No Surprise - 16th - 30th March 2009

Its with no surprise that two weeks have gone by and there have been no blog entries. I did try but after so many issues going on whether darts or personal I will simply just summarize the two weeks (and to be honest what I remember) and you can judge for yourself. Don't take pity though this is my normal routine its just that this time its gone slightly overboard.

With the Gib Open looming last week of course pending issues arose at the last minute with a few committee members not being able to attend I was forced to lend my hand at the last minute to get final details in order like printing various things, purchasing trophy plates and engraving, whiteboards, sponsor monies in cash (thanks Guy you're a star). Even though I had given firm instructions to the committee that I was simply unavailable to help during the week, in true typical llanito style things where not planned properly. Its quite annoying but there you go.

There were also issues with the players for the Gib Open Monies/Entries/Draw, Med Cup, media articles, general GDA administration and hundreds of emails sent. Basically anything you can think of I have done this week; family, friends, work, darts, its been an incredibly busy time.

In the Gib Open I lost 3-1 not a shock as its very difficult to concentrate when your organising. I even asked personal friends to come along as we where understaffed that day. Luckily a few committee members handled the Ladies/Youth side and Darren and I handled the Men's side. In hindsight it was the smoothest Gibraltar Open we have done undermanned and all.

Thanks must go to the MC's, Louise Simmonds, Allan Carrington and the chalkers who all volunteered like champions. If it weren't for you guys it would be an impossibility. Thanks to our sponsors Kronenbourg 1664, Music Corner and the Gibraltar Government. Must add a note that the Youth players behaved exceptionally well and should be applauded for that.

My good friend John Ferrell from the UK took won the Gib Open. For a few years I have always said that John is a cracking player despite the usual comments every year with people putting him down "I can beat him". Well yes so can I, but most the time I bet on him jejeje!!!! Only Henry Zapata got close in the Gib Open with a chance to win (missed doubles), unlucky but it was John's day. In the semi's and final he played really well scoring 4 x 180's and in the semis achieving close to a 35 average.

It is time you get some feedback on my personal life (which is also why there has been no blog entries in two weeks). One of things was not being able to attend the BDO Torremolinos to defend my 2 times in a row pairs title as I had no work leave (days booked for marriage).

The only grace was that a lot of people contacted me saying that my presence was missed which I thought was endearing and simply nice.

I have been in contact with my lawyer and all the legal Government offices to get my marriage in order, dealing with work issues, teaching a colleague, to take over my role during my absence which is the backups of the Government of Gibraltar and nearly its departments.

The backups procedures and strategy was all covered and my colleague was now ready to take it on until the last minute when we did a configuration change so that he had absolutely nothing to worry about during my absence. This event happened last Monday when we lost the link to over 6.5 Terra Bytes of backed up information. Must add MS Windows IS CRAPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!! Now if some of you are used to GigaBytes I'll put it into perspective that's 6500 GigaBytes!!!! equal to storing close to 2 million average MP3 songs!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say recovering that information has been an absolute nightmare. I have worked for the past week Monday to Sunday 9am to 12pm, monitoring and moving information across. All sorts of things have happened like not being able to purchase extra storage space, losing 1 hour of download because of recent daylight savings time, the PC's not having enough memory even though they should have had 2 gigs each, the IBM servers only having USB1.1 instead of USB2.0 (and USB2.0 is 40 times faster) leaving us to resort to doing the transfer over the network at 100 Megabits a second. All complete nightmare believe me. Oh and its 00:28 hours and we still have not copied all the information across.

Its been so long since my last post when I started with three A4 sheets of things to do before my departure to Colombia (which is 2 days from now), but every time I crossed something on the list 2 further things cropped up and in two weeks I have only been able to reduce 3 sheets of a4 to 2 sheets of A4.

With one day left before I leave and only having lunchtime in which to get it done, tomorrow I'll simply get through the most important ones.

Its with no surprise that the blog has been dead for the past two weeks and apologies for that but it has not been by lack of wanting but it was an extra burden I could do without so I frankly did. Get the house in order as they say.

Viva Colombia!!!!!!!!