2009

christmas was same as always. too much eating and too much sleeping and too much time watching rubbish on tv. my gym has been closed for the last few days but they were open yesterday and it was good to feel alive again after days of just being a slob. weather has been a bit milder but very grey and damp, which is about the norm for london town. haven't bothered going to any of the sales. i don't need anything and its going to be ridiculously busy. i also lost my wallet last week and my new cash machine card hasn't come through yet. going to have to make what cash i have last for a few more days.

2009 has almost gone and it the big '10 in a few days. will need to start looking for a new contract as soon as i get back. am always keen to start the new year with something fresh and its been that way the last couple of years. here is hoping i get lucky and end up somewhere good, and even if its not good it will be a change and that is always positive....well most of the time it is.

have a very happy new year.

today i have mostly been listening to the gaslight anthem - '59 sound, filmed in LA. i was at this show and it was the best night out i had all year. i was trying to spot myself in this video but can't. i was standing right at the bottom of the frame about 4 or 5 people from the front. i need a more distinctive head or hairstyle. a mohawk maybe.




take care.

games for days

my boss got a bit ratty with me today because i couldn't find the right path to some files on a SAN disk attached to a vmware ESX server. jeez sorry. its bad enough that i have to do it on a command line from esx and the forward slashes (/) are making the whole thing look a bit strange already, with out my boss tutting and getting impatient when i asked him to check it.

he came over and then just typed away quickly and when he ran the command it still didn't work. he then went away and i searched some forums and found the answer. i am not a complete idiot. i managed to do what i needed to get done, but just needed a little help. i have been here around 10 months and am familiar with everything, but i can recall when i worked somewhere for years and its then you get to know everything inside out, because you were the one who built it all. i think maybe my boss sometimes forgets that he has a few years start on the rest of us and was here when it all went in.

i suppose thats the thing that stops people from moving around in jobs a lot. you go somewhere new and you have to ask lots of questions about where they store stuff or how they do particular things. it can take months and months before you even start to get your head around some of it and there will be situations like today where you will be asked to work on systems that you have barely touched since you got there.

no two places are the same despite the fact that they use a lot of the same systems. in a way it comes down to whether your ego can take being the newbie and having to ask for things and having to deal with some occasionally difficult characters. i have found i can do it and its the fact that i know that i can move on to somewhere new in a few months, that makes tolerate working with some difficult people. not saying my boss is difficult, because he is not, but when you are contractor you need to be able to just be able to let a lot of things slide.

anyways, whilst working on how to solve my problem i began searching google and forums and this amused me.

someone asks a question about a problem and then someone else goes to the trouble of replying on a forum saying he doesn't know the answer. what a fucking idiot. don't reply if you don't know the answer. whats the point of that. if i ask a question i want to know the answer, i don't want to hear from people telling me that they don't know the answer. that doesn't help me.

anyway it did make me laugh out loud when i read it.

today i have mostly been listening to julien plenti - games for days. this is mr paul banks who is lead singer of interpol who are a wicked band and i really like this video.

westwood

its still freezing cold and the roads are icy but that didn't stop me from cycling to the gym on saturday and sunday. we had a couple of near misses where i felt my bike slip underneath me, but i managed to avoid kissing tarmac and made it ok. it was blisteringly cold though and almost to taunt myself, i was wearing a san diego padres woolly hat, which is an item of clothing san diegans would rarely have the need to wear themselves. they just like to rub our noses in it. buy this hat and wear it when its cold and miserable and it will remind you that its not cold and miserable in southern california, bitches!. er...thanks for that.

anyways rather strangely i saw the DJ Tim Westwood training yesterday when i was at the gym. for people who don't who tim westwood is, he has a radio show on the most popular radio station in the UK and he plays hip hop and rap. the rather strange thing is that he is in his late 40's, the son of a bishop, white and from a middle class family from a rural area of england, and yet he speaks as though he was born and raised in 'the ghettos' of south or east london. he is basically a fraud and a twat.

anyways, the only other celeb that i used to see at my gym was swimsuit model and FHM cover girl caprice. she used to come in occasionally and i would see her working out, but i haven't seen her in quite a while. i lose caprice and get tim westwood. hows that for bad luck.

anyways, that was my weekend. quiet and cold. am on earlies this week till thursday and then i am off for a week between christmas and new year. i can't wait to be out of here.

i heard that brittany murphy died yesterday. obviously sad when some one so young passes. lets give a medal to all the young stars in hollywood that aren't dead, or in rehab or in trouble with five-O. when you are young and moneyed, the temptations must be quite hard to resist.

respect is due to the likes of evan rachel wood and natalie portman and beyonce, who are rarely in the press pictured stumbling out a club on sunset at 3am with powder around their nostrils. i can't think of any young guys that are not up to no good, because i suspect there are almost none. i bet even the jonas brothers are snorting coke off hookers tits on a friday night in LA. promise rings, my arse.

3 more early mornings for me till the end of the year at work.

today i have mostly been listening to placebo - sleeping with ghosts.

tigers wife

its really getting cold now. there were flakes of snow falling this morning as i was walking to work and the cold was biting. i am playing football tomorrow night. i really wish i had said i wasn't going to play, but i have to go now as its too late to cancel. will have to wrap up when i play and make sure i do an extra long warm up before hand. i also have to cycle to the gym on the weekend and i really would rather not cycle in sleet and snow although the forecast is for quite a bit more snow on friday.

i applied for a couple of jobs yesterday an got call backs from the agencies. its a bit awkward taking calls when sitting in a big open plan office and so i have to scurry away to a quiet corrider when my phone rings. only 6 more days of work after today till the end of the year. i mentioned that my boss told me i would be on my own in the first week back in january. well it turns out i will also be on-call over christmas and new year as well because my boss and the other contractor have decided to take holiday at the same time....again!!!. thanks for that. come on dude, you run the department of 3 people and you would think it would be a rule for 2 people to not be off for 2 weeks at the same time, but clearly not. actually my boss has been a bit off on more than one occasion recently. time for me to pack my bags and move on soon.

i find myself currently in that odd state of trying to give a shit when i really am just looking for the next contract and want out of here, but as i haven't found anything, and its all a few weeks away at least, i have to put up the pretence of caring. in that way i am a bit like tiger woods wife.....although i haven't had my heart broken and have kids and am not married to a person with about as much charisma as a wet mop, but apart from that its similar. she can't just up and leave immediately. she has to get shit sorted out and things organised and needs time to make plans.

......and also its just golf. who gives a shit about golf?. when did golf get so big?. i have been to the states and kids in america don't want to be tiger. they want to be tom brady or lebron james or josh beckett. and can we also stop calling him an athlete. golf is about as athletic as snooker or darts. there is skill and technique but if you don't sweat or do any physical exhersion, you can't be called an athlete. thats my rule and that is that.

anyway, i went out last night in shoreditch to meet up with some friends. a very good night out. had the usual run for the last train home at the end of the night, but we got there in time. there have been times in the past when i have missed it and then you have the joy of getting the nightbus home. a 45 minute journey turns into a 2 hour trek through london. its not nice.

today i have mostly been listening to jack penate - pull my heart away. wicked tune.

i will give it a pass

it was cold this weekend but as there was no rain during the day i managed to cycle both days. my cold also subsided and i think i may have found the cure. on friday lunchtime i went to a turkish place that does lamb kebabs and rice and salad, and even on friday afternoon i could feel myself getting better. lemsip, nyQuil and all that other stuff is useless. lamb kebab with rice is the cure.

training like a monster these days. it might be cold and it might be perpetual darkness but i am in the zone at the gym and am killing it.

work is slow which is a good thing. its december and you can feel things winding down. 2 more weeks of work left for this year and then its a brave new world in 2010. we have our christmas party next monday. i think i will give it a pass. i think i will be the only person not to go to it. its a little awkward but i am seeing all my friends tomorrow night for a christmas drinks, from where i used to work and they are my real friends, and i just view my current work colleagues as just work colleagues. it professional and i don't really want to socialise with people i don't really know. it is a bit anti social but i just don't feel like going. if they think i am being a ass then thats NMFP (not my fucking problem).

anyways, from a time when i used to work in an office and i knew all the people and politics. here is an amusing clip from my favourite tv show the thick of it. i kind of miss those days as there were some good laughs, although saying that, when you were actually in the midst of the bullshit it could get quite shite.

and today i have mostly been listening to one day as a lion - wild international.

....i'm like a nail stuck in the wrist of their christmas.

i have also been listening a lot to the new 30 seconds from mars album, this is war. its very good. if you like angels and airwaves you will love it. in places its very similar. being similar to something good is no bad thing but it really does almost sound like the same band, were it not for the fact that jared leto is a slightly better singer than tom de longe. anyways it good. if you have spotify, bit torrent or even some money, i suggest you treat yourself.

empire state

am still feeling really rough today but thankfully my boss has a day off today and i have been able to take it easy today. am really not up to concentrating or doing anything today.

i went out last night and met some friends in a bar in clerkenwell and it was good to see everyone after quite a while.

am going to cycle to the gym tomorrow and see if i can sweat out this cold. either that or i will just pass out on my way there and be killed when a truck runs over my unconscious body laying in the middle of the road. we shall see how it goes but i hope i don't get killed in the next couple of days.

actually now that its cold and shit weather i only see the hardcore cyclists going round regents park. last week i saw some guy riding a beautiful time trial bike with a deep rim at the front and a solid Zipp disc on the back wheel. i couldn't quite see manufacturer but it looked wicked and something like a felt or cervelo or pinarello. if i win the lottery i am going to spend a fortune on a nice bike. not to ride it but just to look at it.

today i have mostly been listening to some guilty pleasures. music that i wouldn't normally tell people i know, that i listen to. my spotify playlist today has included r.kelly, lil wayne, DMX, Flo Rida, Baby, Clipse, Nas and eminem.

anyways yesterday at the bar i was at they played jay z - empire state of mind, and it is wicked. this isn't a guilty pleasure. its genuinely good and not just because it has the fantastically good looking alicia keys in it.

i hate winter

you can not even imagine how much i hate winters in london. cold, dark, damp and just shit. you would think having lived my whole life here i would be used to them, but no, everytime winter comes round i hate it even more than the last one. and now to top it all off i have got a cold, my nose is blocked, my head hurts and my whole face feels swollen. i fucking hate winter.

anyways, tonight i am going to a leaving do for a friend of mine. i would have given it a miss given how i feel but i will go along because i don't think i will get to see some of those people for a while.

i tried to go to the gym last night and do some training but i was feeling a little weak. i still did ok considering i have been struck down by disease. i will go to the gym on the weekend and even if i can't train i will just sit in the steam room for a while and it will clear my head. i fucking hate winter. i need this weekend to come round quick because work it tough when you feel like shit. only 1 more day to get through.

today i have mostly been listening to sigur ros - hoppipolla. enjoy

Kings and Queens

back to work this week. uneventful weekend. training like a beast however and am i must be close to being in the best condition i have ever been. just need to push on over the next few weeks.

i applied to another job but i am not sure why. i don't think i want to leave before the end of the year and i really should wait to see what comes up in january.

today i have mostly been listening to 30 seconds to mars - kings and queens. LA and cycling. 2 of my favourite things and a great song as well.

heads will roll

its been a long week but we got through it someway, somehow. i applied to a couple of jobs i saw yesterday. if nothing else it will get my cv out there in the hands of recruiters so that when the new year does roll round, i might get a call from them if anything tasty comes up.

i had football last night for the first time in about 3 weeks. i had no car so had to take the train and it was also really cold but it was a good game. i can't play next week because i have a leaving drinks to go to, but hopefully will get one more game in before the end of the year. it also looks like the weather will be ok tomorrow so i get to cycle to the gym. i need to keep active because this is precisely the time of year when its easy to come up with excuses and not get any exercise, and before you know it you have started to put on weight.

i still haven't decided what exam to do next. i was going to do sql 2005 but sql 2010 is just about to come out and i don't want to get certified in something so old, despite the fact its the version we use most at my work. will do some more digging around and try and come up with something.

have a lovely weekend.

today i have mostly been listening to yeah yeah yeahs - heads will roll. some of their stuff is fantastically good and some a little less so. this is in the fantastically good category. also one more thing to note is that whilst some popstars like lady gaga or madonna resort to cheap publicity stunts and outrageous costumes to try and appear cool, some people like the lead singer of this band, just have a natural effortlessly cool quality to them that you can't fake or manufacture. its almost like she isn't even trying. probably because she isn't and because she doesn't need to because she is actually genuinely cool.

LA mix tape 2010 track 1

that music video i posted in my last post doesn't seem to work very well. it plays fine when you watch it on vimeo, but just not when its embedded. anyways i got something good for today at the end of this post, and it works just fine.

weather is still cold this week but i figure we are just 3 weeks from the shortest day of the year and then we start the slow climb back to daylight and warmth....though its hardly noticeable and actually the weather is usually worse in january and february, but i like to kid myself into thinking i have broken the back of this winter. don't under estimate the power of self delusion.

i had lunch yesterday with the agent that got me my current contract. i don't know why he bothered to make the trip to see me as i don't know him at all and have met him once, very briefly in the last year, and i was not going to be able to give him any good leads about any new hires my current company might want to make. i did let him know that i was not that pleased that my rate didn't get increased and that i might see what happens in the new year. that should scare him a little. i like scaring agents.

i went out for dinner last night in farringdon at smiths of smithfields with a friend of mine. we meet up like clockwork once every 6 months, and barely communicate in the time inbetween. its slightly odd but we have been doing it for the last few years and smiths is our venue of choice and its a good night out because we always have 6 months of catching up to do and there is always lots to talk about.

i doubt i will go to the gym tonight even though i really should go at least once on a weeknight. i just find that when i am on the early shift i feel a bit tired and lethargic and i know i won't give it 100% if i go. i also have football tomorrow night so can justify getting my exercise fix tomorrow. normal service will be resumed on saturday and sunday at the gym and i am just about getting my conditioning back to a point where i was at in the summer at my peak. i promise i won't miss any sessions for the next few weeks and as i am off work for a week over christmas i might even do an extra session or two then.

today i have mostly been listening to fightstar - city on fire. it reminds me a bit of one of my favourite bands, bush. i just found out that the lead singer of fightstar used to be in a band called busted, who were absolute horse shit. lets just dismiss it as a youthful indescretion. you have to give him dues for turning his life around rehabilitating himself and starting a better band with some decent tunes. i think i will start a new mix for a possible trip to LA next year and i will stick this on it. i am going to need some tunes to listen to in my mustang....or camaro....maybe.

have a lovely day.

grim this morning

am on earlies this week which means i have to leave my house at 7.30am. its dark at that time, but even darker this morning with thick dark clouds and heavy rain and strong winds. goodness me it was grim in the 7 or 8 minutes it took to walk to the train station this morning. only 4 more days of early starts in shitty weather left for me this year. next time i am on this shift it will be 2010 and god knows how much longer i will be here after that.

have a lovely week and thank your lucky stars you are not in london when its weather like this.

today i have mostly been timbaland feat one republic - apologize.

hypocrisy

so i met up with my 3 school friends last night and we went out for a chinese meal just behind leicester square. i hate leicester square. its for tourists. do new yorkers go out for a meal in times square?. no. its the kind of place tourists go to because they don't know the city and where the good places are.

anyways, the whole evening was not as bad as i thought it would be. everyone seems fine although one of them has now found god in a big way and was telling me about how his life has changed for it and how great it is. good for you dude, if it makes you feel better then go for it. at one stage i thought he was going to go on and on and on about it but he wasn't too bad.

i do think it says more about the person he was when he says his life and perspectives have changed. you shouldn't have been such a money obsessed and spiteful little shit before. the rest of us weren't. this is a guy that told me he doesn't declare all his income to his accountant and so avoids paying tax. everyone pays tax and whilst i don't want to pay more than i absolutely have to, i don't resort to hiding a portion of my income, which is against the law. there are people that earn 5 times less than he does who pay a higher proportion of their wage in tax. god or no god, that just not fair.

this is the same guy that told me he interviewed people that were talented and bright but then told his manager that they were inept technically because he didn't want anyone that might jeapordise his own position at his firm. thats a shitty thing to do just on a human level and its deceitful. what did your god say about that?. i bet any money that he is still doing the same after his enlightenment.

my friend who i went on my road trip across america started getting all moralistic on me as well, i recall. when the waitress gave us our bill and it was a few bucks short because she didn't include everything he insisted we tell her, while i was saying we should pay, tip her and leave it. he told me that would be the morally wrong thing to do. this from the person who dropped $2000 on a hooker in las vegas in one night!. this from a person who spent £600 on hookers on a stag weekend in poland. we can't get a $4 orange juice for free but its ok for you to take advantage of these young women for whom the only opportunity to earn above minimum wage is to sell their bodies for sex with strangers. go figure that one out.

this isn't me slamming religion. its just me slamming the hypocrisy of some people. also not all of my friends are in prison or tax cheats and kerb crawlers. most of them are hard working decent people who just get on with their lives and who never attempt to give people lessons on morals or decency whilst forgetting or concealing their own shortcomings. maybe its because they are decent people that they kind of assume, possibly naively, that everyone else is as well. i sense the ones that make a big deal about it and tell people about it, assume everyone else is morally deficient, maybe because they are or were themselves.

today i have mostly been listening to u2 - bad. this is from when they were a good band making interesting music. this is before the hypocrisy set in. this is another from when i used to go to my friends house when i was a kid and we used to listen to his parents and older brothers record collection.

old friends

a guy that used to live on the same block as me and who i used to play football on the street with, when i was kid, died suddenly last friday. not too sure of the reasons but it looks like he just died in his sleep from a heart related issue. i hadn't seen him for about 10 years but i bump into his brother occasionally, who also played football with us, because he works for london trandsport and is sometimes at the station i take in the morning. sad news.

also on the subject of childhood friends, tonight i am meeting up with 3 guys that i used to go to school with. 1 of them is a really nice guy and i have got a lot of time for him, but the other 2 are just assholes. all they talk about is money, and yet they are tighter than fish's arse. they are also just chancers who have landed fat contracts and have sat on them for years, hoping not to be discovered. dull, boring people with nothing to say whose only status is the money they earn and not the substance of their character.

i have met plenty of their type in my travels around banks. bitter, institutionalised IT workers threatened by anything new and whose sole purpose is self promotion to anyone that will listen whilst also patronising and putting down anyone perceived as a threat, in the hope of gaining a reputation as someone who is not expendable if a reorganisation came to pass.

am a little surprised they haven't been completely found out yet and been let go. one of them has been a bit. he was a contractor earning £120,000 a year and his bank told him they would end his contract and take him on a permie earning £45,000 a year. that still good money, but a 75k pay cut is tough to take. he took their offer in a tacit acknowledgement that he is actually a chancer and was overpaid beyond his ability and he would be unable to compete with anyone even remotely good in the open market.

i hadn't heard from one of them for about 3 years and in his first email to me yesterday the first thing he wrote me was "hey, how are you doing?, are you out of work?". what a lovely way to start an email. i replied i was well and employed. i should have replied, "i am doing good, how are you?, still cheating on your wife?", "its a shame she found out 6 months after the wedding, hope the divorce hasn't cleaned you out". prick.

anyways i have an evening of bullshit to look forward to tonight, and will invariably be asked if i can get hold of the latest version of visual studio or sql server or oracle or whatever. download it off the web yourself you idiots. trial versions are free.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - papillon. this is a live performance from the tv show, later with jools holland. its wicked. the new album is good as well. it grows on you slowly. also you can't see it in this clip but the audience on the jools holland show always consists of desperately un-cool people nodding their heads out of time to whichever band is playing. all friends of friends of bbc lovies i suspect. shoot me if i ever go to a taping of that show. its a great show, but the audience always consists of wankers. i bet the journalists from the NME are there as well as people who work on Radio 1. zane lowe, jo whiley, chris moyles, etc. wankers, like i said.

have a splendid day. its not raining today in london town, so thats always good.

it is a fact

exuses, excuses. do i say i was waiting for a delivery, or do i say that i needed to pick someone up from the airport, or there is always the classic, i had a dentists appointment.

i told my boss i was going to be in an hour late this morning, and not wanting to lie when i don't have to, i gave no explanation as to why. he was fine with it and didn't ask why, but its an easy thing to do to feel compelled to give more information. i didn't.

i was going to be late because i had my exam this morning. my confidence that had been building up all week and that made me bring my exam forward by a week, suddenly ebbed away last night as i was studying. christ, i don't know this shit nearly as well as i thought i did.

anyways, i go to the exam center this morning and started the exam and having done dozens of exams before i know if its going well or not. this one was not going that well. i got through it and at the end of the exam i waited expectantly for a message mocking my false confidence and saying that i should have studied another week.

to my surprise it appears my exam score was counted by the same people that counted the ballots in florida in 2000 and the same people that did the recent afghan election, because i miraculously passed, and quite comfortably as well. i had a voucher for a free re-take in case i flunked it, but its nice to know i won't need it and i will have a free weekend ahead of me, although the forecast is for rain all weekend so i may as well have been stuck indoors studying.

anyways thats me done. there are no exams that i feel i have to take for the time being. i will still read but with out exams to do. i doubt that will work well but we shall see.

in other news, i applied for another contract yesterday. we shall see what happens but the market is definitely waking up. come the new year i think its going to be interesting. am hoping i will be measuring my time at this contract in days and weeks and not months when 2010 rolls round.

today i have mostly been listening to the cure - disintegration. the title track of one of the greatest albums ever recorded. that is not my opinion. its a fact.

have a lovely weekend my friend

they didn't want me

they didn't get back to me about that job after i was in contact last friday. maybe they thought i was not good enough or they didn't believe me that i could extricate myself from my contract and be able to start next monday. oh well, no bother. am a little surprised they would pay soo much money to fill a roll and only give themselves 5 days to find a candidate. you might not be getting the best you can get, but hey, thats up to them.

the good thing is that the whole process woke me up and i am studying like a beast now. am absolutely killing it, so much so, that i had my exam booked for next friday but i have brought it forward to this friday. i also have a voucher that entitles me to a free second shot at the exam (it costs £125 to take it), so that means even if i crash and burn i still can go back and try again with out being stung for more money. i can't lose, .........unless i fail it twice.

they didn't laugh

you know you are a nerd when just on the basis of a job spec on a recruiters site, which doesn't state the company they are recruiting for, you can work it out.

"aah, thats interesting that they want an windows guy who knows exchange,....that counts out deutsche bank, rbs because they use lotus notes, and also jp morgan, goldmans, merryll and morgan stanley, bank of america and nomura because they have separate messaging teams. right, of who is left.........". through a process of elimination based on the technologies in the job spec i figured it was one of 2 banks, and this morning the agent emailed me and it was one of the 2 i guessed it would be. what a fucking nerd!.

so the people that are recruiting for that really good job got back to me this morning. the guy was honest in his email and said he had 12 people that they were considering for it and that i was one of them. he asked me to give him some more information and said he would get back to me. he also asked me to confirm if i could start in just over a week. i said i was pretty sure i could work it out if things went that far and i got an offer. its also quite nice that the recruiter for back to me at all and didn't laugh when he saw my CV and then burned it on a fire.

in all honesty the chances of me getting it are very slim, but we shall see how it goes. i won't be too disappointed if i don't get it (because i never do), though it would be nice. there will also be some problems to iron out with my current place with regards to me getting released in time and those problems are made worse by the fact that the other 2 people in the department have both booked holidays at the same time at the beginning of january. but that is not my problem. i am not going to feel guilty and turn down a chance of a good contract because it may clash with my work colleagues holidays. that makes no sense at all.

i have been a martyr for work before. i have done it lots of times. i gave up holidays i was entitled to, to finish projects that were given deadlines that were too tight. i have worked countless weekends and long hours and in the end it all counted for shit. i promised myself that i wouldn't let that happen to me again and it hasn't and i feel so much better for it.

have a good weekend

today i have mostly been listening to muse - undisclosed desires

luck

saw a peach of a job today. it looked absolutely perfect but they wanted someone to start in 10 days. arrgghh!!!!. who can start in 10 days time?. people that are sitting around the house watching day time tv and wearing sportswear on a weekday but not playing sport, thats who.

for a while i thought of going for the job and dealing with the consequences if it came through. the consequences being if i get the job, i just tell my current job that i won't be coming back in to work and leaving after a few days and breaking my contract mid way. its a shitty thing to do and i won't lie and say that money has nothing to do with it, because it does. they would definitely react badly and my name would be mud in this place. it would be a bridge permanently burnt and these people have treated my well, even when i have done the occasional fuck up.

i hope this doesn't prevent me from getting other similar roles, but actually its just struck me that i have been available quickly each time i have moved between contracts and this is the first time i will be in the midst of a contract and not able to leave with in a week or two. shit shit shit!.

am still debating going for it.

in the meantime i have sent my agent an email asking him what my notice period is. after all, they didn't give me a raise when i asked for one a couple of months ago, and i want that little fucker to know that i am serious and could walk, maybe not now but soon. that will put the cat amongst the pigeons and i don't want them to get too comfortable. i don't want me to get too comfortable either hence the need to move on soon.

sometimes it all comes down to luck.....

UPDATE: i just went ahead and applied for that job. if they don't get back to me thats fine, and if they get back to me but reject me that fine as well. i am not going to reject myself without even trying.

mute admin

being the mute admin sitting alone at his desk, i have been blissfully unaware of politics and personalities. i suspect my colleagues might think i am a bit weird and very quiet but as they say, thats how i roll.

anyways its only in the last few months that my blissful ignorance has been tempered and i have started seeing some politics and personalities come through.

my boss is in a bad mood today. he has these occasionally. i don't think it was helped by me doing some work last week that he wasn't aware of and that didn't follow all the procedures. jeez, i had some senior manager at my desk who looked under pressure and he asked me to do so something as it was holding up his team and other teams around europe. i could have said "have you raised a call and done all the paperwork for it", but i didn't and just started to work on it. when my boss came back to his desk i could see he was not happy.

i also had one of the networks guys get a bit pissed off because i didn't do some hardware upgrade for him. he asked me what the delay was. i looked into it and it turns out that the delay was him holding up the decommissioning of another server which i had told him i was going to get the parts out of, for his server. why bitch about something not being done, but at the same time hold up work that is reliant on that work being done.

be in no doubt that i can be slack about stuff. employee of the month is something i will never get, but people who shout about stuff should also get their facts straight. network guy has gone strangely quiet now that i have refreshed his memory and traced the cause of his delay.

ah well... such is life. most of the time things are fine here but occasionally you get some shit.

thats all jobs i guess, and hopefully i will find a new contract in the new year and once again be blissfully unaware of any politics or prickly personalities. i can recall 2 years ago to the day that i was sitting next to the biggest chump in the world at the japanese bank i was working for at the time. that was painful every minute of every hour of the day having to listen to his nuggets of wisdom, which were in fact nuggets of horse shit. this is a stroll in the summer sunshine by comparison.

speaking of sunshine, there has been a little but there has also been some showers and its getting cold as well. to be expected in november. am glad i still have the memory of californian sun in my mind and my soul.

today i have watched a clip of the office. it brings back memories of where i used to work and reviews and appraisals with my bosses.

there is none of that for me now, although like this clip, i was looked down upon by a lot of the guys at that bank with the chump, because i had gone to university. who would have thought studying would be something other people would discourage, but they do. i think i would have fitted in more had i spent my evenings getting drunk, watching big brother, lost or 24 on sky plus (tivo), and playing golf on weekends and reading tabloid newspapers everyday. er, no thanks.

anyways i have booked my exam and its in 2 weeks time. revision has been coming along ok and i figure that in a couple of weeks i will be ready......or i might not be ready and i will get 7% and be laughed out of the exam center whilst people though rotten eggs at me and call me names.

mute

a quiet weekend. had to force myself to go to the gym on saturday and sunday and am glad i did. its just too easy to let things slide and be lazy especially at this time of year when its cold and dark and you would rather just sit at home in front of the tv. actually the only times i studied this weekend was when i got back from the gym. its gets your blood pumping and motivated and full of energy and it has a positive effect on the mind as well.

speaking of being lazy at this time of year, a measure of how bad i had got was that i didn't send off my timesheets last week. it wasn't because i was particularly busy or they hadn't been signed off. it was just because i was lazy and just let it slide. you would think the fact that it held up payment of my wages for the whole of last month would be a motivation to get it done promptly, but no. anyways, i sent them off this morning as i still have some energy left from working out.

my boss said something that amused me last week. i asked about the guy that almost started crying when his PC wallpaper got changed and who requested that he put his own picture on his desktop. i asked my boss what happened with that and if he would get an exemption. my boss, in a very dead pan and serious way, replied, " no, and people like that should be killed". ha ha ha!!!. we can laugh about it, but making a silly request like that means that the guy's stock has fallen. should be killed. ha ha ha!!. harsh but fair i suppose.

i have seen so many contractors commit proffessional suicide by saying stupid things at work. i think here where i work they must think i am a bit of a quiet loner. its not that, but i am just very aware of not being too vocal and being a loudmouth or even just saying something really stupid. i guess it comes from working in investment banks recently. i have seen people not have contracts renewed just on the fact that they have been a bit mouthy and difficult and not gotten on well with one person in the team.

am on earlies this week and i was leaving the home this morning it was really cold. its the first real cold we have had this winter season. it will get worse, but there are only another 6 weeks of work left before this year is effectively over. just need to count it down and get through it and i know i will feel better once we have broken the back of this winter.

anyways, today, like most days, i have been sat at my desk like a mute.

today i have mostly been listening to stellastarr - sweet troubled soul.

i was right, it was a rubbish bar

this week has gone by so fast its scarcely believable. it just seems like yesterday that i was waking up in monday morning thinking i had a whole 5 days ahead of me. have been quite busy at work but not so busy that it gets stressful. not that i ever get stressed anyway.

i went out to a bar in clerkenwell last night and as i suspected it was a bit of an old mans pub. i don't think some of the other guys were very impressed with it either. even the guy that suggested it looked a bit sheepish as we all turned up one by one and suspected he may have not quite caught the mood we were looking for in a place. i doubt we will be going there again. strongrooms in shoreditch will be re-installed as venue of choice for us. still it was a good night out and we had much amusement slating each other and where we work and people we used to work with. long winter evenings fly by when you are bitching and taking the piss.

i applied for another job today. at the very least it will get my resume out there in the hands of recruiters so that they will have me on file, if and when something else comes up over the next few weeks and months.

and thats it really. will study a bit this weekend. my gym sessions have been disrupted because my gym has closed for 2 weeks for refurbishment. it will be nice to go there when its all been done up and is nice and new again. it was starting to look a bit tired and some of the equipment had begun to breakdown quite often.

today i have mostly been watching the trailer for the the new film, where the wild things are. it looks wicked.

have a good weekend my friend.

the only shit bar in clerkenwell

going out for a drink with some friends this evening, and we usually go to shoreditch, but for tonight the venue has changed and we are going to some old dingy pub in clerkenwell. there are lots of nice bars in clerkenwell but we are going to what looks like a dated old fashioned bar for old men.

arrghh!!!, why can't we just go to our usual. you can get a seat, they serve decent food and there are usually some nice looking girls which is always pleasant to see. if not there then why not to the dozens of other nice bars in clerkenwell.

there is a thing in london where people are just desperately trying to be fashionable and cool by going to places that are not fashionable and cool but that they think are going to be fashionable and cool in 6 months time, at which point they stop going there, and can then moan about how its lost its edge and had its day now that everyone is going there. they then move on and try and find bars that are shit in the desperate hope that in 6 months time, they can do the whole "this place has had its day" speech all over again. what a futile exercise.

i suspect the venue tonight is going to be shit. i could be wrong, but i doubt it.

my boss told me that in the first week of january i will be on my own as him and the other person i work with will be away on holidays. there is something to look forward to in the new year. not.

i think i am slightly abnormal in the amount of time i take off, in that its not much at all compared to most other people. anyways, i should be in the midst of job hunting then, so hopefully we won't have a scheduling conflict. we shall see how it goes. i applied for a job today and in the worst case scenario they will be screwed if i get it, but lets be realistic, its unlikely i will get something so quickly, though it would be a nice problem. actually it won't be a problem...for me at least.

today i have mostly been listening to screaming lights - GMN, ...whatever it is gmn stands for???.

take care V

edge of seventeen

weather has gotten a few degrees cooler today after the unseasonably mild temperatures we had last week. its actually a lovely crisp sunny day outside.

weekend was quiet for me. gym and a little bit of study. i was a little unwell and with out wanting to go into too much detail i had issues keeping food down since thursday. i decided that i would stop eating and let my system reset its self and so i didn't eat for 3 days till yesterday, sunday. it seemed to do the trick as i seem to be fine now. this happened to me once before and i ended up not eating for 3 weeks. i lost 30lbs in the process. in comparison i think i got off easy this time.

there was no football last week as we ended up being a man down because he went to see the death metal band cannibal corpse, on that night. oh dear.

anyways its the start of a new week. am on lates which is ok and the best shift for me to be on. will carry on studying for my exam and thats it. am going out in shoreditch with the usual group of poeple that all worked at the internet company i used to work for. it should be a good night out as usual.

oh, and can i just make a point about software and microsoft. can i just say that having used windows media player to sync my new sony mp3 player, it is an experience as pleasant as being punched in the face. my playlists are messed up for no reason and music has started disappearing from my player when i know its on my computer. the syncing has a mind of its own. you might think that this might be me just being a dumb ass and not knowing how to use a computer, and although supporting servers doesn't make me qualified to use media player and an mp3 player, you would think i would have the aptitude to fix any issue, but no.

windows media player is a horse shit piece of software and yet we are on version 11. they have improved it 11 times, and its still this bad. christ on a bike!. don't assume that i am a unix/open source advocate who hates microsoft. i have made my career supporting microsoft server software. 22 certifications in microsoft software mean i am not someone who uses their products on the side and there are some great things they do, but my recent experience with media player has been terrible. no wonder google, apple and vmware are giving you a beating. maybe you should just stick to office and windows server and leave everything else to people with better ideas and understanding.

anyways enough ranting, today i have mostly been listening to stevie nicks - edge of seventeen. i was watching a documentary about fleetwood mac last night, and they had this on it and it reminded me how great a song it is. the first time i became aware of stevie nicks and fleetwood mac was when i was about 15 and i used to go round to my friends house and we would sometimes listen to some of his parents old record collection., that how i first heard stevie nicks and her unique, gravelly voice.

if you don't like this song, call an ambulance because there is something seriously wrong with you and you need to get yourself checked out by a doctor. :-)

take care my friend.

wallpaper

spent monday in a datancentre swapping various parts in servers. i was there for about 4 hours and spending all that time in a very dry and cold environment like that has given me a sore throat and blocked nose now. what a nice way to start the week.

its a small consollation that the weather has been very mild for the time of year. 18-19C which is very warm considering november starts at the end of this week.

am on lates this week so finish at 6pm which means i join the rush at oxford circus tube station on my way home. its absolutely insane how crowded it is every evening. an unpleasant journey but the consellation is that i only have half an hour of it.

nothing else to say. struggling to motivate myself at work but thats usual at this time of year. still not booked my exam. i will do so this week. actually, i will do it today. i have also been missing gym sessions and my revision for my exam has been sporadic as well. i just feel so lazy.

oh, one last thing. my boss just told me about a really funny incident just now. a few days ago the desktop background wallpaper on all the desktops was changed to a new design. anyways, one of the heads of the development teams downstairs spoke to my boss saying one of his developers was distraught because he had a picture of his family as his desktop wallpaper and now it was the new design and he didn't like it. my boss just thought, yeah whatever, but the guy told him that the developer was almost in tears and that now when he looks at his screen it just looks like he is staring into space. ha ha ha!!!. all this is true. he is asking for an exception to be made on his desktop so that he can put a pic of his family on there.

i don't know this guy but i can tell you that he is the laughing stock of all the admin and support teams right now. well done mate, you have made yourself look like a prick.

thank goodness its friday tomorrow.

first application

like a person training for a marathon and going on short jogs around the block, i have started preparing for my exam, which is good. will build momentum and look to peak in mid to late november when i take it, but at the moment its just the equivalent of light jogging.

saying that though, it is fucking depressing at this time of year and then to spend time studying as well just makes it worse. strangely enough i have tended to do most of my exams between march and september when the days are a bit longer and weather not as shitty, which is odd because you would think the last thing you would want to do is stay in and study. oh well.

was also thinking that i will have the hassle of having to get changed for interviews, if and when i get them. at my current job i wear jeans and trainers, but for interviews i will need to be suited up, and there is no way in hell i could come to work in a suit. it means lots of changing clothes. i might try and utilise my gym which is just down the road, as its better than going home after every interview. time is money baby and i don't want to start taking whole chunks of time off.

i applied for a job yesterday that i saw on a website. i know i said i didn't want to screw my current employers over, but it looked like a decent roll and it was paying quite a bit more than i currently get so it was worth going for. it is my first application but surely not the last. am sure there will be dozens of application sent off before anyone gets back to me, let alone offers to give me an interview.

today i have mostly been listening to nine inch nail and gary numan - cars, recorded live in london. i was there!!!.

take care my friend

its starting to get cold

a quiet weekend just gone for me. did nothing much apart from go to the gym and do my laundry and watch tv. i was supposed to be studying for my exam but i only managed about 20 minutes which was a pathetic effort.

it is the hardest thing to do though, starting to study for an exam. once you are in the flow and in the routine its fine, but just getting started is a bit of a shock to the system. in that way its quite similar to training in the gym when its really difficult to start with after a break.

anyways, starting from today i will force myself to study. i have a time limit of the end of the year and i need to get it done. i will make the booking for my exam tomorrow and i think i will try and aim for november 20th as a target.

the weekend was cold. i have had to wear my fleece when i have been cycling the last 3 weeks but last weekend was the first time i had to wear a woolly hat. the cold is coming.

am on earlies this week. i really don't like it but at least i get to leave the office at 4.30 which is good.

today i have mostly been to angels and airwaves - the adventure. the album that this song comes from is just epic.

juneau

fridays are a beautiful thing. the end of the week and 2 days of rest ahead over the weekend, though its only one day for me as i am working tomorrow. even so, its not a proper work day tomorrow and i will hopefully only be in for a few hours to do what i have to get done.

my book arrived that i am going to use to study for my exam and its a bit bigger than i thought it would be. i should know a lot of what is in it but its still a lot of material to get through. i think end of november or beginning of december is a more realistic time to take my exam. i shall get the booking for it done next week because as we all know, until you get it booked you won't actually do any study.

i had football last night. a few of the guys along with me were planning on going to liverpool for a weekend at the beginning of september. guess what?. its all fallen through and been cancelled. ha!, useless. they can't even organise a trip to liverpool so god knows why i ask them to go to los angeles.

thats it really. am in 2 minds about actually applying for jobs before christmas or if i should wait for january. will keep an eye out and if anything good comes up i will go for it but i think i will wait for the new year to really get my cv out there.

also if i get something in january it means i can leave at the end of my contract. if i were to land something before then i would have to hand in my notice and then they would be a bit screwed trying to find a replacement for me over christmas and new year. its not my intention to screw this place over and i am not completely with out heart. one doesn't want to antagonise or make enemies or be unproffessional. they have been good to me and you never know when you might work these people again.

today i have mostly been listening to funeral for a friend - juneau.

dominos

i signed my new contract and sent it back and it is all done and dusted now. there is a chance that this will be my final 3 months here. new year is a good time to start a new adventure.

i also ordered a book and will schedule an exam that i want to take. i need the book to get delivered from amazon and depending on how fat it is, it will determine the exact day of when i will book the exam for. i have to do it before the end of the year, so am most probably looking at the first half of november. that gives me enough time to do a re-sit in case i crash and burn on my first attempt. if i do pass that is definitely me done with exams for the near future.

aside from that life is mundane. i have football on thursday night which is the highlight of my week. the rest of the time i will be just studying, but its got to be done. i have also been casting an eye over some job sites recently just seeing if there is something that just jumps out for me. times are getting slightly better it would appear.

heard from some friends that they were organising a trip to liverpool at the beginning of december just for the weekend. that was a couple of weeks ago. have not heard anything since. i will wait till i hear back from them that they are all booked and ready to go, before i book my ticket and hotel. not wanting to sound like a snob, but i suspect if they do go they will book the cheapest shittiest hotel they can find. i don't roll like that, and will arrange my own hotel somewhere a bit nicer. i think there is a nice place down by the docks. its a few quid more, but i don't slum it these days.

thats all folks. today i have mostly been listening to, the big pink - dominos.

maybe my last contract extension

my contract got renewed for another 3 months which will take me upto the end of january. i still had a few more weeks left before it was due to run out, but it looks like they wanted to get things done early.

i had also asked my agent about an increase in my pay. he said it wouldn't happen on this extension but that he would try again next time its up for renewal. he was bullshitting and i am a cash cow for them and i think they are taking me for granted. they clearly don't know me very well because they should be worried that their easy money will walk away, because i will. i am not like a lot of contractors that just want to find somewhere comfortable.

anyways, regardless of what their response was to be, it doesn't change my plan. i am going to test the waters and see what the market is like out there. have seen a few interesting things out there already and will go for some of them. also it works out well bacause at the end of january i will have done a full year at my current place.

thats it for this week. have been doing that thing where i have been saying to myself 'friday 3 weeks ago i was having lunch on melrose in the sunshine instead of at my desk at work'. it would be depressing but it actually makes me feel better.

i saw one of my friends that i asked to go to cali, and who turned it down (for the 2nd year in a row). he asked me how it was. i told him it was lame. all there was out there was sunshine and beaches, nice girls at beaches, lunches in hollywood, nights out at the music box, la galaxy, san francisco, san diego, driving along the pacific coast highway..... it was all pretty lame really. he then asked me if i might be going next year. yes, i think i very well might go next year, i replied. right then, i am going to try and make it on that trip, he said. in the meantime he also tried to convince one of our other friends to make plans for it next year, but he has already turned it down and listed off a ton of excuses all of which are very lame.

he started bitching to me about this other guy making excuses, and i told him to just let it go. he is a fine one to talk, after blowing it out 2 years in a row himself. i told him i was not bothered, and if i have to go solo i will do so again. i am not relying on anyone or anything. i find in cases like this its best not to pitch your destiny in with a bunch of people that couldn't organise a bum rape in a barracks.

anyways, today i have mostly been listening to perry farrell - song yet to be sung.

have a lovely weekend.

little lion man

rain, drizzle, dampness in london town. here comes the shit weather and there is months of it to come. god help me get through it.

also had to pay out lots of money to the tax man today. :-( what a lovely day.

anyways, some wicked new music to help me get through the oncoming winter.

today i have mostly been listening to mumford and sons - little lion man. it kind of reminds me of early kings of leon before they got their big stadium anthems.

i have also been listening to some other stuff on spotify. its not launched in the US and is a european service at the moment. it is wicked.

Heart of Gold

despite it being a monday, i feel much better than i did last week. i got my sleep back into a routine over the weekend, and i also went training and out for a bike ride on sunday. i have lost quite a bit physically but i think i can get back to where i was in about 3 or 4 weeks, but its definitely a strange feeling when you can't do stuff you could do just 3 or 4 weeks ago. i used to be able to lift this and now i can't????.

i also have to do all my accounts because it was the end of the quarter and i need to get all my stuff sent to my accountants so that they can go over it and then tell me how much i have to give to this government, who i didn't vote for and who will probably spend the money i give them on bombs to kill poor people, or spend it on trident nuclear submarines, or aircraft carriers or fighter planes. basically lots of shit i don't want my money spent on.

actually the good thing about contracting is that i pay quite a bit less tax than i used to, so the government will hopefully not be able to afford to buy weapons and thats a good thing. me being tax efficient is saving lives.

weather is drizzly and grey in london. i miss LA.

today i have mostly been listening to Neil Young - Heart of Gold. this is from before i was born, but i saw it on a music documentary a while back and its just a great great song and it also has a west coast feel to it as well (even though he is canadian), which is also why i am listening to it today.

don't you just sometimes wish you could go back in time to see some shows. neil young in 1971, led zepplin in the late 70s, prince playing at first avenue in minneapolis in 1981, springsteen playing in asbury park in the mid to late 70s, janes addiction playing in LA in the late 80s. if the government was spending my taxes on developing a time travelling delorean, i would be more than happy to contribute.

stellify

its always a tough week back when you return from holiday and this has been as expected. even when my plane landed last sunday afternoon and i switched it on, i got a text from my boss telling me i was on the early shift this week. i always feel tired when i am on earlies but when you have missed a whole nights sleep at the beginning of the week, i just knew that this week would be tough. it also meant i didn't get the chance to get over my jet lag by having 1 night of sleep where you can just reset everything and wake up naturally as opposed to by an alarm and some un-godly hour.

anyways the next day i had to be up at 6.30am and have been struggling ever since. i will be fine tonight as it is a saturday tomorrow and i can lie in and recover. i also have got a chesty cough and a sore throat. i think my body got used to the warm southern californian climate and although it hasn't been particularly cold, it is cold compared to LA.

i went to the gym on wednesday evening for the first time in almost 3 weeks. i have completely lost any conditioning, so i was careful not to go too hard and injure myself. if you pull a muscle that could mean weeks of no training. anyways, i took it easy and although i felt weak and tired i got through the session unscathed, but then last night i went to football and i fell over and landed and on my shoulder and have injured it and it absolutely kills. so much for me being worried about hurting myself at the gym. anyways i doubt i will be able to train hard for at least a week...i hope. actually with this cold i have picked up i wouldn't have been able to give it 100% anyways.

to top it all off, i got caught it in traffic after football at 11pm last night and got home just before midnight. by the time i had gotten showered and into bed it was 12.30am. imagine my joy when when my alarm went off 6 hours later.

and thats it so far. have dreamt about california the last 3 nights in a row. london looks even more greyer and dirty and crowded than it usually does.

today i have mostly been listening to ian brown - stellify. he was the lead singer of seminal manchester band the stone roses. if you don't who they are, all i can say is that in england, and in terms of influence they were like niravana ..... multiplied by 100 in terms of how inflential they were. anyways, carrying on with the nirvana comparison, the band split up and whilst you wonder what the quality of the material will be from members of the band when they go solo or form other bands, ian browns solo stuff is really very good. i thought it was a bit hit and miss earlier on but he just seems to be getting better and better with each release and is adding to his legacy and reputation...........which unfortunately can not be said for dave grohl. he seems like a really nice guy but my god!, some of the foo fighters stuff is just so boring and dull. i heard his new single on the radio yesterday and it was more generic radio rock. come on dave, is this the best you can do?.

anyways this is how its done. enjoy.