It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

Just got back from an afternoon walk with some friends, had a nice leisurly walk round Ivy Green, took a few photo’s then had a swift one at the Horse and Jockey, closely followed by Bangers & Mash at electriks Bar.

Luke turned up 1/2 way through the meal and got introduced to his younger brother Will and his missus, Will’s down here for a showdown sort of thing between the Cowdry brothers and the Frietags, so should be an interesting afternoon/evening for those attending the bar today.
Would have loved to have stayed, but its Sunday and got work tomorrow so it’s a definate no no I’m afriad, will no doubt see Luke twittering about it later.

Going to spend the rest of the evening watching some more of Cold Case Series 1, did’nt really watch it when it aired on TV, but now I’ve managed to watch a few of them back to back getting quite into it, anyway managed to get hold of  Series 1-4, so going to be some serious watching over the next week or so.

Picture 095, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Did’nt really post to much over the weekend as I spent quite alot of it in bed, due to being called out to an alarm call at my workplace, was there from midnight Friday till 5:30am Saturday morning, so spent quite a while in bed recovering.

So seeing as most of Saturday was spent in bed thought we#d better do something on Sunday, was’nt sure what to do or where to go, but in the end we decided on Chelford Car boot.

Got there for about 12:30 and spent a good hour or so just wondering round looking for bargain’s but think we missed most of them, so just ended up buying lots of quaility cheeses instead, more about those in another post.

After leaving we thought we’d best take Blue for a walk and on the way back we chanced upon Styal Estate a rather good dog walking place, we’d heard about it before but never actually bothered to go look for it, really wish we had cause its definatly a dog friendly walk, lost of paths and fields for Blue to galavant in, I’ll stick some photo & videos up this weekend so you can see for yourselfs.

Anyway its close to 8:00am and I’d better start making my way to work, cyas laters
.

Well at work today we were informed that one of our colleagues has been diagnosed with Swine Flu and he won’t be in work for at least a week or so, we were also told that if anyone was caught coughing or sneezing without covering there h/noses it would be a disciplinary matter.

The MD as far as we can tell was told around 9:00am by our colleagues partner, then all the managers were taken upstairs to a meeting where he obviously told them all about it, about 45 minutes later each Dept was informed by there Managers and told that the colleagues partner was being sent home, however before she was her Manager took all 8 members of the Dept into an enclosed small office to tell them, while the person was in the room with them, so which bright spark thought it would be a good idea to take a person who’s been in contact with a Swine Flu victim and stick them in a small enclosed office with 8 people without Swine Flu . . . . .

Anyway we’ve all been handed tissues for our desks and we’ve all wiped down the surfaces of our desk’s and we’re now awaiting some anti-bacteria wipes for our hands . .

Later on discussed how long the person would be off with and was told by my Manager that it would be 7 days and the same for his partner, so I said well what if she gets it won’t he be off for another 7 days

“Oh no says the manager you can’t catch it twice”

“yes but if his partner then gets swine flu, won’t there be the possibility that he could carry the germs into work from them . . .!”

We’ve also heard that someone asked about sick pay while we’re off and have been told it’s at the companies discretion . .

So let me get this straight  . .  you get Swine Flu through no fault of your own, you do the safe thing to prevent it spreading and stay off work for 1-2 weeks and you don’t get paid , the alternative is you catch swine flu, through no fault of your own come into work to avoid losing 2 weeks pay and end up giving it to everyone you work with, thus rendering the companies workforce ill.

God and people wonder why I complain about my workplace so much

Been a slightly stressful day and a 1/2 at work for me, had to set up some PC’s in the office and transfer data onto them from the PC’s there replacing, now this may not seem very stressful I know, but when you spend 1/2 day trying to figure out why you cant load an operating system onto the PC’s even though you’ve contacted Dell’s Mumbai Support Centre 8 times and each of those 8 times they tell you that these instructions will resolve the matter and 8 times they don’t your bound to be a little stressed.

After finally giving up on getting any sort of help from Dell I eventually found a response on a forum detailing what was causing the problem (it was the SATA settings for the hard-drive in system setup) and resolving it I finally got round to installing Win XP on the 1st of the PC’s.

So I’ve the got the OS installed now all I need to do is back up the PST file from the PC its replacing, copy any files that the user has stored on their PC onto the Server and than replace the PC, copy all the data back onto the new PC, import the PST file into Outlook and Bob’s ya uncle so to speak . . . well again nothings ever easy. First off the PST file is nearly 4 Gig in size (seems the users kept every single email they’ve sent/received in the past 3-4 years, so after 40-60 min’s of exporting I finally start to look for the data files that the user wants me to copy across to the new PC, kindly enough the user has put them all into a folder on his desktop to make it easier for me, so I copy the move the PST file I’ve just exported and drop it inside the folder and prepare to copy it onto the server . . thinking that its not going to take real long, its 4 Gig file and some word/excel documents, surely that won’t take long, how wrong could I be, seems that the copying over the networks going to take 2hrs ! Upon investigating the folder with all the docs in he wants me to copy I find there’s 11 Gig of data in there even before I add the 4 Gig PST file (yep 15 Gig of data), this explains the long time to copy across the network.

So thats why its been a stressful  day and a 1/2 thus far, I’ve not even finished yet either, still got a shed load of windows updates to download and install yet and I’ve yet to copy the data back onto the users new PC . . oh joy.

You know whats really annoying about the whole thing . . . this could have been so much easier, for a start we have a server that gets backed up every night that this person could have been storing their 11 Gig of data on, which if they had would have saved me a good few hours of work, they could have even maybe occasionally gone through there emails and deleted any they don’t need anymore (we keep a backup of incoming/outgoing emails in MailMarshal so people can delete emails, but nobody does).  If they’d just done one of these it would have saved me at least a couple of hours work, but alas no such luck

Time to put away the bunting, yes the curtain has fallen on this years Giant Bradley Day…..

I arrived home early Saturday afternoon with Mel, Liam and Gemma, after we’d got Liam and Gemma settled in there little log cabin decided to take them for a quick scoot around York to do the touristy thing, though to be honest we did’nt have long there as it was at least 3pm when we got there, had a quick beer in the Roman Baths pub and then took them around the Shambles and such like.

Liam looking all Redneck

Arrived back in Weighton about 6:00pm and then met up with them both for a few drinks round Weighton, actually expected it to be a fairly busy day, but seems that most people were saving themselves for Sunday nights as the pubs were real empty, Bradley day itself was the usual stalls and street performers, was especially impressed by the guy doing the Falconary display, really entertaining and very enjoyable, did’nt see much of the Giant though.

Entered Blue in the Dog Show again this year though she was pipped at the post by a rescue Akita, in all she won 3 Rossetes:

1st Place for Most Looks Like Owner

2nd Place for Best Legs

2nd Place for Best in Show

But hey she cant be expected to win every year, got to give all the other dogs a chance, anyway after that we hung around for a few hours and then decided to head back to Manchester with Liam and Gemma and another Bradley Day was been and gone

Got back yesterda afternoon and went straight round to see  mum, got settled in then headed across to Kirkella to see my friend Lisa and catch up a abit on all the gossip, eventually got home around midnight after sharing  a bottle or wine, could’nt stay longer as had car-boots to attend today with mel and mum.

So did the carboot thing this morning, not very many bargains to catch m eye I’m afriad, but plenty of people’s eye’s were aught Blue, had lots of people enquiring after her breed, even had some ask us if we’d be at Crufts next weekend which we found amusing, especially as Blue’s breed the Cane Corso is’nt even recognised by the UK Kennel Club, then we headed to York, but decided against staying as it was just to busy with foriegn tourists.

Now me and mel are sat in one of Market Weightons wifi hotspots Bradleys Cafe/Bistro enjoying a beer and a mocha and of course updating my blog, as for the next 2 days  . . . no idea what we’ll be doing, but as soon as we know no doubt i’ll post about it on here so for now I’ll say ttfn

Picture 015, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Went and checked out Davyhulmes Millenium Nature Reserve at the weekend with Blue our Cane Corso, the whole site covers about 8 hectares of land along side about 3/4 mile of the west bank of Manchesters Ship Canal , the reserve is a mixed landscape of wetland, woods, water features & open land.

You can do everything from bird watching, walking, cycling there as well as having a traditional picnic on one of the benchs provided.

The site is owned and maintained by United Utilities and part of it is a designated Site of Biological Importance.

Who might be coming back I hear you scream . . .

Well the MD might be coming back early from his holidays, seems a member of his family has unluckily broken thier leg in 2 places, which is pretty bad really, but it means he may be calling his holiday short and returning to work, so its also unlucky for us, we were looking forward to a week without him, its a sort of holiday for us as well.

Thinking about it though he’ll probably rebook and take the holiday again in the near future so we still might be lucky enough to have some time without him.

In other news I seem to be increasing my Twitter following, I’ve now got 12 followers who have subscribed to my Twitterings, this is an increase of 9 since last week, been chatting to a few of them online, seems this is another way to meet new friends from around the world, you should give it a go, other thing thats good about it is the amount of links that people twitter, I’ve come across news and websites I don’t think I’d have heard or found of myself.

Is nothing sacred, it’s enough we have to watch the misery of Coro on the TV without having it on our computer screens as well.
My computer is my escape from dull evening soaps and now there’s a possibility that just as dull a game is going to be made all based on Coronation Street, what am I supposed to do if the missus decides she wants to buy it and install it on my PC, It’ll no longer be pure, it will be tainted by this thing they call a Soap.

Dear god what have us men done to deserver such punishment, how dare they consider placing such a game as this alongside my install of Half-life 2 and Call of Duty . . oh the pain . .

Just some photo’s I took at Chorlton Water Park last weekend, nothing special, just me clicking with the camera