we all have 2 monitors for our PCs and this morning when i fired up my PC i noticed that one of my monitors had died. its like it knew it was my last day and it had been working all my time here but today just gave in and expired. i suspect it works fine and it just can't be bothered to work, which is a bit like me today.
anyways, this is my last day and it feels like your last day tends to feel like when you leave. the place feels unfamiliar as if i have left already and i have done very little work today, though thats nothing new because i have done very little work in my 6 months here. its true and i can admit it.
saying that it has been a worthwhile exercise being here because i did get the name of a very big bank on my cv and because i had so much free time, i did loads of exams that i would never have done had i been in a 'proper' job doing 'work'. i also got paid more money than i have in any previous job as well, but there is not even the slightest twinge of regret at walking away from the money they offered for me to stay. i would be trapped then and i don't want to be like a lot of the people here. i know they envy me and that fact that i am walking away in search of a brighter day.
the last 6 months have been an exercise in will power as well. with the exception of the last month i didn't speak too much at work, but thats mainly because the guys tend not to talk to each other that much between themselves. also when i was at the internet company my timekeeping and punctuality was not the best but in both my jobs at banks i make a point of never coming in late and never taking a long lunch. my punctuality has improved and is impeccable now. i have also not taken a single day off either. just had it in my head to get through this stint and i didn't want to relax or slack off in that way, at any point.
anyways i was just looking on a few sites and there are some good jobs paying decent money, but as usual they want people who can start in the next week or two. hopefully there will be some similar roles when i get back. i think august can be a bit quiet for hiring because lots of people in banks tend to take their summer holidays. amongst the 8 or 10 guys sitting around me, all of them will be taking a week or two off in the next month. this place will be dead in august.
take care cali-girl. wish me luck and pray i get a good contract next, and if its not good at least let it be easy money again. :-)
today i have mostly been listening to U2 - gone. this is from when i thought they were still a half decent band. they went downhill after this and just turned into a bland boring corporate machine churing out average stadium songs. i saw them on this tour at wembley stadium and the stage show was incredible, but they didn't seem to have much enthusiasm. just as well they had the big screens as the band wasn't really compulsive viewing.
You get to feel so guilty, got so much for so little...
Then you find that feeling just won't go away...
Friday 25 July 2008
Thursday 24 July 2008
wild international
it feels great to be going today. had been a little annoyed at times recently with the other guys leaving me in the office on my own most of the time whilst they worked from home or whatever it was they were doing, but today really does feel different and i have one foot out the door.
i should be worried about not knowing what i will be doing and where i end up when i get back from holiday at the end of august and i will be worreid then, but this afternoon i feel pretty good about it.
i listen to the conversations the people around me are having and it all sounds so dull. i don't envy them and their money and their lamborghini's at all. they should be jealous of me that i am leaving all this behind and then i hope to find a brighter day somewhere else. deep inside i think they might be.
have a lovely day flower. hottest day of the year so far in london town. nowhere near arizona heat. closer to socal heat. just like home.
today i have mostly been listening to one day as a lion - wild international. have a listen. its the shit!.
i should be worried about not knowing what i will be doing and where i end up when i get back from holiday at the end of august and i will be worreid then, but this afternoon i feel pretty good about it.
i listen to the conversations the people around me are having and it all sounds so dull. i don't envy them and their money and their lamborghini's at all. they should be jealous of me that i am leaving all this behind and then i hope to find a brighter day somewhere else. deep inside i think they might be.
have a lovely day flower. hottest day of the year so far in london town. nowhere near arizona heat. closer to socal heat. just like home.
today i have mostly been listening to one day as a lion - wild international. have a listen. its the shit!.
Monday 21 July 2008
janes
its my last week here at work!!!. hurrah!!!.
where is my boss?.....working from home...again.
has he been sending me lots of emails to get stuff done?.....of course
is he doing nothing himself?......yes, you knows it
did the other guy leave early at 3.30pm and leave me on my own till 6pm?.....for sure homes
have i been scheduled on the late shift for the 3rd week in a row?.....yes sir.
do i give a shit?......no!!!!!!. :-)
just 4 more days to go and then i am free last, free at last, thank god almighty i'm free at last.
who knows where i will end up next, but i just hope its somewhere good and even if its not somewhere particularly good it will be different and a change is always good. actually i was thinking about it and things have gone quite close to plan the last couple of times i have changed jobs........so when i get back from the states i am hoping to land a good contract paying $1,000 a day somewhere around liverpool street, st pauls, farringdon next.......or maybe not. :-).
the most important thing is that i am out and i am in a position to get something if it turns up. we shall see what happens........
today i have mostly been listening to janes addiction - jane says
jane says i'm goin' away to spain......
when i get my money saved.....
gonna start tomorrow.....
take care flower.
where is my boss?.....working from home...again.
has he been sending me lots of emails to get stuff done?.....of course
is he doing nothing himself?......yes, you knows it
did the other guy leave early at 3.30pm and leave me on my own till 6pm?.....for sure homes
have i been scheduled on the late shift for the 3rd week in a row?.....yes sir.
do i give a shit?......no!!!!!!. :-)
just 4 more days to go and then i am free last, free at last, thank god almighty i'm free at last.
who knows where i will end up next, but i just hope its somewhere good and even if its not somewhere particularly good it will be different and a change is always good. actually i was thinking about it and things have gone quite close to plan the last couple of times i have changed jobs........so when i get back from the states i am hoping to land a good contract paying $1,000 a day somewhere around liverpool street, st pauls, farringdon next.......or maybe not. :-).
the most important thing is that i am out and i am in a position to get something if it turns up. we shall see what happens........
today i have mostly been listening to janes addiction - jane says
jane says i'm goin' away to spain......
when i get my money saved.....
gonna start tomorrow.....
take care flower.
Thursday 17 July 2008
just over a week to go
Maybe its because i am going soon or maybe its because my teamleader hates his new boss, but my teamleader has been a bit of an arse this week. for the 3rd time in 4 days this week he has decided to work from home. The teamleader has been concerned recently that his new boss was not putting as much importance to dealing with him recently, and i think he feels the department and more importantly he himself has been overlooked and ignored.
I know he has not been very impressed with the restructuring of teams and the merging of our team with one in another office. As if to press the point home that he doesn’t think the integration is working and we are short-staffed, i think my boss has decided to demonstrate what its like with an under resourced department, ie: me in the office on my own for most of the week. its been shit today.
All he has been doing is forwarding random emails to me all day saying “can you talk to XXXXXX and deal with this issue”. Dude, it wouldn’t kill you to do a little something yourself there fella. A lot of it has been really obscure shit regarding things i don’t know the history about. I just end up trying to work backwards and emailing various people trying to get information about stuff. Whats the password, whats the server name, where is the server....blah blah blah. Its a little annoying to say the least. It would be a lot more annoying if i had much more than a week left in this place.
You see my teamleaders problem is this........he has got a new boss to report to. He had his whole career planned out and he had a boss before that knew how he worked and took care of him. Now he has to start all over again from nothing with a new boss, who has a reputation for, not to put too fine a point on it, being utterly useless. I think my teamleader can see his comfortable career and future not turn out quite in the way he envisaged. I think that after 10 years here he didn’t expect to be in this position and so he has decided to pretty much not give too much of a shit and instead i think he will exacerbate problems in the hope they give him a new manager or team to report to. His management type role that he once had has disappeared but he still likes delegating and pretending to be the manager and so thats what he has decided to do all day.
He is scared to leave as his resume will look lame because he has worked in the same place for 10 years and people will think he is institutionalised and set in his ways and they will wonder if he can work with new people. He hasn’t done a single exam in all his time here and from what i can tell, just cherry picks the stuff he wants to do and delegates the shit to me and to a lesser extent, the other guy.
He is essentially a prisoner here at the bank and a prisoner to his boss. I remember when i had an arsehole for a boss, idiotboss, and its fucking terrible situation to be in. You just have to hope they leave or get fired or you have to leave yourself. Hopefully with all that i have done in the last year and what i am doing now, i will never find myself in that position ever again and if i do, i can tell them to stick their job up their ass and i will take all my experience and skills and passion and my 21 microsoft certifications, my citrix and vmware certifications, and get something new.
today i have mostly been listening to prince - gett off.
take care flower. see you in a few weeks.
I know he has not been very impressed with the restructuring of teams and the merging of our team with one in another office. As if to press the point home that he doesn’t think the integration is working and we are short-staffed, i think my boss has decided to demonstrate what its like with an under resourced department, ie: me in the office on my own for most of the week. its been shit today.
All he has been doing is forwarding random emails to me all day saying “can you talk to XXXXXX and deal with this issue”. Dude, it wouldn’t kill you to do a little something yourself there fella. A lot of it has been really obscure shit regarding things i don’t know the history about. I just end up trying to work backwards and emailing various people trying to get information about stuff. Whats the password, whats the server name, where is the server....blah blah blah. Its a little annoying to say the least. It would be a lot more annoying if i had much more than a week left in this place.
You see my teamleaders problem is this........he has got a new boss to report to. He had his whole career planned out and he had a boss before that knew how he worked and took care of him. Now he has to start all over again from nothing with a new boss, who has a reputation for, not to put too fine a point on it, being utterly useless. I think my teamleader can see his comfortable career and future not turn out quite in the way he envisaged. I think that after 10 years here he didn’t expect to be in this position and so he has decided to pretty much not give too much of a shit and instead i think he will exacerbate problems in the hope they give him a new manager or team to report to. His management type role that he once had has disappeared but he still likes delegating and pretending to be the manager and so thats what he has decided to do all day.
He is scared to leave as his resume will look lame because he has worked in the same place for 10 years and people will think he is institutionalised and set in his ways and they will wonder if he can work with new people. He hasn’t done a single exam in all his time here and from what i can tell, just cherry picks the stuff he wants to do and delegates the shit to me and to a lesser extent, the other guy.
He is essentially a prisoner here at the bank and a prisoner to his boss. I remember when i had an arsehole for a boss, idiotboss, and its fucking terrible situation to be in. You just have to hope they leave or get fired or you have to leave yourself. Hopefully with all that i have done in the last year and what i am doing now, i will never find myself in that position ever again and if i do, i can tell them to stick their job up their ass and i will take all my experience and skills and passion and my 21 microsoft certifications, my citrix and vmware certifications, and get something new.
today i have mostly been listening to prince - gett off.
take care flower. see you in a few weeks.
Monday 14 July 2008
you will leave a mark
Am flying the ship solo today. One of the guys is on holiday this week and the other guy, the team leader has decided to work from home today. He also went home at 1.30pm on Friday because he said he was feeling unwell. He looked perfectly fine to me. dude, when the department is short staffed you have to come to come into the office unless you are literally hurling up your guts. You can’t just say you got a headache and not come in. If i was his boss i would not be very impressed but i am not so do whatever you want to do fella.
I have just this week and next week left at the bank and then i am out of here. With each passing day it just feels better and better to be going. Have been sleeping like a baby recently as well. haven’t slept this well in a long time. maybe its because i have been training like a beast at the gym but the last few days i just close my eyes at night and i am out cold in about 10 minutes.
i have 10 days from when i finish at the bank and before flying to New York. Will be mostly training at the gym and seeing a few friends and not much else in that time. Its july 14th today. This time next month, august 14th, the plan is to be in Memphis, Tennessee and to be walking round Elvis’s house, Graceland. That is going to be the shit!. That will be in the morning and will take us up to lunch time. grab a bite to eat in Memphis and then hit the road and see how far we can get. If we feel strong we might try and go all the way through to Amarillo, Texas that day but we would get there around midnight, so we might just stop half way in Oklahoma somewhere. We shall see how it goes. i also bought my tickets to nine inch nails in knoxville tennessee as well. have been to football matches in other countries but never been to a concert in another country. it should be awesome.
Take care lovely. Have a good day.
Today i have mostly been listening to a silent film - you will leave a mark. enjoy.
I have just this week and next week left at the bank and then i am out of here. With each passing day it just feels better and better to be going. Have been sleeping like a baby recently as well. haven’t slept this well in a long time. maybe its because i have been training like a beast at the gym but the last few days i just close my eyes at night and i am out cold in about 10 minutes.
i have 10 days from when i finish at the bank and before flying to New York. Will be mostly training at the gym and seeing a few friends and not much else in that time. Its july 14th today. This time next month, august 14th, the plan is to be in Memphis, Tennessee and to be walking round Elvis’s house, Graceland. That is going to be the shit!. That will be in the morning and will take us up to lunch time. grab a bite to eat in Memphis and then hit the road and see how far we can get. If we feel strong we might try and go all the way through to Amarillo, Texas that day but we would get there around midnight, so we might just stop half way in Oklahoma somewhere. We shall see how it goes. i also bought my tickets to nine inch nails in knoxville tennessee as well. have been to football matches in other countries but never been to a concert in another country. it should be awesome.
Take care lovely. Have a good day.
Today i have mostly been listening to a silent film - you will leave a mark. enjoy.
Thursday 3 July 2008
unpublished
i write my posts during the day in outlook and then i paste them into my blog. since i have been at the bank i have written lots of posts but just left them as drafts in outlook. there are 51 unpublished posts mainly talking about various things going on here. they aren't posts full of whining and bitterness like they were in my previous job. they are more observational general writings. you can click on the jpeg and read one if your screen is big enough.
today i have mostly been listening to madison strays - last train.
keep smiling, flower :-)
Wednesday 2 July 2008
the route so far...
New Nork, New york....Washington, DC....Salem, Virgina....Knoxville, Tenessee....Memphis, Tenesse....Amarillo, Texas....Santa Fe, New Mexico....Flagstaff/Phoenix, Arizona....Las Vegas, Nevada....Los Angeles, California.
thats a preliminary route as far as we have it. NY is a good place to start from and it was either that or somewhere in florida, but i think it can get quite stormy and wet in florida in august, so we decided to go with NY, which will be hot and sunny. washington dc next, to see the white house, capitol hill etc. salem virginia, in the blue ridge mountains for a stop over. knoxville to see nine inch nails. memphis to go to graceland. big long day of driving to amarillo and then onto santa fe, which is supposed to be a pretty town. next is flagstaff to see the grand canyon and phoenix to see my dear friend. then its on to vegas baby! and finish up in the city of angels and will try and get tickets to see radiohead at the hollywood bowl.
don't know if i will be able to blog but will be taking lots of pictures so will post them on my return.
one or two calls about jobs, but they were nothing special so i declined to be put forward. all that stuff starts properly when i get back at the end of august. work has been quiet thankfully. it had gotten a little busier but its all died down again which is good. haven't done too much study and i delayed the 2 exams i had booked. probably won't get to do them before i leave, but thats ok. i have done the vmware VCP, citrix CCA and the full MCITP windows 2008 certification since december. thats good going and the 2 exams i have booked are just because i was bored and not because i had to do them. i should be set up well for when i get back and i put myself on the market. financial companies are going through hard times at the moment, but we'll see what we can get.
today i have mostly been listening to the verve - love is noise. my new favourite song. can't wait for the new album. this was on TV on sunday night and i was watching it thinking it was one of the best performances i had ever seen. i really like the bit towards the end when he puts on his leather jacket and walks off. job done. thats very cool.
take care my friend. you will be the highlight of my trip.
thats a preliminary route as far as we have it. NY is a good place to start from and it was either that or somewhere in florida, but i think it can get quite stormy and wet in florida in august, so we decided to go with NY, which will be hot and sunny. washington dc next, to see the white house, capitol hill etc. salem virginia, in the blue ridge mountains for a stop over. knoxville to see nine inch nails. memphis to go to graceland. big long day of driving to amarillo and then onto santa fe, which is supposed to be a pretty town. next is flagstaff to see the grand canyon and phoenix to see my dear friend. then its on to vegas baby! and finish up in the city of angels and will try and get tickets to see radiohead at the hollywood bowl.
don't know if i will be able to blog but will be taking lots of pictures so will post them on my return.
one or two calls about jobs, but they were nothing special so i declined to be put forward. all that stuff starts properly when i get back at the end of august. work has been quiet thankfully. it had gotten a little busier but its all died down again which is good. haven't done too much study and i delayed the 2 exams i had booked. probably won't get to do them before i leave, but thats ok. i have done the vmware VCP, citrix CCA and the full MCITP windows 2008 certification since december. thats good going and the 2 exams i have booked are just because i was bored and not because i had to do them. i should be set up well for when i get back and i put myself on the market. financial companies are going through hard times at the moment, but we'll see what we can get.
today i have mostly been listening to the verve - love is noise. my new favourite song. can't wait for the new album. this was on TV on sunday night and i was watching it thinking it was one of the best performances i had ever seen. i really like the bit towards the end when he puts on his leather jacket and walks off. job done. thats very cool.
take care my friend. you will be the highlight of my trip.
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