The Moon and the Clouds

 

ruined our viewing of the Perseids meteor shower.

The bastards!!

I dream of taking photos like these

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=perseid&z=e

Unfortunately all I got was a hundred photos of black. Even with some Photoshop trickery all I got was some black images with a few white bits.

However all was not lost. We did see about a dozen shooting stars including two that travelled more than half way across the sky before the clouds came in on Tuesday.

Because the moon was rising early and was quite bright it washed out the sky meaning that the smaller shooting stars were not so visible thats what you get with a waning gibbous moon you know

Tonight we will try again. We shall take the dog to the cricket field and lie on a sleeping bag and drift away looking at all that is far away and feel very small. I look forward to it immensely

There is something wonderful about just sitting and waiting for the universe to entertain me. Without any outside influence from ‘the media’. Watching the amazing show made up of tiny little particles, the remnants of the beginning of the universe travelling behind the Swift-Tuttle Comet hitting our atmosphere at speeds of more than 100,000 miles per hours and burning to nothingness.

A joy it is to watch the sky and see nothing but stars, maybe a plane, a satelite if you look carefully or maybe one of the planets and then WHAM there it is a streak across the sky. A small one normally gets a “One over there” whilst a larger particle which leaves a long streak across the sky that can last for many seconds will get OOOO’s and Ahhhs and there is no doubt that everyone saw it.

So go out and look at the sky for a while. It is a stunning experience.

Read your email

Due to the unplanned nature of our teams attitude to upgrades or changes, nobody had thought it nessecary to inform our users that there would be changes to the way they would log onto the network and their webmail.

As we needed to do these changes I decided to send out an email to this effect :-

“We are making some changes to the wya you log onto your computers at XXXXX and your webmail over the next few weeks.

Should you find that you cannot log onto your computer follow these steps (change domain name and log on as usual and wait for me to come and sort out outlook)

Should you find you cannot log onto webmail, go to this address and type in newdomain\username and there you go.

Please print out this email or forward it to your personal email so that you can access it at the point you cannot log on.”

Simples

Oh no. Firstly can I just say that these people I am emailing are, in general, teaching degrees, masters and PhD’s. Clever folks.

I get an email (from current webmail system) saying I cannot access this new email and I really need to get at it, I can’t be without access to my email as I am in China and must keep in contact with all my students and colleagues. So I explain that she won’t be able to access the new system until her account has been migrated.

But I need access now, she says (in her email from the current webmail) I can’t wait, I need to be able to get to my emails its very important (she says in her email from the current system where she can still access her email and stay in contact)

For fucks sake – just read what I wrote – you are not stupid (I wish I had written) You HAVENT been migrated yet (so you can still access your emails the way you always have) and when you have been migrated you can use these instructions to get at your email without delay.

GRRRRRR moan wimble whinge grumble groan mutter to self about usuless stupid clever people who CANT READE

Thanks – she said – that makes it clear I understand – you are ever so helpful.

Luckily, another happy user. Me, hair pulled out, eyes glaring, need to go out for a smoke to calm down. Other users weren’t so happy tho :-(