Woke up this morning feeling a like death.

Must of been that bloody beer but I felt like crap. Not touching that stuff again. Wierd as I felt OK last night and I drank far more at other times this week.

Training was OK but there are more bugs in 10.5.3 server than under my decking (which is home to countless spiders according to Adam).

Whether it is the AFP authentication bug (which stops anyone connecting to the server via AFP or OD) or the various flakey exhibits in web services.

We also found out that things like the Wiki server have to be run on the same machine as the OD server – not a connected server, the same server. What a POS, I mean unless you have 5 members of staff who is going to do that?

Lunch today at the beach – at last Meat – steak and chips, although I never understood the French facination with sticking a cold pat of butter on the top of a steak. Water only for me today – I feel crap as it is and I am not trying the “hare that bit the dog” approach that someone recommended. Read the rest of this entry »

Called home this morning and spoke to Mrs who didn’t want to disturb my daughter because she was up to 4am with her friends on her 16th Birthday sleepover.

Went to training and called again before lunch, think they were out. Eventually go hold of them this evening and dispite the transient nature of the internet connection here, I managed to wish her happy birthday and make the correct noises.

Really today the training was a bit secondary as I was thinking about home – bit sad really but there it is. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I am not going to write much this evening because I want to concentrate on the course notes, however it was an OK day apart from the OS which is still buggy.

Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, too much wine blah blah – I am sure you the reader couldn’t give a monkeys. May write more tomorrow.

Missing family. The calls home are taking their toll a bit and I am looking forward to seeing them Wednesday.

Have set an alarm to remind me to call Amy in the morning.

Up early and swatting for the exam this afternoon.

Morning session to cover startup and troubleshooting then Lunch in the Hotel.

4:18pm Exam time!

(It is a 2Hr exam so no rush)

. . . . . .

5:14pm Pass Time!

Ok, I dropped two questions but some of them were tricksy. Read the rest of this entry »

Day three (Second day of training)

Training is going OK, if a little slow for my liking. I think that much of the exercises in this course could have been chopped – at least in this environment where most if not all of the delegates are quite experiences.

That said, there are a couple of the folks who are not what you can call Mac experts and I guess they are getting useful experience of stuff they wouldn’t normally encounter. For the old Mac heads like me, it does drag a little. Read the rest of this entry »

Up bright and early for breakfast and the first day of training today.

This year I’m doing the ACTC certification course of 10.5 support essentials and 10.5 Server essentials.

The Course is OK, Dave – our trainer is in good form however the course material has not changed much from 10.4 and is a little slow going. This is the potato’s and I am looking forward to the meat – unlike the Steak Tartare we were served for lunch at the hotel’s beachfront restaurant today at lunch however, which although I am bit of a carnivore, I just couldn’t bring my self to consume. The meat was expertly seasoned and prepared but it was still like a burger that they forgot to cook. Thoughts of worms and other lovley stuff really put me off. I am sure it was fine and far better than most of the fast food and takeaway I eat from my local establishments (it is France after all), but no thanks – I just ate the chips. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday and it’s travel day for the delegates going to Cannes in the south of France to attend the Amsys / Agnosys Apple Summer Camp.

For a couple of reasons (Mrs was at work and the car needs a service) I am taking public transport to Stanstead airport in Essex to fly EasyJet into Nice airpor.

Typically with London’s transport system there was a problem. Somone decided to act a bit strange at Stratford station and the whole of the eastern railway service ground to a hault for 45 minutes. When you are travelling to catch a plane it is very frustrating. Thankfully, I am retentive enough that I built-in enought buffer time to my journey that it wasn’t a big issue.

So the journey went; Romford to Liverpool Street (£5), Liverpool Street to Stanstead (£17). Some of the guys here spen that much on their entire journey by train from other parts of Europe.

Britain once lead the world in rail transport and now we are a joke, it saddens me.

Check in at Stanstead was relatively painless but security there now dictates that as we go airside we have to take off our shoes. I was tempted to strip completely but there were kids around and I didn’t want to scar them for life.

I watched as a toddler was patted down and swiped with an explosives detector and pondered on who was winning the war on terror.

Flight was OK, managed to find one of the only seats without another passenger next to me (in a three seat row), alas not a window seat but you can’t have everything.

Landed in Nice about 5ish and met up with two other delegates. We were eventually met by a chap from Amsys who gave us 100 Euro and put us in a cab to Cannes. 85 of those Euros later and we were at the Hotel.

Interesting(ish) fact. Nice only issues 476 taxi licenses so when they come up for sale, they change hands at upto half a million euros each – hense the expensive taxi’s.

Evening meal + Free Drink and bed was the order of the night and apart from arranging an internet connection (49 Euros for a POS WiFi – pronounced “wiffy”  in French) that’s it for Day 1.