Three Days Work At Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire.

Its been a very blissful three days at Brocket Hall.

I have been support a Directors Board Meeting and took the few hours at my disposal to wonder the grounds of this huge Estate.

Brocket Hall is a country house in Hertfordshire, England, 22 miles from central London by road. It was built for Sir Matthew Lamb, 1st Baronet, in around 1760 to designs by the architect James Paine. It stands on the site of two predecessors, the first of which was built in 1239. It is a tall red brick neoclassical house in a fine landscape setting with a Palladian bridge. The main staircase is probably the finest of the interiors. A ceiling was painted by Francis Wheatley.

Sir Matthew’s son became the first Lord Melbourne and he was often visited at Brocket Hall by the Prince Regent, who had a liaison with Lady Melbourne. The next owner was William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1835-1841. On his death, the house passed to his sister, who was to marry Lord Palmerston who also became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and who died at Brocket while still in office. Queen Victoria was another visitor to Brocket.

In 1923 the estate was purchased by Sir Charles Nall-Cain; he was created Baron Brocket in 1933. It was a maternity hospital during World War II.

In the late 20th century Charles Nall-Cain, 3rd Baron Brocket, also a convicted fraudster and reality television personality, converted Brocket Hall into a hotel and conference centre. It has two golf courses, a Faldo Golf Institute, and a restaurant called Auberge du Lac which was formerly associated with celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli.

As usual, I took the time to take some stunning pictures of the place.

Brocket Hall - Library

Brocket Hall - Snooker Room

Brocket Hall - Dinning Room

Brocket Hall - Ceiling View

Brocket Hall - Stair View

Brocket Hall - Stair View

Brocket Hall - Lake View And Golf Course

Brocket Hall - Lake And Mini Waterfall

Broket Hall - Outside View

Brocket Hall - Tea Lounge

Brocket Hall - Tea Lounge

Brocket Hall - Tea Lounge

From M&E to Zulughana….With Love

I was up on the 6th floor 4 weeks ago sorting out a Lotus Notes issue for one of my clients. Just by the desk of one of the Executive Assistants were some old IT kit that needed to be disposed of and a helmet. I inquired about the helmet and was told that it was going to be sold on eBay to raise some dosh for the M&E team to buy some beer. I instantly told them that I was interested in the helmet and that it should be spared from ending up on eBay.

I had completely forgotten about the helmet untill last week when I came back to my desk to find it sitting there with a note attached to it “to Zulu from the M&E department – with love”

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week…….. Day Three – Tuesday

I woke up around 5AM with a splitting headache. I was kind of expecting this invasion of my brain cell with this sort of pain, so I quickly rushed to the bathroom where I had a packet of pain-killers. I went back to sleep immediately and woke up at 6.30AM from my wake up call.
Breakfast was in “The Cellar”. My appetite was huge, as you probably know, from all that alcohol I had been drinking from the night before into the early hours of Tuesday. I quickly finish breakfast and went over to the conference rooms to setup my kit. Tuesday was a short day. The Directors had fishing and golf lined up for them from 3AM onwards, so the Directors Secretary bought me a days pass for a bus tour of Dublin city centre.
I caught the bus from just outside The Merrion and proceeded to take pictures. The bus tour was fabulous. I totally enjoyed it. It was windy as it was an open top bus, and at one point I lost my baseball cap I bought in Bangalore. I was gutted, but found solace in the fact that I became friends with an American Lady called Ebony.

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week…….. Day Two – Monday

Monday fond me up bright and early. I had a great night on Sunday. The conference organizer and the Directors Secretary I was supporting took me out to a restaurant about 5 minutes walk from the hotel we were staying in. I think it is called Pebles. The food was absolutely lovely. One thing I learnt about Irish cooking is that they never use frozen fish to cook. Everything is fresh from the sea. I was hoping to have my first pint of genuine Irish Guinness beer, but unfortunately, the restaurant did not serve beer.
Anyway after setting up the conference room with the laptops and projectors needed to the Directors presentation, I took the free time that I had to take pictures around the Hotel. I would just like to mention that the pictures have been taken with a Nokia N95-8G, which is quite impressive.

This building is just across the street from The Merrion Hotel.

The Merrion Hotel – A View From Outside. You wouldnt believe that this
building has such beautiful rooms in it.

The Coffee Lounge At The Merrion.

The conference was setup up in two parts. One room catered for a teleconference meeting, and the other room was for the conference “proper”

BAT Dublin Conference Room One

BAT Dublin Conference Room Two

Now I shall show you some pictures of my Hotel room. The one thing that caught my eye as soon as I entered the room was the height of the bed. Not that I am complaining. It was a great bed, absolutely perfect.

My Comfort Zone In My Hotel Room

My Entertainment Centre

The white cabinet on which the flat screen TV is resting on has a fuly loaded drinks bar tucked away in it!

My Bed

Also check out the BOSE CD player sitting on the right side of this picture, if I had known, I would have brought some “serious” Smooth Jazz CD’s. The aquality of sound that bashes out of those devices is wicked.

The Bathroom

OK, so things finally finished off at 7PM and I gathred my IT Kit and made tracks to my room, I was quite tired and was looking forward to an early night. Just as I got to my room, I got a call asking me to be at reception by 9PM. We were all going out for a meal at Johnnies. Now for those of you who are toourist in Dublin and have not been over to Johnnie’s…well, you guys are missing out “big time”.
The drive in a BMW 740 series] took about 35 minutes. I actually went on ahead of everyone else with the conference organizer from Number 20 just to make sure that everything was in place for the Directors when they got there. The joint totally blew me away. It was here I had my first genuine pint of Guinness. Wow, now this is what I call Guinness. I am now sure that the pubs in london dilute their Guinness one way or the other. from now onwards, if I ever have the urge to drink Guinness, I will either fly over to Dublin or have it sent to me by some special means. Check out the pictures taken at Johnnies below.

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week…….. Day One – Sunday

My flight from Heathrow was uneventful. The flight was delayed by 25 minutes, but hey, in the end we were up in the air and before i noticed the captain was annoucing our arrival into Dublin airport.

I was not expecting the airport to be that small. Mind you I was expecting Dublin to be a big city, but as my driver was telling me on the way to the Hotel, Dublin is a fairly small city. Since joining the EU, there has been a huge influx of workers from Europe currently working here. Everything here looks so different [obviously!].

The driver was kind enough to take me through a quick tour of the city.

I am staying at The Merrion Hotel, which, according to the driver, is located in a very strategic part of town. He adviced me to check out The Temple Bar. My next question to him was “how about the Guiness”. He just laughed and said I should not leave Dublin without sampling the beer. He said if I did leave without sampling the beer I would be doing myself serious harm.

My hotel room is just amazing. As usual, i have taken some pictures of the room and hotel for those interested. Watch out for Day Two log enteries which will have some pictures.

I Am Off To Dublin Next Week.

I have never been to Ireland, you will please pardon my excitement.

There is a conference being held there for a period of 4 days. Its a practice that when the top guys in BAT are having a conference in any part of the world there is the presence of an IT person there to assistance with any IT related things. This can range from Blackberry support, through VPN connection issues down to anything.

Yesterday, the PA to one of the top guys at work asked me to kindly step into her office so that we could book our tickets to Dublin. I will be going via Terminal One at Heathrow and will be flying with Air Lingus

I wonder what the Irish people are like? And what is all this facination about Guiness Beer? Well I hope I get some time to do some sightseeing whilst I am up there. Hey if any of you out there is Irish and has some tips for me, then please jot something here for me. Thanks

That reminds me, I need to ask the PA tomorrow what hotel we will be staying in.

At Work – Weekending 17th May

This week I was based at Danesfield House Hotel, based in Marlow, supporting the LACAR conference. The Hotel grounds are absolutely great. I didn’t actually spend any nights in the hotel, but with these old country houses, you notice that they tend to need a complete overhauling due to their age.

Standing outside the hotel at the back you have a superb view of the grounds and also part of the Thames River.

I was originally booked to set-up the IT kit and return back to Globe House on Tuesday. However thinking to myself, told the PA that since this was her first conference it would be a bad idea for me to leave her all alone for the rest of the week. Out of the 17 delegates at the conference, at least 12 were popping into the office I was using every day asking for assistance on IT related issues.

Danesfield House Hotel is a perfect place to:
1….chill out for the weekend with your partner, wife/husband or friend
2….have a wedding reception
3….have breakfast, lunch or dinner

No Comment…….

I was onsite at another company about two weeks ago on a friday night to do some work. I couldnt help using my mobile phone to take pictures of thier server room.

I just could not believe the state in which the room was in. I have been in a lot of server rooms, some in a sorry state, but this one beats them all.

well done FSA..!

At work Today – 22nd April

got into work at 08:10 as usual. My trip to work was no different from those I normally take every other day, well except for the fact that today the train stopped at Bedford for about 10 minutes, something to do with the doors not being able to close properly. But when you get into the habot of taking trains, and event like this is no big deal.

So I got into work, dropped my stuff off at my desk and made my way downstairs to the company restuarant. LOL…yeah restuarant, I would normally call it a canteen, but this place of eating is too posh to be called a canteen. Anyway, I got myself a bowl of oats and a cup fo coffee and headed back to my desk.

The morning was pretty busy, we are currently short staffed. Normally arrangements would be made for replacement support analyst to fill in the gap, but recently a lot of “politics” has been going on within managed services. Everyone has their suspicions that its to do with the renewing of the present contract.

About 20 minutes before lunch, I noticed that there were quite an unusal number of people gathered around Kirks [not his real name] desk. I had a quick glance and noticed that there was the Service Delivery Manager, another support analyst, the IT Manager for the company I currently work for; and a few other people. From the conversations that was being thrown about, Kirk was urgently trying to sort out a Lotus Notes issue for a VIP. The VIP needed his Lotus Notes on his laptop sorted out in the next 10 minutes as he was going on a trip. To the relief of all those standing around Kirk, he managed to sort the issue out, tested Lotus notes and confirmed that all was OK.

So we make our way to lunch with Kirk telling us what the issue was. Twenty minutes into lunch, we notice the Service Delivery Manager wondering around the restuarant. he heads towards our table and calls Kirk aside and walks off with Kirk. back upstairs, we notice that the Service delivery manager and the company IT Manager are standing around Kirk whist he is gathering his things. No one could tell us what was going on. From the body language, I immediately sensed that Kirk was bieng walked offsite, but the question was WHY? After thirty minutes, the SDM [Service Delivery Manager] calls us all into the meeting room and informs us that Kirk has been suspended pending further investigations.

You should have seen the look on our faces. We were in total shock. What the hell is going on?

Apparently, after fixing the Notes problem, Kirk wanted to send a test mail from the VIP’s laptop to himself. He asked the SDM and the IT Manager [to which they agreeed] before sending the mail. Now the VIP notices from his Blackberry that an email has originated from his account into Kirks email account. Now here is the knockout punch. The test email Kirk decided to send was an email, with attachment of a document of very sensitive nature. So the VIP immediately calls the IT Mnager and request that Kirk be dismissed.

Anyway, at the end of the meeting everyone seem to come to the conclusion that we needed to watch out for ourselves because management are just not an effective tool in supporting you in such a crisis like this. All during the meeting, it became more and more obvious that Kirk had been led to the slaughter house to save the hind of the SDm and IT manager.

What a shame….

All In A Days Work

Since becoming an IT contractor many years ago, I have worked for a lot of companies, especially in the city of London,UK. Each day at work has never failed to bring the unexpected. If only I had started documenting the events of my day at work [sigh] earlier on in my IT career. However since it is never too late to start something, I have decided to dedicate a page to the rants and raves of my workplace environment and the things that happen in then.

I suppose the driving force in anyones day in a work environment are the people whom you work with or for. I am sure you will agree that there comes a time when you have to work with some real jerks and on the flip side, other times you get to work with some really nice people.

Another determining point of ones day are is your working envoronment itself. If where you work is pretty much a hell hole, then I suppose your feelings towards work is negative and you embrace your activities at work with a feeling of some rejection.

I wonder how other people in other professions would document their day? Well maybe if you happen to drop by on this blog, you will be kind enough to tell me [us] how your day was at work [not necessarily today, but any other day gone by].