Last Day Alone and Reading

Well tomorrow (Friday) will be my last day alone at work, as next week I have my replacement sitting in on me for the next 5 days learning my job. Best of luck in 5 days.

So really this is me saying cheerio for next week, seeing as Im hardly going to have spare time to chat and post online, and my new job, who knows how soon I'll be back up online or even have spare time to accomplish this.

So if you see anything from me next week its going to be either an imposter or me just posting of an evening.

-

Seeing as I've suddenly realised that I have just over 1 week of commuting to go (3 hour round trip), and there was so many books I never got around to reading or finishing off my novel, that in haste this morning I grabbed a smallish book I hope to finish in 6 days or less.

Im reading (and in 90 minutes already 1/3 rd of the way through) Michael Moorcock's The Jewel in the Skull, the first novel in the Runestaff series. He writes with such flair, talent and speed, that having read a paragraph whole lives, continents and epic events have occured.

-

Serenity has come to a hiatus because of my job and our group is playing Riddle of Steel and Warhammer (2 different games depending on which GM is free that week). Looking forward to both.

Vista vs Zune - Dont get Along

Interesting story...

Microsoft admits Zune and Vista don't get along

What happens when you take the newest OS from Microsoft and combine it with their long awaited highly-functional Zune media player? Nothing, apparently. Whether due to Media Player 11, the nature of Vista or perhaps other reasons unknown, it seems that Microsoft's newest toy, the Zune, is incompatible with Windows Vista:

Buried in the Zune website, Microsoft admits that the player is not compatible with Vista and gives no information as to when it will introduce a patch or update enabling the player to do so. Instead, users are asked to "check back soon for updates".
Now, to its credit, the Zune has already won many people over. It's functionality is quite extraordinary and the device shows a lot of promise. But how is it possible that a company with such a vast R&D team is unable to make their two biggest products in four years work together? Granted, the Zune was only released in the past day. Even more granted, Vista is not even released. But it's not like they are unavailable to developers, or the public in general. Will Vista be ready for the Zune on release? Not likely, since it has already gone final. Of course, Microsoft will fix it – it's in their absolute best interest to. Nevertheless, it's quite humorous.

Why I'm Glad I'm Leaving

A bit harsh, but yes one of the reasons Im leaving is simply because my assistant is a lazy-arsed ignorant fool, who has managed to win over his employers, fellow colleagues and previous managers with his personality while admitting openly that he aims to do as little as possible for as much money as possible.

We all have company mobile phones and I have an O2 Exec (pretty much a hand-held PC) and of all the things he is most worried about with my departure is who my old phone is going to.

Okay, I look after the accounts, payroll and IT, health and safety etc.... and instead of "raping" my brain for information he has requested the phone be given to him, and then put in for the rest of his holidays before I depart.

I handed my 4 weeks notice in, 1 has already gone, and we are quickly coming to the end of no. 2. The MD is away for the last 2 weeks on holiday, pretty much leaving me in charge of everything.

They have sourced a replacement, but she wont be starting any time soon.

But all in all I wish them all good luck, except to my old assistant who has remained ignorant and blissfully unaware of his attitude.

New Job Offer, How to Say Goodbye?

Okay so I landed a job, easier than one would imagine, but that as I said was the EASY part. The hardest part right now is telling my old company that Im leaving.

More so when you have shed a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears (not to mentioned freight-trains running through my head at 2am) for the company.

The main reason Im leaving is because of the long commute and lack of future prospects, basically Im bored. So why is it so hard to say goodbye? Anyone who knows me, knows I hate goodbyes, Im the kind of person who would prefer to say bye and leave, or just leave. I dont leave for home in a big flurry of goodbyes and goodnights because I believe the well-wishing are as "empty" as talking about the weather.

Ive already put it off a day, but Im left with no option today. If I dont say anything (and I will), then it will be too late.

Enough soul pouring, dont give me you congrats, or whatever, just good solid goodbye advice.

A Funny Thing Happened while Driving Through France...

I came across a website of stories. Not the fantastic, but rather normal stories of real life people. Anecdotes, snapshots and heart felt moments, but all real. Not urban myths or virals, but interesting all the same.

So I got to thinking, I'm must have anecdotes of my own, stories to tell. Well I do. And this is one. I'm posting it here because I don't want it to get lost in that website.

In 1988 my entire family moved from the UK and emigrated to Spain. We moved as a family and drove the entire route with my dad and friend in three separate vehicles. My dad drove a Ford Transit minibus, I drove a Mercedes saloon, and my friend drove a VW Golf. We kept in contact with CB Radios (Citizen Band) to stop ourselves getting lonely. My brother, mum and another friend went a week early by ferry.

1,500 miles was a long journey through France and Spain. We made it safely in one piece, but this little story is about the French journey.

Just off the ferry, Ramsgate to Calais, we hit the motorway to Lille. The radio chat was good and high-spirited, the roads clear and good to us, and we ate the miles up fast.

France has no more immunity to graffiti and terrorism than the rest of Europe, and every bridge we drove under, or every sign we drove past, and even written on the road itself, was the words AF. It was French for something, and was usually written with some Gaelic slogan that none of us understood. The chat one night on the radio turned to what this AF meant, and what political or revolutionary organisation it was.

Towards the end of the first day we got hungry. Knowing that we were travelling on a budget, we would sleep in the cars, but buy food on the road. We were veterans of the motorway café in the UK and knew the food was good and inexpensive. So it was armed with that knowledge that we finally agreed to pull into the next lay-by and buy some sausage and chips.

Well the lay-by didn't take long and there was a "food van" parked up so we got out our French francs (pre-euro days) and ordered three loads of sausages and chips. It came to nearly £5.00 for just the chips, which in UK should have only cost £0.20 at most. So we bought the chips and gave the sausages the miss. Now being French they didn't call chips, chips, but rather Frites or fries. We noticed that there was a menu board outside which clearly detailed the prices of these fritz and we were shocked. These prices were for the bloody tourists not the French. Curious to know if we had been ripped off we drove on making sure we would check the prices of all the other Frites wagons.

Sure enough each one of these vans were adding so much on top of their prices that the profit they were making was criminal. Deep fried chipped potatoes had massive markup.

And on we drove, until we began giving each of the Frites wagons an English "V" sign in defiance of their rip-off pricing, and still seeing AF written on every white concrete pillar and post.

This one particular afternoon was quiet and as my dad drove past another one of these symbols the radio crackled into life.

 

"I know what AF stands for. 'Arsesoles to Frites'."

Blackberry is Go

Well, its Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, and we have a few things planned, but one surprise that I got was our Blackberrys arrived and are finally working, and I have only one thing to say about them - Underwhelmed.

Its not that amazing. I mean it gets your corporate emails and all that, but thats all. No sync with contacts or calender - and it only gets NEW emails, not allows me to get old ones. To be honest Id be hard pushed to find a use for this device for myself, and may well carry on with my XDA Exec unit. But that could be kicked into touch by a job change...

More Laptop woes, but Silver linings

Its official, my laptop battery can't hold a charge for more than 20 minutes. Ebay here I come.
While, like most laptoppers I use the damn thing connect to the power supply, its nice to actually be able to move between rooms without the damn thing going into hibernate mode. Its a laptop not a tortoise!
The amount of money Ive spent on it lately, new hard drive, 1gb memory, replacement CDROM and now battery. Still cant complain, only got one non-performing pixel, shows every colour except red, then it goes black.
I am going to get a new one soon, once the monies are sorted, and its going to be another Dell.

Anyway, my remortage has been approved (debt consolidation, new kitchen and sofa, and my wife's teeth fixed) and the job interviews are looking favourable. In my field of work, there is a set salary range, so its down to naming your price and benefits package. The one that came in today was in Chelmsford (google maps reveal 45 minute drive away) not too bad, but if it works out, Ill need a company or second car.

Little things amuse me

I have some serious trouble accessing this site at work. Why? FIIK - Fucked If I Know?

So as a mini rebellion I tried looking elsewhere for a place to host a blog that did work, but gave up.
But I did find this little gem www.blogger.com.
I had a quick peek at the templates and found this little sample

Blackberry & Webmail

Finally managed to get remote webmail working at work, and remotely as well. This means we can now use teh company's long needed Blackberry functions. This should keep several of of office bound workers happy, its just a little sad its only working after all this time, and what with me getting ready to change jobs and all.

I hope to leave, as I have done at several previous jobs, left a legacy and still remained behind as a consultant or some-such.
My main reasons for leaving are the fact the company isnt moving closer to where I live until November 2007, plus I spend too many hours (3) a day commuting.

Drought

People of the London region are aware we are in drought conditions. No baths, no water hoses and massive recommendations that we all have showers. This is despite bottled water drinking has become the de-facto way of drinking water now, reducing water demand.

Plus Thames Water (the private company water responsible) have been running full page adverts claiming how much water they are saving on a daily basis.

So I take GREAT offence when I heard a radio advert today telling me to not only have a shower (and save money on a bath) but to make it a 2 minute shower and not a 5 minute one.

As Catherine Tate would say "What a fucking cheek!"

Future Newswire

A newswire story from 2010.A routine train ticket inspection at London Bridge International Train Station heralded the beginning of a brand new type of inspection. Now ticket inspectors not only have the power to enforce fare-dodgers, but now have the powers to audit passenger's iPods.

Using a hand-held device the inspectors are able to perform an iAudit of the MP3's music collection, and a ticket is issued to the owner giving them 28 days to produce evidence that they have legally purchased or own the right to listen to the music.

The trial device compares the music in its database to the music on the iPod, and using state-of-the-art fuzzy logic it can even detect renamed files. At the moment the hand-held can only store 100 albums worth of music, but the Metropolitan Police (who are running the scheme) say they are in contact with the Recording Artists of America and the Rest of the World who are supporting the scheme to acquire more music with which to compare to. The more music they have access to, the more music files can be checked for validity. Those users who are unable to produce the revelcant documentation, are fined.

The trial scheme is planned for 3 months.

A follow-up newswire story from 2011
In the ultimate "Bite the hand that feed you" sensation of the year, we have this to report.

The Recording Artists of America and the Rest of the World are taking the Metropolitan Police to court over copywright violations. It claims the MP have illegal music on its Hand-Held device database.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said in response, that they had requested over the last 11 months for copies of all of the RAA & ROTW music so as to administer the scheme better. The RAA & ROTW has not replied and so the Metropolitan Police had no other choice but to begin downloading the music themselves.

What they WONT tell you about Broadband

In the UK broadband is getting out of hand.

It wasnt long ago that download speeds were of dial-up quality, 2-4kb per second. I wont go into a long rant about how we are now enjoying 8meg download speeds and all that - thats nothing more than looking a gift horse in the mouth.

But here is what they dont tell you. While you get wonderful download rates of 8128 kbps, the upload speeds are only 832. That means your ability to upload data is one tenth of your download ability.

Now this isnt an issue Im taking a stand on for P2P networks, but for businesses who need to share data over intranets and the internet. Using a database program, but sourcing the data on a networked business server is difficult because of the lack of synchronised data speeds.

Imagine using a program where you got the data in one second, but took you ten seconds to send that same data back.

TV Shows I'm Addicted To

Two TV programs currently being shown on British TV are occupying a lot of my viewing time, and both by accident. Im fairly difficult to please, the last show that blew my socks off was Firefly, but this blog isnt about that show. SteveD does a better review of each episode, far and above anything I could attempt.

Okay Show 1 is Futurama - this is a show that has taken me nearly 8 years to actually enjoy watching. When I first saw it, I thought it was a Simpsons ripoff, the same stories but set in space, but I was wrong. Here is a show that is more culturally aware, and is able to be more cutting and scathing in its attacks, but get away with it because it is a "cartoon". It is witty, smart, intelligent, makes remarks about our society that we live in and gets away with murder. It is almost as if Matt Greonig made the Simpsons to finance this show.

Show 2 is Scrubs - a far cry from anything I normally would ever watch. But it has a clever script, smart cast and a wonderful set of on-going jokes (JD and the janitor, JD and Cox), plus it has some of the weird sureal scenes ever seen on a mainstream comedy series.

Futurama is a Sky 3 on Freeview on Sunday afternoons
Scrubs is on during the day on Channel 15 on Freeview, but I only get to watch it at the weekends.

Watch em and let me know what you think?

Restaurants & Movies

2 disappointing experiences yesterday (Sunday), one I expected, and one I did not.

Firstly - Nando's Restaurant
Whenever we visit Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent (England), we invariable go via the cinema entrance. One of the restaurants close to the cinema is Nando's which always has a full shop, as well as having a queue so long, that you would have to be starving or addicted to the stuff to want it.

So we (my wife and I) decided to give it a try and find out what all the fuss was about. We did it last night when it was quiet, and was shocked initially by the fact that the place is nothing more than a glorified fast food joint!

You get allocated a table which gets you in the mind set of a restaurant, i.e. being appointed a waiter and ordering, waiting, eating, paying and going home, but instead you are given a table number, and have to go and order AND pay at the counter. You feel duped.

So the food comes out quickly and to be fair is well cooked, but the over-rated Nando authentic/original Portuguese recipe lark is true. I expected more from the food, and ended up being disappointed. Curries have a variety which cannot be matched, but this is tasteless.

Secondly - The Da Vinci Code
Im one of these people who have never read the book, but I have a good idea of what is going on, so much so that I watched the film and failed to be surprised by any twist or turn the film/book threw at me. It dealt with ideas and concepts that were out of date and old fashioned, purported rumour and myth to be the truth. The book Im sure will fuel the mindless masses who believe this sort of fantasy crap. Dan Brown has watched a few documentaries on cults, secret societies along with a passing knowledge of the "grail", and written a half-hearted novel about it. How it ever deserved to go global the way it did, I have no idea.

Apart from a few nationals (French and American), the entire cast was English with bad accents. The effects and wow factor was minimal, the locations boring. But then the film didnt have much to work with.

Im not a fan of Tom Hanks, but he acted his entire way through this film without any effort at all. Back in the 70s and 80s they made films with actors that were high on cocaine or heroine or smack. It seems these days films are made by actors jacked up on Botox. I mean, Hugh Grant has more emotion than Tom.

Ian McKellan looked like he was over acting, simply because no one else was even remotely making an effort.

Food Industry?

Seeing as talking about food and water has generated more comments than anything I have ever posted before to any live journal entry, I feel it important to continue the theme of food.

My daughter when she was born was "gifted" a whole series of allergies which I hope one day she will grow out of, but you never know.

(a) cows milk - this rules out most products in the supermarkets, but with the advent of soya millk (yurk!!!) and goats milk (gag) this problem has been temporarily overcome

(b) egg white - again eggs are in most products and it will kill her should she ingest any

(c) gluten - in most supermarket products.

So me and the wife are left with purchasing products which dont contain the above which is doubly expensive and also organic food which is priced so high as to require a a second income to fund.

Ive never looked at food before since having kids, and with my wife due in the middle of June to give birth to baby no. 2, Im hoping the new arrival has no allergies.

I ought to get around to putting some images up on the journal some time.

Whole Grain Water?

Two little comments really, one on the state of our water supply, and the other on the so-called goodness of whole grain foods.

Water.
Those of you who dont live in the south of England will not be aware that we are in a drought zone. Our water company has banned all hose-pipes and standing pipes. Something that has always escaped me is the fact that we are an island surrounded by water, yet still we have enough drought alerts for it to be serious.

Our water supply in the London region has always been terrible, being partly based on old Victorian pipe networks that were installed over 100 years ago. It has been revealed that the pipes are worn and leaking, and the amount they leak into the soil on a daily basis is terrifyingly high. We are talking millions of gallons a day. So seeing as this poor water network has been part of London life for over 100 years, why has it taken a century to think about fixing/repairing and replacing the network. And where have 100 years of profit gone?

Whole Grain.
As part of the attempt to woo customers from one breakfast cereal to another, suddenly breakfast companies are annoucing that their foods now contain "Whole grain goodness". Now this is obviously a buzz word, because whole grain used to be taken out of the food as part of the production process of say cornflakes. Now all of a sudden they are back in with a healthy promotion campaign in the process too. So if they were always good for you, then why weren't they left in from day one?

Working From Home for the Wrong Reason

I think it is a fallacy to think that given a chance everyone would work from home.

(a) no discipline to working at home.
(b) because of the mixture of work and hours you never really stop working, i.e. you tend to work less for longer periods.
(c) the whole point to coming to work is to get away from your domestic life to work, so therefore what you really want is no so much a home office, but an office which is exclusively yours away from home.

I am lucky on point (c) as one of the companys I work for has an office they dont use which is mine 24/7. Its there that I do my own private work as well as writing.

Well today was one of the those days when I needed to be in work, but for whatever reason (I wont bore you here - as if you aren't already yawning?) I couldnt. Thanks to remote desktops and pcAnywhere I am able to run a payroll remotely from home. Good for me!

Havent been doing much writing, but have made lots of characterisation notes for mid and end chapters.