The River Thames Boat Ride - EEMEA Conference

For me, it was a very pleasant experience, because it was my first time going on a boat trip on the River Thames. The weather was absolutely perfect. Even though light showers were forecast, not a drop fell from the sky that afternoon. So, as usual, below I have pictures I took whilst on the boat. Most of the pictures were taken with my Blackberry device, however I was fortunate to get some really good shots from Richard

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If you wish to see a slide show of the pictures, please click on this link "slide Show" or on the picture below

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week…….. Day Two - Monday

Monday fond me up bright and early. I had a great night on Sunday. The conference organizer and the Directors Secretary I was supporting took me out to a restaurant about 5 minutes walk from the hotel we were staying in. I think it is called Pebles. The food was absolutely lovely. One thing I learnt about Irish cooking is that they never use frozen fish to cook. Everything is fresh from the sea. I was hoping to have my first pint of genuine Irish Guinness beer, but unfortunately, the restaurant did not serve beer.Anyway after setting up the conference room with the laptops and projectors needed to the Directors presentation, I took the free time that I had to take pictures around the Hotel. I would just like to mention that the pictures have been taken with a Nokia N95-8G, which is quite impressive.

This building is just across the street from The Merrion Hotel.

The Merrion Hotel - A View From Outside. You wouldnt believe that this building has such beautiful rooms in it.

The Coffee Lounge At The Merrion.

The conference was setup up in two parts. One room catered for a teleconference meeting, and the other room was for the conference "proper"

Now I shall show you some pictures of my Hotel room. The one thing that caught my eye as soon as I entered the room was the height of the bed. Not that I am complaining. It was a great bed, absolutely perfect.

The white cabinet on which the flat screen TV is resting on has a fuly loaded drinks bar tucked away in it!

Also check out the BOSE CD player sitting on the right side of this picture, if I had known, I would have brought some "serious" Smooth Jazz CD's. The aquality of sound that bashes out of those devices is wicked.

OK, so things finally finished off at 7PM and I gathred my IT Kit and made tracks to my room, I was quite tired and was looking forward to an early night. Just as I got to my room, I got a call asking me to be at reception by 9PM. We were all going out for a meal at Johnnies. Now for those of you who are toourist in Dublin and have not been over to Johnnie's...well, you guys are missing out "big time". The drive in a BMW 740 series] took about 35 minutes. I actually went on ahead of everyone else with the conference organizer from Number 20 just to make sure that everything was in place for the Directors when they got there. The joint totally blew me away. It was here I had my first genuine pint of Guinness. Wow, now this is what I call Guinness. I am now sure that the pubs in london dilute their Guinness one way or the other. from now onwards, if I ever have the urge to drink Guinness, I will either fly over to Dublin or have it sent to me by some special means. Check out the pictures taken at Johnnies below.

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week........ Day One - Sunday

My flight from Heathrow was uneventful. The flight was delayed by 25 minutes, but hey, in the end we were up in the air and before i noticed the captain was annoucing our arrival into Dublin airport. I was not expecting the airport to be that small. Mind you I was expecting Dublin to be a big city, but as my driver was telling me on the way to the Hotel, Dublin is a fairly small city. Since joining the EU, there has been a huge influx of workers from Europe currently working here. Everything here looks so different [obviously!].

The driver was kind enough to take me through a quick tour of the city.

I am staying at The Merrion Hotel, which, according to the driver, is located in a very strategic part of town. He adviced me to check out The Temple Bar. My next question to him was "how about the Guiness". He just laughed and said I should not leave Dublin without sampling the beer. He said if I did leave without sampling the beer I would be doing myself serious harm.

My hotel room is just amazing. As usual, i have taken some pictures of the room and hotel for those interested. Watch out for Day Two log enteries which will have some pictures.

At Work - Weekending 17th May

This week I was based at Danesfield House Hotel, based in Marlow, supporting the LACAR conference. The Hotel grounds are absolutely great. I didn't actually spend any nights in the hotel, but with these old country houses, you notice that they tend to need a complete overhauling due to their age. Standing outside the hotel at the back you have a superb view of the grounds and also part of the Thames River.

I was originally booked to set-up the IT kit and return back to Globe House on Tuesday. However thinking to myself, told the PA that since this was her first conference it would be a bad idea for me to leave her all alone for the rest of the week. Out of the 17 delegates at the conference, at least 12 were popping into the office I was using every day asking for assistance on IT related issues.

Danesfield House Hotel is a perfect place to: 1....chill out for the weekend with your partner, wife/husband or friend 2....have a wedding reception 3....have breakfast, lunch or dinner

At work Today - 22nd April

got into work at 08:10 as usual. My trip to work was no different from those I normally take every other day, well except for the fact that today the train stopped at Bedford for about 10 minutes, something to do with the doors not being able to close properly. But when you get into the habit of taking trains, and event like this is no big deal. So I got into work, dropped my stuff off at my desk and made my way downstairs to the company restaurant. LOL...yeah restaurant, I would normally call it a canteen, but this place of eating is too posh to be called a canteen. Anyway, I got myself a bowl of oats and a cup of coffee and headed back to my desk.

The morning was pretty busy, we are currently short staffed. Normally arrangements would be made for replacement support analyst to fill in the gap, but recently a lot of "politics" has been going on within managed services. Everyone has their suspicions that its to do with the renewing of the present contract.

About 20 minutes before lunch, I noticed that there were quite an unusual number of people gathered around Kirks [not his real name] desk. I had a quick glance and noticed that there was the Service Delivery Manager, another support analyst, the IT Manager for the company I currently work for; and a few other people. From the conversations that was being thrown about, Kirk was urgently trying to sort out a Lotus Notes issue for a VIP. The VIP needed his Lotus Notes on his laptop sorted out in the next 10 minutes as he was going on a trip. To the relief of all those standing around Kirk, he managed to sort the issue out, tested Lotus notes and confirmed that all was OK.

So we make our way to lunch with Kirk telling us what the issue was. Twenty minutes into lunch, we notice the Service Delivery Manager wondering around the restaurant. he heads towards our table and calls Kirk aside and walks off with Kirk. back upstairs, we notice that the Service delivery manager and the company IT Manager are standing around Kirk whist he is gathering his things. No one could tell us what was going on. From the body language, I immediately sensed that Kirk was being walked off site, but the question was WHY? After thirty minutes, the SDM [Service Delivery Manager] calls us all into the meeting room and informs us that Kirk has been suspended pending further investigations.

You should have seen the look on our faces. We were in total shock. What the hell is going on?

Apparently, after fixing the Notes problem, Kirk wanted to send a test mail from the VIP's laptop to himself. He asked the SDM and the IT Manager [to which they agreed] before sending the mail. Now the VIP notices from his Blackberry that an email has originated from his account into Kirks email account. Now here is the knockout punch. The test email Kirk decided to send was an email, with attachment of a document of very sensitive nature. So the VIP immediately calls the IT Manager and request that Kirk be dismissed.

Anyway, at the end of the meeting everyone seem to come to the conclusion that we needed to watch out for ourselves because management are just not an effective tool in supporting you in such a crisis like this. All during the meeting, it became more and more obvious that Kirk had been led to the slaughter house to save the hind of the SDM and IT manager.

What a shame....!

Christmas Present...The Cigars Come As Standard