farewell

got called into a meeting with the tech director who told me they wanted to extend my contract but that they wanted me to join the support team. he really tried to sell it to me but i know what those guys do, and they basically get dumped on to do all the shit. i know because i have done it in other places. i much prefer working with the developers and building out infrastructure or doing migrations and projects. he tried to tell me that i would get to do project work, but i can do that now without joining that team. i was not buying it, but i told him i would think about it. 

in the afternoon i spoke to my team leader and told him i was not going to do that role and that my contract was going to end on april 22nd and then i would move on. this evening as i was leaving the office he asked me if i would consider staying on for 1 more month to cover one the guys and even though i really did not want, i told him i would. london is small in the world of contracting and i will stay and do them a favour. there is no need to be unco-operative or spiteful. one of the other engineers resigned about 4 weeks ago and he tried to get out before his notice period. it did not go down too well amongst the senior managers and i suspect he will never work at that firm ever again. they have treated me well and i have got a lot out of working there. 

i have done plently of contracts and plenty of shit ones. the one thing i learned is never burn bridges and be professional at all times. 

the plan is to put the word out that i am looking in a week or 2, and then to maybe book a week in japan as holiday. thats the plan, which might change and be overtaken by events as they happen, but we will see how it goes. 

today i have been mostly listening to farewell jr, that i posted yesterday. great song. 

Farewell J.R - Skin Pieces (Audio)

max q

my boss that turned down my 5 days holiday when i gave them 2 months advance notice and had planned it for when this current contract period had expired, told us on friday that from now on he was going to work from home on either mondays or fridays from now on. 

his girlfriend lives in another city a 3 hour drive away and he has been complaining that it is tiring driving up every weekend, so now he can make a 3 day weekend of it and its less tiring. you know what is tiring?. not having a single day off work since july last year, thats fucking tiring. my boss had 3 weeks holiday in december/january and then another week off in february, but still turned down my holiday request. those 5 days i was going to be away they need bodies in the office, and now i can see why when he is going down to 4 days a week in the office. the other senior permie has also reverted back to a 4 day week as well. what the fuck is going on?!!!.

am going to accept a contract offer if they give me one, but i am going to ask for more money. they can give it to me or they can refuse and i will still sign it, but i will then be on the look out and they will suspect it as well. i know we contractors are just a resource for projects and work, but we are human beings as well and there is no need to treat them like shit.  

a comment was made last week that was telling. i was told at the last minute that the local support contract in new york needed to come into the office to shut down some equipment on saturday for maintenance. i was told this on thursday and it meant that the 3rd party contractor supplier had little time to arrange for one of their guys to work on saturday. when they asked if they could arrange it for late friday afternoon i asked my boss if that was ok, and his reply was something like "no, they will come in on saturday and do it when we want. we pay them for the work and if they dont want our business we will get someone else to do it". i thought that was a bit cuntish. they have done lots of good work for us in the past and they were just asking if it was possible to re-arrange it as it was such short notice. also, i dont think we can find another support contract in NY in one day. 

he should have been less bullish and appreciated the fact that it was our fault this was at late notice. he should have appreciated the fact that they did then come in on the saturday and do the work we asked them to. just because you pay someone does not mean you can treat them like shit. on the flip side, if people are just money, then you can give me some more. after all, this job is just a means to earn money. 

i have a meeting with the IT director in a couple of weeks, which is also 2 weeks before my contract expires. either he will tell me its over, or he will offer me a new one. its going to look shit, if they dont offer me a new one and have fucked my holiday for no reason other than spite. 

a guide to recognizing cunts

another lovely spring sunday in london and as last week, there were millions of cunts driving around. actually, not only driving but cycling as well. i was cycling around regents park and you get a lot of lycra wearing racers going round as well. those fellas can shift. anyways a middle aged couple of barclays hire bikes pulled out of a side road with out looking. they looked like tourists. anyways, i was not going that fast and slowed down because i anticipated they were going to be do something stupid like that. behind me was a serious cyclist and there was no way he was going to stop in time, and luckily he managed to swerve round them as he shouted for them to look out. those skinny tyred racers are not very maneuverable at speed and he did well. if he had hit them it would have been entirely their fault and it would have been carnage. that old fella would have been hit side on and it would not have been pretty. 

what the fuck is it with tourists who want to cycle around london. i dont know what fucking city you come from but they look european and that shit might be ok in masstricht or amsterdam or brugge but this is london and you need to keep your wits about you otherwise you are going to get hurt. i would never dream of hiring a bike and riding around manhattan. i have seen the traffic and the broken roads and the speeding cabs and i would rather take the subway than trying to dodge people, cars and vans on streets i have not ridden before. why would i risk my life on holiday doing that. i am i going to cycle in tokyo?, fuck no!!. 

anyways i also had a car overtake me and get really close. he was driving a bmw 5 series gt. a fucking gt version. the regular saloon is a nice but conservatively designed car. this cunt, said to himself, "i want a beemer 5 but i dont want the conservative looking one, i think i would rather drop 40 grand on the shittier looking one. no mate, it does not look like an aston rapide, or a ferrari FF or 456 in that its a swooping sporty 4 seater. it looks shit and you are a cunt. 

yesterday another driver just took a left turn with out indicating. i had anticipated he was going to do it by the fact that he was driving a vauxhall minaro. who the fuck buys a 6 liter vauxhall in london?. a cunt, thats who!. i already had my fingers on the brakes as i came up behind him and actually thought to myself  "6 litre vauxhall, this guy is obviously a cunt, i better get ready to take evasive action in the event he lives up to the crude stereotype i have labelled him with, and he did. 
buy an BMW M3 or M5, or an AMG 55 or 63 if you want large displacement. dont buy a big engine in a fucking vauxhall. 

but the world champion cunt car is the Audi A3 (or s3). they are almost exclusively driven by cunts. usually men who clearly have a little bit of money and want to buy something german. they are young and non-graduate and yet have a few quid so i suspect they might work in IT or a junior position counting paperclips in a bank in the city or they are estate agents. they could have done the sensible thing and bought a golf r32, but no, they wanted a bit more badge and so got the audi even though its less of a car. they think audi is a prestige marque not realising the fact that it is undermined by the fact they actually bought one. they then proceed to drive it with their fucking boyfriends in the passenger seat, both of them wearing superdry polo shirts with the collars turned up and oakley shades resting on their soon to be balding heads. its a catalogue on uncool. superdry is not cool. wearing oakley shades when you are not a proffessional bike rider is not cool and turing up your collars is not cool. guess what?, your car is not cool either. 

the politest drivers on the road. that will be mercedes benz and particularly those that drive the top f the range S class. i had a guy give me so much room the other day as he was overtaking me that he swerved over into the opposite lane and nearly crashed head on into oncoming traffic. he would rather have killed himself and another car driver than risk getting too close to me. i salute you sir. 

this is wicked.

the decline of western civilisation Part 2

it was the warmest sunniest day of the year so far and i went from wearing my jacket and gloves and woolly hat last sunday on my cycle to the gym, to wearing a t-shirt on my cycle today. it was beautiful weather in london town. 

maybe it was the shock of having such good weather so early in march in london that had an affect on peoples brains, but london was also full of people acting like cunts today. an example of just one of many incidents on my 20 minute cycle to the gym is explained and shown below. 

i ride through st johns wood which is one of the nicest and most expensive areas in north london. its near regents park and there are some beautiful houses worth tens of millions of pounds. ambassadors, rock stars, investment bankers, oil company executives all live in st johns wood and it has a small high street with not an iceland or lidl in sight. am surprised they have a tesco round the corner. it does have the now ubiquitous starbucks, of which i wrote about in the first part of my posts about the decline of western civilization. today i saw the next part. 

something has happened to human beings and especially those that can afford a car. one wonders if in a few generations we will have evolved and lost the use of our legs, given how everyone wants to drive everywhere and are loathed to use their legs even to carry themselves the smallest distances. below is an example of the lengths people will go to avoid using their legs. 

the high street is wide enough for one lane of traffic in each direction. a truck (represented in blue) had stopped and blocked one lane as it was making a delivery to one of the shops on that side of the street. cars were filtering around it when there was a break in the traffic in the opposite lane, and there was a queue of about 3 or 4 cars waiting to get around it. one of the cars (represented in yellow) that had been behind the truck, moved out into the opposite lane, but instead of passing the truck, it pulled up along side it and put on its hazard lights and stopped (see graphic below).

it decided that this was the best place to wait for a parking space. both sides of the street were now blocked, one with the truck and one with the car alongside it waiting for a parking space. cars were now queuing up on both sides of the street as it was blocked and the guy in the car just sat there as if nothing was happening. he seemed utterly impervious to the beeping horns and the dirty stares he was getting from the cars blocked behind and the cars in in front of him, that he was facing head on. all for a parking space and your refusal to even entertain the idea of having to walk a few meters you will open yourself to vitriol and abuse, but you will sit and block the high street. 

i do wonder what it is about these people and what goes through their brains. i wonder if they look at troops that have come back from iraq and have had their legs blown off by an IED, and think to themselves, "lucky bastard, now you have an excuse to sit down all day in a motorised chair". i do wonder if they had the chance, many able bodied people would use wheelchairs out of choice because they dont want to walk even the shortest distance. "sorry dude, how did you lose your ability to walk, was it polio, was it an IED, was it a broken back, an industrial accident or something?". 
"no, my legs work fine, i am just a lazy cunt for whom walking 50 meters is the equivalent of doing the london marathon".  

its telling that this occurred in st johns wood. these people are the elites. those with access to money and education and universities and good jobs and good housing and good culture and those that have most control over their lives in terms of having choices open to them that might not be available to others. one wonders if elites are queuing up for a fucking starbucks on a sunday afternoon and now not aware of their actions when blocking a high street because they dont want to use their legs, whether we have passed the high point of western civilisation. should they not be at the opera or ballet or commissioning artisans. should they not be writing and composing and building and inventing. should they not be using their wealth to enrich their own lives with culture and knowledge which in turn would advance culture and knowledge as a whole. it turns out they are not from what i see. instead they are waiting in a queue outside a coffee shop with their car double parked. 

oncall

i have been on call this week and i am on call this weekend. i had not had any calls and i figured i could get away with going to the gym at lunch time as i have not had any out of hours calls all week. as is usually the way, as soon as i got changed and started working out, i got a call from someone who could not get into their system. instead of going home and remote accessing from there, i decided it would be quicker to cycle into the office and fix it from there, which i did. thanks for ruining my afternoon. 

this evening i had to remote in and do a little more work for the north america office, which somehow i got lumbered with. on friday they had a discussion about not wanting to me to work this weekend on it because as a contractor i charge for any extra time i work. damn right i charge for my time.  they asked around amongst themselves and even though they did not want to pay me for today, none of them volunteered to do the work. hey, i am happy to not work on the weekends and you can keep your money, but it turns out none of you (permies), actually wanted to do it, so thats why i said i would because it needs to get done. 

its only an hour of work but the dept head said i should bill it as half a days work. the senior techie who i have to work with and dont much like, said that actually they would pay me a full days money but would also then give me more work to do to fill the whole of saturday, to which i said i was not free for the whole day. i dont think he liked that. hey!, if you one of you volunteered to do it you would not be in this situation but none of you did, so you can not really resent me for being paid a silly amount of money for an hours work, because the dept head agreed to it. pardon me for being helpful and pardon me for being a contractor. if you had the stones you would go contracting yourself but you like giving it large and talking big in a familiar environment.  

were it not for 2 of the guys i work with, i would walk away from this contract at the end of april. one of them got me the job and i dont want to let him down, and the other guy is probably the best contractor in london and i learn tonnes of new shit from him every week. i have been getting lots of calls from agencies despite not applying for anything in months and the market seems to have improved quite a bit. under normal circumstances i would book my ticket for tokyo and end my contract at the end of april. instead i will stay because of those 2 guys who have helped me a lot and to whom i owe a debt of gratitude. 

i watched this recently. watch it if you want to learn something. 

sinner man

work has been a bit of a chore this week. its just been a bit busy and boring and a little annoying. i have to work with one of the guys that i dont really like. he thinks he is the shit and that he runs the place and yet it turns out he does not know nearly as much as he would like to think he does. we have another guy in our team who i by far the best techie i have ever worked with and he is exposing holes in the stuff that has been put in. 

tonight we had a problem with a mail store on a mail server and it was left to me and the other guy who is really good, to sort it out. we are both contractors whilst the annoying guy is the senior member of the dept and permanent. he walked straight passed us when he saw that there was a problem and went home at 5:30 whilst we stayed behind to try and fix it, which the other guy did manage to. 

i thought it summed things up quite appropriately. when the shit hit the fan he split because when things go wrong, its when you find out what people know. he did not fancy getting exposed as he has an image he is cultivating, whereas i dont give a shit if people dont think i am the best techie in the firm, and i just want to learn and try and understand things and if that means google and reading forums, then so be it. i am not too proud to admit that i dont know what every error message is. anyway, the reason the servers went to shit was because the time server on the ESX host they were on was not set right and the virtual servers were getting their time from it. 2 fuck ups and 2 more things that should not occur if you followed best practice. you dont let your virtual windows machine get time from the esx server. you use another NTP server that is not piggy backing and using an esx host as its master. in that case, even if the ntp daemon has stopped on the esx server, it still would not fuck up your guest VM's, which it did tonight. kerberos does not like time differences of more than 5 minutes between servers.  

today i have mostly been listening to nina simone. class. 

UPDATE: tonight i had to remote into one of our north american sites to shut down a server. its a small office with no IT staff and only have one server on site. now, the guy who is a bit of an asshole is a stickler for process and doing things right and getting everything documented and done by the book. well, for all that, it turns out we have a server in a remote site with no iLO remote access configured. another case of giving it large and falling over on the basics. other similar issues this week on top of the NTP issues and this were discovering they had randomly mixed 300GB and 600GB drives in the SAN for someone unknown reason, not using host sets on the SAN, not receiving alerts from the SAN, naming servers as AD domain controllers but they are not actually domain controllers, using group policy to implement Logon as a service right to a bunch of random accounts, which was overwriting the accounts that actually needed to on particular servers,  incorrect IP address stated for a switch and domain controller at a remote site, so i thought they were down when i could not get to them or ping them and incorrect password written in the password list for one of the switches. so much for dotting all the I's and crossing all the t's.