Xmas Party

Yesterday was the Christmas Party.

The theme this time round was 'seedy chic' No idea what that looks like so I went in a black suit and shirt. Still I don't think many other people knew what it was either. The costumes ranged from country gentlemen, to playboy bunny, to father Xmas and Rod Stewart.

It was quite a quiet affair (well no not quiet, the music was loud just that not much gossip worthy happened) but we still managed to drink the 6000 GBP bar tab in a couple of hours.

Had a look at most of the picture taken and nothing embarrassing there...which is good!

One Year

Hurrah

Managed a whole year in this current job.

I think it's secure in this current economic climate but I thought the last one was secure as well!

Focus for next year will be learning the latest versions of all the technologies I use (mostly Microsoft C# 3.5) and not getting in too many arguements with the management.

A top time in turkey

After the disaster the was last years trip to Rhodes (so bad I couldn't face blogging about it) this year I went to Turkey for a week and had a brilliant time!

The rule at work is that you have to use all your holiday days before the last calendar day of the year. So I found that I had 7.5 days left and so needed to take a break or lose the benefit (the current company is OK but I wouldn't go so far as to give them another weeks worth of work for free).

So I had to find something to do and after a bit of a hunt round to find a early ski holiday I went a bit random and book a adventure trip to the Daylan part of Turkey.

I book through a company called SpeedBreaks and for a very reasonable price of less than 500 GBP. The trip included
Sea Kayaking (quite tiring fighting the tides but nice and calm)
Canyoning (climbing over rocks and jumping in pools)
Trekking (quite a long hard walk finished off with a nice swim in the sea)
Water Rafting (grade 3-4 bonkers! very gung ho, nearly turned the whole boat over (had it on its side) but a brilliant time was had by all)
and of course Drinking beer

The holiday was arranged for single travellers with about a 50/50 male/female split also nobody knew anybody but in the end we all got on well and had a great laugh. I, like most of the others on the trip where a bit worried about being with a complete bunch of strangers but the whole thing was so well organised and the locals very nice so we were at our ease from the start.

It's a great time to go that bit of the world (its the end of their tourist season so the place is really quiet) as its nice and sunny, not too hot and a great deal better than the rain and the cold that we left in the UK.

Now what to do with the day and a half I've got left...

Meeting the famous

Well Wallace and Gromit and that's soooo cool!

The people from Aardman visited the office to talk about the creative process and brought some examples. Well I think that's why they were there. For me and it seems most of the others it was just a chance to hold Wallace and Gromit and get your picture taken!





It was brill and a major case of child like giddyness affected everyone there.

Replacement iPhone

WTF I mean WTF!!!

The new iPhone not more than a few weeks old has died on me!

Last Friday I was just accessing the calculator (I was doing my tax return, fun eh!) and it crashed and wouldn't come back to life. It's not like I was even doing something very unusual, the calculator app is one that comes with the phone and not some dodgy bit of software I downloaded.

Now this is quite a problem for me as I currently have no other way of staying contactable. I don't have a land line in the flat since the British Telecom farrago last year. so having it crash at 3 pm on a Friday is a bit of issue.

OK, not war and famine scale issue but still annoying.

So fortunately the apple store is a couple of streets away from work and so it was straight back around there to sort this latest out. The process was pretty much the same as the last time with people not quite believing me, pressing buttons, then giving up and handing me on to the next person.

In the end, what they call a 'Genius' called Judith give me a new phone and a short lecture on backing things up.

I got most of my settings back when I sync'd the new phone to itunes so and was able to meet up with my friends at the weekend. A lovely little trip to one of the City Farms where we found a eating place to rival the best in the area.

Its been three days now and the phone is still working but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Windows and Boilers

I sorta fixed the boiler by switching thermostat and fuses around so its half working. I'm getting the top element working but that's fine as its a big boiler.

I won't know more until I can get some more fuses. For some reason the thick cartridge fused that go in the fuse box are not easy to come by in central London, even in hardware shops (the temptation to say 'fork handles' was almost overwhelming!).

On the good news front. I got a knock on the door the other morning before I left for work. It was the building manager to say we are getting brand new windows put in, hopefully before Xmas. So that should be nice, warm and add to the value of the flat. Checking back we've been paying into the window fund quarterly for 3 years so that's one bill I'm glad to see go.

Bloody Boiler!

Unbelievable I definitely think my flat is out to get me and knows I've put it up for sale.

It now appears that the boiler has stopped working at some point during the weekend. I was so bombed out from being up all night on Friday I didn't really notice until I tried to get a shave on Monday morning.

Fortunately I don't need hot water for my heating or washing clothes just for the bath and doing the dishes. So I've been to the gym (as they have OK showers) and not eaten in. If it really has broken then I'm going to have to get a new one and that will invalidate my HIP energy certification (and cost 250 GBP to get a new one) and my HIP is really the only reason the flat is still on the market.

So I'm growing a beard again!

Aaahhh!

Oktoberfest

I did some thing slightly crazy at the weekend (only slightly crazy)

I helped out at the SCIFI London Oktoberfest all-nighter, which is where alots of fans of anime, zombies and really bad movies (plan 9 bad) stay up all night and watch films and drink lots of red bull. I helped with the handing out of the red bull and ice cream. I got to watch a couple of the MST3K movies and a very very bad scifi movie Xmas special, which with the lack of sleep seriously messed with my head.

I got back to the flat about 10ish on Saturday morning and then did nothing complicated the rest of the weekend.

Land Registry - WTF!

I don't know what it is about my flat but nobody seems to be able to manage the accounts correctly. After the saga a couple of years ago about a missing payment which I had paid, I could prove I had paid and the management company didn't believe me for the best part of two years.

Now for some reason my parents names have been registered on my flat as the owners!
The management company, and its a different lot from last time, say they did a land registry search on the flat and it came back with my parents names as the owners.

Huh!

So they closed my account opened one in my parents names and sent them a demand for payments because no one was paying into the new account. This is because I was still paying in to the closed account by standing order and they were letting me! So they sent a arrears demand for non payment which when we found out about this and I rang them up.

'Hello, what are you doing?'
'We did a search on the property and your parents are the legal owners.'
'No they are not and have never been connected with my flat in any way.'

The one exception being I used their address as a billing address while I was letting the flat out

'Well you will have to talk to the land registry and get it fix, We need a correct land registry form to change our accounts'
'OK can I have a copy of the land registry found you have then'
'Certainly I'll email it over'
'Cool'
.
.
.
.
'Er this is a search done on my parents property and not my flat!'
'Oh'

Honestly this is just one of the reasons why I want to sell my flat because I think its been cursed by the daemon of poor administration.

The Temple of Smug and the Blue Smarties

OK so going to Apple store was a strange experience and not a little annoying.

So I'll admit with 'brand new broken headphones', I wasn't in the best mood to sample the 'Apple Experience'.

You walk into the place, which is bright and full of lots of stands on which you can try out all there lovely tech, trying to work out where to go to get help. The are absolutely no signs to point you in the right direction.

I guess the idea is to talk to one of the assistants wearing the bright t-shirts (all the colours you get in smarties but the looks of it) but they were all already talking to customers. So I headed to the tills figuring that was the best place.

This was a mistake, after a lot of waiting I got to talk to someone at the till wearing blue and this 'Blue Smartie' said I had to go upstairs and talk to someone wearing an orange t-shirt.

OK so upstairs I go...Excuse ME! I say to the first Orange Smartie and explain about the headphones. 'Sorry Sir you want the orange shirts over there' he says point across the room. 'OK', breath deeply. across to a group of Orange Smarties behind a counter who are doing there best to ignore the customers about them. I explain again to one of the girls and the others disappear quickly.
She has a listen to the headphones and my phone and it is at this point I start thinking she might have some sort of hearing problem. She turns the sound right up to max so I can hear the music clearly from two foot away!

'I don't hear it' She says
I think I may have gone momentarily cross eyed at this point.

'OK turn it down a bit and try 'All you need is love'' I say taking the phone back and trying to find the Beatles track (Beatles to the rescue as they have lots of stuff happening in one speaker or the other). Except of course itunes made a right hash of it when importing the songs and it takes me an age to find it listed under 'Various Artist'.

So now she sort of agrees with me and asks me what I want to do.

'Can I have some working headphones? or get them fixed?'

'Er I'll see' and off she goes to look in the draws behind the counter. It's at this point I start to take in the rest of the things on this floor. I'm stood by a stand of accessories for the iPhone including about 500 pairs of headphones. Surreally down the far end of the floor there appears to be a lecture going on and about 50 people are listening to the Author/Comedian Charlie Higson talk about, I think, James Bond.

So Orange Smartie comes back and says 'Sorry we don't seem to have any headphones in stock".

I look at her, She looks at me. I look at the 500 headphones, She looks at the 500 headphones.

'oh'

Taking a pack we walk back to the till and she tries to ring it up on the till. I thinking this is now sorted and I'll soon be out of here.

No, she's not allowed to put the transaction through and we have to go downstairs and find a Blue Smartie. This takes some time as Orange Smartie won't interrupt any of the Blue Smarties that are talking to customers, ie all of them. When we finally get a Blue Smartie but he's not senior enough either and they both disappear out the back of the shop.

After a bit Orange Smartie comes back with a Black Smartie (and I thought they were a myth!) and Black Smartie has the special secret wrist movement or possibly key card to complete the transaction.

Done it! Orange gives me the headphones and as I head for the door says to be careful with them. Fortunately I've been in the store for half and hour at this stage, I'm too tired to get angry and just leave.

In their defence they didn't argue about the headphone and did just replace them but there is a little invention called a customer service desk that they might find useful.

Time to circle the wagons

For the first time last night with the collapse of B&B and the failure of the wall st rescue fund I detected the first real note of panic in the coverage. Up till now the BBC has been quite calm about the whole thing but last night they started to say that it was going to all get alot worse.

So how am I effected? well, the flat isn't selling, one person viewed it last week but no news from that. I starting to think maybe giving up on the selling front and do some major DIY on it instead. Maybe looks at putting it back on the market next year. As for any shares I had, well they where worth buttons at the end so there wasn't much to lose out on. I had both HBOS and B&B shares, I'm quite surprised I didn't have Lehman Bros as well!

Ambushed by the Estate agent

OK they got me!

I've dodged the decision for weeks but they got me on the phone today and ask about dropping the price.

The market is dead and all the business with free stamp duty and the other government breaks don't seem to have any effect at all on the London market. To be fair there aren't many places under the 175K in London so it never was going to help much.

Basically the market is falling and so my original price now isn't getting anybody around for a viewing. I sorta plan to hang around until the market bottoms out as a percent down turn in all prices will end up in my favour as I plan on getting a bigger place in the same sort of area.

I agreed we would try it on the market for 10k less than is currently is on to see what happens. I'm not sure I would want it to go much lower yet as there is a smaller flat in my block on for 10k less than that.

Perhaps I'll do some more to fix it up and try and justify the price different a bit more.

Knee Update

Well I've been ticking along nicely for awhile now with my knee. It has recovered from going around the alps and all that climbing.

I works fine with a bit of creaking when I try and crouch down, I still can't quite bend it all the way back so my heel touch my backside but then again I don't think most normal people can do that any way. It makes a noise like crunching cellophane and still needs a bit of a push to unbend. I can do the standing on the bad leg and then doing a bit of a crunch down (an old exercise from my physio back at the start of the year) but not as good as the other leg. I just have to keep exercising it everyday.

As far a pain goes sometimes it will have a dull ache for days at a time but not much else. I think that's cause by the way I sleep, on my side with that leg resting on the other one.

Gym is now mostly concentrated on core muscles again with v sits on a core board and now with twisting and holding the positions for a count (5 normal) which REALLY causes the muscles to burn! We have upped the weights quiet a bit and the press ups he tries to make me clap my hands between each one now, which is well hard!

iPhone Update

Apple release a new firmware the other day to fix a heap of bugs. the iPhone is a bit better now and hasn't crashed on me for a while.

However I've been hit by the legendary poor apple build quality and the headphones only go up to about 10% volume in one ear (yes I did try some other earphones and the iPhone itself is fine). So after talking to a selection of the brain trust at Carphonewarehouse (where I bought it), they couldn't help (Apple won't give them any spare bits) and I now have to go to an iStore.

Joy!

Google Search All

Maybe this could be classified as a thought on modern philosophy.

I tried putting *.* (the find any file term) into Google and got back

Your search - *.* - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.



Now I know I won't get the whole Internet back but surely I should get some matches!

Vodafone Music Awards

Party with Lewis Hamilton and Neil Walker!

After years of working in IT I've finally worked on something that resulted in a good freebie. We been working on various vodafone campaign websites and to say thank you they gave us some free tickets to the Awards show. There was a good little line up of different bands, each playing 1-3 tracks.
They included
The Ting Tings (great stuff starting the show and the second time I've seen them this year)
James Morison (a bit quite)
The Pussy Cat Dolls (quite literally bonkers and I guess one of the reasons Lewis Hamilton was there (the other being the amount of wonga vodafone sponsor him)
Estelle (good LOTS of confetti)
Will Young (I think I went to the bar then)
Primal Scream (I was jumping around like a right nutter and can't really believe I've now actually seen them live!)
and some others that you couldn't really hear over all the media types (and us) talking.

We spent the evening by the VIP section and about 5 meters from Lewis Hamilton and Family. He's smaller that I imagined but then again he has to fit in the car doesn't he.

The other 'interesting' person there was Neil Walker, a friend from many years ago at Uni. Completely random chance meeting, except for the fact he is an executive at Vodafone, so may not that surprising. We had a quick catch up and he brought me a beer which was nice.

I've decided I quite like freebies...

Happy Birthday Mum!

iPhone

What a fashion victim I am.

I got a new phone and yes this will come as a shock to people that work with me it's an iPhone.

Yeap I've bought an apple product after work with Microsoft products for so long.
I'm not really anti Apple or pro Microsoft not like the religious fanatics you get on the subject (mainly in the Apple camp in my experience).

So what's it like? well it looks nice the shinny blackness and the touch screen goodness. It's definitely the future the GPS function is cool watching yourself move around on the map is very 'Spooks' also the 16GB ipod with videos is good.

On the downside it's not really a finished technology I guess they rushed it
to market as it crashes, locks up, drops phone connections alot. I've crashed it completely about 4 or 5 times in a week.

The main culprit seems to be the itunes software that it has to connect to in order to get the music off a PC. Something to do with the applications you can install on the phone and the security checks that the software does. Most of the time this kills all the installed applications and clears the all the music off the iphone.

So I got it more or less working and stuff installed and as long as I don't try connecting it to itunes I should be OK until a patch comes out for the phone.

Birthday

Happy Birthday to my Dad and Happy Aniversary to Him and my Mum...
:-)

Hears to hanging with Henry

So this years festival experience...

Metallica (great)
Tenacious D (good)
Feeder (good)
Hadouken (pretty good)
Brendon Burns (brilliant)
Robots In Disguise (quite good)
Mindless Self Indulgence (don't I know that track)

Rage Against The Machine (not as good as I was expecting but ended real strong)
Pennywise (loud and fast)
Less than Jake (good)
Queens Of The Stone Age (top stuff)
The Fratellis (nice beat)
Biffy Clyro (er...)
Serj Tankian (bonkers)
Henry Rollins (All hail the mighty H)
Beans On Toast (Glasto kick)

The Killers (sublime)
Bloc Party (really good, how comes I've not listen to this lot before?)
The Raconteurs (quality)
The Ting Tings (bong bong brill)
Sugar Sammy (ouch that's funny)
The Joy Formidable (good must try and remember the name)
Fucked Up (I like it but they might have been The Gaslight Anthem)

Plus a few others, alot of mud and for the first time in our festival history some descent freebies. We got each a free bag, t shirt and a wicked light saber pen which was damn handy when you are tried to find people in the pitch dark.

Darling, Phones and a Festival on two feet

On the flat selling front, its deathly quiet. This is probably not helped by the right cock up Mr Darling, the Chancellor caused by suggesting a freeze on stamp duty (the tax you pay when buying a house) which now means most people are hanging back to see if there will be a freeze.

The estate agent finally rang on Friday to say that there was no news and they hadn't shown the flat in a while. In fact they say they only managed a sell 'a couple of much larger properties' in the last month. very quite, 'had I considered knocking some money off the asking price? say change it to 199,995 down 20k and try it again'. Well that would be in line with around the 12% as quoted by the national press. So I have to decide and they will ring me back this week.

On to happier news its music festival time again and I'm off to the Leeds festival at the weekend acts include

Metallica
Queens of the Stone Age
Rage Against the Machine
The Killers
Tenacious D
Slipknot
The Raconteurs
Feeder
Avenged Sevenfold
Manic Street Preachers
The Fratellis
The Enemy
Biffy Clyro
Serj Tankian
Dizzee Rascal
Taking Back Sunday
and Henry Rollins!

topp stuff! and this time a much more mobile event as I won't be on crutches this time and so may even jig around a bit (depending on the beer intake probably!)


and as for phones...well now the rush has died down a bit I was considering getting an iPhone.

Motor Show

I confused alot of people last week by telling them I was going to the London Motor Show at the weekend. I'm not know as a person who likes car i fact when challenged I can probably remember what colour a car is but its about it. It's at least a decade since I've owned a car and that one I left in pieces in Bristol.

In fact I went to see Meatloaf in concert and the free ticket to the motor show came with it. It was very good, the show had loads on drama to it and the man himself is as over the top as you can imagine. Highlights include of course a huge bat of hell with lots of extra guitar and Meatloaf dressing up like he did in the seventies with frilly shirt and long hair to sing Dead Ringer for Love.

Totally OTT and a great thing to see live

2 news items

From the guardian:

House prices suffer record fall

July 31: House prices suffer record fall House prices continued to fall in July, recording their largest year-on-year drop since the property market crash of the early 1990s, figures from Nationwide building society showed today.

The average price of a home in the UK is now £169,316 - almost £15,000 less than 12 months ago and lower than it has been at any point since August 2006.

Prices fell by 1.7% over the month, Nationwide said, more than double the 0.8% fall in June recorded by the society. The annual rate of decline is up from 6.3% last month to 8.1% - the largest year-on-year fall since Nationwide's price index began in 1991.

And from our local paper:

Tower Hamlets sees prices rise

LONDON bucked the national trend of monthly price falls with a 0.3 per cent increase on asking prices from June to July. Tower hamlets saw the largest monthly hike at 4 per cent with the average price climbing from £412,431 to £429,514, according to research by rightmove.co.uk.

Anyway my flat is still up for sale (nobody has visited for about 3 weeks now) and I haven't dropped the price yet. and my tracker mortgage ends today, so tomorrow it will be the standard banks (6.49%) based rate until I sort it out...

eek! time again to book an appointment as there is no point hanging on for a sale.

Sore Knees?

Well I'm still whole and walking. It was a great if very hard 9.5 days of walking. I found the altitude hard work, even walking on the flat gets you out of breath until you get used to it.

The group was very nice if a little fast for me, I'm a bit of a Dawdler and the other four in the group where very fast. I spent a fair bit of time walking in the solitude so to speak, with the others ahead in the distance (well dots).

This wasn't to say I didn't still walk fast than most people, in fact most of the time estimates where bang-on for me, just that the others where very fast. The was despite the fact three of them qualify for their OAP bus passes (60+).

We managed the whole loop around 170km by mostly walking and a couple of bus trips. I'm not sure of the precise calculation yet but the vertical height climbed is around the 6.5km mark. few!

Anyway great view, lots of weather from Snow to Rain to Serious amounts of Sun and some very good food (and wine!).

A took about 400 photos so there has to be a couple of OK ones in there, time of get them on flickr.

An east wind is blowing

Larna (I think, never met anyone by that name, perhaps they have now sacked everyone that I've met!) from the estate agents called (well left a message on my phone)
'to give a bit of feedback' about how my flat selling is going. well its still going so you can probably guess.

anyway she has one of London accents you could break down walls with so I was guessing a bit at what she said.

basically (she liked that word) we have been having 'call outs' of the flat. and they had just had another 'call out' but nah luck at the current price. They have just had
a major price drop on another flat (from the next estate over) down to 215K (she didn't say what it was before) and that as they where having no luck with my flat at current price, she thinks, we 'really' should drop it down to 207K or 205K (which would be about 7%) she said give her a call and tell her my thoughts.

So I've done nothing so far (head in the sand tactic) as I'm not in a rush to sell and any drop in the market would mean the more expensive next property would drop in price as well so I'm better off left it drop. although I've only got a couple of weeks until my mortgage end so I may well get more motivated or I may get fed up keeping the flat tidy!

83 Steps

Well for me the office move was fine. Nothing went missing and I've got a nice desk by a window. The main drawback for me is that its on the fourth floor to it can be alot of steps if you need to go see anybody else.

Other people aren't enjoying the new locations that much and the management have had to send an email around telling people off for swapping desks, moving around and generally screwing up the master plan. Still for us in tech we are broken up into two different areas and so getting stuff done when half the group is two floors away (and one building over!) does waste alot of time. So I'll enjoy my view while I have it as I expect we will be arranged before too long.

Deja Vu

The company is expanding into the building next door. So I’m being moved from my current location in the main build on the 1st floor up to ‘the gods’ on the 4th floor in the new building.

So in a slight case of déjà vu I’m pack all my stuff into labelled crates to be moved over the weekend. I can’t help thinking about the last time I was in an office move, how long it took to find all our stuff and of course what happened to that company only a few short months later! At least this time I won’t be in surgery when it happens.

Tour Du Mont Blanc

In a couple of weeks I’m off on holiday on a trip to the alps.

I think my leg is pretty good now so I’m going for a walk around Mont Blanc. It’s quite a famous route called the ‘tour du Mont Blanc'. I shall be spending 10 days walking in a huge loop in the mountains around the mighty Mont Blanc. It’s up to an altitude of 2,665m (8,743 ft). It circles the whole Mont Blanc Massif covering a distance of roughly 170 km with 10 km of ascent and passes through parts of Switzerland, Italy and France.

I’ll have to remember to take my camera and hopefully a sun hat!

Gym training knee update

I’m still going to see the personal trainer every other week. The sessions are now mainly about continuing to build up core stability, increasing my endurance and increasing my general strength.

Andy, the trainer, says the goal is to ‘get the whole body synchronized so the body’s strength and flexibility can move and control the body in balance’. I have a sneaking idea this means that we are going to start using the Chin-Up/Dip machine which has been lurking in the corner of the gym the whole time.

Also we started something called VO2 max training which is 4 lots of 500m rowing, in 2 mins each, with 15 v sit-ups in-between. This is well hard and I go bright red and can’t yet do a full v sit-up (from lying flat to sitting up with you knee touching your chest)

Still I think its doing me good as I’m running a bit again, 10 minutes without getting out of breath.

The Knee or rather the leg aches off and on about half the time but for normal day to day stuff its fine. I can run up stairs and jump around a fair bit (well lot when Rage Against the Machine is on). Crouching down is still a bit tricky and it
makes some weird noises a bit like someone crumpling up a crisp packet!

All quite on the home front

Well perhaps its not the best time to be trying to sell a flat. With the news being full of reports about a coming recession and how hard it is to get a mortgage these days.

After the drama of the first week, the salesman at the estate agent got suddenly fired (I'm now being looked after by the branch manager, mainly I think, because she is the only person there!), there were a couple of viewings and a visit from the energy efficient auditor (you have to have an energy efficiency certification in the home information pack), it has all gone very quite.

The agent says it will pick up and that it was only quite due to the bank holiday.

So I've stopped looking for the time being as I don't fancy being in the position of finding somewhere I really want but having to lose it because I have to sell my place first.

Putting my flat on the market

I only planned to pop up the road to get a newspaper, and ended up selling my flat.

OK not quite but that's about what happened on Saturday morning. I have to pass two estate agents on my way to the newsagents and so I thought I would pop in to see if any of them had anything good for sale.

With the first agent I went to look at an OK property on the other side of the island and mentioned on the way back that I was just about to put my property on the market with another agent. I had planned on going to the other agent and sorting it out, that afternoon. So the agent, being a salesmen, offered me a deal. 1.5% fee rather than 1.95% they had offered when they valued my flat the other week. The other agent was offering 1.85% so I accepted the deal and will let them market the flat.

So the process has started hopefully it won't be too much of a roller coaster ride.

Protecting the Stormtroopers

Last week was the 8Th London Sci-Fi festival, which we are regular visitors too. Well regular visitors to the Sci-Fi pub quiz which is held on the last day and is a slightly alcoholic but fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

This year I decided to give a little back and volunteered to help out. Most of my duties were things like tidying up and manning the front desk, but there were a couple of stand out tasks.

One was helping out in the projector room, the festival which is mostly movies is held in a cinema in central London, seeing all the bits of equipment and reels of film.

The other top task was to be bodyguard to some Star wars Stormtroopers, who were helping to promote the festival. They may have ruled the empire and fought their way across the galaxy but they needed guarding from the general public so their armour didn't get damaged!

Decision in principle

Went to see the Mortgage advisor yesterday to give me a firm figure of how much they are will to give me.

They couldn't quote me much in the way of valid rates as it was the last day of the month and apparently they all change on the start of the month (they could have told me before hand) still I'm still 3 months until my old mortgage switches to the expensive standard variable rate so should be able to sort something out nearer the time.

I checked their rates this morning and the 3yr tracker has dropped 0.5% from yesterday.

So in theory the money is sorted, the next step is to get a HIP (home information pack).

Birthday treat and advice

We (Russ, Nick and Myself) had a great little birthday trip to Thorpe park adventure park.

We raced around with priority tickets, tried out most of the rides and got a bit sun burnt (it rained all week and was sunny, just long enough for our trip, which was nice!).

The best ride was Nemesis, with lots of lovely looping and a real feeling or whooshing back and forwards.

A word of warning, we did a ride called the Samurai which rotates on three axis and really screwed up our balance for several hours. fortunately we did that ride after all the other, as the park was closing, and so we could wimp out of doing any more because they wouldn't let us.

I still get the odd 'body memory' of flipping over backwards now after 5 days.

And now a word from our sponsors

Well I survived the talk
It took about 10 minutes in front of about 100 people. People laughed and asked questions, and nicely for me said afterwards that they enjoyed it. I drank three beers straight down afterwards and I'm quite glad I don't have to do anything like that again for a while.

First Thursday

Oh my one of the drawbacks of working for a funky media agency is that once in a while you have to do some funky media agency stuff.

I've been picked to give a presentation about myself in the big company wide meeting in a section called Knowing me Knowing you.

I have to give a quick talk about myself with slides.

Two people get picked per month and I was unlucky enough to be picked last month while I was away skiing.

30minutes to go wish me luck...

The Knives were out

Well I missed it the big board cull at my old company has happened. I found out last night that the Americans did what we were all predicted and got rid of most of the board, only Alan, Richard(who most still blame), Susie and Nick and the lawyer bloke are left.

The board after selling the company to the Americans presided over the downturn in the companies fortune, making a load of us redundant and the watching as most of the rest of the company resigned, due to them having ripped the heart out of the company.The morale has been really bad and they must have been having leaving dos every week.

The people who were forced out and nearly all in much better positions (except for Rob who's still at leisure) and now most of rest of the company (or at least IT) are in better positions as well.

Valuation Weekend

As part of my plan for selling my flat and moving to some thing bigger (2 bedrooms) I needed to get the flat valued.So on Saturday I had a day sitting around waiting for estate agents to call and value the flat.

I picked three agents partly because they were local and partly because the were on the bigger property websites (primelocation.com, propertyfinder.com) and in the case of the last one because they have just sold a flat in my block and the sold board is nailed to the front.

First up at 10am (and me with a hangover from a pretty good works night out) was a lady from Rubicon. They are the nearest agent, at about 10 doors down the road. She had a good look around, made notes and quoted a price of 215K.

Next Up at 1pm was a chap from Alex Neil, the company I used as a managing agent while I was letting the flat out, they quoted 220-225K partly based on a load on flats nearby on for 230K which were a bit smaller but had water views (a big thing in docklands where I live if you can see the river Thames or a bit of one of the dock the price goes up) and partly on other units they had sold in my block.

Finally at 2:30pm just as a huge rain storm started was the posh lady from Franklin James. She completely turned me around by say I shouldn't try and market the property above 250K (I hadn't planned on it after the first two estimates) but the flat was a good size and she quoted 245K.

They all said the market is still quite good and that a flat like mine would sell in 4-6 weeks. They also all explained about getting a HIPS pack and about sole agent agreements.

It was all very interested and quite fun once the hangover had gone. I'll now have to sit down and think my options through.

Clocks go forward

It's so nice to go home from work while the sun is still out.

It makes you all positive and thinking all is right with the world even when you have to travel home using London public transport.

Back from Skiing and still walking

I did take it easy. In the end I did 5ish days of skiing and only fell over the once.

I found it quite tricky to turn right as my left leg would drag slightly behind me. However I do think some of the technique I learnt last year help so I didn't just try and turn using my knee joint.

I stuck to Green and Blue runs and was going fine not staying out until I got tired until, on Wednesday I fell over while almost stationary. Just one of those over balances that happen on skis some times. I fell on my right side and just ever so slightly twisted my left knee (basically just the weight of the ski and the boot). At first it felt quite sore and I couldn't get enough
power through it (tried to push but nothing happened until I push down with my hand) to clip back into the binding. So I quit for the day.

Oddly enough walking around on it didn't hurt so I guess it's a slight pull on a muscle that you don't normally use for walking! I figure the general weakness of the knee made the twist worse than normal.

So I took it easy for the rest of the week, just a three hours on the Thursday on some green runs (actually bloody scared due to all the out of control beginners rocketing around) and took the Friday off to be a tourist and do some site seeing.

It was a good holiday and I glad to say that being able to ski properly again looks good.

Just have to wait until next year to give it another try...

Personal Trainer

Yeah I'm trying out a personal trainer at the gym. he says I need to do lot of work on my core muscles.

He had me doing planks (which I'm quite good at) things with the gym ball (for stability as the things go all over the place when you try to do sit ups on them) and press ups (again using the gym ball to make it harder which I'm really rubbish at). I'm not sure how long I want to do this as its a bit on the expensive side but from the grumpy signals coming from my stomach muscles today it should do some good.

It's all getting a bit Yuppie isn't it! Next thing you know I'll have a flat in Docklands and a pair of red braces...Oh hang on a minute...

Back in the flat

Sort of moved back in this week, well just for a couple of days, before I go off skiing for a week.

The place is in pretty good nick and clean. Except for a few bits of wear and tear (as the management company called it) and something tells me I didn't stipulate that he had to be a non-smoker (the sofa got a good Febrezing).

It's very empty and tidy at the moment I have to see how I can keep it that way.

Off to the snow

Yes I'll be careful

A gentle week in Les Deux Alpes. Just trying to get my nerve back.Actually I'm more worried about moving around the town when not on skis, watch the ice!I've been packed really to go from over a week and I've been to the shops and brought the Bourne identity books to have something to read on the trip


I can't wait

Ivy's party and a Sleeping Dougie

At the weekend Ivy had her birthday party all based around a teddy bears picnic. there was small people and teddy bears everywhere.

I now understand that a childrens birthday party is a compleate bedlam!

Fortunately a very large pot of Tea was available for the adults and it was fun to see my sister in teacher mode controlling the chaos.

Dougie slept straight through most of the noise and attention.

Brecon Beacons

So we had a good time in the Brecon Beacons and my leg more or less managed to get through it.

We stayed at a lovely little cottage in Talybont-on-Usk (SO119216)

http://www.breconcottages.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=CM.cottage&Propref=BANK&startmonth=0

which looks like the owner had been watching grand design et al.

We did two days of walking including a huge 9 hours and 12 miles walk around the Pen-Y-Fan horseshoe and on to Fan Y Big and a Wellington bomber crash site. We ended in the dark with our head touches by the time we got to the bomber and a couple of more hours afterwards back down to road.

Techincally it was still a bit beyond me and using polls to help your balance is very tiring when you have to pull them out of mud and long grass. So by the time we got back I was dead on my feet and could hardily move, but to be fair Colin and Mark wheren't in much of a better state.

As a result we made sure saturday was an easier day with a just couple of small sunny hills to a pub lunch and very long flat walk back in the rain to cottage. The saturday walk was a full outing with the girls and baby Abi, as well.

Sunday was an easy day, as we were all a bit tired. A lessurely breakfast and then a slow train home.

Discharged

It was a very quick 10 minute meeting. Nipun, the Physio had me stand-up, sit-down and jog up and down the room.

Then he said 'is ok?' and I said 'yes'.
He said 'are you jogging?' ('yes' I said), I mentioned that I did some walking at the weekend just said I went for a bit of a walk.
'and cycling?' ('yes' I said)
'and have you joined a gym?' ('yes').

'Good' he said and that he'll discharge me.

I told him its pretty good now mostly just klicking when I bend it. to which his reply was don't klick it!

He told me to keep focus on the straight leg lift (sitting straight up on a high backed chair and lifting your leg locked straight out in front of you) and to keep good posture

I asked him about skiing and he said don't ski for a least 6 months, and to get a second opion from Mr Parmar, my surgeon (not likely at 145 quid a go)

So I didn't tell him about the trip in march and said 'thank you' and 'good bye'.

A firm hand shake and I was out the door.

Douglas Daniel and a long walk around Pen-Y-Fan

some more good news...

I'm an uncle again.

Douglas Daniel Waring (7lb 15oz) arrived very early on friday morning and is doing very well. As is very nearly a family tradition I was away doing something vaguely adventurous, this time walking in the Brecons.

He managed to arrive in time for his sisters birthday on the Monday.

Friday a conversation in the Pub

'Your beard has got really long the last couple of days.'

'Er I've had my hair cut....'

Interviews

It's really bizzare but I've been asked to do a couple of interviews. That's interview people for a position here rather than the other way around. It's a fairly odd experience as I start by explaining a bit about the company and the position, both of switch I'd don't really know about yet...

Feb 18th

It's sorted my tenant will be moving out on the 18th Feb. Not quite sure what notice he actually got in the end as the management company got a bit confused (not good in a management company!) but it was meant to be two months.

Oh well, its sorted now, and I'll move in just after, its a Monday so slightly odd.

And I can have a sit down and decide if anything needs fixing up before I move a load of stuff back in. Most of it is just twenty metres down the road at the storage unit, so that's not a problem.

The flat still has the same kitchen and bathroom (more or less) since it was built (around 1993) so may be its a good time for some new stuff.

Anyway the Lads will be happy with hotel Dunhill will be open again for London visits, or at the very least, the sofa...

An 'Oh my god she's dropped the bottle' moment

Yesterday, at work, I managed to earn my salary before 9am and earn a few brownie points.

I was looking through the code on one of our live sites trying to find some performance improvements and I noticed there was some code to get the entire user table, which includes username, email and password for the site and write it out to a web page.

Er I wonder if you can access that page on the development server, ah yes you can. How about the stage server, oh yes you can see all the users printed out in a nice list. But how about the Live site....oh Shit! every single username and password. A very rapid flurry of emails then occurred as I got them (the clients tech team) to make the site safe and delete the offending pages.

A little later when our CTO found out (I had to tell him) a general email went around the department giving everyone a rocket (it wasn't the fault of anyone who currently works here) and reminding them to check they don't release test pages like this in future.

A trip into the loft

skis - got them out for the first time since last year from where they got dump when I got back. They're a bit more bashed up that I would have figured I guess I used them quite hard last year. A couple of deep holes that I should p-tex and perhaps give them a good waxing. But they should serve me well in March.

Staples sorted

the bill for getting my staples out - another 25:50 but they did pay in the end. I think that's it and I'm now in a position to work out how much the crash actually cost me.

Sunlight

sunlight - it's just starting to get light in the mornings the sunrise happens while I'm on the train on the way in. It was so much nicer even on Monday morning for it not to be dark.

New year at the gym

Its a new year and its very very busy at the gym near work and it's smelling quite bad too. An entire sea of new years resolutioners are jamming up the works and making the place busy (read sweaty urgh!).

I notice it on the way home as well, lots of red faced people on the homeward train. I guess it will all die down again in a couple of weeks. I do think though it is starting to have a benefit.

I'm going a couple of times a week or more and hopefully I'll be in a half fit state for my walking trip at the end of the month, the Brecon Beacons, let alone my upcoming ski trip

Doing the crane

At the physio again

This time he had me jogging around, running up fake steps and standing on the most tricky balance board to date.

The jogging was a little faster than he wanted and he told me to slow down, I figured at that point I then won't tell him about running on the machines at the gym. The fake steps just go up three steps and then back down again, in the corner of the room, and apart from me failing around a bit, need to practice my balance, I was okay with that. On the other hand/foot the balance board was really hard, a 30cm round wooden disc with a wooden cone fixed to the bottom, I couldn't get it to stay horizontal at all.

The rest of the exercises where all around me standing on one foot a trying to go into a crouch, sort of a geriatric karate kid. he's happy with my progress and said that next time, in four weeks time, may well be the last time I need to see him. I'm still deciding if I'm going to tell him I'm off skiing!

Review of the Year

Spent 28 days in Foreign countries

Worked only 135 days out of the UK normal of 252 days
but managed to increased my salary by 47%

Managed to resign one job, then get hired back with a promotion. Then get made redundant and finally get another job for much better terms.

Spent 7 1/2 months with crutches or walking sticks and 2 nights in hospital

I know lot more about knees and ligaments

Became an Uncle again for the third time.

Got a new bike and a pair of skis

Rented out my flat without any problems to just one tenant.
Lived at my parents for 11 months

Did interviews for 6 different jobs

My 2007 carbon footprint includes
Total for flights = 2.303 tonnes of CO2
Total for bus & rail = 0.726 tonnes of CO2
and I should offset by planting 6 trees (about 4.380 tonnes)

Didn't change my weight at all and still weight about 13 1/2 stone.

Joined a gym (LA Fitness) but haven't tried any of the classes yet. I go about twice a week and I'm back to being able to jog.

Only brought myself 4 CDs

Joined Facebook in April

Had a beard at three times over the year.

Went to one music festival (Leeds) and one gig (Beatallica). Already have tickets for this years festival.

So this is Christmas

I had a good time at my Parents for Christmas and we had a Boxing day visit down to West Sussex to visit my sister and her family.

Ivy got a dolls house nearly bigger than she is, which she made sure everything was placed exactly were she wanted it. Freddie got loads of 'Cars' stuff and watched his 'Cars' DVD again and again, and Edie just watched everything that was happening around her.

The other bit of news was that I wrote back to the flat management agents to ask for my flat back. I have to give to two months notice so it may be back in London in March.

A bill for Staples

I just got a note from the insurance company saying they are sorry but they won't pay the invoice for 25.50GBP as I'm now longer covered.

What! er what 25.50, what procedure was that for!

So I rang them and apparently the surgeon only just got around to billing for removing the staples from the surgery all those months ago.They said they would sort it out.

So the whole thing is still not settled

I shan't be using Lastminute.com again

or don't believe what Lastminute.com put on there website.

The upshot of the whole experience seems to be, Lastminute won't guarantee any of the information on its site. It's star rating system is factually wrong as you can't compare quality from one country to another. And they will blame anyone but themselves.

So my advice stay away from them

Here's some of the details of the letters I got including on the 17Th Dec received a final response to my complaint letter way back in October

Lastminute said back in 7 Nov 07

1) We're sorry.
2) Your feedback is important.
3) We are passing the buck to our supplier, Fleetway Travel.
4) So we're not going to do anything else about it.

and last week in the post from Fleetway Travel. The main points being.

1) We're sorry
2) The description of the hotel is not our fault we blame our supplier
3) We checked the hotel met Greece Health and Safety at the start of the season.
4) The classification is can only be compare to other local hotels.
5) That is what passes for 5 star accommodation in Rhodes.
6) We will pass on your comment to the hotel
7) The quality of the accommodation is your personal option
8) We'll take the comments into account when using this hotel in future.
9) You should of contacted the local agent or the UK office
10) We could have move you to another hotel if you had asked.
11) We're sorry about the flight but you can't blame us.
12) Please travel with us again in future.

Both of which do a very good job of avoiding most of the issues I was trying to make. So I guess I'll try again but this time make it real simple and get across that I was mainly upset at the miss-selling of the holiday.

1) If something is advertised it should be in the holiday. i.e. Sauna, Sat TV, Scuba Diving.
2) When selling to a UK audience, a dreamlike Deluxe 5 star hotel should be described as a decent 3 star hotel if that's what it is.
3) You should not be using a rating system to compare holidays from different countries if in fact they are not comparable.
4) I was not complaining about the flights I was complaining that the advert did not say we would not be getting any food.
5) I did report my complains to the Holiday rep and email again once I got home but its a little difficult to work out who to complain to as you both just pass the buck.
6) If you can't guarantee any of the information about a holiday then you should say so in the advert.

Closed for Christmas

The office closed for Xmas and opens on the 2nd. So I effect I get another 4 days holiday!

However a load of stuff was promised to clients in time for Xmas and so the last couple of days was really mental. Partly this was due to the amount of stuff to do but mainly this was due to most of the people that knew stuff had left for the holidays.
I was in the odd position of being the only 'expert' at a couple of systems despite not actually having seen any of the code.
With you talking to someone about an issue one day only to find out later that that was their last day! In the .NET team we went from 4 people to 2 people as the contractors finished and we got all their stuff to support and release.
So it was busy but I didn't think it was too bad as no-one was actually screaming and I've had the odd mad deadlines before.

Hopefully nothing goes wrong over Xmas and things should be running smoothly when I get back!

Nipun and the wobble board

This weeks trip to the physio, or jolly psycho as I've started to think of him, was a bit different.

The session was mostly with me standing on a balance board (basically a round board with half a football under it) trying to keep up right while Nipun threw balls at me a different angles for me to catch.

The idea was to make me bend and weave from my knees. It was a bit scary to start with due to a complete lack of trust in my knee but once we got started it was OK and much less of a problem than I was expecting. I guess that was the point!

When he wasn't playing ball, but still on a wobble board (this time a square one with a fixed bar under it) getting me to stand on one foot (my good one), we were mostly talking about letting flats in London! yeah odd, but he ask me about mine and he was of the opinion Ilford was the place to buy in so there!

The other important exercise for me to concentrate on this time was the hamstring stretch. Its not too bad for normal motion but anything more the hamstring is tight. last time I was told to sit in a chair and raise the leg up until I felt the hamstring stretch and hold it for 20. this should take about 6 weeks of doing it every day to get the hamstring back to a good length. However I didn't seem to be having much success. The Physio corrected my posture and told me to sit up straight and not slouch and right away I could feel the pull. bit obvious really but you try remembering all the stuff they say!

To top it all the wobble board fun last major thing he told me, after watching me walk up and down for a bit, was that I should start jogging again. Eek! its a year since I done anything more than a fast walk so this a major step. The feeling at the moment is that if I put to much weight on the leg too fast it will give way and I will crash to the floor. So I'm going to take it real easy.

I went to the gym that evening a did 1K on the running machine, very slowly 6.0KM/h and boy did my leg hurt the day after.

On Sunday I did 1.5K at 7.0 KM/h and so far it feels OK.

Week two and the Xmas do

So my timing was pretty good the company is happy because they just win a couple of major awards and I also join in time for the Christmas party.

They had a little celebration at the awards news and we had champagne in the morning. Which was nice.

The party was good, if a little more tame than I was expecting. It was at a swish Sony place called the colour rooms (basically some neon lights a big TVs) with just lots of free drink and light conversation. Although judging by the rumours and the lack of people making it into work on Friday morning some more stuff happened after I left. Actually I was the first person into the office that morning and had to get it unlocked and the lights on.

My new niece

A week later than planned I finally made it down to my sisters place to see my new niece Edith May.

We tried got down last weekend but an exploding spark plug meant we saw rather too much of the hard should of the M25 (between Jn17 - Jn16) and had a very long trip home in the recovery truck.

This weekend Dad and me in a fixed car, went down (Mum took the train down last Monday) and despite the weather we got to see Edie.

What can I say 'It's a baby!' and she's lovely!

First Week - New kid at school feeling

Well its a very different place to work.
It started with bacon sandwiches at a meeting for the whole company on Monday morning at which the new members of staff are introduced...

Er... Hi.. I'm David...

and the week ended with beers being handed around the office at 5 on Friday. before I headed off for a major leaving do at my old company (partly so I could tell them all about my new job!!)

It's going to be an interesting place to work, very media agency, laid back, casual clothes, music playing type place. They have a few nice perks in the office as well, from free stuff to make breakfast with in the morning (bagels, toast, crumpets) to fresh fruit deliveries a couple of times a week. Of course they have tea and coffee and handily they've placed me near the kitchen to I so don't have to run dry of Tea... (and No its not the new boy makes the Tea, any more than anyone else)

The work hasn't really started yet but beyond the initial front-end designs and the deadlines, how things are done and what technologies I use will be up to me.

The company is mostly designers, producers and front end Flash (its a name of a technology rather than a personality trait) developers. There are a couple of other .NET developers and nothing at all by way of DBAs. So I should have some opportunity to apply some of the things I've learned at my last company about process and the best way to organise things.

The hardest part at the moment is getting up while its still dark. that and learning everyone's names!

Thursday and my trip up to Town.

...or two interviews, one meeting with the agent, a job offer and a little light shopping.

An early start, smartly dressed this time, to meet the CTO of the digital agency. This is the first time I've gone to an interview and had to apologise for being too smart!

It was quite a tricky meeting with him asking lots of questions about Agile and Scrum and how I think things should be done in an IT department. So we talked and I've done this so many times in the last couple of weeks I'm trying to make all the answered sound like I've just made them up rather than said the same thing before. Also I'm trying to watch my body language so I send all the right signals with mirroring and stuff like that.

We ended with him saying good luck in the interview that afternoon and then he changes it to good luck making the right decision. I wasn't sure how it went and so I headed off to do some shopping while I killed 2 hours until the next interview.

The Seventh interview was with a small company with an amazing TV studio setup. They film and then broadcast company TV across satellites and the web. It was a good interview except for the interviewer asking me the same question several different way. I guess it was to see if the answers where all the same. I had a tour around the offices and got to see the huge TV mixing desk and the studio they do some green screen stuff.

OK by this stage its about 3pm and I'm trashed. but it's off the Agent for a debrief on the day's interviews. It's right across town and I'm wandering around Bank and Monument for a while trying to find the office, despite having been there before with a desperate need to go to the loo.

When I finally get there the Agent is as chipper as ever and was just getting down to grilling me on how the interviews went when he was called away to the phone.

He comes back in with a slightly bemused, stunned look on his face. 'That was [the digital media agency] on the phone, they really like you and want to offer you a job...for [the same amount as the other offer], which is er... 3 grand more than they were willing to pay!'

Hurrah ! I'll take it! I said and my job searching is over. They print me all the package details and send me on my way. I travelled home in a slight daze (well until I got my PSP out to play WipeOut) and broke the news to my Dad when I got home.

So I'm starting on Monday and I'm slightly scared at trying to match up to the person I come across as when I'm being interviewed. But at least I won't have to wear my suit again for a while.

Sixth Interview and a Decision

Otherwise known as what I did on Wednesday

So I've had overnight to think about the offer and still don't know. Anyway the sixth interview is at 11 am and I said I would make a decision after that.

The interview is at a digital media agency based north of oxford street. basically they make online adverts and viral marketing like the Sony and Lynx themed game sites. It's a very different prospect from the other interviews so much so I've been told to go in casual clothes. It seems to be a lively place and according to Mel (who runs the IT department) who interviewed me its got a lively social. Also she said that they get all sorts of perks like drinks evening and yoga classes! So I'm pretty impressed and I think that it went well as the technical guy I met was saying some pretty positive stuff as I left.

Well I got about 200 metres outside the office and into a nearby shop before the Agent rang to say they wanted me back for a second interview. Blimey that was quick it could have only taken 20 minutes. So I'm due back on Thursday (11am) to see the CTO. although next time I will be dressed smart as I'm off to interview number seven in the afternoon.

So the rest of the day is mine to do a little Xmas shopping and wonder what I going to do about the job offer. Actually by this stage I had decided, I didn't fancy it and the work place didn't compare at all well with the place I had just visited. So I found a nice quiet place to ring the agent and give him the bad news, it was in the stairwell in Liberty's.

Two phone interviews and a job offer

At this rate I'm going to need a job just so my life quietens down a bit.

Today started with me heading off to the first meeting with my new Physio in the NHS, Nipun. Interesting differences with my last physio. Apparently I'm still favouring my left leg and limping a bit so we are going to work on that. Its a case to stretching out the hamstrings and learning to use both legs the same.

In the afternoon it was phone time first the second part of yesterdays interview and then a HR interview with a streaming media company based in St Martin's lane.

The results of which were from the latter an invite to a second interview on Thursday and a Job offer from the first phone call. Well from the agent late after he'd spoken to the company.

It's a standard package health care, pension, 10% bonus and 22% increase in pay from my old job. pretty good

I've got over night to think about it and with it being a scary job I don't know if I'm going to say yes or not!!!

Fifth Interview and the Arrival of Edith May

Friday evening and I'm sorting myself out for a weekend away and all of a sudden the agents go crazy and all start ringing at the same time. One of the agents who contacted me thought LinkedIn had a position with a financial opinion news service. They must be a bit desperate to fill their position because from first phone call to me it took about 40 minutes to get my CV to them and fix up an interview.

So Monday morning I went down to Liverpool St (not to Guildhall where Google maps had located them) to a small company hidden down a side street. The interview was fine but the job sounds a little scary, basically I would be the only developer/architect in the company surrounded by business users. A huge opportunity to shape a whole department but only I would be needed to IT support an entire company! According to the agent it went OK and I had the second part a fairly simple technical phone call with their current third party IT supplier on the phone on Tuesday afternoon. One of the questions he asked was 'What upcoming technology in the near future really excites you' to which I guess I was supposed to say something related to IT but I said the new Virgin One spaceship!

Also on the Monday as well as going to see one of the agents and doing a very odd multiple choice technical screening test, we had some good news...

I'm an uncle again.

Edith May Golding (7lb 7oz) arrived early in the morning and is doing very well.

Fourth Interview part deux

Well it went well enough for them to ask me back for a second interview. So yesterday I went back to see them. This time it was in Angel.

This time is was a full technical test, which was alot like a written exam. Fortunately we were late as the person who was seeing me was double booked in another meeting across town. So I didn't have to do it all just have a good go at it for half an hour. There were questions on asp.net controls c# sql queries and creating tables, state management and requirements capture.

It was quite hard as these things test more your ability to remember stuff than whether you are any good at coding. But I got a chance at the end to talk around some of the topics to show I a little of what I know.

The last question they asked was 'How would you work out how many hairdressers were there in London'. It's quite common in my experience that interviewers ask something a little left field in an interview just to see how a person would react. I normally, when interviewing someone would ask 'tell me something interesting about yourself', a question I picked up from my old boss, Julian. Well this time I answered it a couple of different ways including using a phone book and making a worm hole out of a couple of stars to freeze time and going around counting by hand! At least I will be remembered!

So still fingers crossed.

Fourth interview

I thought this one went OK too, er like I did the last three.

This time is it was at the end of the day so I went in a little early and went for a wander around the British Museum. I visited the money section, since I was going to an interview at an investment bank, and the Painting and Drawing section. Most people don't even know the Drawings are there, hidden away at the back of the building, but you can see some wonderful things in there, like sketches by Michelangelo.

So the interview, that was a little different again from the others as I was interviewed by two people this time, for a bit and then asked some technical questions by one of them in a different room. Also I got chaperoned to the interview by the Agent, which was a little strange.

The reason for the slightly odd way of doing things was that they were holding a sort of 'open evening' and meeting a couple of candidates, so we will see what becomes of that.

One draw-back of my amazing cheap suit is that is quite thin and as the temperature dropped today (6C with wind) it got a bit chilly on the way home.

Third Interview

From two guys at an investment bank by phone.

Didn't go too well as they asked me loads of how web pages work type of stuff which you never need to know when you are actually writing them.

Also doing it by phone is never as good as face to face.

So I'm not expecting anything more...

Second Interview

Well the suit has now paid for itself.

This one too seems to go OK and nice place in Angel.
but I've had no reply back from the agent so I figure that one has gone to someone else too.

Still early days yet. It's only the end of the second week of looking.

(the agent rang on the Sunday evening (the interview was Friday morning) to say the guy that got the job was someone who had worked with them before and so knew their systems, you can't really compete with that!)

First Interview

Today was my first interview had a long trip down the district line all the way to Hammersmith.
It seemed to go ok


but they gave the job to someone else

the agent thinks it might be some one cheaper

English Sporting Weekend

Saturday, the English rugby team, got through to the final, amazing. It was a bit of a long shot but we dared to hope. A painful match to watch (watching England nearly always is) and a bit sad in the end.

Still there was Lewis on Sunday to win the Grand Prix and cheers us all up.

Oh dear perhaps next time.

I think I'll stop watching sport for a bit, not that I watch much before.
Still in both cases an amazing achievement to get as far as they did.

CV go live!

Finally managed to get my life on to two sides of A4 and ask my Mum to read through it to check it made some sense.

Posted it up on to Jobserve.com on Thursday and got about 20 email straight away
and the phone has been really busy for the first couple of hours.

One agent said said it had been download 10 times already and then was in a couple of hours. I looking for a contract in Central London around the 300 a day mark, to start with. I figure that about right for 12 years experience in IT.

So fingers crossed and I had better start revising for any technical tests I may be asked to do.

Complaint Letter

Dear Lastminute.com

I wish to complaint about my recent holiday to Rhodes as booked through your web site (I reported my complaints to the local rep on 8.10.7). I wanted a quiet, warm, stress free holiday to recover from an operation I’ve just had. I wasn’t after much, a nice room, some nice food, a swimming pool and a gym to help regain my fitness.

I paid 600 pounds for this holiday and I don’t feel I got my moneys worth by a long stretch, In fact I feel I have been miss-sold too. The holiday was advertised as a ‘dreamlike Deluxe 5 star hotel’ however the room was very basic needed and multiple maintenance work was needed to be done on it, in the first case just to make the room safe.

The holiday was rated as 5 stars and this definitely wasn’t. You do point out on some of your other holidays that standards are a bit different in some countries, but that is clearly stated in the advert and was not in this case. I don’t expect any 5 star accommodation include two single beds, of slightly different heights, push together to make a double when the room is clearly designed for a double bed (the double bed head board was nailed to the wall). Supplied in the room was a single hand towel and a single medium sized towel (not even bath towel size), 2 rolls of toilet paper and nothing else. Nothing to make it a 5 star experience at all not even a bar of soap. When advertising a 5 star experience you think of such things as mini bar, a kettle for tea making, a range of TV and radio channels, furniture that isn’t worn and shabby, a room which doesn’t need things fixing and perhaps even some toiletries.

Where I would agree the all-inclusive part of the package was good, the main lobby and the swimming pools were fine; but practically nothing else was of even a moderate standard. The Fitness Centre and Sauna was a shabby little basement room with a nearly unusable multi-gym and no sign of the sauna at all. The advertised Scuba diving lessons and hire were non-existent.

The room was in such bad repair, ignoring the minor faults, I had to call out maintenance 4 times. First time was to fix the high cupboard door that was dangerously hanging off making entering the room unsafe. Then it was twice to try and make the hot water work. Finally once more to repair the patio door which fell off its hinges.

Room facilities were not as advertised or perhaps only the barest minimum to cover the legal definition. The ‘Satellite TV with international channels/ music radio’ was 1 English TV channel only, BBC World, and that was only after I had retuned the TV to get it. No radio channels that I could find.

You advert specifically lists what is not included in the holiday and you didn’t mention that the In-flight meals were not included as you do on some of your other holidays – on the way out as I wasn’t warned and so I was pretty hungry after 14 hour journey there. And on the way home, 9 hours stuck with Thomas Cook only a single drink and sandwich at the airport and nothing on the plane during the appalling journey home.

All these problems left me much more stressed and tired than before I left and I now feel I would not want to wish your organisation on my worst enemy.

Last Physio

Now the insurance money has just about run out (the day after this visit), I went to see my physio for the last time and get a list of stuff to work on in the future.

He said my goal should be to do 20 one leg 'squats' with weights either in the hand or perhaps a rucksack. He also said I could join a gym and use my bike again.

At the gym I want to focus on the leg press and leg curl and he said my skiing trip in March is a good target to work towards.

The leg is still shaking and I need to keep up with the stretches the goal of the 20 repeats is a still quite a long way off. I can start kneeling down and siting back on to my heals (that's really painful at the moment!).

In the future I should always include the stretches the balancing and one leg squats in an gym routine from now on to try and keep the level of use up.

Basically his message was build up the muscles and good luck.

Off on Holiday

its raining here
is not raining in Rhodes
so I'm packed and I'm off for a week in the warm tonight.

Iliotibial tract

"Rhodes... where we're going we don't need Rhodes"

Had my last meeting with Mr Parmar, well the last one should be in six months but the money runs out. Everything is fine and it was all quite jolly! Apparently the main issue I still have, a clicking, sore bit on the outside of the knee, is cause by my Iliotibial tract rubbing on the drill site and should lessen with time. the rod is sticking out a bit and rubbing on this tract thing but should smooth off and get absorbed into the bone.

Also we've sorted the lawyer stuff to quite a tight deadline, set by the Company. Funny really because it was mainly them causing the delays. But once they had sorted all the typos and got the amount right we had an agreement to sign and that should be that.


On the trip front I went for the third option in the end and just book something quick. So I'm going to Greece. I've booked a week on Rhodes. It looks like a nice place with a gym and several swimming pools. This will be the first time I've been on a beach holiday as normally its all activity
for me so the difference should be interesting.


Now I just have to get some beachwear and some reading materials and then I away from this England of constant rain!

Skiing March 2008

Yeap

I've just booked to go on a ski trip next March. It's six months away so I should be fit enough by then. It's important to get straight back on the horse as the saying goes.
The trip is with my friends from Ware it should be a nice gentle re-introduction to Skiing as its a group with a full range of abilities.

To aid the recovery, and because I have a little time on my hand, I've been going to for walks around the village each day. the government say you should do 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week. so I'm got a nice little route worked out which has some ups and downs to get me slightly out of breath for an hour.

The route runs up behind my Parents house, through the woods, across a couple of fields until I get to Mill Lane. Then its up Mill Lane, the steep climb stretches out the knee) and then across the huge rolling field above the Lamas until I get to the point Walkern road bridge goes over the bypass. Then its reverse course and return home.

I great walk with good views of the village, as it runs along the ridge, but not to good when its raining.

Suits you sir

I'm impressively unprepared for looking for a new job. Not only do I have to fix up a 3 year old CV, I find that all my smart clothes are in storage.

So I had to go out and buy a new suit today. This is probably a good thing as I haven't used them much in three years they are probably too small. That goes for shoes that aren't trainers as well. The fit is now up to a 40" Regular although the trouser are still 34". I guess if I put on the old jackets I would now look a bit like a bouncer.

Still writing my CV. it's like pulling teeth. I'm doing a full permie CV has I will probably need it at some point and then cutting it down into one suitable for contracting. With a full CV you give lots of detail about yourself, as well as your skills, so a company can work out if you are a good fit. However for a Contractor CV it should be much short, not more that 2 pages, and only concentrate on the skills the company is looking for.

And no word from the lawyers, I guess my old company are still messing them around.

Lawyers and leg bending

The beard has now gone and I've had a hair cut so I'm looking professional again, partly for the future interview but mainly because I needed a passport photo that didn't make me look like a nutter.


Thursday was a trip to the Physio

He said that there had been no progress in the last three weeks despite me walking in this time without the crutches. I was thinking that he could go and get knotted. OK the progress isn't amazing but I definitely moving around better.

I told him about the redundancy and about the end of my medical cover. We sorted out that we could have a couple more sessions until it runs out on the 17th Oct (one month from me signing the letter on Monday). That got him off my case a bit but he still wanted me to do the exercises 'every hour'

Friday night in the pub

A company tradition even if most of us now don't work for the company anymore. It was Christians leaving do and most of us had already planned on going before events happened.

I did get a call in the middle of it, after I had had a few pints from the lawyer to say that the company wanted the contracts signed by the by the close of business on the Friday, but as they hadn't actually sent mine yet and the ones that they had, needed some correction, then it wasn't likely to happen. I said it was no bother to me and repeated to them that they didn't need to tell me what the company is like as I had worked for them for three years!


The other event that evening was that Matt turned up, so he had recovered from the shock on Monday and seemed ready to get on with job hunting.

CV Writing

Mostly this week I've being doing a bit of revision, watching season three of LOST and trying to update my CV.

Man its hard I haven't touched my CV in three years and to try and sum up your time at a company and then sell yourself on paper is really difficult. So its slow going. Fortunately the management at my old company had a bad attack of buzz words towards the end so I can just put them all straight in; Agile, TDD, Scrum, WCF, SOA, Continuous Integration, Product backlogs, etc.

LOST is fine. I had put off watching it as I got fed up with it during the second season but I find I have free time on my hands and so I decided to get caught up.

and the revising, well starting interviewing again means technical tests which meant reading around the subject to be able to answer questions about .net development which you never really need to know when you are actually developing.

Passports and Postoffices

Its a case of bad timing but my passport is about to expire so I've been rushing around trying to get it renewed.

So I had a trip out to Hertford to the big post office to use their check and send service. I got there a bit early and it was deserted so I went for a wander until 9am. Quite how there managed to be a 10 person queue outside in the 5 minutes I went to the cash machine I don't know. The trip home was fun as well, I got the bus back with all the OAPs.

Anyway the reason for the sorting my passport is that I was thinking of doing something like the last time I was made redundant. I decided it would be a good time to take a long break and went on a trekking trip around some of the national parks in America. I did a big loop from San Francisco via Monument, Yosemite, Dead Valley, Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon and Moab, down to Los Angeles.

So my options are

1. get another permanent job.
2. going contracting - setting up a company and finding a job for a couple of months and then do a big trip.
3. going sailing perhaps a tall ship cruise.
4. going trekking although my knee is not really up to it.
5. or go on a smaller holiday and sort my life out when I get back.

So now I'm waiting for my passport to return in the post.

Facebook and the voided pass

Poor Matt

Monday didn't go too well for my mate Matt. He was on holiday while all the redundancy thing was happening so officially didn't know anything about it. Fortunately some of us rang him at the weekend (although we didn't know if he was included as well) and told him all about it.

Otherwise the first he knew about it would have been on Monday morning when his door pass didn't work.

Which is exactly what happened.

Matt was always early into the office, usually getting in at 8:20ish. so he was half expecting it to happen and that he would have to wait around until someone else got into work. So I had a very odd phone conversation with him at about 8:40ish after he had tried to get it, with me sitting at home and him sitting in the park near the office waiting for 9 am so he could go in and get fired.

For him that's how 5 years of service ended to the company.

I did go in to work later on but Matt didn't stick around and went home. I was there to signed away my right to fight the redundancy and take the money. Also I was there to collect all my personal stuff.

So I cleaned my desk and my locker under the watchful eye of Charlotte from HR. Met with Susie to sign the agreement letter. I wasn't able to sign the no contest contract as I was told I needed to get legal advice first. Fortunately the company would put some money towards that and an independent lawyer was in the offices seeing some of the others so I got a bit of time with him. He took me through the contract and explained the process and sorted out some of the vague details with Susie. He said he would get the company to complete all the details and then he would mail me the contract to sign. Seemed like a nice chap for a lawyer!

Generally the day was a slow process as I stopped to talk to everyone coming backwards and forward. I was in the main lobby for quite a long time neither getting closer to the office or towards the door as a steady stream of people still employed and those collecting their stuff turned up.

It ended in the pub again as we discussed the events of the day over a few pints of beer.

When I got back I set up an ex-company group on facebook so we could all stay in touch.

Redundant

Well I guess I don't have to worry about the office politics anymore

Friday morning started normally with the Traffic project scrum meeting at 9:30 where we talked through what we are doing on the project and what the next lot of work is we will be starting. You meant to stand in a scrum meeting the idea being that if you are standing you will be quicker. However I've been sitting at these meetings because of the knee. The aim of a scrum meeting to for each person to cover three things and three things only 'What I did yesterday, what I'm doing today, and what problems am I facing that are stopping me getting things done'. So we successfully sorted out what the team was doing and went back to our desks.

Waiting for me when I got back was an invite to a strategy meeting. The list of people on it was a bit unusual rather than just being the normal people the go to planning meetings it included a range of people from junior developers to Fabio our technical architect and some developers from the our teams. Raza was one of the developers from another team and he came across to ask what the meeting was about. I didn't know but joked that looking at the selection of people if they fired us all then the company would be in a bit of trouble and alot of the systems knowledge would be lost. Funny how accurate you can be when you are making a joke. So we all trooped off upstairs to Breakout (the meeting rooms are all name after computer games).

The Strategy meeting was as awkward as you would imagine a meeting to tell people that they are being fired, can be. all the guys from IT arrived at the same time to find, Richard (CTO), Susie (Head of HR), Liam (Recruitment), Ruth (Recruitment) and Barry (Tech Support) already in the room. Richard started to read from a script and it was at that point that my heart rate went through the roof and my hands started to shake (they shook for most of that weekend). He read from a script that basically said that they were reorganising the company and as such they didn't need as much staff as they had. They would meet with each of us individually and go into details of our redundancy packages.

Up to this stage I was thinking that it was pretty much like the last time I got made redundant the developers in the room where the ones getting the chop the rest where there to make it official. I was sitting next to Ketan and we could see across to Robo. But Robo's shocked reaction didn't sink in with me until Richard said the time of his meeting with Robo. they also read out the meeting times for Fabio, Ruth and Barry so it was at that point we realised it was them as well. Richard also said that the rest of the company was being told right now and that the was another group being given the bad news in a different meeting (these were people from the business side). He then said we could stay in this room if we wanted and then our computers had been locked. He finish off by saying something about being sorry but by that time I wasn't really listening anymore and was just thinking things through.

So normally at times of crisis this British make a cup of tea. So I suggested that but then realised that Raza was sitting next to me. He's just started his month of fasting so for him the whole shock to the system couldn't be softened with even a glass of water.

We sat in the room for a bit and talked. I explained what happened to me the last time and Gareth made lot of jokes! I guess we all react to shock in different ways most of us by joking about it. We decided to go down to the coffee bar outside the canteen, also so the smokers and the ones who have given up smoking could go out a have a cigarette.

I walked back into the office to get my wallet and ran straight into the IT meeting explaining what's happening. I listen at the back for a bit and then went out a round the other way to get to my desk.

First order of business was to find a quiet corner to ring my Mum and tell her what has happened. Then it was down to the coffee bar with the others. We passed the news around and found out about the others who got the chop and some of the people not given the chop came down and commiserated with us.

Talked to Christian and some of the others about setting up as a contractor. Christian quit a couple of weeks ago and was still working out his notice. Basically a set up a company, get an accountant and then find a job through some recruitment company like GCS. GCS is a company that during my time in the industry a lot of the good contractor guys that I have worked with
have come from. So once I get home that's what I'll be looking into.

So everyone that was in the scrum meeting was out of the door and looking back that forms an odd moment in my mind. The most ironic thing of the whole experience was the mail Rob had sent out a few days ago spoofing the I'm resigning letters. Because we had had so many people resigning recently giving their contract details and saying goodbye, Rob wrote a joke version saying he was not leaving and that he could be contacted on his work address. Little did he know!

I had to go back up for my 1-2-1 meeting with Richard and Susie, this time it was in JetPac. Richard read through another script, this time saying much the same thing but adding if I didn't want to fight the decision then they would give me a pay off to 'soften' the blow. But I had to make my mind up fast as the money would start decreasing. I had until the end of business on the Monday to agree to get the full amount which roughly speak was about a month and half of pay. If I didn't agree until the end of the Friday after it would drop down to the statutory minimum payment, which for me is 310 pounds for each full year that I've worked with the company.

That done I went back down to the office with my little pack of documents and collected my stuff. By this stage most people had got to the pub but I hung around for a bit talking to people and keeping Raza and Lutfur company as they don't drink as so weren't going down the pub. Checking my computer I found that they hadn't locked me out and so I was able to collect some of my personal files; CV, pictures and some music files.

We left the office and Raza did come down the pub to say goodbye. That's where I stayed for the rest of the day drinking, mostly at first with Ketan and Fabio. Later everyone else turned up including lots of old members of staff, it was planned as a big night already because my mate John was leaving anyway and Gareth had invited lots of people. It got very messing towards the end and I heard reports afterwards that a couple of people needed help getting home.

Fitting I suppose, that it all ended in a pub which always has been the heart of the social spirit of the company.

sans crutches

First day going to work without crutches

Seems to be going OK apart from trying to get across Victoria station. People sort of assume you're going to get out of the way for them but while I can do a reasonable straight line I can't yet dodge, but then again most people just bounced off me and for one bloke in particular, I can push back too.

I've noticed that the reason I walk very slowly at the minute is due to only using one leg to push me forward. I've been favoring the left leg for so long now, when I try and force the left leg to push as well the increase in speed is quite noticeable. So as I get back to normal walking I should speed up in no time.

Jokes about crutches stopping me shaving (I've had a beard for about a month now) must have reached the fifty mark by now. The beard is doing fine!