Office Politics

So I talked to the director who is running these 'sorting out tech's problems' sessions about what my boss had said about him saying to my boss that I was being negative and not helpful.

He was a little shocked about what my boss said and said he hadn't said such things.
I told him I was planning on withdrawn from the process if it was just going to back fire on me and he asked me not to. In fact he said its quite negative because we have to talk about what wrong in order to find solutions.

It sounds like my boss is playing office politics and because I checked we know he's been exaggerating or making stuff up.

It may be because we are integrating the tech and creative parts of the company and he feeling a bit sidelined as the junior part of the partnership.

In other news a couple of the new guys in the department have had either their probation extended or been put on a rolling three month review mainly because they don't work fast enough. So I definately not the only person who is not in his good books.

So much for trying to help

The saying is true that 'No good deed goes unpunished'.

As a result of us trying to talk to the board about the issues in the department and wanting to trying improve the situation it looks like the whole thing is back firing in my face.

My genius of a boss dragged me over the coals yesterday for being too negative and much as said learn to love the way the company does things or consider my position with the company.

So that'll teach me to try and improve things. I'll just stop trying to fix stuff, focus on doing interesting stuff and improving my skill set.

Oh and I guess I'll update my CV as well.

Renegades OK OK its Feeder

A stadium band in a tiny pub venue.

That's what happened on Monday evening. Feeder pretending to be the another band played a final gig (for this little tour) in a bar in Hoxton which I managed to get a ticket for. Actually three of our for work the other two being real fans.

It was a loud mad set, of alot of their old tracks and pieces for the real old time fans. So I didn't know much of what they played but it was catchy and loud! I had a good time jumping around even although getting 200 odd people in the space the size of a tennis court meant I didn't really have the room for it.
Funny to be that close to a band (10ft), they where well supported by a band called ManOrMouse.

It took a couple of days for my hearing to recover.

Rammstein and Meeting the Management

Busy day today (although I'm still finding time to write this!) we got a second meeting for the concerned from the tech department with members of the board. we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago as because there was so much stuff to talk about and this is the second meeting for the over run. Basically we are complaining about Career development and the rest of the company treating us like &$%^&£! see below for a few of the points we put to them.
Things in the department has actually been a bit more stable, we actually have 4 people in the flash team at the minute! We just want to try and fix things up a bit so it will be worth stay with the company in the medium term.

...And Rammstein well that's my first music gig tonight of this year. Da Boyz and down for a visit and we will be off up to Wembley for a bit of German Heavy Metal and an ear clean.

Rest of the weekend will probably involved PS3,Xbox and beer




Career path
There is none

Line Management
Too busy to manage

Respect
Treated like a third party supplier company

Innovation
Should not just be down to one person who does share with the tech department

Recognition
No reward for effort

Ignorance
Digital understanding in the business, it ‘cool not to understand’

Integration
How does the business see tech in the company?

Training
None!!!

Process
No point doing project reviews ; tech not included in part of the planning

Knowledge
Individual team member knowledge is ignored or dismissed

Quality
We always end up with the ‘best of a bad job’

Fault
Budget and Deadline for most projects already gone by the time it gets to Tech but its still our fault

Creative Technical
Tech only gets involved after the fact. There are no opportunities to innovate

Budget
We are always told the budget is blown but nobody will back it up with figures

Tempora
Estimates can be made more efficient if we got feed back of what time we did take on tasks

R&D
Any? By force the business was not happy to give up the time for it

Leading the Field
No; The company isn’t the company it was; we follow the trends or miss them completely rather than make them

The Companies’ Aim
To be the Agency of the Year; no matter what; nothing else is important

Quality
One person is not a QA department unless you are cowboys

Retainment
Pay rise only if you leave (but offered too late); Lack of support; no profit in going the extra mile

Architecture
Old broken software; Old development technology; no plan for maintenance and upgrade

Internal Process
Have a Company way of doing things rather that muddle through differently each time

Ideas
An idea is only a good idea if it is made to happen the good ideas don’t happen unless somebody realizes it

Outsourcing
Managing third party tech work isn’t tech work

Developing
Bug fixing and low quality scrap work isn’t enjoyable work

2009 before I forget

A bit late but heres a little review of last year based as last time on facebook, really its just slow twittering really. I also note the stuff happening seems to be the same as the year before.

David Has just skied the resort end to end. Happy and knackered. Time for the après ski! Happy new year from Andorra
31 December 2009 at 14:53

David Is going skiing over the top and down into the dark side
31 December 2009 at 08:04

David Can see the slopes from the Cafe and the stationary lifts. Grrh
30 December 2009 at 11:12

David Is at Terminal 5 waiting to get off-ski
27 December 2009 at 15:34

David It's all about the Rage Factor! Grrrrgh
20 December 2009 at 23:22

David killing in the name of...
16 December 2009 at 13:33

David beer o'clock?
11 December 2009 at 16:42

David is deployed out...
02 December 2009 at 18:35

David just off for a bit of wood carving
25 November 2009 at 17:30

David hopper $%&£!
20 November 2009 at 18:08

David Has just snapped and gone next gen!
14 November 2009 at 17:53

David And now a little light housework
14 November 2009 at 11:18

David is planning on breaking some coloured glass
12 November 2009 at 16:17

David Has an evening planned that envolves gunpowder! Nice
07 November 2009 at 18:58

David and now it's decided to delete all my music aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggh
04 November 2009 at 15:57

David Happy Birthday Wallace and Gromit!
04 November 2009 at 09:56

David Is in the middle of road again but this time they have shut it. Pretty lights!
03 November 2009 at 18:50

David is off to see the lights
03 November 2009 at 18:36

David Is standing in the middle of the road at Oxford circus
02 November 2009 at 18:03

David is thinking about breaking the first rule of facebook
28 October 2009 at 11:22 (8)(8)

David has got his cans on
12 October 2009 at 17:47

David Hello world um this might be drunk pub typing
04 October 2009 at 20:06

David this weekend is brought to you by the letter V
25 September 2009 at 11:39

David is lost in translation
18 September 2009 at 13:54

David oh and that was a bad miss...
11 September 2009 at 17:35

David Um I'm in a pub in covent garden doing London thing... Drinking
06 September 2009 at 18:07

David is NOT feeling management friendly at the minute
02 September 2009 at 19:59

David is a getting a little sun. Home to see the folks.
29 August 2009 at 11:31

David wants to know why he's still at work. Sideshow Bob?, Minty?
28 August 2009 at 20:40

David is practising his big words
27 August 2009 at 18:35

David mostly human again
21 August 2009 at 19:15

David apparently it's called a Caipirinha. hic!
20 August 2009 at 19:01

David the machine goes beep.
17 August 2009 at 13:19

David humbug work! time for a beer festival me thinks!
07 August 2009 at 11:59

David sun, surf, cider and still a nice cup of tea
02 August 2009 at 16:23

David rain, tea, sun, tea, rain, tea, sun and Edie looking for her shoes- the great British holiday
30 July 2009 at 21:38

David is now in the age of steam.
30 July 2009 at 12:06

David well stuff all this working malarky I'm off on my Hols....
24 July 2009 at 18:00

David is happy now Trent is doing music you need muscles for. Ragh!
15 July 2009 at 21:30

David is getting a little pissed off with Trent for having to do all this bloody queing. NIN gig is pants so far!
15 July 2009 at 20:07

David is going all NINJA!
15 July 2009 at 17:23

David has just gone slightly nuts at the placebo iTunes gig and just applied for tickets for all the remaining gig in the festival!
14 July 2009 at 21:41

David is off to the gig
14 July 2009 at 18:00

David um but its a dry heat...
03 July 2009 at 15:59

David maybe I should be at the gym... nah!
30 June 2009 at 17:37

David is watching all human life happening, in real time.
26 June 2009 at 17:52

David is feeling a little metric in an imperial world
22 June 2009 at 19:31

David Oh wow! copy and paste!
17 June 2009 at 20:59

David it's cornish pasty time!!!
15 June 2009 at 14:22

David is having a sit down
04 June 2009 at 19:27

David still at work. There is a special circle of hell reserved for the people who invented Akamai caching...
29 May 2009 at 19:08

David its jam all the way
22 May 2009 at 17:17

David is 3 points of contact at all times tis important yer ere!
19 May 2009 at 14:39

David is still at work and not happy with his clients. I don't even know bloody coldfusion
15 May 2009 at 18:43

David I'm Not Okay (I Promise)...
15 May 2009 at 14:46

David has just gone ker-plunk!
14 May 2009 at 11:24

David gone fishing ... for beer!
01 May 2009 at 18:07

David is getting in touch with his X-gene
29 April 2009 at 13:33

David is more human than human
24 April 2009 at 19:38

David for my birthday I decided to give myself some sunburn. It was a nice day in the park.
23 April 2009 at 14:46

David it's offical I'm a Prodigy front row Warrior! Maxim said so...
19 April 2009 at 01:32

David is @#!P&$. things aren't going as planned.
17 April 2009 at 12:27

David is feeling a little NINJA
15 April 2009 at 10:43

David um still hung over time for a pint
03 April 2009 at 17:52

David has a new sofa! comfy
01 April 2009 at 17:08

David has got a ticket for the Prodigy!!!! FIRESTARTER !!!! Yeaaaaagggh bluuuurrr
26 March 2009 at 11:15

David is back in blighty and shock! still walking!
14 March 2009 at 15:21

David is skiing in his T-shirt. Nice!
13 March 2009 at 16:47

David is checking for frostbite
09 March 2009 at 22:10

David has packed his bags and is hitting the slopes...
06 March 2009 at 18:29

David are you calling me darling? that's not my name
01 March 2009 at 22:55

David has just seen U2 live at the BBC! Random!
27 February 2009 at 19:15

David is looking good in a Buffalo Stance.
27 February 2009 at 09:57

David is sans beard
21 February 2009 at 23:01

David can fix it, yes he can!
20 February 2009 at 12:25

David um now where did I put that beer?
13 February 2009 at 17:33

David Ok. Forget the beer who knows where home is?
13 February 2009 at 23:48

David is in the big smoke, damn
10 February 2009 at 17:48

David is doing plan B we're off walking in the Mendips instead...
06 February 2009 at 17:20

David is wondering if he'll be walking in the Brecons this weekend
06 February 2009 at 10:04

David has had a shave
03 February 2009 at 15:32

David is taking the hint and heading home.
02 February 2009 at 14:25

David is at work. 15cm snow no probs!
02 February 2009 at 10:48

David is mispelt
29 January 2009 at 15:03

David is cuppa tea, bacon sarnie and back in blighty, mavellous!
25 January 2009 at 16:28

David and his knee have made it thru a whole week of lovely snow powder skiing. Now if he can just make it back from the pub to the hotel
24 January 2009 at 18:39

David is up to his knees in snow
23 January 2009 at 17:53

David is bon ski ! wooosh !
16 January 2009 at 17:10

David has caught the smell of snow on the wind
15 January 2009 at 11:50

David can hear the drums
14 January 2009 at 17:44

David has had the scafolding put up
13 January 2009 at 11:11

David is thinking he should have zigged when he zagged, again!
10 January 2009 at 00:39

David is in the dark
08 January 2009 at 00:22

David is reviewing the year
06 January 2009 at 14:23

45 go mild in Andorra

The world appears to be ending or at least civilization in the UK according to the British Press as the snow comes down and everything grinds to a halt.

This is weird because I'm in Central London, and while it is a bit cold, there isn't much snow and because I've just got back from a weeks skiing so snow, for me, is normal at the mo.

I was in Andorra with Snowbreaks for a weeks skiing and quite a jolly new years eve. The group in total was about 45 people, it was good mix of people and capabilities. I skied with a medium group for most of the week as I didn't want to over do it and put myself in traction.

A combination of not skiing too late, ibuprofen, knee supports and fizzy beer got me though the week (sore now but mobile). There were casualties; one girl got catch in some fencing at speed and damage her knee and one chap fell over while going slow and dislocated his elbow (ouch).

The conditions started the week icy and bare but due to a load of snow at new year end with a fine day with some nice powder (so long as you didn't cut in too deep and hit the ice). The weather was quiet warm (in the positives) and so it was a shock getting back to London waiting for night buses with the cold rising up through the soles of your shoes.

Flat all Safe

Managed to get through the whole series of Spooks with my flat undamaged by bomb, gas, floods or fire. Well apart from the threat of Nuclear War of course

1/4 Million Hoppers

Well it took a while but we got to 250000 space hoppers. the 250000th is called 'netty' and hails from hungary.

Angel is off

Sad day Today as Angel our Spanish Systems Administrator is off to pastures new. He's been a quite force keeping things together and all the project running smoothly. He knows where everything is and what all the passwords are.

UPDATE:

We been phoning him about once a day since he left needing to know one thing or another. He's in Spain so this must be getting quite expensive. Most things have been sorted out but for some reasons half the testing environments have gone MIA, but Angel didn't know about them. That's just what happens around Xmas when hardly anybody is in the office.

What's Spanish for C'est la vie?

Rage against X factor

Made my little contribution against low quality mass entertainment.

Hopefully Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine will be the Xmas number one. Suitablity enough after having seen them live last year.

Go buy it and stop the Cowell machine you know it makes sense.


UPDATE: WE DID IT YEAH!
Rage beat X factor by about 50,000 copies Merry Xmas

An online Xmas

Done it

I managed to get all my stuff ordered online for the first time. for a couple of years now I've run pretty close but this year I've bought all my pressies online.
Hopefully they all arrive at my parents' and then I can have a huge wrapping session.

Marilyn Manson and the Dry Ice

Not as good as I was hoping it would be.

Went to see the controversial one the other night, Marilyn Manson.

The support act Esoterica weren't too bad being maybe a bit like the Lost Prophets.

The main act started with the most dry ice I've ever seen in my entire life. So much so you couldn't really tell what was going on for the first 4 songs. He did a great effect like Edward Scissorhands with laser pens for fingers which looked great with all the dry ice.

The audience didn't seemed to really get into the swing of things as the show went on despite there being nothing really wrong with the set. They did get worked up for the song The Beatiful People which had some fire to it. However that was the last song so it was a bit late.

Rob and Me found a nice pub around the corner as we got out before last orders.

The last of the few

Another leaving do today.
Actually its worse than that as our only sys admin has just rang me to say he's resigned so working conditions are going to get bad as we will have to do all the systems bug fixes as well. But it's good for him as they where taking advantage of him something rotten. He should be going to something much more interesting and pays better.
One of the other developer and myself actually arranged to meet with our CTO yesterday to see if we could try and help the situation. I think the CTO was quite surprised as he must have been thinking everyone is against him. A bit too late I think but at least we tried.

You've got mail

Finally got my first bit of mail in my brand new mail box, apart of course from all the pizza and take-away menus.

Unfortunately it was just my phone bill :-(

Spooks

First episode of the new season last night. not bad, my flat, in fact all of London managed to get through the whole episode without being damaged at all.

100000 Hoppers

At 7:50pm UK time on 2nd November 2009 we had our 100,000th Hopper created, in Latvia of all places.

This means is this campaign has been quite successful

And that's alot of hoppers!

Trying out a new bit of Tech

I just downloaded a new app for the fashion victims brick (my iPhone) to write blog entries and this post is the result. Ok not that exiting but it's the future!

On the home front not much movement on the selling. However we have had our letterboxes upgraded. The new ones are much bigger and much less likely to bite your fingers. It's just a bit of a pity that i'm not getting any letters with all the postal strikes at the moment!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Live again

Phase 2 of the great hopper invasion is live.

After a mad rush on Friday doing multiple fixes and changes to the site, refusing to add stuff that there was just no time to do and getting the final deployment out at 7pm and then off to the pub for several pints of Guinness.

It was a combination of the client wanting lots of small changes and trying to convince people it is more important to have a stable site live than keep trying to add stuff.

But it finally went live in Australia 6pm EDT and everything seems to work fine. The Yahoo site showed the special adverts at the correct time and the main site stood up fine.

So now we are waiting for the statistics to come back and to see if the client will say thank you.

By way of celebration I did get one gift, from my Mum, appropriately enough for this project it is a stress ball shaped like a space hopper.

Arraggh it's been released to the public

In a typical half asleep moment on the way to work the other week I was ambushed by my own work on the tube.

I was travelling on one of the escalators watching those new TV advert boards that they have started to install everywhere when an advert for the current web advertisement campaign I'm working came on. It's based a around a famous bouncing children's toy and we have done a site that lets you pick and personalise one to have on your PC.

My first reaction (and this was the same for some of the others on the team) as oh sh*t! I hope its working.

But it seems fine and the project is still just about on target (if a little stressful due to a dithering client constantly changing her mind). When it is finished it will be available in over 30 different languages (including ones that don't read left to right) and will be quite a complicated a mix of technologies.

So something to be proud of so long as it doesn't crash!

Bonus or a Bung

We all got an envelope at work today.

Mine contained a thank you note and a 50 quid note.

This I believe is in lieu of any bonus or pay rise for this year!
They still manages to do things here that surprises me. Most people seem have taken it as a bit of an insult.

Nobody leaving this week I think...