Tuesday 14th March 2006: "oh and father christmas has come a callin'......."

Lo all yup me again... another tale to tell of woe and woe.....

07:00 Up with the lark today..ok that's a complete lie. Radar on automatic and I've only bashed into two door frames on the way to making the tea. This training is all very well but I miss out on at least 1/2 an hour of sleep...tch....

08:10: On the road now after my trip to the garage...petrol to put in, pineapple juice to buy (what the hell eh?)

09:15: Made it to the NCraP car park, that is literally spitting distance from the place where the course is. I check the tariff board this time and discover that it's not exactly that much different to the train station one....My reckoning is that this will cost me about £10-11 to park all day...I'm already preparing myself for the "why didn't you just get the train" etc etc questions...

10:00: Training is well and truly underway. I neglected to mention that someone with the same name as me is also on this course...odd very odd...I still can't quite understand it.
I'm also slightly embarrassed by the fact that everyone at the course seems to know someone else on the course, i.e. their firm has decided that more than one person should know this stuff, unlike DBD.

10:30: First break of the day so I collect my coffee (having of course first raced through the 'lab' modules (experiments you have to do). I decide it'll be a good idea to check my mail...After punching in my username and password about 100 times I finally get in. Quiet Rob has sent me the question of the day which I haven't a hope in answerring, thanks for that Rob. There's also an email from Basra Hollohead, indicating that he's having a real problem with the WebNonsense reporting server....to which Nunob has responded by very cleverly say "See I told you it should have been reimaged..." yes that's quite right, in fact it wasn't actually you Nunob now was it ? It was in fact Luish (I don't know but that's how they pronounce it), and if I'm not mistaken, you asked for it to be reimaged about 2 hours before I went home on the Friday before it was due to get sent to the MFI loco. Now all of a sudden it's a "I told you so" it's got to be because it had ISNA installed on it....Well if I actually cared that much I'd respond in kind, but since my new tactic is to not give a toss, I let it slide. I email Basra and basically say that if it needs to be reimaged then we need to get the box back...I really don't fancy another loco trip next week....

10:45: Back to the Squeel course and it's trainer Bill Oddie the 2nd...he's waffling on about RAID and about the different types of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, really nothing clever to worry about), but I know a thing or two about this....and can't help blurting out that RAID 0 isn't actually RAID, then we get into a "oh yes it is....." and a " microsoft actually recommend RAID 0....." war of words...the old DBA vs SYS ADMIN war of words about this...I put them in place by very slowly explaining the meaning of the acronym R.A.I.D and pointing out that if there is no redundancy then it's actually an A.I.D not a R.A.I.D by definition...they just stare through me...well I'm sorry but if someone is going to talk bollox then I feel it my duty to humanity to talk them through it and show them the error of their ways....Rob I hope you're reading this ;-).

12:45: Lunch...I make a break for it...thinking cleverly that I'd sit in the car and listen to the RADIO but no, MW radio (or FM for that matter) doesn't seem to work very well inside a multi-storey car park, I toy with the idea of running a piece of wire connected to the aerial of the car to outside the car park but quickly decide the better form of valour is to admit defeat and trudge back into the building and eat my Sainsbury's Garage sandwiches there, amongst the strange people....

14:00: Back from lunch..the course resumes and I so can't keep my eyes open...I mean we are talking about roles and security....

15:00: Another break !! I'm not sure quite how I've made it this far but I have....

16:30: "now you can complete the exercises now or first thing......" he doesn't even get the whole sentance out and most of the class including me are up on their feet....I make it back to the car park slide in the ticket, it says £11:60 I gulp give it my credit card and finally leave.

17:10: I've just made it back in, Colin our financial advisor is coming to sell us, sorry see us. I've spotted that we're paying way over the odds for our life assurance and we're trying to save money so we can afford our loft conversion, so this should be interesting. Mandy has cooked sausages but with my red wine sauce (she's made it)...I have to admit that her effort is better than mine !!! This isn't on.....