Tony Sutton’s Blog!

Well, well, we’ve done it! The hot air balloon ride today was good! We enjoyed it and would love to go again if it wasn’t expensive!

We arrived on site at 6pm but they hasn’t set up the balloon yet as they wasn’t sure if we had enough wind! The weather was lovely, just lack of wind…

They kept releasing lots of small balloon to find out where the wind are and it kept going straight up and moved outward a little bit. We waited for almost an hour when the wind started to pick up.

So they unloaded the basket, the balloon and set it up. Took a while to finish setting it up.

Then we’re off! We started from Bluebell Road, Cringleford, flew over Norwich, then the wind direction changed and it took us over Norwich Airport! We finally landed just outside Newton St Faith (zoom out to see the location if you like)

In total, from the waiting of the balloons being setup up to the landing, it was 4 hours.

At the end of the day, we both enjoyed it and we will never forget the fantastic view of Norwich!

Photos are being uploaded to my Hot Air Balloon’s gallery so give it time to finish.

So its sunny at last. And a good timing as we have re-re-re-re-booked the hot air balloon to today! The past 4 bookings was cancelled due to poor weather.
Camera batteries are being charged up as I type. Will know the confirmation if its going ahead or not at 4pm.
Looking forward to it.

Got them out from our garden. Some big ‘un!

Dear Weather,

Please stop raining so our driveway can be finished. Pretty please?

Yours

Tony.

Am annoyed with the weather… the driveway work should only take one day to finish it off but the rain has delayed it for 5 days so far!! And it’s unlikely they will be round this weekend cause it’s the weekend. So hopefully Monday or whenever the rain stops!

Grrr…

Mmm, drink for us tonight.

The driveway work today was good - it’s MUCH better than before. Used to be able to fit just one car on the driveway, now we have space for two cars, possible three if it’s parked properly.

Before the work

After the work

Only left to do… - see where the cones are? That area is the property of the council (tar road, see the before photo) which we’re not supposed to touch.

But when the guys dug up the old driveway, the road tar just crumpled away, more likely to old age, so they’ve decided to take out the whole thing and re-do it. They’re going to get it filled up tomorrow or so if they can book someone else to come round and fill them up and also other bits of work they want to sort out.

We’re happy with the new driveway and that will help with increasing the value of the house. Plus it looks much smarter than before.

Can’t wait when it’s all done!

Busy at work. Had the boss doing the presentation about the new building, telling us what the new building will contain. It’s amazing… they are going to use the very latest technology - IP phone, wireless network, IP video, plasmas (around 20!!) and much more. And as soon as the building work is all done, we’re going there to fit the new NAS servers, a DC and build them. We’re aiming to get there on 20th Aug or earlier as we only have 2 weeks to finish them off before they open this Sept. Very tight timing but hopefully we can pull it off.

TV time.

Last night, I didn’t get much sleep because it was too warm to sleep. And with the thunder & lighting tonight, it will be warm again overnight.

Busy at work again, didn’t finish till half five. Lots to do this week. Thinking about taking  a few day off to relax and catch up with my sleep!

Driveway work to start tomorrow and assuming the weather stays nice, it should take 2 days to have the whole job finished. Can’t wait to see it all finished! Will try to take a before & after picture… assuming they don’t turn up too early! They’re going to turn up at 8am!

With the porch work all done last weekend, the driveway work is the next one on the list of things to be done. Then need to save up big time for the bathroom changes and hopefully to have the bathroom done by next year or so.

And it’s time for me to have an early night!

… on work

The base build’s image capture has been completed and has been saved to the SMS server for tested. We did one room and it was a success using ZTI. A few adjustments and we should be good to go to do the whole buildings starting next Tuesday. To reward myself for the work, I finished work and left on time (at last! Has been finishing after 6pm all week.)

… on last night

After work, we went to the video shop to hire an DVD - Hot Fuzz - and we went home. Cooked our dinner and sat down to watch this DVD.

We thought it was funny & good storylines. Some good people in that film including the former James Bond, Timothy Dalton. Can’t believe how much he has changed, tho!

… on this morning

Woke up early this morning to have a brekkie and caught up some TV show on my HDD recorder. Then went outside to cut the grass just before the big clouds looms over our head. But it didn’t rain…

Felt a “thump” vibration while getting the lawnmower out in the back garden, I went out to the rear gate to have a look and what did I see?

A brand new wheelie bin! All clean. I’m going to stick the door number on the bin just in case someone decides to nick it again as it doesn’t have ay door number!

… on the plans for today

Waiting for the dark clouds to go away and hope it doesn’t rain. If so, I will cut the front garden’s grass. Otherwise, I’m going to head to the garage and do the cleanup. Need some space to move some stuff from my room and other rooms in preparation for the heating upgrade if it goes all well.

… on YOU all

Hope you all are doing well and hope you all enjoy the weekend!

This is what i have been doing for the past few days - preparing the “base build” for the workstations. Lots of testing involved in this and its finally done. What i am doing is installing the base software to these machines as you can see in the photo. When this is done, i will do an image capture and then merge the image with the SMS server, ready for deployment.
A crazy half week! Need to leave here soon…

… our wheelie rubbish bin !! :/

Walked around trying to find it and didn’t find it… guess it’s long gone!

Have reported it to the council… hopefully we will have a replacement soon… don’t want to put bags of rubbish outside!

Yesterday, parents popped round with the correct tools for the door. It went well up to almost at the end where we fitted the door and found the door out of shape!

I put my hand up - I should have left the door lying flat on the floor to keep it flat, but I didn’t - I left it leaning against the wall for about 2 weeks in a warm room. That caused the door to be a bit curvy!

Still, we left it on the hinges anyway and put some wedges to keep it flat. I’ve just checked when we got home and it’s starting to get a bit flat. Going to leave it this week and hopefully it will be back to normal.

Worked till half six today as I had to do some upgrades on the servers after hours as the servers are live. It misbehaved for me for at the end, I cracked the upgrade and finished it. My call queue of jobs to do are sitting at 11 jobs. All of them are related to the summer work and there are a lot to do. Plus rebuilding every single PCs out there. That’s approximately 2,000 PCs. Thank god for Zero Touch Installation (if we can get it to work lol)

TomTom finally got back to me and gave me the free map upgrade at last. A big 250MB! Good thing I got 2GB memory card! Need to get the latest map loaded, ready for the trip to MK and Silverstone!

Driveway work has been delayed to next week yet again… I was looking forward to it. Oh well.

Going to watch some trashy TV show.

Went to The Fur And Feather Inn for our lunch before heading out to Ranworth, Norfolk for the Broads Wildlife Centre - it was a nice walk around including a trip on the boat. And the weather had brighten up since this morning’s gloomy clouds.

A day.

I’m getting ready for tonight’s bar work. I’m sure we will have less people due to people going on their holidays. But we’ll see.

And do we see any sign of sun? “No” I hear most of you saying it. It sucks, we should be seeing plenty of sunshine action in July!

Last July, we were sitting down and sweating our arse off, remember? Now look at this month, some are recovering from heavy rain/flooding, others are buying hot weather bottles (yes, latest news are saying they have seen an increased number of hot water bottles being sold!!)

*shrugs* we have odd weather system…

Anyway, yesterday we had a day off because someone from Warm Front was visiting to do an assessment of the house as we only have “air heating” which doesn’t work 100% all the time.

At the end of the assessment, the guy said we should have radiator in every room including the porch, new boiler, the whole work. But only if my application to Warm Front is approved.

If approved… then Yikes! That would mean the house will be a bombsite once again. They will want to rip out the floor board to do the piping work. Which means removing the carpet that was only fitted last year to access the floor board. But then it will be worth it as the house will be warm during winter and better heating.

They said when it has been approved, the work will begin “within a week or two” which is pretty good. But it does mean I need to pack away some of the stuff so they can access the area to do their job.

More on this later.

Not sure what to do today, as usual, depending on the weather. Tonight, I’m working in the bar.

Tomorrow, parents are coming over as they have some tools required to fit the new door in the porch. Then the porch work will be all done! One thing off the list of to do jobs.

Brekkie time.

Hurrah #1

The council has finally removed the old street light from our driveway, which means the new driveway work can now go ahead by next week (if the weather stays nice!)

The council didn’t bother clearing up afterward… they left some bits of wires and a huuuuuuge fuse! Off it goes in the bin.

Hurrah #2

The new 19″ bedroom TV has arrived and it’s looking sweet.

Now time to get my screwdriver out and hack it up so I can make it as a wall mount. Need to buy the wall mount kit tomorrow.

Hurrah #3 (not)

Rained all day today. I was watching the rain from the server room at work. Watching the lighting striking. Watching the heavy rain (and hail?? wtf), the rain came down so hard, it set off the car alarm (an Audi!) three times. Made me chuckle as no other cars were setting off alarms, just that car. I wonder if it’s too sensitive?

Hurrah #4

CSI at 9pm! Looks interesting regarding the “miniature murder” - someone is going to get killed in this film… but I wonder who?

Anyway, it’s on in 5 mins… so I’m going to get ready!

When is it ever going to stop RAINING!? I mean, it’s July now and we have enough water over here… please stop!

I mean, it’s almost Summer, yeah? We get home from work. We had dinner. We watched TV. Looked outside, it was okay.

Went for a walk. 30 minutes later, it started to rain. Really raining. Heavy. And we’re 30 minutes back to home. (that’s how far we walked)

And we ended up 45 minutes back home because we kept stopping in some shelter (i.e. bus stop, etc) when the rain got heaVVVVYYYY!

And yes we got soaked wet. Wet.

Fed up with the rain and I want it to stop because it’s summer.

But I think about it. Why am I moaning about it when people up north lost almost everything from the flooding. And all I am moaning is about getting wet.

So I’ll shut up.

Busy at work and will get even more busy as we prepare for the Summer work. Lots of new PCs. Lots of upgrade. Lots of servers changing - we are now focusing on Virtualization to save costs. It’s the big buzzword in the I.T. industry and everyone are going with it. We are also moving over to Exchange 2007. But no Vista or Office 2007 - we are waiting for SP1 like everyone else.

So yeah, will have a busy Summer.

Tomorrow, the new bedroom TV should be arriving. Need a wall stand for it.

Time for bed. By the way, welcome to a wet July.