As you might know I live 5 mins walk from the Olympic site, which is where I am working at the moment. My landlords in their infinite wisdom have decided they probably won’t renew my lease after July 16th when it runs out so they can make as much cash as they can during the Olympic period. My housemate has already decided he doesn’t like the uncertainty of weather or not we won’t have this place after that date, so he has found somewhere else. Of course that’s fine for him, with his permanent job and unblemished credit record; meanwhile I am just with being made bankrupt at 28 after I had no chance of paying back £15,000 and being on a contract that only runs until August 15th. So clearly I have very little chance of convincing another landlord to rent to me. Then you add on their sky high prices and whilst I am on the council housing register my disability to them is social, so I have no chance of being rehouse anytime this century.

That was pissing me off since Saturday, then today I get to the site only to find that one of the buses that usually takes us from the Handball arena to the Velodrome and Basketball is not running. Not signs, no emails, no warning. Apparently they closed a road on the park which it uses. So that’s 10 mins of walking, in the rain with heavy steel toe cap boots on.

Get to Velodrome, very little work to do; eventually they ask us to put out and QA 5 PC’s, but there were only 4 PC’s planned for that room, so no-where to plug in the 5th.

Then I have to deal with the latest government propaganda from Ian Duncan-Smith and his marvelous plans for DLA, quite clearly since I have both legs I am cheating the system and won’t get anything when they bring in the new system…

I didn’t choose to be this way, to have the problems that I have. So why should they get to choose weather or not they support me? I was born in this country, I have paid some taxes, my parents have paid taxes all their lives…

Arrrrgghhhh…. I am just going to sleep, because that is all I can do right now. I guess that’s another job I have lost. Off to the streets for me then…

I have had one slip up so far, I didn’t go to work on Thursday. I suppose it was an impulsive moment, not enough sleep and not enough productive things to do at work the day prior had caused me to think too much about those less fortunate than myself and the government, and as usual, get annoyed and frustrated on their behalf. However, I did not harm myself and I did not run off to another country. I managed to email one of my bosses and found out in the process that he has a son with Aspergers.

Today was easier, the day was dominated by boxing up hardware that was on test in order to transport it to a live location. It didn’t take long, but at least I have a fair idea of what should be in which box now and the best ways to pack it up. All the hardware must be locked down with K-Locks, the most annoying things are these little eyelets which fit into a special hole on the back of the monitor and the system unit, in order for a steel cable to be threaded through and then looped around something immovable. Being very small (less than an inch square), its easy for them to get lost…

Hopefully next week I will get to go to said live venue and box this kit, set it up, etc.. it will be good to get out of the office for a bit.

The other part of today was scenario training… what should we do when x or y happens. The biggest issue was many people over-thinking the situation. You have two choices in this deployment if things go wrong – re-image the machine (akin to re-installing windows, but a lot faster) or replace the machine. I guess it makes things easier, but there is a part of me that says “I want to know why that broke” – I believe that person is probably stuck in the 1990′s-early 2000′s!

So now a weekend, a small change to sleep later, but not much of a chance as I have work to do for Open University courses due towards the end of May. Right now I am really really tired, so I shall be off to bed soon!

So I decided the best way was to go back to WordPress, but use it as more than just a blog. So I created a new wordpress from scratch and then imported my old blog entries into it. There are a few things I like better in drupal – its easier to put in quick link pages (eg. site.com/contact rather than site.com/p=165) and the drush system is pretty good. But at the end of the day I wasn’t really willing to throw away all those blogs.

What I have now is WordPress, with a few static pages and then a ‘Blog’ page which is the archive of all my blog posts. I hope you enjoy the new look!

I was originally diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD aged 17, nearly every time I have asked for help from mental healthcare professionals the Asperger’s Syndrome has dominated the conversations with little attention paid to the ADHD. When I was at school this wasn’t picked up because (a) it was the early 1990′s and nothing much was known about Asperger’s other than classical Autism and (b) I was rowdy, but generally a good student. You could often describe me as “the class clown”, I had my good days and bad days, but in the subjects I was good at I did want to learn.

In the UK and especially within the NHS, the idea that ADHD can exist in adults is often considered as nonsense. ADHD is a childhood disorder and ends when children grow up, Ritalin the main drug used to treat it, isn’t even officially licensed for use in adults; so the idea that someone could go through their childhood without being diagnosed with ADHD and then expect treatment as an adult is preposterous! I have seen at least 5 psychiatrists, probably more who have told me this and therefore refused to even consider treating me or referring me to someone who could help – despite there being a specialist clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in South London.

So last week I was amazed when I went to see Dr Trevor Turner a psychiatrist with East London NHS Trust who within a 30 minute appointment confirmed the ADHD diagnosis and then agreed to write to my GP asking him to prescribe Ritalin to me. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I never thought it would be so easy. At present I am waiting for Dr Turner’s letter to get to my GP, so I haven’t taken the medication yet.

The question is, after 17 years of dropping out of courses, jobs and generally being depressed and thinking things would never get better, if the Ritalin works and I get my concentration back, what do I do? The worst times started when I realised I couldn’t finish the university course I started in 2005, and although I tried again twice after that it never quite worked out, mostly because I couldn’t concentrate to get the work done.

So, do I go back to University? I am thinking that if things have improved by September then I might enrol on an Access to HE course (which I did try once before, but gave up on) at a local college in East London. If that works out at least I will have completed something since I was 16!

Of course I could be completely wrong – even with the drugs I might be not able to do it. I dunno, the trouble is that I am 31 now and not getting any younger. Do I want to loose another 4 years of my life?! I wish I had a time machine…

So things are getting better and I hope they will continue to do so, even if no-one wants to give me a job at the moment!

<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
<Directory /home/*/public_html>
php_admin_value engine Off
</Directory>
</IfModule>

What that actually means is that if the user home directory module is loaded and the page is being loaded from the user’s home directory (that’s the ~seth bit), then TURN OFF PHP!

So you can see why it wasn’t working. I assume that in some recent update to Apache or PHP there is some security concern that has caused a paranoid code maintainer to put in this draconian setting. Once I had commented that out, it was fine.

Then I needed to update to WordPress 3.1, that went fine as I have done it many times before. But then when I tried to load the homepage again, it was blank – the so called “White Screen of Death”!

I fiddled around with a few things that people had suggested – turning off plugins, changing themes, but none of them worked. What I decided to do was to start from scratch and not use my old wp-config.php. Once I opened up the new version of wp-config-sample.php I realised that there were a lot of things my old file (probably from WP 1.x) didn’t have in it. So I changed my database password and then put in my settings. Once I had done this, everything worked fine!

Last week I was quite shocked when someone actually offered me a job! Its been so long (15 months or so) since I have worked that I had really forgotten what it was like to be able to get work! I shall be working for a company called “Samvo” who provide online gambling services. They are very big in the Far East apparently, but most things are run from London. It will be a combination of Windows and Linux Systems Administration and I am quite looking forward to starting on 23/08/2010. My only issue is that my commute (the job is in West London) is about 1hr each way, although I guess that is London for you! Formerly prospective employers in the North West didn’t want to know if I told them I had no car or that it would take me an hour on the train to get to their office, so just shows you how things are different here.

I have just spent about 2hrs trying to migrate my lighttpd configuration back to apache, mostly because there are quite a few things you can’t do with lighttpd… If you are trying to get things working, make sure that your browsers cache isn’t caching your fails, otherwise things will take you twice as long – including firefox caching the fact that its being sent php before its been processed and therefore trying to download it!

Well I think I should try to sleep for a bit, got to get up in 2hrs to go to Royal London Hospital and hopefully have the rest of my tooth removed!

Click on pics to show larger version…

(Stripped down Server)

After stripping both down to the motherboard I find that both had a mis-seated CPU, with the CPU coming out with the heatsink (even though the retention mechanism was locked!). So I clean the gunk off the CPU’s, re-gunk, put it all back together et voila 2 working servers.

(Intel Xenon CPU Stuck to Heatsink!)

(YAY! It boots!)

The thing is, even though I started doing this at 11:00pm and didn’t finish until 3am, even though the noise of them running (still installing operating systems) is so loud I can hear it in the next room, even though I knew there was going to be no payment for this job… I still loved it and put my best into it.

(My desk piled with servers!)

So working with hardware is what I love, I just need to find a job where there isn’t too much pressure and I don’t have too much responsibility. Any offers?

I think the main issue with the Assignment – which was to write a report about a Engineer/Technologist who had made a significant impact on society, was that I had tried to go too deep. No word limit was specified and although pointers were specified about the sort of information required I didn’t really know how much detail to write about each bit.

Anyway, its all over now and I just have to get an assignment done for a module called “Product Realisation” which is about how the electronics industry actually works. I have 2 circuit diagrams and I have to copy them into a SPICE simulation package called Multisim, then do the PCB layout in Ultiboard (which is part of the same package as Multisim).

This is a fairly easy task, but unfortunately Multisim/Ultiboard are not available off campus due to licensing restrictions and the licenses are a bit difficult to bypass. But I have until 17th December to do that, so I expect it will be OK in the end. Incidentally Multisim is a very bad package and my tutor says he was once given a spec for a military project which specifically said “DO NOT USE MULTISIM!”

The issue with the Roaming Service was that I had my wireless driver set to verify the certificate provided, clearly something dodgy is going on at Bolton, because there instructions specifically say to turn off certificate verification! Again this is another example of how bad a University it is and how it has become too big for its boots! Never enough computers available for use, very small library and a general penny pinching attitude – we’ll try and get as many students on a course as we can, never mind if its booked for a room where there aren’t enough computers or we don’t have enough licenses for the software they are using!

I will try to decide in a few months time what to do next, weather to stick around or take my credits and go somewhere else…

I think that the latest batch of undergradates are probably members of the ADD generation – not that they have ADD, but more that life has too many distractions. Facebook, Myspace, IM, email, texts… we can now access these services anywhere at any time. Nearly everyone has a laptop or some kind of computer of their own and the temptation to go off and chat/social network is probably greatest when we are bored, but know whe have stuff to do: Procrastination. Workplaces have to block these sites because people would get no work done otherwise (not to mention the possibility of litigation).

Now I know I cannot blame anyone for this, no-one held a gun to my head and said “join Facebook” but sometimes it seems that way! I guess in these modern times our lives are bankrupt to the point where we just have to know what everyone else is doing to be happy!

Tonight I had a plan, thanks to agreements between North West Universities I am able to go to any University and use their library to study. I am also able (theoretically) to use Internet facilities of  any University in the UK that participates in the Eduroam Service. I made this choice because home is too distracting and Bolton has a very poor library with little space to study and never enough computers.

So I went to Lancaster University, because I know that there is no requirement there to show ID to get in, so no arguments with jobsworth security guards. I did do some work, approxmately 300 words about Alan Turing for an assignment due Friday, but sadly Eduroam failed. I could not logon to the system and I don’t know if this is the fault of Bolton or Lancaster, but according to JAnet their systems are supposedly up to scratch. I have emailed Bolton to ask what’s up.

Possibly this wasn’t the best of ideas, an hour’s travelling time or so each way to do 300 words, but I did do something and I suppose I should think about that rather than thinking “I can’t do this, there is no point in me remaining at University”.

it may be gray outside in Massachusetts — at least there are still rainbows in my soap bubbles – Star Simpson

I got back from a wet evening in Manchester and this quote made me smile. Its been been difficult lately…

For those of you who are new to the world of Seth, I have Diabetes and a messed up Pancreas, these health issues go back about 10 years now, before that I was skinny and had no problems. This is of course on top of my Asperger Syndrome and “additional mental health issues”…

The Pancreas issues started when I was 20, I suddenly got terrible pain in my abdomen and had to call an ambulance; this kinda thing went on for about 2 years, every few months or so. Removing my gall bladder didn’t help! The damage done to my pancreas by all these bouts of pancreatitis – basically the pancreas tries to digest itself – left me with a problem digesting fats… sometimes its better than others, sometimes I eat something with a minimal amount of fat in and minutes later (I kid you not) I am running for the bathroom.

When I was 24 I found out that not only had the enzyme producing part of my Pancreas messed up, but the Insulin producing part had as well and I now had diabetes. At first it was easy, I would ensure, no-matter what that I had my insulin pen and my glucometer with me and would always test and inject before meals. Then I got depressed, pissed off and I have never really gotten it right again for very long since about 2007.

Recently its been really getting me down, over the summer I had a blood test which seemed to suggest that I am making my own insulin and that my diabetes might be more like Type 2 than Type 1 – Type 2 diabetics produce insulin but can’t use it, Type 1 diabetics have no or very little insulin production. So I started taking tablets instead of insulin during the day and then I realised they weren’t working, so try a different tablet – last week I figure out this isn’t working either. Yesterday I realised I couldn’t bring my blood sugar down even by injecting an amount that would have been normal for me a few months ago.

So it seems for the past few weeks, my blood sugar has been sky high, I have spent the best part of my waking life on the toilet, but I am still alive I guess and not going blind, etc, yet…

The weirdest part is that you can have these problems with blood sugar, but not really feel any different. Granted I want to sleep a lot – which has kinda messed things up: On Thursday night I was supposed to take my Intermediate Amateur (HAM) Radio License exam. I got home from University and all I wanted to do was sleep, I could not contemplate getting on 2 buses, taking the exam and getting home… I turned my phone off and went to sleep. Now I have voicemails and emails to deal with – “where were you?!”. Today I wasn’t at my lectures – the most boring ‘crossover’ module on “The Engineering Environment” is shared with mechanical engineers and mostly seems to be about writing about your favourite dead engineer – I have chosen Alan Turing, although I haven’t started writing the essay yet.

So tomorrow I will go in, I will go to bed in a minute and I will try my hardest to get up at 7am, shower, do the things normal people do and sit for 3hrs soldering my function generator project together and hopefully have something I can test at the end of the lab session.

So I hope that explains “where I have been” these last few days…