The service times of me

Well that was another week

2009-03-15T16:43:00.002Z

Well it was another interesting week in school. The big event is that the school is getting a new finance manager. While this may seem good it means that we had to create a new office for them by converting a classroom in an extension. All well and good, however when the person starts Monday and we didn't start getting things for the office till Friday Morning you can see that there may be a problem! Mainly that we then have to get furniture from Ikea, build it, move out the old furniture then I can start the IT jobs of installing and reconfiguring the computers and telephones for the room. All told I was in work until 8.10pm Friday after a 7.30am start. Hardcore day!! on the plus side I've had a full weekend instead of having to go in Saturday to finish the job.

Church today was OK again. I came away feeling uplifted, which is the main thing I guess! Other than that its shaping up to be another fun week-lots of training to be done and lots to work on but otherwise it should be fun! :)

A Long Pause

2009-03-06T19:48:00.002Z

Well, it seems that was a very long day (Though I'd beet Saxon to the punch there....)
Work is going well. Turns out the first few days back were very hectic with all kinds of little problems raising their heads. Mainly little simple things, like monitors not being plugged in. The best is someone saying "My computers not working" me, after walking in, turning it on and saying "There you go all fixed"

Things since that have been good. I'v learnt how to deploy software using MSI files, rather than installing it to every computer using a CD. When you ave 125 computers to manage, this is a good thing!
I've also learnt how servers work and have become familiar with all kinds of things. Also I work with the children a lot, helping teach the ICT lessons in lower primary.
This week was great fun-it was World Maths day Wednesday, and because of this we set up all of the schools laptops in the main Hall to allow everyone to have a go on the website, competing with other children all over the world. IT was hard work to set up and take down but the amount of fun they had made it all worth while!
It was also a good chance to stress test the internet and wireless network.
IT was interesting to see the reports from the firewall we have. On a normal day we use about 1.8GB of bandwidth. Wednesday we used 3.2GB-quite an increase!

Well thats the highlights of my experiences so far as a network administrator. Tune in later for more exciting updates!

Well that wasn't too difficult....

2008-09-16T20:13:00.002+01:00

Well readers (or possibly reader, im not sure at this point.....) today was my second day in my new role as IT support at the international school here in Luxembourg. The last couple of days have run fairly smoothly with no major problems. I've fixed several white boards and made several software programs work. The major problem was the network DNS then playing up and all the office staff complaining they couldn't access their emails. Turns out this was a problem that required a consult from my technical advisers and eventually resulted in a reboot of the server. Good times had by all overall....
Well tomorrow the children come back to school and i expect many problems to raise their head once all the equipment is back in use. I've tested most of it so i don't think there will be too many problems but we shall have to see what happens!
Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting update!

So I have arrived

2008-09-09T22:30:00.003+01:00

SO it seems i have arrived safley in Luxembourg. The trip over here was fun and ended up as a 27 hour day for me! I started my last ever shift at work on Saturday Morning. I was up at 3am as i started just after 4am ready to open the restaraunt at 5am. After opening we had no customers in until about 6.10am, proving the point that opening that early in Loughborough is pointless as nobody wants to buy McDonalds that early in the morning. I ran a good whift and then as a final present got to leave early, just after 12. I said godbye to everyone then ventured out into the rain to walk up to my car feeling a little emotional as my 7 years at McDonalds drew to a close.
AFter i got to the car i drove back to the HArdys to finish packing everything. After packing all my things, i then got a call asking me to go to Curys and collect the bike Nicholas left there, as Mum and DAd were running late. Eventually they drove down to meet me and collect everything at about 5.30pm. We then loaded up the cars and headed south. The rain abated while we loaded but as we drove south it turned into, as Saxon described it 'Mega Death Rain' This is capitalised as it was that bad. At this point i'd had a nap while Mum and Dad drove down to Loughborough from Bradford and so Dad and I were driving. We were up gainst it as our ferry was booked for 9.20, meaning we had to be there at 8.50 and we didnt leave Loughborough till 6pm. The Satnav said the journey would take 3hrs 15 min. Despite this and the weather Dad and I pused on safely and drove at speeds appropiate to the prevailing road conditions managing to arrive at Dover at 8.50. At this point we checked in both cars and then were told that due to the weather the ferry ws delayed until 10.40. This meant we waited in the cars at the terminal safe from the mega death rain. We did venture out once, Blackwidow and I, to visit the service area there and purchase burgers from Burger King to eat with the last of our English Money. We then got loaded onto the ferry about 10.20 and went upstairs to meet up as the two cars were parked in different spots aboard. The crossing was a little rough but not too bad overall, and my family admired the secret project of Saxons making and agreed how cool it was (Saxon, photos will eventually follow!)
When we arrived in Calais at 1.10am French time Mum and Dad drove the cars and we headed off to Luxembourg at a nice steady pace. WE stopped a couple of times and i fell asleep lots but we arrived safely at our apartment at 6am and all collapsed into bed and slept till 12pm sunday, as it was stake conference that weekend and the stake centre is about 2 hours away from where we live. AFter gettin up we unloaded the cars and started to sort the apartment. Overall a fun trip and so far this week has been good fun overall! Futher deatails to follow, along with a report from a skirmish Saxon and I had a couple of weeks back.......

A new direction

2008-09-04T21:24:00.002+01:00

So I've taken some major decisions in the last few weeks. Prime in these is a decision to emigrate to live with my Parents in Luxembourg. As such this blog will become a place to keep friends and family up to date on whats happening in my life and what i get up to. Should be an interesting new direction me thinks!

Reflections.

2008-06-11T01:05:00.000+01:00

On reflections having posted that earlier I fel little bad now... I wonder if saxon realises that usualy nobody reads this blog so if he hadn't linked it nobody would have seen it.... Illustrates the classic conundrum with something that's leaked; do you stay quiet and hope nobody notices or make a fuss to get it removed so everyone knows???
Looking at it though made me realise that I've bought some singles and albums that I probably wouldn't admit to in polite company. On reflection the first single I bought I now look back at and realise just how embaressing it was. I was reminded of this as I cleared out the cupbard under the stairs last week and found a load of stuff.

Also another no you didn't moment occurred at work this week. A young member of staff used our rapid toaster to try cok something he shouldn't have. This toaster toasts a bun in around 15 seconds and works vertically. You drop a bun in the topand then the two halfs go down separate sides toast and rejoin at the bottom. Instead of putting bread in he put frozen chicken patties in. The word 'idiot' was used in its proper context at this point.
This event lead to the toaster having to be taken off an throughly cleaned before reuse which is a major pain in the rear end. Not a fun day though it was something new. I usually tell new staff not to worry as in the legnth of time I've been in my job I've een everything
. This was new however and proves that if you think something is idiot proof a more advanced model of idiot will waltz right over and prove you wrong.

In closing murphys law really does suck (and if your geeky enough to know the difference between that and sods law you are a true geek. And for that I salute you!)

Later!

Horriable horriable things found....

2008-06-10T16:28:00.000+01:00

Well, if you read saxons blog you probably know him and mewere clearing out his dads garage today. He has many photos to share and im sure they will appear shortly however i thought id share what I found as we were clearing I out. The horrors of this song and the mental scarring from the sheer rubbishness and irritation of this song came flooding back ;p

The graduation dance

2008-05-09T21:31:00.000+01:00

So, im at the graduation dance for insttute (a scripture study class at church) we've been taking photos and saxon said hed kill me if I put his up on the web... So you know I had to do it! I'=l fill everyone in on the es of the details lter this weekend. Also to follow is the tale of my 36 hour epic to get my final bit of uni coursework in. Good times!!

This would be so awesome...

2008-04-24T01:53:00.001+01:00

While browsing a random news aggregator, i came across a thread discussing High School Pranks. The idea below had me in stiches-partly because i know I'd fall for it myself!

Cagey B [TotalFark] 2008-04-23 01:38:58 PM
I post this in every prank thread, but the most awesome ever is when someone gets two goats, paints a "1" and a "3" on them, releases them in said school/office building/church/funeral home, and sits back and watches as the authorities go nuts looking for "2".

Pure genius!!

Another one bites the dust

2008-04-22T20:37:00.000+01:00

Well church yeaterday was good. I arrived just after sarament as blackwidow slept in and had nothing to wear and therefore tok a while to sort out!
Church was good. The lessons on king benjamin and the priesthood also were both good. After that I had a nice quit afternoon. I spent several hours on the phone to people and then atge. In the evening I had a meeting in lichfield but had to collect 2 friends from leicestter making it a nice U hour drive there and another 2 hours back! We did pass MIRA thou which is cool! Yesterday I spent working on my uni project. Another cuple of sections bit the dust so now im nearly finished which is great and as a bonus my lecturer says it looks good too :) overall a good weekend. Now I have work tonight which is a litle boring but at least I can the look foreward to institute tomorrow night!

This made me smile

2008-04-19T14:03:00.004+01:00

While on a short break from typing up my project report so i can graduate from university at last i found this rather amusing web comic from Dilbert.

several things amused me about this
number 1 is that it seems to be a description of my life sometimes
number 2 one well known "You might be an engineer if..." is that you have a dilbert on your office or cubical wall. As i have neither of these things (i have to share the office at work with all the other managers, and anyway, i should be out on the shop floor rather than in it) i think a blog is the next best thing!

Just another morning at the office

2008-03-06T10:52:00.002Z

Well this week has been interesting. Weve been a little short staffed at work due to people calling in sick. This has lead to me doing the early shift at work today. Instead of a nice normal 8-5 im now working 5.15-2pm. Fun times! Its actually nice to do an early for a change. Its ben a while since I did one and I forgot how easy and fun they are. Once you get past the getting up at 4.30 (a time which should only be seen as part of the night before) its a good laugh. Institute was also good last nigh but ill post details when im home from work!
Laters!

Sent from a mobile device probably from the office at work...

So that was the night

2008-02-17T02:00:00.002Z

After the assault of the vixens had abated i discovered that we had taken our enire projected sales for the hour in about 20mins which would make me look good atwork on Monday. Not to mention make some of the other managers little envious! The shift as a whole went well. Many drunks were served the senile old lady was mentioned over the pubwatch radio several times and we had street marshals hanging about inside the restaraunt for most of the night which ensured nobody caused any trouble! I had the last customers out of the door and the place emptied for about 00:05 and we then proceded to clean the place and i ended up gettign home a little earlier then usuall which was a good thing!
Well folks thats all for tonight. Now its time for bed before i wake for church tomorrow!!

The Vixens are here!!

2008-02-16T23:31:00.001Z

Ahh Saxon would be so jelous
I just had the pleasure of serving the entire Southampton Vixens cheerleading squad..that's about 50 cheerleaders. As they were obviously students we sorted them all out with student offers. A little friendly flirting happen as we'll I think.... All part of giving great customer service. Its amazing the attention you can command when the ladies are hungry!!

The staff have arrived

2008-02-16T22:41:00.001Z

So part 2 of the live blogging
The staff have just arrived on their way out for a night in he town centre. The ladies LN and SB made their customery pit stop to say hi on their way out. The senile lady reappeared and another large group of chavs occupied the lobby. I've also been listening in on our pubwatch radio to the fun the bouncers are having already and its only 10. Could be a fun night later!

Live blogging

2008-02-16T19:48:00.001Z

So time for the llive blogging I promised from work..
I arrived to run my saturday night shift at 3.45 and found that the day managers had done a great job of cleaning the place and getting it ready for the night. It was busy also but I had plenty of staff on. Since then the clientel of the restaurant has changed. Around 5pm the place was half full of chavs who were just hanging around without having bought anything so they were all moved along. We also had one of our regulars in. Shes a slightly deaf old lady wo is a little senile as well making her.... interesting to serve unless you have lots of patience and are good at keping people on task. Fortunatly im good at this and so I ended up serving herSince then its been fairly quiet so were getting the place clean and ready for the onslaught of drunks who will surley arrive soon....
Number of chavs kicked out...approx 25
Number of senile old ladies served 1
Number of drunks served 0
*sent from my mobile phonèwhile on a break at work*

Quote of the week so far

2008-02-16T02:11:00.001Z

"Dude keep your pants on....
No....
Really....
Please keep your pants on"
"OK fair point"
All speculation on the origin of this is welcome in the coments below. An explanation may follow in the morning!

Dead....or maybe not......

2008-02-14T00:26:00.001Z

So hows this for a treat.. not one but two blog posts in a day!
Being a wednesday we had Institute tonight. I was a little later than usuall arriving as i had to pick Y on the way and had been catchign up with a friend from university, which was good. I knew him as he lived in teh room opposite mine for a year when i was in halls. We remanisced about the Elvyn slop and teh nimber of times we went for takeouts and i drove to Dominoes for pizza after we were late for dinner and left with a particually unppealing selection!!

Institute was good as usuall. Brother H taught an excallent lesson. The first was Adjusting to married life and was just what i was expecting. I took this part of the course 4 years ago so a lot of it is reinforcing what ive learnt already, but the Eternal marriage course dosen't have as much depth as the ones on the standard works so what you see is what you get!
As i was reflecting in class today I realised how much roles in the class have changed. 4 years ago i was new to the class and the area and was learning all about things from teh first time and enjoying being away from home for the first time and trying to sort out many emotions i had and the class really helped, especially the contributions from the more experanced class members. Today I realied that I am now one of those and hwo hopefully im helping to teach those who are taking the corse for the first time.

The second class on the Old Testement was also good and i have several notes to transer to my scriptures tomorrow morning when i study. It was interesting to look at the end of Deuteronomy and realise how things can easily be mistranslated when the docterines being taught are either lost or misunderstood. Anyone who wants more details will have to ask me to explain.

Well, ite getting late now so i'd better head off to Bed. I look foreward to being able to get Saxons take on the lessons in his post tomorrow!!!

After a brief respite...

2008-02-14T00:02:00.002Z

So as you may be able to see from the dates on the last post its been a little while since i last posted... yeah....about that......
Lifes been busy i have done lots visited the family and served an awful lot of burgers. Blackwidow now has a new job selling electrical goods at a large retail chain and Institutes going well. Christmas was great and im lovin' it at work!
Works been particially enjoyable with many interesting anecdotes and more quotes. I've had both the Police and the Ambulance service attend on my shifts to deal with the members of the public who end up in the store. Theres a saying ive heard that definatly bears true on nights in a town centre. A person is Clever. People are dumb
Somethign im goign to try doing is the occasional live blogpost from work when intersting things happen.
Could be interesting.
Could be boring
Whos knows!
Tune in Later for more!!

TACOMA with a side of ORM

2007-09-08T13:27:00.000+01:00

So time for a second blogpost. As i'm sure Saxon and Fraggle can attest this blogging thing is a little harder than it first appears!! I can say that in the last 3 weeks lots has happened some of which may appear shortly here....
You can see on Saxons blog that him, Fraggle and myself went to the LDS national YSA convention over the bank holiday weekend and had great fun there. After that i returned to geeksville for 2 days before jetting off to Luxembourg to visit the parents for a week where great fun was had. While there i got a text from the boss at work saying that she was leaving :o
My first shift back was Friday this week and it was fun. I was working till 7 and then went out to the movies with Saxon J Alfred and some other people. While on the way i got a call from my brother who was at work saying they were short staffed and had had to send someone to the walkin centre as he got burnt because he wasn't wearing his PPE while cleaning a grill. Silly boy. Goes to show why we spend money buying PPE and telling the staff to wear it. I can claim a moral high ground here as i always were the proper PPE and make others do it when i see there not!

Due to there only being 2 people working for most of the shift last night my brother got hoe at about 3am and so slept in this morning. I went to take him to work and on the way home came across a man at the side of the road on the ground having a fit. This is where the blog post comes in. At work I've been first aid trained and my entire job revolves around the concept of TACOMA. Whats TACOMA i hear you cry!! Well its an acronym used by the US military and stands for TAke COntrol and Move Ahead. This is the essential aspect of Management-if you cant do this then you need to get out! I stopped The Car i was driving got out checked there was no danger to myself checked the man was breathing as there was no response when i shook him and talked to him then looked for a street sign as i called an ambulance. Another person stopped so i told them to sit with him while i was on the phone. As i was on the phone the man came round then a few minuted later the ambulance arrived in the form of an ECP in a response car. As she was on her own i waited a couple of minutes for the ambulance to arrive and then left them to do their jobs. Before the ambulance arrived someone came out from a house and got a chair for the man to sit on which was a really daft thing to do. If he'd had another fit he could have hurt himself if he fell to the floor as i was told on my first aid course and as the call taker reinforced to me. I said this however i was the youngest in a crowd of 7 or 8 people so nobody listened to me. As there were people around and he was in the chair and talking to us saying he was OK i applied a little ORM (another US term, Operational Risk Management) nd decided not to push the point-he didnt want to get out of the chair i could hear the ambulance coming and there were enough people next to the chair to catch him and place him on the ground if he had another fit. As he was OK i went and moved some cars that had stopped to allow the ambulance to stop next to the man without blocking the junction we were next to and waited for them to arrive. Its great how you feel proud of yourself for helping and serving others after the event, though i did the usual thing i do in that type of situation by taking control dealing with it then when its all over shaking a little as the delayed panic and stress sets in.

Training is great for preventing panic and to anyoen reading this who hasnt done a first aid course i highly reccomend you go do one. Its been invaluable to me and though i didnt save the mans life it could help you save someones!

Stay safe and if you all behave i might update you on what i got up to in Manchester and Luxembourg.......

2007-08-15T22:23:00.000+01:00

So this is the first blogpost from Enginseer. These things are actually a little difficult to write. I was going to mention my excellent plan to make an entrance in to a party in UT however Saxon seems to have beat me to the punch. I suppose I could mention the events today. I work at a generic high street quick service restaurant currently giving away coke glasses, today my first order of the day was interesting. A lady came in and asked for 6 double bacon sandwiches so I say to her certainly, 7 double bacon sandwiches that’s however much it was. I then give her the food . A few minutes later she came back a little irritated and said she actually wanted 6 sausage sandwiches. I then went to the kitchen to tell them to cook the new ones and at the same time muttered a few words about how customers should listen.

Let this be a lesson to all.

Please ensure you listed to those serving you.

Also please ensure that you at least pause your conversation on the phone before trying to order.

We have a kitchen filled with sharp blade type things.

If you ignore us we may be tempted to use them.

We also reserve the right to discuss amongst ourselves what an idiot you look and how ignorant and deaf you are after you leave or as soon as we move out of earshot of you. Thankyou for your attention during this important public service announcement.