Office Move

Actually this was back in November but I missed blogging about it at the time.
The company has also merged with another agenct so we are about 250 people now.
My new desk is bigger and I have more space but I miss the friends I was sitting with. I don't seem to get any of the updates on the gossip like a used to :-(

NYE Skiing

and tobogganing in the dark which was exiting if contra-indicated on my travel insurance.

Review of the Year! 2010

um yes should do this - a handy app to do this for me, nice!

Skunk Ananise

A fitting gig to end a great year of music.

90's favorites Skunk Ananise played the Brixton Academy

It was so loud I had to stuff paper in my ears to pervent damage but still heard everything clearly.

Had a bit of a rush to get the as I had to show my face at a work leaving drinks but I made it thru the door just as the band appeared on stage and the lights went down
nice!

Black Keys

A bit different this time at the Roundhouse. Went with Olly to see the Black Keys, who are a blues, rocky, indie alt type of band.

I had no idea about any of it beforehand but it was good and loud. I'm definitely going to look them up on Spotify.

By the looks of the audience they have a hard core following, a few comments I heard said it wasn't the best gig they had done, but for me it was fine. The roundhouse roof being open to let the heat out again was also very welcome.

Feeder

a good solid performance at Sheperd's Bush. Went with Rob W. One lady got overcome and had to be taken out by the medics. Nothing to do with Rob and me of course.

Training !

A bit of a first or at least that I can remember.

I've just been on a two software architect conference. A bit scary technical but I got some good info and idea about developmet.

It's a bit of a first because I think its the first time that a manager has delivered on a promise of sending me on a training course.

I guess I'll have to say positive things about him from now on...

Sonisphere

Wow my ears are only just getting back to normal.
A whole host of bands at my first festival where I've camped at.
It was really tiring trying to sleep on a slope, in a 20 quid tent, surrounded by thousands of people.

musically highlights include

Iron Maiden (headliners, my first time seeing them, very good, I knew the word for fear of the dark)
Rammstein (brilliant, fire and noise, got right to the front for them)
Alice Cooper (not so good, not sure why didn't quite get the crowd going)
Iggy & The Stooges (same although I was a long way back)
Papa Roach (for the kids)
Good Charlotte (for the kids as well)
Anthrax (great stuff, I didn't really
Placebo (OK bit weird in daylight and wearing white suits)
Henry Rollins (great again keep up the fight)
Skunk Anansie (really good set, Skin owns the crowd, I got a bit sun burnt!)
Apocalyptica (OK odd 4 guys with cellos, everyone else thought they were the nuts)
Mötley Crue (WTF the crowd went wild)
Slayer (Roar! mighty stuff)
Corey Taylor (unlucky missed most of it but the rest was good)
Pendulum (Really, Really good didn't think I was going to like it but boy did I bounce)
Renegades (Feeder really really late at night, but tired and happy)
Terrorvision (Highlight they still got it and I nearly lost my voice)
Therapy? (Once they got the electrics to work. One of the highlights as they played the whole troublegum album)
Gary Numan (solid stuff)
Europe (yeap final countdown they did other stuff but couldn't hear for the crowd chanting for final countdown!)

plus a load of others which I can only vaguely remember going to. I was all a bit of a blur in the end. That might have something to do with sharing a camp site with a bunch of South Africans, boy can they drink!

Flat Update

They changed the sign (a sign of desperation?)

"BUY MY 1 BED FLAT
NO MORTGAGE NEEDED
£10,000+£268a week BUYS IT.
WEST FERRY RD, E14
CALL ADAM
07xxxxxx"

Well that'll be tricky to beat. Althouhg I wouldn't fancy getting into all sorts of legal oddities being either half of that sort of an arrangement.

Lager Lager Lager

It was iTunes festival time again here in London and I managed to win tickets to
Underworld at the Roundhouse on the 17th.

It was a good gig, a bit different to what I normally see live. we got into a nice dance to the different tunes and I realised I had been dance for about an hour when I decided to head to the back for a cold down. I guess the gym sessions are paying off!

Support was good too a chap called Kele. I didn't realise until he started singing but he's the lead singer of Bloc Party. He built up a really good vibe for the main event and I would definitely want to catch him live the next time he is playing.

Of course the crowd were waiting for one particular song and Underworld closed their set with it. As the opening bars sounded out you could feel the roar of energy rip thru the crowd and get the whole place moving.

we all left happy humming 'lager lager lager...'

Flat Competition

An update the flat is still up for sale. Its sort of a holding pattern now as nothing much is happening in the market at the moment. looking at the land registry info most of the stuff that does sell is a couple of 100K more than my flat. I would normally mostly be getting first time buyers looking at the flat and there aren't many of those about.

My competition, another flat that is up for sale in my block, made an interesting move at the weekend. the following hand written sign appeared outside on the railings.

For Sale by Owner
Westferry Rd. 1 Bed flat
NO MORTGAGE REQUIRED
£296 per week
cal 07xxxxxx

So er is that Hire Purchase? I assume so and that they would take about 20 years at around 5.5% to pay that off if the price is still anything like my place. I guess that's one way to go if its just investment and your want to get it rid of it for your pension.

Guitar Blues and Heat at the Roundhouse

A jolly night out at the Roundhouse with Olly one of my brother-in-laws. We caught the show by the Dead Weathers. The band includes the lass from the Kills and Jack White of the White Strips.

It was an interesting mix of rock, blues, amazing guitar work and some seriously shouty lyrics. The weather had been really hot and the southern American blues vibes suited it perfectly. I came away humming the tunes of even the ones I didn't know.

The big 4 in Polska

OK this is definitely the farthest I've been to just to go to a gig.

Poland for a one day festival (on a Wednesday!) to see Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth.

There I stood in a field outside of Warsaw, a shinny warm day, in the middle of a sea of black t-shirts, getting my ears rearranged by some seriously loud music.

A good couple of days with cheap beer and some very nice (if meaty) BBQ takeaway food.

I went with a friend from work and ended up meeting another (ex-)work friend, who kipped on our hotel floor! It was a nice atmosphere and we got chatting to a couple of other English groups of people who we ended up going around with.

the music was great and you could really feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as Metallica launched into some of their classic hits.

RageFactor free thank you gig

It was brilliant. A whole festival feeling on a Sunday afternoon.

When we got there is some good support from Gogol Bordello and we had a few beers in the late afternoon sun (and a little rain).

It was amazing to me that I managed, in such a large crowd, to bump into 4 different people I knew.

So along with Colin, Joe and Jamie we got ourselves down into the mosh pit and got jumping. I managed about an hour before retiring to the back to watch the remainder of the show.
It's definitely a moment to remember. I was there when Killing in the Name was played out to the crown in a London park as the final song of the evening.

We made History!

and got the T-Shirt...

MOT

Yeap I finally had my annual review at week

There were many things I had thought about saying about my time here and the fact that I've not had any changes in my T&Cs since I got here.

I was going to point that the cost of living has gone up by about 3.5% per year while I've worked here so i fact I'm being paid less (in as the government like to say, real terms).

I also had a great quote from Malcolm Gladwell on job satisfaction.

"Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying."

But what did I say, not alot, I got a mixed set of reviews so we talked about that I somehow have managed to be helpful and obstructive at the same time. and also being good at mentoring but not offering information unsolicited.

so I've got to be more proactive, which is like asking someone to juggle fog.
I've also got to try to be happier, no idea how they are going to measure that one!

and the CTO wants to push me towards handling one of less interesting clients and basically moving my role towards support work on a site we inherited from another company and client management meetings.

the subject of money didn't come up.

BMI

for no other reason than my results were a lot better then some of the other people in the department here are the results of a check your weight/height/fat machine we found in Boots the other day.

Weight: 14st 2lb 89.9kg
Height: 5'11.2" 1.81m

which gives a B.M.I. 27.4
the formula being Weight/(Height)^2

which makes me overweight :-(
where the ideal being [18.5] 9st 7lb (60.9kg) to [25.0] 12st 12lb (81.9kg)
which is a bit crazy as I wasn't even down to 10st when I was very thin back during my university days.

Body Fat 24.9% which is good (average being 25.6% and it getting to be a problem at 32.1% (for men))
Body Fat Mass 22.3kg

and we found a nice little calculator to check the results
http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx

so looks like the gym has been helping :-)

New broom

So It's all about to change around.

The last two of our line manager are now going to be the new CTO (the newest guy who has been with us not 6 months yet) and his deputy (who's been at the company 3+ years). And it looks like some of the work that the four of them (including my old line manager and the old CTO) used to do doing technical management of the client will be given out to us (the rest of the tech department) to do. probably I might add for the same amount of money as before.

and guess what we have to do our MOT career reviews again, joy! I'm going to have to answer questions like

What do you think you could have done better and what has stopped you?
What do you think you’ve done well and how do you know?
What are your career goals and what would help you move forward?

No More CTO

Yeap after all the politics and messing around. My boss, the CTO, is leaving the company. so its all change here. Actually I been ages since I've known but had to keep quite about it until all the legal stuff was sorted and the official announcement has been made.

He's leaving partly because of all the complaints from the us during the staff survey and partly some stuff happening in the board.

It was turning into the worse kept secret in the company and as I found out in the pub several months back, its good its out in the open. The department was in a bit of a holding pattern waiting for the other shoe to drop and so we could talk to the rest of the company about it(and make the odd blog!)

and yes that what my cryptic post about the situation changing in the department was about and why I haven't had a career review this year.

So a big opportunity for me and I guess there will be a shake up in the department. At last I should have a new line manager and finally get an annual review.

Anyway must dash as we are about to have the leaving speeches.

Zell am See Skiing trip 3!

Ok

A great little trip to Austria with the people at Snowbreaks.

At the resort of Zell am See and Kaprun.
Zell is by a beautiful lake at only 500m and by the end of the week it was very much summer holiday conditions. In fact one day coming back from the slopes Kevin (another skier) and I sat in the bus in full ski gear opposite a group of lads in shorts and flip-flops!.

to get to the skiing you take a cable car 1500m up at Zell and a bus plus a cable car to 2000m at Kaprun.
The conditions went from cold and snowy (day 1), to very hot and very sunny (days 3-4) to crazy whiteout skiing (day 6)
the first two days we skied Zell which got very slushy by the end and then 4 days at Kaprun which has a glacier so it guaranteed snow. however being the Easter weekend its also guaranteed to be busy.

Our plan to avoid the crowd was to get up real early (no matter what time we were in the bars the night before) at catch the 8am bus to Kaprun so we could be up and skiing before 8:45am. This meant we had the best conditions and clean runs before it got busy. We had lunch at about 11:30 just when it was getting crazy busy and back out for a couple of more hours when most people are at lunch, finally going back to the hotel around 3ish, knackered of course!

Nice bunch of people in fact it worked out that out of the 13 on the trip seven of us were on the Andorra new year trip as well!

really good guides in Bas and Dana the Dutch ski instructors.

Got a bit of a shock a couple of day after we got back as Snowbreaks the company who organised the trip went bust. A shame as I've had some good trips with them.

17 Winter sports cover Oh bugger

Ah I've spotted a floor in my plan

3 ski trips in one year works out as 18 days skiing. That mean the annual travel insurance won't cover it all by one single day.

Fortunately the nice people at DogTag (that the insurance company, they print all the info on a dogtag you can wear while you ski) let me cancel my current policy with quite a big refund and take out another policy this time with 24 days cover.

This mean I'm covered for another 3 skiing holidays before next April, interesting!