Ok, so its been quiet here, a book post and nothing else. The house, the reading and, finally, the new job has just killed the time off and I am bloody knackered.

Don't get me wrong, this is not an unhappy state, this is truly a knackered state.

The house is getting along quite nicely after the Christmas break. There is a big push to finish the small bed room but to do that I needed to get all of the electrics done in the living room underneath so we can get the laminate floor down. Obviously this required the tool that would allow me to get the work done as quickly as possible, new angle grinder with diamond disk it is then. Certainly the best way of doing the work and so so much quicker than the drilling and chiseling of the small room. A word of warning for all of those of you reading this and thinking its the way forward..... get the misses out of the house and seal up the room. I was prepared but, despite very strong and numerous warnings, there was a look of shock on the face of the other half when she saw the dust that was in the room and I had already cleared up a load of the mess. Another tip, don't just have safety glasses like I was wearing, you do really need goggles if you want to open your eyes the next day.

So thats the house, a big push this weekend should see all the new wiring underneath a bonding coat and everything connected into the new ring thats being put in.

The new job is very exciting. As much as I have had great fun at lots of my previous jobs, it is so nice to be in the middle of a big group of people as opposed to being architect, font of knowledge and the person delivering, without and direct support of an equal, team or superior. I have, right at the end of skype, a huge group of people who I can ask questions of, even better, the company actually encourages the sharing of information though specific chat groups, forums and meetings.

The exciting thing for me is the technology stack. I am split across two different projects, both with a similar technology stack for an ops point of view and both key pieces are things I haven't used before or, at least, for a very long time. Ansible and Puppet. One of the projects, currently under review but still a possibility, is looking to use Salt. At this rate I will have full real life full production experience of all the major configuration management tools. Go me!!!!

So, after years of being a chef man, its nice to look at the other technologies. Puppet is much the same, I still find some of it a little bit strange in comparison to chef, mostly around the environment/node/nodetype specific data management. However Ansible has won my heart already, such a simple tool and all the code makes it so self explanatory, however there are some issues around it being a true "configuration" management tool, much of which was acknowledged at the latest Ansible fest in London and, with that acknowledgement, also many fixes are coming. While I can see there are some things to fix, I really hope that it won't become the large everything to everybody that both Chef and Puppet have become.

This role is also a step back in time, close working with government, if you have ever worked with any type of government department you will know how that works. Its better than the last time I was there and certain departments are leaps and bounds ahead of others but even those, well, I will leave it to your imagination. On top of that, one of the people I have direct contact with is someone how I have worked with in the past..... and never actually expected to cross paths with again. Then, finally, something of nightmares. Years of battling with products that were originally introduced to me when they were IPlanet, that moved on to became Sun One, finally removing them from my life, being replaced with far more sensible bits of software, I am now back there fighting it again. Different front end tools and yet another name but still too many bits that say "IPlanet" or "SunOne". Oh well should be fun and allow my to get back to the good old sweary days :)

So, to finish this little post, just a funny story from the in laws. They have been away on holiday for the past week, a great opportunity to test out the satnav that they were bought for Christmas. Now, everything, it appears was all good and very few complaints. the funny part of the story is Grandmother asking how many people are those in the office directing at any one time and how do they manage not to get confused......

So, every if the rest of this post bored you to death, I do hope thats put at least a little smile on your face