Suffice it to say I’ve been a busy little bee recently and therefore this poor old portal has again felt like an ugly woman’s naughty area; it never gets a look in. But after Monday, this song certainly will apply.

More is certainly going come…..

Now this is going to appear to be something of a bizarre topic to bring up at this time of year, given the fact that those turkeys aren’t going to eat themselves and Grandma needs throwing on the fire, nevertheless, this evening it was something I felt compelled to write about and given the fact after two days in and out of bed exhausted, finally the time has come to put finger to keyboard once more.

Something came up at work (oh yes I’m still employed by a real firm you know, well at the time of writing I was anyway) recently and one event that has been at the back of my mind a fair bit, was the fact that we all had to adhere to a new “Blogging policy” which is a new thing to have to consider really when you’re a happy go lucky chap on the internet writing about how many time you went to the toilet in one day or the questionable smells from your armpits.

There are now for the first time ever, official guidelines I now have to follow, perhaps out of something truly horrible happening like business being lost, or perhaps even people avoiding working for them, for hearing the latest in a long line of spooky stories at the haunted corporate building. Who knows why they materialised, the fact is that they are there.

Then I started wondering more about the whole area of “enforced” censorship as a result of who you work for, and not for the first time either, this subject came up a while ago: How to write a Blog without losing your job… from September 2007 in fact, when a female worker got fired from Nintendo for being thick and I learned about the existence of “Blog Change Agents” working for companies writing to people who write about them negatively to try and change their opinions via one means or another. Maybe it’s time to revisit the subject and see if things have changed and perhaps now find way around the minefield that is blogging freely while under the company rules.

Well even at the arse end of 2009, not a lot has changed in many ways. People still get jolly upset legally when you mention them with their PR people having a look over first and it appears someone did just that recently as we were all warned recently by various managers to not knock the company you work for to other people outside your family as not only does this reflect badly on the company, but also yourself as a person. Though….surely that’s obvious.

I mean not the “badly on you” part, let’s be honest, raise your hand if you’ve moaned about work to anyone outside your family. There we are, we’ve all done it and it’s part of conversations that people have on a daily basis.

But the stupidest thing to do is this: writing down your annoyances on the internet for all to see. Then frankly you’re asking for it and you deserve to get your arse handed to you with a lovely P45 tax sheet to hand in at your first day at Burger World.

As much as we all would love to write a 70,000 word novel on the whole subject of why our workplaces are located in the 7th layer of hell including a couple of chapters bad-mouthing everyone who steals our oxygen, wondering who the hell stupid people advance to positions of authority even though they could be outwitted by a dead badger, while earning 17 times what you do, while you struggle living in a bin etc etc, what purpose would it ultimately serve?

Granted it’s a release of anger, pent-up aggression that one seldom can excise in other ways other than a good hard (woooh there, can’t put that in), in the long run you will only serve to damage your employment chances, which given the fact we are still in a depression, is just as bad as teasing a lion by putting your head in it’s mouth while flicking it’s love spuds with a wet towel. So what good actually does get served from writing about what you do?

The odd exception aside from long and boring technical manuals or equally dull autobiographies which springs to mind was the work created by Belle de Jour, aka Dr Brooke Magnanti, the woman who wrote about her “work” in the Secret Diaries of a Call Girl, which led to the series where Billie Piper made sexy noises a lot and got her breasts out for ITV2.

In a strange sort of way, this writing served to highlight what it was like to work in a certain industry, the highs and tragic lows along with strange situations which can occur even when doing the job on a regular basis, in this case, the naughty industry. It’s the only exception that springs to mind at the moment that had become popular and sold very well as a result. But again this was all still cloaked in an air of mystery as to who it was that was writing such material, only the fact of who wrote it came out this year, way after all the material had been out on the public domain for some time, and her finanical future was assured.

Given the fact that there is the worry about writing the wrong thing these days, here is a link to the EFF that was given to me recently with tips on How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) and a lot of the tips revolve around being anonymous. That’s it. The key to the whole freedom of speech bit is be anonymous.

It seems to protect you from a lot of things and in a twisted fashion you could end up becoming a blogging superhero, working by day as a binman, but at night, armed with a keyboard, you destroy the festering corruption that is coming from the local council’s bin management policies and put an end to 17 different bins being used for the same thing. Provided you are smart about the whole thing, you could change things for the better or, let’s be honest, get what you really wanted; a column in the Guardian.

It seems to work for a number of miscellaneous writers who appear in the newspapers, commenting on the City’s daft financial practices while buying another boat for themselves as a treat or those stupid twentysomethings just writing about their love lives which are almost always utter failures, oh boo hoo…..To me, they’re all tw*ts.

But really a lot of us will not achieve anything from such writing and therefore in most ways it’s just better to shut the hell up. The UK, though behind America in setting up policies based around what you do outside of work, is fast catching up, and it won’t be long before it’s the new standard that you sign a form stating that you will not talk about anything work related unless authorised to do so.

Should we be actually be concerned that more and more, your workplace can dictate what we can and can’t say on a medium that’s meant to be free from restraint? Well the simple truth is you should be more concerned about the X Factor, the cost of wonderbras or the fact that global warming is occurring as a result of your excessive farting instead. It’s actually less likely to attract the wrong kind of attention and won’t be an issue on your ability to keep that cardboard box over your head at a time where career options are limited.

Unless you’re a hard working prostitute, in which case, I salute you and look forward to reading about all it.

Well after the first day, it seems almost mandatory that I write something at least, given the fact that throughout the day I’ve been asked “You’re working on a bank holiday, why?” just to overlook said fact really.

In fact this morning started out rather slowly, after the night before when I arrived late, and had spent about 20 minutes on the famous (apparently) roof garden of the Hotel Urban, and crying over the fact that a small bottle of beer cost 9 euros.

I started out not wanting to wake up, business as usual you might agree, but it was only the fact that the alarm sounded different and the fact that the room looked different that I realised I wasn’t in Kansas any more.

I could into more detail of the stages of man that is the morning routine of fumbling about in the dark, but I’ll leave it there.

Having made my escape to the exit, I looked for breakfast and thinking I was running late, I went to Starbucks. Yep, go to a different country and end up having the same thing. No wonder I’d stink doing old Michael Palin’s job of wandering around sitting in various plac….err…never mind, and then I tried to get a taxi to work.

Not a difficult thing to do, however I barely speak English, let alone Spanish or any other language other than complete b*****ks, and trying to direct the driver to somewhere where I was pronouncing it like marijuana, he probably thought I was after a good time.

But once the mix-up and the exchange was made (wait, scrap the exchange part) was sorted out, I arrived to a near empty office. Turns out most people only started coming back today, and were still in a holiday mood. Ok then.

Still it was always interesting to see how the Spanish work, and I never get over how care free they are. The building could be burning down, society collapsing but as long as they have a ciggie in one hand, and time for a chat, bugger what happens.

I’m ending today’s blog post (making it sound like I write on here that often, as if anyone will believe that) to catch up on translating stuff and having a wander around town, the sun is still shining and there be much eye-humping of the ladies to accomplish.

Well seeing as I am currently at Heathrow Terminal 3, along with what seems to be the rest of London right now, maybe the Notting Hill carnival scared everyone or something, I have managed to park myself down with the laptop and for the first time in ages, at least update this magical muse of the world with something of substance.

I had an inclination of doing so while here anyway before the brown-trousers-time that is the flight to Madrid, but the timing came around so quickly it suprised me.

I had reached the airport in good time, wandered through all the fancy check-in thing, pushing buttons, scanning different things, and then after being hand raped by the UK Border control people, you reach the DMZ that is the “Duty Free” area.

I reached the level of utter boredom within 12 minutes, a new record for loitering around an airport. Simply put, unless you are in the market for overly priced booze, ciggies or electric gear which is cheaper to get at Play.com, your mind starts dying very quickly.

Then again, I do wonder if this is on purpose; allow the mind to lapse into a coma to dull everything for the flight out, therefore removing from your subconsciense the knowledge that you fly 30,000 feet in a tin can, and that you’re the only non-terrorist aboard not wanting to play with the combination of fire and footware.

It’s not the first time I’ve remarked on the fear of flying, nor will it be the last, but given the fact there is so so little to do, you can’t even play with sharp things on your wrists with the security here, that you may as well be slumped on the floor like a dead bumblebee.

Might give that a go actually, it might be interesting for about 3 minutes….

There are have a great many things happening in the past few weeks, including watching that new film, Incorrect bellwethers with Brad Pitt playing Jimmy Hill, Bruce Forsyth or indeed anyone else whose chin could be used to land planes. Trust me, a post regarding the film is deserved, for slightly different reasons than you might think though. Hmm, should I spoil it now or wait.

Nah, wait. Waiting is the theme right now, and it can wait till later on when hopefully (if Gravity hasn’t decided to book the same flight as me and f**k things up) I shall retire to the roof garden of a fancy pants hotel, drink something I have no idea what it is, and then once again whip out this very device I am typing on right now.

For now, I bid you farewell. Now, I need a drink with accompanying VAT receipt….

It couldn’t be going on too long with all this nonscense about things with lights, bits of script coding, and looking like a reject from the 70’s without placing some pictures from my time in Madrid. Yes, inbetween sweating in an office and sweating in a very posh hotel, there were a couple of oppotunites to look around briefly, so here for your dining and dancing pleasure:

Photos, only without the old folk’s voice telling about each picture in soul-destroying detail.

This view was taken from the top of a garden bar on the roof of some pub with the sun slowly drawing in on the second day. The view from the roof of the hotel at night was fantastic and you could see all around, and it was a good place to sniper people working in the government building next door.

For some reason, House got tired of mocking people with illnesses and decided to sell lemonade in Spain. Righto then.

And here we have an excellent example of Spanish design; some water pipes sticking out the ground. It’ll look nice when it’s finished….

And here we have an example of what one of Madrid’s fish bars look like. Though from the outside, it looks like you would catch a disease from looking at the sign.

It was something to stand up, talking over everyone else while stuffing your face full of various bits of seafood. But I will have to say this, the food was so good, I wanted to take it somewhere, get to know it all better, find out what movies it liked….oh dear, I think we’re drifting onto the world of food porn.

And what possible visit to the seafood place be complete without a picture of two numptys wondering what the hell to do when a camera’s on them?

Ahhh……nah, I can’t think of anything.

Well that’s the thing with the visit away, it was mainly about Business, which detracts from any touristy stuff you could do in the limited time we had, but at the very least, I got the jist of what Madrid is all about.

Life is slower, people have more time for you, and a short lunchtime is an hour. Sometimes, a man has to wonder what it’s all about. Fair play to the spanish!

Well I guess I haven’t really said everything that happened, so let me quickly wrap things up so I can return back to the black and charred mess that is the Underworld, this trip was also the very first time I had ever flown with BA to anywhere, and stayed in a really posh hotel, drank overpriced water, had Starbucks for breakfast, and spanish food in the evenings, basically it was all good! I want MORE!

I mean, it has been yet another week without so much as a “How’s your father?” or “Stop putting that in my ear” comment and with the excitement barely contained after the taste of Spain or something else equally repeating on you a few hours afterwards, you might be wondering if I had gotten distracted again by shiny things or better yet, discovered how to make gold out of bin bags.

Well my friends, I had spent most of last week, seemingly to the lament of quite a few people judging by the Facebook and Twitter responses I received, in Madrid, working away beavering on yet more Office 2007 goodness.

Not content with mastering it the first time round and writing about it for all my sins, here was a fresh challenge to adopt what I had done before, but for those without Admin Rights, and still containing all the bits from before, with the added requirement of making sure no-one could have a play while all of it goes on.

Because the Computer Weekly thing ended some time ago, and some might be wondering how this epic tale will unfold, allow me to add some ray of sunshine onto this new area and the way it’s been engineered:

Calls to VBscript from KIX mainly as I’m scared a fair bit of VBscript (it seems to take far more to do the same damned thing as one line of KIX but there we are) and registering the AutoitX.dll (available from this site: Autoitscript.com) on machines which then allow you to use this code (as an example, think the syntax is good…err…)

Set oAutoIt = CreateObject(”AutoItX.Control”)

oAutoIt.BlockInput on

With that and using the run as option built into the AutoITx.dll as well, you have a truly handy way of getting round pesky little things such as the lack of Admin rights and stopping people from playing with their machines while you’re trying to do something wonderful.

If you package the resultant script as an EXE using something which packages scripts as EXEs…..creative sentence there, it would be a pretty handy way to automate a customised install such as what Office was for use with extra parts.

The only problem would be you would need an admin level account to use for the execution of said program, and that as we all know, if you leave that out in the open, you potentially could find yourself with people abusing that account to do as they please. Guess that is always open to debate whether you should use this method, but if you don’t have a better deployment method for distribution or a small company, it could be the answer.

Yes, My life truly is this exciting….

With the ftp back up and working at long last and finally having plucked up enough energy to lift the leisurely head from it’s slumber, it’s just about time we remarked on the full on trip that was Spain, which included to some working, some walking and the KKK.

Yes, you read that right. I wrote the KKK. Those naughty people who scare others by dressing up as ghosts…err…That’s about as much as I know about them to tell the truth, but before we get old Shaggy from Scooby Doo shouting Zonks and legging it down the corridor with the repeating background, allow me to explain why they were all about at this time while I was over there.

You see, it was all to do with the Spanish customs of Easter, in which they have jolly old buddy Christ looking upset being carried around along with other things in streets up and down the land, and accompanying them are the KKK. Why I haven’t fully grasped this, but I’ll be damned if I was not meant to say anything as they walked past as I used my manly powers to destroy an ice cream cone. It’s a great honour to be one of them as it goes from what the locals told me. They even have action figures….look here if you don’t believe me!

As you can see there are a number of versions, with the new Spiderman version coming to the deep south soon. But surely if we’re going to celebrate the fact that Jesus did some magic tricks and was able to poke stuff through his hands afterwards, we need something new and exciting and something which would make us praise the lord even more; Jesus Cake.

Act now and you get a free KKK lolly. But all in all it was a strange sight to behold and also you gain insights in just how religious the Spanish truly are. Even in the many public houses you went into, there was a picture of our lord Vader, I mean Jesus looking jolly upset, perhaps just to remind everyone the dangers of drinking or something, to be honest I have no idea.

I suppose that it would be an understatement to remark on the wonderful weather and some of the views I got to see away from the hustle and bustle that is the root of all evil. Just a lot of things seemed simple in comparison and not as much to worry about, despite the fact that I was in contact with Work for a bit of the time, various questions coming up from a couple of people and also it was surprising what broke while I was out.

Apparently there is now a program to clone me to ensure 24×7 availability of my services….Mind you, the thought of two of me is enough to induce heart attacks in most people I know. Rest assured, nature would not allow such an abomination to survive.

But in the more remote places I did get the chance at least to wander round, and survey all that I could see, all while getting my face and arms burnt with just a few minutes exposure to the big shiny shiny in the sky;

The Landscape was fantastic and some of the olive groves went on for miles and miles. Strangely I feel compelled to talk about the motorways out of the cities, which were all but clear every day of the week, with only Serville amounting to the level of traffic we expect in London, but I suspect it was bad because no-one knew where they were going. Suppose it’s what you get when you don’t take a map and all you wanted to was drive to Tesco.

The weekend did bring a return to the Costalotofmoney or little Britain as it’s better known to regular readers of Ooh Sometimes, and it was quite nice down there too with some Canadians running around with excess energy to hip hop bollocks, it almost made my eyes bleed, but there was something else to note;

In the picture above, do you see anyone about?

No it’s not a “Where’s Wally?”, it’s just a illustration of the fact that there was next to no-one there. At this time of year, you expect to see a huge influx of people out and about all vomiting before 10am after 3 rounds of English breakfast and 10 gallons of vodka.

But it seems that the poor exchange rate of the pound to the Euro and other economic circumstances have indeed taken it’s toll on the tourist industry with rarely a soul in sight. Most of the places had closed their doors, with the rest operating minimal opening hours and only then a handful remained open all day thanks to the single stag doo that had wandered through all demanding cowboy hats and some haggis.

There were other pictures taken in between other work but alas they shall remain buried along with the Blue Peter Time Capsule filled with 100% pure cocaine and a limited edition copy of playboy from 1978. Though there was some time spent around a church at the top of hill to see the landscape, and hanging around like the locals, though of course, My Spanish only extends to the noise: ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, which must be made before we speak. Go and practise, then we shall see if you’ve made the the effort.

I suppose the real shock was when I came back to Broken Britain at 3am on the Wednesday, to then climb aboard the National express to Victoria and then find a bus which came close to home. The bus ride of course, made it perfectly clear what I had come back to.

First of there were 17 chavs all out of their tiny minds on cola who proceeded to make the rest of us miserable by arguing with the bus driver about why he couldn’t take them home to Watford, then after they got off, a huge black woman got on sobbing away about god knows what and proceeded to ask people for change, and finally to add to the mix, a group of very very load American women got on and proceeded to talk about things which only should get talked about on Adult channels.

And early in the morning, despite the fact I was asleep and had the day off, work rang.

Welcome back indeed.

Since Thursday of the preceding week, you may be forgiven for thinking that it’s all going a bit wrong for the Lord of Leisure at the moment. The first day at work in a new environment with new people in a completely different field of industry altogether went down like telling an Arab joke involving Bin Laden at a mosque.

Walking around what looks like a set from Bridget Jones with thirty something women around looking at screens wondering if the knickers they bought from Primark would not make them a laughing stock when they have chatted up a man at the local bar, you start wondering if perhaps the films made in London were not as farfetched as they seem.

The first day was one filled with only questions with not that many answers forthcoming and I was given the task of finding out what the carbon footprint of the equipment used is, at the moment. Yep, I know. But let me explain the issue.

The only problem is that it is close to impossible to be 100% sure about the power usage etc, as this depends on many things including how much heat the equipment is spewing out therefore giving more work to the air conditioning which uses more power, then you have other things all plugged in like backup power etc and you then find that it’s a bit of an effing task to do.

The IT worker’s best friend “Make it up” will have to be called upon.

Of course the whole carbon footprint thing has been questioned along with the bigger global warming issue. Aside from the fact that the earth is now cooling according to instrumentation that the fancy scientists play with, most people view it as a new way to tax people. But it appears it’s now being used as a PR stunt and a way to secure funding for new shiny things and perhaps that’s what it is all about at the end of the day.

So the end of the first day occurred with scary Tube trip back home and you of course will now wonder what is going on.

Day 2 wandered around like someone selling the Big Issue or indeed, one of the lucky immigrants asking for spare change all day on the Tube to anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to want to use public transport.

It was different certainly. The trip into work was in fact worse, with even more people than the day before all crowding in to the Docklands Light Railway, which actually begs a question: How the hell can the last day of the week be the busiest? Has no-one heard of the weekend?

I had in fact decided over breakfast, while having a chat with the various voices in my head that a renewed sense of vigour should be given, basically forget the first day, it’s too early to say what’s going on and in fact that was when the work proper started, along side of course the work given the day before. And as it goes it was the right thing to do. After all, there is a place where people watch TV all day and get paid to do so, so it can’t be all bad eh?

As the day wore on, and the exposure to more things occurred, and I started to have more contact with the natives, a sense of hope creped in that maybe just maybe, this will be alright in the end.

As an extra bonus for finding out more, I’ve been invited to the in-house bar for my introduction to the company in a couple of weeks time for finding out the basics such as holiday booking, and what extras there are.

One trip to Euston station to pick up some tickets later while chatting to Mr Tebbutt back up in Manchester about what had happened so far and home beckoned. Thus ends the latest entry in the digital diary.

I’m lost in the widerness, the wind howls through the trees like a box of cereal, and all the while the fear of being alone for all time fills my veins with frost. In fact it could be summed up with a jolly nice picture like this:

If only there was some funky dance track to accompany this post just like from the show.

Because of my recent change of heart in terms of being absent for great periods of time, I decieded to take some time out of my busy silliness, and work on the blog once more, tweaking it’s various aspects because some of the site has been broke for a fair amount of time.

So as you may have noticed, we have had a fair amount of updating to the site recently in terms of content, some plug-ins have been updated, the RSS feed has been fixed at long last and the one person I know who used it, Mr. Nigel Parsons can once again browse the feed without ever having to come to the site proper, yes I know it was such a pain to actually look at the actual webpage for you.

We also now have a snazzy little favicon for the site which adds nothing really of extra what-so-ever but it’s the little touches.

The importantish work actually has been proceeding at a resonable pace today too so all in all it’s not been a bad outcome for today’s events which for a saturday is quite good!

Right, I’m off to disappear for several more days. Honestly sometimes I feel like I spoil you all.

Sorry, i am still at work at 6:30 in the evening despite working since 8 this morning, and I am annoyed. Annoyed frankly at people’s ablity to fob things off when you need help the most, in fact the real helpful people have been at all places: Microsoft, have been on the phone with their support about a really nasty problem with a crap piece of their software called Application Center 2000.

In fact as we speak I am preparing the full log files etc to upload to some workspace created by their Product Support Reporting tools, which you only ever use if you have to raise a case with MS. Isn’t this dull and boring the pants off you? It certainly is me!!

Anyway, the weekend was a hectic one which i will leave for the podcast. survice it to say there were a change in the ol plans, of which i have said sorry for missing out on Mandy’s Birthday Bash. Seen Natalie for a chat about things, and regretfully the majority of my time has been spent on bloody work. AGAIN! At least i will get some money and maybe even a promotion on the horizon, according to my boss as it appears I doing very well. Never mind.

I still would prefer to be doing other things really, and not even the uni work, ugh still have that to do after all this rubbish. You see this is the problem with aspirations and ambition. It appears there is far too much work invloved with it.

Still I have some good plans ahead for the weekend, including recording the podcast which will take a slight detour off what i normally ramble about, but it should peak your interests at least. Bye Kids!