Saw a mountain biker who shall we say was doing a different kind of riding in a BMW convertible, not that I was worried but please on a residential road!!

Also had a numpty in a four wheel drive who thought it would be good to see if he could run me and some pedestrians over as we crossed pelican crossing. Yes he had the green light but he was still on the round about 60mtr prior to the pelican crossing so we had plenty of time to cross with out obstructing him, even the pedestrians got a cross with out a problem but it did not stop him from screaming the engine and glaring at us as we crossed in front of him. I offered him a single digit salute to let him know how I felt.

Just spent a pointless 2 hours trying to get something to run on the server at work this afternoon (need everybody of the system to run), it failed, not sure why as it ran perfectly when I did this in November. The joy of working from home over a weekend, looks like I will be trying again tomorrow evening.

A quick check around the Internet and TFTuned seemed to be the people to service my Rockshox Forks . To be honest I did try another company but after four attempts during the day they failed to pick up the phone (and still have not returned my answer phone message I left). So a quick call to TFTuned so see if there were any inherent faults or any other sort of gotcha with these forks to which they said there was not. So Monday night I filled in the online service request form and parcelled up the forks for their trip to TFTuned on Tuesday.

This morning just after 11am I got a phone call from TFTuned saying the forks were ready, a complete service, all new seals throughout the forks and a bill for £89. On the one hand it is an expense I could do with out, on the other it is cheaper than a new pair of forks and now I will be able to ride over the Xmas and New year break, so it is win win for me…………….what do you mean how? I now can’t afford an xmas booze so I won’t ruin my dieting by drinking and I can carry on riding to help with my weight loss, well that is my story and I am sticking to it.

Hopefully I will be doing my traditional Christmas eve ride, done it for the last couple of years, weather is looking OK. Then hopefully I will be out for a early Boxing day ride.

As for the rest of life it is a right pain in the rear, work is nothing but a nightmare at the moment, I think somebody has tied a target on my back as most of the agro seems to be directed in my direction at the moment. My other problem, or rather the other half problem of being made redundant on Jan 31st is not really helping matters, neither was a decline after what she thought was a successful job interview today. Seem to remember being in a similar position this time last year.

Now for the not very regularly ABS (Arse Behind a Steeringwheel) Award goes to a driver on the M3 this morning just south of J9 A34. I was on the inside lane which becomes the slip road while the middle and outside lane continue on as the M3, I was going a bit faster than the car in the middle lane and the lane marking between lane 1 (sliproad) and lane 2 (now lane 1) had changed to show that I was clearly now on the slip road, so what does the ABS do, move and indicate (in that order) onto the now slip road narrowly missing my front bumper because he did not like me undertaking him. He then realises that he is now on the slip road for the A34 and promptly moves back into the now inside lane of the M3 and accelerates away.

Yesterday ABS Award goes to the little old lady in her silver Micra who waited until the lorry was about 50yds from the junction before pulling out in front of him, thankfully there was nothing coming in the other direction and the lorry was able to swerve onto the other side of the road to avoid her whilst locking everything up in a clouds of blue tyre smoke. I was speechless at her stupidity, I not sure what the lorry driver said but I some how don’t think it was printable judging by the hand gesticulation I could see in his cab mirror.

Here a picture of what I have been working on at work

Servers & Sans

Two new servers (the green lights) and two new San units (only read if you like reading geek) above the servers. A total of 36 disks, 18 in each San unit which is small fry to large corporation style sans but for a small business, it is a lot.

Took the camera out and took some pictures for the first time in months. Only went down to the local beach on a windy day but it was fun.

Here is a kite surfer about to launch their kite.

Kite launch

The shot was taken looking towards the sun which is why everything look so dull apart from the bright blue kite.

Here a shot looking out toward France (it is over the horizon a bit!!)

Breaking waves

Finally from the camera a dog and ball leaving the water, I had a bit of fun with this one

Dog, ball and water

On the bike riding front, I was intending to go on a club ride this afternoon, but thing got in the way and ended up going shopping this morning when I wanted to do a couple of bits on my bike. So I did the work on the bike this afternoon, including bleeding the rear brake as it was a little soft and every intention of going out tomorrow morning.

Friday was another day for riding, went out in the afternoon, went for a ride across the local heath then into Delph Woods then down the Castleman Train to the Roman Road at Upton, then up the hill until I turned off on to Upton Heath. I have only ridden this bit once before and I thought the turn off was in the first quarter of the hill not the last. This part of Upton Heath is the part that was featured on the national news earlier in the year when it went up in flames due to a suspected arson attack. The whole area has now started to regrow, the only sign of the fire is the blacken trunks and branches of the trees and bushes. Apparently the wild life has moved back into the area, I met a photographer who was stalking a deer which after I came rattling down a hill had moved into a clump of trees and out of site, opps

Saturday I had to work, only made worse by the fact that I had to travel to the head office in Worcs. so no riding. I was supposed to be riding with the son today but he stayed over at the mother in-laws last night and did not want to come back for a ride, add to that it has been raining all day so I did not go in the end. Definitely going out riding tomorrow morning regardless of the weather. Going with the wife to Moors Valley where we will both ride the Through the Tree trail and then I will shoot off and ride some other bits while she pootles back to the van. I am not back to work till Wednesday so I am hoping to get another ride then.

This past week has been a strange week, a sort of lull before the storm, although I am not sure when the storm is going to hit. Work has been those sort of days when you are busy all day and then look back at the end of the day and nothing has been accomplished, you just spend the whole day dealing with lots of minor dead end problems. I am on holiday for the second part of next week and the first part of the following week but it looks at the moment that I am going to have to work on Saturday (the one in the middle of my holiday) again, work that one out!

I am living in a house of bugs, we had a phone call on Monday asking us to collect our son from school as he was unwell. Fortunately I was able to leave work and go and collect him, since then is has had a hacking cough. I was feeling below par earlier in the week. The wife felt under the weather in the middle of the week. The only one who has not been ill is the daughter and she been working long hours and overnight so she been temperamental because she is tired.

Virgin Media are really peeing me off, the internet problem I complained about back in May and contacted them again at the end of September and early October which they complete ignored is still on going. I have not contacted them yet as I know it won’t be a pleasant call to them. I am planning on doing it one day next week when I am on holiday but I will be more angry when I come off the phone than when I start……

I have done no riding this week, I had planned to go out one night this past week but forgot to put my light on charge (it takes over 18 hour to charge). Then I decided not to ride the following night as the weather forecast was iffy and it turned out to be a lovely night………well would of been had I gone out for a ride.

I am not happy with the bike at the moment, it has a creak and I can’t find it and I hate the sound of that creak as I pedal along. I spent this morning and the early part of the afternoon trying to find the creak to no avail. I popped into my local bike shop for some (creak resolution) advice, his advice was to go over everything I have done again. I picked up a few useful tips on the Mountain Bike Forum so I have a lot to do tomorrow and my son want to go for a ride although that will depend on how bad his cough is.

I think I am getting to that age when all you do is moan……………

After an early start from home on Saturday I was soon at head office shutting the IT system down so I could do some work on the support equipment. Thankfully it was one of those day when everything went as it should of done (well almost) and by mid afternoon we were on our way to Tewkesbury for an over night stay.

Having sorted out how to get the TV working I watched the highlights of the Wales v France rugby and like everybody else felt Wales were robbed. We then went for a wander around Tewkesbury grabbed some food and then retired back to the van.

Sunday dawned sunny but by the time I got up it had clouded over, watched the first half of New Zealand and Australia before heading for the Croft Trail at Swindon. It was along the M5 that we bumped into a Pheasant. It decided to walk across the hard shoulder into lane one, he got as far as lane two and then turned round and headed back toward the hard shoulder, with us closing on it quickly, it then decided that it would try and out run us, Pheasant are not renowned for their speed (on foot or flying) and the inevitable happened, a loud thump from the front of the van and the Pheasant was last seen heading at great speed into the undergrowth at the side of the hard shoulder. On reaching the Croft trail car park it was not hard to find the Pheasant’s point of impact, there was plenty of blood, feathers and guts on the front bumper.

After three laps of the Croft Trail and some lunch it was time to head home as I now had to wash the blood and guts off the van.

Not sure what the week holds for me, feeling a bit below par at the moment

Let start with the annoying bits, the new school term is about 4 weeks old, to date we have lost one football sock, lost one pair of trainers, ruined one pair of shoes and had one call to collect son from school (injury). I just hope things improve in the next 5 or something year while the son is at secondary school.

Works is becoming manic, the easy jobs become hard jobs and take twice as long to resolve, the hard jobs (the jobs that are actually hard) don’t get started because the easy jobs are taking to long.

Riding, well there have been a couple of rides, I had my hardest ride (ever) last weekend over the South Downs, did not help that I choose one of the hottest days of the year to do the ride and claimed yet another puncture. A couple of miles later I felt better as my ridding buddy also got a puncture. I had an attack of the cramps during the ride (again), I managed to keep the worst of it at bay but it stayed with me till the end of the ride. I reckon I drank over 5ltr of water and energy drink during the ride and ate one energy bar, two small pieces of flap-jack, two slices of malt loaf and an ice cream. The ice cream was my treat on the way down the hills, we passed a car park where the old ice cream van was doing a roaring trade.

I was planning on an easy ride on Sunday but I just had no energy by the time we had finished cutting the grass and washing the van. Made amends later in the week by going out for a ride in the evening, had to take my big light as it was dark enough for it.

This weekend I am not sure what riding will be done, will be keeping an an eye on the weather and decide on the day.

On my way through Worthing yesterday near the hospital on the A27 (I think), saw a car waiting in a side road on my left to pull out and turn right, then when I am no more than 40yds from the junction he pulls out in front of me and then stops as there is traffic coming the other way, not sure how I missed him I just hit the brakes. The ABS came into operation and I stopped just short of ramming his drivers door. I got nothing from the driver apart from a horrified look as he pulled away and disappeared off down the road.

What can be more simple than mounting a cabinet on a the wall?? I marked the wall where I wanted it. I even marked the cabinet to ensure the correct orientation, so can you spot the deliberate mistake in the picture below?

If you still can't see it, look at the label on left hand side of the cabinet!!

Communication companies, why are they so bad at communicating?? Lodged a complaint for the third time on Sunday still waiting for a reply. The auto reply I got said we will be back to you within 5 days (5 days in these modern times is woeful), well today is the fifth day, anyone want to take bets on me getting a reply??

Going for a ride over the Southdowns tomorrow, hopefully I will take my riding legs with me unlike last night ride…..

I did actually go out and ride this morning (on my own), ended up going over the local heath, tried a few more of those paths that I had not tried to date. Tomorrow I am trying an old route with a new twist. After this past week I might be asking for trouble so I am not saying anything about it.

The reason I went and sat in a field was the company are having a show this weekend and they move about 70% of their stock into a field adjacent to a Theme Park. As this is only one of three show (I don’t go to the other two) during the year where the sales team from all our branches meet in the same place at the same time, it is an ideal time for me to grab their laptops and install some new mobile Internet dongles.

As ever the install was nothing like the instructions, when you read the instructions you need to read between the lines. Like, at no point did the instructions say reboot the PC\Laptop, but I had to reboot each laptop three times at different points during the install for the process to work properly.

I eventually got 4 of the six dongle installed, (one never turned up, and one is not there till tomorrow) and left the sales team sitting in the field in the rain. My days of working that show are gone, I used to there at the start of the set-up of the field a week before the show, I used to work the weekend of the show and then I would be there the week after taking it all away again, 10 straight days of early starts and late finishes. those were the days.

Tomorrow will be my third day of working from home and I am starting to get cabin fever, Thursday I have to go out for work but fortunately it is not to far away and then on Friday I have the hospital apponitment and then I have a meeting near Southampton.

While my shoulder is getting better, I now have a fairly full range of movement of my right arm now without pain (until I try to either push, pull or carry anything) trying to sleep is a nightmare. The only position I can lie in without pain is on my back but I can’t sleep on my back. Lying on my left side is reasonably comfortable but the position I rest my right arm in soon become uncomfortable and I have to turn over. Well I would turn over if I could, I can’t lie on my right side as my shoulder is still to painful. I have tired lying in various new positions but they feel so alien I can’t get to sleep. Then when I do fall asleep I will turn over in my sleep and then wake up in pain as I turn on to my right side.

We won’t go into Monday nights weigh-in the weight loss went out the window which based on what I ate after Wednesday crash is hardly surprising, just got to try and keep the food intake sensible this week and hope I can get back on the bike Saturday.

Thursday the motherboard turned up along with an engineer to fit it, a quick swap over of the disks and everything is working as it should be………………………..er, no. Having got one server back up one of the other servers has a strop and drop one of it three hard disks, fortunately this server only runs background jobs so it has not caused as many problems as the other server.

Friday did not improve with a printer and a laptop dying. The weekend did not bring a change in fortunes as I two of my PC’s at home died one of which was my main PC. Just hope things improve tomorrow when I am back to work.

No riding this weekend, yesterday was a rainy miserable day and today with all my PC problems at home I decided that I had better get it all sorted out. Then in the middle of setting up my e-mail this afternoon I get an e-mail telling me that one of my domain names had expired yesterday, a distraction I could of done without. Still have a fair bit of data to recover from my old PC but I have the basics up and running and I will do the remainder as and when I get time or need it.

Weigh in last week was a small gain and to be honest I am not expecting any improvement tomorrow night, time will tell.

Trying to get any info from the guy that supply our phones was a waste of time as the info he supplied was as accurate as a map showing where the treasure is buried.

A meeting was agreed for today at 10am at the local branch to me (it should of been last Thursday in East Sussex but I had to cancel). So I arrived nice and early at 9:30 and the directors arrived at 11:45 and then said he was leaving at 1:00pm, who give the boss a bollocking for being late??

Now I had done a bit of research on the net in the past week checking out what needed to be done, so once I got the phone I spent 20 minutes with half the office staff trying to read the pin and iemi numbers written on the sticker under the battery, it would of been easier to write War and Peace on a grain of sand. Once I had the information it did not matter what I did I could not even get beyond the registering the service with out an error message. So I gave up and phoned Vodafone, well in 10 minutes the phone was set-up and working and 15 minutes later the e-mail was working (most of that was setting up the e-mail account).

Now all I have to do is do the other Blackberry, accept he has his swapped his Blackberry for an iPhone…………..

Last night was weigh-in night and it was another loss, not a big loss but a loss none the less. This week is going to be a trying week with hot cross buns and chocolate in abundances. Looking at riding on three of the 4 days over the weekend, Friday I am going to be chasing a creak on the Whtye.

Todays photo is straight out of the Anorak section, I used to be a train spotter (don’t tell anybody) and so when the chance came round in 2009 to look round the railway works at Eastleigh I thought it would be a nice day out and my son would enjoy getting up close and personal with some trains. I had been to an open days at Eastleigh many years ago but boy was it different this time, the place was empty compared to how it was on my first trip there. BR pulled out many years ago and now there are several small train repair service companies working out of then various engine sheds, nothing like it used to be.

Here you can see Western Champion in it original colour scheme sat in the sidings. Many years ago at Bristol Temple Meads I had the opportunity to drive one of these beasts, admittedly it only moved about 10ft but as far as the 16 year old me was concerned I drove it. More info on the Western class can be found here

Western Champion

Since Monday I have been fighting Trojans, or to be more precise, fake Trojans. The type that pop up a fake security warning saying you have 20,000 infections on your PC, enter your bank card details below and watch us empty your bank account!! Just a pain in the arse to deal with (goes well with the pain in the groin).

Well last night was weigh in night and it was a loss. Bit of a surprise really after what I ate of Friday and Saturday, but hey I will take it. Just need to get my mind into gear and get into a new number (e.g. 16st area).

As spring has sprung (and despite the forecast rain tomorrow) here is a view of summer for you.

Sunset over Poole Harbour

Firstly they would not log off from the failing server, then when they had been asked not to log back on to the server they did log back on and got upset when I kicked them off the server. Then when they could not log back on they complained that they were unable to log back on. Fortunately by lunch time the message had gotten through to most of them.

I am hoping to get a couple of rides in this weekend, we have rain over night which should be finished early morning so maybe lunch time I can pop out for a ride. Might even try and get the Cannondale out on Saturday, just the new chain and a couple of little jobs to do. Sunday looks like the better day, so hopefully I will get a nice long ride out on Sunday.

Them: I have send you an e-mail, we need to use that software yours

Me: You can’t your department is not setup

Them: Why not?

Me: er 4 months ago you were not interested

Them: I need it this afternoon will it be ready?

Me? No

So I was left with instruction that it was very urgent. Never having set this up myself I first fired off an e-mail to the support company for some help and then set about seeing what information I could glean from the old set-up and what was going to be needed for the new set-up. I soon found the old set-up and realised that there were 6 different section that this department had set-up previously (only ever used one of them). So now I needed further confirmation of what exactly they wanted set-up. So in a long e-mail (a reply in part to the one they send me) I outlined the info I needed and the went on to explain some of the new features and how they would help their department. I then waited and waited and then packed up for the weekend then started again on Monday and then got a reply which basically said “we will discuss when you are in the office next”!! Talk about being urgent……………………NOT!

Then there was this morning, earlier last week I was asked if I could set-up an e-mail feature, I said no it was not possible. Late yesterday I realised that I was wrong that it could be done and with a bit of testing yesterday I proved it worked so I let them know the good news. This morning after further testing we found the e-mail server was doing something we had not expected it to do (or should of been doing) which basically broke this new facility. Well I send out a brief e-mail saying we had run into an unexpected problem so it might take a little longer, everybody was ok with this accept one person. They send me an e-mail and asked why I was holding it all up. In the past I have kept thing nice and simple when I had to explain anything to them as they are not at all techy, so I let loose with an long e-mail covering chapter and verse as to why I was doing it this way and what the problem was, no surprise that I have not had a reply by the end of the day……….

I wonder what tomorrow will bring

Prior to going to the dentist the network at work went awol so not only could nobody at work do anything (11 sites across the UK) I was unable to do anything from home either. Support company did not help when they turned round and said they could login OK. Eventually the network turned up for work, even now we are still scratching our heads wondering where it went. The afternoon bubbled along with the usual IT related problems.

Tuesday, more IT problems one followed the other and more lack of support from a support company (different company than the one mentioned earlier). I had to phone them after waiting 4 hours after the problem was reported and the problem was resolved in 2 minutes.

Wednesday and my early morning departure for head office in Worcestershire, traffic was horrible so I was 15 minutes later arriving than normal. A simple 10 minute job took over an hours to do. Some parts I ordered arrived looking like bits for a jigsaw puzzle. About 30 minutes before I leave, all hell let rip, the payroll PC spat it dummy out and I had to sent a file off to support but it refused to be copied so the 2 minute copy and e-mail turned into a 30 minutes battle of wills. Then two printers decided they did not like printing and somebody asked why his e-mail with 25mb attachment was not arriving despite sending it 5 times, oh the joys of IT.

This morning as I was working from home I decided to have a bit of a lie in, as I dozed in bed I was rudely awoken by my works mobile phones being thrust in my face, our Northampton branch could not login. Further phone calls revealed that it total 5 branches could not login after our network supplier had a major outage.

This was followed by more fun and games with the non-printing printers, a request from a manager to set-up there department now on a new system who was too busy to give me the required information 6 months ago when we installed the system.

Not to sure I want to get out of bed tomorrow…………….

Monday was weigh-in night and my 3 week losing streak came to an end, 1lb on. I was not surprised as there had been some major troughing over the weekend. This week to date has been pretty good, but the weekdays normally are, it is the weekends that it all falls apart.

I does not look like I will be going on the ride with Rafe and the MBS crew this Saturday, rain and high winds on the top of a hill is not my idea of fun. In fact the weather is looking better at home so I think it will be a early morning local ride and then back home ready to watch the second match in the six nations rugby.

Finally, the new post notification that should appear on facebook when I post a new blog is not working at the moment, it should work but it does not, ho knows why………………

My calf and thigh muscle have stopped aching now which is a bit of a relieve as I lost count of the time’s that I went to get up out of the chair only to whimper from the pain of my calf muscles stretching.

My new cassette has arrived for the Whyte, it is a nice shade of pink, “Pinkslip Pink” apparently (it was £2 cheaper than the red one and £4 cheaper than the green or gold ones)!! Can’t fit it yet as I need to buy two new long reach sockets as Whyte has a strange axle set-up and two nuts that hold the axle on the wheel are in a deep recess on each side, so it will have to wait until Saturday when I can get to the shop to buy the sockets. So the likelihood I will only do one ride this weekend which will be on Sunday.

Have a meeting at 8am tomorrow morning at head office a 130 miles away so will be up earlier than normal so will need to make sure that I get an early night.

I made one ride over the weekend and that was Saturday, I went over the local heath but only had a short ride because it felt like I was dragging an anchor behind me. Not sure why, maybe the anti biotic’s were having an affect on me, I just had no energy. I got up Sunday morning and there was a total lack of enthusiasm to go for a ride after Saturday lack of energy. So I spent the day cleaning the Cannondale and discovering a host of things that need to be looked at. Well I am on holiday from Friday so it will give me something to do.

Weigh in night was last night and I was expecting the worst, but I have to say knowing what I had eaten over the past two weeks the small gain was a lot better than I had expected, no gain is nice but I can accept this one under the circumstances.

Tomorrow is my last trip to head office for this year, the three week (well, just under) holiday will be a nice break from early morning starts and 280 mile round trips. I just have to content with the family, drink and chocolate…………………mmmmmmm tough one!!

Once I had got everything working and my server had reappeared (the disappearance was linked to the item I was installing not working correctly) it was nearly mid afternoon before I left for home a couple of hours later than planned. Decide to go back the scenic route via Stow-on-the-Wold, where I passed two groups on mountain bike riders, riding up the road caked in mud and looking as though they had enjoyed their ride. I felt really peeved off, the sun was out, the sky was blue and I was working. With rain forecast for tomorrow I am not sure if I will get to ride or not, will have to decide on how heavy the rain is. It will have to be a morning ride as I want to watch the F1 which is on just after midday.

I would like to see Hamilton or Webber win the F1 but there is little chance of Hamilton winning it so I will be hoping Webber is there at the end, just as long as Vettel and Alonso don’t win it I don’t mind. Wanted to watch the England Australia rugby match but I never got back in time so I watched the highlights, certainly looked like the England boys had a field day. Might of been a bit different had Australia put those penalty away rather than missing. I did manage to watch New Zealand walk all over Scotland

My week has not really got any better or worse than Tuesday blogs, I have ignored the problem for the time being, been to busy working on the new phone system install which has been happening this past week and seemed to go fairly well (nothing I was doing, I was just a helping hand).