Hurry up and wait

Here I am stuck in the north of England in Deeside, with this thing <------- being drip fed an ISO image of Netware 5.1 SP6, over a network which seems to be connected via 2400 baud modems or probably via some moistened string.... to fix a server which went down over the weekend....the image is only 475mb arrrrghhhhhh...... it says 235 microsoft minutes so that could be months away in my experience of Microsoft promises on time

only once I have the ISO image can I fix the server......so hurry up and wait it seems, I was also supposed to be seeing another customer tonight but it's not looking good...in fact it's not looking anything at all

I was put up in a Premier Travel Inn about 10 miles away last night from where I'm currently working, there was nothing "Premier" about it, it's situated right next to a chemical factory and the whole night I kept waking up to the most awful smells drifting through my room, and it had nothing to do with the Indian meal I had to force down myself because it was too late for "proper" food.....

on the plus side I did manage to have a few pints with my mate Chris (well I had pints of man beer the shandy boy drank differently) anyway he lives a stones throw away from Chester so we did manage to put the world to rights......again

I am determined to leave this god awful place as soon as I am able....

I know why I moved from the north all those years ago..... it's bloody grim up here

I spoke to Andrea to give her the bad news about my non imminent arrival home and I could hear Freya coo'ing and ahhh'ing in her arms.....it plucked at the heartstrings a bit, she is growing up so fast now and has a lot of expression in her face, she has even learnt to frown but it's usually when she is about to fill her nappy..... I should imagine it takes quite a bit of concentration getting it right, and she gets it right quite often these days ;¬)

she is a very peaceful baby, or is at least when I get to hold her Andrea no doubt has experienced her full spectrum of strops being with her 24/7.....

anyway I must go and wait some more .... apparently it's 128 microsoft minutes now and the afternoon is disappearing fast ..............

fade to ..... "please release me, let me gooooooooooooooo"


update Deeside revisited :-

it's a quarter past four and the ISO image is all but here with 27 Microsoft minutes pending delivery.....and the good news is the disaster recovery procedure has worked, so the pressure is off me to try and fix this server without causing any loss of data, although they would prefer it if I did bring it back to the land of the living intact, because there is "some" data on it they want back so I may be leaving this God awful place sooner than I thought, the people that work here are fantastic, I've had a real laugh but I've had this potential loss of huge amounts of data hanging over me at the single press of a key.....

you watch I'll un-zip this iso image and it will fail the CRC check...... the toffee hammer and rusty razor blades behind a glass case are within easy reach, if only I had something for this banging headache I seem to have had all day ..... :(