My holiday
Why are our holidays never straight forward
Ok. The day prior to flying out, I was working on a "simple" cleanup job.
I should have known.
Prior to removing the machine from her premises, (solicitor, a malware mess) I performed a quick fabs on to an external drive of hers, (minus the pst's as we were both short of time).
Ps. This is a home office setup, and she lets her kids use the same machine. Same profile.
Go figure.....
(These pst's were huge, particularly as her colleagues were sending her picture files, 20-30 gig EACH. And her broadband isn't the best either).
This alone was 150gb of data. I took the slow transfer down to being the external drive.
I should have seen this coming.
At home on the bench, her drive slaved into my repair machine, the hard drive was behaving like a slug, wearing hiking boots, wading through treacle, carrying a heavy rucksack, wearing jeans at half mast.
Ok. Hdclone onto a new drive. It started well and copied at a half-decent speed, but then it really slowed down.
After 8 hours, I took the hint, aborted hdclone and fired up fabs. A full run this time to my NAS. Time was running out.
The fabs transfer was SLOOOOW.
Of course, the machine was a business machine, and the customer had no proper backup, and she needed the machine back for 8.30 the following morning.
Ok. Install a new drive in her machine and load fresh windows etc etc.
It was now 10pm, and our taxi to the airport was at 11am the following morning.
After a lot of messing about which I won't bore you with, I got to bed at 1.30 am and set my alarm for 6am. I still had to transfer the data across to the new windows inst.
I woke up at 5am and checked progress on my mobile, using team-viewer. The transfer had stalled. Thankfully, just a mouse click required.
Anyway. I got up.
Right, data transferred.
Thankfully the password on her pst file was the same as her login. That was a heart stopper I can tell ya.
Emptied the email trash bin (looks like it had never been done) and ran the pst compress routine. This took a while.
Tick tick tick goes the clock.
I returned the machine, as promised, at 8.30 and mentioned what a marathon it had been.
Total disinterest.
I mentioned that I had managed to get her copy of office 2010 reinstalled.
Total disinterest.
I suggested we sat down together, so she could check out that everything was ok, and functioned ok.
She looked at me in amazement, because I had interrupted her at her desk.
She knew I was against the clock here, but nevertheless took a phone call and disappeared
I waited for her to return.
10 mins..
15 mins.......
I've never stormed out of a house before, but I came damn close here.
I grabbed my kit, found her in an adjoining room, said I had to leave and that if she had any issues, contact me in 2 weeks.
I left..fuming.
I had saved her business from almost certain catastrophe, and that's the thanks you get.
It's now 9.30am
Chill down time ?
Nah. Got to get some euros.
Get back home at 10.30. Quick pack and get the taxi to the airport.
I can grab a nap on the plane.
HOLIDAY !!!!!!!!
What could possibly go wrong.
The flight to Lanzarote, I can only describe as "Ians revenge".
I laughed a couple of weeks ago about how he had to put up with screaming babies on his coach.
This flight was not so much a flight, more of a flying crèche. Screaming kids. Babies. Vomiting. Kids doing their best to snap your spine by kicking the back of the seat.
Mothers (..and fathers. Wifey said it was sexist)
When will you learn that milk, orange juice and turbulence is a bad mix !!
Being British, I smiled sweetly. Little darlings.
Hotel reception.
I had emailed a few weeks earlier about upgrading our room to a double (actually sleeps 3). (I have a tendency to snore after a pint or two, or a medium heavy meal).
Non. None available.
Oh great.
Maybe tomorrow.
So we go to our room, (let's call this room no 1, you will see why later) and of course, am constantly elbowed by her ladyship about my snoring.
Remember, I had barely slept in the last 48 hours.
Next morning, a double room is available.
Great.
So we move there...... Which is 2 doors down from the kids disco, and cannot receive wifi.
16 yr old daughter with no wifi.
Oh boy was she impressed.
This was not a pleasant morning.
Back to reception. Another room please.
Yes. But only from tomorrow morning.
Drag luggage and complaining bodies back to room number 1 for the night.
Next morning. Back to reception to move to room no 3.
"Sorry, I made a mistake. It's not available, but there is another room free from midday"
Groans all around.
At last, we move into room number 4.
Unpack.
Chill.
Cook some pasta.
...... And the electricity fuse blows.... Repeatedly.
So I tramp over to reception, who greet me like an old friend. (Yeah right) who despatch a maintenance man to check the electrics.
The man arrives and flicks the fuse switch. Power returns and he is about to leave. I stop him.
I switch on the stove.
Fuse blows.
He disassembled the stove unit and runs some tests. Checked other appliances. Seems ok now.
Family agrees that we are NOT moving again.
Wifi. Despite having 5 bars is intermittent at best. Login screen fails to appear. When I do get on, I see a Ping test drop 70% of packets.
I try a static IP address to see if that works. It does help a bit.
DNS issues ? Anyway.
I go to reception. Who said they would look into it.
Wifi in the other parts of the complex are ok, it's just this repeater, and frankly I'm just too exhausted to argue.
Madam can get her wifi now, and I'm not going to rock any more boats.
Oh, and it just started raining.
And I've got sunburn.
And my mobile has "no service".
Why are our holidays never straight forward
Ok. The day prior to flying out, I was working on a "simple" cleanup job.
I should have known.
Prior to removing the machine from her premises, (solicitor, a malware mess) I performed a quick fabs on to an external drive of hers, (minus the pst's as we were both short of time).
Ps. This is a home office setup, and she lets her kids use the same machine. Same profile.
Go figure.....
(These pst's were huge, particularly as her colleagues were sending her picture files, 20-30 gig EACH. And her broadband isn't the best either).
This alone was 150gb of data. I took the slow transfer down to being the external drive.
I should have seen this coming.
At home on the bench, her drive slaved into my repair machine, the hard drive was behaving like a slug, wearing hiking boots, wading through treacle, carrying a heavy rucksack, wearing jeans at half mast.
Ok. Hdclone onto a new drive. It started well and copied at a half-decent speed, but then it really slowed down.
After 8 hours, I took the hint, aborted hdclone and fired up fabs. A full run this time to my NAS. Time was running out.
The fabs transfer was SLOOOOW.
Of course, the machine was a business machine, and the customer had no proper backup, and she needed the machine back for 8.30 the following morning.
Ok. Install a new drive in her machine and load fresh windows etc etc.
It was now 10pm, and our taxi to the airport was at 11am the following morning.
After a lot of messing about which I won't bore you with, I got to bed at 1.30 am and set my alarm for 6am. I still had to transfer the data across to the new windows inst.
I woke up at 5am and checked progress on my mobile, using team-viewer. The transfer had stalled. Thankfully, just a mouse click required.
Anyway. I got up.
Right, data transferred.
Thankfully the password on her pst file was the same as her login. That was a heart stopper I can tell ya.
Emptied the email trash bin (looks like it had never been done) and ran the pst compress routine. This took a while.
Tick tick tick goes the clock.
I returned the machine, as promised, at 8.30 and mentioned what a marathon it had been.
Total disinterest.
I mentioned that I had managed to get her copy of office 2010 reinstalled.
Total disinterest.
I suggested we sat down together, so she could check out that everything was ok, and functioned ok.
She looked at me in amazement, because I had interrupted her at her desk.
She knew I was against the clock here, but nevertheless took a phone call and disappeared
I waited for her to return.
10 mins..
15 mins.......
I've never stormed out of a house before, but I came damn close here.
I grabbed my kit, found her in an adjoining room, said I had to leave and that if she had any issues, contact me in 2 weeks.
I left..fuming.
I had saved her business from almost certain catastrophe, and that's the thanks you get.
It's now 9.30am
Chill down time ?
Nah. Got to get some euros.
Get back home at 10.30. Quick pack and get the taxi to the airport.
I can grab a nap on the plane.
HOLIDAY !!!!!!!!
What could possibly go wrong.
The flight to Lanzarote, I can only describe as "Ians revenge".
I laughed a couple of weeks ago about how he had to put up with screaming babies on his coach.
This flight was not so much a flight, more of a flying crèche. Screaming kids. Babies. Vomiting. Kids doing their best to snap your spine by kicking the back of the seat.
Mothers (..and fathers. Wifey said it was sexist)
When will you learn that milk, orange juice and turbulence is a bad mix !!
Being British, I smiled sweetly. Little darlings.
Hotel reception.
I had emailed a few weeks earlier about upgrading our room to a double (actually sleeps 3). (I have a tendency to snore after a pint or two, or a medium heavy meal).
Non. None available.
Oh great.
Maybe tomorrow.
So we go to our room, (let's call this room no 1, you will see why later) and of course, am constantly elbowed by her ladyship about my snoring.
Remember, I had barely slept in the last 48 hours.
Next morning, a double room is available.
Great.
So we move there...... Which is 2 doors down from the kids disco, and cannot receive wifi.
16 yr old daughter with no wifi.
Oh boy was she impressed.
This was not a pleasant morning.
Back to reception. Another room please.
Yes. But only from tomorrow morning.
Drag luggage and complaining bodies back to room number 1 for the night.
Next morning. Back to reception to move to room no 3.
"Sorry, I made a mistake. It's not available, but there is another room free from midday"
Groans all around.
At last, we move into room number 4.
Unpack.
Chill.
Cook some pasta.
...... And the electricity fuse blows.... Repeatedly.
So I tramp over to reception, who greet me like an old friend. (Yeah right) who despatch a maintenance man to check the electrics.
The man arrives and flicks the fuse switch. Power returns and he is about to leave. I stop him.
I switch on the stove.
Fuse blows.
He disassembled the stove unit and runs some tests. Checked other appliances. Seems ok now.
Family agrees that we are NOT moving again.
Wifi. Despite having 5 bars is intermittent at best. Login screen fails to appear. When I do get on, I see a Ping test drop 70% of packets.
I try a static IP address to see if that works. It does help a bit.
DNS issues ? Anyway.
I go to reception. Who said they would look into it.
Wifi in the other parts of the complex are ok, it's just this repeater, and frankly I'm just too exhausted to argue.
Madam can get her wifi now, and I'm not going to rock any more boats.
Oh, and it just started raining.
And I've got sunburn.
And my mobile has "no service".
Last edited:
. 
. When I went to Spain in May I had the idea of taking all business calls in Spain, this time there was no proper signal and it kept dropping my calls. I had travelled 1200 miles on a coach to find the weather was just the same as the UK. 
