I Owe My Mother!!

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My mother taught me LOGIC.
" Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My mother taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"

15 My mother taught me about ENVY.
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home"

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING
"You are going to get it when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP.
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25. My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!"


I was reading this article (not a daily occurrence I assure I) and it got me thinking. Would that work? How much of the world could they document and calculate before it changed and how/who keeps it updated? Seems like far too much work to me :)

Todays quest:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions

'For example, if you specify ike_hybrid_user_timeout (100), the actual time allocated for user authentication may be as long as 136 seconds.' - Getting Started Guide, Checkpoint Secure Virtual Network



My new server case. It's plain but functional. And it should turn up on Thursday. Along with some fans and stuff. The plan for the layout of the drives is as below:

5.25 DVD
5.25 DVD-RW
5.25 -
5.25 Rheobus
3.5 fdd
3.5 10gb (boot)
3.5 -
3.5 80gb (raid-0 stripe 1)
3.5 80gb (raid-0 stripe 1)
3.5 80gb (raid-0 stripe 2) (to be purchased)
3.5 80gb (raid-0 stripe 2) (to be purchased)

Now is that fucking geeky or what! Posting my drive layout in the case to the interweb for people to see.

I need to get out more!

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[link]   Posted @ 12:25

Todays Friday Five that I participated in was asking about what I do as a job, what I like about it, what I dislike about it, what makes a bad day and what would I really like to be doing.

It got me thinking about what I have done and where I am going.

In 1998 I left IBM to seek my fortune. I was earning �30K at the time. I went contracting for 18 months and then smashed my leg up. Then Lucent (the company I was contracting to) offered me a permanent job. They made me redundant in 2002 when I was earning �50K a year. I'm now working for HP (notice the major companies here) for about the same as I was in 1998. Is that progress? Is it fuck?

I'm gonna make something of myself, again, I think. HP at least has the opportunity for (as a technology company) to get myself noticed for what I am and what I can do. The job is guaranteed redundancy free for 2 years with a 3rd years income if it happens during the 3rd year. Thats pretty secure in my books. I wouldnt get that anywhere. So I'm thinking, maybe I should use that to my advantage.

What can I achieve at HP in the next 2 years? What should I specialise in? What training should I take to maximise my options? Damn it - I wanna get somewhere in my career as well as my life. Been coasting for too long...

On another note, I havent called to see if I am getting the kids this weekend. Why not? Because Bimbo (see the retrogression here?) has accused me (via her solicitors) me of ringing constantly and threatening violence. Wonders will never cease. I have deliberatly stayed away and only phoned once a week, thinking to myself "Last year, she went potty and accused of everything under the sun. Bet she does it again, so I'll be super-squeaky..." and I'm right.

Thank god for Shell keeping me sane (get well soon love) and keeping my head in the right direction. I just hope some of my friends who have befriended Bimbo and Dumbo (heh heh - just though of that one) see the truth - again!

This has been a public announcement from Tudor's "Its Friday and I'm Going Home" Head. Have a good weekend all, whatever you are doing. And Roger - keep up with the computer stuff - it interests me :)

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[link]   Posted @ 16:34

Shell has been signed off work for a week.
She has a the beginning of septicemia(sp?) from her cheek piercing and a spasming muscle in her chest. Which explains the sore jaw, shoulder pain and chest pains, that have prevented her from sleeping well the past week. Get well soon love!

Found a way to possibly get my ADSL router to work in a mode to allow a linux box (running FreeSCO or Smoothwall) to be the firewall/gateway machine again. YAY!

Or I could just attach the Alcatel Speedtouch ADSL modem to it and run a huge length of RJ11 down the stairs instead...

Off to see 'Shaun of the Dead' tonight. Looking forward to that. The weekend holds 2 days of tidying and cleaning for me. The landlord said that month that he wants to come and do an inspection next month when the rent is due. Shell has done a shit load of it - just me and Tim to do the rest. Including the gardening :(

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[link]   Posted @ 14:37

First there was 10 Worst Album Covers of All Time. Then there was More Worst Album Covers. Excellent.

Check out Pork Tornado. Thx to Fairmania for pointing me to them, although I might have linked the first one before.

And Tom pointed me to a great comic - Men In Hats. Spent ages laughing at those. Hasnt been running for long (unlike Real Life and Sloggy - which I must catch up with) but I love it.

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[link]   Posted @ 09:40

I'm fairly sure I have done this before, but I need to do it again. I'm just about to buy another 80gb drive to go into the server (to join the 80gb from my main machine). This will mean that I will have to move the XP boot partition (and other drives) from my 80gb (master) to the 40gb (slave). I think I did this before with Partition Magic or Drive Image Pro or even Norton Ghost (I have them all)... but I cant remember what I used.
I did it before when I moved from a 40gb to the current 80gb. I only need to move the C: drive over as the other partitions can be backed up to the server (just in case). Can someone let me know which one? Running XP with NTFS partitions.

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[link]   Posted @ 15:10

First item of the day is to apologise for the heading on Fridays entry "Saturday". I have no idea why I wrote that, I suspect (and hope) that it was due to me thinking it was Saturday because I had a day off work. Yes - that sounds pretty plausible, so I will stick to that one.

Shell and I were meant to be going out on Friday night, but I managed to destroy that plan completely by falling asleep from 6.30 til 22.00! Thats unheard of - I didnt even know I was tired when I laid down on the bed and next thing I know - its waay late. So we didnt go out.

Nor did we go out on Saturday night, as neither of us felt like it. We just spent the day doing nothing, sleeping, playing scabble, watching BTVS on DVD, etc. We did the same on Sunday - absolutely nothing. Apart from going to the pub in the evening to see the Open Stage night at Cheers/Back Bar. A guest drummer who was fantastic *and* sang - quite a change. Unfortunately, Bimbo and Dumbo turned up later on - Bimbo had a face like thunder when she saw me, but I wasn't bothered in the slightest. Some of the time I seethe with what she is putting my kids through (I would put more, but its all going to court now, so I won't) but when I'm with Shell, they just dont bother me there and then. I have more important things to do in my life than rant and rave at a person who needs mental help.

Monday - we did actually do something in the afternoon. We went to Backwell Lake and fed the ducks, geese and swans. Aren't swans awesome? Massive bastards but so, so graceful. Shell made friends with a couple of the ducks and wanted to take them home, but I pointed out that we couldnt due to the rules of the tenancy agreement. She was also "growled" at by one of the geese - had me stitches to ages. Growling Geese...

We went to Shells mums for dinner, watched some more BTVS and I also multi-regioned their new DVD player (which Su had bought specifically for this, as their expensive DVD/Video combo isnt hackable). She'd bought the Dual DVD858 from ASDA, and it used exactly the same hack as the Pacific 1002/1003 and Scheider DVD857 boxes - Open/Close, Clear, 1, 3, 6, 9, 0, Open/Close. Result!

Got an upgrade to the network to do this morning at work - install a 48port ethernet blade into a Cisco 6509 chassis. The whole thing is hot-swappable, hot-installable and everything. We have done a couple before (in 2002), yet people are still worried it might have an impact on the network! Aargh!

I'd really like to have a rant about the situation with the kids, but I can't do it in such a public forum (you never know who might be reading) when going to court. Maybe I should start up a password protected private area for my more "interesting" subjects....

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[link]   Posted @ 09:38

Beat Ben at snooker last night 2-1. All the games were damn close, and both of us managed to put some reasonable breaks together. I think we might actually be improving, although the table (Table 2) was atrocious. Ben is away on holiday next week, so we have booked for the following week - on a different table!

This morning, after dropping Shell at work, I once again dismantled my PCs and moved the hard disks around. The server now has a 10gb boot drive and a 160gb RAID-0 array. And its damned fast :)

The main PC now has an 80gb and a 40gb in it as I didnt see the need for massive amounts of storage on the main PC when I can fit shit loads into the server. I've seen a new case that can hold 7, yes, 7 3.5" devices. As I already have a nice beefy PSU that can support them all - I'm damn tempted. Its also a better layout than my existing case, so I can add some cooling to it. That way I could have 4 80gb drives in a RAID-0 - giving me 320Gb of network storage. I'm sure that should do me for a while. Next months pay packet is buying me a case, an 80mm fan and 2x 80gb drives.

My mate Ian (who I tried contacting yesterday, but was unable to) is in hospital! He had a pain in the stomach from Sunday and then went to casualty when it got worst and has now had an operation on his appendix! So I'm gonna go see him this afternoon. When you get home mate - get well soon.

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[link]   Posted @ 09:40

Hehe. I found Rogers blog here and it will be going up on the left tonight when I get home and remember to upload the new code. Hi Roger :) Now to find his website...

Hmm. Thats got me wondering whether I could upload code from my Citrix session inside HP from my web browser here in BoI. If I could...

EDIT Found it! And interestingly - another PKD fan... Plus "The Simpsons, Absolutely, Ab Fab, Naked Video, The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Far Side, Garfield, South Park, Caroline in the City, Frasier" - crikey. This is getting quite scary! Major fan of all of them apart from Ab Fab and South Park.

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[link]   Posted @ 14:36

Well I installed the "Intel Application Accelerator" yesterday evening and now my machine flies faster than a fast thing thats been strapped to the fastest rocket on National Fast Rocket Day in Rocketsville, Arizona. Or something...

Unfortunately, I've had to start reinstalling all my apps and drivers again due to the reformat (which I needn't have done!) and the machine is slowly coming back to normal. My new DVDRW can also burn at 4x speed now, which it wasnt capable of before, due to only being able to sustain 2x reading from the drive.

I ran the performance tests again last night (I use PerformanceTest V5.0) and the drives are faster than the ATA100 drive in the server, but not quite as fast as the striped raid array in the server.

What annoys me the most is Intel. Why provide the motherboard drivers in one package and the IDE drivers in another completely seperate package that seems to be something else, yet all it contains is the IDE stuff? Eh? How madcap is that? Its like releasing a spreadsheet program that is called "Kettle Monitor v7.0"!

Shell has improved dramatically over the last day or so. She slept virtually all day yesterday and thats given her body time to deal with it all. She woke up this morning (twice, which I shall come to shortly) bright eyed and bushy tailed. Still not 100% but miles better.

At 2.30am this morning, we were awoken by shouting coming from my house mates room, where Emma and Tim were arguing. We waited for a bit, in the hope it was short lived, but eventually Shell went down and had a go at them. It stopped and then they left the house! God knows where they went at 3am in the morning...

I'll get some links up later on, when I can be arsed to search out some weird and wacky ones.

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[link]   Posted @ 09:28

From a friend - Paul:

"...having large tits doesn't automatically stop you from being a complete fucking minger."

Class :)

I also put an overtime claim in today to cover January, February and March: 38 hours. Thats a whole week and a bits extra pay. Yeehaw! Of course, most of it will disappear in tax and NI - bastards!

Just thought of another thing. Bimbo asked me not to t/f the CSA money into her account anymore as it had been closed down. So I agreed to pay by cheque, but she isnt answering my calls in order for me to arrange to go round and give the damn cheque to her. Doh!

On a slightly better (or more concerning note), Shell got her blood test results back. They were testing it for something to do with her thyroid. They found nothing. Nothing? They must have found something surely - it was blood - not water! She gets incredibly bad stomach aches on an almost continual basis - especially when she eats vegetables. Maybe I'll take her to get allergy tested at a place I know in Nailsworth. Get myself done again while I'm there.

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[link]   Posted @ 15:07