contractor rule # 3

managed to motivate my sorry ass to actually study this weekend. weather was dry but quite chilly and windy and so staying in and hitting the books was not such a bad option. anyways, things are looking on schedule for friday lunchtime which is when i have it booked for. will study in the evenings when i get home but it shall hopefully be only this week of inconvenience and then i genuinely will have done nearly all the exams i wanted to get done. there is nothing else out there that i really badly want to study for. will carry on reading and studying but i won't actually HAVE to take any more exams not that i HAD to take any exams before, but i just wanted to.  

....and thats it. absolutely nothing else happening at all. life is unbelieveably dull, and especially when you stay in and hit the books. i left the house only to cycle to the gym and work out on saturday and sunday. i did nothing else. 

lets be honest, this blog is pretty mundane at the best of times and hardly the heroin diaries, but these days its just got to a whole new level of boring. oh well....

.....i guess i could write about work but there isn't anything really to say. its ok. they haven't given me any projects or anything big to be doing so things are just ticking along. last week i heard one of the directors ask how a particular thing could be done, and my boss suggested vmware and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. i nearly suggested that it could be overkill, and they could go do a citrix or terminal server type solution....but i kept my mouth shut. vmware is my bosses pet technology and he loves it, and i agree it is a wicked product, but there are other ways of giving remote users access to applications and desktops, but i doubt he would appreciate my 2 cents if i suggested something else. 

contractor rule # 3 - don't suggest alternatives to your bosses chosen techology speciality. he is not going to choose something he knows little about, even if it may be better. this also follows on from contractor rule # 2 , don't offer an opinion unless asked. 

see now, i would be breaking 2 rules if i spoke up and suggested terminal server. amateur mistakes really. schoolboy errors. jog on sunshine. 

today i have mostly been listening to juliette and the licks - coming around. no actual video but just a youtube link to the song but its a wicked tune. was sceptical when i heard an actress was in a band but she is actually a really good singer. 

you take care now. yes you V!. :-)

6.20am

just like i predicted yesterday, this morning i woke up at 6.20am, 10 minutes before my alarm went off. you know whats going to happen though. come saturday, i will wake up at 6.20 because my body will have gotten used to it. felt a little cheated of 10 minutes extra sleep i could have had this morning.

booked an exam. i know from experience that if you don't book it then you don't have a date to aim for and then you don't end up studying hard for it. anyways the booking is in a couple of weeks and i am going to try and do a concentrated effort and take the exam and force myself not re-schedule.

i won't tell anyone at work i am doing an exam. have found from previous experience that for some strange reason people don't like it when you tell them you are studying and planning to do some exams.

its not just bosses that don't like it, because they wonder you are just trying to make your resume look good and must be planning to leave. co-workers as well don't like it because they think you are trying to make them look bad or being a smart arse. no one likes a smart arse and that includes me. i am not trying to be a smart arse. i just want to do my exams, learn some shit, make my resume look good and maybe an interesting opportunity might come from it. thats all. we do what we got to do.

anyways will just tell the people at work that i will need to take a longer lunch the friday of the exam and am meeting friends, when in reality i will be sitting in front of a computer for an hour in a testing centre in the city trying to get certified in hyper-v. sad but true and a rather strange turn of events, when i think back to when i was in school and i used to say i was studying or going to the library and would just end up playing computer games or football with my friends, to now, when i am saying i am going out with my friends but actually am going to be studying. 

bat for lashes

best song of the year so far along with starsailor - tell me its not over.

daniel, by bat for lashes.

have put the music video at the top of my post today as its just too good.

anyways, i am on earlies this week. getting up at 6.30am was tough on monday but you get used to it and tomorrow i will probably be up before my alarm goes off. good thing about earlies is that i miss the main parts of the rush hour in the mornings and evenings. calm journey into work though there are still a lot of people about. from the look of it, a lot of them seem like investment bank types scurrying to their jobs hoping they won't get found out for being frauds and trying to squeeze one more year of fat pay cheques in. i don't have the heart to tell them the partys over dude.

they stand there feverishly tapping away on their blackberrys. some days there are so many people with them on the train, i think i am the only person in london with out a blackberry. everyday when i am putting on my jeans and trainers i give thanks i don't work in an investment bank any more and that i left on my own terms out of choice.

work has been ok but this week we are back to our normal quota of staff and so there are 3 of us in everyday. i preferred it when there was only 2 of us, as it meant i was a bit busier. its fine though. i can handle it and its only 2 contract renewals to get me through most of this year.

bought a second external hard drive and it arrived yesterday. figured i had quite a collection of films and music and that i really ought to have a backup. have barely bought hardly any cds for a few years now, not since bands and record companies made it free to download it all off the internet. who said they are just corporations interested in profit. not true at all, since the record and film companies launched the bit torrent free downloading service. :-).

it was inevitable that the net would change things and its so nice to see music embrace the changes....or not as the case may be. bono and u2 really are rock dinosaurs and are just cash monkeys these days. they used to be a great band. unforgettble fire is one of the greatest albums ever....ever!. its up there with disintegration by the cure and that really is saying something.

anyways i paid for a digital download of the bat for lashes song from play.com . the money was not going to a tax evader with homes in ireland, new york and france and who runs a private equity firm, so its ok.

boring

i think i am running out of things to say. everything is benign and calm (ie. boring). weather has regressed back into the cool and cloudy conditions of the last few months although the weather was wicked on saturday, normal service has resumed for monday. hopefully things will get better in time for the weekend again.

trained as hard as i ever have this weekend, so much so, that on saturday when i got home i felt a little lightheaded and groggy like i had been in a boxing match and had been hit around the head a few times. i was exhausted from training and cycling.

i still haven't started studying for another exam. it was genuinely my intention to do so, but i seem to be struggling for motivation. will just have to knuckle down and do it, but its hard to study in your spare time.

i got a load of films from my friend and that is proving to be a distraction. i watched step brothers with will ferrell and its very funny and i watched the wrestler which has mickey rourke and evan rachel wood in it, and that was an excellent film as well, though a bit of a downer. its also filmed in new jersey around elizabeth and rahway, and rahway is where my uncle lives and where i stay when i am out in the states. it all looked pretty grim in the film. its not quite that bad in real life...though i will admit, some parts of new jersey are pretty bad. some parts of london are a shithole, so thats not me saying anything bad against NJ.

still not booked my ticket to cali yet. waiting to hear back from my friend who might want to go. there are some special offers at the moment and i can get a good deal if i book soon. hopefully he finds out his dates soon and makes a decision quick. i just like to know the exact date of when i will escaping this city.

was included in an email from my 'friend' who i went on my road trip with, last summer and who i haven't spoken to since i got back. he was aksing if anyone had 6 spare tickets for michael jackson at the o2, later this year. what a pointless email. 1 million tickets sold out in 3 hours and he is asking if anyone has 6 spare. the only people that will have 6 spare tickets are touts (scalpers) and they will be charging hundreds of pounds for them. he seems to think one of his friends is going to give him 6 spare tickets which he is offering to buy at face value. don't be silly dude.

you just want to give everyone the impression you want to go to that concert but you couldn't be bothered to arrange anything and then they all went. i should have told him i had a spare ticket to see nine inch nails in knoxville, tenessee or that he could have seen radiohead in hollywood but both times he passed on them. its all for show.

anyways the weeks are flying by. the clocks go forward this weekend and long summer evenings will be upon shortly. can't wait.

take care cali girl.

today i have mostly been listening to Lil Wayne - got money. don't ask.

out of blue comes green

the weather was so nice yesterday that it was borderline whether i could ditch my fleece and just ride my bike in my long sleeve t-shirt. i already ditched my woolly hat and gloves a couple of weeks ago. this dirty grey old town looks so much better in the sunshine. had one of those dull headaches yesterday evening from training and cycling. did a couple of hard sessions on both days and i think it caught up with me yesterday evening. feel much better today.

as the weather gets warmer more and more cyclists are coming out around regent park and the last couple of weekends i have seen some really nice bikes. one guy shot past me on a fantastic looking machine. it was a triathlon bike made by a company called felt. i looked it up and its costs over £5,000. thats a silly amount of money to pay for a bike and would ridiculous if i were riding it, but the guy that had it was in his full lycra gear, was as thin as a stick and looked the part. he was no sunday morning gym rider. he came past me like a missile and sped off into the distance. he was like the terminator.....but on a bicycle. 

i, in comparison, was wearing my big fleece, backwards baseball cap, going half the speed he was, yet was sweating like a rapist in a rubber suit. i didn't look like the terminator. 

my friend who is in the army called me on friday and said he heard i might be going to the states in the summer and he said he might be interested in coming along. i told him he should come and he is going to get back to me with some dates of when he might be able to make it. he has to take his holidays at particular times when he doesn't have a bunch of new recruits, as he is an instructor. i think if we can work it out that he can come on the trip, one of the the other guys from football will probably come as well. we shall see how it goes. either way, all i know is i am going someway somehow. 

i think i may have been mistakenly overpaid in my last pay cheque at my last contract, a few weeks ago. it looked a little but more than i had roughly estimated in my head but its been a few weeks now and they haven't said anything and i sure as hell ain't going to say anything, and besides, maybe i am wrong and i estimated it incorrectly. i will keep the money back in reserve in case they do come back to me and tell me to send them a cheque. its not a lot of money but its enough to pay for a return to ticket to LA and some spending money. anyways, its a pleasant change from being paid late and chasing up people to sign my timesheets and sending invoices and all the crap that goes with contracting. 

anyways thats all for now. nothing else to report. life is dull but i can't complain. no one is listening anyhow. :-). work is going ok. figured i am 2 contract renewals till the end of the year. that sounds really bad, thinking of the end of the year when we are still in march and also a little bad to be comtemplating leaving, but hey, thats just the way it is. i could say i love it and i will stay here but i think we all know that i probably will leave at some point and the most opportune moment would be the new year. they did make a point repeatedly during my interviews that they were looking for someone to come in and stay for a while and not leave after a few months or a year. hey, maybe i won't end up leaving....but i probably will.

today i have mostly been listening to a-ha - out of blue comes green. a pop, 80s, synth band that upbeat happy songs, but they did make some dark songs as well and this is one. its awesome. 

as i touched the horizon.....it just felt like i'd die soon. 

see, i told you it was dark. 

have a lovely week V. 

friday again?

sweet jesus of nazareth, the weeks are just flying by. is it friday already?!.....man, this is a new phenomenen for me. if it carries on at this pace its going to be summer and then before i know it, i will be back in southern california sitting on the beach, catching some rays and listening to my music. god, i hope so. 

had my first project meeting today and it was good to meet some other people that i don't work with usually. when i was at the bank i just built servers for trading applications or database servers, i now have to build a server to stream video to playstation 3 consoles for internal testing. thats much more my kind of thing. 

weather is nice and sunny though a little cold. am meeting one of the guys i used to work with at the bank tonight. it will make me feel better hearing all the shenanigans going on at that place. its so nice to have escaped especially in this dire economic climate that we are in. everyday there is more bad news and just when you think its hit bottom, things get worse. the dangerous combinaton of electing a dumbass as a president who was in the pocket of powerful bankers, oil executives and defense companies, who it turns out were all either inept or corrupt. well done george. 

oh and if you are wondering how on earth we got into this economic mess, i can say that after having worked in 3 major investment banks, just because they wear suits and expensive watches, and earn tonnes of money and have been to the best universities, doesn't mean the people who work in banks are smart. some of the stupidest people i know work in investment banks. 

anyways, despite all that, i have had a couple of calls from agents asking if i am looking around and interested in a move. turned them down saying i was not going to be moving for a little while, but will keep their details because you never know what might happen in the future. 

quiet weekend planned. its ok, because the money i save i will spend in cali....hopefully. 

have a lovely weekend V, 

today i have mostly been listening to nine inch nails - the big comedown. its stunning

oblivion

am flying the ship solo today as various people are away. i always end up flying the ship solo early on in my contracts. i never have a course or seminar booked and i never have any days off and always turn up to work everyday. that seems to be quite rare i have found. have had to do a long early to late shift today as i have to cover everything. 

anyways as per usual when i am on my own, it has coincided with one of the SANs going a bit mad. i don't know too much about EMC clariions but boy can you learn fast when you have to. it looks like one of the storage processor units has failed or maybe just needs to be reseated. some engineers from EMC have to come out and fix it and its not been too stressful for me. i never get too stressed out anymore. i think i used up all my stress at the internet company i worked for a while back. everything else since then has seemed quite tame in comparison. 

weather has gotten colder today and will be lame for the rest of the week according to the forecast. i need california so bad right now, but its just ages before i go. aarrghhh!!.

today i have mostly been listening to wintersleep - oblivion. i hate that thing where people describe bands by saying its new wave, meets industrial but with a bit of rock mixed with nu-metal but a bit funky. what the fuck is that supposed to mean? ..... but if i was going to describe them i would say it sounds like interpol meets the arcade fire, or in other words, .....they are good.