Job security

Let it be known that you saw it here first!

Ok so the place that I currently work has really great job security. Not many people actually leave here unwilling. Most people actually leave on their own accord. There have been a few people that have lost their jobs some rightfully so. Others because they actually did their job and no one liked it. The problem when you want a "Yes man" instead of an effective manager.

Anyway events of late have really pointed to the fax that my employment here may not be as long as I would like it to be. Anyway I know this isn't a problem because sometimes this place is really depressing. Eg out of the three people in my cubicle area all three agree that being at a funeral is less depressing than working here.

So my going bet right now is that by May I won't have a job here. Hopefully that will be true because then I can be in Austrilia without thinking about the office and spend my settlement package out there (yes I know I shouldn't do that before you financial/commerce people tell me)

Good news

My place is actually getting clean. I mean I might actually be able to see the floor in a little while :) I figure that this will be more true when I manage to get the recycling out. I have three garbage bags full of the stuff so it will be nice to see it all gone.

Parts of the house are nicely packed up right now so at least it looks like there is an effort going forth to move out. I figure if all goes well I should have at least the entertainment room packed up, minus computers, by the end of the week. Now that the floor is visible I can put boxes on it :)

A cure for AIDS?

THIS! is incredible. A potential cure for AIDS?

Over all I'm impressed. I just hope that it turns out to be everything that people think is it.

Micorosoft support

Sure they are great and get you an answer but why does it have to take more than 2 hours to solve the question of:
I can't delete a folder in windows explorer in a junction
I can delete it anywhere else.

I didn't think it was a difficult question. I guess I thought wrong. Well I'm up to 122 minutes now. Still waiting....

*falls asleep waiting for microsoft*

Fun with doors

Ok I should have posted this last week but oh well.

Last Friday I did the pinnicle of all great things. I locked my keys in my house. Normally this would not be a problem but for some cosmic reason I couldn't contact the landlord so he could get me in the house.

After jumping through a couple of hoops and taking advice from a couple of co-workers I managed to get in the house from a couple of friendly locksmiths. Three hours of waiting later I was finally in my house and back out again to places I should have already been at.

The entire event left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, and bank account. Note to self: Call the fire department next time. They will probably be faster and cheaper....and more professional.

Topic

Ok I was thinking at the start of last week to write about "faith". That was over ruled with my previous posts which I think is fine.

Then I thought I would post about things going on in and around my life. This would make sense since this is my blog. I decided against this.

Then I thought and decided, that I would write about "confusion". This seems to be a constant theme running through my head. I'm not confused about anything in particular but just confused about everything. It is like I'm constantly looking through a fog.

Anyone else suffer this?

Surprise!

Look another post in seven days! Aren't you all surprised?

Actually my boss is in a meeting and I'm just sitting here so I thought I would post.

Anyway I have a new appartment rented that I can move into in the last week of February so now I start getting to plan that out. Yea!

The new place isn't much more expensive but I get about twice the floor space which is great because Bubbles will be moving in with me in April. I'm happy about the new place. Not so happy about having to move though. On the great side it isn't far from a subway station so I can start walking to the station AND I get a pool. Exercise here I come. Much needed for the future trip in May.

Blah I say!

Ok so it has been a long while since I last posted. Things have been going well for the past month and a half.

Christmas was great all three versions of it had many friends and family around so it was a warm and fun time.

New Year's was a good party too as usual. The surprising thing is that people seemed more sober this year than the previous year.

Right now I have a big challenge of trying to get over the winter/Christmas reprise blahs. *sigh*

I just want to sleep for the next month.

Right now I'm still trying to catch up on my comics. Actually just one SinFest. I have just been really distracted playing a game on my PlayStation2 though. Dark Cloud 2 and it is taking a lot of my time. So far this week I have managed to pass about 15 hours of play. It is also making not sleep until later than I should.

Oh Bell, will you ever get it right?

Ok so as a few people probably noticed I have an interesting Bell issue.

Back in May I got my phone line transfered from L to T. One would imagine that this is a simple process. That wasn't the case and there were many calls to Bell about getting the line transfered. This on it's own can be a rant but this would be 6 months too late so I won't bother. After it got transfered it turns out that the phone line in both locations then started to work. Again a few calls to Bell to try to get this straightened out was met with "Bell the wise" saying "We can't do that." Not sure what they ment but just kind of let it go. At least I got my phone line and I could make calls at will once again.

Last month I gave up Bell completely, mostly because of service like the above, one can only hear "Sorry we can't give you a phone line at that address even though you are calling from there." excuse so many times before you start to realize that the people that are are dealing with can't find their ass with both hands and a mirror.

Well Bell sent me a final bill to cover the disconnect and final long distance calling that I had done for the month. Fine all is good. I paid the bill and made the mistake that I would never hear from them again. On Monday I got another bill from Bell. First thought was "Oh the mailman didn't want to deliver this to the right address no problem. I'll just file under "R" for recycle....No wait. It has my name on it? This isn't right. I get inside the house and find out that I have now been charged for 4 month of long distance from a phone I don't own. I wouldn't mind this if it was only $2 because it wouldn't be enough to squable about but it is close to $150!

Anyway tomorrow I will call Bell and find out what kind of drugs they are on and ask if they are willing to share. I figure this way I can at least come half way to find out how I got charged for stuff I didn't do.

....Maybe if they don't agree with me I will invoice them for $200 for technical services rendered in repair of their.... um .... automatic banana pealer.

So I have been bad

Ok first off I must admit that it has been a while since my last post. I have a good reason for it....Sort of.

I have been working with another company lately in my off hours helping them sort out some networking issues. It has taken a lot of time but I think I'm at the end of it all.

Not only has that been keeping me busy but I also had two more things to work on. I'm still working on doing some MP3ing for a friend's co-worker so that has been keeping me going but that is over for the time being because I have run out of CDs.

My Aunt's system had a few issues so I took some time out to also do that as well.

My actual job hasn't been keeping me very busy as it seems I have hit a recent low in overtime which is nice to see.

Hopefully I will now be able to get back to a little more stable posting.

Scripts

Before you start thinking too much I'm not speaking of VBScript or JavaScript. I am also not talking about play scripts....exactly.

It was brought up in my company that while the earnings cycle is going on that we should have extended support hours. I find this funny because the normal line around the office is that "earnings never ends" due to work load. So anyway we the IT staff now get to humor the rest of the staff. I figure that this was something fine and dandy as I could finally have my old shift back, 12:00 to 20:00. No such luck. I was told that right now the other admin that I am working with isn't completly up to speed. He still says "I don't know how Phalse did."

Now this is a problem. The new guy has been there since January/February so one would think that after actually working in a company at an Administrator level would actually understand the systems after eight or nine months later. Now this guy is from a big bank and his normal troubleshooting is through a simple script. If something falls outside of that script than it is the next level ups job to fix.

Now I know that some people have some experience with this, eg calling the telephone company or ISP, but does anyone work with someone like this outside of those groups? Have you seen situations where this caused problems with no way of going higher?

For those outside the know

I would just like to say that I'm now engaged to Bubbles as of last friday. (cheer)

At long last

I have finally got everything finished up with Look Communicaitons....Ok not completely they still have a couple of things to do but at least the billing end of things is now done.

Here is the story in it's long windedness.

Six years ago I ask them to take payments off my Visa and start invoicing me. They didn't so five years ago I called them and asked them to change it so I was. I figured a simple clerical error and it will now be fixed. Boy was I wrong! Fast forward with annual calls say "Please change your billing arrangement."

This year I got fed up and I asked Visa to not pay them. I only found this out after a while because Visa called me saying "Why haven't you payed your bill?". Only to find out that I forgot to inform them about my change of address. Anyway they wouldn't deal with it because of the age of the billing. I then called Look to yell at them saying pay off Visa because they are on my back. This at least had their attention. I asked them to take care of the problem and send me an invoice. It seems that I had too much trust, one would think I would learn, but anyway it wasn't done. Try again two months ago. No luck. Last month I just demanded to speak to a supervisor and someone who could actually work the accounting system. They told me that someone would contact me in 72 hours.

24 hours later no call.

48 hours later no call. So beings the weekend. At this point I don't care that it is the weekend.

72 hours later still no call.

I call in the morning on Monday saying "Where is my supervisor call?". It turns out that a bunch of the supervisors decided to go on vacation and leave it all on Alex's plate. To my delight I get a call at 5pm that day. I outline the situation to Alex and he confirms it on the system that they have there. Promises again are made. After the initial billing issue is sorted out it seems that Look Communications can't pay back Visa because it was more than six months ago. So I pay off Visa and make them happy.

It is now on record that IF anything like this happens again I will get free webhosting and dial up for a year until the problem is corrected.

Now if any of you are asking why I am still with Look after this issue I have actually been with them since .... 1989. Ya before the internet went commercial and a high speed connection was considered 14.4kbps and T1 backbones were considering screaming fast. However I can actually say that this has very much tainted my view on the company.

Is it really that hard to get a simple request filled?

That time of year

Ok it is that time of year when I find that people go funny. Some people are walking around in T-Shirts while others are walking around in deep freeze parkas with everything in between. I find this funny on so many levels and yet I think it is also a tribute to those who fail to see the truly unique nature in people. Right now I am running around in my trench coat but only because of the great amount of rain that is happening. I am sure otherwise I would be wearing a heavy sweater.

For those that are abroad are do you see the same thing? Will I be seeing the same thing next May?

Servers and their joy

Ok I am helping a company move into a co-location here in town but because of some wacky settings that are going to be used I need to use the server in my office first. Nice and simple right. So I pick up the server and I go for about a 15 minute walk around down town.

Now someone in reason I think would at least stare at me odd with a 1U server under my arm but nothing. Not even either of the security guys batted an eye. Oh well at least it was fun walking around with a nice server in my hands....Even if it isn't mine.

New hardware

Ok this is priceless. Once I get the FTP server up and going AND stable I go out and get some new hardware to put in it. Of course this means I now have to down my system and get some new hardware to work with the system. Anyway I picked up a new DVD-Writer that is dual layer. As I'm sure no one will be surprised as to which manufacturer I chose.

Now I just need a few pieces of dual layer media to burn on.

FTPServer

Ok everthing is now working fine. I managed to get the FTPServer so now I can start the joy of creating accounts. If anyone wants one drop me a line. In the mean time my IP is 72,56,5,245.

I'm also getting the Ventrilo server online so it isn't going right now. Give me a day or two.

A new post coming soon!

Silly but that is me.

Anyway I'm still catching up with all my work from my week off so I will write about all the good stuff tonight when I get home.

So much to discuss. Wedding "A" which was S&D and wedding "B" which was T&I.

Stay tuned!

FTP Server

Well it seems like life just took another setback. Last night I finished setting up most of the entertainment room and found a copule of issues.

It seems that the FTP Server I have suffered some kind of failure. I'm not sure what hte problem is but it won't be solved any time soon. Undoubtly this will trouble me to no end from now until I get it fixed. So right now I have to deal without the data stores and my Ventrilo server. This makes two systems I have lost in the past year. I just home this one I can recover from.

*sigh* Stupid flood.

(Still feeling luckier than those in New Orleans though)

Posting

Ok I haven't posted in a while. I have a good reason though....Well at least a simple reason.

As most of you know the appartment flooded in the rains that occured Friday the 19th. After a quick move out from the appartment with aid from the parents of both sides we managed to clear out for the new tile floor that was going to be put in. Since moving out has removed my ability to access the internet I can't very well post from home can I? Well most of the stuff is slowly getting back into place but this time it will be done with a little more care.

For the near future I will be helping the parents get ready for my brother's wedding. This is bound to be exciting because of everything going on.

Things will be interesting with all the stuff going on in life. I just don't know how to express it all.