Sniffing

I started a new job today – my time on the WarwickPiazza help desk has come to an end and I’m now working for the network team in ITS for a bit. So this afternoon was spent wandering around the Humanities block and the surrounding area with a wireless PDA and some network-sniffing software, searching for rogue wireless networks.

Sometimes it’s good to get out of the office.

Hakuna Matata

Warning: attempting to watch a DVD while lying on Dave’s bed under your duvet, having consumed several glasses of wine, may cause you to fall asleep and barely remember ANYTHING of the film. Oops!

New House

We still need to sign contracts to make it official, but I have a house! Or at least, a room in a shared house. So for the next nine months, I’ll be living in Leam again. This time I’m just around the corner from Bar 44, and as I said to Marty last night, way to close to the Cargo Home Shop for my liking. This could be a problem, as the room is nice and will therefore need lots of nice things to be put in it.

Media whore

Monday night: spent a while going up and down the biggest Top B queue I’ve ever seen in my life (it stretched from the cash points up round the piazza, past CostCutters and Lazerlizard, almost to Health Centre Road at one point), handing out RaW beer mats. I helped carry some of the equipment they’d had down on the Piazza up to the studio afterwards and got into the event slightly earlier than I might otherwise have done *cough*.

Tuesday: The new Boar site, which I’ve been helping out with went live. The content management system I’ve been working on for the Boar still isn’t finished yet, but when it is (currently I have no computer, so development work has ceased for a bit) it will be capable of generating the same content.

Other than that, I’ve been real busy at work and generally pretty exhaused. It’s been good dealing with loads of people and helping out with their problems, but I’ll still be pretty glad when it starts to quieten down a bit. I’ve got the weekend off this week (unlike last week, when I was helping out over the coming up weekend), so I’m hoping to be able to relax a bit then.

Right now, I’m trying to remove some of the comment spam that’s appeared on my blog *again*. I need to figure out how to stop the spam bots picking up on the fact that I run a Movable Type blog. I suspect that removing the <meta name=”generator”> tag and the “Powered by Movable Type” text might do it, but I’m not sure. Anyone got any ideas?

Update: I found some really useful-looking info (warning: don’t access this in IE, unless you like spyware) from the Learning Movable Type blog. This sounds a bit more complicated…

Chicken Kievs and Chips

I’ve never heard anyone refer to a day as ‘crisp’, but I thought one of my colleagues summed up today pretty well using that word. I’ve went to Somerfield earlier to fetch some dinner for myself, wearing a shirt, a jumper *and* a coat. People are wandering around wearing scarves.

Baby B was good tonight. Apart from the feeling that we were going to die on the way there. The taxi driver was slightly mad…

Working tomorrow 10-4. Yay freshers! 🙂

A very English affair

Up at 8.15 this morning, due to having gone to bed at 7pm last night. I’m so lame, but at least I woke up not feeling tired! It’s been so long since that last happened.

Gorgeous morning, but not so nice any more. Our picnic in London got rained off, so we had to sit there with coats and umbrellas. How very British, eh?

Homeless

Lack of Internet access stopped me from making seven continuous days worth of blog entries, as I had hoped to. Curse BT!

There seem to be quite a few people at the moment who don’t have a proper home to go to, or at least one where they feel happy. In my case, I’m crashing down at Dave’s for a bit until I can find somewhere else. It’s alright for now, but every day is a reminder that I don’t actually have anywhere that I can think of as home.

I don’t go back to Wales much any more, so I no longer have much of an emotional connection with the place. Conversely I tend to build up quite a big connection with the places I do spend time in, which leaves quite a feeling of emptyness when I have to leave those places. This sucks.

I’m lucky that I have friends who will help me out in such situations, but I can’t keep relying on that. I need to start doing something about the crappy situation I’ve allowed myself to get into and sort my life out. Or at least, my accommodation :-).

The End

Well not for me, but it was for a few people last night.

I went to my first Baby B of the Summer, and probably my last. The music was good, which surprised me. I danced lots and drenched myself in sweat. That’s a sign of a good night out.

The Last Day

Last full day on campus today, and back to work again. I think I could get used to having Thursdays off, it makes Fridays so much more bearable 🙂

As it happens, I was fairly busy all day. I took a few Piazza calls, before Chris took me over to University House to make a start on setting up the new PCs that have just been put into the Learning Grid. Nice place. I had a meeting about the Boar CMS that I’m still involved in over lunch. That inspired me to do some more stuff on that, so I’ve been staring at code for the last half an hour now. I’ll have to stop sometime.