So I've finished my first two days at work and all I can say is jesus, h, fucking, christ. I'm supposed to be developing a half-finished system to help their business but this is a business that has an IT infrastructure to rival Telewest after a visiting from Retards Recabling Inc.

I mean - a) there's no cabling map anywhere and the IT manager left 4 weeks ago taking all knowledge with him, b) the servers are all on the stairs. Yes, actually ON THE STAIRS of a heavily used stairwell with no ventilation, c) despite having 48 slots on the switch in an office of 16 people, 6 people daisy chain off a single port (in layman's terms having six people share a broadband connection with 5 free sockets directly in front of them), d) every computer and server has a different password - none of which are written down, e) the ex-IT manager refuses to divulge the main certifier password - meaning the email system is crippled, though that's less of a problem because, f) the only mail server has so little free space it fails to survive an hour at a time.

Oh and g) no backups have been taken since 2004. It feels good to rant.

I likes a challenge, me... :)

And the surviving IT bod is a funny nutjob who likes her beer as much as I do. Should be an interesting 6 months.

So, what happened at Glade? Well skipping all the work and heat and lack of sleep out of it, I got there at 10pm Wed night and got my first visit to the main site on Saturday where randomly Alabama 3 were playing (purely I think so that they could sing "You don't dans 2 tekno" to 2000 people of whom 90% were pilled up after doing exactly that to all the other dance acts for 2 days). After converting another believer I did another shift before joining Paul and Sue for a first evening out. Dance music isn't really my thing, but pretty lights! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoWGThDSum4

After wandering a bit we headed to the back-stage bar until around 2:30am when Sue and I realised that Paul hadn't returned from the loo about 20 minutes before. We resolved to head back to the campsite but just as we were leaving the backstage area, up came Paul saying to follow him and to say nothing. We followed him to the back of the main stage where he headed straight through the 'Performers Only' entrance and into back stage. From there we went to the edge of the backing curtain and watched Juno Reactor (who?) doing some african drumming with mixed in guitars (it was surprisingly good). Best of all we were standing in full view of the 3000 people in the tent for the headline act (I guess the Glastonbury equivalent would be Radiohead on the pyramid stage last act on the saturday). There were about 8 of these guys, half in full tribal gear and we were happily boogeying away when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find a security guard behind me. Oops. The conversation went like this:

Me: "Yes?"

Guard: "Can I take a photo mate?"

Me: (Pause) "Yeah, sure boss, but be quick about it eh?"

After this exchange I took a few photos and videos like this:


At this point what appeared to be their manager wandered over, having noticed us. Feeling a bit devil-may-care I gave him a nod and a wink and commented on how good the set was going. Obviously thinking I was someone important (as opposed to someone serving food to oxfam volunteers to help a mate out) he shook my hand and made sure some of the band saw it. Once we moved to the other side the drummer their kept giving us the thumbs up between songs and I found a good opportunity to take an arty shot:


Finally, the band finished at 4am and all came off to high-five us and we departed the stage area feeling very pleased for ourselves - stopping only to get the security staff to take a picture of the three of us under the 'Performers Only' sign. Professional security, just serious fuckwittage.... :)