Nothing lasts forever...

Well, it had to come to an end sometime I guess. It was "fun" while it lasted, but as of this afternoon, I am no longer an ECDL waster.

< cue sad music from Incredible Hulk >

< cut to: me packing my belongings into a box, walking to the door. /me stops at the door frame and looks back into the room. With a sigh, the light is switched off... >

But, yea. Me as a Kustom employee. That's cool.

Life at Kustom

damn! this stuff is tireing. i start at 9 and spend all day just reinstalling windows, running adaware and avg and replacing hardware till i finnd the broken piece.

don't get me wrong, its fantastic fun. i genuinly love it. the guys are great. the atmosphere is casual. theres always a cup of tea not 5 minutes away. what more could i want?

so ill be evaluated on thursday, to see if i am being kept on. if i get the full time, ill be one of those people that everyone hates : someone who loves their job.

also, i'm reading the princess bride. its so funny. and charming. go buy it now!

How would you close your currently open document?

Bad news...when I went to buy Red Alert it had been sold. Within the 3 hours that i saw it and went to buy it, someone came along and bought it. Who the hell want to play Red Alert these days anyway?

More bad news: I am gonna have to take a hiatus from the blog...at least a week. Maybe longer, but for now, just a week. Y'see I'm going for a work trial. at Kustom PCs. *cue Ode to Joy*

Frankly, I'm a bit excited. And slightly nervous. Its working in the software repair area, i.e. someone brings their machine in, I'd scan for virus & spyware. Its just like going to CJ & Simons. The software is where it all started for me. I only got into hardware out of necessity. I can do software.

But it the unknow aspect of it that scares me. On the other hand, theres really very little to fear. Theres only a few new people to meet, as I know most of them already. So thats good. New people scare me, y'see.

So, I start tomorrow, 9am and am evaluated on Thursday. I just have to go see my Job Centre Lady(tm) so that if I'm not at JHP, I'm not signed off. Because, if it doesn't work out at Kustom, then I have to wait 6 months before I can claim again. If the Job Centre insist on making things too complicated, I guess I have litle choice but to just sign off and take my chances. Opertunities to work at Kustom do not come along very often.

P.S. note to self: shave when you get in. Maybe a shower too.

How would you move a slide within a presentation?

One of the noobs stole my seat today, so I've been relegated to sitting next to Wee David (tm). But thats not the worst of it...this mouse has no scroll wheel! I mean, come on! It's downright essential. Its like the dark ages in here.

I'm gonna come in a bit early tomorrow and get my computer back. Or someone elses. Someones with a wheel. and a deent keyboard. Thats not near a boken, constantly open window. grrrrr...

Still, gaming news, I found a copy of Red Alert for £4.99 with its add-ons in original packing! none of this "Best of" or budget range. I'm gonna grab it once i'm done here.

Thats all for today...move along, nothing more to see here...

How would you resize a drawn object or chart?

Dungeon Siege is great! I really don't know why I like it, because I hate Diablo. But I'm glad I got my working copy. But its not the best game ever. After some internal mulling and soul searching I came to the conclusion that I would quite like to actually own all of my favourite games. This, granted, is not a new thought, hence why I bought both Splinter Cells and Max Payne. And HL2. And Mr Driller. and Evil Genius.

But one game (and its expansion packs) is, as i see it, clearly missing. And so began, last week, my search for Battlefield 1942 Anthology (which is BF1942 + Secret Weapons + Road to Rome for less then £20 from Game! Thats a silly low price!). Now, it would be too easy to go into Game and buy it, they don't have it in. The website, sold out. Every other site I've searched has priced it at about £30-40.

So during lunch just there I thought I'd try GameStation. Johnny was working, so that was cool, I could ask him...nope, they had none. BUT, Johnny did inform me that he plans to leave Gamestation quite soon. And so are quite a few other people. So, that could be a job for me. He's gonna see what he can do about getting me in, which would, praise the lord, get me away from here. I think I'd like working there...but I remain cautiously pessemistic. I've already proved I'm nigh on un-employable.

I sent an application away to Dell Glasgow today, to work on their Tech Support. I could do that. I couldn't sell Dells, I'm just not that good a liar. "Of course you can play your brand new Mega Blaster 3000 game on a Dell, it has an integrated 3DFX Voodoo 2 right on the mother board! A Voodoo 2, thats twice integrated video controller of any other company that gives you a Voodoo 1..."

As for the people that leave weekly, they either get jobs, or are opted out of Job Seekers Allowance for 6 months. 6 months is a long time with no money. And yea, some of them are doing different courses, like Training for Work. I don't think theres much difference, but there must be some.

P.S. sorry about my creativly vapid post titles...I have no inspiration these days. Normal service will resume when I can think of a funny title, else I'll keep using random questions from my course. Actually, maybe the questions are alright ... certainly keep the theme, dont'cha think? Well, we'll see...

How would you add a shadow effect to an AutoShape?

You know your getting old when hangovers last for a day or two...And I've caught this flu/cold thats going about.

So, I nearly left this morning at about 10am. I was just miserable. But I went for a walk in the fresh air, bought some lockets (it is impossible to buy cherry soothers these days! plenty of blackcurrant one, but i dont like blackcurrant) and now I feel fine.

A whole host of new faces today, literally outnumbering the recognised faces. I even have a trashy looking pikey sitting next to me. I took a stealth photo of her. I'll put it up later.

I got so bored I designed the floorplan of the JHP offices in a powerpoint presentation. At the minute, when not blogging or forum reading, I'm drawing housing in powerpoint. I think I'll animate them in a minute.

I can't wait till I get home. I think I'll try and leave in 15.

No, elephant books.

Ahh, Friday. Friday, Friday, Friday. I like the half day on Friday idea. Its a good scheme. Promotes moral.

The people here keep calling me a "whizz kid". I assume it's because i usually get roped into helping someone and since its all easy stuff, I always know the answer, more or less. Or I know to search help for it. Either that or it's cos I smell of pee.

I think my computer (Takara) is well again. Or at least on the way to recovery. I put a clean, fresh new 80gig (IDE) in as master and reinstalled windows and such. The I added in my old SATAs (2x120gb) and set about copying the files from one to the other. It was taking an age. about 83 minutes quoted to transfer about 8 gig.

Turned out windows decided to default my SATAs to PIO mode, instead of zippy-ninja-speed DMA. And refused to change back to DMA. Long story short, I fixed it. It now transfers full speed. My internet transfers full speed. And I have plenty of space on my HDD.

The plan now is to copy all I need from my old C and D drives (one drive, partitioned) to the now IDE and other SATA and then format it. If I feel really posh, I might concider RAID 0 -ing my SATAs and leaving the IDE as a system drive.

Anyway, enough computer talk. I can see your eyes have glazed over with bordem. That happens. Got some more pics to put up, but I need to reinstall the drivers for my data cable first, and set it all up. I even have photos of Mark Taylor. On a bus! (I was on the same bus, y'see. I didn't just stand on the pavement and wait for him to pass by. That would be wierd.)

I'll post them to Elvis Street when i get the chance. He has no sideburns. None. Shaved right up to the start of his hair line. It was like looking at someone with no eyebrows...you can see something is wierd but your maybe not sure what it is...and then it hits you! I hope its visible in the pics.