This Place Crawls.

Well it has been some months since my last post here. So here's a quick outline of what's been going on.

Firstly you may of noticed that under the Serious section of the website I added a section entitled Powershell. I've been writing a fair few Powershell scripts at work recently and if I think that any of them or any components of them might be useful to anybody else I'll stick some guides on what to do here. There currently is one there at the moment for writing a basic combat engine in Powershell for a text based adventure game that I wrote using it at work. It's not quite finished as it could do with a few tweaks and some more content added but the basic bones are there so I may upload it to the site in the Future.

Writing the adventure game in Powershell eventually got me thinking it would be nice to have a more graphical rendition of the game and I moved it over to Flash. Which has proved to be an interesting challenge, as it involves a lot more coding in Flash then I'm used to. Also as the version of Flash I have is very old it means that if I get a bit stuck if I try to find some help online it's all for newer versions, meaning I have to figure it out for myself. Which is more rewarding when I do figure it out, but it means it's a lot harder work. It's not finished yet but I think I've got a lot of the basics done with it. So after that it's just the art, sounds, music, polishing and fixing bugs. So if I knuckle down and don't get distracted by something shinny or another idea that may get finished and uploaded to the site at some point.
Also as I work for the NHS I'm kind of in limbo land as to if I'll have a job at the start of April or not. I won't be getting fired though, my post will just not be in the organisation after it's "restructured". Which just means I don't have to turn up for work anymore! So it's not all bad. It will however also mean that I don't have a job title, an employer or for that matter actually, you know, get paid any more. Which I'm trying not to let interfere with my life too much but it's hard. There's this ever looming prospect that soon I may be out on my arse in the cold without a job. So cheers everybody who voted for the Conservatives[1], hope you're having fun suckling at David "Call me Dave" Cameron’s teat.

Anyho I'll leave you with the tale of what happened at work the other day to try and distract us from the sword of Damocles above my head.

 

At the moment we're currently stripping out all our old servers from sites at the moment, this tale takes place during one such server removal.

The door is jammed I put some weight against it and it judders a bit then slowly moves back. Wisps of dust flutter out of the dark room into the light of the corridor there is a dark line of dust about a half inch wide all around the door where it's been against the jamb. Great dust, I'm allergic to dust. I step into the room and reach round the wall for the light switch. The floor lets out a light but unmistakable crunch sound. "Feels like I step on Fortune Cookie!" I mutter as I finally find the light switch. The light in the ceiling dimly glows a red orange as it begins to warm up, it emits a steady hum as it warms up mingling with the sounds of a straining extractor fan somewhere on my left. As with most 'Server Rooms' at our practices the term room isn't really as applicable as say broom cupboard; so the half-light from the warming up bulb is enough for me to get an idea of the objects in the room, the server and associated gear we need are to my right under a bench running along that wall, the monitor and keyboard for it are on the bench. I take the step required to get over and reach them and hit the on button on the monitors, it's an old heavy CRT one. It clunks and then flickers to life providing more light then the actual light fitting as it basks the room in its glow. There's dust all over the keyboard I tilt it then brush it off with my hand, experience tells me if I blow dust it seems to just blow up in my face and I catch a nose full of it, which would be bad for me. Stupid dust Kryptonite. I set the keyboard back flat on the bench and type in the commands to safely shutdown the server and wait.

The extractor fan behind me lets out a loud whine and stops after a heart beat it makes a grinding sound as it starts again then continues to make it's stuttering unhealthy sounds as it spins round. The server beeps and tells me that it can be safely powered down and disconnected I hit its power button, shimmy it forward as far as the cables will allow, roughly half and inch and I'm just about to reach round the back of it when with a ping the light finally fully comes on giving me for the first time a full good look at the room.

It is truly the land that the cleaners forgot. The walls were once white, I can tell from where my fingers questioning for the light switch have smeared the dust away. Now the walls are a dark gray of dust, they also have larger patches of darkness that are rippled across the wall like waves in the black deserts sand. The extractor fan has what looks like a huge sheet of black over it that billows inwards with the fans groaning efforts. I can see my footprints in the floor like in snow on a winters day, oh yes and those fortune cookies, not fortune cookies. Spiders. Now dead spiders. My eyes adjust to the brighter light. Those ripples on the walls, spider webs covered in dust. The sheet over the extractor Spider web covered in dust. The dust I wiped off the keyboard. Dead spiders. I look around there are dead spiders everywhere their legs all curled up at ridged angles. It's an arachnopocolypse.

Well this is freaky and more then a little disgusting and also possibly a name for a SyFy movie but I still need to get the server out of here. I reach my hand steadily round the back of the server to unplug the cables. Ew it's all dusty round the back of here as well, cobwebs I mentally correct myself, it's not dust it's cobwebs, well dust and cobwebs I suppose. I pull it in clumps off the cables and unplug them before dragging the server forward. Small dead spider bodies drop from behind the server, where I'd pulled the cables from, as I pull it forward, like leaves falling on an Autumn day. Dead Spider leaves that is. I dump the server out in the corridor, next up is the UPS[2] battery backup. I wipe the dead spider bodies off the top with my shoe and unplug it at the back and pick it up, Christ these things are heavy. As I carry it out to the corridor dead spiders drop out of the power supply vent at the back. I dump the keyboard and monitor into the corridor as well and I'm just making my last trip to collect the last few cables when I finally get a chance to ponder what killed all these spiders? Bending down under the bench to reach the last cables in the darkest corner I notice something rather large stir under there.
You know what, I think I've got everything I need. I slowly back out of the room.

[1]Who didn't actually win the election. Somebody should probably tell them that.

[2]Uninterruptible Power Supply. It's essentially a big car battery that will keep the server running it there is a power outage.