What's new - babies, business and WLANs...

So, it's been a looooong time since I last posted here. A lot of things have changed since then.

I now work 5 over 4 in my main job, I am in the process of setting up a new IT business helping out local homeusers and small businesses... oh, and I became a proud Granddad to a beautiful baby girl.

Added to this, I decided to change direction with my studies and go down the path offered by the CWNP. I picked up an excellent resource off of Amazon, called the Certified Wireless Technology Specialist Official Study Guide, bought the Online Practice Test off the CWNP site, and took the exam at a Pearson Vue test centre.

All this is less than a couple of weeks.

I cannot stress enough how good this book is. The chapters are very well written with great examples and explanations. Just the thing to whet your appetite for WLANs.

Anyway... onwards and upwards... I have purchased the Certified Wireless Network Administrator Official Study Guide, and I am already onto Chapter 4.

I am thoroughly enjoying the whole experience, such a breath of fresh air after everything MS or CompTIA.

I found a new forum too... www.techexams.net which is a gold mine. Really nice people from what I can see, no big egos that I am aware of, and people willing to help. Time will tell obviously, but things look as if they are on the up.

Back to normal... almost

Well... where to begin?

I suppose it's easy to type this as opposed to trying to talk to people about why I disappeared. Bottom line is that things happen that serve to knock you sideways. Some you can deal with, or you think you can deal with, and some you can't.

There have been things going on in both my work and private life that, when added together, became just too much for me to take. I do not intend to dredge those up now, save to say that it was not just one or the other; however the sum of the parts really did become pretty much the last straw.

So, I took the only option open to me... I withdrew from everything except the basic life essential things.

Now, I am back, but not with a vengeance. My intention is to be more pragmatic, to learn what I can change and to live in the knowledge that some things I cannot change.

And so... life goes on... here's to the next chapter!

Hi... I'm new here... well, I haven't posted for over a week!

Well, my new blogworthy future didn't last long, did it?

Too little time, too much work, study and family... but work pays the bills (plus I enjoy it in a masochistic way), I enjoy study (seriously enjoy it) and I thoroughly enjoy quality time with family.

Last week was meant to be study, study, study... yet, even with a full week, I still got nowhere near enough done. I ended up revisiting a lot of the stuff I did ealrier in the week towards the end of the week because it just wasn't sinking in. Ouch! I have told others the best way to study is a couple of hours max per day, and I should stick to that myself. So I am going to.

I am currently wading through the MS Training Kit for 70-640. I have already worked my way through it, but I am now studying for 70-642 and wanted to rebuild/install my lab bit by bit so I was happy from a 70-640 perspective before starting on the 70-642 Training Kit. I'd forgotten how many errors there are in the 70-640 book, and even the errata on the MS site doesn't pick them all up. That said, it is an excellent resource and the 70-642 looks to be just as good.

Right... gonna go do some real work... then lunch for me and the litle fella.

TTFN

On leave... well sort of...

First day of leave today. Still working...

Just need to tidy up some loose ends, and then I can put up the roller blind, and face plates for the sockets bought yesterday.

And then... then... I can relax.

Actually, provided the blind goes up OK, it should be fun; however, I put one up in the main bedroom a while ago now and, when I came to put the screws in there was nothing behind the plaster! Some wally had basically cut the plasterboard too short, and merely butted to the window frame with actual plaster and webbing. I pushed into the plaster and whoosh... the flipping screw disappeared! Cowboy builders strike again - one of the big ones that shall remain nameless.

Just waiting now to see what other jobs are found for me for the rest of the week...

It's flipping cold!

Well, the temperature has dropped a few degrees up Lincoln way, and I whacked the heating up a couple of notches to compensate. Brrrr… mind you, it’s not as bad as the southern US with its ice storms, or western France with its major storms in the last week or so. My Dad (and Mum) who lives in France was saying that he had to go up onto his shed roof to stop the corrugated roof blowing right off. It was so bad, he had to kneel on the roof so he didn’t get blown off. He ended up carrying rocks up to put on the roof to stop it disappearing into the distance.

Anyway, it looks like the weather people were right for a change. Reading posts on a couple of the forums I’m on, a few of the guys and girls are saying that they’re getting smatterings of white stuff, but nothing heavy as yet.

We had flurries up here earlier; indeed, the wind was making it blow horizontally up the road at one point! I went out to deposit some rubbish in one of the bins, and decided there and then that I would not, under any circumstances go out again today.

Ooh… and as I type, the flakes have started falling again. OMG! And some chap has just run past my house, in tracksuit and running shoes with bobble hat on. He has to be mad!

Right, I’m off to make a hot cup of coffee and challenge my youngest to a game of Raving Rabbids.

 

There is hope for humanity...

Sometimes, just sometimes, in all the rubbish we hear and read about there comes a story to gladden the heart and moisten the eyes.

There is a little fella by the name of Fintan Morley-Smith who has a rare eye condition called retinoblastoma.

His dad, James, is running the London Marathon to raise funds for the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust.

I heard about this through Twitter, in particular Stephen Fry. As a result of a message from Fintan's dad to Stephen, and Stephen's subsequent Tweet, many people have donated to help Fintan and other childfren like him.

If you're feeling really brassed off, that life stinks and maybe someone owes you a favour, just take a minute, read about Fintan here and consider donating using the link to the right on my Blog.

OK, life may be **** but Fintan and many like him will have been helped by your generosity. Hold your head up (feel proud, it really isn't a sin) and realise how lucky you really are.

Thanks for reading.

Thank God it's the weekend

Had a naff week in work, which ended with me being told that someone else was moving into a role I'd been hoping to fill. But hey, at least my boss had the decency to tell me before anyone else found out.

Thing is, I've been working my diddlysquits off, doing even extra to put myself in the frame for the role.

I am ab.so.lute.ly gutted.

Still, no one died.

Now got to get myself into the right frame of mind for work... fortunately, I'm off next week so I can forget about all the rubbish for a week. All I need to do is just put my Out of Office on... :D

Have I brought Twitter to its knees?

There I was, updating my background... I'd picked a nice foresty piece off my PC, if you wanted to know... and was attempting to save it. All of a sudden it happened...

Twitter is over capacity!

What??

Have you people got no work to do? :-)

Finally, two attempts later (and choice of background changed), I am able to see my new background.

The morale of this tale of woe? Don't get so hung up over tweeting... Ooh, hang on, just got a new mess... yeah, be right back, just got to post a reply...

Must find the time to blog a bit more...

Crikey! First few days in and I am already slacking. Tsk.

Mind you, I was working from some ungodly hour yesterday morning, through to just after 22:00 GMT. I actually had my dinner/tea whilst dialling into one teleconf, such was the rush throughout the day.

Still, this leads me nicely onto an issue we hear a fair bit about nowadays: work/life balance. Is it possible to ever get it just right?

I am up early in the morning and, if I'm not driving, I roll into my office at 06:30 (no later than 07:10). I then stop for breakfast and a quick play (normally Star Wars or Dr Who) with my youngest son, and I am back in work at about 08:15. From then on in, it's pretty frenetic all day with calls and emails coming in pretty much constantly.

If I grab a bite to eat, it's normally a cheese roll. Coffee is made on the fly, while in meetings/calls.

Dinner/tea is about 17:30, after which I am straight back upstairs working.

If I haven't got a conference call, or the proverbial isn't hitting the fan, then I will try to make sure I am downstairs and ready to rumble with 'Junior' at 19:00-ish.

Once he's having his supper, I'm back on the machine working, and I nip in and say goodnight as he's getting off to sleep.

Then I'll be working until 21:00 or later (as happened last night).

I'm also studying later on, but taking time out to sit with my better half for an hour or so...

Weekends are spent as a family for most of the time but, if I am behind at work, I'll login and attempt to clear some of the more priority pieces. Again, study tends to happen at the weekends as well.

I do wonder as I actually type up the time I spend doing various things - this isn't a blog on how hard I work I hasten to add; I know people who work far harder than I do - is this what we really mean by work/life balance? Is it the 15 minutes here, or the half hour there spent as quality time (I hope!), as opposed to a full day just sitting around in the same room, that gives us the work/life balance?

A cold and frosty morning... brrr!

Well, I have been 'up and running' since about 7:10 this morning. This was a pretty late start for me, but then I was studying until the early hours.

I opened the curtains and lo and behold... heavy frost on the ground, and a whopping 1 degree C on the old thermometer. Unbelievable! Not because it's cold but because we've had high winds, heavy rain and quite mild temps, all within the last week. What is happening? Surely you're not telling me that Global Warming is messing with the weather as much as this?

All I can say is I am glad I live at the top of a hill!

Grammar we love you, grammar we do...

Well us folks in the UK (the ones who are old enough anyway) will remember the song by St Winifred's School Choir that topped the charts in 1980.


Anyway, I digress...


A funny thing happened to me as I was working away this evening. She who must be obeyed (yeah... right) called up from the kitchen, where she was sitting with our son as he typed up his poem for homework. Basically, the question eminating from the depths was "when you want to write 'the cow parachuted down to its cosy shed' is it 'its' or 'it's'?".



Initial reaction as someone who churns out loads of crud for a living on a daily basis was "It's 'its'"; however, panic began to set in mere seconds later and I dashed off a query into Google. Relief abounded as I confirmed my first thought. Smugly, I went to the landing, so as to reaffirm my opening reply "Yes, definitely 'Its'".



I suppose the main point of this post, other than to share my shamefaced admission that I had to check, is to wonder whether we do just type and hope that Word* (replace with wordprocessor of choice) will keep us on the straight and narrow. Because of spellcheck and grammar check, are we losing our understanding of grammar and punctuation?

Are we getting lazy over our use of written English?

Having a 'mare...

We all have them, I'm sure. Bad days, that is.

I woke up this morning, and even the old 'war wound' couldn't dull the spring in my step. Today. I thought, I am going to push on and get the tasks done that keep getting held up the JFDIs or PDQs that seem to crop up all the time.

You guessed it... 'same old same old'.

Now I am even further behind than I was close of play Friday, and I can feel the stress levels buildng. To be honest I would love to be able to delegate some of the stuff I get, but there's no one to delegate to. Help!

What I have come to realise over the years is the one thing I am very bad at is turning anyone away when they ask for help.

Still, generally I enjoy what I do, and I do actually like helping people. That doesn't mean I ain't gonna have a grumble from time to time though...

Umm... my first ever blog.

I noticed some of the people I know have really gotten into this Blog mentality, so I thought I'd try it myself. I'm not sure if what I write will be funny, serious, have hints of anger from time to time or just be plain daft.

I have to be honest, I always thought 'blogging' was another form of vanity, allowing those who have a BIG opinion of themselves full rein to tell us all how damn good they are!

But, over the last few weeks I've been trawling though the various blogs I've found and found that they are quite fun. I see blogging now as more of a psychological thing, a mechanism (to me anyway) that I can hopefully use to have laugh, let off steam and just mess about as well as let people know what I am up to. If it gives others a bit of enjoyment, great. If not...