’t have to fuel the ever increasing shops profits at this time of year ~ or brave the masses, all clamouring for the ‘bargains’ at the local department store.

This Christmas, I have managed to saunter through buying AND wrapping my gifts, by the simple method of forward planning.
We (as a couple) enjoy a stroll through the January sales, buying those little nick-nacks for stocking fillers, and/or getting things like decorations, wrapping paper and those funky sparkly paper gift bags.
Obviously, if you are a fashion victim and absolutely MUST have the latest fad in decorations, this little bit of forethought won’t be for you.

With the majority of the little things purchased and stored for next Christmas, we shopped online for the gifts we wanted to give.
A few Home deliveries and a bout of wrapping later, and we are about done :)

Once this little plan was in operation, I was free to enjoy the shopping experiences we undertook ~ safe in the knowledge it wasn’t all panic!

Organised for once?
BAH HUMBUG!!!

---

Just a couple of items sparked my interest today:
UK trails on super-fast broadband say OECD figures

Oh dear – in this technological world which we live in, the UK is severly lagging behind in terms of available speed:
The top 10 speedy nations:

• Japan – top advertised speed 1Gbps
• Finland – 110Mbps
• Sweden – 100Mbps
• Korea – 100Mbps
• Iceland – 100Mbps
• France – 100Mbps
• Denmark – 100Mbps
• Netherlands – 60Mbps
• United States – 50Mbps
• Spain – 50Mbps

We rank 21^st!

This on the back of 4G mobile phone network comes to Scandinavia
Only 100mb/s second download on a MOBILE network!!!

Sigh…

Filed under : Heaven &Hell  |  Be the first to comment! »
2 views

=============== ===============

I know it’s a bit of a risqué image but it serves a two fold purpose.

Today, Tor got a call from a long standing client of ours. We’ve looked after their Internet and website hosting for years.
These are the only services we give them though ~ they have actively refused our offers of support and we are happy with the status quo (they seem to have no interest in investing in their IT systems either ~ suffice to say their systems are OLD!).

Today’s call was about an iPhone. :evil:
Something we have configured from time to time, as people seem to like “pretty pretty” toys with no regard to their technical merit (cynical iPhone hater here). It works fine with our email systems though.
Apparently, the support engineer who the client chooses to use can’t get the iPhone working with our SMTP server.

Why oh why the client thought we’d sort this out is beyond me..!
We provide email services for sure, but the configuration of the iPhone is a little outside this methinks.
The best/worst of it was it’s the PAID engineer who can’t get it working and it was he who called us!!

This the same engineer who couldn’t restore the clients server without our help either (on that occasion we pointed him in the right direction ‘cos it was causing the client lots of pain).

Tor told him where to get off ~ politely of course.

It’s a strangely amusing world out there..!

Filed under : General  |  Be the first to comment! »
2 views

=============== ===============

Electronic Point Of Sale ~ that’s the acronym. Sounds so innocuous in a conversation that you’d never know the problems that can arise…

In this case, one of our clients has the GPoS software installed on the cash register at the store ~ all good so far, the software seems to be one of the better ones out there.
The client has a head office located in a different part of town and would like to connect the HQ PCs to the register to download the daily reports for sales, and update the prices etc.

Sounds simple?

NOPE!
We’ve done what the reseller suggested (port forwarding the send/receive ports to the PC, and connect via a VPN) to no avail.
I have learned LOTS about this particular piece of software, and even (although it pains me to say it) had to ask BT for help, as it’s communicating over their broadband.
Still no joy…

It’s a call to the software vendor tomorrow to see if we can get to the bottom of it…

Meanwhile I’m on the Ibuprofen for the headache

Just had my final cuppa for the evening so I think it’s time to dream of a perfect world, where things WORK PROPERLY!

Filed under : Hell  |  Be the first to comment! »
6 views

=============== ===============