Flahed out

Yep, for those of you who were having doubts, I am still alive. Just about. And still in Kenya. My return date has been put back to at least the 12th of December though I’m thinking this is only the start of it and I may not be leaving before the 19th. As long as I get back before Christmas, I don’t really care, and it’ll mean spending more time living on expenses, saving my own cash for important things like paying the bills… and there are many!

I’m discovering how hard it is to find anything interesting to put into a ‘blog when you’re onsite for a couple of months. Days run into each other and pretty much the same things happen. And if I put the really interesting stuff up here, I’d probably lose my job, or at least get sued by the client anyway.

Well, I’ll update again when I have any news or anything interesting to add.

Bloody hell. Over three months since I updated this blog. Well, for those people I haven’t spoken to in a while, this is the story. Headed off to South Africa for a total of SEVEN weeks back at the start of July (Yes, I know I said four, but that’s what I was told til I’d actually arrived!).

It’s an interesting place. Looking forward to going back at some time in the future. Car-jacking is particularly prevalent down there and thanks to a decision a few years ago to hang car-jackers, said car-jackers are now murdering their victims in an attempt to leave no witnesses. Wonderful.

The food is great down there, especially the meat. In the better restaurants, you can buy “super-aged” beef, which is aged for 21-days, and is the most tender beef I have ever eaten. I’ll miss that, as the bloody EU have banned aging for longer than 10 days. Arseholes.

There’s obviously a lot more to the country but I’d be ages typing it all out, so I’ll leave it for a while. Maybe in another days ‘blog, if I’m bored enough

So, having got back from SA on August 22nd, we promptly shagged off to Lanzarote for a week on September 11th for a bit of R & R. @Twas fun – and Lou got to hire a Megane Cabriolet, so she was bloody delighted – but I don’t think I’d have stayed for more than a week given the chance. I prefer Malta.

And now I’m in Nairobi, Kenya. I flew out on September 30th, and will be here until at least November 29th. It’s a nice place, though obviously a very poor country. People are a lot more friendly than in (certain parts of) Ireland. Most things are a lot cheaper than at home. For example, I headed out for dinner last night and had dinner (a large main course including three pints of Tusker, the local brew) for about eight euro. I’d have paid probably three times that in Cork, and more again in Dublin. Talk about Ripoff Ireland.

Anyway, better go do some work.

Thought I’d better update the ould ‘blog, to let people know that I’ll be disappearing for a while at the end of this week. I’ve been told I’m going to South Africa, specifically Johannesburg, for a minimum of 4 weeks on Sunday. I’ll be flying out of Edinburgh, where I’ll be this weekend for Dad’s 60th birthday pissup party.

I don’t know whether to be happy or not. On one hand, it is further afield than I’ve travelled before, but on the other, I won’t see Louise for the whole time. I had contemplated flying her out for a week, but the cost of doing so is more than we can afford at the moment The worst part is that I won’t even have internet access very often, so chatting to her on the internet is out too.

Oh well, think of the duty free

What a weekend… the most fun I’ve had in a long time Had a wedding to go to on Friday, Louise’s cousin got married and invited nearly 400 people for the whole thing, including five-course meal, band ’til midnight and disco til 4am. Unlike a lot of really big weddings, the atmosphere was fabulous, there was no splitting up into little cliques. I can’t say enough good things about the wedding.

The following day, we headed across to a good friend in Abbeyfeale, who took us out for dinner to a fabulous restaurant called Whytes which I would heartedly recommend followed by a short pub crawl, and back to the house to see a DVD. Followed, yesterday morning by a big fry-up. If I needed reminding about how lucky I’ve been with my friends, that was it. Thanks Mike.

Yesterday afternoon we headed out to Louise’s aunt’s house for a barbecue with most of her Dad’s side of the family. The bride and groom (see above) showed up and a great time was had by all. They left early so as to get a good night’s sleep to be prepared for their flight to New York this morning, while we stayed a little while longer.

I don’t think I ever wanted anything more than another hour in bed this morning

Apparently this isn’t really news, but I hadn’t heard of ANY plans to make a film of the Hitch-Hikers Guide. So it IS news to me. So there. Here‘s a link to what the BBC had to say on the topic today.

After a long week, spent in Reading working on a client site, I finally jumped on my Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow back to Cork at 19:10 on Friday evening. At about 20:00, 25 minutes before we were scheduled to land, we were informed that we might be rerouted to Shannon, as the ‘landing equipment’ in Cork was currently knackered and being repaired and that the airport was fogbound.

We eventually landed in Shannon at nearly 21:30, whereupon we were informed that there had been no luck in obtaining coaches to take us to Cork, but that as soon as the fog in Cork showed signs of lifting, we’d be flown down. As any Cork person knows, the chance of that happening before 9am is slim. So… de boss, who’d been chatting to some people he met on the plane announced that we were going to rent a car and drive to Cork. Brilliant. Except that it would be most convenient for him to drop me at Cork Airport rather than Cork city. hmm. Rang Louise, made arrangements for a lift. We made it to Cork Airport in 75 minutes… about 10 minutes after the bloody plane.

It worked out quite well though, as I was able to collect my baggage instead of having to come back on Saturday, for which I had other plans…

On Saturday morning at about 11:30am – after breakfast – I asked Louise to marry me. She said YES!!! Needless to say, I am now still over the moon. And she loved the ring, which really helps

The rest of the weekend is a blur, we visited a lot of relatives who were all keen to see the ring and offer their congratulations culminating in a trip to Killarney today. Now I’m totally knackered and uncharacteristically still smilling, so I’m going to bed. Good night all.

..I’ve remembered to update this ‘blog again. Feeling guilty about all of the work Donncha is putting into this blogging software is my motivation this time

My latest project at home, is to move tech-mad.org to my local server, to cut out my hosting costs and substitute them for a horrifically high electricity bill (I haven’t got one since I started running the server fulltime, but trust me, it’ll be bloody high). Still trying to decide between qmail and postfix for mail. As I know next to nothing about either, it’s not an easy task, so I’m currently trawling the web for tutorials. I want to get SMTP, POP, and IMAP all running before Monday ideally. What are the chances?

I could have sworn I updated this blog yesterday, but it must have slipped my mind…

Well, I’ve passed the exams with a mark of over 90%. That’s a relief I must say, and I’m glad they’re over. I’m now a Micromuse “Netcool Certified Consultant”. Certification at last

In other good news, Esat BT finally installed my DSL on Thursday morning. The install went perfectly and I was up and running in 30 minutes. I have hardly left my computer since A case in point: it’s 2:11am now. My excuse for being such a sad bastard is that I’m installing Mandrake 9.1 updates on my server here. Anyway… updating is finished, I’m off to bed.

I’m getting really bad at updating this ‘blog, but today is a momentous day: I’ve finally got a date for when my DSL goes in. Next Thursday the 8th is the glorious day, when all my efforts will have come to fruition. I’ll have wireless broadband throughout the apartment, and halfway up to Patrick St.

On the other hand, I have to sit the Micromuse Omnibus Netcool Certified Consultant exams all day Tuesday and Wednesday. The pass mark is 80%, though we’re expected to get 90% here in Eirteic. Very high standards and all that. I’ll have my nose stuck in a laptop (hopefully not literally) until then so no more updates until next Thursday probably.

Seeing as I didn’t get a chance to update the ‘blog yesterday, I’ll take this opportunity to congratulate John & Julie, who got hitched yesterday. So congratulations you two and best wishes for a wonderful life together.

In other less fun news, my exam is rushing inexorably towards me at breakneck speed – kind of like a train in a tunnel. Regardless of how well prepared I may or may not be, these kind of things always terrify me. However, things are looking a little brighter, as I discovered yesterday that the two-day exam is all labs and doesn’t include a written section.

I never cease to be amazed by the way people profess their interest in something UNTIL it’s made available, and then promptly change their minds. The level of interest on the ILUG mailing lists in training and certification has always been apparently quite high. However, nobody seems to be actually interested in obtaining same as we’re looking to run a RHCE training course here and can’t get enough people to fill a class of 12. And we’d be running it at Red Hat’s prescribed rate, unlike a certain Dublin training company who seem to be adding rounghly 15% on top.

Ah well, I suppose some people just like to talk.

Still waiting on the DSL. Apparently, though the order was submitted by Esat to eircom on 31st March, eircom only acknowledged it on 8th April. If that’s the pace they’re working at, I may as well abandon hope of getting it any time soon. Damn this is frustrating.

On the other hand, the wireless network at home is great, and will be very impressive (well, I’ll be impressed) once it has a DSL connection.

Heading down to Doolin for another get-together on Friday, though of course because the bloody state continues to impose religious fasting days on us regardless of whether or not we are in any way religious, the pubs will be closed. Better hit the off-license on Thursday.

…if not exactly shiny Hopefully the weather will pick up though. Other things have started to go wrong, mind you… Irish Rail have pulled the Cobh train til the end of the month, for “essential line upgrades”, so I have to get a bus to and fro. Still, at least the bus is generally on time

Went to Dublin on Friday evening, to do a bit of work for my brother. His new PC is fantastic. 1Gb RAM, 160Gb of disk, 2.4Ghz P4 processor, ATI Radeon 9000… the list goes on, as do the constant upgrades.

I also picked up, on Saturday evening, a D-Link DI-614+ AirPlus Enhanced 2.4GHz Wireless Router, and an Alcatel Speedtouch Pro DSL modem. So I have lots of stuff to play with at home. The only damper was failure to get Samba working properly with WinXP Home and WinME on Sunday morning, which was down to authentication problems. I’ll have to read up on it when I’ve time.