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Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
One More than the Queen of England
Weird post title right? What I am referring to is birthdays, The Queen of England has two birthdays a year, Myself I have Three. So if you will sit down comfortably dear Reader, I’ll explain, mostly because its become a FAQ.
A few years ago a friend offered to do one of those astronomical charts for me. One of the larger complicated ones that show your personality, and long term fortune, etc. So I gave my friend the details I had, Date of Birth, and Location of Birth. Both of which are required for accuracy. I was then informed that if I wished a more accurate chart then they would need my time of birth, because when it comes to stars that take a millennium for the light to reach us, knowing what minute you were born makes all the difference. So I asked my parents for the time of my birth.
I think I’ll jump ahead here to the conversation with my friend later, for pure comedy affect.
F=Friend, M=Me
F: “So, you got the time of your birth?“
M: “Yes, Nov 1st“
F: “No the TIME? if you don’t know the exact time you can narrow it down to morning, afternoon, evening, night. it will still help with accuracy“
M: “Nov 1st“
F: “No, can they narrow it down a bit?“
M: “They did, they narrowed it down to Nov 1st. Apparently no one made a note of when I was born, and they latter could not work out if it was Oct 31st, Nov 1st, Nov 2nd. so the narrowed it down to the middle one, Nov 1st“
F: “You just can’t do anything normal can you? you even managed to mess up and complicate getting born!“
It turns out that it was a very long and painful labor, and I was a home birth (a uncommon occurrence at the time). Also the Midwife was not that good, and forgot to fill in the forms at the time. She also banged my head repeatedly against the bed, but that’s a different story. So basically everyone was tired, exhausted, and under belief that the midwife did her job. It was only later when it came time to register my birth they realised they were unsure of the date. My father, Mother & Nian (Grandmother) all believed different days.
They settled on the middle day of the range, since it was central and my mothers vote (well she did have the pain so its only fair). Since then a few people have stated I’m more suited to a Halloween birth than a All Saints Day birth. The upshot is that since I was born on one of three possible days, I think to play safe I should celebrate my birthday over the full three day period. Its the only way I can be sure I have got the right day.
Battle to be The King of Idiots
This week at the Asylum has been a bit weird (And I mean weirder than normal) We’ve had two customers fighting to be crowned “The King of Idiots.” Now you would not think that was a title anyone would actively seek out, but I swear the two nominated contestants must have been. There is no other explanation for the level of stupidity involved.
Contestant 1: (We shall call them Santa & the Elves)
For several weeks now Santa has been emailing our Support department asking for some DNS changes to be made for their domain name. And every week they have been informed the changes were done weeks ago. This finally got escalated to me to look at, and I inform them that the changes have all be done.
I get an email from Santa saying that where www is working and pointing at the correct IP, the domain name by itself is not pointing at the right IP so could an A record be created. So I point out www is a CNAME that points at the domain. so whatever IP www goes to is the one the domain name by itself goes too. *Repeat four Times*. Since Santa is getting nowhere with emails, he decided to phone me up and explain again how www goes to the right place, and can we point the domain to the same place as www. This time as well as explaining it all to him, I logged onto our primary NameServer and emailed him the actual zonefile for his domain to show him where things went.
Santa then asked would I mind talking to his head IT elf, I agreed so the IT elf phoned and used the same words as Santa. I explained again, and the elf came up with this solution. “If we change the www from a cname to an a record it may work?” I had to check I had heard him right and that his plan was for me to change the one he claimed worked, and set it up exactly as the one he claimed did not work?
Santa then decided we need a conference call with all the elves, and some clever dwarfs who were walking past at the time. In this call they suggested that since www worked when it was just an alias for the domain, that couldn’t we leave it pointing to the domain, and change the domain to point to the www? I believe they could tell by the sound of *BANG* *BANG* as my head banged against my desk, that maybe that would not work.
It was during this conference call while their head IT Elf was muttering that the DNS was all wrong, and his load balancer was not working because of it, which in turn stopped their certificate from working. As soon as I heard cert, I stopped them to ask was this about a SSL cert? (Which it was). They had got one www.domain, only when they went to domain it was giving warnings. And they believed if they could just get the DNS & load balancer working right, this problem would be resolved.
I had to explain what DNS and URL’s were, to several people who were IT professionals, with claimed experience in hosting, networks, dns, etc..
Contestant 2: (We shall call the Seaman)
I was asked in my role of Linux Sys.Admin to help the Seaman with any problems he had moving the hosting of a website over too us. Now there should have been no problems really since the Seaman is a professional web developer.
Now, His entry was a late one, and only lasted one day, as opposed to Contestants 1’s weeks. Yet on that one day he managed to phone up for help over a dozen times, here’s a few of the problems he had.
P: FTP will not let me connect to the server.
S: Spell FTP correctly, and it will work
P: It says it can not load the file, but the files there
S: You realise Linux is case sensitive right?
P: I can not write collected email addresses to a file
S: Make the file writable and not read only.
S2: Errr why are you using a flat file, you have a MySQL DB with that account?
I’ve not decided on the winner YET. I’m leaning towards Contestant 2. Mainly because “How do you spell FTP wrong?” come on, its three letters, and you say the three letters when saying the word F T P?
RTL – From The Games Cabinet – Fallout: New Vegas
You wake up in a doctors office with no memory of how you got there, the last thing you remember was getting a job to deliver a simple package to someone. After further investigation you discover you were waylaying on route, shot in the head and buried alive. Luckily this incident was spotted, and your body was dug up and taken to the nearest doctor. Now you must find out why you were shot, who shot you, and claim VENGEANCE!
No, this is not the plot of some Cheap Western (Or the Japanese original) but the rough starting plot of the new Role-Playing game in the Fallout series by Obsidian Entertainment. Yes “Fallout: New Vegas”.
The game is set about four years after the events of “Fallout 3″, and is located in the post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Nevada and the Mojave Desert known as the “Mojave Wasteland“. Yes, its a post-apocalyptic world with mutated creatures attacking travelers, legions of slavers, cannibals, criminals killing their way across the land, and Las Vegas is still doing trade as the gambling capital of the world. This is the world you are playing in.
The game play is similar to Fallout 3, well it is running the same game engine. Once again you can have companions, only this time they are more useful, and you can have one humanoid and one none humanoid companion. The greatest difference in my opinion is the addition of crafting. In the old game you had to scavenge for ammunition for your weapons or keep purchasing new ones, in this one you can use workbenches, or reloading stations to make your own ammunition using empty cases, powder and lead. Or you can make tools, equipment, repair items using the scrap you salvage as you travel. You can even use campfires to cook up things, I think this makes it a lot more realistic since most post-apocalyptic travelers would pick up a few real world survival skills.
Like any good RPG, you get to select your skill sets & bonuses as you advance in levels, pick what Armour & weapons you use (I am currently running around in a kilt with a machete thanks to pre-order DLC). You can even customise your ammunition (Armour Piercing, Overcharged Cells, Shrapnel in you dynamite) & add accessories to your firearms (Scopes, Silencers, Etc). You also get to pick which quests you will take, and if you will be nice or evil, which faction to side with, and how you will interact with the inhabitants. You can complete the game by just following you own quest for Vengeance, only you will miss out on so much more fun by doing that.
I would say this game is well worth getting (Hey, I lost the last weekend to this game), and any any fans of the series, or the RPG genre, or anything post-apocalyptic need this game in their collection.
This Article was 1st posted @ rocktheLAN.com
National Nostalgia Week
These and other pointless questions will not be answered in this post. It does make you think though, if today is INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and people celebrate the annoying use of shoutyness in correspondence, is “National Nostalgia Week” such a insane suggestion? But I digress, I know its an uncommon thing for me to go slightly off-topic but that’s what I seem to have done here.
The concept of “National Nostalgia Week” has come about because this week seems to be a collection of things reminding me of days gone by, basically a string of nostalgic memories for bygone days. Let me share a few here for you dear reader.
Nostalgia 1.
Wednesday in the office we were listening to my last.fm stream and it randomly played “Your in the army now” by Status Quo. Now I’ve not heard that song since I was about 15, and it was played almost constantly at the ACF camp I was attending. In fact, a group of us even rewrote the lyrics to be a comedy of events involving people from our battalion. We even performed the song as part of a show for Christmas that year, it was a good show with staged fights and fake blood the works. Now I have not thought about my Childhood, or my time spent in the ACF for a very, very, very long time. Its amazing that one song can bring back so many memories.
Nostalgia 2.
Yesterday (Thursday) I was working from home in the afternoon, and chatting to an old friend/X-colleague/Training Partner/Fellow Farmyard torrets sufferer PlanetPete. He recently started his own blog over at ChimonTendo, and had imported all his old LiveJournal posts into the archive, and we were reading the Insanity of the olden days, and trying to work out where such pearls of wisdom as “Beware the fuzzy duck with a mongoose on its back” came from.
Nostalgia 3.
This morning before commuting to work I spotted my eldest nephews car parked on my parents drive so I popped over to say hello. He’s been working night shifts down in London Town for the last few weeks, and I was curious to how he was getting on. During the conversation it was mentioned that he may be working in Ireland next week, so I was joking how he’d probably get to Anglesey and get lost. It was then that my mother said she was worried since he often speaks without thinking so could say the wrong thing over there and get in trouble. I defended him by saying its easy to say the wrong thing, and recalled an incident that happened many years ago on my first visit to Dublin.
I was drinking at the bar in a pub with a friend when this young attractive girl came over and sat in my lap, apparently it was a quicker way to get to the crowded bar. So we started talking while she was getting server, well she started telling me about her collection of studded collars and such she had at home, and it started from there. During the conversation she pointed around the room and said “look at them all getting drunk on a Saturday night, its silly really as we have to confess it all in the morning, it makes you wonder why we do it!” to which I answer without thinking “I don’t know. I’m not a catholic!“. Have you ever seen a horror film when the people walk into a Inn on a moor and the whole place goes silent and stare at them? Its what happened, everything went silent, people stared, and I’m sure a group of men in the shadows started to put hands under jackets as if reaching for something. Remember the Catholic-Protestant issues they have over there. Luckily I had the sense of mind to follow it up with “I’m Welsh!” at which the noise returned to the pub, and several blokes came over to greet me and point out the Welsh hate the English as much as they do so I was all right. I then had several hours of drinks and anti-English jokes.
So all in all its been a week of being reminded of my past, who knows what it means, if anything. I will just smile to myself and say to the Verse “Thanks for the memories”.
BT has killed my will to live.
I am sat here, feet on desk, phone resting on my shoulder trying to work out if I can slash my wrists with a business card. Why you ask? Well to fully explain I need to go back over a hour, so sit comfortably and get ready for story time.
The Governor of the Asylum signed up to attend a BT teleconference on their plans to move some of their systems to a newer environment. The only problem was, he decided to be visiting London Town for the scheduled appointment, So I was picked to fill in for him. On paper this sounds like a good thing, a couple of hour conference call where I could legitimately do no work.
I got my login details for the call and noticed the first problem. BT use Microsoft livemeeting for their conference calls, which is fine unless you run a Linux desktop. So for starters I would have to use the audio only phone part of the meeting, meaning I would not see the slides, the presentation or have access to the ongoing Q&A controls.
Feeling slightly annoyed to start off with, I follow the instructions and phone in five minutes before the conference is due to start. And get really annoying hold music which was on a two minute loop of the same tune. This very very annoying hold music continued for almost twenty minutes before the conference started.
Feeling very annoyed, I listen to the conference which seems to be almost fully talking about what we can see on the slides (What slides? audio only remember?). Another irritation was the fact there seemed to be several dozen people giving the talk. You would get one person introduce themselves, say a couple of sentences and then pass on to the next person who would do the same. This went on for over a hour, I lost count of the number of people we switched through.
Sometime in the last twenty minutes I really lost the will to live, since the constant droning in my ear from the voices in the phone are preventing me napping.
Oh, and the meeting, was a let you know what’s going on before the full meeting in January next year? Like I will remember any of this junk by tomorrow, let alone next year.
Parents, Who’d have them?
Last week at a festive board there was a discussion on “kids, and the annoying requests they ask of you” The general opinion of the parents present was that in their days if you had a problem, like you broke down, or ran out of petrol you sorted it out yourself, and did not phone your parents expecting them to help. My father was one of the strong voices against annoying kids expecting you to go out of your way to help. This conversation was brought back into my mind yesterday. And as a none-parent I want to point out its not just Children/Grandchildren that are guilty of this.
Yesterday about 7pm I get a call from my mother. Turns out there was family up in the area on a canal boat holiday, and my parents had gone to visit them for a pub lunch. Only after the lunch they decided to travel along the canal for a while to enjoy the day, and my father had always fancied having a go on a canal boat. So at 7 when they decided to call it a day and come home after a day on the canal they realise they are now several miles or more away from where they parked their car.
So pour coffee down sink, take a moment to morn its loss, and jump in car to drive to the middle of nowhere to pick up parents. I arrive at a small car-park near the canal, its miles from the nearest street light so its dark, cold, and abandoned. I am the only person about, so I phone my father to say I am here, and where are they?. “Oh, we had to move on. We’re a couple miles down the canal. We are just mooring up which should take twenty minutes or so, then we’ll walk the mile or so back to where you are. so just wait there”
Right, so I am to wait in a cold, dark, abandoned car park. And I can’t leave the engine running as I’m a bit low on diesel and probably shouldn’t waste it. Now the smarter amongst you are probably thinking . o (err. they were only guests on the boat, and they knew you were on route to collect them, so why did they not leave the boat at the location you were driving to, and wait for you to arrive?) The answer would be, they did not think of it.
About a half hour later I get a call from my father asking was I still there (like where else would I be?) and informing me they stopped off at a pub, so I should drive to pub to meet them. So it was a case of relocate to pub, (OK I did get a pint for my troubles. Not off my parents but of some random friend of the family who I do not know). Then a quick ten minute trip to go drop them off at their car, before I was able to go home.
PARENTS!!!!!!
When is a simple task not a simple task?
Last Friday it was pointed out to me that the sidelight on the drivers side was not working on my car. Now changing the bulbs on a car is a simple task so I pencilled in doing some maintenance at the weekend.
So Saturday afternoon I pop the hood and look at the back of the light fitting to see what kind of bulb I need. Imagine my surprise when I realised the lamp I wanted was behind a bit of metal chassis. OK. Not to worry, I have the owners manual so I’ll check what they say about bulb replacement.
The entry for side lights & indicators was simply “For this task we suggest taking the vehicle to your supplier for them to deal with” WTF?? Since when has replacing a simple sidelight bulb needed the vehicle dealers to do? Pah at them.
So I take a look to see how big a job it is to gain access to the bulb. Right. to gain access to the back of the lighting unit you have to remove the lighting unit. So far so simple. Only the lighting unit is behind the front grill & bodywork. So you have to remove the front of the car to get at the lighting unit, to remove the lighting unit to gain access to the lamp to simply unplug it, and plug a new one in.
How fraking stupid is that design ?
Several hours of major mechanical work just to get access to a 30 second maintenance job.
Needless to say, my side light is still not working.
Doctors 2.1
My case of “Vampire Eye” was not getting any better, in fact it seemed to be getting actually worse, so yesterday I decided to get myself a check-up appointment at the Doctors. I was in luck and managed to get myself a 9am appointment. So not long to wait to get some answers…..right?
9:00 AM Doctor 1:
I’m sat patiently in the waiting room, and by patiently I mean board out of my mind and playing “angry birds” to waste the time. You have to love appointment times, I had a fixed time 9am, I was the first appointment of day, and I still had to wait about twenty minutes before getting seen.
I get in to see the Doc, (Not The Doc, which is a shame cos that would have been really cool), anyway I walk in and sit down. My Doctor looks at me
Doc: “err so the drops I gave you are not helping?“
WO: “No, and my eyes been getting worse the last three days?“
Doc: “err, well I don’t really know much about eyes. But one of the other doctors here is an eye man, he used to be work at the eye clinic, and he really knows his stuff. I’ll make you an appointment to see him.“
WO: . o (WTF? I come in repeatedly with an EYE problem, I keep seeing you who knows nothing about eyes, and you guys had an eye doctor here all the time?) “Cool.“
A new appointment is made with a new doctor for 4pm.
4:00 PM Doctor 2:
I turn up and wait, and wait, I then spot a doctor coming out the room I know is the one I have the appointment in. He walks over to receptionist and hands over a pile of medical notes/records then leaves the building. I just look about wondering if no one told him about the extra person he had to see at the end of the day. I was just planning how to kidnap him in the car park when he came back in.
Now this doctor actually checked my eye, asked me questions, inserted a variety of bits of cardboard and paper into my eye to check things, and various other things. This beat my previous doctors method of going. “oh, you have a blood shot eye, conjunctivitis, take these drops!” He humms, and asks do I mind waiting back in the waiting room for a bit while he phones the eye-clinic. So I wait but I should get some answers……right?
After an hour in and out of the doctors office, I was asked did I mind rushing myself to A&E ASAP, do not pass go & do not collect $200. Well OK, that sounds bad, but the Hospital should give me some answers…..right?
So I shot off to the Hospital with a letter from the Doctor.
5:30 PM Hospital:
I arrive at A&E and give my name and address. The receptionist asks what the issue is, so I hand over my note from my doctor. She opens it and looks at page, turns it over and looks at back, turns it over and looks at the front, and then again the back. She puts it back into the envelope and asks “err so what’s the issue?“. I tell here dodgy eye and she sends me to another waiting room to wait for the triage nurse.
I get called up and sent into a small examination room. The triage nurse and another nurse come in with me and ask what seems to be the problem. Once again I hand over my note and the two of them look at the front, then the back, then the front, then the back. “err ok, I got about 4 words that I could read” says one, “I got part of his DOB” the other one adds. I get the note back and place it safely in my pocket to show my mother at some later date to prove my handwriting on the whole is not that bad.
Before we start I am given a form thing I have to fill in on abuse, bullying, etc. Questions like is anyone in your family physically abusing you, mentally abusing you, etc. And what would you do if someone tried abusing you. I helpfully point out they missing the option “I’d rip out their spleen and wear it as a hat” and the two nurses back out of the room informing me someone will be along soon.
The waiting continues, and continues. The triage nurse pops into the room “Has anyone seen you yet?” “no” “good!” and pops out leaving me shall we say a tad bit confused. Luckily she popped back in to explain that they had got a phone call from one of the doctors from the eye clinic asking was I there, and not to see me because they were coming up to see me.
After a short wait I hear a Russian accent ask “where is he?” and a rather attractive, tall blonde woman in street clothes is standing by entrance to room. The triage nurse walks up to her and points at me, then adds that there is a three year old in A&E with grit in his eye, and they would like her to have quick look at the kid. “No! I am here for him” *slaps paperwork in her hand* “Only Him!“. Woooooo Hoooooooo I think.
So I get examined, she curses loudly in her lovely accent that my doctors are all fools for diagnosing conjunctivitis all the times and giving me anti-biotics’. She informs me that I have in fact got Iriitis, I will have drops to take for next 3 days, and I will see her again on Monday. (Score). It was at this point the nurses explained that pharmacy was closed for the night, so I would not be able to have prescription until the morning.
She looked at me, “One minute” and left the room. From down the corridor I could hear her accent as she informed the A&E doctors and nurses that I would have my prescribed medication tonight, even if one of them had to hand write a prescription and run to the nearest Boots that was open and pick me some up. She walked back into the room to inform me with a smile “you will have your drugs!”
I have to hand it to the A&E staff, they managed to scrounge up enough bits from different places to cover me until the morning when I would be able to come back to get full prescription filled.
Doctors 2.0
Yesterday I gave in to the masses, who had been giving me a hard time for not going to the doctor with my “Vampire Eye“.
So I woke up yesterday, got dressed up in my Ninja Gi, loaded up with all the weapons and tools of the Ninja, and prepared for the dangerous, and arduous task that is trying to book an appointment at my medical centre. And was I in for a surprise.
I get ready with the house phone, my mobile, & a scripted PBX to attempt the impossible first step, actually getting hold of someone. I dial and……. I get an automated welcome message, welcoming me to the medical centre, informing me my call may be recorded for training purposes and telling me i shall have options to pick from. WOW. My Doctors place has got themselves a decent phone system that’s not some old woman sat at a desk moving wires about.
I then get to the menu system of the phone call. “Press one for…..” there then followed a huge list of all the possible reasons you may press option one. Then SILENCE, I waited, and waited, but still there was silence. “OK? so the first part of the menu is press 1 or press 1” I pressed 1, and the phone started ringing and I got a real person. Yes their automated phone messaging system goes. Press 1 and get person. They have managed to add a pointless step in the process of PHONE-RINGS->ANSWER-PHONE.
I get my appointment and dutifully turn up at the surgery on time. Only its all different, its bigger, better, and different. In fact its like they had built a huge new building next to the original, then knocked down the original to make additional car parking spaces. Well the old place had been there for dozens of years, and was a bit small and dingy.
I enter the posh new building to be greeted by a large wall mounted flat screen TV with the word “Welcome” on it in a button like box. I then touched the button on the screen like you do, it changed to two buttons [Male] & [Female] “Wow, they really gone to town on making the patients feel comfortable while waiting, they even supply company for you“. I quickly pressed the [Female] button, it now asked for a D.O.B. “wow. I wonder if they ask for my preferred hair colour and such?” I hit a few random options for a birth date, and waited for my order to arrive.
The screen in front of me said “Welcome Mrs ***** ****** ******, please take a seat in the waiting area.” *SHIT* its a login system, not a online ordering thing. I hit reset, and put my details in, and made my way to sit innocently in the waiting room. Where there was an even bigger flat screen TV informing me that “smoking is bad” “unsafe sex is bad” “yada yada yada” and occasional beeping and telling someone they should go to room **. Modern technology is great, instead of the old yellowing posters telling me everything fun is bad for me, they now get to do it in wide screen, high definition.
After all that, the Doc told me nothing I didn’t already know, and I was in with him for about 3 minutes. This is why I never bother going to see the Doctor.
RTL – From the Bookshelf of a Geek: Shatnerquake
Title: Shatnerquake
Author: Jeff Burk
Published: 2009
Pages: 100
PLOT (Taken from Amazon.com):
It’s Shatner VS Shatners!
William Shatner? William Shatner. WILLIAM SHATNER!!! It’s the first ShatnerCon with William Shatner as the guest of honor! But after a failed terrorist attack by Campbellians, a crazy terrorist cult that worships Bruce Campbell, all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner.
Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911 Shatner, Singer Shatner, Shakespearean Shatner, Twilight Zone Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Esperanto Shatner, Priceline Shatner, SNL Shatner, and – of course – William Shatner!
No costumed con-goer will be spared in their wave of destruction, no redshirt will make it out alive, and not even the Klingons will be able to stand up to a deranged Captain Kirk with a lightsaber. But these Shatner-clones are about to learn a hard lesson…that the real William Shatner doesn’t take crap from anybody. Not even himself.
It’s Shatnertastic!
MY OPINION (Taken from my Mind):
I first heard about this book on @wilw‘s blog, and again later when he posted that the author Jeff Burk was offering it as a one day free PDF Download. So I did what any geek would do, I downloaded it and read it in work :o)
Well ok, the original plan was to just check out the story and read it later that evening. Only I was hooked as soon as Shatner drove past the first Campbellian, I loved the idea of a cult of Campbell, where followers cut off their right hand and change their name to Bruce.
That was it then. There was zero chance of any productivity from me until the book was finished, Luckily its only 100 pages long so does not take long to read.
But that’s 100 pages of pure AWESOME. we are talking about Captain kirk trying to sleep with people cosplaying slave girls, and attacking klingons, not to mention the poor cosplaying red shirts. Theres even one point when Kirk is running around in pure rage armed with a working lightsaber?
MY RECOMMENDATION
I would recommend this book to anyone from a beginner reader, to the kind of hardcore reader who will read war & peace in a sitting.
Its witty, funny, and so very different that you should be able to enjoy it even if you are not a Shatner fan.
It should also be required reading to anyone who visits conventions.
This Article was 1st posted @ rocktheLAN.com