You Always Believed – In This Moment

I think back on the years we shared
All the times you stood by me
All the pain you wiped away
All the things you ever said
I think back how you carried me
And you never once have doubted me
And you were my
My hero through it all

And you held me through it all
And you never let me fall
And you let me fly away
And you always believed in me

I love you sis…

To those people who I host mail for, sorry it will be back ASAP, just playing it safe with the email and making backup copies of the data before I mess with anything else.  Worst case this will be back up this evening some time.

I was doing my bit to try and keep up with technology before end of play today and catching up with some online sites etc.  I meant to post this earlier but as usual forgot, discovering my own home PC had a dead drive reminded me (and also demonstrated that RAID 1 is not overkill on a home machine, system still up, I didn’t notice but there is a dead drive waiting to be replaced).

Back on track.

The boffins at SeaGate have been fiddling and produced a new line in Hybrid SSD drives.  The drive combines a small SSD drive and a regular spindle drive.  Idea being that the drive is intelligent enough to recognise high frequency random IO and store it on the SSD, thus next time you come to load your OS/common Apps the reads hit the SSD and not thrash on the spindle.

This is a top idea in my book, if the SSD fails no worries your data is on the spindle anyway and you now just have a regular 7200 RPM drive.  Kinda like intelligent and large (4GB) persistent cache.

Seagate SSD Hybrid drive

If you would rather make use of your existing drive, but have a similar feature in your desktop machine, there is a handy looking doodad over at Scan for not a lot of money:

HDD Boost

Although you would need to also provide your own SSD to couple with your regular HDD.

I have an idea for a project I want to do, probably not terribly exciting to most but it is to me.  It has been quite a while since I got my hands dirty with any kind of code, and I do miss the days when I would have my head deep in C repeatability banging my head against a -Wall until I found the typo (you see what I did there ).

The other thing I miss, well hard to miss what you never really got chance to do is OO.  Yup Object Oriented Programming.  Once the penny dropped at uni I loved it, and have always since wanted to play with classes more, so this project is going to be OO damnit!

Which leads me back to the title of this post.  Whilst pondering how to tackle the task at hand my old friend OO waved at me and makes a lot of sense.  I will be aquiring XML, breaking it into chunks and storing its gooey middle bits in a database.  The XML driver I will be using is heavily OO already so using OO myself only makes more sense.  So of I went to learn how to do OO in PHP (its a web project so shush), 5 minutes later and I had the syntax, now just the planning of objects to do.

Planning the objects is the most dull and interesting part for me, lots of pondering, trying to work out program flow whilst considering inheritance etc.  Which is where a lot of my uni work came back to me, I remember the fun I had building abstract classes to act as interfaces in objects allowing them to work with all kinds of magical objects later in life.  Once I get the free time I think I will be sat frantically scribbling with bits of paper and cards planning out my flow charts and object relationships (I might call one Maude )

Anyway, called up, got a real VOL number, and a £40 credit to my account for the line rental of the 1st 3 months.

I also pointed out that their online system was screwed as I selected paperless billing and they have me on paper billing.  The chap too my username for the online interface, nothing unusual there.. then asked for my password…. “Wait, are you just logging into it to change it?”, “Yes sir, this is the only way I could check it and set it for you”…. *FACEPALM* I thanked him and told him I would simply do it myself as I am not giving my password out to anyone.

As I was opening my front door I heard the lift close behind me and decend, this it will only do if someone calls it from a lower floor, I look round to see it stop at the first floor… I had to stand and watch just to see, but yep, someone on the 1st floor is sufficiently bone idle to use the lift to get down 1 floor to the groundfloor! YE GADS!

When I was on my way back with my second lot of stuff from teh car I accidentally clipped the 2nd floor button (me being on the 3rd), so the lift naturally stopped at 2 first.  As I lent forward to press the closedoors button (got bored of waiting), the lift filled with the stench of smoking!! the lift opens into the hallway shared between all the flats on that floor! and the hallway smelt bad enough that the lift filled with the smell in seconds!  I wonder if someone is smoking in the hallways rather than their own flat or someone is really going for it and the smell is escaping!

GRIM anyway.  Thankfully the same is not true on my floor.

I know they are purposfully confusing, but lifts that have one set of buttons on one side of the lift and the other set on the other side.  Not a full set on either, one lot goes to one floor the other lot other floors!

When I get in with my trolley as I knew I was collecting large long boxes as I had chosen online using their website checked stock etc, I find I have to go through the checkouts the wrong way to get into the warehouse! now all the Aisle locator machines are at the other end of the warehouse!

Arse about tit or what!  Just because they seem to want everyone to walk through the store!! ARGH!

I moved in on the 29th of March, so I thought I would get stuff rolling ASAP and ordered online via BT’s website my shiny new phone line.  The box is already in, marked with “Openreach”, extensions in, so a simple jumper job I thinks…

I select paperless billing, I get a letter from them telling me I have chosen paper billing!! ok, fair enough.

It also says an Engineer visit for the 20th of April, not quite sure why I have to wait almost a month! but hey ho.  I book the time off work, sit in and wait between the allocated times (8am – 1pm, larger than most peoples half day :/)  No show.  So I ring to ask whats going on as the line is still dead, chap on the phone tries to fob me off at every turn.  I am told work at the exchange has been completed and my line will be active by midnight that night.

Next morning, 7AM, line still dead.. pretty sure this is after midnight too.. so get in work and ring up BT again.  This time get a much more helpful guy, who once again apologises and rings Openreach, this time.. underground routing issues, line will be up by the end of business today..

This morning 7AM, line still dead.. starting to feel quite familiar.  Ring BT again, 1st off it takes me through the automated phone system, which includes an advert about the world cup read/shouted by a man in a shower cubicle it sounds like, then after poking at the damn thing I get told the lines arn’t open yet! ARGH.  Ring back a few minutes later get through and am now told that the issue is at the exchange.  He didn’t seem to happy when I suggested they were using some random excuse generator.  Apparently I was sent a text to inform me of the delay.. none recieved, and the engineer will call to let me know when he is coming to the property to check the line.  I then pointed out I am at work (why is it service companies don’t seem to grasp that to pay for them people must work?) and was helpfully told that if I was not present at the property I would have to rebook an engineer visit and be charged for the missed appointment!  All kinds of NO!  Especially after them wasting my time!

I have this horrible vision of them lifting two install charges from my bank via DD now and refusing to return the money.

Why can nothing ever be simple and as its described?

It is somewhat daunting however, bills and mortgage ontop of debt and living :/ if I have done my maths right, then the savings should offset the increased costs….. I hope

First order of the day however is getting flooring installed. I wasn’t early enough to buy to be able to specify any options, so I have what is called “builders finish” as a floor at the moment. Tomorrow sees my dad and I taking on the job of laying lamminate and vynal flooring. Hopefully all be done, and I can start the moving in process proper.

Going to be a long, stressful day, and costly :/ being a Sunday also limited time wise for raiding diy stores. I have taken Monday off work too so I can spenc that whole day moving and fitting things.

Exciting and daunting at the same time.

First course of duty was to goto the Italian JagFest organised by Marco.  Much Atari goodness was beheld and his rather impressive shop and collection of all things computer game related! impressive.

Food was consumed, it has to be said Italian food, is very good, although their Pizzas only seem to come in one size.. HUGE, and made of NOM   Pizza hut is NOTHING like real Italian pizza, no where near.  The 3-4 foot long Pizza’s we had for Lunch were impressive (I didn’t get a pic ) those were shared

As we all know Italian beer is like flavoured tap water to the cultivated British taste buds, so Gaz and myself undertook a mission to deplete the stock of Guinness in the local Irish bar whilst Mike tackled the Erdinger.

Second and best (for me) was meeting my long time On-line chums from WoW.  Franco, Piero and Nic are quite simply the nicest blokes you could hope to meet, and completely bonkers was more like meeting old friends than meeting friends for the 1st time, much more delicious food was consumed (the three Italians worked their way through a local Zoo I think ) and much Vino was drunk.  After goodbyes more Guinness in the Irish bar and bad… followed by the WORST Hangover I have had in years, and most of the next day going missing

Unfortunately due to various issues (like the hangovers and illness) we didn’t get to see them again the next day, although promises were made to come over to the UK for our next guild meet I didn’t forget lads   Look forward to seeing you again.

Soon enough it was time to head home and here I am writing this as I upload the pics.  Its been must be nearly 12 hours of travel time and I haven’t shaved in days (bloody silly airplane carry on laws).. So now the pics are up I think I will go and get a nice long shower and trim my face off

Pics here http://www.linkovitch.me.uk/gallery/italy201003