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Well now that I've a life again, I'm back dating. And its been so so interesting.

Firstly, I found not a lot of messages, but two or three women were kind of interesting. One was a bit far away (lives in same town as my last girlfriends partner does, and that is a big turn off), another replied too infreuquently to arrange a proper meeting, but number 3 had potential. There were issues, bisexuality, a married past, only recently out, a long history of illness and some rather dogmatic ideas about life, but for the first time in a long time I found myself talking to somebody my own age, articulate, mature, with a reasonably broad outlook, outside of the cult of the dyke ghetto and well, up for it. Oh and easy on the eye too. In fact, she actually looked better in person than she did in her photos.

Of course I totally blew that one. Did the grand gesture and the OTT femmerama. I think I scared her knickers on rather than off. Sadly, she didn't want friendship even, so I was rather hurt. But it got me thinking and kind of drop kicked me into making a bigger effort to actually attract a wider range of women and sift rather than project.

At the same time it was really nice to finally discover that there was one - at least one! - woman out there who I could actually be attracted to. It made me realise that there are actually rare but good potential matches out there if you keep looking. And of course I am well aware that there is a large silent majority of women-loving-women who do not buy into the dyke ghetto, and find it not only scary but hugely unsexy. Come on, who would want the bitter taste of a Basher Bindel style one anyway? I was in the Flounge on Friday and two very macho dykes arrived in, they pretty much looked like they would beat the crap out of you, complete with mens clothes and mens haircuts.

But you see, that isn't the reality that most WWSWW live (as opposed to MWSWM). Loads of women just want nothing more than somebody nice and normal who loves them for who them are, can take reponsibility for themselves and be a good friend and lover, and is capable in bed. They don't want somebody who is basically a man with a uterus. Nor do they want somebody who they have to answer for, or be marginalised with. I seriously think that one of the saddest twists of radical feminism is its failure to recognise the reality of female to male gender disphoria, and I think a hell of a lot of these girls are quite potentially gender disphoric. And I think its something that has staRted to become more of phenomenon.
Anyway, back to dating. The hard thing, is I don't want to repeat my last two mistakes, and most importantly, I don't want to end up with somebody who doesn't read books, think about politics but instead lives in front of de telly. I don't want that anymore and its so, so hard to strip away the layers to find yet one more stereotype who is glued to Fairly Shitty every night and X Factor all weekend.

Looks like I'll just have to keep trying.

Ultra Xtreamer setup with multi boot for home AV use on network
Bridged wireless Wifi lan (largely complete)
network devices placed on lan (Belkin)

Haven't been watching a lot of TV lately but managed to catch one or two that interested me.

Jean Byrne continues to be delightful.  This week included tight black satin trousers and a figure hugging elbow length black top - unfortunately married to a puffy white jacket that kind of reminds me of a chessboard.  Not one of the better ones, but hey its new.  The leather jacket from her 11th Hour appearance last week was almost certainly Joanne Hynes - a really gorgeous number I have to say, very feminine and nicely matched with a simple top with design.  Despite some fairly heavy lighting, Byrne still managed to look about half her age, and came across as very appealling, the sort of person you'd be very happy to get stuck beside on a long flight or in the cube next to you at work.  Incidentally, forgot to mention two rather funny things from that programme.  Byrne picked out music from David Bowie and Welsh singer Duffy.

Bowie - good choice, I thought - Fanning put on heroes.  Funny comment Byrne made was that men wearing makeup was an interest - when I caught that it was a real case of Don't say that, you'll only encourage them!!  Liking guys with makeup on isn't your average middle Ireland hetero thing - although it might turn off a few potential stalkers not to keen on having to don lippy and eyeliner.  In fact the main reason most girls I know don't like it because the guys they know who do that, not only want to wear THEIR makeup, but half their wardrobe too.  Say no more.  Anyway, we'll put it down to and off-the-cuff remark rather than a deep knowledge of the crossdressing fantasies of so many hetero males.  (Oh yes many - you'd be surprised how many good male friends I have, married with kids etc, who like nothing more than to don a short mini, a shocking wig, heavy slap and 6 inch heels).  I loved Bowie as vampiric lover of Catherine Denueve in the Hunger - one of his most sublime performances, particularly the scene in the mens where he looks at his aging self in the mirror, and the rather sad and painful scene where he devours his lover's favoured teenage violinist.  Fabulous.  Very angrogynous and an almost unwitting statesman, along with former wife Agnie, for bisexuality.  Anyway, nuff of that.

Duffy I didn't immediately get but I had forgotten that Duffy's debut was a 60s-esque style number which started "You got me begging you for mercy, Why won’t you release me."  Ok nobody else spotted this (not even on BDSM-Ireland's recent discussion of BDSM themed songs) - but well - the imagery is just too close to the popular folklore regarding tight leather tunics and determinedly straightening your long black tresses.

Anyway, more of Byrne soon.  I didn't watch the finale of Lost, having lost touch with it during the first season, but unsurprised to hear of the finale.  Ok, I got that as soon as I heard they started quoting one of my favourite author's - Flann O Brien, in his book The Third Policeman.  Did you know that O'Brien became an honorary member of the Irish Housewives Association?  I'll bet you didn't.  Its one of the many pieces that my baby sister has dug up in her PhD study of womens organisations in the middle of the 20th century.  He poked a bit of fun at them in his column, but according to Ash he was in fact a good supporter, especially in their lobbying for better prices for consumers.  Ash also says that while IHA supported the Mother and Child scheme, they were not so keen on the children's allowance because it was allocated to the husbands, and there was still shortages.  She says that they feared price inflation because of the perception of greater consumer power and preferred instead a system of vouchers.  I skim read the Sisters piece in the Irish Times during the week and I really felt how so many women, even now, could read this and find it hard to relate to.  Maeve Binchy's piece was good, but I do feel sometimes that ordinary women with husbands and kids, who sometimes work and sometimes don't, might find it easier to relate to groups like IHA and ICA than more overtly political groups.  The north has a good string of community based womens groups that in context of over heavily divided communities, can actually be more than a bit diverse.  In fact I found out about the northern groups through a closet lesbian single mum of two in a large town.  Someday that could be ripe pickings for a PhD.

Anwyay, 2nd programme I watched this week with interest, was Rising After Redundancy.  You might have seen Bill Cullen's little performance on the Front Line a while back where he demonstrated vast ignorance of the reality of unemployment today as compared to 20 or 40 years ago.  Indeed, vast ignorance of Ireland, full stop.  Cullen grew up in inner Dublin, in a Dublin where tenements were the way of life.  I know a little about these as many of my family grew up in them also.  You'd have as many as 80-100 people living in a large Georgian house.  Families of 10 in 2 rooms.  As a result, from the 1940s onwards, slum clearance programmes aimed to move people to less cramped housing in order to mitigate against many of the problems of overcrowding.  This was well in progress in the 50s and 60s, and many of Cullen's age would have moved from these areas as children to a variety of places, nice and otherwise.  Dad's family were particularly fortunate and moved to Marino.  Those less so found themselves in places like Coolock and later, Ballymun.  Anyway, Cullen doesn't get one thing - housing is now a huge expense for the under 40s.  And many older people too.  There simply isn't cheap, low quality housing for purchase and even less so for rent, which remains stubbornly high.  This eats heavily into the salaries of low paid workers.  In the 50s, those with low paid or occasional work could survive because of cheap if poor housing.

One of the primary impacts of better housing in Ireland from the 60s onwards has been the massive inflationary bubble which in reality started in the late 1960s and ended with the collapse of house prices in 2008/9 - and is still ongoing.  House prices started doubling every 4-5 years from the end of the 60s, and in fact, this continued until the stagnation in the 80s and early 90s.  It picked up where it had left off around 1994, and relentless increases continued for the next 12 years.  Rents shot up even faster - especially housing policy changed and welfare-dependent renters were dumped into rented sector rather than social housing from the mid 90s on.  My Dad also, funny enough, went to primary school in Gardnier St.  Anyway, the key problems today are a workforce that is immobile because of negative equity in housing, and inflexible because of poor skills.  This is to top off the fact that about 250,000 jobs have simply vanished, leaving a hard core of unemployed chasing a declining number of open vacancies.

Unlike the 80s, when the mantle fell particularly harshly on young workers, and workers over 40, this has been a far more democratic recession.  But Cullen was ignorance itself when he suggest that people "work for nothing."  Now don't get me wrong.  Unpaid internship is great for young folk without experience, fresh out of college and with some skills but little practical experience.  But its totally unworkable for somebody on the dole with maybe a mortgage and a few other debts to pay.  Those inbetween - early career years to mid career, in the 25-40 age group would be particularly hard hit because there is an assumption, especially if they are highly skilled, that they will not only find a job quickly, but that they will find one paying the same.  And contrary to popular folklore, there are loads of people who simply wouldn't survive if they had to take a 20-30k paycut from maybe 40-50k to 20k for anymore but a brief term.

So the programme, unfortuantely, almost starts at the common view made of redundant folk on tv: not looking hard enough, unrealistic expectations, unsuitable skills.  The big thing I notice is that a lot of people let go are being dropped from areas which in a normal job market would have reasonable currency.  Things like administrative work, marketing, IT, etc.  The recruitment guy - I am sorry, but I find him an obnoxious tosser.  I have really grown to like most of the others, but he just rubs me up the wrong way.  Barney is particularly likeable and probably very typical - like the 130,000 construction workers who were let go, he probably just found his role in Aer Lingus in the 70s or 80s, worked through trainee programmes, did fairly well, managed to survive all the various turbulence in that industry.  This is why Michael O Leary's nasty little propoganda campaign against the DAA is so insidious: the workers at the former Team Aer Lingus plant were old fashioned, older, heavily unionised.  O Leary would never give them a job.  Instead he would have taken in school leavers on the minimum wage and possibly on temporary contracts for ever.  If he was ever to start such an operation, it would be to break the spirits of those workers.  But he'll never do that - he can well afford to play the media game - after all thats what O Leary does.  He is a master of marketing and subtle propoganda.  He runs a lean airline that focuses on a very particular type of travel that probably makes up about 75% of all travel - and just does it very efficiently.  Thats why Ryanair, in its current guise, will never run a transatlantic flight.  What they will probably eventually do is adopt a failing carrier or start a separate company - probably as a kind of experiment, only they don't really need to - lots of carriers in Asia are doing this on Australia to the Far East and I reckon O Leary is watching carefully to see what he can learn and reproduce.

Anyway the problem I have with this kind of  programme, are these points:

• that the work is out there, but you are not really trying hard enough
• that you can pitch yourself to any job without having the qualifications and experience - or worse still, that you can "retrain" overnight and be a huge success - "Decide and start a course, just do it, it will never be a waste when it's an area that you're interested in."
• that you can change everything overnight and on aspiration alone, be hugely successful
• that you have to lower your expectations and work for little or for free
• and finally, the big one, that something in yourself needs to change - "Back yourself, believe in yourself and you will succeed."

The last point is the big one. This programme is based on a kind life coaching thing run by a company called Harmonics.  Like many of these companies, this advice doesn't come cheaply.  "Career Health Check Programme"as its called on their website, will set you back an eye watering 1500 euros - that 7 and a half times the adult weekly dole rate - nearly 2 months of payments or 1/6 of an unemployed persons annual income.  Exploitation?  I think at this rate, yes.  They do cv/interview prep too - for a cool 400 euros for 4 hours.  Ok, thats 2 weeks dole - or more than a week on the minimum wage.  But the big Daddy of them all, the "career and financial planning" - thats 2,900.  Yes, you read that right.  Thats 4 months on the dole.  In fact its more than I get after tax in a month.  Its considerably more than an average earner will get after tax in a month.  Guess what?  I changed career for free.  In fact lots of people do it.  Or, you can spend your 2900 on something like this which is a rather good Certificate in Management from the Open University - very useful for anybody considering starting up their own enterprise.

I wouldn't have an issue with this programme were it not for the obscene amount that they are looking for.  The career health check for example, amounts to 150 euros an hour - i mean, aside from hospital consultants - who gets that?  And why are RTE doing a great big glossy ad for not only this company, but the many, many, often much worse and more grossly exploitative parade of often inexperienced and unaccredited "social marketeers", "consultants" and "coaches" of all descriptions.  People are really getting ripped off by this kinda stuff.

Thing is you see, I spent about 8k on the Open University, and slowly, its working for me, even though I'm not finished.  What shines far more on your cv than yet another get-rich-quick and believe-it-and-it-will-happen session is that 4-6 years you spent working away.  I really do have an issue with the poking through peoples lives on this programme because it makes it look like these courses are good value for money.  As it happens I spotted some (and I have to say - quite good) writing online from one participant, and I don't know if its really worked for him, and I can only presume that he didn't have to pay 1500-2900.

As for "start your own business" which is the mantra of many of these programmes - please please please will Fas get in and make everybody who wants to do this go through a full time one week course first?  One which explains things like your personal liability, the impact on your PRSI payments (which effectively remove you from many entitlements people take for granted) and the complexity of dealing with banks etc as a self employed person?  I know a lot of self employed people who have lost houses, have nearly lost houses and even one who is likely to lose a SECOND house because if things get bad, its potentially even worse than the dole.  Its NOT a get rich quick route.  For most people its a good way of life, but not a wealthy one.

Anyway on to the TVnow awards.  What can I say?  Just awful.  Excruciating to watch.  Embarassing.  And who the fook is Anna Daly?  Jean was robbed (but the frock was nice - bring a chaperone next time - it helps, believe me).  Whoever edited this should never be let near a film again.  I could have done better myself.  Not inviting nominees was just pathetic.  And the two RTE ladies who were completely hammered were painful.  Less red wine next time, girls.

Weather has been rather interesting lately - rather cool but dry. According to Joan Blackburn on this morning's radio we have been experiencing 6c lower than normal for April but rainfall is quite low. This sort of coincides with the warm dry spell last September (much of which I missed as I was in Budapest).

Jean Byrne has been shopping again! On 28th April she appeared wearing a rather interesting number from Joanne Hynes SS10 collection. I'd seen the promo photos in white but seen the original which was in Hynes 2 week pop-up shop in Brown Thomas in Cork. I don't get to Dublin so much these days, and when I do I'm rather busy so rarely get to BT, so its nice to see some designers appear in Cork, even when it is for just a week. Anyway this will probably all change, as I'm laid off in 4 weeks time and no job offer yet, so quite expecting to end up in Dublin at the end of June for a while. Maybe I might visit BT more often, even if a lot of the clothes would eat into an entire dole rate for 4 weeks! It costs nothing to have a look anyway.

Anyway Byrne also showed up on the awful Dave Fanning's 11th Hour wearing what I am sure is another one of Hynes new leather jackets. Just over a simple black t shirt and black trousers. She does come across as rather diffident when interviewed. Its nice in a sense to hear that she takes no notice of online comments since to be honest many of the male ones are simply "whoa" and her style is individual, and dare I say, appropriate to her own personality.

If the jacket is the Hynes one I am thinking of it has some rather interesting work done around the upper body which makes the texture look rather interesting. One thing I find about Hynes designs is not only do they look at their best on "real women" with breasts and hips (compare any of the youtube rips of Byrne wearing the ss10 zippered leather number to the white version in Hynes ss10 promo shots - the design looks much better on Byrne, simply because she has a feminine shape) but they are in a sense, ageless.

Two years ago, Linda Grant wrote a very interesting piece in the Guardian questioning whether or not older women could wear leather jackets. She was particularly considering if wearing them in your 50s could make you look a bit like "mutton."  Now it isn't anything I should be worrying over just yet as I'm not quite 38 yet, but you do wonder sometimes if that item just might be pushing over the boundary.  I know, for example, a woman in her 60s who determinedly wears Pennys stuff designed for teenagers, and to top it off, she's transgendered and transitioned later in life.  As a result she looks like a server from a Munich beerhall.  Byrne, curiously enough, contradicts one suggestion that Grant has regarding many very beautiful older women - I wouldn't have described her as ravishingly beautiful 5 or 6 years ago.  In fact I hardly noticed her at all.  There is a rather old photo which somebody managed to dig out of the RTE archives of a very pretty, and girl-next-doory Byrne working in the Met quite a long time ago - dates are for sissies! - which I have to say rather shocked me as it indicated to me that I'd underestimated her likely age by at least 10 years!  Thats rather good - to look 10 years younger than you actually are - well done Jean!  Anyway, what is rather amusing about the photo is what Jean is wearing -a  plaid shirt with denim dungarees.  Height of fashion at the time.  It was pretty next too - but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than dashingly glamorous.

I think sometimes that is what happens to "nice girls" who grow up and eventually just stop caring what anybody else thinks of them.  From what I've heard of Byrne she doesn't give a shite what anybody else thinks and I have to say I really like that.  In Ireland outside of the catholic church everybody is so terrified about what everybody else thinks we've almost pertrified.  Look at politics and the key message the opposition parties churn out is "omg what will everybody think of us" (which to be honest isn't completely wrong considering that US multinationals in particular and quietly leaving Ireland in droves).  Grant's idea, by the way, of just wearing one or two really dashing items is something I'd be inclined to pass advice to all ages on.

Linda Grant's blog is here http://www.thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com/

Jelie Feeney's lovely song, goes "You're impossibly beautiful, is it just cause I'm looking or is it just cause you are?" Well recently Ireland has been thrown into a rather curious and unexpected debate regarding perceptions of beauty by a shift by one of the longstanding Met Eireann meteorologists who delivers the weather on RTE1.

For reasons not 100% explained by Jean Byrne's explanation that she was getting a lot of requests for where she bought her clothes from "Mothers of the Bride" and possibly more to do with cutbacks in the wardrobe department in RTE, probbly allowing announcers a greater level of autonomy regarding decision making than they previously might have, we've been treated to a lovely fashion shw of designer dresses, unique fabrics, leather and some rather special accessories. Two Facebook groups have popped up with delight - sheer raw lust from male members (and I'm sure more than a few females) and fashionisting from females.

A suggestion that Miss Byrne's soothing contralto might be appropriate to announcing Ireland's televote results for the Eurovision (given RTE's increasing bring conservatism, a nearly certain no-no) triggered me to start off a petition for the same, despite its obvious clash with the values of the broadcaster. Already we are treated to a daily borefest on the radio from Tubridy to the truly dreadful Joe Duffy, who is really at his worst on the old whineline. Not a women to be heard, now banaished to what has become a rather fine weekend schedule - Marian Finucane's programme is great and Miriam O Callaghan's programme is pretty good too.

So Byrne manages to liven up what has become a rather jaded schedule on TV also, with really only the hard-hitting populism of the Frontline to generate real debate along with Primetime. An Cór I must admit I like, but I do enjoy traditional music - many don't. RTE's native programming is really currently at risk of vanishing into oblivion - there really are very few really good programmes being homegrown at present, compared to a few years ago when we'd stuff like Bachelor's Walk, Pure Mule, and the side splitting Soupy Norman.

One late night last Novemeber I thanked my lucky stars as I heard the gutter almost burst with the force of rainfall, that I live right on top of the hill in north Cork city and not down by the river, as torrential rain first flooded the North Gate to the Lee Fields (followed by a grim week without running water) and then a cold spell froze us out until late January. As it got colder, somehow the fashion on Miss Byrne's forecasts got jauntier and I seriously thought while watching one a week before Christmas that she was definitely on her way to a Christmas shindig, until I saw what she sported on Christmas Day.

Well lots of people didn't like it, but I have to say, despite my intial sense of "surely there is no party today?" it was a rather grand guna indeed. A silver, figure hugging party number, and Miss Byrne has a lovely curvy feminine form to fill it beautifully. I hope the turkey was good later on too! Her excuse was that she hoped that everybody by then would have had a glass of vino and wouldn't notice - but instead Ireland was treated to Christmas cheer. In fact she was probably the highlight of the entire seasonal schedule.

Well despite Miss Byrne's bemusement, and the fun of the many discussions on various forums, it seems that the lady has gone from being regarded as dour to a veritable sex symbol. But this ain't no Susan Boyle: dig back through the archives and you'll see that from day one she's been a really good looking woman no doubt obscured by the essentialism and purpose of a weather chart.

Now as somebody who awoke 6000 foot up a mountain range in northern California last Easter expecting 18c and instead shivering in my tent cabin to 0c and heavy snowfall (thank God I'd snow tyres on my hired 4x4 to get me to San Francisco on the last open road) I have to say that there are plenty of times when the message of the Met is highly critical. So indeed the medium should not distract, unless of course it is so predictable and boring that its far more fun to look at what the presenter is dressed up in today.

All of a sudden, Paul Cunningham was in on the act, but after his wonderful French dough Afghan hat, and the legendary guy slipping on ice on the news, Miss Byrne has outlasted them all. Many women are critical, seeing her dress sense as over the top, disliking hairdos, and even some rather unkind comments about availability of mirrors. But many are enjoying the kind of unwitting game that has evolved as suddenly the poor lady realises that half the country are as much interested in what outfit she can produce as her wise words regard all things weather.

So what to now though? Are all presenters now free to willingly air their individuality? Who shall rise to the challeng? Aleady sites such as the amusing www.whattheywerewearing.com are comparing and contrasting the newreaders, weather forecasters and even poor Kathryn Thomas (although she has the extra benefit of getting to show a bit of leg). And frankly, nobody cares what George Hook wears or most other male presenters, to be honest. Its the poor ladies to get it all.

I mean look at how much of the abuse of Mary Harney explicitly turns on her age and weight, its merciless and unfair on somebody who in fairness has been lumped with by far the most impossible portfolio politically. And as for the constant diet of dumpy tracksuited wans produced on every second programme to be coifed, buffed, chopped and dressed up, well its rather cruel and unfeeling. Nobody ever does that to men, however sloppy their appearance might be.

Of course a lot of this is relative and a matter of luck and lifestyle. It was in a sense slightly tragic to see Nell McCafferty strip for the cameras. Honestly, it wasn't beatutiful and I think its probably brought her more abuse than respect. Go do the Spencer Tunick thing, but thats about turning the human body into an abstract form and besides, mingle in with the crowd and nobody, hopefully, will notice you. But long may we enjoy the delights of Miss Byrne's lovely clothes, so please RTE, don't go hard on the wardrobe constraints! We are enjoying it!

I managed to get through the latest VmWare VCP certificate yesterday, after about 6 weeks of effort. I was pretty much backed into doing it by work, which is blooding annoying when you're doing a level 2 OU Business Course simultaneously - these courses are already 2 hours a day and basically, they've eaten up a big chunk of my life.

Anyway hard to say how I feel about VCP. I'm very pleased to pass, since the only versions of VI I come across are older implementations, my own ESXi 3.5u4 server at home (yes I know how sad is that) and workstation (which I've used to isolate my own personal "desktops" for many years - great way to keep the peace in a relationship when one of you is ultra tidy by nature and the other isn't - I could create my own virtual mess while my partners PC stayed squeaky clean). Anyway about 9 of us did it together at work, with a lab and overview built by one of our in-house consultatants on vmware infrastructure, who did the vSphere update exam on the first week. The good news is that the pass mark has been dropped - it was about 70% out of 75 questions, now its 60% out of a 85 question pool, there are 10 unmarked questions.

I found the scenario questions the hardest - the ones where they show you a running vm or output from reports and it asks you what you should do next? Like add another cpu, power off a vm in the cluster etc etc. Performance issues basically. These can be tough to troubleshoot, especially if there is a lot of clusters. On the other hand, when I got the VCP 310 I shredded the manuals in the hhope of not revisiting for a few years. No such luck. However, this turned out to be a blessing, as the class manuals don't cover the material in anywhere enough detail to get a decent mark, or pass at all. What you really need to do is what I did, and base your study on the core documentation PDF set for vSphere. I also gave my desktop PC (which has a large 80GB hard drive hardly used) a new life as an iSCSI device using OpenFiler and got a Dell Poweredge 2650 from Hilco auctions for a mere 132 euros. Ok the cpus couldn't cope with ESXi 4, but they could happily run the last version of 3.5i which gave me a lot of practice with mucking about with resource pools etc. Ok a lot of the vCentre stuff and clustering stuff was not available to me but there is a good lot of detail in the manual, and if you clearly understand resource pooling on a single host basis, there isn't a huge gap to understand how this is then used in a clustered context.

If RTFM were not such a good mantra I'd have them tattooed on every persons head. Seriously folks, you wouldn't believe that I've worked with a few Gombeens over the years who thought they were too smart to follow instructions or take advice. Out of our group, we have just one colleague whose failed so far, with a fail mark poor enough for one of our experts to really question how he managed to do so badly. (I could tell him straight off that the lack of committment, not taking things seriously enough, pig-headed arrogance and a poor base level of skills carefully concealed by years of putting on the air of somebody mature and solid will be shown up at even basic cert exams).

I think one of the big difficulties that I had for many years was that entry level IT posts are so badly paid that if you don't have a lab or training programmes, its really difficult to get solid backgrounds on anything your job doesn't require. In fact a lot of places just refuse outright to offer any training over and above what is absolutely necessary - often meaning that they end up both with high staff turnovers, and have to hire more senior positions externally because they cannot bridge the skillsets themselves (which means they often end up havign to pay more for senior staff). It also has produced a whole generation of what I call Gombeen IT staff: seemingly competent staff, who have learned to "play the system" and bullshit past the basic requirements which they are often missing - solid server management skills, infastructure training on products such as DBs, Exchange, Active Directory, networking is a particular skill gap in a lot of the Gombeen IT men. A lot of them snuck into IT without qualifications and although they might raise to an A+ or an old NT or 2000 MCP, these were usually achieved through memorising vast pools of braindump questions, with little real world knowledge.

The trouble with these guys is that they are not so stupid that they cannot engineer their way into higher up posts and evade detection, sometimes for years. I was really shocked, for example, at one colleague, who it took me nearly 6 months to see through his deceptive but persistent campaign of being the solid "techie." His biggest problem, mind you, was a persistent refusal to follow other peoples instructions and advice, which sometimes had catastrophic consequences, as he has a "creative" streak, waywardly clicking on buttons that do something different rather than following instructions. As for women - like a lot of these techs, there is a serious belief that women cannot do IT. They are just intellectually inferior according to these Troglodytes. Years ago I had another colleague who (and this is a common ploy with Gombeen IT men) picked out a fringe application that nobody else knew anything about, and start signing off his emails with SME (Subject Matter Expert) on this application. Thats a very common method of deceit - find something you think nobody else knows anything about and claim experise. Of course, this generally doesn't work when you've got somebody like me around - I can spot an IT Gombeen from 10 miles away. My previous background included real world application support and massice enterprise support - some stuff of which really paid off.

But for me the key was working step by step through certifications and qualifications. I started with a Network+. Then I did ITIL 2 foundation. And then I got a CCNA. I did an A+ across 2 weeks on my lunchbreaks, at a point where I realised that this exam by then was easy enough to do just by reading a basic Mike Meyers book (I'd been supporting IT for 5 years by then and felt it was worth the couple of hundred euros). The benefit actually, was learning a little regarding SCSI. With this and networking, the next step was management of an infrastructure. My next job was just that - overall overviews rather than detailed stuff, problem management, pulling reports, delivering enabling information. Change management experience helped enormously too.

By the time I got to "pure" server support and delivery, I'd sufficient experience to not only just know the hardware, but also to really understand the dynamic of large corporate enterprises. I've rarely worked in a company with less than 50,000 employees. Most of my customers down through the years have been equally massive. This is where you really learn to stop being narrow minded and stop trying to focus on finding niches. The biggest danger facing a lot of IT people is that they push themselves into these "false dawns" - getting tied up with applications that vanish as so many get tied up in the new "next great thing."

My advice is this:

• Get a good knowledge of hardware, operating systems, networking and storage. Don't concentrate on any one area without a reasonable knowledge of the other. A server admin is almost useful if he/she doesn't understand networking concepts and have some basis for storage administration. They won't be able to properly troubleshoot modern enterprise level applications without this knowledge.
• Give time to application support if you get a chance but don't jump in at the deep end where the application requires high levels of programming knowledge in particular. If you haven't got a degree in IT or 10 years real-world experience, most employers and your peers will probably recognise you for the charlatan you most probably are, unless you really are genuinely gifted and can script anything rapidly and elegantly.
• Get to understand the business, both that of your employer and your clients. If you don't understand that you'll have a hard time making sense of business requirements and design specifications.
• Don't pooh pooh your colleagues in other technology areas. You don't know it all. If you think you are smarter on another subject area ask yourself why you are not working on that team? (Unless you've been promoted upwards). But don't sneer especially at people doing a very different job, even if you think you understand them. Especially don't jeer at their designs or ignore their instructions or advice. You might find that they are right.
• Women in IT generally have to work and fight much harder to get on. As a result you will often find they are way superior to their male colleagues. Get over yourself on this, its a simple reality that women face massive stereotyping and discrimination in traditionally male roles and so have to outperform to get the same outcomes. Forgetting this may prove very costly when that girl who you thought was oh so dumb is now your manager. Especially don't even think of engineering retaliation against women who get promoted over you - they've probably earned it the hard way. If you can't see that, take the log out of your eyes and stop being such a pathetic bully.
• Never be dishonest about mistakes you made or things you didn't do. Most IT systems have a detailed audit trail and you'll be found out.
• Don't look down on global colleagues or stereotype them - same goes as women. You don't understand them and they have it harder than you. Get over your sense of superiority or it will bite your ass.
• Don't sneer at qualifications, especially diplomas and degrees. People work hard to get these and employers regard them as a mark of discipline. If you haven't done one, consider taking night courses towards it. Modular courses are often a good and flexible low cost method to get recogniseable qualifications. A failure to do this may be seen as an indication of laziness and lack of commitment.
• Be willing to share the workload. Recogonise others efforts, especially those over and above.
• If you've read this through and recognise a colleague, the only real way to deal with them is to ignore them. They are a menace but if you let them play their mind games you'll only end up distracted and angry. Get over it for now, let them hang themselves and eventually you'll get promoted into a position where you can get something done. Employers eventually wise up to people like that and create rounds of redundancies especially for them.

Just back from Budapest and really fascinated by one thing.  Ok, there are several thousand Hungarians in Ireland, though well outnumbered by the Poles, who number from 64,000 to anything up to 300,000 (which I think is a gross exaggeration) and I met quite a few back in the 1990s when I was involved with the Kodály Society of Ireland, not to mention working with quite a few Hungarians, but I never realised what the people are like en masse.  One thing that had struck me from my previous experience was sometimes that they were quite odd, and secondly that they seemed to have a strong sense of fun.  What I had missed out was their glamorousness.

Everywhere, it seemed, everybody went out day-to-day in their Sunday best.  Didn't matter if you are 30 or 60, fat or thin, good looking or an affront to the eyesight - the best clothing seemed necessary, along with lovely handbags, nice jewelery and well coiffed hair.  And the men were the same - beautifully dressed up in shirts and ties, good leather shoes - even in the evenings on weekdays.  It seems that appearance is very important to this culture.  Manners were also striking - something I found very striking.

Earlier this year I witnessed what I can only describe as a charge of the light brigade from a bunch of Americans to get on the first bus on a sight-seeing trip in San Francisco.  (Aside from being entirely unnecessary, I was really struck by the "me first" mentality).  Of course, we in Ireland and Britain are every bit as bad.  Try getting off a bus or train at rush hour and not only will you have to shoulder charge your way through people who block the ways on and off, people also literally try to walk through commuters trying to exit trains and buses.  Rudeness is almost a common way of life - made worse by rugby scrum boarding patterns on Ryanair flights and dreadful pushing a shoving.

For example, an Irish man yesterday had two older children - to be honest, I cannot describe them as children but as piglets, who aside from trying to push past my semi disabled mother in the queue for the flight, tried to push and shove their way past us in the ailse of the aircraft as we packed our bags into the overhead lockers of the cabin.  While their ignoramous of a caveman father (well dressed and seemingly respectable) didn't say a word.  My mother has had 3 operations in recent months and carries a walking stick, but this clearly meant nothing to the Irish piglets and their hogmaster who clearly saw themselves as far superior to anybody else in the world and undeserving of respect.

Hungarians, in contrast, patiently wait for people to disembark, are quite unagressive and not in any way noisy.  We also noted how few Hungarian youngsters drank openly in public spaces, and how less agressive and attention seeking they were on the one occasion when we did spy a group drinking outside the Astoria metro station - sure they were enjoying a can or two, but left passers by alone and kept to themselves.  The vast majority seemed content enough to enjoy fast food and coffee in McDonalds, but didn't seem to feel the need to scream their presence to the world going by, unlike desperate for attention Irish and British teens (and adults).

This seems to fit in with the story that somebody called into one of the RTE radio stations with earlier this year about a bunch of Polish people enjoying a picnic in the Phoenix park while a bunch of Irish youths engaged in a booze-fuelled and aggressive orgy close-by.  As somebody pointed out, the Poles would remember a lovely spring day in the park, the Irish piglets will remember nothing.

One thing I also noticed was the multifaceted nature of continental cafe culture.  People seem to think that if you make the decor nice and continental in style, serve wine and throw in an expresso machine, you get cafe culture.  But this is very different to whats on the continent.  The "drinking emporium" mentality isn't there in the cafes (though no doubt its there in the industrial nightclubs), but also the strong emphasis on food, serving up until 11pm is one facet.  Another is the fact that many of these styles of coffee bars don't open until 18:00 in the evening, especially if they stay open later.  I recall many years ago drinking in one in Wolfenbüttel in Germany, and being served a drinking at the untimely hour of 3:55.  5 minutes later I was being shooed out the door - there is no concept of "drink up" time - the real curse of Irish binge drinking culture.  You are out the door at closing time, no matter what.

Similarly, in San Francisco bars close at a relatively timid 2am, but here is the thing - many clubs just keep going without serving booze.  That to me seems like a fairly good idea.  In Australia there are lock-ins, but really this only spills the problem out onto streets.  I would suggest that if club opening hours were reformed to allow clubs to stay open without serving alcohol (I noticed in Palm Springs that some bars would stay open and just serve soft drinks and water) it might help a little.  Perhaps a continental style fixed closing style might end the rounds culture of buying several rounds 5 minutes before the bell goes just to have something to extend drink-up time as late as possible.  Then we could consider allowing clubs and pubs to stay open but just not serve booze.

Another solution, perhaps, would be to control only the total opening hours per week then let individual establishments decide on how to allocate those hours.   Then you could viably run a club say weekends only, but keep it open around the clock.  Its just a suggestion (one that I think wouldn't really be viable as around the clock clubbing tends to be associated with pill use, and pill users often don't drink, which would make the clubs unprofitable).

One thing that does also assist the continental bars though, is locating in urban areas away from disturbing neighbours, while at the same time maintaining shorter opening hours for premises based in residential areas.  For example it seems crazy to me that loads of bars are based on Douglas street and allowed wasteful late licenses that really are a waste as some residents just complain about the noise and the police more or less persecute the bar owners for using legally obtained permits to open late.  (The gay bar of course, gets particularly heavy handed treated).

I spotted this on the RTE news website this morning - I really gotta ask?  Why do we need this?

Ballymun is probably the poster child in Ireland for how not to do development.  Unlike the sister development in West Dublin, Tallaght, which was essentially a planned project which included schools, a hospital and a proper town centre (which admittedly was then kinda skewed when the "Square", a large shopping precinct, was built).  But its actually not bad, aside from the large dual carriageway which effectively splits it in two, and sink estates on the periphery.

Ballymun, in contrast, used high rises, which through a combination of non-management (mismanagement is too strong a word since DCC effectively stopped managing the high rises decades before they were knocked and just left them to decay both physically and socially) and local impoverishment, became a rather unpleasant place to live.  Rather than address the key issue - why did Dublin Corporation simply stop maintaining and managing Ballymun towers as they were bound to do in their stewardship as landlords - the government chose to "blame" the buildings.  Over the last 10 years many of the original tower blocks and surrounding eyesores have been demolished and replaced with - well slightly smaller blocks and surrounding eyesores.  Residents generally have been happy so far with the development, but lets be honest, its still being "managed" at present.  What would happen if the corpo simply opted out, as they did previously with the old tower blocks, and stopped actively managing the estates?  It would end up the same.  And I suspect this is what may well happen if cutbacks resume.

In the meantime, the Corpo have served up a massive new gravy train for the construction industry on top of the 54 billion NAMA bailout last week - 800 million is the cost, not counting the inevitable overruns, and if I recall, Treasury Holdings is or was part of AIB.

Funny that.

Meantime some little spoilt uberbrat who was kicked out of BOI albeit with a 2.4 million payoff for viewing porn at work, has taken the usual swipe at "unmarried mothers".  I took out my calculator and did some quick sums.  On the basis that at any one time, there are around 60,000 lone parents on the welfare system, each running at a cost of around 20k per annum to the state.  This represents a total figure of 1.2 billion euros per year - so effectively the NAMA bailout paid out in one week would subsidise the entire current body of lone parents for up to 45 years.  Who is the welfare sponger now Mr Banker?

Community and Voluntary Pillar today bleated away with impunity about the dreadful suggestions last week that would easily add 3000 euros a year to working families tax bills, suggesting it be diverted to the "most vulnerable."  Now I am sick and tired of this sequaling away about the "most vulnerable" as in reality this group are often the most protected and sheltered members of society, sponging away while everybody else pays for it.

It was depressing to read last week that many of the new college places would be reserved for "long term" welfare recipients - in other words precisely the ones who opted out of the world of work while jobs were available, so now we are giving them the long term chance to opt out for a few more years.  Why is the back to education schemes as they currently operate so open-ended that people appear to remain in welfare-funded full time education for as long as 5 years and more?  Why is it made so much easier for social opt-outs to go back to college than people who are genuinely seeking work?  Its not surprising to hear the consistent ignorance of Father Sean Healy, who clearly hasn't spent the many years of living in rented sector, where a large proportion of the welfare-sponger group are concentrated, and seen at first hand, the nice cosy lifestyles of many of those on welfare.

There was a couple of years I spent as the only working tenant in a house of maybe 6 or 7 flats.  It was really amazing to see the great social lives and not at all uncomfortable lifestyles which the guys (they were all single males in the their 20-40s) enjoyed.  Some even had cars at their disposals and a few seemed to have jobs on the black economy also.  Yet they are considered "vulnerable" even though many of the newer taxes don't apply to them - for example I know of people working in public sector roles who are already 200-300 a month worse off than they were last year.

the Community Pillar has made this group into the untouchables.  I live in a terrace in Cork city which is mostly rented and about 50:50 self-funded tenancies and welfare "rent allowance" tenants.  The incredible thing I see is that there is a far higher proportion of car ownership amongst the welfare tenants than there is amongst the working tenants.  This is astonishing considering the very high cost of petrol, car maintenance and insurance.  Yet it seems to be relatively affordable for welfare tenants.  The vast majority of the working tenants don't have cars, presumably because most of them are paying 120-150 per week rents out of their own pockets.  If you consider many of them are only earning low wages - somebody on 1500-2000 a month will thus be easily forking out 500-650 a month on rents while the welfare brigade will consistently get 800 a month roughly.  Add to this the cost of going to work - bus and train fares are easily 80-100 euros a month for those who work out of town so a lot of these guys will only have 1000-1300 left after paying rent.  Take into account doctors fees, prescription charges, and you can see that a lot of the local tenants are only maybe 50-150 euros per week better off than the rent allowance tenants.  Its no wonder that there is such a high proportion of RA tenants.

And interestingly, partially due to wear and tear and wanton vandalism by evicted former RA tenants, most of the RA houses are in horrendous conditions - some of them are the Cork equivalent of African shanty towns.  The tenants leave the doors wide open all day, so security must be non existent.  It seems crazy that there is so little knowledge of the real lifestyles of the so-called "poor" by the community fascists.  Maybe they should come and live on Wellington Rd for a week and see the truth about the lifestyles of the people they are trying to "protect" - in reality they are creating a priveliged class of societal opt-outs at the expense the true vulnerable - low paid workers and non home-owners.