Got to do some work today...not looking forward to it, just want to go for a drive...again

The CD I ordered is the wrong one. I now have to send it back recorded delivery to an address in Guernsey. I guess the despatchers think the beautiful Welsh language is some sort of garbled cipher and just sent the first garbled cipher CD they could find.

Playing a stringed instrument at my level of competence is challenging when there are lots of sharps or flats in the key signature, but you just get on with it.

I don't have problems singing in any key that's thrown at me. The Blue Bird anyone? That's in Gb/Ebminor if I remember correctly?

Something I find slightly irritating is playing a lovely band arrangement in, let's say, G major, only for a singer to complain they find it hard in that key, can't it be a semitone lower, rendering the newly made-into-F# major parts nigh on impossible...

Obviously the fault lies in the adoption of A=440.

Not really a bad week - quite good, actually - but plagued by a slew of silly domestic accidents...

... the most idiotic - and expensive - of which was falling asleep on the sofa. Woke up a while later to find that the charger of my Mac had fallen into a glass of water I'd left on the floor. And fried.

Son (aged 7) has lost his G1 piano book at school today. It was in his bag, now it isn't. Drama being that he took it in to play in music as he is playing in the festival here on SUNDAY. Unlike the UK that doesn't give us enough time to order a new book and get it delivered, and the original has to be in view for the adjudicator. Oh and of course we don't have the pennies to spare for another either. Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh

Sorry to read that. Hope it will be found!!!

A server has been taken down at work to be upgraded so I was using the backup server yesterday without any issues. Now both of the servers have been taken offline to be upgraded.

This affects a lot of my work as an IT professional.

This used to happen to me. On days that it happened, I would leave at 3pm out of principle. I wasn't going to spend the rest of the working day sitting around doing nothing because the department was stupid enough to set things up so you couldn't do anything without those servers.

We lost one of our main network routers... the maintenance engineer then managed to switch off the one that was working and chaos ensued....

Had a bad run of pupils in school these last 2 days....
2 yesterday with no instrument.... most had done no practice- they had been on a residential for Wed to Fri and this obviously means they couldn't practice all week.....
Today 2 had left their clarinets at school ALL week- no practice done there.... another had broken her reed after one practice, so rather than get a new reed- no prac done again! Another forgot her music!

Exams are next Wed.... one pupils is struggling with 2 of her pieces.......

Emailed 2 parents who haven't arranged a practice with accompanist- one got back to me and said they were too busy driving their children around to practice and hoped he'd be alright. So i replied that the only practice they have had, her son couldn't play the pieces by then and the rehearsal wasn't very successful and so now he can play the pieces, a practice is a good idea.....

Thankfully amidst all this, I have had a pupil who was struggling make good progress and 3 pupils in one school who are all lovely!

You could always come here and play with mine. I am gradually working my way through the various issues with NAT, NPS, DNS, DHCP and so forth, but whilst it works well it is still generating copious error and advisory notices. I am sure I didn't have this faff with 2003 R2.

Regarding routers; some years ago I was feeling very pleased with myself having set up my small office network with two uninterruptible power supplies. We get quite a few power cuts out here in the sticks, so a UPS is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Anyhow, I distinctly remember thinking that it didn't matter if the internet (ISDN in those days) went down during a power cut, and in any case the router's power adapter wouldn't connect to the UPS without a lot of faff, so it was just plugged into a 13A socket.

All was well until the next power cut. Everything kept going except the router - which had it's DHCP server enabled, so the whole network stopped working and we couldn't save anything. This somehow made a real mess of our Sage accounts system, which thankfully I was able to recover that from last night's tape. Lesson learned!

SB

I will not go on facebook to rant about the stress I'm feeling right now....
1) Son was in worng place today to go off for a ten tor training hike..... he didn't tell me where they were meeting
2) DD2 had to go to gym as they are auditioning tomorrow for some show but had a school concert- playing a solo. School teacher gave me the last possible time to be there... but tonight's concert was running ahead of schedule and I was stuck behind a very slow car (well driving at speed limit in villages and 40 mph on de-restricted
3) Local rep rang to say she'd received a letter sent in error saying my exams next week have been cancelled- I know nothing about this so now have to try to find out what is happpening
4) had to get permission for DD2 to miss school tomorrow for gym... I did have her going in for an hour but now I've decided she's not going in- I can't cope, so had to ask head at concert- he was fine about it though.....

Breathe..... drink port...... breathe.....

breathing is good. Just keep breathing.

Port is good, too. Just keep drinking...

W

My thoughts exactly!
(especially on a Friday night)

I use this as my mantra when stressed. Has anyone seen the bit in Finding Nemo where Dory sings, "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming"? I sing that to, "Just keep breathing, breathing, breathing" and Dory's laid-back attitude somehow gets through to me. (OK, so I'm an idiot - if you didn't know that already! )

Hope you're feeling less stressed today, Clari Nicki1.

A permanent member of staff is being hired for my team at work as apparently the department can't afford 3 contractors.

All 3 of us have turned down the opportunity to go perm as it would mean taking between 25-30% pay cut.
As a result my manager is going to hire an external person who will replace someone already in the team.

We have no idea who may get the cut and it may be me.

I actually really like my job and would like to keep it, I just feel the salary on offer for permanent is undervaluing the skills I have and the amount of work the job involves.



The server was used to remotely acces PCs to fix problems users reported as well as to roll out applications to PCs and install them. The server was also used to reimage PCs but it isn't my job to do that.

It did cause some trouble. People rang up saying X is not working rpoerly and I couldn't hgelp as I couldn;t access their machine to troubleshoot. I ended up working as best I could through the email queue for the rest of that day and setting up user accounts etc...

Fingers crossed for you, VH...

This is a difficult one. One could argue that if you did go permanent it would give job security and make it easier to get a mortgage, but that is quite a pay cut. OTOH, as you've turned it down you could be out of work altogether. As I'm sure you know, the reason contractors are employed is that they can easily be turned off when times are tough, which is why they are paid more in the first place. Most people I know feel they are overworked and underpaid!

Good luck!

I am actually very happy with my pay rate at the moment, it is good for the work that I do. However the perm offering is unacceptable. I would willing to meet in the middle between what my boss is trying to offer and what I earn now but I don't think I am able to make such an offer.

It looks like 'this is the salary we will be paying to a perm employee and that is that' is the stance HR/senior management is taking.

Interviews are being held on Thursday so I may not have much longer left. I have only been in this job 4 months. I just hope something can be worked out in time!

If I had been told at the time of being offered the job that we are offering you are perm position with the salary they are talking about I would not have taken the job.

Don't feel you have to reply if you don't want to, VH, but how do the two total packages compare? The permanent post obviously comes with a lower salary, but would this now mean you received holiday pay, sick pay, staff discounts, pension package and other employee benefits? Would it put you in a better position to further your career elsewhere within the company, i.e. are there lots of suitable vacancies and promotions for internal candidates only?

Whilst no-one likes to sell themselves short, one does occasionally have to speculate to accumulate

I work for the NHS.

The perm post is near the top of band 3 and comes with annual leave and pension scheme. There are no staff discounts to be had.

The contract post works out to be the top of band 5 and has no annual leave or pension scheme. I can however get a pension through my umbrella company.

3 staff members moved from the Service Desk to 2nd line engineers in about 6 months and 2 of them are contractors. That is ok as there are enough perm staff in the engineers team to balance it out. There are no perm staff at present in the service desk team. I really don't think being perm makes any difference when it comes to promotion.

The problem I have is that I wouldn't be happy knowing other people are doing the exact same job as me would be earning noticeably more than me. It would probably just make me want to go somewhere with a better salary.

If they do end up cutting me from the team then I hope they at least let my contract come to an end which is currently at the end of April so I could at least have time to try and get another job. After all I am the youngest in the team and have been in IT for the shortest period of time, about 13 months so I could see the reasoning behind me getting the cut over the others if someone does have to go. However what I really want to stay on the same rolling contract I am currently on. It suits me perfectly and the saying goes "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Hi VH

As you probably realise I work in IT (looseley speaking as a solution architect) for a large company. I know this message is unsettling, but contract IT staff are usually paid a premium in part because they are always at risk of displacement at short notice, hence the premium.

Companies manage their resource levels by "flexing" (don't you just love management speak?) the number of contractors above a core permanent staff base.

In my line of work, contractors are paid about double what permies (like me) are paid. If you have very specialist skills, the premia can be higher still.

We've just been through a re-org in my dept (800 of us) this last week and fortunately, no redundancies (they did consider making us apply for our jobs.... but ruled it out). Luckier than colleagues in an adjacent department were 500 are going.

Well at least if I took the perm offering I would not drop half my salary as then I really could not afford to live on the wage on offer! If my manager would listen to what I would accept for perm then it would be a start.

I am really fed up - suffering from a very large dose of overwork - just can't seem to get on top of the pile. It isn't helped by the fact that I have been watching my weight for 10 days and although I have stopped putting on I haven't started taking off and I'm hungry. And now my partner has started talking about the friends who want to come and visit us in the summer and I really am fed up with every year giving other people a holiday and never getting one myself. I love having my friends but I can't, at the moment, see my way clear to doing all the work entailed. On top of this my partner is unwell so an awful lot is falling on me.

It is rare that I get low like this so perhaps I had better just go and get on with the jobs and see if I can get some of them crossed off the list. I think I'll put some Mozart on and perhaps that will lull me back into my usual optimistic frame of mind. Now I must go away and get on with things!

Sorry you're feeling like this. Perhaps try to achieve three or four things and then give yourself a treat? (Hope that doesn't sound trite...)

Thanks Czerny and Cyrilla. I was encouraged! I have now done two jobs on my endless list and although that is not anywhere near enough I am now going to take a break. I think there might be choucroute for dinner so that will be the treat!

Oooooooh, I've just had a thought.
OK that sounds stupid.
It's a thought about thoughts, a realisation of the way my mind has been working for...well...some time, I guess.

I wish my husband were home, as I could talk to him.
Except once he gets here I probably won't want to bother him (ha, which thinking about it is probably part of the problem, or a symptom of the same underlying cause, or something)

Ramble ramble...

Shouldn't this be in the Random Thoughts thread?

Probably should now...definitely wasn't when I was going to share more info with you all

New ARGH now!
At the start of March our home contents/buildings insurance renewal came through and I put it to one side and noted that as it was due at the end of March, by the end of this week (i.e. 23rd March) I should have done some comparison prices and so on.
This was more important this year, due to the fact that I was going to take out the cameras (which we have on all-risk, as part of the contents insurance) out of the policy, and look at getting a camera-specific policy.

Postman has just been, and delivered my entire new home insurance policy. Turns out it's not the end of the month, it's the 15th of the month. So argh, now I have paid for the next year probably at a vastly inflated price...(it might not be, but it's gone up a good 25% )

Ho well, it should mean I remember for next year Actually, tempted to phone up now and take it off of auto-renewal in preparedness!!
(and at least it is bonus pay day tomorrow so it should have tooooo much of an effect)

....Except if you do that and miss the date next year, that could leave you without insurance at all!

Very good point. Good job I haven't got round to doing that then!
But I have now noted in two places that will ping messages at me the 13th February 2013 - one month before the renewal is due


Husband is home now. I have to pop out in a few minutes, but when I get back I may well resolve to talk at him. If I'm feeling brave...

Has this been a particularly long and arduous term?

I have 9 pupils entering exams (quite a high proportion of my total pupils, but I favour Easter because it avoids school outings clashing with exams in the summer).

Of these 9 pupils 4 have had accidents or have injured themselves in some way, so that 1 of them has had to withdraw from an exam this week. The others are walking wounded and will be ok for the exams next week .... unless something else befalls them.

Not just you - I have several who have missed two or more lessons through illness, one who broke both wrists and now another who has broken her thumb in two places.

I've also got 9 in for this week. Sadly none of them can blame accidents for their WOEFULLY INADEQUATE PREPARATION

REALLY-Fed-Up-Bag x

Blame musikfest! I was not pleased that A played the piece IN THE CONCERT that I'd said was not ready.

I have three in this week. Suddenly end of term seems rather close!

Work

Thumbs seem very popular. The one that's put herself right out of action has broken her thumb.

I'm going to have 2 teeth removals to allow room for braces treatment. There goes a while to get used to playing missing teeth

My sole candidate is in there right now doing his exam. I've had to leave the building - I can't bear it - have been chatting to his Mum outside - we're both in bits!!!!

How did it go?

I think my neighbours have just got a puppy - has been howling all morning.

Howl back at it !

After a very long exam visit day yesterday, a late night yesterday, an early start today ( due to anxiety about road works that weren't actually there this morning), I had a full days' teaching and then this evening my father in law has been found dead in his house. I've had better days......

Oh dear, I am sorry

Take care - there's not a lot that can be said in these circumstances.