Dan’s View

So it’s taken me 3 days to actually post my ramblings from this week. And boy has it been a little wierd. It has had both good and bad, well not bad just not so nice. I didn’t like how I had to be on Tuesday. But at the same time if I hadn’t it would be worse.
So to describe today, work has been ok; semi-productive. My evening hence has been walking, music, roll-ups, couple of bottles of cider and 10 miles of walking, in the rain. It’s really nice walking around streets and areas you know. The memories seem to come back and you feel nostalgic. I was liking it for certain. Hat helped, thanks for it, you.

I wander with work, I wander with life, I wander litterally. Am I supposed to settle?

I don’t think I am. I am supposed to wander and do as I do and talk to everyone and no-one at the same time.

Let us hope that the don’t fall through!

Tonight will be starting in my local for a few bevies, the meet a friend who’s on his way to Cambridge. Then into town for some late night drinking, dacin’ and chatting. Am heading to the Corenet in Elephant and Castle with some friends that I haven’t seen in a few months. I think it’s gonna be fun.

Oh and today work was busy, frustrating and a little chaotic. Thank silicon I’m not working this weekend, I’m sure it’s gonna be painful…

So nearly back to Ealing, time to make final arrangements…

So today has been a hung over, slept on the sofa by accident day. Worked my shift which was mainly calm nothing as chaotic as yesterday! Chatted to a few friends which was nice, even my mum for once! At the moment I’ve taken myself for a jaunt around town. Needed to get out of the flat and do something! Still I have no real aim brought the camera along with me in case of any decent views or things. We’ll seen, this train is about to terminate, so up to ground level for me.

Got to ground level and someone called who I was trying to meet, so heading north now. I’m annoyed someone else who lives around where I’m heading appears to have lost their phone and I have no way of contacting them. Been wanting to chat to them as we always have good conversation.

Stuck listening to that Soul Tech mix, it’s great.

So hopefully an old work friend will call in a bit and we’ll have drinks in my local,  not seen them in quite a while.

So that was a nice visit to see a friend. We had a good chat, tea and gaming. Heading back home. Currently listening to Spinns show from the end of last month.

So bus section completed. Joy! Currently sitting on the tube, pondering life the universe and games. Gonna play some when I’m home.

On shift again tomorrow so up at before 7am tomorrow, going to go out with a friend afterwords; well I’m in a state of indecision as to whom I go and meet, but I think I have made up my mind partially and then I’ll take Monday off.. A Monday off is great, laziness at home. Time to walk off the train.

All home testing out new firefox beta, so far so good. Seems quicker in handling the JS side of things.

Time for some games me thinks.

What has the last couple of days been like? Interesting, to say the least.

Work has been chaos busy, especially today; maintenance at the start of my shift, therefore cleanup after and then massive egress drops in the realm of 8GB. NOT my fault, but still chaos.

Yesterday I met with an old friend whom I havn’t seen in over 2 years, wow. We met and we fell back into chatting, I find it so easy to discuss things with them. It really was nice. So we ended up eating, drinking and chatting till 2am. It was a little weird at the start but I cannot impress upon you that it was so easy. We just kinda gel.

I paused writing this post last night as I was interrupted by a person, whom with I had a good chat. Then eventually I was met by two friends from my old work. We had fun. I now wake and warm myself to working, I’m on shift today 08:00 till 16:00. Still I will have a lazy monday who knows about sunday
evening…

I havn’t checked my work email yet, but I really hope it’s in a better state than yesterday. At the moment I have no more to say; I’m sure I did at the beginning of writing this, but it’s either been vented or forgotten.

Time for toast.

Today was definatly a day of more crunching, the shift in the USA I took over from at 8am didn’t seem to have actually focused on the alerts. We started of with about 90! I find it exceedingly irritating as when I am primary, my sole goal is to get that page empty; not that that occurs often! So over the day we battled with this, as well as code deployment, yet still managed to get the number of alerts to under 10 by 4pm! I was hoping to get to zero, but that is neigh on impossible when there are something like 20,000 servers being monitored.

Our office is different this week, we have visitors from the USA, they are over here in preparation for the new Dublin office; doing interviews, etc. So our normal population of 5 men in the office is offset by 4 women chatting to possible employees on the phone. Makes the office different, including limiting the amount of swearing we can do; the HR manger for the satallite offices is in the room

Ahh, my bottle of Westons Organic Cider is now being consumed as I sit on the train from Paddington to Ealing Broadway, am actually heading onto Hayes/My old work local to meet with friends. I couldn’t be arsed to wait for the next direct train so will wait on the platform in Ealing for a bit. I was surprised how easy it was for me to get an extension ticket to goto Hayes, I was expecting the ticket sales guy to be all confused. I guess more people do it than I imagine.

Time from a break from writing and drinking instead

So I am back drinking, but now outside the old work local waiting for peeps to finish.

It’s surprising how well my mind/thoughts changed as I walked through Stockley Park. I guess that I do really have fond memories of this wierd business park place. It’s not got much to offer, but I remember things in a good light. Anyone from my old company understands that I didn’t leave for negative reasons, but I am surprised at myself! Then again I had a message from someone in the Accounting department today asking how I know one of his friends, well it is because I work with him in the new job and he didn’t know that I had left!
Time check… 5 to the hour, I guess they are nearly ready to walk the 3 minute journey to the pub! I cannot see them though. Oh and I’m still listening to lots of Carl Matthas’ shows from Bassdrive. I really cannot say how much they put me in a good mood.

Well my mood today was annoyed as per the alerts, but I am still feeling in very good spirits. I think it goes hand in hand with me being more carefree. Now that I have made this change of being single again I cannot see me in a relationship for a while, I am really liking the aspect of being random, and
not the random you have with anyone else, the purely selfish randomness. I choose, I want, I know I know, that it is selfish, but I cannot avoid how that thought enters my mind. And I am sure that I am not alone in that feeling.

Ok I think I have exhausted my typing for the moment, plus I need to roll a ciggy. I’m not sure if this blog post is finished, we’ll see…

I have had an interesting evening with my old peers; we chatted about almost anything. And in fact I was the rant vent for one friend for an hour and a half. He needed to discuss his concerns, we used todo this all the time. We were the ranting pair. I guess he misses that to a degree. (If that is my own ego; humpf. At least I can admit I have ego!) (( Don’t know where that was directed, probably to myself. )) Back on tack I think that he is half correct with his concerns; but to a degree it’s an impossible game, because it is all a political game.

That last paragraph took me a few hours to finish typing, I’ll post it in the morning. Sorry you have to wait!

Cheers,
Dan.

Well not espically flavoursome alerts, nothing critical. The day kinda just passed without too many fires. I think we even managed to keep the number of active alerts under 30! Which is a huge improvment upon a few weeks ago. I can see that we will eventually reach a point we the number is so low that we can trust each alert and start to SMS alert, and therefore not have to watch a web
interface to the alert system.

In talking with one of my collueages a while back about what they used at his company they actually reached the point where there is no manual deployment of servers. The system knows the load/peaks/demand for the services and if a node falls over it automagially re-images it, well if the hardware is borked it would re-purpouse another machine to take it’s role. I have been thinking
about this for a while and it would be an extreamly efficent way of handling the whole kaboodle that is the chain that has to occur in the case of new hardware being provisioned or the re-purposing of existing. It can cause headaches, espcially if someone accidently makes a typo in the Bind
configuration; that has been know to take the site offline before… It is something that I would like to possibly start working towards; although is a massive project, at least if feels massive. If I start to break the task down into chunks I am sure I could manage it. Let’s see.

Too tired to join colluages on a meal tonight; it’s a shame as some of the folk from the US offices are over at the moment. So the evening looks like Mario Kart; I am turning into a bad bad Sys. Admin who plays games in the evening. Still they are fun.

Acton Town stop, I think I have written enough now. Have a good evening. Oh and Happy Birthday Jens!

Cheers,
DanB

Ok so anyone I have spoken to f2f knows what I mean. I cannot do the same as I used to, the views of my work env. I have to kinda keep limited to a degree. (I wish I could do more; well you know I would!) I am enjoying this environment, but it’s hard work. The structure is not the same; if it exists..

I can see how this will move forward; things will improve on the orga side; things will get better. It just takes some expirance to affect the change. And that is going to be affected by the new team. We are not in the same environment; we have exp. And we are not scared, infact we make others scared. We don’t mean to but we don’t see the logic. We see the disorganisation and we are scared. We want it to be more efficent.

And on life; well life. It’s a game, tomorrow is today and yesterday was today. (Sh1t that kinda makes sense.) Anyway ramble over, time for a roll-up and a bottle of beer.