Just the smell of the smoke took me right back 30-odd years, to when I was probably 6 or 7. My grandparents lived in a little village called Shuttington in Staffordshire, and the memory was the exact smell of the coal fired chimneys when we used to visit and play outside in their cul-de-sac in the winter.

Another bit of a memory was this morning, driving into work. I have my iPod in the car, and it’s perpetually on Album shuffle – so in essence it works like a massive CD changer, playing an album at a time. It just so happens that this morning an album by Gerry Rafferty came on the iPod. City to City is the album that has the track ‘Baker Street’ on it – but the memory is more from when I first heard the album.

During the summer holidays when I was younger, my parents always used to spend a few weeks at a villa in France. We used to take the Southampton to Le Havre ferry across (Townsend Thoresen I seem to remember?) and drive down to the house which was in the Vendee. One of the people who used to come with us on our jollies to France was my uncle – my Mum’s younger brother.

Being a single fairly well to do chap (he’s an accountant), and a typical london based bachelor at the time, he used to collect quite alot of music – and he used to tape all his vinyl so he could listen to it in the car. I had a walkman, and he had a box full of tapes – so I just used to sit and listen to all his albums and it was really the way I got heavily into music. The Gerry Rafferty album was one of those tapes (amongst many other classic albums I still listen to today) and I used to love the album. I have happy memories of the times in France and with the family.

What’s so sad about this story, however, is that I’ve not see this uncle for probably 11 or 12 years – and what’s even more sad is that the main reason is down to money.

When my grandfather died (my mother’s father) it was after quite a long illness. My mum had spent a good few years looking after Grandad as he went downhill. Then the fateful day came when he passed away, and I remember going to his funeral (remarking how the crematorium was like going into a drive-thru McDonalds), and then going back to Mum and Dad’s house afterwards. This was when the Aga decided to spring a leak and flood the kitchen. What was strange is that it was the stop cock that started to leak water – and it hadn’t been turned for years. I was able to turn it off no problem – but three of us were stood in the kitchen when it just started to spray water onto the floor. It was very bizarre and whether right or not – my mother always blamed the ghost of grandad!

But his biggest revenge was yet to be uncovered.

When the nursing home were tidying out my grandfather’s belongings, along with my other uncle, they found a will my Grandfather had written (it was in his handwriting) and it had been countersigned and witnessed (My grandfather used to be a solicitor back in the day and still did conveyancing on the side well into his 60′s).

This will caused a problem – because his previous will was held with his solicitor and although it hadn’t officially been read, it’s contents were well know by the family – but this new one superceded that historic will, and the new will was quite a bit different in many ways.

In the solicitor’s original will – pretty much all my grandfather’s assets were split between all 4 of his children – my Mum and my 3 uncles.  However, this new will left everything just to my mum with just token values going to my uncles. I think the youngest uncle (who was the one who used to come on holiday with us) took umbridge at this as he stood to lose out quite a bit compared to what he thought he was going to get – and from that day forward he’s not been in touch with the rest of the family – not spoken to his two brothers or my mum – his sister. Talk about taking his bat and ball home. I can see how he’d be aggrieved – but at the end of the day it was Grandad’s wishes, and nonetheless, he’s also got a very good job and not short of a bob or two – so I don’t think it’s fair to just cut off the rest of the family. But there you go. Sad but true.

Friday was a bad day, on many levels. Strangely I actually felt quite motivated at work but it was still a struggle. Once the brain fog descends it’s extremely hard to get out. Over the weekend I think the kids thought they had a zombie for a father. At times that can probably be fun for them as they can get away with murder. But on the other hand it can’t be much fun.

It came to a head where on Tuesday where I just felt utterly suicidal. But I had a good long chat with Michelle on Tuesday night and we fixed a few faults. And I wake up this morning still feeling awful but less suicidal, and like there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel.

Still very tired though. These cycles tend to run around a month to a month and a half in length. I think I’m back on the up cycle again now with rock bottom having been the last week or so.

If I don’t make the effort to go out, go swimming, cycling, diving or whatever, I won’t do it and the malaise sets in. If I can involve the family, then all the better, but if they’re not interested, I’m not going to push the issue – and I’ll just carry on and do it myself.

If I don’t get up early and make time to meditate I only have myself to blame. I’ll try to make it to my sangha every week. It really helps.

I’m swimming at least twice a week, cycling to work at least once a week, and out at weekends. I’m trying not to get in the way of the rest of the family’s requirements so my enjoyment and happiness isn’t at their cost. And a happy and contented me also tends to appear more motivated to do a good job and make a difference – whether at home or at work.

Today (Sunday 18th March) was a case in point. It was Mothers Day, and we all enjoyed a little 10 mile ride to the park and back, primarily motivated by Michelle wanting to get out on the bike for the first time this year. Even though her knee is in a bad way, she held up well and enjoyed it.

But why am I writing this? Well I’m also making a positive move to detach myself from the internet and social media.This may well be my last blog post on here, mainly because I’m going to unplug. Not because of anything negative – but more that I just haven’t anything interesting to write about!

I’ll not be regularly checking or updating twitter, facebook or this blog. However, if people want to get in touch with me (or vice-versa), I’ll still be there, idly reading occasionally when I get time rather than it being the first thing I do when I wake up.

Anyway – no-one really wants to see what my ego wants to push out! Rather than my adding to the torrent of one-upmanship, I’m getting off. Detaching.

See you out there!

Monday was a day of crunching numbers. Not much to report, mainly work.

Tuesday was my first cycle commuting day in a while. 18.29 miles into work, into a headwind pretty much the entire journey. Took me around 1h30 mins. However, it was actually quite a nice ride. A days work, and then back on the bike. This time a tailwind pushed me home and the same journey back to the junction where I would normally go into the village was only 1h06mins! In the end I did 22.31 miles to the centre of York in 1h25mins. Then after the Chan meeting I rode home, with a total mileage of 45.29 miles. Slept well

Wednesday I had to be up early as I was expected at a meeting in Bradford at 8am but my laptop was in the office (I don’t always take it home if I’m not on call so I don’t have to lug it around) so I had to leave home at 6:00am to get to the office, pick up my kit and get to Bradford at 8am. As it was I spend the entire morning saying very little. Driving back to the office my car was still playing up. I really need to get it serviced.

Then I had to go to another meeting which I’m not going to write about on here.

When I got home I was very quiet all night, and pretty much all of Thursday too – although it was very nice to go out for lunch with Simon before he goes off to the hospital for his chemo / stem cell therapy next week, which will hopefully ward off his myeloma. I have everything crossed for him that it all goes well.

Friday I went for a swim first thing. Apparently the pool had been closed on Thursday so the fast swimmers were all in on Friday morning, and the pool was chuffing freezing. However, I still managed to do 1.5km (around a mile) which was good. Then a pretty dull day at work and then home. Said bye to Eldest daughter who went off to camp.

Saturday was my birthday, so we went off for breakfast at the Highwayman Cafe in York, which does a brilliant breakfast. We were going to go to the coast, but we only got as far as Malton and turned back, and ended up going into the centre of York instead.

Then in the evening we had a great wine tasting evening with a few of our friends at their house, and I drank more than I think I’ve had in a couple of years. What can I say – I quite enjoyed the wine, but it obviously didn’t enjoy me. I stumbled home moving diagonally like a boat tacking into the wind, and spent most of Sunday with a stinking hangover (even though I had to work for 3 and a bit hours through lunchtime again – I’ve not had a full weekend off from work for ages).

Saturday I spent most of the day working, keeping an eye on the data centres and doing some monitoring due to some issues that were reported the prior weekend.

Sunday was a bit of a write off too. Having worked all day Saturday I was in a very down phase, so with the sun out I thought I’d try something to lift my mood somewhat.

I waited until 10am to get out on the bike – and the weather was gloriously sunny with a north-westerly wind. I went through town and out on the cycle path with the plan of going over the aldwark bridge, across towards Boroughbridge, down through Whixley and Cattal and then back home. Would have been around 40 miles or so. Riding against the wind until I crossed the bridge and then being blown home.

The ride was going well and I was just thinking to myself this was really enjoyable and what a great day when my phone rang. My heart sank. It was the office. It transpired that an issue had been reported earlier in the week to a different team hadn’t been fixed by the usual staff and as such as I was on call (for emergencies) I was expected to drop what I was doing and go into the office to fix the problem (i.e – an issue the usual day to day staff hadn’t fixed). To say I was angry was an understatement. So I had to cycle home by the shortest route.

I then speeded to the office and cured the issue they had (which took me around 2 hours) and then back home. Felt pretty depressed for the rest of the day. Crap weekend.

Monday I was a bit of a zombie. I didn’t sleep very well sunday night and didn’t do any meditation monday morning either. I was meant to have a meeting with my boss at work, but no-one had cancelled the meeting and I later found out he was on holiday. I’d even skipped swimming so I could get in a bit earlier but it made things even worse. So the rest of the day I was in a bit of a bad mood which compounded the already bad mood I was in, plus it was a day of finger pointing and ‘why is your kit so shite’. Not great. Went home in the evening and definitely felt like I wanted to do something bloody stupid.

Tuesday was a better day. Had a bit of a breakthrough with my meditation, went swimming first thing which always makes me happy, and we stayed in that evening to have a chilled out valentines evening.

Wednesday I worked from home. Got lots done – then around 5pm I did a bit of work to the folding bike to get it roadworthy again (checked chain, refitted lights, checked tyres etc), and cycled into town to meet Michelle. What do you know – the folding bike *just* fits into the boot of a 2011 VW Polo, although you have to take the seat post out entirely.

Quickly walked to the Cinema as it’s Orange Wednesday and we got straight in to the Woman in Black. Daniel Radcliffe was great, but you really needed an older actor. However, it’s a proper good old Hammer horror film, but in the jumpy haunted house ghost format rather than gore porn which is what the current crop of horror movies tend to be.

Leaving the cinema we went to a couple of places for dinner but they were all full – Cafe Rouge 0n Coney St had loads of empty tables but the waitress said ’30 minute wait’ (ever get the feeling they didn’t need the customers?), so we ended up just wandering round to Wagamama.

Thursday was a bit of a quiet day – lots of work during the day, but when I got home it was a quiet night with just some music and reading as Michelle was out.

Friday I woke up full of energy. I had a great 1.5Km swim to start the day (60 lengths) which felt much easier than usual. I could have carried on going if it wasn’t for the time. When I got home Mum and Dad were at our house with the kids, so I took littlest one swimming and then we had a nice meal.

On Saturday morning we drove down to Worcestershire to see my parents. En route, I noticed that the window washers weren’t working on the new car, even though I’d put in almost neat window washer fluid a couple of days previously. I just put this down to the fact that it had been around -12C at our house overnight and the washer was just frozen. Even when we got down to my parents house it still wasn’t working, but I figured it was still frozen solid and didn’t think any more of it.

Quick pint with my Dad, and once we’d had some lunch and I did a quick scoot around on some work things due to issues, Michelle needed some shopping for the girls, so we went to Merry Hill. Always busy this mecca of shops at the weekend. Normally I’d have been tempted to go and spend some cash but I just tagged along acting as chauffeur and didn’t spend anything.

Saturday evening I was still feeling a bit Meh so I went to bed early.

Sunday morning I didn’t wake till 7:30am, but after a nice breakfast got everything ready as I needed to do some work today. Thankfully there is an ADSL link at my parents house so I can just connect in. I retired to the office for a couple of hours to do some work, and then once that was done it was a bit of lunch and then back in the car and up the motorway.

We stopped to fill the car up at the garage nearby and I realised the washers were still not working. It’s 8degC so it can’t be frozen, but when you try there was no pump noise either. Must be a fuse.

I asked Michelle to get out the manual. Is there a fuse diagram for a Polo in the manual? no. VW decided to say ‘Because this manual was produced prior to the completion of the full design of the car, the fuse layout may change so there is no diagram’. Wankers.

So we drove home praying for rain – and thankfully we randomly got it so the salt wasn’t too much of a problem.

Once home, a quick unload of the car and I wasn’t going to let the fuse defeat me – so I pulled out my torch and proceeded to check every single bloody fuse. Eventually I found the offending fuse and thankfully I had a spare one in a little kit in my other car (VW don’t give you spare fuses either). And lo and behold it was fixed.

We then quickly went back out to see Reverend and the Makers at Fibbers in York. A brilliant concert – added to at the end by John McClure coming outside and doing an impromptu acoustic session on the green opposite Fibbers! A great night.

With the weather things have been a little bit up in the air. That may be why I’ve lilted into depression somewhat – I’ve not been able to exercise anywhere near as much – partially because Michelle doesn’t like driving in the snow, so I end up dropping the kids off and missing out on swimming, and partially because I can’t ride the bikes when it’s icy. Snow is OK, as is rain, and somewhat wind, but ice is just asking for trouble and a broken hip, and after an experience a couple of years ago when a patch of black ice, me on a bike, and a lorry didn’t mix, I’ve been very wary about riding on ice. And also hearing horror stories from fellow CTC riders who have ended up being out of the mix for months or years due to broken bones caused by ice.

Monday was an all day meeting at a meeting space in a hotel, where I overdosed on the free goodies they give you. I can attest that if you eat too many jelly beans and chocolate raisins you do indeed feel very poorly. Bed by 9pm.

Tuesday worked from home. Then took the kids out to Chiquitos for tea, missing the Buddhist meeting in the process. I’m going to end up missing two weeks as next tuesday is Valentines night.

So the only swim this week was Wednesday, but it was a good one. Although I did get that kidney ache not far from the end. But I do think it’s muscular now rather than actual kidney pain. Either that or my body reacts if I swallow chlorinated water possibly.

Thursday / Friday I was definitely down in the 2/10 phase where I’ve been at least 6/10 for the last few weeks and more like 7/10. Possibly down to work related stress but also feeling lagged from no play too I suppose. I keep looking at pictures of things I could do and wishing I could do them, but realising currently most of my time is family and work so I get very little playtime to fit around it. Friday I worked from home – mainly because if I was in the office I wouldn’t be a very positive influence. Gah. I wish there was some pills I could take to make me happy. Maybe I just need to make more changes in my life to get a bit more positive.

Oh well, here comes next week…

Today, my job pretty much centres around managing a brilliant team of people who manage a large computer network (the bits that link all the machines together), but also being hands on and technical myself too – I find it works best if I at least know what I’m talking about. But also knowing and respecting that my team know as much as I do, if not more sometimes, so it’s not a dictatorship – more a consensus.

So we all make a bunch of routers, switches and firewalls talk to each other. And hassle people who stop them working. But I’ve not always done that – I started my career in IT back in the early 90′s filling up toner in Oki laser printers, and mending 386SX desktop machines running DOS 3.3 and Wordstar. Hand coding NDIS drivers and fixing Novell servers were standard practice, and I used UNIX SVR4 and Solaris/XWindows before Microsoft Windows was mainstream, and Linux was a pipe dream of some bloke called Linus. (If you wanted Intel Unix you used Solaris or Microsoft’s Xenix – remember that?)
DEC MicroVAX machines were also a staple diet back then, and I used to have an EGA monitor (8 or 16 colours at the flick of a switch) on my Apricot Xen-I 386SX with 4Mb RAM and 40Mb Hard Drive. VGA was a luxury with it’s 256 colour display and higher resolutions. Gem Desktop anyone?

So what are the things I’ve learnt thanks to working in IT for just short of 20 years?

• BT Openreach are a law unto themselves. Any time period you can put on a comms link installation, then always add an extra 30 days for ‘blocked ducts’. And if you have an office anywhere near the new Media City in Manchester, be aware that the fibre installation engineers are unaware that the BBC have requested that all the ducting covers are welded shut!
• There is no Service Level Agreement on an ADSL line. But businesses will always use ADSL lines instead of proper leased lines (or even now EFM), because they’re cheap and cheerful, usually work OK and are in the main easy to install and maintain.
  However, people usually get very upset when their ADSL line goes down because Openreach are meddling in the exchange or they’ve managed to break their authentication system, and you tell them sadly there’s no quick fix. That’s usually followed by a quote for a link with a proper SLA attached (and a heftier price tag). Service Level Agreements are exactly what they sound like – a commitment from a comms provider for a guaranteed fix time, with financial penalties attached if they don’t succeed in fixing the link in the time they say they will. That costs money, and you get what you pay for.
• Companies that outsource their IT usually regret it fairly quickly after they get their first bill and realise that to keep the same level of service to the business it’s costing them more and they’re getting a much lower quality service. I’ve seen it time and time again where the Outsourcing company generally works to rule with no flexibility, with staff that bugger off at 4pm and leave you high and dry.
  I’ve been all sides of the coin – working as a contractor, working for an outsourcer and being in a company looking at outsourcing. Usually companies that outsource their IT are on the slippery slope to a takeover.
  And also, whatever an IT outsourcing company tells you it will cost to provide a job, double the price or fix them on very strong contracts (and watch out for work to rule again here). They’re only quoting you the lowest price to get their foot in the door. Added extras will put the price up, as will you changing the scope every 5 minutes.
• The amount of bandwidth you need is usually inversely proportional to the amount of bandwidth you think you need.
• No matter how much bandwidth you have on your internet connection, someone working from home will always have more and complain that your link is ‘too slow’.
• VMWare is great, but beware older virtual infrastructure that has very weird side effects to some applications (manifests itself as strange delays or blips) – even though a VMWare guru will swear blind they don’t know it happens. Those of us who have used everything since 386 servers will know something isn’t *quite* right. Although to it’s defence I have to say it’s less prominent now in the latest version of VSphere.
•  Users/Clients will think Virtual Infrastructure = Free + Full DR.
  It’s not. Usually it’s more costly than filling a rack full of 1U servers each running an individual app. But you don’t necessarily get the flexibility with a rack of 1U servers. Strangely the whole thing has come full circle. I remember using Mainframes with Virtual Machines and Hypervisors. They’ve been around since the 60′s (and most big corporates still use them).
• 10Gb switches make no difference if you’re using Microsoft Shared Folders (SMB) to copy files between hosts. You’ll struggle to max out a 100Mb LAN port using Windows Shared Folders. You’ll even struggle to max out a 1Gb port with FTP. Try a groovy UDP file transfer protocol instead that hoofs the data at wire speed (and at the same time frustrate fellow WAN users by absorbing all the WAN bandwidth).
•  No matter how much redundancy you think you’ve built into a solution, the whole solution will at some stage fail on it’s arse due to an unknown /  missed single point of failure.
• Scopes of projects are always dynamic. You should never feel like you’ve completed a project as something else will crawl out of the woodwork and bite you.
• Mitigating against power is all very well, but if you have a massive heating boiler in the plant room above your main office floor that bursts (or something sets off the sprinklers you haven’t capped in your comms room) you end up with alot of wet kit.
• Having security guards and commissionaires is no guarantee of security – especially when they let the burglars in the comms room to rob all your RAM from your servers and steal your routers.
• Don’t complain that the LAN is slow when your machine is riddled with Viruses.
•  Documentation is for wimps. Well, that’s what people keep telling me anyway. I don’t believe them…

A sorting stuff out at home morning, although I also took a load of photographs of the birds in the garden, which some were new visitors – see here.

Had to go to work for a few hours today (meh) but at least I was lucky compared to a couple of my team who were in London. Snow started whilst we were sat in the office, and Gary crashed his car on the snow in the car park (eek!) but thankfully it was just a slow speed bump rather than serious damage.

Home and had to pop out to pick up some food for tea. Thank god for the village Co-Op

It was getting *really* cold outside, so I made sure the heating was on constant

Sunday

Up a bit earlier this morning. Made a couple of bacon sandwiches for breakfast for me and Michelle, and then although I’d changed into my cycle kit, spent ages doing stuff for the kids. Changed the tyres on my mountain bike eventually across to the studded ones. Kids went out to play in the snow.

Then a bit more work (from home this time), being a conf call for a few hours until 2pm at which point we’d done all the work, everything was done (woo!) and I went out on the bike for a ride in the snow.

Finally home, and normally I like a long bath but the one this evening may have been too hot and sent me into over-heated overdrive – I was tempted at one point to go outside and roll in the snow I felt so bloody hot.

Spend the evening reading somewhat whilst Michelle browsed the TV