Generally, the quality of cover versions on YouTube can vary to say the least.
However, covers that purely mime to the original soundtrack are excellent as you can simply minimise the video and listen to decent music, you were forced to remove to make way for another yet another virtual machine.
This cover version of 'Aneurysm' by Nirvana has a certain visual appeal though - the drums and cymbal, the bendy guitar and the socks.
Ladies and gentlemen. Please be upstanding and don your ear protectors for this unique version of God Save The Queen.
Im not sure Im cut out for a career in pre-sales as I have an irritating tendency to blush and my left eye twitches horribly when I tell half-truths.
However, on Sunday afternoon, in order to welcome my loved ones back from Holland, I donned a smart dark suit with a crisp white shirt and business-like grey tie. I then loitered around the lower level of Heathrow Terminal 1. I chose to invest the money I saved on the standard taxi fare in a very stylish (and not stupid looking) Bluetooth headset offering hands free operation.
As the incoming flight was inevitably delayed by two spaced out students who checked in and then spent another hour checking out every single item for sale in every single retail outlet at Schipol, I had an unexpected 75 minutes to kill so I wandered around keeping an eye out for celebrities, potential terrorists or weirdos.
A lovely, foreign lady approached me and asked how to get to 'Terminal 2 Lufthansa, please' so I consulted the information board and directed her to Bus Stop 1 for the courtesy bus. Curiously, this selfless act human kindness and my authoritative presence led to a flurry of more people approaching asking for assistance: 'Where to check-in for BMI to Copenhagen ?', 'Where to get English money ?', 'When will BA74 from Brussels arrive ?' and 'Why are the toilets so (expletive deleted) filthy ?'
I cheerfully answered the questions free of charge: 'Upstairs', 'Currency Exchange or that cashpoint might be cheaper', 'Sorry - no idea' and 'Don't know where you come from but that's spotless by British standards'.
Finally, after an overpriced medium Latte, the flight landed and the monitor changed from 'BD108 Amsterdam: Expected ~~16:17~~, ~~16:24~~, 16:37' to 'Landed 16:45' and finally to 'Baggage in hall'.
I carefully pulled out a sheet of A4 paper and inscribed 'BRIGHTSIDE' in blue marker pen. I quickly called my son at home, told him to get the roast out of the oven, hoover throughout, wash the toilets, air the washing and call me back immediately.
My glorious headset illuminated 'Blue' and I told my controller 'Yeah - I'm just picking up at T1 now. Can make Wimbledon in 55 minutes. Roger. Over and out.'
I then identified prime position on the metal barrier and squeezed in next to a young lady keenly waiting for her boyfriend who had been ski-ing (and unfaithful) in Austria. I unzipped my jacket and extracted my outsize A4 sign which I held aloft. The lady muttered 'Bloody minicab drivers.'
New arrivals from India, America and Western Europe looked enquiringly at my sign but I shook my head with disdain. Tall people riding bicycles, smoking tulips and carrying joints emerged. At last, the Amsterdam flight was here.
Finally, Norma and Norma Jean arrived. My daughter's face went bright pink, she frowned and nudged her mother who was completely oblivious. I proudly held the 'BRIGHTSIDE' sign even higher and fiddled with the volume on my Borg headset.
After hearing about Anne Frank's house, the red light area and the 'coffee shops', I helped to unload the heavy suitcase and opened the front door for the excited but exhausted European globetrotters. When I politely asked about the possibility of a tip, Norma replied:
'Yeah. I'll give you an excellent tip. Never eat yellow snow.'
Holy Father. It is almost 31 years since Citys last trophy. Since then, I have:
'My dear son. You are indeed a worthless sinner. May the Lord may mercy on your soul. To seek forgiveness and redemption, please say three Hail Marys, one Our Father and request a transfer to pre-sales.'
As part of the ongoing vinyl replacement program, I finally bought Unknown Pleasures, Closer and Still today.
25 years on - 'New Dawn Fades', 'She's Lost Control' et al still sound absolutely fantastic.
What could possibly be better than a romantic city break in Amsterdam with your loved one in the glorious spring sunshine ?
That would be lovely but, unfortunately, Norma has chosen to take her loved one, Norma- Jean to Holland to indulge in culture, canals, Anne Frank, trampolining, tulips and space-cake.
Never mind. What could possibly be better than a lazy weekend dedicated to father-son bonding ? A chance to catch up in the beer garden on all the events of the week at work and school respectively. A chance to hire 'Borat' on DVD and laugh helplessly.
A chance to order pizza with garlic bread instead of defrosting that meal in the freezer. A chance to go to bed whenever we damn well please. A chance to play music loud. A chance for father and son to go to see a real football match, err, well Charlton v Newcastle.
That would be lovely but, unfortunately, Norman Junior III has foolishly spurned this glorious opportunity in favour of a 'sleepover' followed by paint-balling with his real mates.
Oh well. What could be better than a night in the pub followed by a curry with your mates ?
Nothing.
Two questions of earth shattering importance
Answers:
I am currently trying to assist with a couple of long standing Service Requests. This type of work is interesting because the issue is normally pretty deep rooted and complicated. These escalations are also very challenging because lots of very intelligent people have already spent a lot of man-hours investigating the problem.
Anyway, one of the first steps is to review associated Service Requests and try to determine whether they are indeed related to the issue under investigation.
The opening paragraph of one such SR contained this bold assertion from the customer: 'As you can see, we have populated the interface tables correctly and EIM still doesn't work.'
This was a interesting statement and was directly related to the problem I was looking at. This statement went unchallenged by Technical Support so I took it at face value and continued my analysis.
There was further empirical evidence that this data load would fail as changes to the corresponding meta-data in the Siebel Repository had been made in version 7.8. A user key definition on this table had been inactivated which was previously present in 7.5. Interesting.
A few hours later, I returned to this SR as I was about to actually try loading data into the same Siebel tables. This seemed rather pointless if it wasn't going to work. However, I started from scratch, read the documentation and created my own simple test case for a single record.
Sure enough, the customer was correct. Even though, I had populated the correct columns in the correct interface table with the correct data, Siebel failed to populate the target tables.
However, when I reviewed the EIM log files more carefully, the errors were the conventional (foreign key lookup failed) type. I fixed the test data, re-ran the load script and sure enough data appeared in the target tables and was visible in the Siebel application.
So, the customer was actually mistaken and I suspect his bold assertion including the four little words 'As you can see' also misled the technical support engineer.
Last night, my son told me that playing World of Warcraft was much, much quicker since the recent broadband upgrade from 4Mb to 10Mb. This made sense as online gaming presumably needs lots of bandwidth and Virgin customer services told me the upgrade would be effective from last Friday.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded a 100MB file (twice) and looked at the download speeds which were in the range 360-390 KB/sec. Quick but less than you would expect for a 10Mb connection.
I called my friends at Virgin Media to check the status of my broadband upgrade. Sure enough, contrary to what I was told, the 10Mb upgrade will only be activated on 23 March when the engineer installs the V+ box.
So, unless you see it with your own eyes, it didn't happen.
06:55 Bin day. Dustbins out (from Web)
06:57 Fortnightly recycling day. Grolsch cans and newspapers out (from txt)
07:04 Radio 5 on (from ear)
07:07 Grapefruit juice. Lovely. (from tongue)
07:12 Poltergeist has re-assembled furniture in lounge (from brain)
07:17 Quick shower (from bathroom)
07:25 Twitter about twitter (from recursion)
07:34 Oh no. I feel a cold coming on. Please excuse me from gym (from Mummy)
The new machine from Dell duly arrived yesterday so I hid it safely away in a tall cupboard.
This morning, when no-one was looking, I surreptitiously retrieved the boxes out of the tall cupboard and carefully cut the boxes open.
Then I quickly hooked up the new PC to my existing keyboard, mouse and monitor and power cable.
I had a sneak peek at Windows Vista and it looked pretty nice (IE7, integrated desktop search, media player, shiny new interface).
Then I carefully packed the computer away, taped the boxes up and put them all back into the tall cupboard.
What am I ?