Heat

It's bloody hot here and we've run out of water again...

Fireworks at Work

Not yet
It was the first weekend of the overtime this weekend and so some people were in at the weekend to help with the deadlines, including one guy that couldn't get in until he was vouched for by someone already in the office!
The project manager has been very grown up about the whole thing (unlike the way I'm behaving) and said the coming in is voluntary and me refusing was fine. I'm pretty vital to some bits of the release but not madly busy as yet. so I'm not doing too much damage and hopefully getting a little message higher up the managment structure.

I deciding to do this it made me think about the way going on strike (which is pretty much what I'm doing) or working to rule effects other people. In my case the message gets out that I'm not happy but the people it most effects are the ones I work with who, mostly, are not to blame. This is simular to the train and tube strikes we always seem to be having. we were going to have a train strike that weekend but it was called off at the last minute. Anyway a train strike, in my company at least, only hurts the staff as they are told they have to be in on time and if not they have to make up the time.

ah well

Little Lego Men

As the project at work is coming to an end I thought it would be nice to do something to celebrate the fact. The project is a rebranding of all our current websites and intgration of .NET 2.0 changes.

As part of this there are two sub systems called customisation and lego. Customisation is a data store of image and other types of content and lego is a set of custom controls which the pages are made from. So Lego is pretty much the building blocks of the website.

After a bit of thinking we decided LEGO would stand for Localised Extensible Generic Objects.

This means that I could get some little jokey presents to celebrate the project deadline (which is friday next (and the week of the London Beer Festival (bad/good timing or what!!)). So I've bought 25 lego cowboy keyrings (hopefully one for each of the developers that have had to work with the new code) . And if I'm really luck maybe I can get the project to pay for them (they were only 40 quid so I don't really mind if they don't)

Fireworks at work

Well soon maybe
we've just been asked to do some overtime as we getting close to our deadline. and this is my reply

Hello XXX

I don't want you to think it's anyway personal to you and it's no fault of anything you've being involved with
but I'm refusing to do any overtime for this company, under my current conditions.

Sorry if this causes any problems.

D



so this might just make them take a bit of notice and I should have an interesting time tomorrow. right time for the Pub....

New Mortgage

When and sorted out a remortgage yesterday with Nationwide. basically another 2 year track at +0.27 base rate. As it with the same company I get to keep my overpayment benefits and loyality this, that and the other.
However this is the crazy thing I asked them about letting out my flat for the three months I plan to be away (Jan to Mar) and they said fine no probs, I can let out on my new mortgage by just telling them I want to (in writing). Great I said also I would like to take some of my overpayment back to pay for my trip. My overpayment is about 7 grand and so would cover most of the expense. No problems they said. Then I said can't I get a payment holiday rather than take all the money out and they said ... Er no you either either have a payment holiday or let the flat!!! So I say, I can let the flat and take my overpayment out to pay the mortgage? Er yes you can do that ...! also sir you can get a temperary loan at our base rate to cover holiday and the mortgage payments and pay it back when you like!! well slightly crazy so I take out the quick loan to cover all my expenses and payments and keep my overpayment benefits and only have to pay for what it take out. Cool crazy but I'll do that then.

So I'm on the new mortgage and will sort out enough loan to cover what I don't save up for in the meantime just before I leave. This will leave me letting the flat going away and covering my mortgage just calling it all a 'flexible loans'.

full steam ahead then.

Strategy Day - After

Well it wasn't too bad. definately a long day and a real lot of talking.
I managed to say everything I want to say and we will now have to wait and see if anything comes from it.

I just want the company to invest in the staff a little more so that they won't just keep leaving. I've been here two years and its hard to even get them to do the odd team get together.

The irony is that I'm planning my exit (if hopefully only temporary) so most changes aren't likely to effect me.

Another interesting development is that now the project deadline is getting a little tight, Gordon the project manager has been asking people if the will come and work at the weekends. I've avoided the question so far but will refuse to do it.

My reason for this is that I'm not giving any more to this company until it gives something back to me. For the same reason I plan to refuse the personal review process so they can't use it to justify not improving my conditions (which is what happened in Feb) and I'm still waiting on them to get back to me about the pay review from then, which was less than inflation and so in real terms a pay cut.

A nasty suprise when you thought you were working hard all year and get stuff done.

Strategy away day.

Tomorrow we'll be out of the office (I work in IT at in a department of 50 or so people) at a Strategy away day. This will mean sitting around talking about how the department should be run and what we should be doing to. Sounds like fun doesn't it. Actually I'm glad I'm going because the people who are invited are the managers, team leads (we call them dev managers) and the senior developers. Now I'm not actually in any of those groups. but since I've been doing this IT stuff for 10 years I carry on like a senior developer (they are very much like a junior team lead) and managed to get an invite.
The senior developers position is quite a resent thing here. The positions were created back in feb and several of the current developers at the time were invited to apply. I was one of those who applied and like most people at the time, we thought I was a cert to get one of the positions. As you've probably guessed I didn't the post it went to someone more junior than me (4 years experience ) but who is a lot better at the old office politics.
So I'm still both bitter and angry at the whole thing (not least the 5 grand or so pay it cost me) and have been known to mention it now and again.
Fortunately for me (and part of the reason I get to go to the away day) is that we have just got a new CTO for the company and he doesn't yet suffer from effects of the office politics. The away day is his idea and I should get a bit of a forum to get some good ideas across ( we I think they are good ideas). Here's the list of things I plan to say so far:

Strategy away day.

1. IT future direction; big picture;

Views on Structure, teams,

Move to a more open structured system

Currently too few people doing to many things

Don’t need people to have an input into every decision all the time.

Process, methods

REVIEWS we should be doing some!

Fix the method of booking meeting so you can actually tell where people are when you need to speak to them.

Environment, tools

Separate DBA team

Build Server

Views on Lifecycle

How we interact with the business

Development of internal computer systems to support the Business

Automatic of review publish process

Better tools for fininail reporting rather than just using Excel

Better system of storage update, versioning of HR forms and processes

General store for company wide information – extend the wiki

2. Company strategy (from an IT perspective - what should it be)

Driving the company with newest technology

upmystreet on mobiles?

3. What new technologies/ technology approaches should we pursue that could transform the business

i.e., Ajax; search engine keyword optimisation (like Shopzilla); etc etc

Microsoft Partner program/ solution provider.

Gold Partner system.

Use of the new Frameword v3 code

Make the cross application communication more stabile with a technology such as MSMQ

CCTV system so I can see if people are at their desk without having to go around and see!

4. Global strategy USA; EUROPE - what should we be thinking about now?

Localization

Scalability

5. Personal Development - creating a culture of learning - how do we achieve this?

IT Training – Some please

- Languages c#

- Techologies web, nant, nunit, nhibernate,

- Methologies – UML, Agile development

Project planning and estimation

Risk anaylsis

Business Training

- to better understand them and what they need

- and where they want to go

- so the way they do things /think doesn’t come as a supprise to us.

- possibly also mirror to the business system training idea (from the quartely meeting – Susie (HR) presentation)

Soft Skills Training –

Time management,

Writing (IMPORTANT!) and communication,

Team working

Interviews (we do?)

Leadership (we do)

Resources

Electronic

Books, DVDs (microsoft web casts (from gold partner system)

Learning environment PCs prototype boxes

Conferences

Flexible Working

Time for other things

Other Projects

Charity Work (group work team building)

So its up to me to give a good impression and hopefully help put the worst of politics behind me!

D

The Flat

One of the things I'm trying to sort out is what should I do with my flat while I'm away. There are several options on this; nothing, take a payment holiday from my Mortgage, try and let it out or sell it.
The best option would be to let it out and get loads of money for it but of course I'll have to square things with the Mortgage company Nationwide. So I'm off at lunch time to set up a meeting and take some advice.

Ideal would be yes you can take out 7 grand to cover the ski course (remind me to explain about that!) and take a 3 month payment holiday and let me let out the flat while I'm away.

I've been overpaying the Mortgage for the last couple of years by 400 a month so that should give me some lea way to deal.

Currently I've just finished a two year +0.09 base rate tracker so I need to sort something out as I'm paying 20quid extra a month just for being on the banks base rate.

D

A Start

Well here it is another attempt at blogging to join the million others out there. I have high hopes for this blog, that I may even post to it more than once. It could end up like those diaries you start on holiday in a brand new exercise book which you find ten years later with a single entry in it, but hopefully it won't!!

Anyway the real reason I'm doing this is to record what is happening to me at the moment and what will happen to me over the next couple of months. You see the thing is I'm planing to make some major changes in my life and I will have a lot of things to sort out and decide