Work – Ross Stone .net

Delhi & Microsoft Certification

Having negotiated for some training in this years staff appraisal among other things, later this year I am now travelling to Delhi to do some work out there and also take a course for a Microsoft Certification.

The Microsoft Certification I am working towards is called MCITP: Enterprise Administrator and handily covers pretty much everything I do in my job, but should teach me the correct way of doing things or help me understand why things are done as well as how to correctly do them. So over a short space of time I will have to study for and take five exams… Continue Reading

Jury service update

Just a quick update. Her Majesty’s Court Service rejected my request to be exempted from the jury duty so I have to do it early in January.

However having emailed our chairman, he informed me that the Art Loss Register pays employees there full salary while they are doing jury service. So all of my financial concerns are resolved on that note.

Jury summons

So this morning I received a letter from Her Majesty’s Courts Service because my name is on the electorial register. Apparently I have been selected for jury service in January 2011 in Bristol Crown Court which by itself is quite a pain to travel to for someone who dos not drive. However as I read the paperwork, I came to the following conclusion.

Presuming a court case lasts two weeks, my employer is legally required to give me that time off work unpaid, so I would lose about £850 (gross) income in that month. Plus £68 for train travel to Bristol gets the total to £918… Continue Reading

Losing time to Minecraft

Over the past few weeks I have been pretty distracted by a new game called Minecraft. Still in development so it has its bugs, but for 10 euros its good value for money considering how much time I have enjoyed it.

Within the game you basically have this massive randomly generated world that has no boundary’s and allows you to mine resources and build whatever you can imagine. Sounds good, but you also have some great “redstone” mechanics to makes things complicated too. Continue Reading

Thoughts on my Nexus One

So I have had my Nexus One for a few months now and I have to admit… I am even more impressed with Android now. Migrating from one Android phone to another was brilliant…

Turn off old T-Mobile G1 Handset
Turn on new Nexus One Handset
Provide Google Account details

That’s it, all my contacts are downloaded near instantly, email synced, calendar synced and what surprised me was that some phone settings were retained. Nexus One even knew what time I had set my alarms for example. Continue Reading

11th Annual SysAdmin Day

Just a quick note, to mention that today is the 11th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day! Yes, its a real thing with a website here. As a result, I brought an assortment of cakes into the office… Not quite the right way round as they are meant to bring cakes in for me but never mind.

In the spirit of today, to the right is some of my creativity. I finished patching for an office move so this is some of my work art. Continue Reading

Best part of commuting to London

Now and again, I have to head out to the London office the Art Loss Register has to do various on site IT related things. Bit of a pain, as I end up spending about five hours of the day travelling. Very different to the 10 minute walk to the Bath Office I am used too.

There are a few nifty things about London I enjoy that make it worth while though. First off, they sell tasty doughnut in Paddington Station! There is a small store I finally found hidden in the corner called Krispy Kreme, and for £10 you can get sick on 12 doughnuts. Continue Reading

Final Fantasy XIII & Real Life Work both Completed!

As some will know, I have been a fan of the Final Fantasy series ever since I experianced my first Final Fantasy with Final Fantasy VII on the original playstation many years ago. So when the next game in the series was released I was excited.

On an related note, I even have my own mini shrine almost to Final Fantasy VII, with an original boxed copy, various models and figures, piano sheet music, and moogle plush toy. Continue Reading

Sleep and chocolate

Over the last few months I have been working fairly irregular hours, and after a week off work too, my sleep pattern got completely messed and out of sync. So for many days in a row, I was waking up in the middle of the night, or spending ages falling asleep and in general being pretty exhausted.

However, I stumbled on a solution to fix this insomnia… Rather than try and head to sleep earlier, wake up later to catch up on sleep. I went to bed later (past midnight), while waking up earlier. The effect sorted my sleep, so I started falling asleep in minutes, and getting decent sleep again. Just thought it was interesting solution, although I still want to get a sleep phase alarm clock sometime. Continue Reading

The cake is a lie

Having worked hard, created a brilliantly designed infrastructure for the company, patched thousands of security holes, working until the early hours of mornings. Its now the end of January 2010 when I see it paying off.

*crunches the numbers*

Hmm. It seems the myth of “working hard pays off” is a lie. Continue Reading

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