Freeloading Phill and ...

... The Long and Wireless Road

The Wireless hotspot saga continues to go on and on. Now the supplier is unable to get the connection working through our existing ADSL modem so they have to ship us a new one.

Of course they made me come in early for testing before they decided this so now I'm brain fried for no reason - and I have to do an early Monday morning start at Brighton. The only upside will be the abundance of unguarded free food that I can avail myself of while I am doing all that testing.

... The Rooms Full of Noobies

The last two days have seen me assisting the 2.0 champions helping staff to go through their 2.0 23 things training.
Lot's of account recovery and signing on to things and explaining to the noobies what the sites do.
Of course from high on my IT Man hill I had to have Mr Prada explain to me what several sites do and how to use them.
And as penance I have a bazillion blog update messages in my bloglines account that I have to sift through now.

(and I still haven't got onto image generators!)

... The Lost Hours

It seems that everything I have done in the last few days has lost me some hours.

Thursday I had an extra late in the day meeting sprung on me by Supervisor Grand Chief K and lost the start of the soccer game. A few post game beers to drown my sorrows and suddenly it was bedtime.

Friday was imaging up the genealogy PCs and true to form the imaging took a good four hours longer than I'd guesstimated. Then a phone call from our wireless supplier kept me at Brighton after closing while the techs on the other end tried to conjure up a eureka moment and I installed Brighton's special databases onto their genealogy PC. Thankfully there was free cake in the fridge so I didn't go without dinner as I was on the phone to Svetlana until quite late once I finally got home. (It seems there may be a plot to kidnap me when I go over to Hrvatska on my Christmas visit)

Saturday was the excitement of getting new tires on the car which was overwhelmed by the new iPod Clock Radio I splashed out on afterwards. In the evening I stayed in to watch the Pies finally start to get it right and solidify their spot in the top eight.

Today was looking okay until I decided to head across town to collect cards for the next games tournament without checking the footy fixture. Who schedules a twilight game at the MCG and and an early finishing game at Docklands??? My latest caution is that not only should you avoid Punt Road at all costs, but also always go via the Western Suburbs.

I think I'm actually going to catch the train to work tomorrow for the first time in weeks! Of course it being a Monday Connex will have hours of delays for me to contend with. Still, I should be able to get lots more "Magic Wood" Fantasy-Family Saga reading done.

... The Long Haul

I've had so many things happening and have ended up with little time for bloggerising them.

Sunday was a quick market coffee with Rugrat Twin followed by a gaming Sunday with surprise guests and multiple games going. I managed to be the second person ever to be eliminated from a game of Kings & Things (I am also the first person it ever happened to so my record is not so good)

Monday was a work as usual with a visit to Corporate HQ. In the evening I had dinner at my close neighbour CCs flat while she FaceBooked me. Facebook is a little underwhelming and I don't think I can get addicted to it, although it is another way to stay in touch with LittleBigGirl. I think for me it would be much easier to get addicted to reading forums where idiots argue with each other - mmmm anonymous opinions.

Tuesday was the new stove delivery and install on a self imposed credit day - although the new Supervisor Grand Chief K regime looks like it may crack down on that sort of independence - sigh, I shall miss Supervisor S. Regular Tuesday gaming ensued in the evening.

On Wednesday I proceeded to regain all my spent credit time by doing a long haul upgrade of public PCs that kept me there until the wee hours of 8.30. Luckily Mr Prada decreed that I could start late the next day to make up for it.

Said next day then became a blur of Brighton things and meetings and half a soccer game and not a lot else once home.

... The Green Mile and the White Stove

I finished the last couple of chapter books a couple of days ago in this busy week and have just watched the movie this afternoon. I enjoyed both quite a lot and may even have got something in my eye at the end of the movie.

In work news the wireless install stretches out as all sorts of upstream providers have to come into pay to make changes to the network. Also Supervisor S is the latest staff member to abandon me, leaving soon to take up maternal duties with her newly adopted son. (am I the only one that thinks it's a tad egotistical to adopt a child whose name is phonetically ISarah?)

I spent this afternoon shopping for a new stove - which for me involves going to the same store I bought my fridge from years ago and picking one of the four models on display that will do the job, none of that shopping around stuff for me, although I did do a smidgen of research on the internet. The currently trendy metallic ones were too wide for the space I have so I've gone with classic white. Delivery and install are all keyed up for Tuesday so yay for a day off!

... A Little 2.0

(246 Alternate Title: Things #5-7 Flickr & more)

I am finally moving on to the next task - or rather filling in the Flickr gap in my 2.0 task list.

I've already had a browse through Flickr in the past, as well as a few other photo sites like PhotoBucket. They are a great way to upload your Photo's and tag them for other people to see. Personally I prefer to use hand-carved HTML to create my online photo albums but I do have the web programming background that allows me to do that.
The Flickr geotagging is a good idea but I find it annoying that some tags don't show at all until you zoom closer. This means that looking at the places I visited last year in Croatia it looks like there are no photos and I almost gave up. One accidental click later though and I realised that they show up as you zoom in.

I'm supposed to blog about some technology that interests me... umm. Well it won't be wireless internet access!! I've spent the last two work days getting this set up and dealing with supplier and courier damage and replacement parts, and we still haven't really started on the network security and routing stuff.
But I do really think wireless is a great technology (apart from frying all our brains with all those "rays" flying around). For almost a year I've been using a wireless mouse and the lack of "cable-pull" on my mousing action has been wonderful. Wireless at home - the new home, it would never work at the old one - has allowed me to do away with cable runs through to the study and to set up the laptop on the kitchen table to VPN into work to fix stuff.
I could have scammed free access off my neighbour who has just plugged in the box without any security, as ArchEnemy tested during one visit. Ooh there's another caution for you - ALWAYS change your home wireless set-up to use security or others will be surfing the net on your account!

I finished the third part of The Green Mile this morning such an easy read and the chapter books really give a sense of fast progress.

... The Completion of the Hat-trick!

My third goal finally arrived at last nights soccer, so the average is now one goal every two and a half months.

I also finished zooming through the second part of The Green Mile.

Most of the last couple of days have been taken up with the wireless internet install - or rather the organising of replacement and missing parts to be sent across. It is still many days, maybe even weeks from debuting for the public as there are a few security and networking issues to e sorted out.
In the middle of all that it was announced that The Marketing Marvel was resigning due to the day not having 30 hours in it and not being able to fit everything in. She will be sadly missed.

...The Green Mile: part 1

I started and finished the first Chapter book of this 6 part Stephen King story in the last two days.

It had been long enough since my Dark Tower and associated King stories reading, that I'm ready to read some more - in between my other reading.

I didn't expect the chapter book to fly past so quickly but Mr Kings writing is as flowing and interesting to me as ever. If I keep up the pace I'll finish the whole lot before the week is out!

... The Footy, take two

I went to the footy again yesterday and this time the pies got it right. Ignoring ladder position it was a good close back and forth game and didn't look over until halfway through the last quarter. I went with The Great Sandro again, who was unhappy this week so it's one all this year. BestFriendSincePrep was at the ground as well but he was in a corporate box with free beer and was strangely uncontactable after the game...
Ms Magpie was also supposed to be there and should be pleased with the result even though I suspect her reasons for watching athletic young men in tight shorts running around are a little less sport related than mine.

...The Surgeon of Crowthorne

by Simon Winchester

I finished reading this yesterday. It is an interesting and entertaining story with a touch too much overwriting - a horse and cart does not just go down the lane, the horses hooves spark off the cobblestones lighting up the surrounding scene like lightning.
Half the fun of this book is seeing how many times the author uses the phrase "what could have happened was..." before launching into a lurid and sensationally fictional tale which is ended with "but that was not what happened" or "but nobody knows what really happened", biography indeed!
I am intrigued about the author's writing style in his other books.

... Style Wars

This is an addendum to the training class from the previous post.
It is not all good having Mr Prada working on the classes with me - I'm being completely overshadowed on the style front every time we run a class together.
And I don't think there's any way I can ever compete. I'll have to make the most of Mr Prada's absence later in the year when I run the class on my own.

.. Classes and headaches and 'puters, oh my!

Since the weekend I've been busily doing the usual with just a touch of sadly hunched over in the cold for two hours at the footy induced back muscle tightness which has given me those wonderful referred head/neck aches.

The Class was another Your Library at home class co-presented with Mr Prada. (Co-presented means I do half the talking and he does all the preparation and set-up - it's good to be the king). It went well this time and is unsurprisingly much easier to do when you haven't had oodles of training day drinks the night before.

The aforementioned headaches gave me the excuse for a late arrival on Wednesday, but Days of our Libraries had been hunting me around all the branches so I couldn't pull the old "I was at another branch" swifty and instead had to use up some of the extra-time I'd built up.

I finally faced my fear of calling a service centre today and spoke to the Dell tech to get our faulty monitors replaced. He had one of those beautiful fake call centre accents that couldn't quite cover his sub-continentness and the delightful name of Luther Alexander - very close to the wonderful Luther Arkwright.
Soccer tonight was a great workout even though we white shirts took a ten nil thrashing. (it should have been 9-0 but I'm not going to head a ball that could mush my glasses... again)(well actually it should have been 9-1 but I can't kick straight)

I skipped gaming tonight and was able to intercept Svetlana's attempt to just leave a message and forced her to talk to me live.

Finally I received an email tonight from LittleBigGirl who is turning her occasional update emails into a blog so now my RSS feeds will keep tabs of her too, mwha ha ha.