Easter Musings 2016

I’m going a bit meta in this blog post; I’m talking about blogs and blogging.

Easter Musings

Hello! Easter is here already; we’re 1/4 of the way through 2015, the clocks have gone forward, and for the first time in a long time it was warm enough for me to venture outside without a hat.

New Year Musings

Hello! And Happy New Year!

I’ve spent much of the past month off work looking after my daughter whilst my wife is at work. It seems that while this time of year is quiet for me at the office, in the NHS its the busiest period of the year. So it has been great to spend time with Phoebe at home, which has resembled a building site since the end of October. Indeed, as I work from home I have had to move the computer from into 5 different times whilst work was completed. During that time I’ve learnt more things about plumbing than I’ve ever wanted to know, and surprised myself when I kept a remarkably cool head when I noticed water leaking out the ceiling (from the room I had just removed the radiator from successfully (I thought) and whose pipes I had capped) into our living room. And here is some advice which is as unrelated to technology as you’ll ever read on this site, but invaluable nonetheless: try not to reuse caps to cap off radiator pipes, as you have to turn them so tight they tend to break up when you try to use them again. Which is exactly what I had done. I thought they were screwed on well enough until I turned the heating on and water got flowing around the system, which was when the water started to leak out of the busted cap. Fortunately for me no damage was done and I was able to drain the entire heating system, which unfortunately coincided with us living without heating during the coldest days of 2014, until the plastering was done. It’s all part of us paying our dues until the house is done. Currently we are without a shower/bath, though mercifully we are not far away from friends who are kind enough to let us use their bathroom.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Blogging

This post has nearly been a year in the making. When I hit the 100 post mark, which was roughly a year into writing this blog, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about blogging and what it meant to me and how someone can start up a blog and still be actively posting a year later. But I decided not to, as I felt a year and 100 posts was not nearly enough time to post anything with any real authority. But 1 year and 100 posts later I still wanted to share my thoughts on blogging. If for nothing else, it’ll be interesting to read this post in 2/3/4 years time and see just how much of what I wrote I still agree with. This post is not definitive; rather, it’s like viewing a junk shop; I’m sure there’ll be something for someone to take home from this collection of thoughts.

Paid In Full

Before I get into what exactly it is that I have paid in full, let’s have Eric B and Rakim drop a beat for you this morning: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7t8eoA_1jQ&w=420&h=315] So, that it’s then, my student debt is paid off! A mere 7 years after leaving university, I have fulfilled my side of the deal. I was going to write a large piece about the state of education today, but I think I’ll just put a link to a sobering news story on the BBCwebsite about the state of the student loan system in the UK.

A Few Things I Didn't Know Last Week

Last Name Change I Promise... Again...

A lesson learnt from thinking that Red Phoenix was a good site title (always Google a website name before you decide to take it on).

Back in the Game

Happy New Year! I started the blog as a new-years-resolution-but-not-really-because-I-don’t-make-new-years-resolutions late last year, and with that in mind I’m posting my new-years-resolution-but-not-really-because-I-don’t-make-new-years-resolutions. These are as much related to work as well as my blog as well as some personal posts:

THE PHOENIX PROJECT

(Apologies for the name change whilst I try to settle on something I like. All the good names on Twitter and Wordpress have gone…) One name I wanted to settle on was the “Agile Administrator”. Nope, taken: that blog already exists. But whilst reading the aforementioned blog they were reviewing a book called “THE PHOENIX PROJECT: A NOVEL ABOUT IT, DEVOPS, AND HELPING YOUR BUSINESS WIN”. So I bought the book and read it.

Hello world.

Despite possibly the lamest title ever, this blog is about my experiences as an IT Professional working for a Microsoft workshop in London. Longer terms there is going to be a series on managing Analysis Services through PowerShell, but as my skills range from SSMS/SSIS/SSAS/MSBuild/WiX…. the list goes on, I plan to post whatever obscure things I come across that may help others who turn to Google for the answers.