I’ve not written in ages!  I don’t really know why.  I’ve just not really bothered.  A few things have happened recently though that deserved a bit of a mention so…. here goes.

The first, not so nice am I hurt my knee.  Did I tell you all I’m back at Judo?  Yes. I am and it’s great but it’s taking a long time to get back into it properly.  The last time i was there was about three weeks ago.  I badly hurt my knee so have had to stop it for a while.  It’s kind of a funny story though.  At the end of the night, I was paired with this young girl who was training with us.  She can’t have been any more than 47KG’s.  So, like the gentleman I am, hahaha, I promised to take it easy on her.  That was a huge mistake.  She was vicious!  To make a long story short, I went in for a throw but she reversed it.  What ever way I turned when she countered the throw, caused me to twist my knee and sprain a ligament. To make things worse then, two weeks later, I went back to Judo again but after 15 minutes, I was back to square one again, unable to move and in a lot of pain.
Last Thursday, I saw a Fizeo therapist to try to get it sorted.  For €50 Euro per session I expected miracles!  No. Instead, I got more pain.  She squeezed and moved and prodded muscles and tendants around replacing and straining things at the back of my knee until at the end I really couldn’t handle any more.  The result is that I’m actually now in more pain than I was when I started that session. So, I’ve another appointment this Friday except with another woman.  Hopefully she’ll be a bit better.  
It’s actually very painful.  It makes walking or going up and down stairs very difficult.

More news?  Oh yeah, I had an interview last Tuesday in digiweb.  Their Internet Service Provider in Ireland providing wireless and wired broadband.  Their young company but they have done very well in the last few years with even more growth forecasted in the future.  Unfortunately though, the role they met me about was not at all technical enough so although I asked them to keep me in mind for other roles within the company, I doubt I’ll hear from them again.  I’m not bothered though as the company is very far away from busses or trains which would make commuting very difficult.

Today, I have another interview in a company called Phorest.  It looks like they do a bit of everything.  I’m looking forward to talking with them.  Sounds like they will have some interesting prospects in the future.  I just hope that they aren’t hoping to get me for some basic role again.

Oh, we’re looking for a house.  The favorite at the moment is a 4 bedroom house in a place called Marian park in Drogheda.  Prices are fortunately coming down so let’s hope we make the right decision.

Nothing else really at the moment.  I’ll try to keep this updated though.  A few funny things happened today but I’ll keep you wondering for a while before I write them down.

Here’s something I’ve found on the Stream website.  Look at the highlighted parts in bold.  They say near the end that they encourage diversity.  They have equal oppertunities for gays, forign people, people from Dundalk, people with disabilities etc.  They harp on about how they want to be an outsourcer that is admired in the industry but yet I want a few very minor alterations to their I-T policy and it’s completely impossible.  Nothing that I’ve asked for will put the company at risk in terms of security, it won’t cost a penny and it will improve my productivity.  

When I-T give us a very old PC, they argue that it is all we’re going to get because as it’s minimum spec as defined in the clients contract it will therefore do the job.  However, These Minimum specs were probably a guess from some sales fella ten years ago.  They are so old and worn out that even windows 98 would have a hard time keeping things moving.  And they want us to use them for every day work?  I wish people could understand that if you want to get the best from employees then you need to give them more than minimum spec.  Minimum spec = Minimum productivity.

Anyway, look at this extract.  I want your comments on this by the way.

Top 10 Reasons Stream is a Great Place to Work

Passion for creating exceptional experiences

Commitment to company-wide values, vision, mission, and goals

Extensive training as part of a learning organization

Relentless pursuit of excellence through aggressive goals and progress measurements

Recognized value of a healthy work/life balance

Global presence, with support around the world in many languages

Challenging and fun work environment

Comprehensive benefits plan

Opportunities for personal growth, development, and promotion

Team environment valuing all opinions and recognizing excellence

Our Culture

We distinguish ourselves from other companies through our values, vision, mission, and goals.

Values

Our actions will demonstrate a steadfast commitment to our clients and their customers, as well as to each other

Our clients will experience our commitment through the service they receive from the best people, operations, processes and tools, and global capabilities

We will work as a team instilled with integrity and respect, valuing all opinions and recognizing excellence

Vision

Deliver an exceptional customer experience

Strive to be the place people want to work

Grow to be the most admired global outsourcing company in our industry

Mission

Deliver an exceptional customer experience

Goals

Create satisfied, loyal customers

Develop fulfilled associates

Optimize operations and processes

Deliver financial results

Diversity

Stream strives to attract, retain, and motivate individuals who reflect the diversity of their communities. Through these efforts, we provide equal opportunity for all employees and all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, veteran, or citizenship status.

Stream believes in the dignity of the individual. All Stream team members must work together toward a common goal. All employees must therefore be respected for their individual contributions, and be granted the right to personal dignity in the pursuit of their work.

We believe that a diverse environment, where people share their experiences, individual perspective and personal style, makes our customer relationships the best in the business.

Benefits at a Glance

Employees are our most valuable resource. In appreciation for the work they do, Stream offers its employees a full benefits package. We offer an array of programs designed to be flexible, innovative, and valuable for employees and their families.

Due to our company’s presence in a number of widespread geographies, the full details of our benefits programs are too diverse to list here; however, benefits information will be readily available during the interview process

Good Jesus, if I get any more annoyed I am! I sware! I’m going to pull off someone’s head and shove my fist down their neck.  I’m sorry for being so graphic but really, I’m just so pissed off!  This place will drive me nuts at times!  For fuck sake!  I’m stuck!

My problem is simple.  well, it’s not really. It’s very complicated I think.  You tell me what I should do.

Ok, I’m now working with the Novell technical support team providing support to consumers and hobbyist users of SUSE Linux.  I’m actually the technical lead on the team which means that I am suppose to be seen as the mentor or more technically able amung the team.  That’s great.  I’m finally out of Sybase 365.  What’s not so great is that SUSE Linux is possibly one of the most inaccessible distributions of Linux I’ve ever worked with.  

Sorry, this next bit gets a bit technical but I’m sorry. just read on.

Background:
I access a computer via a screen reader.  A screen reader is used by people who are blind to access a computer.  It speaks or brailles relevant components of the user interface.  for example, if Arrowing around the start menu, the screen reader would likely speak: Internet explorer. when you press the down arrow for the first time.  

In Windows, Screen readers have been around since the early introduction of Windows 95 in early 1996.  Since this time, they have grown and evolved to be very powerful and versatile.  They have a number of draw backs and unfortunately areas of the windows operating system and applications are still yet to be made accessible.  However, on a whole, Windows Screen readers have gone past the stage of making programs accessible to making them even more usable to the extent that many Blind people can interact with the Windows environment just as fast if not faster than their sighted counterparts.  

In Linux however, the story gets more complicated.  In terms of screen reader and accessibility, Linux is broken into sections.  The console, has been accessible for years.  This console environment is very similar to Dos and it’s accessibility possibly has existed since the time of Dos 5 and 6.  
The Graphical environments again can be divided into the final two sections within the context of accessibility.  Gnome and KDE.  These are the two most popular window managers within Linux.  For anyone to independantly use the Linux graphical desktop without sight, they must use Gnome.  This is primarily due to the Gnome projects uptake of accessibility in their core system.  The Gnome project has supported an effert by Sun Micro Systems to develop a screen reader that will enable people who are Blind to use Gnome and most applications built on it’s supported framework (GTK).  Unlike screen readers for windows who depend on tweeks and hacks, The Gnome screen reader takes full advantage of the ATSPI model which in essence is an underlying API that makes all applications written for Gnome with the GTK framework behave in a standardized fassion that exposes their controls, state and properties.  

KDE on the otherhand, although more popular in certain distributions is built on the QT framework.  The KDE eveloper network have committed to accessibility in order to help distributions comply with accessibility legislation however although their accessibility project has been ongoing for aproximitly four years, it is still very under developed and not yet usable.  

So… My problem:
SUSE Linux prefers KDE as their window manager and therefore spends a lot of time writing enhancements, fixes and modifications for this window manager.  They even write their system tools in the QT framework so they integrate seemlessly with it.  Of course, they do provide the option of Gnome but their version of Gnome is always behind the pack slightly.  For example, In SUSE 10.2, Gnome 2.16 was instaled.  This implementation of Gnome however was riddled with bugs and therefore wasn’t very usable once accessibility support was enabled.  Gnome panel frequently crashed and system performance frequently cralled at speeds slower than the oldest 4-8-6’s.  

To get around this problem, I have decided that my work pc in Novell will contain Ubuntu 7.4 or later and my test machine will contain SUSE 10.2 or later.  This will give me the best of both worlds.  Ubuntu’s window manager of choice is Gnome therefore they spend more time ironing out the kinds in this software.  Ubuntu is also the distribution of choice for the magority of developers of the Orca screen reader therefore more documentation is available specific to Ubuntu users.  It is therefore much easier to use the applications with accessibility support in Ubuntu than any other distribution in my experience.  As I have my test machine using SUSE 10.2, I have all of the tools that are necessary to troubleshoot SUSE related issues.  

That doesn’t sound very complicated does it?

The problem is, I’m stuck between two jobs at the moment.  I’m slowly but surely being moved out of the Sybase 365 team over to Novell but the problem is that it’s not fast enough and I’m already starting to get work from the other team to do.  

I-T in Stream did me a favour.  They gave me a machine to use until I get over to the Novell team permanantly.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am very thankful for that.  It’s been a great asset.  The problem is though, it’s not even a pentium 3,  it has about 5 gigs of hard disk space and 128 meg of RAM.  This thing gets stuck when just viewing the contents of a directory!  therefore, in the graphical environment, it trips over completely.  It finds it very hard to work well at all!  So, when I try to run a screen reader in a version of Gnome that is very buggy, it really has trouble.  Orca and this version of Gnome have hundreds of memory leaks.  fortunately, the problems with the main application, "gnome-panel" were logged at a very early stage and it looks like they’ve been fixed for the next version of SUSE 10.3 however in this version, it’s so slow it’s painful!
So, what did I do to get around this?  I plugged my nice fast laptop running Ubuntu 7.4 into the test network.  Now, just note that this test network isn’t connected to the main corprit network in any way.  I was then able to get everything I needed to do done.  I wasn’t hambered in any way by accessibility or speed issues and in fact, I was very impressed that I could access so much so eaily.  
That was all well and good until this morning.  A short time ago, I received an email from I-T saying that I have continually taken advantage of their generosity and good will by breaking I-T policies.  I was instructed that under no uncertain terms was I ever to connect my laptop into any Stream network again and I was to disconnect it straight away.  
Now, Ok, I put my hands up.  Yes.  I broke I-T policies.  Yes.  I ask them for a lot but come on!  Why cant they see that Absolutely everything I have asked for is work related.  There was not one personal message or window open on that laptops screen.  In fact, they should be thanking me for reaching my full potential by utilizing my own equipment!  There’s a frien of mine working in another office run by the government.  He gets things there that he probably doesn’t need half as much but to help him out, they make things as easy for him as possible without giving him an unfair advantage!  
That’s all I’m asking.  I want to have the same oppertunities as everyone else in Stream.  I’m not looking for any unfair advantages.  I just want to have the access I need to do my job.  

I know this probably isn’t getting my point across but I really hope you understand after reading this the position I am in.  

The wosrt thing is, I am so annoyed, I want to leave.  I want to get up and leave right now.  But I know I cant find another job.  I’m really stuck between a rock and a hard place!

Sometimes I feel like giving up completely!  Why bother with all this shit!

I should just play on the disability card all the time and let the government worry about it!  Why bother getting stressed over a company who probably doesn’t give a flying shit about me anyway.

Fuck it.  I’m pissed off.

In saying that though, Writing this rant has helped.

Thanks for reading.

Write back.  Tell me what you think.

I don’t know how long I’ve been working on getting this server up and running for now but it must be at least twenty or more hours in total.  

I’ve gone from using ispconfig to set it all up automatically to actually manually configuring each application.  So far, I’ve set up:
Postfix  to handle sending mail.  It also seems to contact fetchmail as well but I’m not sure how or why.
Fetchmail for receiving mail.
Procmail for handling putting it into maildir format as aposed to MBox.
Courier for handling the IMAP server.
Squirrelmail for showing the mail in a web based interface.

So far, mail is being received and at least half of it has been converted to MailDir format.  All I have to do is find out why the other accounts aren’t doing that.  
courier is working and I have a connection to the IMap server.
Squirrelmail is set up but it’s not letting me log in.

It’s getting there.  

It’s interesting but very difficult.  I’m looking forward to actually using it as it should make the organization of my mail much easier.  

I’m trying to figure out why Freddie, my guide dog  absolutely loves running or more accurately bounding through bushes.  Well, he mainly likes the low ones but any bush will do.  
There are bushes that reach just above his belly in the business park that are very well kept.  The entire business park has very well kept grass and plants all over the place and you’d be pressed to find one bush that hasn’t been cut so all the tops and edges are flat.  They must spend thousands every year on gardening.  

I bring Freddie out every day at lunch for a bit of a run around.  There’s a few banks that he runs up and down, trees that he can have a good sniff at and plenty of hidden places where he can relieve him self.

His main activity though is running around inside a lot of interconnecting bushes that are cut very low. He bounds around inside them only to come out, have a shake, say hello before jumping back in!  I cant understand it!  There’s definitly nothing wrong with him doing it because he doesn’t leave much of a trace after him I hear but I’d just like to know why he gets so much enjoyment out of it.  

I came back today and had to dry him.  It was like he had just been caught out in the rain for an hour.  I’m not particularly bothered though as I probably get as much enjoyment listening to him jump around the place as he does doing it.

It’s Friday, just after 2pm, I’ve one conference call left to go, a few audits to finish up and two or three account log ins to test before I send off a few emails shouting at other departments.  

An email has been sent around the site a few moments ago to say that all webmail sites will be blocked after the 27th of September.  Isn’t that offal?  No one can waste precious company money and time on Google mail, hotmail, yahoo or any other site like that.  Now, I’ve heard cry and shout about this new change.  "How could I-T disable those kind of sites?" "That’s ridiculous why are they doing that?"  Well, the answer to both statements are: They wouldn’t do it if you didn’t spend more time on personal mail and chat than you do on work related things.

Personally, I’m delighted.  I don’t know how many people I know here are messing on personal sites for half their working day.  It’s about time something is done about them.  

On my side though, I don’t care!  I have my own site with my own mail set up on it so they can disable what they want!  Their never going to be able to stop me! Hahahahahahahaha.  Sorry.  But come on,  you use shitty little web mail sites that every teen in the world is using and you deserve to be stood on.  Google mail? Crap. Yahoo, really crap.  Hotmail.  It’s so crap it’s a joke!  Ok, I’ll give one exception.  I like Google mails spam filtering.  It’s really effective.  My set up consists of my own domain: www.digitaldarragh.com The email from this domain gets passed through Google but then it’s pulled back to my own server at home so it’s filtered according to mailing lists, private mail,  work mail etc.   I also have over four accounts so all four accounts are then accessible from the one account on my home server.  The best thing is that this server is on a dynamic ip address and I have a script set up to email that ip address over to me when it changes so they’ll never be able to block me!  

So, all you losers in Stream using Google, yahoo and hotmail, ha ha ha!

I’m off to check my mail!

Ah that’s just tipicle.  I make a lovely strong cup of coffee, get to drink half of it but then get called away so it goes cold and yuck. It’s really not a good start to a wednesday morning.  On the up side though, I’ve had a really great discussion with some of the novell people this morning.  Their very friendly and I can see my change over to there going very smoothly.

Hay, on the technology front things are going quite well actually.  I’m installing a server for use at home.  I’m setting up an Imap mail box for handling all my mail from the numerous accounts I have, FTP, HTTP and HTTPS servers to handle server and website administration and a few other things that I want to play with as well.  I’m actually looking at an idea that will let me stream audio from different sources and let me access it over the internet no matter where I am and what firewall I’m behind.  

The installation of my server is going quite well.  I’ve got everything installed and that’s usually the hardest thing to do,  getting everything talking to each others also gone ok.  I have a site up and running that allows me to write basic changes to the config files now and it will hopefully make it easier and faster to get up and running.

God, I started writing this early this morning but it’s now nearly five.  I got slightly distracted with work and……. other things so I completely forgot about this window open at the moment.  Do you ever get like that?  So many windows open that you just forget about everything apart from the thre eor four windows you are working between?  IE 7 is great.  it has tabbed browsing now and I do use that to a good extent but I like to use alt tab more because I can make sure I’m actually going to land on the page I want to land on.  With tabbed browsing, I have to cycle between each one!  When you have sixteen or seventeen pages open at any one time this can be a bit cumbersum.  Today I have all that open pluss three putty windows, a terminal server, Lotus notes, Microsoft Access, Excel and Word and on the other computer sitting beside me all 6 consoles are being used for different projects.   The answer to your question is, no, of course I don’t need to have so many windows open for work or for anything else for that matter it’s just that I’m moving between two teams at the moment so I have almost double the usual work lode.  Pluss, people keep nabbing me for different things so I have a lot of unfinished work to get done.  So, keeping windows opened so I remember what I have to finish is just the best way of keeping track of things right now.  I wish I was using linux for all this stuff.  in linux, I have different desktop spaces, consoles and work spaces so everything is separated in a very clean way so I don’t have to alt tab dozens of times to find what I’m looking for.  

Ok. Rant over.  

As I was saying earlier, the configuration of my server is going well.  I’ve been messing with installing perl modules for a while and I’m really starting to notice how broad it’s support is.  It’s amazing that it does so much.

Ok.  That’s me for now.  I want to try a few other things before I go home.

It’s been about eight months since I’ve blogged and oh how I’ve missed it!  Millions of things are happening. I’m moving into a new job, I’m seriously looking at buying a house, I’m going to brutally mutilate my boss, Winter is starting to hit us, Freddie won’t stop eating grass and muck because he’s a stubbern fucker, Emma’s starting a course in the grafton accadimy in fassion design, I’m swimming a good bit, I’m in the process of setting up a server at home, I’m playing a lot more music than I was for a long time and things are generally very busy but very good.  

It’s strange.  I set up this blog in September 2005.  Almost two years ago.  In January 2006, I moved it to my own website at www.digitaldarragh.com In September I was working as a Support engineer in the Novell team.  In January, I moved to the Sybase 365 team as a technical lead.  Now, in September 2007, I’m moving back over to the Novell team as their technical lead.  It’s funny how things coinside.  I am not using my own website to host my blog at the moment because I cant seem to find the time or patients to write my own blogging software using asp.net.  I have much more of a handle on it now than I ever had it’s just getting the time to sit down and really consintrate on it.  It is one of my main aims though as far as my technical aspirations go.  

Because I’ve been out of the Linux world for so long though, and I’m about to walk into a team where I am suppose to be the expert, I have to focus all my energy on learning as much as I can about the systems that the engineers in the team are supporting.  So, I’m basically pushing anything that’s technical but not related to Linux to one side until I am comfortably settled in to the new role.  It’s a pity though because I’ve a nice new beast of a machine running windows vista that I’d like to play with a bit more but I’m not letting my self.  

On the music front, I’m playing with a musician by the name of Maurice Lennon, the fiddler from Stocktons Wing.  He’s a fantastic musician and it’s really great to pick a few things up from him.  I’m playing in a few other places as well, Fairhouse, Dundalk, Carlow and where ever else I can get to.  It’s thanks to Emma really,  she’s pushing me to make the effert to do these things.  It’s paying off too!  Last Friday night I played in Dundalk.  I used ornimintation that I’ve never been able to get before!  I harmonized without thinking about it for an entire part of a tune!  That’s a real accomplishment for me.  I’m usually very driven by the main melody but I love listening to musicians who can really play around with how a tune should sound.  

There are a lot of other things happening but I’ll leave you with that taster and I’ll blog again soon.  

Thanks for coming back!  Don’t worry, I’m not dead yet.  Your not getting rid of me that easily!