Why’s the Rum Gone?

So its Christmas, Well OK it’s not actually Christmas Day or anything, It is however the last working day at the Asylum.

FREEEEEDOM!!!!

Now in the current financial climate, with customers going Bust, People spending less, the ready cash flow for the asylum is a bit on the bare side, so there is no bonus’s or such this year. Now one of the company directors has  bought every member of the Asylums staff a “Bottle of Wine” for Christmas, Which is a nice gesture, and as a director it represents the company.

The only problem is, He decided to get every member of the Asylum a gift, with the exception of the Two members of the SysAdmin department.

This man really needs to read the BOFH. He would then know how BAD an idea it is to annoy the Admin.

Next Year should be interesting.

CN

BTW: Merry Christmas One and All.

Ghosts At The Insane Asylum

It seems the Insane Asylum is haunted, or we have the worlds weirdest burglars.

Last night as i made my bid for freedom I left Gawain my trusty work desktop recompiling its kernel, and doing other re-compiles of parts of its OS. I know it was doing this as the screens were scrolling with code as i switched off the monitors by the switches on their front.  I then left the Asylum at the same time as DemonP, which left two inmates left in the building who left not long after us. Now they set the alarm and locked up the building. All was well!

This morning I entered my padded cell, hit the buttons on Gawains monitors to check my social networking sites before work began… NOTHING… I press them again, and they remain blank. “Ok” I thought “My machine crashed over night” So i hit the power button on Gawain… NOTHING… Hummm? Power cut? No, everything else is working. So I investigate more and discover the extension lead that powers my desktop, monitors, switch, VoIP phone had been switched off at the wall.  Now the socket is semi behind my desk, and blocked by the wedged open door, in other words “Impossible to be accidentally switched off” besides it was still on when I left the night before.

ARSE! That’s a tad annoying” says I. Ok the exact words I may have used were not quite that polite. Right, switch the socket back on, power up the machine only for it to sit at the maintenance prompt due to disk errors. Get them fixed, and have to kick off the re-compiles to repair the damage caused by a unscheduled  power off mid compiling. So far I have spent all day trying to get my desktop back up and running.

SO I checked with the two guys who left the Asylum after me last night, both deny switching off the power and say they would never do such a thing as they know the problems it would cause. (I should take a second to explain here that one is a sheep following the new-age hippie flock at the minute and keeps moaning we should switch off all electrical devices at night to save the planet).  So no one turned it off, which leaves us the following options.

1) Ghosts: The Asylum is haunted with an odd poltergeist who’s only presence to date is switching one power switch to the off position.

2) Burglars: Last night some burglars picked the locks on the main building, then picked the secondary locks on the secure part of the Asylum, disabled the alarms and gained entry.  They then did not steal any of the expensive equipment that’s all over the place, but just switched off one power socket before resetting the alarms, re locking the doors, and leaving.

ghost

CN

Violence has its place.

Today I was reminded why I make it a policy to be unarmed in the office.  The extra time needed to find a suitable weapon gives my temper time to loose its edge. And on days like today every second gained helps keep people alive…

Now I’ve been busy all week, my current work load is stacked miles high, so I’m not in the happiest of places to begin with.  So imagine my annoyance when a support phone call comes through to my desk (I am way down the hunt group list, so a lot of people who’s job it is to answer the phones must have ignored their phones for it to come to me.) So I get disturbed from my work to take the call, to find the person on the other end chasing up one of our engineers who was supposed to be doing a job that morning, only has forgotten.

So I try and put the call through to the director in charge of support, who asks me to take the guys name & number, create a support ticket, give it to him and he will phone the guy back. “Now am I the only one thinking, WTF? they guy is on the phone, we don’t need to get his number so we can phone him at cost to us, he’s on the line!” but ok, the guys a director so. I take the details, make the ticket, and go tell the guy its there…

Then after the cut off time to phone the customer back the director asks “have you got his email addy?” err nope, wasnt asked for that, not need an email address to PHONE a guy back. then the director tells me i should have collected more info, and not just made a ticket, but also emailed him so he knew the ticket was there. (I thought walking into his office to tell him it was there should have been enough)

I’m sorry, but when did i become a Fraking Secretary?

Some days are good!

In the velvet darkness, of the blackest sky

lightning

All morning the skies above the Insane Asylum have been dark & brooding as we are sat under a Thunder Storm. Now this is not necessary a bad thing,  OK. So my dogs are outside getting drenched, OK I will spend longer driving home at the end of the day, OK parents with their kids off school will be cursing the weather, and other Bad things I can understand.

But there is a light in the darkness of everybody’s life..

What is that positive light I hear you ask. Yes I heard you, thanks to a flashplayer plugin on this site it recorded your statement, and emailed it to me over to my iPhone. No! I will not go do that to myself. Behave!!!

Well to answer your none-rude question, The positive light is ;- I work for an ISP, which means computer, technology, things that need power to work, and since the storm keeps taking out either our electricity or our Internet connection, it means I get to spend the day sitting back, playing on the Internet via my iPhone. ;o)

Life Is Good!

CN.

Have you ever been stuck in a revolving door.

OK. Over at the Techno Insane Asylum we have a small problem. Our Windows Systems Administrator has left, and left our windows servers in a bit of a state. So we need some urgent work doing, to rectify about 6 years worth of neglect…

Now our biggest problem is, no ones been appointed the new systems administrator, so currently theres even less work being done than there was. Now this has recently come to a head as an important customer has requested a service we cant currently provide without some urgent work.

So we’ve had a couple of meetings now to try and sort out whats needed, and in what order they need doing. and when we can do them, the only thing we have not discussed is, getting a Windows System Administrator to do the work…

So todays meeting went along the lines of working out what was needed, The director chairing the meeting then decided the best thing we could do to quickly get ourselves up to speed, was to ignore the half dozen or so windows servers we have out in the field and deploy a Windows 2008 server, fully up to date, to meet our customers needs. So we can put the other stuff on the back bone.. All sorted and decided..

Now, we just need a windows administrator to build the 2008 server (which no one in the asylum has ever used) so we can get it out and running to save us having to pick a windows administrator….

At this point in the meeting (after checking I was not armed and able to put them out of my misery) I retreated into my own little world…

Work: The End Is here.. T-1 days

Well today is Plaetpete’s last day in the office. So far we have spent most the morning moving furniture around the building, but are yet to discover where he has dug his escape tunnel…

I have a theory he is being a pesky tricky ninja, and we’ll never find his tunnel, as he’ll go all ninjaesq and walk out the front door as we all try and find his escape route.

Well I think the company will miss him, as the git has packed up most the fun and insanity and is taking it with him. So the place will be a less enjoyable building.

Ok, truth be known. We’ll miss Jeff the Wonder Dog!!

But in a rare moment of seriousness..

Have fun in your new place mate!