well, Annanova certainly proves to twitch my soapbox nerve yet again,  SPIN - I have to say, personally I would rather live the life of a mushroom, if this money was being fed into VITAL areas like Medicine, NHS or Education?! 

Is it really too subtle an idea?

This Bank Holiday weekend, I discovered a new form of sewerage waste.  Which proved and interesting challenge, for disposing of.  You see when I transferred Mister Guinea-Pig to his outdoor hutch, I left his deluxe indoor penthouse appartment outside the back too, well, I thought nothing of it, until all the recent days of torrential rain and all, ok - harmless you say?  Now add this rain to the old bedding half eaten carrots, and Guinea-Pig poo and you get a recipe for disaster on a scale to rival Chernobol.

Left alone it didn’t smell, but as soon as it was disturbed it’s true nature was revealed, now of course I had to dispose of this in a way as not to annoy the neighbours, (impossible on the face of it) - and this would have been easy had I got a downstairs loo. 

In the end, I seived out as much water as I could in the kitchen sink, then I played a delicated balancing game; making sure I didn’t cause any industrial spillage in the house,  as I carried the base full of … “stuff” … up to the toilet on the landing.  Let’s just say, it was touch and go for a couple of minutes; but mission accomplished and a most offensive mixture sent on it’s merry way.

…and yes of course!  lessons learned :P 

It’s official - we now only have 8 planets in the Solar System.  According to Annanova it’s all been agreed at some big wig convention of stargazers; guess I will have to throw out all my old encyclopedia’s now because they are so wrong. 

I am really saddened by this, but at the same time curious - I wonder if this is how the world reacted when scientists agreed it was no longer flat but round? 

*One muses to himself*

Well, I guess it doesn’t do much to change the price of fish?

According to Annanova - “Public Health Minister Caroline Flint announced on Tuesday her new role to make Britain’s couch potatoes fitter, working with several Government departments”

Well, on the face of it, I am in favour of such a scheme, as long as she doesn’t just attack the “symptoms” of the general trend in obiesity - things like increased professional stress and depression that often drive people to comfort eat…not to mention home-owner’s stress over increasing utilities and council tax bills!  Need I go on?

…Sigh, I watch with bated breath; and if I don’t see something positive out of this government soon, I’m headed for the fridge

Hmmm…bit if a post drought going on, however - I think I have found the perfect signature for my work emails now:-

“Aspice, officio fungeris sine spe honoris amplioris.”

I’ll give you a clue - it’s in latin…but pretty good none the less!

First of all I apologise for getting a geeky - being a technical support engineer, it comes with the territory and whilst I cannot be specific in the following narrative suffice to say, this was one of the few moment’s of job satisfaction I have had in a while

I was given the mother of all faults on Monday to deal with and have had a couple of late nighters as a result of the sensitive nature of my client.  Anyhoo - I put in a temporary fix and set out on my quest for the root cause of the fault. 

I did this by building a mini approximation of the client’s network in a lab - No no no!! no mad flashy lights, or volatile chemicals here please! In my case a lab is simply a bunch of routers and a switch plugged into each other.

Anyways, by doing this I was able to play to my hearts content at replicating the fault without affecting the operational network.  It certainly paid dividends in my opinion in that it increased my understanding of a very robust routing protocol and it’s interaction with other routing protocols, in this current case I was dealing with BGP with routes learned from OSPF if you don’t know what these are then tough, I am too tired to explain

Since I played on the lab for the last day and a bit, I was able to identify a flaw in the routing; and tonight I got the opportunity from my client to prove the theory on the live network - Yay!!  It worked! My kudos get’s increased, though I say it all the time, this was still a team effort and I didn’t acheive my wonderful results all on my own, I got one or two crucial nudges from colleagues within my team that helped get to the end result.

though humbleness aside I did 90% of the work to prove this!! So there

In other news I have decided to get a Flickr account since so many people have one, and here’s what I have so far:-  Geese I will figure out integration with the blog at a later date, though I already have the latest plug in for it - I would partially blame Nikki for this but really it’s to do with a competition on BBC 1 for taking snaps of wildlife and whilst my first entry of a goose, isn’t technically Homegrown widllife - I “am” working on it ok!!

You know, diets come and go; however it’s the wasteline that has the truth to show.  All this comfort eating I have been doing of late has had it’s toll.  I think I hit “critical mass” this weekend.  Somewhere still between 15 and 16 Stone. 

It is proving so much harder to lose weight than the first time around.  I will not pay some 3rd party upwards of £40 a month either as that is the average cost of a gym membership these days. 

I just can’t afford it.  Even if I could I doubt I would spend that much - it’s an extortionate price; you do the math - how many people can fit in the gym at any one time?  over 100?  Spending on average 1-2 hours not a bad income £400 per hour.  Now I bet you the average wage there isn’t any more than £8.50/hour?  Most or all of the equipment was paid for from initial capital investment, which means that it wouldn’t take “that” long to pay it off even with the maintenance costs.  Oh and I almost forgot this doesn’t include all the “joining” fee of anywhere from £10 to £50 depending on which gym you join, plus the fact that many gyms will “financially” tie you into that membership for a full 12 months (what are we mobile phones?).

pah! Oh well, guess I’ll just stick to being a lard-arse.

For goodness sake! Airport Closed in wake of terror plot! - the plain (sorry about pun) and simple fact is that the “precautionary” security measures enforced have added to delays, meaning the airport(s) fast run out of space for any more planes, leaving them little or no choice but to close to any further incoming flights….hardly “Hollywood blockbuster” material is it? 

Crikey how dramatic.