Back to the Day Job

First day back in the office. Managed to survive and it could have been a lot worse! However by 3pm I was wiped out and ready to go home. It’ll take a couple of days to get back into my routine I guess.

4 days until the weekend!

Who Broke the Internet?

I can imagine everyone is being a lot more productive this afternoon since the internet seems to be hosed…. well Twitter and Facebook are borked for me and both are usually the sites that distract me when I should be doing something more productive with my days off.

The last few days have been very relaxed and I should be in a state ready to go back to work now.  The last few weeks I have found myself experiencing that Friday afternoon tiredness on a Monday morning and that’s never a good sign. I definitely needed some time out of the office. We’ve been more or less constant since the start of the year.

I’ve spent my time improving my non existent photography skills and… *shudder*… shopping. Damn those inconsiderate friends for having birthdays! Still, the resulting birthday meal was a lot of fun as normal.

Now I just need to enjoy the time I have left before heading back to the office.

Update: Twitter is experiencing a distributed denial of service attack.

Still Here

I’m getting slightly more successful at writing here although I still have a long way to go. It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything…. sorry about that!

Some downtime at work means I’ve taken a few days off.  Not many of the bigger projects move forward during August due to the number of people taking time off.  This means as the techy person I can also escape the office and the chains on my desk for a few days…. although I really hate to think how many emails I’ll end up going back to.  A guesstimate in the hundreds probably isn’t that far out… still I’m pretty good at shutting those kind of thoughts away and not considering them until I’m back in the office.

Although as soon as I get back into work we’re into a period of about six weeks where all leave is banned due to the volume at work. No rest for the wicked I guess?

The house moving thing hasn’t moved any further forward. The surveys etc are all done and it’s not just a case of waiting for the contracts to be drawn up. Is it me or do lawyers have no sense of urgency unless they’re waiting on you to do something? Really hoping though to hear something in the next couple of weeks. For now I’ll just be patient.

Gotta Love Mondays

I knew there was a reason I don’t get into the office at 8am any more…. besides the pain of getting up at 6.30. I’m normally still there 10 hours later which is exactly what happened today.  Attempted to leave at 4pm but got caught up in emails.

Still, I can’t complain too much.  The day flew by and I’m now one day closer to the three day weekend I’ve decided to take next weekend.  It’s going to be a busy week so I think I deserve an extra day off at the end of it.  If I’m lucky the rest of the week will be just like it.

Another Week Gone

Next week is going to be a complete nightmare for me. The start of the new financial quarter means endless reports needing to be written regarding the quarter just gone.

I had psyched myself up to spend the beginning of next week running around like a crazy person as the deadlines loom for everyone to input their data into the system I support. I thought I was going to experience a quiet Friday… the calm before the storm.

Seems everyone else had other ideas though and for the first time in living memory they all decided their data had to be entered before the deadline. My quiet Friday disappeared very quickly… although luckily everyone only had minor queries and nothing went horribly wrong.  In the end I managed to drag myself into the weekend without too much hassle.  Finished up the week by seeing Ice Age 3 (see last post) and am now going to take the next couple of days to relax before things get crazy again.

Enjoy the weekend and finally Happy Independence Day to everyone in the US Enjoy your holiday weekend and your fireworks and if you’re working just make sure you don’t work too hard!

Becoming Cooler

Hopefully the hot weather the UK has been experiencing (I’m ignoring the laughter of my Texan friends at the moment) will be coming to an end tomorrow to be replaced by the all too familiar sight of British rain.  I have no idea what the temp was today but it definitely felt crazy hot as soon as I stepped out the front door today, and that was before 9am.

Luckily the heat didn’t seem to go to my head and the work day passed without any kind of incident.  I’m still a bit confused though as to why my mornings pass much quicker than my afternoons. Still, one more day and then it’s the weekend.  I’m looking forward to a lay in, in a room that hopefully isn’t at a temperature of 30C.

No plans at the moment except a trip to see Ice Age 3 tomorrow night. Not sure what to expect from it.

Getting Back Into It

I said I would try and start writing again and after some procrastination and some gentle pushing from some people I’m actually sitting down to write a full post again. Go me!  This would have been yesterday but sitting in the office until 7pm put pay to that idea as it sucked away all my free time for the evening.

The UK is currently in the middle of a heatwave.  Temperatures are pushing 30C which for a lot of the world is a hot spring day. For us it’s somewhat of a crisis since the British don’t cope with heat well.  The awesome thunderstorms this causes make it almost worth it but they have been somewhat lacking around MK recently.

Work is going well.  We’ve been busy recently but it’s slowly winding down for the summer when people are traditionally on leave and the office is a little quieter. I’m pushing for promotion (and the pay rise it brings) and have some work to complete in order to achieve that and prove my worthyness.  Hopefully I can have that done by the time Autumn comes around because….

…. In other news I am currently going through the process of buying a house.  The pay rise would come in handy for making the mortgage easier to pay.  So far the process hasn’t been too bad. There’s obviously been the inevitable drain on the bank account for legal fees etc and plenty of forms to fill in but nothing horribly complicated.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it continues like that. I would hate for anything to fall through right now.

I think I may now go and complain about the heat some more…. however as a cooling final thought, July 1st means we’re halfway to Christmas

Day in Review – Wednesday 20th May 2009

Didn’t wake up in the best mood today.  It didn’t help that the first email I read was about our stupid government screwing students again.  I don’t want to use this post to go on a political rant but I can’t wait to kick their lying fat arses our of government.  The sooner an election is called the better.

Work today was fairly standard.  Again working on Drupal and getting completely confused by the views feature.  I think I managed to come up with something before I left though.  Left half hour early today to make up for the extra time I did yesterday so no one can accuse me of working too hard today.

I’m winding up today by watching the UEFA Cup final. I’m trying to hang on to what football there is left because in a couple of weeks there will be none for the remainder of the summer.  No NFL, no NHL, no EPL… what sport is there to keep me going?! I don’t mind watching the odd game of baseball but it hasn’t really got the same level of excitment as the others.

As for cricket….. just no.

Day in Review – Tuesday 19th May 2009

My workload is insane at the moment.  Therefore I don’t really appreciate spending my morning wasting my time looking at a problem with a major application at work, only to find it’s been accidentally wrecked by a collegue who wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing the day before.  How do you accidentally cut and paste a folder?! Some people are a danger to technology!

Rest of my day wasn’t too exciting. Currently working with Drupal to evaluate whether we can use it to replace our commerical content management systems (did I just lose a load of readers there?).  Somehow managed to get sucked into that so much during the afternoon that I ended up leaving the office an hour late…. oops. I really must try to stop that considering my flexi time is a little on the high side at the moment.

The plan tomorrow? Much of the same!

Writing Again

I should really try and start writing again.

Maybe a day where I’ve been glued to a computer screen for 10 hours trying to fix a problem at work isn’t the best time to start.

Maybe tomorrow?

New Year, New Effort

I’ve really neglected this thing recently haven’t I?  Nothing written since the end of November!

I guess a new year is a good time to try and revive it? If not only for my own benefit but maybe for the people I won’t get to talk to as often now the new year is taking people in new directions.

I wish I could say 2009 has started brightly but it really hasn’t. Especially today. I try not to be negative but sometimes it can’t be helped.  So far today’s woes have so far included:

1. Everyone around me (family, friends & work colleagues) have been ill over the past few weeks. I rarely get ill. I haven’t had a day off sick from work in over three years.  But this morning it caught up with me.  It’s been trying for a few days. New Years Eve I briefly woke up with a sore throat but it seemed to disappear within a few hours.  However today I woke up with a headache, feeling sick and with very little energy. After managing to just about take an aspirin I passed out again resulting in:
2. Me missing a phone call I really wish I had taken!
3. In fact I’m coming to the realisation that I don’t give enough time to my friends. All of them. I really need to change this. I will change this.
4. The Colts lost.  I don’t know how or by what score. I haven’t been able to bring myself to check yet. But one message not long after the game went into overtime told me all I needed to know.  I’ve followed NFL in the past loosely but this is the first season I have really been into it and the first season I’ve dedicated myself to following a team. I’m bitterly disappointed. Especially after a 9 game unbeaten run.
5. I’m guessing this is as a result of 1. But I just cannot warm up today! I’ve been told by people in the know that the secret to surviving this is layers (although I’m not convinced hairstyles has anything to do with it). I’m wearing several tops including my Colts jersey (in mourning, and technically (due to a 1.30am kick off) today is still game day in the UK) and I’ve not stopped shivering all morning.
6. Providing I wake up in some semi-fit state tomorrow work starts again. I’ve worked only a handful of days over the past couple of weeks so I’ve got myself in a relaxed state.  A five day week does not strike me as a whole lot of fun.
7. Again work related. January marks the start of the fourth financial quarter at work.  Which means every man, woman and child (well maybe not the kids) will want reports on what happened in the third quarter.  As the company’s resident dimensional modelling expert (it’s a posh term for meaning I can do clever stuff with data and numbers) that means in a couple of weeks i’ll be wanting to hang myself… well that or question if I am in the right job.  If that happens I’ll try and make a point of writing about it.  I need to keep telling myself that it’s just a job and I should leave those issues at the door. But sometimes people can be really unreasonable.

So I guess it’s safe to say I have some issues today.  I suspect I’m just feeling sorry for myself because of being ill. With any luck I’ll wake up tomorrow and this will all be gone.

Learning News

So now we all know what the secret meetings yesterday were about.

In an IT department of about 30 people roughly a third are being made redundant. They are asking for volunteers but if no one comes forward they will be forced to pick.

Most other people will have to reapply for their jobs, with the exception of about 5 people… including me. I somehow escaped.

It’s fair to say that everyone was a little distracted and that not much work got done today. Everything should fall into place in January so then we will know who is going.

Other than that it’s not been a very exciting day. I have another big project that I am working on at the moment so that has recently taken off and is now taking up the majority of my days. How successful it will be with all the upheaval that is happening remains to be seen.

Back to Work

I wasn’t happy when my alarm went off at 6.30am this morning.  I was more away than I thought I would be, but it’s still a good four hours earlier than I have been waking up for the past week.

I had 37 emails this morning when I arrived at work. Not too bad I thought by normal standards. By the time I had worked through them I was left with 9 that actually needed me to do anything about them.  Managed to get that down to about 2 emails by the time I left for the day but I think I would have finished if I hadn’t had to spend all afternoon in a freezing meeting room talking about things I already know about.  I hate pointless meetings.

Something is going down at work and I can’t quite work out what. A lot of meetings are going on between staff and HR and no one is allowed to talk about what they contain. As far as I know I am one of the few people (I only know of one other) not involved in these meetings. I haven’t quite decided whether or not this is a good or bad thing.  I’m currently working on the theory it’s probably nothing to do with me so I should quit thinking about it. Still, it’s no fun not knowing!

People at work also annoy me. When i’ve been off work for a week it’s quite important that I sit down and read my emails and see if there’s anything urgent that needs my attention. Therefore I would appreciate it if you fucked off and stop asking me to do stuff right after I get back!

Someone told me that complaining that your feet were cold when not wearing socks is like complaining about the government and then not voting.  I don’t much care today… i’m not wearing socks and my feet are freezing!

And don’t get me started on the government!

Feeling Better

After spending most of yesterday just feeling horrible I felt a lot better today. I actually didn’t go into work feeling like complete crap.

Today was especially helped by the fact it was relaxed and I can’t remember my phone ringing once with any sort of problem. I like the days where I get away from the office on time. They seem to happen less often recently and I really need to sort that.

Past the half way point to the weekend now which hopefully means it’s all downhill until my week off. I shall be heading up towards Penrith for the week which is about as far away from work as I can get without leaving the country.

I’m looking forward to not having to deal with people for five days.

Illness

Like everyone else at this time of year I’ve suddenly contracted an illness.

As a result I’m feeling very sorry for myself today. I’ve dragged myself through a morning at work and after lunch will tackle some more. I hope of disappears before I go away next week

Recovery

After a traumatic Sunday morning I just about recovered during the course of the afternoon. Football can work wonders to take your mind off disturbing things.  I watched the first half of the Colts game before finally needing to get to sleep.

Today hasn’t been great as Mondays go. It’s probably punishment or something for the fact I have next week off.  5 days of pain before 5 days relaxing. It’s keeping the world in balance.

My 45 minute drive to work turned into nearly a two hour journey due to some stupid traffic census stopping all cars.  What kind of muppet plans a traffic census for 8am on a Monday morning? Their results will be totally screwed by the fact they held everyone up.

I arrived at the office feeling a little stressed after that and unfortunately it was one of those mornings where no one can leave you alone for 5 minutes. There were constant interruptions and my work probably suffered because of it.  I ended up leaving late due to the chaos getting to work.

Maybe I’ll sort these things out tomorrow.

Doing Battle

There were slightly more emails in my work inbox this morning than I was expecting after taking just one day off. Can they not actually cope without me?

In the end the emails got cleared fairly quickly.  I booked various meetings with people making sure the people who wrote nice emails got put at the front of the queue. Those who didn’t had to wait. It’s normally the same people too so I’ve come to expect it.

After a fairly successful morning of troubleshooting (only two people said thank you!) I had quite a frustrating afternoon which involved:

1) A fight with a firewall. It took a few hours but I won.

2) Someone arranging a meeting. And then asking me if it could wait a while when I turned up. Don’t arrange the meeting if you’re too busy!

Tomorrow is Friday and most people are off work.  This either means we’ll have a really quiet day, or I’ll spend all my time answering other people’s phones dealing with problems that don’t belong to me. Still, at least I’ll have the weekend to recover.

A Quiet Sunday

I woke up late this morning and wasn’t very with it for a few hours. I even managed to pull up to the wrong petrol pump when I went to fill up. I realised before I got out of my car and luckily the place was empty. I could fix that mistake with a quick bit of reversing.

Not planning on doing a great deal or the rest of the day. I thought about going to see the fireworks in the city tonight but I don’t entirely feel like it now. I’ll probably just catch the F1 this afternoon and then some NFL this evening.

Now October is out of the way I’m hoping for a quiet week. I have meetings most of the day tomorrow and nothing scheduled so far for Tuesday. Wednesday I have booked off because I think it might be quite an interesting news day and they don’t come around all that often.

It might be worth catching.