Dear Bob Congratulations on disrupting the lives of millions of Londoners by calling a two day tube strike. Nice timing, by the way. An England international at Wembley and more importantly; The Fall, Buzzcocks and John Cooper Clarke live at Kentish Town. Just a couple of quick questions before I set off: I would also like a 5% pay rise which would come in most handy in these tense, difficult times. Also, the prospect of a guaranteed final pension and a job for life is also very appealing. I am certainly capable of reading a Red/Green/Amber signal, moving a lever from ‘Stop’ to ‘Go’ while reading a copy of ‘The Sun’. Please email me if any vacancies come up. Obviously, I would like to show my whole hearted support for the RMT cause by hooting my (imaginary) horn and making a small financial contribution to the fighting fund. I will be passing though most of the mainline stations on my extended journey tonight so maybe you could picket there where the London commuting public can see you instead of hiding in your office car park - you cowardly bastards. Your comrade, Norman. ...

My two favourite typos of all time, which are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face, are: ‘Stationary Cupboard’ ‘Principle Consultant’ Until yesterday when I received an invite to: Date: 8 June 2009 Time: 16:30-17:00 (BST) Location: G27 Subject: Warp up meeting I opened the meeting with a summary of the day’s progress and my findings: ‘I have completed my analysis of Siebel performance, the Oracle configuration, the I/O infrastructure, the hardware specifications, application usage and my conclusion is as follows:’ ...

This week I am attending an excellent training course on Linux System Administration at Oracle’s offices in Moorgate, near London. The course is given by Harald van Breederode, an excellent trainer who manages to combine deep technical, real-life expertise with a rare ability to explain complex things in simple terms with a sense of humour. As is traditional, each attendee was asked to give a precis of his/her job role, star sign, experience with Oracle, most embarrassing professional moment, any exposure to Unix (Linux), favourite band and expectations for the course. ...

Come on everybody. Sing along now. A mole digging in a hole Digging up my soul now Going down, relegation Ashley and I in the sky You make me feel like I can die So low, relegation Relegation Relegation Relegation

My obsession with notices and signs in lavatories continues. Has it really come to this ? ‘When should you wash your hands ?’ ‘After your hands have become dirty.’

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a ticket to the Emirates on Tuesday night so here is my match report culled from my stream of inane drivel on identi.ca. Preparing for the big game… ‘My wife just gave me the shock of my life. She said ‘We may have a big problem here.’ Thought TV was bust. Turned out son ’lost’ his PE bag.’ ‘Saw a couple of Gooners on way to Emirates. Lowered car window and shouted ‘Manchester, Manchester, la, la, la’ at them. They waved back.’ ...

A lot has been written about Chelsea’s recent exit from the Champions League to an injury time winner from Iniesta at Stamford Bridge that dumped Chelsea out of the competition on the away goals rule to Barcelona. Inevitably, there has been much discussion about the controversial penalty incidents, the quality of the Norwegian referee, the behaviour of some Chelsea players during and after the match and even ridiculous talk of a UEFA conspiracy. ...

You see - I’m really wasted in IT. I really should be in pre-sales or on ‘The Apprentice’. I thought I’d return to my minimalist roots and change the theme on this blog. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, no need to click through and leave a comment telling me ‘I use an RSS reader so I don’t care about your new theme’ because I already know. If you think ‘Hey - this theme is simply a blatant rip off of Russell Beattie’s blog, I’m going to run and tell him’, don’t bother. I already know and so does Russell. ...

On Wednesday 11 January 1989, I went to Loftus Road to see Manchester United play QPR in an FA Cup 3rd round replay. As usual, we went for a pint in our favourite pub, ‘The Greyhound’ (or similar), on Shepherd’s Bush Green before finally spurning one last beer and reluctantly making our way to the ground. Loftus Road was packed. The United section behind the goal was full. Stewards opened up another section along up to the half-way line to accommodate the large away support. ...

It’s fair to say it took me a while to fully ‘get’ microblogging. In fact, initially Twitter left me as cold as a corpse in a deep freeze. Inevitably, things change and like an old woman, I reserve the right to change my mind more frequently than my underpants, and in 2008, I started using Twitter to post a continuous bytestream of inane drivel in less than 140 characters. Last July, when identi.ca launched, I immediately signed up for the open source microblogging service. I even built my own Laconi.ca instance - not necessarily because I intended using it but just to see how easy (or hard) it was to install and configure the software. ...