I've just got my life back

Its Friday and the weekend has started.

I have had an odd week. For the past few days I feel that I have been a complete arse hole and have repeated pointed out deficiencies in an attempt to get matters on to a sound footing. Let me explain.....

Dante's Nine Circles of Hell is a very sound analogy for my Employer. We have the normal stuff that we do day in, day out like having tortured souls push rocks to the tops of hills. The rocks then roll back down and are pushed back up ad infinitum. Occasionally one of these rocks rolls in to a pool of molten brimstone and we have to engage other Souls and possible Imps to sort this out but this is all pretty much Business as Usual.

But Lucifer has a plan for Universal Domination and that means tempting new Souls to come to Dante's Circles of Hell. We have a set of 7 Service Lines to do this. You must have heard of them; Gluttony, Greed. Envy, Pride, Lust etc. and we use these to bring in new souls to torture.

Now you must understand that there are other Forces out there that will try to protect these Souls and divert them from Lucifer's path or at least ensure that they give Lucifer a good talking to. These other Forces fall in to a number of categories including Competitors and Lawyers.

As a consequence of this we have a number of Business Processes that we need to follow to ensure that we are torturing souls in the right way and have all the necessary paperwork assigning their Souls over to Dante's - signed in blood, Obviously - before we get them up to necks in Brimstone or chained to rocks whilst a large Eagle pecks at their heart on a daily basis.

Yes - I'm getting to the point - These processes are there for a good reason and have been designed by people far more experienced than I am. they are bulky and they are arduous but they are there for a reason and ensure that once we have a Soul chained to a rock they better have a bloody good reason for asking for Sunday off to go and see their Mum.

I have had to be an arse hole because I have been repeatedly pointing out that these processes need to be engaged to absolutely no avail.  I might as well have tried to fly by flapping my arms - and as you know I don't have the right Employer - you have to work for one of the other Guys if you want to have flying perks.

Yes - I was getting nowhere and then I started to point out what a lot of stupid questions they were asking and copied the Imp's Skidmarks manager in on a couple of mails and suddenly things start to happen.

This tells me three things;

1. I was probably right to press for these things to be done
2. The Skid Mark was probably not right to have ignored me
3. Escalation can be an effective tool

The thing is, do I want to be an arse just to get things done?

A change in the weather.

My mood matches the weather today - overcast, grey clouds, a little sullen perhaps.

A few entries back I boldly stated, or should that be "stated boldly" ? - that I wouldn't be mentioning work as it was hard to make it interesting to a reader with no actual investment in the Organisation. You didn't beleve me did you?

Well the Imp's Skidmark has been on form today. I had three emails from him. Every one of them, and I am not exaggerating, had been answered, prior to their issue by me over the past few days. He was, of course, on the distribution lists of these mails. I tried talking to his Senior PM but "birds of a feather...."

In the end I decided to reply to each of his mails embedding a pdf of the earlier mail where I had answered the questions he was now asking. I had responded to all three by 9.30 this morning.

Funnily enough I have had quite a quiet day today.

Other stuff: It is Step Mum's birthday today she will be 412 in cat years. I don't think I ever properly grasped that one. "How old us your dog?" "He is 9, which is 63 in dog years". No its not. It is 9 years. Your dog is not on a planet that is rotating round the sun 7 times faster than the one I am on, and the last time I looked the definition of a year was in the region of 365 days or the period of time it takes the Earth to complete a full orbit of the Sun.

What is happening here is that they are trying to equate the age of a dog with the age of a human so you can work out when it is likely to go and scorch patches on the Elysian Fields.

This is where it gets interesting - vaguely - not really interesting. For most mammals their lifespan is approximately 1.5 Billion Heart beats. The reason that mammals have different lifespans when measured in years is all down to body size. The smaller the animal the faster the heart beats and hence the shorter its life when measured as a unit of time.

The only exception to this is Human Beings as medical advances have allowed us to live longer than our body size would suggest. So, going full circle - comparing a dog's life span to a humans is a bit odd.

I didn't know that.

A busy weekend had me collapsing, brain dead on the sofa at the end of the day rather than busily pecking away at the keyboard.

Actually that isn't entirely true. This weekend has seen me explore the world of wireless network encryption and after sorting that out the last thing I wanted to do was sit at a keyboard ...

... perhaps burn one on an Altar constructed from the long bones of Mr Gates whilst wearing a ceremonial cape made from his flayed skin with the obligatory teeth necklace, but sit at one for pleasure - I think not.

I have an analogy that I use when people say "Oh you work at Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, you must know loads about PCs". My witty response is "Yes, and you drive a BMW. Can you change the cam belt and re-map the ignition".

In other words I can drive a computer but I'm not one to fix them so encryption of the wireless LAN was fun and games.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have the patience of a Saint and that I am sweetness and light to share a home with - I have bound and Gaffa taped TP and 30% in the cellar so they can't come in here and disagree with me.

It wasn't so much the encryption that was the problem it was the connection of my Laptop to the newly encrypted Router that was problematic.

TP has an IPod Touch - He turned it on and pressed the Safari button and it said enter the encryption key. Genius. 20 seconds later he is browsing for whatever it is that 13 year old boys browse for on the Internet.

If it is that simple how come my Laptop required me to search through obviously unnecessary layers of applications to find the fields where I have to enter the key TWICE. It then allowed me to browse the web for important stuff like eBay and Amazon but decided that it should corrupt the software I need to run to allow me to "tunnel" secretly in to Dante's information vaults thereby preventing me from doing the stuff I get paid for.

I now understand why Mac Users are so bloody SMUG.

Anyway - today was a better day - I only had to make one call to the Helpdesk Guys and pay one visit to the Deskside Support team and my laptop has run for 6 hours without screwing up.

Anyway - what was I going to talk about today?

Have you ever had one of those viral mails with "amusing" lists in them - I love getting those - I sit down and think "Hasn't this Git got anything better to do, and for that matter anything original to say". I have constructed a list of people who have sent me unfunny emails, all of which have been prefaced with "You have got to read this" or "You are gonna love this". Come the glorious revolution I am going make them wear long clown shoes for the rest of their lives or cut off their fingers.

I haven't quite decided which yet.

Look don't rush me. One of those lists is Things that your body can't do. You know like sneeze with your eyes open or put your elbow in your ear.

Now first things first the guys who said you cant put your elbow in your ear may only be half right. I reckon that with a dislocated shoulder, a broken humerus and the assistance of a friend there is a good chance that you can put your elbow in your ear. Admittedly the pain might distract from being the first person to do it and I understand that Guinness Book of Records don't cover that type of stuff any more but I think with a bit of application I may have debunked that myth.

So where am I going with this? Well I've got one that I think is a physical impossibility but you are welcome to try and disprove this one too.

See if you can make love to the theme tune of cult cartoon classic Roobard and Custard

Must Dash.

No gain without pain

Today has been somewhat frustrating as the Lesser Demons down at Dante's have found other souls to torture and I have been able to take a break from pushing my rock up the damn hill.

Unfortunately I'm not one to sit idly by. I'm not a great fan of pushing boulders up hills but I like to keep busy. So for the time being, it is the old slope / boulder interface that fills my working day. Consequently I get a bit tetchy when I'm not fully occupied. The mind starts to wander and that can be disastrous.

For instance, this morning the shoulders were a little sore on waking and that was either hefting a piece of furniture in to the Prius or the enthusiastic tugging of Tyson and Marauder as we took our daily constitutional yesterday.

Whilst T&M go by the joint alias of the Straining Staffies in this journal, they are actually pretty good at "walking to heel". This is because TP and I have spent much time and effort in taking them to Puppy Classes. It might be worth mentioning that some of the effort is applied to cleaning up vomit as Marauder is not a good traveller.

But I digress ...

They don't generally pull at the lead but if there is one thing to make them try to wrench my shoulders from their sockets it is horse shit. They absolutely love it. They will guzzle it down like the Health Conscious (or gullible as I like to call them) shovel down Activia Yoghurts and bottled water.

It actually got me thinking, does horse manure contain the canine equivalent of Acidophilus bacteria? Should I be developing up a horse pooh / natural yoghurt mixture and knocking it out via Pets at Home with a considerable profit margin?

So, where is this going .... all I need is an intelligent horse, an off road skateboard, some safety equipment and I have the basis for a new adventure sport / dog exercise experience. It goes like this .... The intelligent horse, let call him Mr Ed, completes a pre-ordained dog walking circuit and carefully deposits a "road apple" every 50 or so yards.

You may have noticed at this point that I type Yoghurt in a strange way and my spelling of metres is completely off the wall. This is because I am very much pre-decimal. My Sat-Nav only shows Roman Roads ..... "Yes Centurion, continue down Via Fossa for another Quattro Mille Passus and you will have arrived at your destination"

I then attire myself with the safety equipment, mount the off-road skateboard and pick up T&Ms leads. You get the picture. How much fun is that going to be as we charge round the route, the dogs encouraged by the regular small equine deposits. This is definitely a winner. If the UK needs a new sport to add to the Schedule for 2012 this could be it. Its got it all - competitiveness, thrills, spills, speed and danger! Sort of Ben Hur meets an Ealing Comedy.

Back to reality.

I've not really mentioned my preferred forms of transport before. There have been a couple of references to the Prius and it might get a minor role in one of the future journal entries but I have had a life long love of motorcycles. For some time the object of my affection, AFTER 30%, TP, T&M, Eddy and Potato has lingered neglected in the garage.

A combination of house moves, building projects, ill health and general stuff meant that she did not get the attention she deserved and she gathered dust for several years. Lets call her the Vespa.

The Vespa is an alias but it serves quite well for she is Italian and designed, when viewed from above to look like the silhouette of a woman's torso - wide at the bust and hips, narrow at the waist. Vespa is also Italian for wasp - do a google image search on "waspie" and you will see why it is a good alias.

Oh I was almost getting poetic there - I forgot to mention that she roars like a lion and has a fuel economy of a BMW 2.2 litre, in-line, 6 cylinder, petrol engine, Yep its amazing what a couple of race cans and a new Ignition chip will do.

So - she needs specialist attention and there's not a lot of it in these parts so when I managed to a) locate a man just 30 miles away combined with b) a friend with a van we get c) servicing bills that will make your eyes water.

So rarity + scarcity of skilled resources + neglect = This Years Bonus.

Ho hum - as I said "no gain without pain".

The e-mail generation

Today started with a degree of Mnghh!

Its that feeling that is neither apprehension nor dread, Neither reluctance nor disinclination but a feeling of mild aversion combined with a knowledge that there are things that must be done.

Basically there is something that I have been assigned by one of the Lesser Demons down at Dante's. I have done the necessary thinking about it and I've even knocked up a couple of sketches but I now need to document it formally and send out to vaguely disinterested parties.

Hence today started with a degree of Mnghh!

I wish my day started like Marauder's seem to start. Marauder loves her bed and she likes to wake slowly. She will spend several minutes just squirming with the delight of being a dog and knowing that today is going to be pretty much exactly like yesterday. You can see a grin appear on her face and she positively wriggles as she realises that the agenda includes playing with Sell-by-Date and Tyson, threatening behaviour towards the chickens, chasing TP, eating a variety of delicacies including horse shit and possibly chicken feathers, a nice long walk during the bad man's lunch break followed by a number of naps including at least one on the premium spot on her favourite sofa.

Her expression shows that her world really cant get any better. I wish I felt like that when I wake up.

Now don't get me wrong, I tend to wake and feel pretty good about my world. But compared to Marauder I am a rank amateur about feeling good. She makes the happy people that you see in the world of TV advertising - You know the ones - unbelievably smug and happy and cheesy - seem positively suicidal - She really knows how to start the day feeling GOOD.

Before today's activities a quick review of yesterday. It went well. A few pints of homemade Pea and Ham soup are now residing in the freezer and there is enough of the garage floor clear to warrant sweeping it. In fact, there was enough space that TP's bike was upended had it's puncture repaired.

This evening has seen TP and I load up the "eco wagon" or "Prius" as she will be known and take a visit to the local Refuse Site thus opening up a whole new swathe of garage floor.

I am hoping that this improvement in the condition of the lawn mower's quarters will get Amnesty International off my back. I have replied to their letter advising that it is not "incarceration without trial" but "protective custody" as the village newsletter has indicated an upturn in the number of shed thefts. Their initial response is not encouraging !

Right - I'm getting to the e-mail generation but I needed a bit of padding before I started on them. Don't worry - all will become apparent in a minute.

As I said, the day started with a feeling of Mnghh but I knuckled down and turned my sketches in to clear illustrations, embedded them in to an e-mail with concise but informative thoughts and dispatched it to the appropriate recipients / victims.

As is generally the case, it went a whole lot better than expected and I again wondered why it is human nature to procrastinate.

Anyway this leads me to my classification of certain people as "the e-mail generation". They can be defined as individuals who are generally under the age of 35 and consequently have grown up with computers in general and e-mail in particular.

The phrase e-mail generation sums up their capacity to take in information. Basically if it cannot be presented in the preview panel of an e-mail application then don't bother. They don't have the mental capacity to take in anything that cannot be described in a couple of sentences. Forget paragraphs or embedded documents. these references will cause paralysis of the mouse hand and a complete inability to use the scroll bars or the little wheel that they now install on mouses.

The reason I cover the subject referenced in the title of this blog so late in the text is because the e-mail generation will have gone away to gaze at their navels on Facebook or MySpace by now.

My role in Dante's Nine Circles of Hell involves quite complex technical elements and often you need to write several pages with cross references and diagrams to get the full picture across. So you can imagine how bloody frustrated I get when a member of the e-mail generation wants a chat about it but isn't willing to engage any mental gears because their thought capacities are filled with the need to change their relationship status on Facebook and their work related plans for a whole new circle of Hell.

I have had situations where I have had to read documents to people and I'm sure they are not illiterate - bone idle - but not illiterate.

Anyway - my impact analysis was issued and one of the recipients has actually read it and agreed with my logic - a whoohoo moment. Unfortunately the actual "Doers" have not bothered to respond yet and I have a feeling of dread as my ability to look in to the future kicks in and I see several conference calls repeatedly explaining the complex to the e-mail generation.

Does my dog need an alias?

Its obvious that I am new to the world of blogging and, to be honest, I made a decision a long time ago that I didn't really fancy having an internet presence.

I don't really get the Social Networking concept. Mind you I suppose I could well be veering towards hypocrisy with a blog. I justify this to myself by saying it is "one-way" and that it is just a way of brain dumping. If that is the case why have I installed a visitor stats counter?

Anyway, to the point of the post - when I say "point" we are talking "last pencil in the box, where the hell is the sharpener or Stanley knife" - just so you don't start expecting incisive journalism here,

It was a friend /colleague that suggested I blog saying that it was a way of dealing with the "stuff" that accumulates. A while back my Other Half or Other 30% as I'm sure she would like to be known also suggested that I write this stuff down - mind you that was probably so she didn't have to listen to it first thing in the morning - she is an owl - I'm a lark.

I'm getting there - don't be inpatient - aliases - The few blogs I have read all use aliases for quite understandable reasons. The name I ramble on under was suggested for me by Golfy when I suggested a couple of varieties of coffee for him to try. It has no relevance to the content or to me really other than being a label.

A while back I was walking the dogs and I bumped in to a fellow dog walker with a deaf Dalmatian called Marley. He was genetically deaf and she used hand signals as commands for sit, here, stay etc. It all worked very well and I asked why the dog had a name. As most people tend to use the dogs name to get its attention before giving it a command. Marley seemed a total irrelevance. She agreed and advised that sometimes she introduced him using a random name, often Geoff.

So - do my dogs need aliases. Probably, as they are bound to get a mention here as they are part of my world. Lets say I have two straining Staffies called Tyson and Marauder. I don't but it will help preserve our privacy - as does the low stat count on this blog.

Another alias that my "frolleagues" use is Starfleet for our employer. I'm not sure about this alias I think I would have seen Dante's Nine Circles of Hell as a more accurate description although perhaps it is a little too close to the truth.

Anyway another individual who needs an alias is "the progeny" and that will do - perhaps TP for short.

TP and I have been taking Tyson and Marauder to a local Kennel Club Puppy Training Class for a few months and Marauder, ably handled by TP, received her Puppy Foundation Assessment yesterday so next steps will hopefully be a promotion to the next class and a Kennel Club Bronze Award.

So that's about it for today - establishing a few lables for some of the family members and parts of my world