Mouse Juggling

I'm sat at the dining table with three sets of technology blinking in and out of Internet connection. The home one is currently direct wired from the wireless router as it couldn't find a signal.

*update!* Microserf has an update available for D-Link DWA-140 RangeBooster N USB Adapter which is, I think, what I'm using. Maybe, just maybe it'll fix the problem.

Snoopy1, the work laptop, is happy as Larry with a working, constant, secure VPN wireless connection

Snoopy2, the project laptop, is making me sign in to the secure VPN thing every ten seconds to ten minutes because it keeps losing the connection. I should point out it was doing that when both the others were off.

Juggling mice isn't one of my strong points.

Still, on the wire of 5:30 on a Friday, I have sent off the complicated request form to book the conference place on Tuesday that I need to get an OK from my BUM! OK, Business Unit Manager (got that Feb 17th on Snoopy1 email) AND my project manager (got that Feb 27th on Snoopy2 email). Yes, yes, I know, I should have done it before but; last conference I went on I booked and paid myself and claimed on expenses. After several weeks, I bothered to put the claim in, and it got authorised BUT the Injah back office cancelled it because I hadn't used the over-complicated purchasing system. I had to personally chase the damn thing up to VP level to get it paid, all £129 of it sssssssssssssssssake

To get the form and copy the emails involved a LOT of mousejuggling till Snoopy2 would send the email to Snoopy1 so I could forward it to bureaucracy 101. I'll let you know if I do actually get to go on this conference next week; I think it's 50/50

So, what else has been going on? I know I wrote a blogthing on word or email or something, somewhere since Monday and I'll slot it in when I find it - probably maybe

Today ....
G&B left at lunchtime, with hurried goodbyes since I had a conference call; Paul is at his grandmother's funeral *sad* for him; and the insurance company have written off the car as an uneconomical repair (no surprise there). They tell me they will be sending me a cheque for £450 (surprise there if it comes to anything noticeable after they take the excess cover off). O2 or carphone warehouse or whoever they are called me to find out why I'd not followed up on the phone I ordered (for Paul) - last month! Now the phone is due to be delivered tomorrow or MOnday and they're giving me a £20 voucher and 12 months free music downloading thing as consolation.

The kitchen is now sporting new doors, a floor and a windowsill and there is a long list of ermmmm, almost associated things which have happened on the home maintenance front/ The back gate is fixed and has a new industrial strength automatic closer on it, the front door lock is fixed, the numbers screwed on properly and the frame sealed properly. The doorbell is back in commission. The cloakroom and bathroom doors now have kitsch vacant/engaged locks on them. There's a new door to the living room which matches the new kitchen doors. and there's now a rinky dinky binkie to go with the dinky binkie in the cupboard. We really need to stop this endless creation of new interesting bits in the kitchen. (yes, yes, I'll upload the pix soon) Much sanding and varnishing has been done, by Barbara! mostly while I was tarting about in London and Southend working and at the LLM which certainly wasn't work.

Bloody men had taken over our room, much to our disgust, especially since we could see them put away their laptops after a while and settle down to hog the room for all two of them sit and watch bloody football while we ladies were forced to try on the clothes from Vicky's "mobile shop" on the mezzanine floor. We didn't catch anyone gawping but then a city wine bar on a Wednesday evening which has football on big screens obviously uses the entire attention span of those chaps still in the building.

The screaming red full skirt was obviously mine (that's half my Rammy outfit for 2010) and the black fancy riding skirt and partywear beaded top were just icing on that particular cake. Cheers Vicky!!! The cake for Ps birthday went down well, baked and iced by the fair Rebecca and Caro turning up with a tin full of luscious fudge more than made up for the fact the place has lost or upset another chef and there was next to zilch on the menu. A fiver for a bowl of chips, I ask you!

What else : ahhhh Tuesday night I'd decided they could spring for a hotel in southend if I had to be in London late Tuesday afternoon and then Southend for 10am Wednesday. I got into the Camelia Hotel (sic) which deserves a prize for twee in almost every respect. A definite good point was the extremely nice white wine with dinner. I forgot to make a note of it but it was a Pinot Grigio of some kind. Food was also obviously cooked rather than microwaved and I ate it in their almost empty dining room full of tables with pristine white tablecloths and perfect place settings. Post prandial long stroll along the beach in the dark (once the lurid scarlet neon hotel sign was out of eyeshot) continued the rebalancing of wa and a seriously bubbly hot bath listening to good music on some unknown radio station rounded it off nicely. There were masses of oyster shells on the shore and I childishly had to collect some, I think it's in the rules if you're on a beach. Sense prevailed in the morning and I left most of them in the bin.

Work? The meeting? pfuuiii! I'd planned to stay there and use a hotdesk, but they didn't have enough ip addresses so I went back to the London office where there are 3 avaialable. All of which were being used, one of which was attached to bigboss's laptop while he'd swanned off to a long meeting. Just as well the LLM was that evening or I'd have ended up working till silly o'clock once I got on the network.

enough of all this, it's the weekend now