Greetings fellow blog readers and contributors. Sorry I haven’t blogged for a week. Actually I did write blog midweek, but Blogger decided to lose what I had typed. I wasn’t happy and couldn’t be asked to retype everything I had done. I’m now typing this in Word, so at least I’ll have a backup before I make it live.
This week was a busy one at work. As reported last week, I was covering Medway Hospital for a colleague who was on holiday. When I say covering, it meant doing my own work as well, so I spent my time flitting between the hospital and my own base.
On Monday, we had some printer problems. We are migrating our printers from one server to another and something wasn’t right with our test printer. Turned out to be the IP address wasn’t setup on the new server. Easy to fix once I had found the problem.
On Tuesday, one of our suppliers wanted to do a backup of a database, but didn’t have enough disk space to do it. I’m not totally up to speed with procedures at the moment, so it took a bit of time before I could get an answer as to whether or not I could delete some old stuff or not.
Throughout the weekend, I struggled to get all the backups done. Again, it’s mainly down to my unfamiliarity with the backup software. On the positive side, failures like these are a good way to learn how to work the software. On another positive note, I like to be kept busy at work. Nothing worse than sitting at work with nothing to do.
I was up late on Thursday night and as I was about to go to bed, I checked the news channel and found that Michael Jackson had died. I watched the news for a while before turning in. Heather woke up as I got into bed and I told her the news. I don’t think she believed me and told me later that she thought I was having a joke with her. Of course, it was all over the news on Friday morning.
I’m not surprised by the outpouring of grief around the world. Michael Jackson was our generation’s Elvis. He was performing since the age of five. He produced the greatest selling album of all time with Thriller and he has sold more albums than everyone other than The Beatles and Elvis. In fact, he will go down in history for Thriller being the greatest selling album of all time, simply because no one buys albums anymore. People download individual tracks from iTunes or wherever. Yes, he had troubles in his life, but don’t we all? He just got publicised because he was massively famous. Over time, the weirdness will be forgotten and his music will be what people remember.
So, Michael Jackson (1958-2009). You’ll be making my list at the end of the year.
Friday, I completed another one of my 50 Things To Do Before 40. I went with Chippy down to Woodchurch for a meeting with the Ashford Astronomical Society. This month’s speaker talked about the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (it was impressed on us that there were SIX moon landings in all). It was a very good presentation and the speaker showed other events that took place in 1969, which was very interesting for me as it was the year I was born. It was also good to see Steve again. Next month, he is doing a talk on meteors. I might go along to that one too. They have a competition each month to photograph various things. Last month was the Moon, which Tina won in her category. This month’s task is to photograph stars. It doesn’t get truly dark until after 11pm right now, but due to our position in the town, we can see stars quite clearly at home without a load of light pollution. Just need to find a camera that’s up to the job. I’ll play with some of the settings on my camera, though I may borrow my father-in-law’s digital SLR.
This week, it’s been pretty hot over here. Constantly over 23 degrees, even in the evening. Sleeping is very uncomfortable and I enjoy sleeping (as do most people). I currently have a headache. Could there be a storm on the way? I got caught out yesterday when it started raining when I had washing out. However, it wasn’t enough rain for the ground or enough to break the humidity. This week, it’s predicted to be even hotter. Although my car has air conditioning, it doesn’t work. We don’t have aircon at work either, not in the offices anyway. I may be spending more time in the Server Room this week.
Today, we went to Godinton School for their Sunday Funday. Haven't been to a school fete in years. We weren't there long, but Heather did get pink cat as a prize.
I always do my blog in Word first & copy it over. The copying & pasting in Blogger has some quirks, but I'm getting used to it.
ReplyDeleteAs for Michael Jackson...I may well write a rant about it tomorrow. However it's the same old story with anyone famous. The media slag them off and ridicule them when alive, but once they are dead the deceased is treated as a hero.