We are back in Dresden.....again.....

Well the Pug passed it's MOT as you know, but since then the front wheel bearings have upped the anti and are starting to sound like the distant approach of the RAF in 1942, it's been getting louder and even I am getting a little worried driving it now, I should imagine they will last for at least another month but I'm not taking any chances. So yesterday I went to Val's Motor factors in Carmarthen and picked up a new set of bearings for the old girl @ £20 EACH !! these do look a bit more substantial than the £8.50 Ryobi ones from GSF in Swansea and they don't have a bit of nylon or plastic on them, plus they weigh in at nearly twice the weight so I suspect they have used metal ball bearings in them instead of the chalk ones in it now :) .... hopefully they will last one hell of a lot longer, you only have to look down my blog to find out when I replaced the other ones for the frankly disappointing bearings made by Tonka Toys, I'm not looking forward to doing it, it's not that it's technically hard or anything it's just a royal pain in the backside doing it again.... so bloody soon !!!

I did laugh at Val's though he is a bit condescending the guy who serves you and grates on you a bit offering his sage advice, he did ask me

"How did you put the old ones in ? with a hammer or with a hydraulic press, funny they failed so quick.... izzenit ?" ...

I couldn't resist and said "Well it was a 5lb lump hammer actually...." ....

"OH my GAWD you didn't put them in with a lump hammer did you mun ?" ......

"No I was joking they were put in with a 50 ton hydraulic press....properly"....

"ahhhh but did you use some oil to lubricate the outside surfaces before pressing them in, only on the outside ring though mun ?"

"Damn .....that's where I went wrong I rubbed them in the dirt outside first, of course I used some oil"

"you jokin innit mun, aiiii, hmmmmm strange that then innit they have gone so quickly usually they last fo'ever init though mun...."

"Not really they cost £8.50 each and were made by Ryobi and were basically crap !!"

"ahhh see now we don't do Ryobi bearings, shoulda said mun, they're crap VECO and Koyo we do init mun ..... brilliant !! " .....

"how much would you charge to use your hydraulic press ?"

"Ahhh see now mun, health and safety and insurance don't cover it, but £30 and we'll do it properly for you...like...innit"

"No you're ok I'll go to where I got them pressed in before..... cheaper !!"


I paid my money and left.... I only have a week left in work before my summer (pah that's a laugh) jollies start, so no doubt next weekend I will be black as the ace of spades and cursing the b'jesus out of the Pug, mind you the front hubs have been taken off so many times since we bought it they probably respond to voice command by now, oh that reminds me I have to change the brake pads as well one of them is down to the metal or very nearly.....oh joy is me

ps/ weather is bloody awful .....August my ar......mpit !!!

Redundancy and the Holidays loom closer

I've got very little time to find another job so the pressure is on, I've had a few sparks of interest but there is very little in this area for somebody with my experience, I may have to drop working with computers and find something else to pay the bills, although having done this line of work since I left the army practically it's very alien to imagine doing anything else to be honest ....

we shall see what providence and a blitzkrieg approach to finding another job returns, my job has gone to India or will very shortly and some other guy will be doing it for 1/10th of what I am paid presently, but business is business and I can't really blame them for getting it done more cheaply abroad, I'm not entitled to any redundancy because I haven't been here for two years yet, actually it's not even one year, but it matters not even if I were it wouldn't amount to much anyway.

I'm not overly worried at the moment as I am sure I will find something but it's something we didn't need right now...

On a lighter note the Pug passed it's MOT for another year with flying colours, well almost, it failed on emissions but that was rectified by the tester by making the mixture leaner so it fell below the 3% Carbon Monoxide level, he then went into a spiel about you can't do that with the cars of today it's all computerised !!! I feigned interest, and stifled the impending yawn when he carried on...... I think I was marginally convincing, but either way it didn't have any advisories and he couldn't find fault with it, so I guess my car maintenance must be up to scratch considering the work it has had done on it...

We are all looking forward to our holiday up in North Wales, although the Xbox 360 recluse isn't coming with us he is staying with his father down in darkest Dartmoor for the week we are on holiday, don't ask it's very complicated but it was his decision, well actually that's not entirely accurate, but he boxed himself into a corner because of outside pressure that he simply couldn't get out of..... it will be good for them to spend time with each other and his Dad has already told him to buy him his first pint seeing as he is a working lad now, and who knows maybe his dad will make him see the error of his ways, although knowing teenage lads (mainly because I used to be one many moons ago) he will think he knows best, so I won't be holding my breath.... I've told him to not bother with Women seriously until they are at least 25 - 30 and their biological clocks have seriously kicked in, up until that point they are heart breakers, but some things you have to experience by yourself to truly understand....

Freya is an urban terrorist she has progressed from very badly slumping on the floor as her arms gave out, and travelling like an aged break dancer doing the worm, to now being able to get to most things which are under two feet from the ground, so we have to Freya proof a room before letting her loose in it, she really is very adept at crawling and climbing now, and has picked up the skills required in very short order, she hasn't as of yet mastered the controlled fall from standing, and has fallen like a tree on quite a few occasions but with each bang of the head, afterwards she seems to carry out a risk assessment before committing to anything and I have seen her abort a few missions probably because she remembers the last body slam on the wood flooring, like all things it takes time I guess, I should imagine it won't be very long before she is running about the place denting the woodwork with her forehead.

My stepdaughter went to the Blue Rock Festival last weekend, and came back looking and smelling like a tramp, which didn't seem to bother her, but three days camping at a festival does that to you, but fair dos she does scrub up well when she makes an effort so the odd spell looking like a homeless person won't do her any harm, the only other thing of note is that Andrea has imposed a pocket money fining regime, or to put it very basically, if they don't clean their bedrooms every day they get one days pocket money deducted from them, I happen to agree with her because other than the youngest shadow boy neither my step daughter or the xbox recluse help around the house at all unless specifically asked to do something, the only other time we get to hear anything from them is "when can you take me into town ?" and "what time is dinner/tea ?" ohhhh and of course the 20 second reverse charge phone call costing nearly £4 a pop asking when they can be picked up from town...I've told them the only time they can use reverse charge calls is when they are lying in a gutter with most of their limbs torn from their bodies.....anyway I digress.....so doing their bedrooms is the very least they can do to help.... so far their rooms are tidy but lets see how long it lasts before they start losing pocket money !!!

The Sword of Damoclese has fallen.....OUCH !!

Its been hanging by a horses hair thread since I started working here in Swansea over two years ago because the contract had been lost and I had been taken on as a stop gap for the transition from Novell to Microsoft.... well this morning HR called me and all the others in the team to tell us why the Lan Support team had been "rightshored" to Mumbai in India, so over the next sixteen weeks I will have my Indian counterpart sitting next to me and I will be explaining and teaching him my job before he jets off back to Mumbai to take over in or around September (ish)... for probably one quarter of the pay I'm currently on....


I knew it was coming so it's no big surprise to me, I will just have to knuckle down and find another position within the company but it's not looking rosy as the only positions available are in Rotherham or Bristol, both of which are too far to commute so it's looking like I have to kick start the business up again full time... or find another job within commutable distance.... :(

/set geek mode=on

However there is a huge fly in the ointment which the non technical big wigs in management haven't spotted yet.....we support Novell servers using IPX (a network protocol), IPX is not routable over the T'internet, it has to be encapsulated within IP for it to travel over the internet which means a VPN, it also needs to encapsulate SPX and RSPX so that is another three VPNS over to Mumbai to support NDS....and one of the huge bluebottles in the ointment is remoting onto one single Novell server will swamp the VPN with traffic as every broadcast and NLSP message is transmitted over the VPN, also ANY traffic or files that have to be copied from one volume to another either internally or externally to the target server will have to go via Mumbai over the VPN before being copied back over the VPN to a different volume on the same server !!! it will be unworkable basically, but they will only find that out after we have gone.... I would like to be a fly on the wall when the (mis) management rightshoring team find that little pearl out !!! ;¬)

/set geek mode=off


So.... Mr Digamy is looking for a job as of today to support four kids .....