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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Today , being the Easter Sunday we went to see a Jousting event in the Knebworth House (you can google it, if you want to know more about it ), it was a “classic” British weather , Cold , slight Drizzling and overcast all day long, in short Perfect for the sort of Middle ages atmosphere they were trying to create at the Jousting Arena.

We had a a nice time and while there I also made sure to take pictures ( both for fun and for my P365), So Day 20’s picture is from the Jousting :

As you guys know I am a member of a dive club where is live , and as such we (i.e the club) are always working with in the community to encourage people to try diving and also help out to those less fortunate .

Last weekend several members of the club ( me included) hosted a group from Dacorum Mencap in the pool for some exposure to Scuba.
This was not your normal scuba class or session but it was much more satisfying.

This morning I had a feeling like I was a kid going to school again.

What brought that on , some of you might ask , well the story is like this:
Myself and the Mrs wanted to find out if we can find a decent Hummus in affordable prices in the area we live in , without having to travel to London to get it.
A short search in the ASDA superstore website showed several items made in our homeland marketed in the shop , so we ordered their “Yarden” Hummus (which turned out to be Zabar , to those how know what we are talking about).

The flavour is not Abu-Gosh , but for us it is a GREAT solution.
Coming back to this morning and the “feeling like a kid ” before I left for work I made myself some food to take with me , Sandwiches to be precise,with Hummus ham and Pickles, just like the ones we used to have when going to school .

Now all I need is some sun and hot weather ;-)

It has been a while since I last posted here and that is due to lack of what I’d define as “leisure time” , Don’t get me wrong , I can get free time and what people call “me” time , but that is not the same a what I call Leisure time.

Many things happened in the time that lapsed , but what woke me up was that yesterday morning I laboured to build a Toddlers Bed to my little Girl , It shook me , she is growing up so fast that she is already moving out of the crib and to a bed. I mean it’s a BED. She can climb in and out as she pleases,the next step is walking to our bedroom and waking us up !!

Bye ,Bye what ever little sleep I had , welcome Terrible Twos .

The Dive club I am part of had the “end of season” party where we acknowledge all the newly certified members and review the past year.

I got my “club” Diploma for the Dive Master certification and we had some laughs about how they can use my particular skills in the club dives (drop me to the bottom with 2 cylinders and spare the time of looking where to anchor the ascend line).
At the end of the evening we have an “Award ceremony” for various things that transpired though out the year , One of them is the “Spanner of the Year” (as you can imagine this is given to the guys that managed to mess up on the most spectacular level).

The nominations were all the heavy hitting blunders : 2 DM in training losing their “rescue” diver and actually rescuing someone else (not even from our club), A diver taking a stride entry off the boat with out the regulator in his mouth and mask on forehead.
And the winner by a long shot , is the man that (and I quote) “Used his Ninja skills to help his CPR patient by removing it’s head”, Yes as you’ve guessed I managed to win this plaque for Killing Annie By mistake.

And I thought they’d forget about that one.

A couple of days ago I got an email from the company that did the logistic behind my London to Paris ride inviting me to participate in 3 Cities Bike Ride .

The dice roll was a natural 20 and with out much thought ( though I did take a look at the route and the distances) the mail was discarded and I moved on .

I can’t say that I don’t miss the fun of the ride , but not now , Maybe for my 50th birthday.

after a long wait the new version of NRPE has come out , for those not versed in the Open Source NMS ( read Nagios or Icinga ) world , this the remote agent that allows to perform remote check on the monitored system .

Just to clear the air about long wait here is the excerpt from the Changelog file ( dates only ):
2.13 – 11/11/2011
—————–

2.12 – 03/10/2008
—————–

Almost 3 years for a minor version , so when it was announced i grabbed the source file and took it for a test drive on my VM .
One of the issues that was prominent in the older version is that when enabling the debug feature the output was minimal and not sufficient to actually debug the activity on the agent , and naturally that was the first item I checked .
Sadly the issue still lingered , to fix it you need to modify the nrpe.c file and modify the definition of the syslog call from LOG_DEBUG to use LOG_INFO , then rebuild the daemon .

I did that and tested the work and now it works fine .

Hopefully , I’ll be able to push my changes to the main steam and have this merged so in the next release ( after my retirement ;-) ) it will not happen again.

I have had a bad week , And I this type of week will never happens again let me go back about 3 weeks and tell you what I am on about :

We agreed that we need to move to a bigger house , so we started looking about a month ago , we saw some places that were not great and some that were great but out of our price range , then the Mrs saw a place and fell in love with it , the price was ok and the location was a big improvement on where we are now (in regards to distance from the Child minder and the train station, for everything else there is the car – which is part of the story). So we started the process of going for the property , putting a deposit , providing references , interviewing moving man, getting a cleaning service to clean after we move and working on scrapping the money for he move .
During all that we had to buy a new car as the old one was scarped and we were stuck with out a car for 3 weeks, so last week we bought a Renault espace , which was in a good condition , although the Clutch was a bit hard to use .

The days ticked by and we were waiting for the tenancy agreement , but we were told that the landlord is away so it will take some time , annoying but Fine .

Come Sunday I had to take care of some things in London , so while there we decided we need a comfort food so we drove to Golders Green to get some decent Humous , once that was done i neede to drop back in to the city .
We went to talk the little one to a short walk in the Heath and when we come back I get the news that the clutch is broken , “odd” I think but as i look I see the clutch laying on the floor of the car like a cat after a good feed in the sun , The car will start but the gears won’t go anywhere . Right , Calling the AA , calling a Cab for the Mrs and the little one and now i wait for the AA.
Long story short – the clutch hydraulics went Kaput and I was towed to the shop with the car .
That was an annoying expenditure that we didn’t need , but it was resolved fast and clean (relatively) .
As the days moved on , it was now two days before the move and we still did not have a contract , my “tact-gone” meter was reaching the red zone and I decided to get in touch with the agency and sort it out . I think they heard that i was on the verge of tipping over and all of a sudden within 1 day we had all the papers sorted with all the changes we needed and now I have the keys to the house .

Considering that the movers are coming tomorrow , i’d say that this is Cutting it a bit close , but at least it is done .

Oh , and on a good new note – my application for the PADI Dive Master Certification has been approved , I am now a “professional” in the the Scuba Diver Business , Who wants to go sink with me ??

It is not as if I am opposed to progress , but there are some things that are just WRONG . and this is one of them , people some times do things cause they can , and never bother to think if the should. (I know i sound like a bad quote from Jurassic Park , or a debate about Stem Cell/Cloning research) , but there are some traditions you do not mess with.

Some will say that this will bring more people to know the flavours of whiskey , but I don’t see it that was , cause as every whiskey drinker will tell you each distillery has it’s own taste and feel to the Dram and even a plastic Bootle is contaminating the flavours of the drink , So to serve it in an Aluminium Can ?? that is like spitting in the face of a centuries old tradition and snubbing your nose at heritage .

This is also the next step to that horrid drink proposed in Star Trek : the Next Generation – Synthaol , A vile and hideous idea , and now they have made it no , Spawned it to infest the markets .
What i fear the most is that some idiot politician will think that how they can make the flavour , then the true article is redundant and will push to outlaw and shut down all whiskey production – the Prohibition again , and you know some one will say that this can be the “cure to alcoholism” .

Fear for the Future .

Last night I had my EFR ( Emergency First Responder ) refresher/training course , we learned about the changes of how to perform CPR that became acceptable since I was initially trained.

It was a good review and nice to see that I still remember most of the stuff , and since our “classes” are more along the lines of an open discussion forum, I was able to part some of my knowledge about how to approach and perform some of the action covered in the CPR procedure.

Then we moved to the CPR and Breathing section with the doll , when it was my turn I got into position and tilted the head back to administer the “rescue breaths” , when there was a loud “CRACK” and Annie’s head was in my hands 5 cm away from the neck joint.

They say that giving aid to a non breathing , no pulse person is a good thing cause you can’t make them any worse , does removing the head of a non breathing person counts as making him worse ? I mean he was dead already , how much deader can you be when you are not breathing and have no heart beat ?

Once the rest of the group managed to recover from the shock , we all laughed , but they looked at me wearily and announced they rather I do not come to their aid if they require CPR , so now I managed to scare most of my Dive club about my buoyancy (or lack there of ) and to add to that those of my Dive Master course would rather die then me give them CPR .

I am not making good impression on people am I ?