Blogging from odd locations

So here I am, sat in a boat which is land locked and sat outside a major northern university. Now this in and of itself is a little weird but this boat is my favourite bar in Leeds and currently the juke box is playing through some of my favourite tracks sat having drink with a friend. Life is good.

So I am now an MCP

Well I got the fist exam of the year out of the way last Monday with a solid 80% so I am now, finally, a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Looks like the next one will be less studying but more exams due to changes at the training provider I use, of which I will post more on when the situation clears up.

In the meantime back to the hang over.

The Monkey from MI5? (part 2)

We rejoin your scampering host once he has departed London for the cooler, wetter climbs of the North, sat on the train with his trusty laptop showing episodes of season 2 of The Unit on DVD.  Earlier that day my friend and colleague Captain Graycat had provided me with this desktop background:

The observant and Bond loving geeks amongst you will recognise this as the background of the laptop that ‘M’ (Dame Judi Dench) uses in Casino Royale.

At this point in my monkey migration I had just finished DVD 2 of The Unit (very good show by the way) and was swapping the DVD’s over and had minimised the VLC player I was using. The following is a factual account of what happened, names have been changed to protect “the stupid”.

The Stupid: “*ahem* are you sure you should be advertising that?“

TheBadMonkey: “Sorry, What?” while taking the headphones out of my ears.

“Are you sure you should be advertising the fact?”

“What fact? I’m sorry, I’m really not following you here.”

Pointing at the screen The Stupid clarifies “You know, who you work for…”

I look at the screen and look at her in disbelief, how can anyone be so daft? “that’s just a picture, I work for an engineering firm”

“Nah, it says where you work for on the screen”

“Really, in all seriousness I work for an Engineering firm”

The Stupid looks at me, looks at the screen and a sudden light of realisation dawns in The Stupid’s eyes.  Perhaps there is hope for the human race after all…

“oh I understand” says The Stupid, taping their nose knowingly “say no more.”  at which point they sit back and smile in the fact they have met a real life “00″ and will be able to trade the story for drinks later.

It just goes to show, that I am not always right….

The Monkey from MI5? (part 1)

I have been doing my job for a little over a year  and about 7 months into the new job I found myself chatting with the company accountant and a software engineer who was working out some kinks in the new time sheet and accounting package that we were having installed.  I had just come from the monthly IT meeting which is normally an exercise in tedium as the agenda never changes, however the meeting on the auspicious day was even more brain rottingly dull then normal, especially when the simple instruction “Archive this data or all data that is older then this date will be deleted” turned into a 40 minute conversation.

For the sake of everybodies sanity (and for you host not to crawl into a bottle of vodka by way of compensation) we shall skip forward about an hour to the conversation between myself (TheBadMonkey) the accountant (Mr Racing Snake) and the Software guy (The Software guy – he doesn’t get a fun name)

TheBadMonkey:”…I thought I got away from such stupidity when I stopped working for the government, I mean Christ how difficult is the concept Archive it or gets deleted?  I mean seriously this is not an advanced concept here.”

Mr Racing Snake: “Oh! I forgot you worked for the government”

At this point Software guys ears perk up.

MRS:”Yeah wasn’t it MI5?”

Software guy near gives himself whip lash he looks round so fast.

SG: “You were in MI5?” – bless him you could see the hope of 00 stories he could tell people, either that or a contact for a nice fat government contract, to be honest I couldn’t tell.

[interjection]

Now at this point I was really confused, how had Mr Racing Snake come to the conclusion that I worked for MI5?  When ever asked I stated that I worked for the “government”, but this was mainly due to the fact I didn’t like saying to people “Revenue & Customs” as at the mere mention of that particular government organ a strange thing occurs.  Your counterpart in the conversation seems to develop a sudden urge to see what an interface between a large blunt object and yours truly’s cranium would look like, and more to the point if it is indeed possible to knocks someone’s head clean off a la David Gray in the video for Be Mine.  So to avoid the whole sticky Monkey decapitation scenario I tend to just say “government” but how does one make the leap from “government” (I must admit at this point quotation marks were never used) to super secret bad ass spy?

[/interjection]

TBM: “Sorry? What Mr Snake? where did you hear that?”

Software guy edges closer

MRS: “You know, around”

if software guy gets any closer to the edge of his chair he will be eating carpet.

MRS: “so I take it by that you didn’t work for MI5?”

I swear Software Guy only has one cheek on the chair at this point and is straining to look uninterested why listening intently.

TBM: “I can’t say I have worked for any of the security services, I worked for HM Revenue & Customs.”

SG: “what?”

At this point Mr Racing Snake and I turn and look at the Software Guy who visibly deflates and carries on with what even black magic and voodoo he was doing before.  Mr Racing Snake expressing his disgust, asks me to vacate his office as he wont have “scum” there,  and not wishing to upset the guy who processes the wages quickly I swiftly exercised the better part of valour and knuckled off as fast as my monkey arms and legs could carry me.