Flirting at ‘arms reach’ is safe.

you know you can always run back to your safety net.

Flirting so close to home is scayr.
No, no scary.

Terifyign.

….your choice of wine is dictated by the fact it has a screw top and is quicker to open.

Subtitle - famous for being famous!

Tuesday night, after a bloody long day at work (had a consultant come in to give a demo of some software, but they guy who had organised it was off sick, and the wrong room was booked, and there were 17 people turning up, and it was extremely stressful), I headed off back to Smalltown, to partake of the second part of my birthday present from my sister.

Hence, Wednesday morning saw me crawling out of bed at 6 in the morning, trying my hardest not to growl at my mother, as I head for the bathroom and she is persistently asking me what I want for breakfast.

Ten past seven, and my brother in law arrives, with my niece in tow, to take us to Not-So-Smalltown, to catch the coach which was going to take us to that Lundun.

Coach was on time, yet it still took us until after 9 o’clock to actually make it onto the motorway - and less than an hour later, we had to have a stop.

At 12.45, we finally got off the coach in that Lundun - what a nightmare journey! I was expecting to have lots of time to wander that Lundun, maybe go to a museum. In the end, we had 2 and a quarter hours in total - including trying to get some lunch.

Thankfully we were in a reasonable part of town - and my niece has only been to that Lundun a few times, and when she was much younger, and only with her family. So I took her wandering around Covent Garden. We laughed at some of the street performers (and believe me, there was possibly the crappest performer I have ever seen - one guy painted gold, just whirling some chains - nothing fancy, just standing still and waving them about). I got myself picked on by one of the performers (curses for having such noticable hair). We found a Mexican restaurant in one of the side streets which was reasonable - especially the lunch with two very nice bottles of Dos Equis included in the price.

Then back to the Strand, to see Joseph.

Now, I don’t watch very much telly at all any more. Apparently the person playing Joseph is famous because he won some “I want to be a celebrity, vote for me,” type of telly show.

The audience were going bananas, screaming when he first came on stage. The woman next to me actually fell over at the end of the show, when she leaped up out of her seat to clap him.

Me? I thought it was an okay show. The guy had absolutely no stage presence - I have seen Joseph a few times (sadly not Jason Donovan though), and his performance was on a par with one of the travelling shows that appears in local theatres for a week at a time before moving on - not bad, but not outstanding.

The production was a different thing all together. This is obviously a consequence of the tv show, where they made money out of the gullible masses from the phone ins. The production was much better than any of the shows I have seen previously.

With one exception.

The coat was a big disappointment. Wasn’t that big, and wasn’t all that brightly coloured. Definitely seen better in the local theatre.

When it was finished, we were back outside, with less than half an hour to wait for the bus - not even enough time to find the nearest Starbucks!

We finally got off the coach at quarter to 11, and back home just after 11.

And my sisters comment on the coach? She booked the coach over the train, because it would be less hassle.

My family are insane.

Why are some people such twats?

Last month, one person managed to almost bring the business to its knees by running a huge pile of shit code overnight. The techie guys were really not pleased at being woken up at 5 am to sort it all out, cancel this shit job, and there was a knock on effect to the rest of the business, with everything else running late.

He then managed to alienate the techies even further by running the same pile of shite the following night - that in itself is stupidity - if it’s inefficient code one night, it’s going to be just as inefficient if you run the same code again with no modifications.

So the techies put a blanket ban on ALL people being allowed to run jobs overnight, thus pissing off pretty much the rest of the company.

Since then, me and B from my team have spent hours (and in B’s case days) rewriting the pile of shit, to be more efficient in terms of code, and to be better suited to our systems. Along the way we have been asking the Twat to please send us the results of him running our modified code, so we can at least confirm that what we are sending him is better - we believe it will be, but only he has the results of running the two editions of code.

He hasn’t bothered sending us anything.

B sent him some code two weeks ago. One week ago I asked him how it was running, and he said he hadn’t even had time to look at it, let alone run it.

So much for it being urgent.

So B and I postponed rewriting the rest of the shit, because why should we bother if it’s not that important?

Then, at the beginning of this week it suddenly became important again.

And to give him his due, the Twat appeared to be coming onside, accepting that maybe what we were suggesting was actually better than what he had, and seemed to be taking on board what we were saying.

On Tuesday, B sent him some modified code, saying she thought he would be able to run the code and bring back one years worth of data in one go, rather than monthly.

Yesterday, he tried to run the code. At 9 this morning I got a phone call from him, saying it was still running (a miracle in itself, the techies had told me they planned to cancel any jobs he had running overnight), and asking if it was near completion. I checked, and it still had a way to go - I put this down to there being a lot of traffic on the system, with everyone running their month end reports, plus I knew there were a lot of other large data extractions going on. I said I’d get the techies to look into it.

Now, 4 weeks ago these guys were within a gnats nadgers of revoking this Twats ability to run anything - nobody takes kindly to being woken two days in a row at 5 am to sort out somebody else’s pile of shite, and it had taken a lot of persuasion from me to stop them from doing it.

And now he is asking for their help.

Thankfully, as IT departments go we have some pretty sound guys up there, and J was extremely helpful. “Let it run until lunchtime - we can then take a call whether to cancel it, and we can try and run it direct from the systems overnight. There is nothing wrong with what it is doing, it is probably down to systems traffic. Oh, and he has 8 sessions running - he’s only supposed to have 2, and we are getting fed up with telling him this.”

I then spent the rest of the morning in a meeting, and when I got back to my desk there was an email from the Twat saying that his job had failed, due to lack of temporary space. He suggested running it one month at a time, and storing the data on the main system for the duration of the project.

I replied, saying that would be up to the techies as the main system was their responsibility, and I asked him if he could give me the whole project spec, so we could maybe look at the problem from a different angle, because up until now I had only seen part of the code, and had only been looking at making what was there more efficient, and hadn’t considered whether what he was doing what the best way of getting to his final point. I also pointed out that running the program for one month at a time was what caused problems in the first place, and we should consider running 3-4 months at a time, to ensure we got data back, but minimised the impact on the other systems. I also asked that he restrict his access to 2 sessions, in line with the guidelines, as the system was almost maxed out, and he was affecting other users.

In the meantime, the techies replied saying it was not possible for him to run and store everything on the main system, as it would take too much in temp space, disk space and resource.

The Twat’s response? “I can’t cancel anything because I am running very important reports for my department. And I don’t believe there will be much impact to the system, so that is the way I am going to do it.” Okay, I paraphrased here.

But what the fuck? He is telling the techie, the one in charge of our system to basically fuck off, he is wrong about the capacity and what it can do, and he is going to do what he wants anyway. Does this guy realise just how close he is to being kicked off the system?

And ‘very important reports’? Get a grip, sunshine, everyone has very important reports to run at month end, and everyone else manages to stick within the guidelines.

Oh, and I noticed he’d not bothered to give us the spec.

So I replied, patiently, again. I told him if he didn’t delete some of his sessions, we would choose which ones to delete. I also pointed out that I would take the techie’s view of what the system could and couldn’t do over his opinion. I asked again for the spec, explaining how it would help us all get to a result which would (maybe) keep everyone happy.

The techie also replied - remarkably calmly I thought, also asking for a “high level view of what he was trying to get at” so he could advise on the best solution.

The Twat’s response to that? “I’m afraid the boat has already left on that one - we do not have the time to go back to the drawing board, we have to go with what we have now and make it run as it is.”

What a fucking idiot.

I have now spoken to his boss, who has sent me the original spec, I have arranged a conference call with me, his boss, the techies and him to go through this tomorrow.

When I left, he was running the code, but for one month only, completely against what I had told him to do.

The only consolation is that his user has, somehow, got ‘deprioritised’ in the running order, ensuring that anything else submitted will run faster than what he has. And the techies on call have been issued instructions (from the techie, may I add, not me) that should the overnight batches be running slow, to just cancel anything running under this user’s id.

The man is just not helping himself. And is refusing to be helped. His arrogance is absolutely astounding.

I’m on a roll! Pilates tonight.

And I saw the teacher from last night at the centre too - she teaches a toning class at the same time as the Pilates - I have asked that they change it, so that the toning class is one hour earlier, so I can go to both, but no luck yet.

It was hard. But it was fun.

Plus, some nerdy thing that I discovered I could do yesterday I am hoping is my ticket to Texas! There is an annual conference for some software I use that I have been wanting to go to for a few years, and this year would have been the closest I could come to it - if they hadn’t decided to hold it in Orlando. In one of the Disney hotels. There was no way I could ever convince the powers that be that that was work!

Anyway, was looking at the website today, and there is a call for papers.

And for the super nerdy, they are only going to be 10 minute presentations.

I could do that.

Well, I have done the nerdy stuff, I will get my beeatch W to turn it into a paper. And then I will work to convince the powers that be that both of us should be allowed to go.

Worth a try anyway.

Well, it looks like I (might be anyway) am back on track!

Aerobics AND yoga.

And, if I am honest, I actually enjoyed it.

My whole body feels like the muscles are set at gas mark 2, low oven. They feel like they have a nice gentle glow, but when I touch them, they don’t feel that warm. I guess I am going to have trouble sleeping until I get back into the habit.

And my new silicon bakeware is great.

Not a whole lot really. Work has been work like. One good thing was towards the end of the week giving feedback to those who I didn’t give the job to - W and I tried to put as positive spin on it as we could, tried to make sure each of them had something good out of it. And I can’t believe how bullshitty management that sounds, but it really was the right thing to do. Took away some of the sour taste.

Got off my fat arse and went to step aerobics for the first time in months - and what a surprise to find the teacher ver noticably pregnant. And still teaching the class, although with a little less energy than previously. She still has terrible rythm though.

I also went to yoga, which was okay, but it was a different teacher. She would have been fine if I hadn’t come straight from an hours step class - the usual teacher begins nice and slow, so I get chance to have a bit of a rest before moving into the stretches. This teacher believed in raising the heart rate of the class before beginning the stretches - mine was already through the roof. So, half way through I just gave up and made full use of the ‘relaxation posture’.

Yesterday I was supposed to be going out with Krazy K, but came on in the morning, and spent most of the day sat in front of the telly, eating chocolate. Couldn’t face spending time with Krazy K and her cronies.

I did, however, go out for a drink with LELI. This wasn’t planned, as he is studying at the moment (the final stretch), but at 8 o’clock I got a text asking if I fancied a quick drink around 9 o’clock?

I also got him to sign the final documentation I have from my solicitor, concerning the tying up of loose financial ends. I needed my signature to be witnessed. I think it was probably a bit naughty, because I know the ex used to get a bit uppity when I talked about LELI, and he is now going to have to look at his signature on a document for the next 10 years! But that’s not the (only) reason I asked LELI - I would have done anyway. But it’s nice to think it will also piss the ex off!

Today I have been out as far as Sainsbury’s (as time goes by I am hating supermarkets more and more), and then have spent the afternoon sat reading in the garden. Mister sat under the bush behind me, supposedly guarding me, but did nothing when next doors cat came to see me for some fuss. Madam just lazed up here in the computer chair.