Phew, long time without looking in here. Not sure what made me click on the link in the favourites bar today but here we are.
Well for my update, I work in the IT department of North West NHS trust as a Senior Network Engineer. Its been pretty full on since February this year for obvious reasons. On the one hand its quite draining, on the other hand though its been very exciting throwing solutions together to get the workforce able to work from home.
We went from an average of 20 people working on VPN at any one time to well over a 1000 in less than a month, Firewalls needed replacing, internet circuits upgrading and new services rolling out.
I'm fortunate that I'm based on a hospital site but in a seperate building, so day to day I'm well away from the patients.
Wow. Puts our 6-7 off site folks in perspective. :-S
“Mick Lagi, the originator of the CatJAM and Vibing Cat meme, shares the tale of how he and his friend's cat Minette incidentally sparked an internet sensation.”
3 sites at the moment. One on furlough (kerchiing) as a lot of it was the restaurant.
The truck depot is good pay and uncomplex...they have 29/44 drivers still well enough to work. I cycle commute two marathons worth a week, so kept fit through it all.
3rd site I celebrated 10yrs this week and is just an hour an evening... dredging 3k a year.
Spending most of my time at going-postal.com in their Disqus comments...which is a shite platform, and I have pointed them to Beehive.
Amazing how many old faces this thread picked up, I just went back through it from the start.
How's everybody doing now we are potentially looking at coming out of the pandemic via vaccines saving our bacon?
I'm still at home and sport is still going so it's generally same-old for me. Homeschooling was mostly horrible, a constant hour-to-hour decision needing to be made about whether we compromise our jobs, the boy's education or our happiness and relationship with one another. Hopefully the schools reopening doesn't make for too much of a spike in cases.
For you, keeping people at arms' length must have been no hardship.
Feel free not to read beyond here, because I've had a fucking good Covid.
I had my first AstraZenica vaxx a couple of weeks ago with no discomfort - not even what I felt after my October 'flu jab. Charlie, my youngest is not that far off thirty and schooling other people's kids. I have one lovely grandchild who calls me 'Grampus'. I have invested the shitloads I've saved from home-working on Georgian glass, Edo period Netsuke, strong drink and generic viagra.
Give my undying love to Tina.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
I'm loving the fc5 arcade maps, especially those by AKAFootloose. Maximum enemies, maximum aggression, threats, insults, shouting, screaming, and nonstop bullet storms. Loadouts are a bit limited but mostly pretty cool, with plenty o' reloads scattered about. Pretty amazing landscapes and townscapes too.
The final FC5.5 bossmatch against the twins and their army is a sod. I'm no fan of rock hard challenges generally - I'm along for the ride - but I was proud to have beaten it every time.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Partially returned to the office since Jan. Two days a week. Enjoy the two days I'm there but also enjoy working from home. Don't ever want to go back to five days in the office. Could probably be back in five days if I really wanted to be, though we've been asked to work to a rota.
I said enjoy, but in reality work itself is very chaotic at the moment, but that's not Covid related. Just work stuff. But that on top of Covid doesn't make things particularly enjoyable.
My underlying condition means I've now been invited for the vaccine, get that on Thursday. Good to see the end (of sorts) in sight.
Girlfriend has now returned to work from furlough after around 11-12 months. That's been a big change.
Genuinely no idea how people have managed this with kids. The idea of things going back to "normal" feels odd. Not totally sure I want to return to how things were before all this.
I know what you mean. My wife and I have a 4-bedroom house and no kids. It's genuinely been great having completely separate home offices during the past year. Meanwhile my wife has a married colleague that lives in a 2-bedroom house with her husband and young child, and which has a completely open-plan living area downstairs.
Sounds like hell in comparison, and I do feel for all those stuck in cramped apartments or with younger kids over the past year.
Yeah, I've got a couple of old school-friends who live in Canada now - one in Vancouver and the other in Toronto. On our weekly Zoom piss-up they remarked that they hadn't had even a sniff of a vaccination appointment yet. Struck me as curious after some international comment that Canada was "stockpiling" vaccine.
I picked up a new contract role the very end of last year (Which was a VERY tough year). 100% WFH/remote, regardless of COVID so that takes me into now my 3rd year of 100% remote work. I'm going to need to stop telling people I stay away lot.
Very very bored of COVID and while I think, after 2+ years, I've adapted to WFH I'm still a bit unsettled. I'm desperate to get down to London (where the HQ is) and meet a few people on the team, and catch up with some people.
I've been a pretty good networker over the years, and I have found it really tough not being able to find an excuse to go and meet people.
Ooh, there's videos and everyting. This one's pretty good, but he's made better maps
“I bought the Kings of Leon album on Friday. For about $50 I get a digital download, NFT artwork and a limited gold vinyl edition of the album. Doesn't help that I really don't like Kings of Leon.”
Apart from the relatively infrequent lockdowns, things haven't really changed here in Auckland. We don't have many foreign tourists, which has put a lot of strain on the hospitality industry, but we're mostly just sitting around waiting for the vaccine to turn up. Most of us aren't going to be getting it (the Pfizer edition) until at least June or July. Which is fine, though we're missing being able to take cheap holidays to Fiji and Rarotonga. We can leave the country to some countries, but we'd still have to go through two weeks of quarantine on the way back in, so effectively we can't travel abroad.
During the first lockdown I went from providing IT support to various customers from the office, to providing it from home. My partner, on the other hand, used to be a genetic scientist before she went into sales. As soon as we went into lockdown and her job went a bit quiet, she was headhunted by the local health board to help set up a new laboratory for Covid testing. Her work were really generous and let her go to part time, and even paid her more to make up for the difference between what they would have paid her and what the lab actually paid her.
So I started working from home, where she normally works, and she went off to the lab every day. That only lasted for the first lockdown, so she's back in her sales job now, and I work from home two days a week. Luckily, we have two spare rooms (not as many international visitors as we normally get), so we each have an office.
I have to say, though, it's weird watching and hearing about how other countries are dealing with it all. We can't really match up our New Zealand (lack of) experiences with Covid and everyone elses. There's a whole country of people here wondeirng what you're all going on about.
