Sunday, When The Lights Went Out...

So the Great Powerdown of 2012 went ahead, and was successful (thanks for asking), at least from an IT perspective. In a departure from normal practice, the project manager actually stayed onsite to supervise, something for which we were most appreciative, not to mention quite relieved.

We had a 6:00 a.m., or in military speak, oh-six-hundred (What's the "oh" stand for? "Oh My God, it's Early!!!") hours, start, in order to shut down systems gracefully rather than let them crash, which would have been extraordinarily bad, and handed over to Facilities at 7:02, at which point the word was given, and the lights went out.

After that it was home for breakfast and waiting for the call to return for the inevitable powerup and testing, which was due to commence at 6:00p.m.

I also had to decide what to do with a set of car keys I found on the street on my way to work that morning.

Quite by chance, I crossed Marlborough St. at a point closer to Parnell than I would normally have done, and came upon a bunch of keys evidently dropped by someone the previous night. There were the usual house and assorted keys, some colourful keyrings attesting to the fact that the owner enjoyed visits to (or souvenirs from) Ibiza, and a switchblade key for a Volkswagen of some description.

There being no cars in evidence, I was unable to see whether the key fit anything, so I resolved to turn them in at my earliest convenience at the nearest Garda station. Which I did.

I handed the keys over to a bored-looking cop at the desk and explained where and when I had found them. He examined the car key and told me it was one of a new type, and that if I took it to a VW dealership they'd be able to tell me the make and model of the car it belonged to, and possibly identify the owner.

There was a brief pause.

As impressed as I was with modern automotive science, I wasn't particularly interested in identifying the car, and said so; I told him I figured the car's owner would stop in at the police station on the offchance that someone had handed in the keys.

The cop thought about it, said okay, and took my name and contact number.

"Just in case," he said.

"So if no-one claims the keys in a year and a day, do I get to keep the car?" I asked, jokingly.

He had nothing to say about that...

Oh, How We Laughed...

This weekend, my colleagues and I will be assisting our facilities management team with a building-wide powerdown in order to allow them to upgrade the building's electrical generators.

The announcement went out three weeks ago, and after the inevitable wrangling and disagreements, it's on for Sunday.

A final reminder went out reminding people to make sure to power down their desktop PCs and such on Friday evening before leaving, (because power will be unavailable between 0700 and 2000 Sunday) and we got this reply back:

"Saturday's (!) fine with us for the powerdown, but we'll be updating the website on Sunday (!!)so we'll need access to email, intranet and server <xxxxxx01>, as well as a phone contact in case there are any issues. Thanks. (!!!)"

Needless to say, we were too busy rolling around the floor laughing to reply immediately, but my team leader pulled himself together and sent a carefully-worded reply to the individual concerned.

Who didn't understand.

"But we have to update the website - we need access."

"There'll be no electricity."

"But - "

"No electricity, no lights, no comms, no PCs, no servers, no network, no intranet. No access."

"But I don't think you understand - "

At which point it got ridiculous. It seems his team interpreted "No power" to mean that the network would be unavailable. Curious, because they work in Communications, and I thought we were quite clear.

Can't wait for the next instalment...

I Hate This Town...

As I may have mentioned previously, it has been our custom, where I work, to go away for a weekend around Christmas, if for no other reason than to get us out of the city and give me a chance to learn how to declare "I love this town!" in the local language, something I am now able to do with confidence in France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and, if we ever go there, Klingon.

It's something, however, I am less likely to say about my hometown these days.

Dublin has degenerated into 'Land of the Junkies' - where every street corner seems to have either a dealer or a hophead, one with the jitters looking around for cops that rarely materialise, the other so spaced out of it that he wouldn't know it if they did.

They wander out into traffic and pick fights with each other or with humans, or meander their way from one end of the street to the other, wailing in barely-intelligible English for their friend/supplier/other, frequently passing each other by without noticing so that the cries and responses grow to resemble a sort of 'Junkie Sonar':

"Sharonnnn!!!"................................................................"Whaaaaa???"
"Sharonnnn!!!"............................................"Whaaaaa???"
"Sharonnnn!!!"........................."Whaaaaa???"
"Sharonnnn!!!"........"Whaaaaa???"
.............
"Sharonnnn!!!"........"Whaaaaa???"
"Sharonnnn!!!"........................."Whaaaaa???"
"Sharonnnn!!!"..........................................."Whaaaaa???"

They push baby buggies (with or without infants in them) out into traffic, almost daring it to hit them, and lurch about like the walking dead, all the while looking for their next fix.

It'd be almost funny if it wasn't so godsdamn tragic...

And then there are the pushers.

On any given day, I watch from my office window and see guided tours of the Henry St/Moore St area, where groups of people are told of the history and traditions of the quarter, and its place in our revolutionary story. And on any given day, these groups are within reach of up to three drug dealers spotting for each other while trying to stay out of the view of the so-called "anticrime" cameras.

The police do their best (and indeed have redoubled their efforts of late) but a lot depends upon their witnessing a crime before they can intervene, and their resources are stretched thinly enough that they can't be everywhere all the time. Indeed, the afore-mentioned dealers have a network in place that warns them if a Garda appears anywhere in a three-block radius. The bastards even use Bluetooth.

We've taken to giving them names - there's Scarecrow, a gangly, bespectacled individual who carries a phone in one hand and watches for police; Poison Ivy, who runs a flower stall that also sells contraband tobacco; the Ear, a guy who, like Scarecrow, acts as spotter but wears a bluetooth earpiece. You get the picture.

Merchandise is stashed in a refuse bin on the corner; occasionally we'll see a dealer running after the council workers who empty the bins if they've been by too early.

There's also a mobile 'stash', held by an elderly gentleman who looks like somebody's kindly old grandfather and goes about with a tartan pull-along shopping trolley.

Every now and again the police cruise by and disrupt business; for a short time, they even stationed a uniformed officer on the street corner. But that just succeeded in driving the business somewhere else. Three days later, they were back.

It is to our shame as a society that this situation exists and is allowed to continue.

And as much as I love my city, I sometimes really hate this town...

Rise of the Machines...

The Telegraph and other sources today reported that

"Driverless cars are to be allowed on the roads of Nevada, which has become the first state in America to allow the vehicles to apply for their own driving licences."

Developed by Google, and following exhaustive testing, the cars will be allowed to drive their passengers, freeing them to take care of such tasks as texting, drinking coffee and even reading newspapers.

Any enterprising businessperson should be off and running with this, which of course has applications in public transport.

So it shouldn't be long before we see the emergence of things like this:

Just goes to show that, in Nevada, you can bet on anything...

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times...

Manchester City 1, Manchester United 0...

That's the half-time scoreline as I write this, and I'm happy.

Added to this is the small matter of having completed a long-running project in work, the recent wedding of two very good friends (to each other, I hasten to add) and the approach of summer (and all that that implies) and I think you'll agree that life is not at all bad.

Except for the reading glasses.

I've been having problems for a while with small print and trying to read in poor light, so I decided to have my oculars tested, the result being a light prescription for reading glasses.

To be fair, it was something that was predicted in my last eye test, about 15 years ago, but it does put a tear in the ol' invulnerability index...

They aren't too uncomfortable, but I do feel like Admiral Kirk in STII - if anyone asks, I'm allergic to Retinax V.

More Stuffing, Vicar???

Note: Some (actually, only one) of the names in the following post have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved; for example, Niall will be referred to as 'Alan', etc.

Last night, following a phone conversation with my old friend, Alan (see above), I was persuaded to watch an episode of BBC comedy "The Vicar of Dibley", starring Dawn French as the eponymous cleric.

The episode in question was a Christmas special, wherein Rev. Geraldine is invited to not one, not two, but four Christmas lunches by members of her congregation, none of whom she has the heart to turn down, and one of which had about nine courses.

It gave new meaning to the word 'stuffing'.

Not that there weren't a few laughs; it is, after all, a family show with something for everybody, and the characters play well against each other.

However,the highlight for me was a small child's answer, when asked where Jesus was born.

"In Dunstable", was the innocent reply.

Thanks, Alan...

Dreams...

So I've been having some weird dreams lately.

Not the one about being the only one at work with no shoes, or the one about flying (that was pretty cool, actually).

In last night's supporting feature, I left all my books outside on the street (in the rain) - I don't know why.

Another time, I was the manager of an old, haunted post office where the previous postmaster had been murdered (only the day before) by someone who turned out to be the last person I'd have suspected. When confronted she confessed, laughing maniacally and saying that

"I would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids,"

whereupon, suddenly realising that there was no talking dog and his mad friends, she apologised for being in the wrong murder mystery and arrested herself.

There was another dream about being in charge of the letter "L", which pretty much amounted to a lot of work, and last night's main feature, a Cecil B. de Mille epic involving the Stewart Granger-like Safari adventure involved in preparing to reboot a storage controller on a SAN* array in my datacentre, the actuality of which involved logging onto it, clicking "Restart" and waiting 30 seconds.

Why can't I have the dream about lying on a beach in the sun, sipping a Mojito and watching as Halle Berry emerges from the surf?

I'd certainly trade someone for management of the letter "L"...


*SAN - Storage Area Network

When A Job's TooTough For Even A "Nanny 911" Intervention...

This man posted this video on Youtube in which he expresses his disappointment with some comments posted on her Facebook page by his 15-year-old daughter, which he discovered after upgrading her laptop for her.

For, in addition to being a caring father, he is also an IT professional.

In it, he reads the message she posted on her page complaining about her life and her parents' treatment of her, then offers his rather unique rebuttal - in .45 calibre hollowpoint.

An IT professional with a gun.

And a caring father...

Netflix - Maybe, Maybe Not...

Netflix, as many may know, launched in the UK and (more importantly) Ireland last month, and are offering a 30-day free trial to new members.

At €6.99 a month after the trial period ends, it sounded like a good deal, so I signed up.

The registration process asked me to rate or comment on a variety of genres and titles in order to build up a profile with which the service would recommend movies I might enjoy.

On reflection, perhaps I should have skipped that part, because the available catalog is so small as to offer many of the same titles in different categories, and attempting to fine-tune things by selecting 'Not Interested' didn't seem to help.

Here's what I've discovered so far:

1. Classic movies - few. A search for Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon returned nothing, and a search for Humphrey Bogart returned The African Queen and nothing else. There are 3 John Wayne movies, however, all westerns. Henry Fonda can be seen in On Golden Pond, with daughter Jane and Katharine Hepburn. Marilyn Monroe can be seen only in Some Like It Hot, with co-stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.

2. New releases - depends on one's definition. The most recent production year was 2011 for a documentary called Page One, about the New York Times and apparently featuring Julian Assange. A small number of titles from 2010, including The Expendables and The Mechanic.

3. TV - mostly British series, dramas from ITV and BBC, so good-quality, but nothing earlier than 1990 except Fawlty Towers. I would have hoped for some classic US shows or even some of the great ITC shows of the '60s and '70s, but nothing doing.

4. Foreign Films - mainly Asian martial-arts, but with a small number of European titles, including one with Jean Claude Van Damme. I did, however, find a film featuring Jeremy Irons and Patricia Kaas,entitled "And Now, Ladies and Gentlemen...", which wasn't bad.

But that in itself will not be enough to maintain my interest, so unless the selection improves drastically in the next 28 days or so, I think I'll be checking out Amazon's LOVEFiLM instead.

Might even give it a look in any event...

The New 52 - Not So Good As I'd Hoped...

My file at Forbidden Planet is going to be a little thinner from tomorrow - I'll be dropping a number of titles from my list.

Curiously, they're all from DC's "New 52":

First off the list is Stormwatch - I don't know what I expected from this; perhaps a grittier JLA or something, but after 5 issues they've had to have a leader imposed upon them because they couldn't decide on one themselves. And they were fighting the Moon.

Nope.

Next, Green Arrow - DC's relaunch of the Emerald Archer sees Ollie reunited with his wealth, so in effect he's become Bruce Wayne. One of the things that defined the character for me was that he had lost everything, but rebuilt his life, becoming a hero in the process.

Unless DC's setting Ollie up for a big fall (and they're taking their time about it) then he's not the character I enjoyed reading for so many years.

Animal Man was a title I picked up on recommendation from one of the staff in FP; I don't have it on order but I was intrigued enough to pick it off the shelf each month. I'd like to stick withit, but the artwork's really doing my head in. Maybe I'll give it another look in a few months, but for now, bye-bye Buddy...

I'll probably drop Savage Hawkman as well, but I'm going to give it another month or two and see what develops. I've never read a Hawkman title before so I've nothing to compare it to, but it's not been bad so far.

And the old reliables aren't safe either: Batman, Superman, Detective - I've been reading them for decades and I'm still to be convinced about the relaunched versions. One thing that's annoying me is that there seem to be multiple versions of characters - the Superman appearing in Action Comics is different from the character in the Superman title; The Batman in, well, Batman, is different from the one appearing in Batman & Robin, for example, or in JLA. It's as if they exist in parallel, which is bizarre to say the least.

I feel no attachment to any of these characters - they're not the ones I grew up reading, and it has been no problem putting a book aside when I couldn't get into thestory, something that's happening more and more frequently of late.

I have been reading more titles from other publishers, increasingly IDW and Dynamite - IDW's new Star Trek book, retelling episodes from the original series with the reimagened cast, is pretty good and works well. I've also been reading Dynamite's Flash Gordon:Zeitgeist and The Bionic Man, with which I've been impressed.

So it's not all bad news - just for DC...

A Day Off...

Having some accumulated time on my hands, I took today off from work.

I had grand plans for the time, most of which included household chores, but accomplished only some of my planned tasks, one of which was to rearrange the bookcase in my living room. The work was therapeutic, and reacquainted me with some books I hadn't read in a while.

A bowl of chicken & vegetable soup for lunch, then I watched Alec Guinness as George Smiley in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", the original BBC production from 1979. Having seen the recent film starring Gary Oldman asSmiley, it was interesting to compare the two productions and, indeed, portrayals of LeCarré's master spy.

All in all, though, it was good to spend a day away from the office. Have to do these things once in a while to stay sane...