It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything in here, that I thought I should post an update on what’s been happening in my life lately.

I’m still working at my new job at Mercury Solutions Centre, which is good news – it means they haven’t fired me yet! I’m even still enjoying my job – lots of interesting challenges with cool technology like VMWare’s ESX server (although it can get frustrating when things don’t work the way they should).

There’s been some amusing incidents at work too. Just this morning, I got in to work to find the monitors attached to our computer used for monitoring our servers via IBM director covered in post it notes. They formed a message – please turn off the annoying submarine sound.

Just some background here – we’ve recently set up a script that pops up a message and makes a (relatively) annoying sound when a server goes offline, to make sure that someone notices it. Add to that the maintenance windows we have on the weekend, where a number of servers get patched with the latest Windows updates, and you have a recipe for a short period with numerous annoying alert sounds.

Clearly someone was working over the weekend, and got fed up with all the noise. So they plugged some headphones into the computer to mitigate the noise, and left some lovely bright yellow post it notes all over the monitor. All in all, quite amusing for us to find this morning, but I suspect not so amusing for the poor person that had to suffer through all those alert sounds before they decided to do something about it.

In other news, I’ve just purchased a hotshoe flash for my 350D – a Canon Speedlite 380EX. I bought it second hand off ebay. Although it’s a relatively old flash (the 380EX was discontinued in 2001) it works great, supports E-TTL, and was certainly a lot cheaper than buying a brand new comparable flash.

I’ve also purchased a fantastic Canon 50mm F/1.4 USM lens from a friend of mine. I only got it last night, but I’ve already taken a number of photos with it. I love the way it takes crisp photos in such low light, thanks to that enormous aperture. I’m really looking forward to using both the lens and the flash at prize night next Saturday.

Speaking of prize night, we had some extensive practises last night for our play. Quite a lot of laughter – so many serious scenes made highly humerous by a gesture or a casual comment. It’s really hard to keep a straight face sometimes. I haven’t been acting in a play for years – usually just doing the sound and lighting, so it’s interesting and kinda fun to get back into it.

I should really get back to work, so I’ll leave it there for the moment.