The wonderful things about wibbles….

Due to the amount of spam, and the fact that this blog is now closed, I’ve turned comments off.

My new blog is Brentwood, Essex, England

Been a long time since I updated this blog. I’ve moved to Brentwood and I’ve started up a new blog over there at http://brentwooduk.blogspot.com

I first got my gmail account a year ago, if not more. Since then, I’ve taken to using it for some of my mailing list stuff – I’ve been forwarding all my CCIE Lab mailing list mails to it for some time.

A couple of months ago, I made the decision to subscribe to the ISP Wireless list (after all, I do work for a wireless ISP). I susbscribed from my work address, and currently I use Outlook to connect to the office Exchange Server (not my decision alright!) . The mail is stored on the Exchange server and I want to import the archive to gmail – better searching and threading for a start. Unfortunately using the readpst program reference on Mark Lyon’s page didn’t work.

Any suggestions?

This on uknot about a power outage in a London Data Centre

# You plug the server in
# The lights go out
# In Out In Out, bandwidth goes down the spout
# You call up tech support to go and sort it out,
# And that’s when you start to doubt…

Now there are some painful memories of life in collective

It is nearly the end of 2004, and I’m currently in Pron’s place, spending my last night in Ireland for the last time in a Very Long Time Indeed (okay, actually it’s about three months, but it feels longer).

In case there’s anyone out there who doesn’t know me, and is sad enough to care, the update since last time is simple. Moved countries to a wireless ISP in the UK, passed my CCIE, and sang in the choir that came second in the Choral Competition in Llandudno, North Wales. And I still love the most wonderful woman in the world. So there…..

what dead, flogable body?

Well everyone else is doing it…..

Bray are playing tonight, in probably one of the biggest games of the season – a win, and they’re a huge step closer to promotion. Lose, and its suddenly as tight as a very tight thing indeed. Draw, and life gets boring.

T.M.W.G.I.T.W (finally get the spelling right) is currently considering working closer to me in a few weeks…. I wish

It looks like a friend of t.w.g.i.t.w’s fancies her – he’s certainly bemoaning “the fact that he fancied someone but would never get her”. Well if he does…. tough luck matey. I’ve got her, and more to the point I intend to keep her. When I’m with her, I just feel so comfortable, so lucky….

I got an email from t.m.g.i.t.w just now complaining she’s not mentioned in the latest blog entry. Except she is. Turns out Internet Explorer is butchering the layout of the site – including missing the most recent blog entry and squashing the rest in a small white column to the left.

So I was in England with the most wonderful girl in the world over the weekend. As is almost the tradition (two Sunday Morning Masses in Liverpool, two lunches…) we had lunch in a Chinese restaurant (Tai Pun?).

This is a “real” Chinese restaurant – the menu there bears as much resemblence to the menu at the “Chinese” restaurant in Bray as it does to the curry house. And it includes that well known Eastern Delicacy, chicken’s feet. Everytime we go – I eat one and t.m.g.i.t.w. eats the rest of the helping. I’m promised that chicken’s feet is not on the menu for the wedding though

It takes a certain kind of brilliance…. we pay one of our suppliers over 50k per annum….
I logged a fault with them last week – after one week, they ring me back to tell me what the fault is….

I know what the fault is you muppet, this is what I called in about last week….

Grrr…..

On a different level of brilliance – Wayne Rooney. Debut. Nuff said

Now I’ve always had a soft spot for Shelbourne FC. Despite their completely insane chairman. They are a credit to the National League – simply in terms of what they’ve done with Tolka Park and running full time football. I was even pleased to see Jason Byrne leave Bray to go to them (but that was because I was resigned to his leaving anyway and was scared he’d go to Bohs).

But last night, they did us all proud. Anyone who claims that the National League is a crap league, and that as soon as you put the teams up against a “real” team, they’d collapse, is just so wrong.

It seems odd to celebrate a 0-0 home draw in Europe, but for all National League fans (not just Shels) last night was easily one of the greatest nights ever in the League’s History. So thank you Shels, for giving all of us some extra self respect!

And that’s waiting for the results to arrive afterwards. Even worse when the result is you failed. Worse still is I still don’t know why I dropped at least 11 of the marks. This is just so frustrating it’s not funny.

For the second time I had the experience of the routers being preloaded with the previous guys configs (I wonder if he passed – if you were in Rack 9 in Brussels last Thursday, drop me a line). However this results were no good for me – he had material configured in that I just didn’t have.

Funny thing was the signs were so good – Bray hammered Dundalk on Thursday night, I saw two magpies as soon as I arrived in Brussels, and while waiting a mobile phone tune went off that was the theme tune to the film I proposed to Herself in front off. (though considering the film was Mission Impossible…..)

Feeling pretty rotten at the moment – have also failed to get tickets for tonight… c’mon Shels!

The worst bit about doing the CCIE Lab has to be the last 24 hours before the exam. Because I have to fly out to Brussels (am leaving the office in little over an hour), it forces you to be more aware of it than if you’re simply pottering over to the place in the morning.

I am very, very nervous. I feel better prepared than the last two times, and yet the extra preparation is what scares me. The more I learn, the more I realised I don’t know (even in my strong areas – there are commands I don’t know because I don’t need to use them on a day to day basis). I have a strategy – lets see if it’s any better this time. At least the woman I love will be coming over to Brussels on Saturday so we can celebrate or commiserate together.

Lots of news to report otherwise – but will leave that for another blog session..

And if you are reading this sweety, just remember I love you.

Herself has been at me to update blog.

right now I’m very, very focused on two things.

1. The absolutely wonderful other person in my life. She doesn’t like me saying this in public, so she’ll be mortified when I scream this accross the net, but she is just so amazing. I can’t believe I’m this lucky. She’s currently on a plane to Dublin to spend the rest of the week here – it’ll be fantastic.

2. CCIE Lab. Attempt number three coming up on Friday week. To say I’m nervous is an understatement – you can’t get me out of the books! As this is the third attempt, I’m really scared – because on the day one little mistake can mess the whole thing up.

Oh, and Bray got knocked out of the cup on Friday. Against Kilkenny. First time we’ve ever lost to a first division side. Idiots.

Still, at least we can’t be knocked out by the Phibsboro Philth this year.

So TOP was over, and a pleasant lazy weekend was had by all.

No you can’t have details. This isn’t that sort of blog – you want Belle de Jour.

Fianna Fail expelled Beverly Cooper Flynn from the parliamentary party yesterday after she lost her case in the Supreme Court last week. She’s arguing it’s a harsh punishment compared to the punishments (not) meted out on the likes of Ray Burke. Maybe so, but that still doesn’t make it the wrong decision.

The thing that bothers me though is the suggestion that if she runs as an independent, she will easily get reelected by the voters of Mayo, just like Michael Lowry did when he was thrown out of Fine Gael. It just goes to show that opinion polls lie – most people want “clean” politicians, and yet we constantly reelect those who have been shown to be or are suspected of being crooks. It’s really simple – democracy means we are run by the leaders we deserve.

For great weekends of my life, it looks like May Bank Holiday weekend 2004 is going to be up there with the weekend of July 28th 2002 (when I met the Pope) and long extended weekend of 1999 when Bray won the FAI Cup. It was wonderful to spend time with TOP (hereinafter refered to as SWMBO) and realise that this is in fact happening. Having a long distance between us still sucks, but that is something no doubt we can work on in the future.

She’s coming over for the UK’s other May Bank Holiday weekend – and already I’m doing the countdown (though I have a horrible feeling my maths is wrong).