The Bulls are rallying $$$ :-D

The JSE has shot up quite a bit these past few days as the trends predicted and I am smiling all the way to the bank. I swear investment is my second calling, if I could turn back the hands of time and didn't have a successful career as a systems administrator I would have set my goals out to be an investment analyst, stock broker.. something big in that industry. I guess I can use this to pay the insurance excess for my damaged car, the universe has balanced itself out.

I saw an interview on CNBC with Warren Buffett about his 38 billion USD charity donation, its old news but new to me, and I was inspired. The new plan is to get rich, buy a yacht, build a deck, grow old then donate the majority of my money to some charities.

No means no

I was minding my own business last night when a lady from work who likes me(lets call her fan) called, keep in mind fan is 6 years older than me and has a child. Anyway she asked if she could pass by after work just to pass some time before going home, an innocent request, so I gave her directions to my apartment.

She came over and everything was going fine, I was just lying down on my futon trying to watch CNBC ignoring her, wishing my phone would ring and she was all over me smelling me, rubbing me down, trying to take off my shirt. I must admit I did smell good as I had just bathed before she called, maybe if I was stinky I could have avoided all of this. Anyway as these things normally progress she tried to kiss me, this is a big no-no, and I moved out of her path so she missed heh. I am used to having people all over me but I reserve my mouth for my girlfriend or some other special girl. So after she attempted to kiss me two more times and was rejected I explained to her she didn't fit the criteria mentioned above and that I didn't dip my pen in company ink.

She was understandably embarrassed and asked to leave so I went for my keys to let her out, I was in the clear (or so I thought). Personally if a girl did that to me I would be gone but fan stopped at the door and asked for a goodbye hug, another innocent request. After I gave her this hug she decided she wasn't leaving and now she was going to spend the night :-/ I thought she was joking so I said sure but you will have to call your son's babysitter and tell her you wont be coming home tonight. Much to my amazement she called my bluff and called the babysitter instructing her to spend the night. At this point I couldn't tell her I was joking and she needs to leave, so I pointed out a flaw in her plan, she didn't have any clothes or anything to spend the night, big mistake.

The only thing I could ask her to do is promise she would behave herself when she was here, she agreed. She then asked me for a shirt to sleep in and followed me to my bedroom to get it. I gave her a white t-shirt, I don't know why coz she just took off her clothes and was walking around in her underwear after that. She followed me around my apartment as I prepared for sleep and the next time I looked at her she was completely naked. I explained to her again that I don't do girls from my company(may be a lie but shes not getting any from me) but she kept pawing at me. She saw I had 2 condoms in my draw from when I gave her the shirt to sleep in and she went for them and put it in my hand. I figured that if she didn't have any protection she would give up, so as quick as she placed the condoms in my hand I threw them behind the bed head, brilliant! I was laughing at her as she tried to move my heavy bed with me on it to try and get behind the bed head for it, I also explained to her that even if she got it out I would throw them out the window or flush them. This did not deter her at all, one would think that some pride would kick in and she would get the point or something, no such luck for me.

She pretended to give up and kept herself quiet on the bed for some time so I went to sleep. It wasn't long before I was awoken by her hands down my boxers stroking me, I took out her hand but she was giving me a fight. She tried to put my hand in her areas which I deem naughty I wasn't having it, you can bring the horse to the water but you can't force him to feel you up :-p. She was grinding herself on me, I didn't mind this much as my privates were secured under my layers of clothes. The rocking motion of her humping me was actually putting me to sleep until I noticed her starting to shake.. she had an orgasm.

For a brief moment there I thought the worst was over but that just fueled her for more, at this point in time fan was trying to get in my pants and sucking on my neck/chest/ears/stomach/anything exposed while trying to force her hand down my boxers. She was also trying to hold my hands down to stop me from stopping her and she was getting more forceful by the minute. In her hormone enraged state she managed to pin me down, a 6'2" fairly muscular man was almost going to get my goods. I opted to throw myself, she and whatever else off the bed to stop this. This only got me some time to re secure myself and she tried to mount me on the floor too.

It must have been the cold floor but my pleas for her to not rape me actually got through to her and she agreed to leave me alone. She realized what she was doing and how wrong she had been and started to apologize. I went back on the bed and back to sleep, she kept to herself for the rest of the night. The sad thing is that this type of thing doesn't disturb me much as I have experienced it a few times before from other girls, a girl that I do not like much and don't know that well can not show up at my house and expect to get some just like that, I don't roll them ways there.

To top things off when she was leaving in the morning she said she didn't think that I would have been that strong to resist her and it wasn't rape because she didn't try to cut off my clothes and hold me down with a knife. wtf?! time to dust off my weights and lock up the knives.

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

I think its about time for me to get a lady, my problem is that most of them are cheaters, gold diggers or something worst. The few things I require is that she is honest, clean, ambitious and healthy. It is sad that I haven't met any girls recently that fit that criteria.

Where not to park your car.. lesson learnt.

Nobody explained this to me explicitly when I was learning to drive but:is not an appropriate place to park one's car. Rewinding one hour, I left my apartment to go to my parent's place for lunch(the Sunday usual). Everything was going good, I was taking my time driving slowly, I even stopped at the stop light when I saw it changed to amber instead of going through.

It all went downhill after the stop light changed to green as I drove ahead and came across some fool in another grey civic hatchback driving ridiculously slow whilst chatting on his phone, and randomly pressing on his brakes at arbitrary points in time. I thought to myself that its Sunday my tank is basically at e and I didn't plan to go to the gas station till Monday so I should just continue driving easy and stay behind him. He continued to increasingly annoy me to the point that the only option was to overtake him and kick up as much dust doing so. So I did this after entering a two lane one way road and it was executed successfully and safely. The only difference is that my mood has changed from this individuals casual Sunday stroll when other people have more important things to do so after overtaking him I went around a pretty sharp corner on the same one way road and decided to skip on the brakes. He was going at about 20mph so I was probably going at 30mph after overtaking him, still a safe speed to negotiate the wide radius 90 degree corner at in my car or so I thought.

I have many times before handbrake turn and slide around sharper corners but that was not the aim this morning, my aim was to get as far away from this Sunday morning driver as possible. So after coming out of the corner the car had a bit of oversteer and in efforts to correct this horrible situation the car ended up swiftly swinging in the opposite direction of the oversteer sliding sideways along the road then hitting the curb and ended up parked on this fence. meh, I would say that this has ruined my day but my day was already ruined after somebody within my company called me at 5:34am this morning explaining to me that they did some major upgrading work on some of the GSM network equipment and needed my assistance. That story would pan out to a priority 1 service being downed for my company resulting in people not being able to receive phone calls made to the GSM phones provisioned tomorrow but thats a long ongoing story and lets not bore you with work related matters.

I assessed the situation, I was stuck on somebody's fence, I reached down and grabbed my phone and look back only to see the annoying grey civic man stop for a minute looking at the scene, he didn't even stay and he was one of the main reasons I was in the dilemma. My drivers side door was damaged by the impact and couldn't be opened so I exited through the front passenger door to a big crowd of people who seemed to be concerned about me and possibly any other person in the vehicle. I explained to them that I was fine, there wasn't even a scratch nor bump on me, and that there was nobody else in there and they insisted that I sit down, go to the hospital, forget about the car and the fence, the seat belts saved my life,... going on and on not making the situation any better. The only idea of use contributed by them was to have some water which they spotted in my car so I went for my bottle and had a sip, the sun was pretty hot. Anyway being a progressive person I ignored them and went on to inspect my car and contact my mechanic (who serviced it three days earlier, salt in my wound). He said he would send a wrecker for me to tow it to his garage, the first step in getting my car back on the road :-p.
Anyways I made my way back up to the road and who is that I see? My sister's sister in law, I have long given up going anywhere and not be spotted by people and it was nice to know atleast one person in the crowd of on lookers which by now has grown to about 30 people. Every last one of them wanted to know how I managed to get the car lodged in the fence given that it was a one way road going in the opposite direction to the placement of the car. Let me just state for the record, believe it or not I was not speeding but I have learnt a valuable lesson in sharp corners, front wheel drive cars and road rage and walked away from it with only an injury to the bank.

At this point in time, I have sourced a temporary vehicle and the last thing left to do is work out the financing of the repairs to my car and the fence. Hopefully this doesn't break the bank and my budget as I have waited/planned/expected my horrible unforeseen expense for this half of the year earlier this year. It seems as if something of this nature happens to me twice yearly and I was overdue. I also think of events such as this as the universe evening things out as most people including myself see me as a not so nice person, karma :(. I realized a few months ago that there was a huge surplus in the current budget and set a ridiculous financial goal for the end of this calendar year to compensate for the excess. After firing up my book keeping application after this accident, I realize I was right smack on track on meeting this goal. Its a shame that I will now have to revert back to the old goal so I can finance the repairs.. Oh well, some things are too good to be true.

Hobby

I am a builder at heart and have decided that my hobby is making and fixing stuff on my own.

One thing on my wishlist now is to have a deck, I am pretty sure this won't happen anytime soon but when it does happen I want to be a part of the build process.

been busy being a bum.. week 43

Where to start? I got last week off from work and spent it doing mostly nothing. I borrowed my fathers camera to capture the events of my vacation but there wasn't much to capture. I miss having my digital camera, I think I will replace my stolen camera in 3 months time. Anyway this first picture here was taken at the picnic I have been waiting for the past 6 months or so, its a shame I couldn't get to take the one person I originally propositioned a picnic to this year.
The past week of idleness also included going to the beach. The place was essentially empty so my party, fueled by coffee rum cream, had a ball skinny dipping in the warm clear waters on that sunny weekday morning, a first for me :-).
The week wasn't completely a waste though, I got a few things out of the way such as going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. I haven't been to the dentist in a while, the dentist made sure to point out the fact that the last time I came was over 9 years ago. He asked why I stopped coming but I was too ashamed to tell him that my mother stopped carrying me there and left me for the wolves. This was part of my parents ingenious parenting plan of not doing anything and letting a kid sink or swim in the deep end but I came out victorious as the dentist proudly told me everything was a-okay and I didn't have any cavities. There are a few other things I should have done while I was off from work but time didn't permit or I was too busy being relaxed.
During my time off I made extra effort to not walk with my phone, it spent most of the week tucked away in some corner of my appartment. I am normally bound to my cell during working hours and from 5pm to 8am during the weeks I work standby duty. This annoys me immensly as I hate cellphones and am not generally a phone person but is forced to answer due to work responsibilities. I have noticed this seems to be the trend for people in the IT dept. at my workplace, only they take it a step further not to answer the work related calls either. One has better chances winning at a game of craps than trying to get me on my mobile phone if its not a work related call. This pisses off my friends and family as I am hard to reach most times but hopefully they understand. I gave the first cell phone I had to my mother, loaded with credit because I didn't use it much, and of course my girlfriend at the time was pissed off as she could never reach me when she wanted to. Its funny seeing that I feel this way and I work for a phone company that foots my phone bills, I guess I save my company money.

A penny saved is a penny earned

This graph represents my income(blue) vs expense(red) of the current and previous 7 quarters over the past two years. It is a good indication that I am living well below my means. I notice most of my peers enjoy living large buying/using the best of things whilst I am equally content with my bulk frosted flakes from pricesmart and banking the few hundred dollars saved. I also try my best to keep capital expenditure to a minimum and under control by spreading purchases out over a large period of time. Financially focused is what I call it, not cheap.
In keeping with my financially focused and tech theme, I must say that I am proud that I did my first online stock transaction today. I was wondering over breakfast what to do with some extra cash I had in my broker's equity account and I just figured I would move it over to my high intrest investment account. Things changed when I reached work and checked stock prices, one of my favorite bluechip companies fell to a 52 week low so I decided to put in the order for it, there isnt much to lose and so much to gain :-). After I came back from lunch and checked my email I saw an automated mail from my broker saying that the order was filled, a very plesant surprise. This is also the first time I put in an order and have it filled the same day.

Week 42, definetly business as usual

It would be a shame for me not to post today. In keeping with the trend of the last few public holidays, the rest of Jamaica is at play and I spent my day at home due to standby duty for work. The day mostly went well, I woke up at about 8am, watched tv for a bit then made myself some cottage cheese topped pancakes(new recipe, it worked out well). After that I decided that the cupboards below my sink were the war on vermin took place many weeks ago was to nasty to continue ignoring so I cleaned it out then trimmed some of the plants which lined the driveway as they have been brushing against my car as I drive by and I noticed the gardner was ignoring them. Quite a productive morning I must say, If I had more free time I would re-position a security light I installed over the area I park my car for better coverage but I guess that will have to stay until another day.

Afternoon came quickly and at about 1:30pm I decided to watch Tom yum goong which I've had for some time but didn't have the time to watch it. I was warned about this movie, the movie can be summed up in one line: some people steal an elephant and the owner fights to get it back. I don't mind watching these kung foo type movies as they usually have some noble inspiration pushing the plot. Anyway I got my first standby call a few minutes before the movie ended, this lady was calling about her process that was failing on my system. I pointed out the problem to her three weeks ago the last time I was working on her side of town and I had to remind her that this problem was already identified. The real problem is that her process is trying to write to an area that has 120,000 files in it already and the system pretty much has reached its limit and three weeks ago I asked her to clean it out as there were too many files in there but of course no action was taken and now I am being called on my public holiday to solve this problem that is now urgent as my company can now not process the files which it uses to bill the customers.

Week 41, business as usual

I just received my power bill from JPS within the last hour and I must say that I am relieved. The other day after washing my car I decided to take my last bill down to the meter and check out how much I owed this utility company for my current usage but to my shock and horror (if my calculations were correct) the meter said I had used close to 200KWH since the last bill cycle. Now looking at this excerpt from the bill I just received it is easy to see that 200KWH is double my normal consumption.
In retrospect, what I suspect happened was that I picked up the bill for the month before so my calculations would have reflected 2 months usage. The balance in the world is restored again, I was beginning to question my ability to quantify my electricity usage and was about to dig up my ammeter to measure the load brought on by my new toys. It is sad that I wouldn't have to do much digging to find my ammeter as it is on a table by my front door amoungst many other doodads and tech that scatter my appartment.
On that note I need to move into somewhere larger and more permanent, I hear my home owner clock ticking and it is becoming harder to ignore. I mentioned this to my mother a few weekends ago and she told me that I am too young to be owning property. In my head it makes sense to be paying off a mortgage vs paying rent as at the end of the day you have something to show for it.

The war on vermin

This war started about 3 weeks ago when I reached home after work one Monday evening and was looking at my ceiling at some mysterious holes left by some bug that black tiny sand like droppings come from. Now I like to keep my kitchen mostly clean so when I come home to a counter full of this sand like droppings I was pissed. I then look in my cutlery draw to see a large grey flash! Upon further inspection my worst fears were confirmed, it was a rat and he just moved in. He was trying to build a nest in the draw using old plastic forks I get from the chinese food I often buy and also pissing all over the draw. I didn't want to poison this unwanted guest as he would die in some inaccessible area behind/below my kitchen sink but I took my canned bug spray and sprayed like I never did before back there, I could still hear his tiny footsteps landing slowly.

I assumed that was it for him so I cleaned out the draws with bleach and moved the cutlery to a safer inaccessible(by rats) cabinet in my kitchen, but of course when I came back the next day it was full of rat urine again. That Saturday I decided to get some glue traps and set them in the draw. When I woke up on Sunday the only thing I saw on the trap was a roach, that was half eaten by the rat(which I then named Jerry). The roaches don't disturb me much anymore as I have always suspected that they were there under the cabinets where I couldn't see but Jerry was just pushing it using my trap for him as a feeding ground. Other than that roach there was nothing for Jerry to eat in that cupboard below the sink.

Jerry: 1, Adrian: 0

This didn't go over well with me so when I went to visit my parents that day and she suggested getting an old fashioned spring loaded rat trap. I noticed I started smelling something funky in my kitchen but couldn't identify the source, I asked my friend if she smelt anything but she said no so I just ignored it. So the next day, Monday, I went out to my hardware store and bought a hammer and some rat traps. I used the hammer to remove some boards in the cupboard under my kitchen sink to reveal who ever lives/died back there, I saw nothing so I just set my spring loaded traps baited with cheese and hope for the best. At that point in time there are three spring traps and two glue traps and up until this yesterday, many weeks later, nothing was caught.

Last Sunday morning came and I went into my kitchen to find it infested with flies.. I realize then what had happened, Jerry got poisoned by my spray or maybe ate the roach that had too much poison on it and died back there in some other place that I still couldn't see. This would explain the faint foul smell I detected a few weeks ago and then these flies came from the maggots that ate his body after. To confirm my theory I looked in the cupboard to find about 8 flies locked away, yep they were born back there and I was disgusted even more. At least he lost that battle and my kitchen is now rodent free.

The next set of vermins are the lizards, my apartment has lots of geckos in and about the place. I personally don't have much of a problem with them as they eat the bugs that fly in at night when I turn on my lights but when a girl wakes you up screaming in the middle of the night that there is a croaking lizard over the bed is not cool. I also used to have a large one that lived outside my window that made the loudest noises ever, he would often wake me up at night with the croaking. I have recently found out that bug spray is effective in getting rid of them. It doesn't kill them instantly but it seems to blind them and prevents them from climbing walls. I have gotten rid of a few this way, up to Sunday night I saw one before I went to bed and sprayed him. He fell to the ground and ran about the place and I just went to bed as I couldn't bother find him and throw it out. When I woke up the next morning I saw him bucking on my closet door trying to get in without success, I glanced away and glance back.. it was gone. I guess I will search for its body later :-( Anyway since the spring loaded rat traps were not catching anything at all I moved the largest one from my kitchen out to the ledge below my living room window last night. Now when I woke up this morning much to my surprise it caught a large gecko, why was it trying to eat the cheese I used to bait the trap? I felt bad for the creature, it was still alive and breathing when I took it off and reset the trap but its back and ribs were snapped.

I figure the score is something like: vermin 1, Adrian 4. Here is the breakdown..

When I first moved here I found 3 different type of ants, they are now mostly gone now.
vermin 0, Adrian 1

Jerry using my draw as his bathroom, me killing him, him leaving flies after death:
vermin 1, Adrian 2

The war on lizards:
vermin 0, Adrian 1

Add up that score and it looks grim for the vermin.. this is sad, I need to move.

dude, where's your car?

This is a picture of part of the yard of my apartment and the road infront of it. For the past 5 days or so there has been a large new pothole that has been terrorizing drivers at night. Basically every other car that passes by drops in the pothole at night. Hubcaps fly off, tires get torn and front ends get destroyed I am sure. Anyway two nights ago I was sleeping by my big window on the bed in the living room from which that picture was taken only to be woken up at 3:30am by some fool shouting "hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello" x100 at the top of his lungs. I just ignored this fellow as I assumed it was just some cokehead who clearly couldn't be talking to me as I know its hard for people to see me up in my bed in my ghetto penthouse from the road or in my yard at ground level. I continued to watch him as he walked around my yard trying to get attention from my neighbors but to no avail. Shortly after I noticed a tow truck drive up and made a 3 point turn on the main road at which point in time this fellow left my yard. I now realize what has happened, he was one of the unfortunate ones who dropped in the pothole and disabled his car. After hearing the flatbed tow truck carry away his car, I decided that it was time for some piece and quiet after been woken up several times earlier that night by other events and went to go sleep in my bedroom that is essentially sound proof.

Anyway I was in the common area the next day about to leave and my neighbour, Eddie, stopped me and told me they stole his car that night. This is a better picture of the entrance to our yard, to the bottom left out of the picture is where we park. I told him about what I heard and saw that night and he told me he was sure that somebody drove in and towed his car out as his car was one of those with the immobiliser chipped ecu's that required the key with the code to start. I felt bad for Eddie as he only had 3rd party insurance coverage but he didn't seem to be too disturbed by it, I guess business is booming for him now(He owns a popular strip club in town). I was sleeping by my window again this morning and at about 6am I was awoken by people talking downstairs. I peeped out my window and saw it was only Eddie talking about his incident with one of the other tenants, I hear car drive up and more people talking.. its Eddie's mother. This woman reminds me of my mother, very annoying.
She, Eddie and the other tenant is now talking about it and I hear another car drive up, its the police. Apparently they found Eddie's car abandoned down the road yesterday. The thieves came in, broke into the car, took apart the ignition to break the steering column lock and pushed the car out of the driveway down the road so they could hotwire it. After they realize it couldn't be hotwired they abandoned it on the road, I guess the immobilizer ecu is worth the money. I am not really bothered much by the thought of them stealing my car too as the insurance payout would probably be a lot better than what I could actually sell the car for.

I will now leave you with an image of how I view the world from the Ghetto Penthouse

My leave cherry is now popped

I took last Friday off, this is the first time in my working lifetime (two years) that I have taken any leave. This leave was well deserved after all that work I was the previous two weeks.
Anyway the Thursday before I called Jodi (My x-crush that I speak of in previous posts) and I asked her if she wanted to go to the beach on Friday, due to the fact that she was upset with me a few weeks earlier for not inviting her to the beach when I went to Lime Cay. She said she wasn't sure and would call me at 8am and tell me what's the deal, now I was bent on going to the beach and relaxing no matter what so when 9am Friday came and I didn't hear a peep from Jodi I called her and asked her what's going on?

J: Friday isn't a good day for the beach, lets go on Sunday.
Me: what's wrong with Friday, I thought you didn't like the crowds?
J: It's just strange to go on Friday plus I'm not sure what's going on today.
Me: you have other plans for today?
J: no.. I just don't know what might happen later.

Of course I am no fool, this girl is hoping for some other plans which she refuses to tell me about to come through and going to the beach with me was plan b. I refuse to be a plan b so I tell her never mind and call my plan b. Its ok for me to have a plan b as I really wanted to go to the beach and quite a few of my friends wanted to go with me plans b, c and d heh.

I called plan b and she was game, I told her I would come for her at 10:30 then went to take a quick shower before I left. Much to my surprise she was ready and waiting for me by the time I reached to her house. This girl has always had a track history of making people wait whenever she is going anywhere and I was prepared to wait 1 hour that morning. K, plan b, was pretty hot in her beach wear. I had to put out extra effort not to touch her that day as it would only lead to bad things. K was kinda boring at the beach, she just sat in my beach chair all those hours eating fish, smoking, sleeping and reading her book in the shade while I was up and down all over the sand and water. This was a new side to me as I used to be able to toss her about the water and have fun the last time I went to the pool with her over a year ago.
I had fun at the beach ignoring the fact that K was lame, I wish I could spend every day at the beach, which leads me to this Friday coming up. To the left is my friend Renee, plan d I think. She also apparently wants to go to the beach with me. This has me confused to no ends.. it must be a trick. Renee is my x's good friends and Renee and I have a platonic relationship, why does she want to go to the beach with me? just the two of us? She has turned down all of my advances to get in her pants with disgust and she loves to mention how much she thinks of me as a brother (the reasons she was plan d)
She is fun in a tomboyish way though, in the picture she was entertaining herself at my house playing pool by herself as I wasn't paying her too much attention. This would be a great asset to have at the beach instead of some girl sitting in the shade hiding from the water. Lets see what this Friday brings.

So its monday . . . yaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!

Who is happy for Mondays? me!

Q: Why?
A: As I predicted in my last post I was stepping into the standby week of hell.

Q: My relief today?
A: My boss came back to work after a two week leave and I am off standby duty :-)

It must have been planned, shortly after my boss left things fell apart and most of his responsibilites fell on my shoulders. At 3:00pm last week Monday I got a call from HP saying I need to shutdown the EVA8000 in my datacenter for critical repair work. Whats the EVA8000? its something that you don't power off, ever. This is the first time we are shutting down the eva8000 since we got it over a year ago and it's in my hands on that public holiday Monday. I got a window of 1 hour to do the maintenance work which was a few hours away so I quickly documented a shutdown plan/notification and sent it out to all the stakeholders who had dependencies on the eva8000(I also had to shutdown their machines due to this also). Try to imagine my bitter feelings as I called some managers telling them I will be bringing down their applications only to hear them at the beach having fun. Anyway after all the calls and the emails I went down to the datacenter, got the work done and was on my way home by 9:30pm :-(. End of Monday.
Tuesday brought on a whole different set of problems mostly I suspect due to issues we were having with the same hardware from Monday and I escalated all of them to the highest level, they were now partially out of my hands, HP is now sending down a specialist to sort us out.. right.
Wednesday/Thursday/Friday the specialist is here "fixing" the problem.. yet somehow we are in the exact same position we were in on Monday and he somehow stole my office space downtown. The problem is now 10x larger as my boss' boss is now asking me if its possible to schedule a business critical update on Saturday night. Now this update can only be done if I can get a process to complete successfully on Friday night. I gave him the grim statistics that this process has had a success rate of 1 in 3 over the past few days and he in turn tries to tell the business that it can not be done at this point in time. The business is not having it and they put the squeeze on him and of course he then puts the squeeze on me. We work with that 33% chance of getting it done and by some miracle it went through. At some point in time my boss' boss, the HOD, realized how much work was being done and called me and informed me that when my boss came back I can get two days extra off, yay! I can see myself sleeping on the empty beach, the only worries in my world would be the crabs on the sand.
Saturday/Sunday went by fairly smoothly. All things went as planned almost. They anounced the work being done to the system on Saturday night on the radio and the work started. I didn't hear a peep from a soul until 11:00am Sunday morning, when I got a call telling me the work is complete. It is my job now to test the integrity of the upgraded system, I told them to give me 20minutes as I was on the road on my way to visit my parents. I reach my parents house and of course a big argument starts between my mother and I over some old issues, I hook up my laptop, vpn into work.. the upgraded system is broken of course. After about an hour on a conference call with support from London and my mother arguing in the background all is well, the system is back up and I can have a civilized conversation with my mother. I then ate some food and left. On my way home, after a lot of thought I have decided to stop visiting them on Sundays, maybe they will see me once a month now. I refuse to deal with that added stress to my life at this point in time and it is avoidable, I hope they understand.
It is now Monday, a new week and a new chapter in my life. I have the next three weeks to kill before I am scheduled for standby again :-D