NYLASF

flew back into a grey and dark london on monday afternoon after 9 days of sunshine, beaches, sports, music and good food in new york and california. am back to work and you can't imagine how shit it feels. found out that i have to work this weekend as well, but its no bother. its all money and its looking increasingly likely that we are coming to the end of our contracts and as the projects get delivered i don't think quite a few of us will be here in the new year. it comforting knowing that the end is near.

anyways, my holiday was very good but it always is. i flew to new york straight after work on friday evening and had 3 days in the city and it was lovely sunny weather. i headed out to williamsburg on the saturday with a friend of mine, and i went to coney island on sunday.



on moday night i went to see klaxons play at the bowery ballroom which is a lovely little venue to see band and the klaxons had the place rocking.



i also saw the actor joaquin phoenix in the bar before the show started which was quite cool.

on tuesday i flew out to LA and went to see Kele/does it offend you yeah/innerpartysystem play at the music box in hollywood, which is another really good small venue. anyways i landed in LA at around 5pm, picked up my car, a mustang convertible and then drive to my hotel in hollywood.
unfortunately it was right in the midst of the LA rush hour, which is when the usually heavy traffic is even heavier. the guy at the front desk of the hotel told me that because of renovations they would offer to put me up in another hotel for free and refund me my money, if i went for it. i think they had a limited number of rooms and were making the offer to some guests. i told him i would do it if i could leave my car parked in his parking lot while i went to the show and would then come back and would be happy to go to another hotel. he agreed he was fine with that, so i ended up getting free parking in hollywood and a free night in another hotel.

i went to get a couple of slices of pizza so missed most of innerpartysystem play, but what i did see of them was very good. does it offend you yeah, then played and whilst the place was jumping, they were a bit of a one trick pony and all their songs sounded the same. kele then came on and he was good, although despite the music box being a small venue it was not full as i had seen it before when saw the gaslight anthem there last year.




it was a good night out though. the next day, wednesday, i drove to san francisco and stayed with a friend of mine and went into the city. all things taken into account i think san francisco must be the nicest city in america to live in.

on the friday i drove back to LA as i was going to see LA Galaxy v NY RedBulls play.



NY won 2-0 and it was a decent game. it ain't champions league standard but it is what it is. the next day i went to Oxnard which is about 60 miles north of LA and visited the Mullin automotive museum which has some of the most beautiful cars ever made.







its a great place to visit. its also about a 15 minute drive to the beach and so i spent the rest of the afternoon reading my Naom Chomsky book whilst laying out in the sun. i then drove back to LA and went for a stroll in west hollywood doing some sightseeing. there isn't any old historical landmarks of the conventional kind but for us music fans there are some legendary venues where bands like gun's 'n' roses and janes addiction started out in and i just wanted to go see them, so i went to the troubadour, whisky, the roxy and the viper room (which is only famous because river phoenix OD'd on the pavement outside).





the next day sunday, was my last day as i had to catch my plane back home in the evening. i went on got some lunch at an argentinian restaurant on melrose called la la's, which was very good indeed. if you find yourself in the LA, and are wondering where is a good place to eat, then you can't go wrong at la la's. i then did a bit of shopping drove around a bit and went up to mullholland drive which has some great views of LA and then went to the airport.


at the airport i saw the songwriter from depeche mode, martin gore and he was on my plane back to london. i really like depeche mode and martin is a legend. i was keeping it rock'n'roll right to the end of my holiday.
that was it. i managed to cram in lots of things in a very short space of time. i wish i had a couple more days out there, but i guess no one wants to come back from holiday to work.

spanish sahara

work has been really busy this week so far. they have put in some very tight deadlines for some projects, and its getting a little ridiculous. a few weeks back i was annoyed that i would have to delay my holiday from my usualy slot at the beginning of september but actually it appears that fate has been kind to me, as it looks like i am going to be away on a nightmare week at work.

there is a piece of work to build a few ESX servers for a new virtual server cluster that is going to have a lot of servers migrated to it next saturday. this migration can't be delayed. only problem is that we won't get the servers to build till monday and there are invariably patching or network or storage issues. basically 5 days to build a big ESX cluster and make sure its configured correctly and stable is cutting it a bit fine. thank goodness i won't be here to do it. it could all go right, but there are lots of ways it could go wrong.

i got a stroppy email from my boss about why i put in a request for zoning and masking some LUNs to another bunch of ESX servers i built, after the monday night deadline the storage team want. my request went in on tuesday morning. i just replied i forgot as i was juggling a lot of shit around and said it was my fault. i actually wanted to reply, christ its just zoning and masking some pre-existing LUNs to a few more servers, why the fuck must they have 5 days notice to do something that takes 5 minutes. i only get 5 days to build a load of ESX clusters and that takes a lot longer to do.

anyways, the clusters i would have had to build have been handed to one of the other guys here. i already told him that i thought it was a tight deadline, but it could be done if he had no issues. if he gets any major issues though, he could be in trouble. he is not looking forward to next week. i am because i will be on holiday. :-)

..now all that is left is for me to duck out of work on a couple of weekends after i get back because they are planning to move a whole bunch of NT4 domain controllers to another datancenter and new networks, and i want no part of that shit.

anyways, i have broken the back if what i had to do this week. hopefully there will be no surprises over the next couple of days. this weekend i will have forgotten about work as i stroll around on a sunny new york afternoon.

this will be my last post for a few days. not sure if i will post much while i am away but i will take a lot of pics to post when i get back. it will be a long day on friday. a full day of work and then i have to go to the airport, 7 hour flight, and then hopefully catch my train to new jersey where i will be staying with my uncle. if i can get here before 1am local time then i will be happy.....and tired.

today i have mostly been listening to foals - spanish sahara.

near misses

i worked on saturday. i mentioned in a previous post that i was very tired and running on empty. well, on saturday it nearly affected my work because at one stage i thought i shutdown a server that processes a lot of the trades from across europe and the far east. my heart was beating at a 1000 a minute when i had thought i had made the mistake and was thinking it was likely that i had. thankfully when i checked it i hadn't shut down that server, but i couldn't remember as i have been running on autopilot.

fatigue is really starting to affect my work. about 2 hours later that same morning i nearly shut down another trading server that i was not supposed to, but i spotted my mistake just before i was about to take it down. it just needs a split second of a lack of concentration to go from shutting down server3424 and instead shutting down server3242, especially when you have 45 servers to go through. saturday ended up turning into another long day. i got into work at 7am and left at midnight. its a good think i don't have a life otherwise it would have been really inconvenient.

this week will be busy because i have to build some esx clusters before i go away on friday. no bother. i can take anything this week.

anyways i dodged 2 bullets, as on both occasions i would have been fired immediately. still, no more 7 am saturday starts for me for the next couple of weekends as i fly away on friday evening. hopefully i will return refreshed.

actually when i return it looks like a few more weeks of work and then it will be quiet as the project i am working on will be completed. i think they won't bother renewing my contract as there won't be anything else for me to do, unless another project comes up in the new year, but i am looking to get out of here anyways. i get the feeling they won't need quite a few of us and a lot of the other people are starting to get worried about not being renewed. me, i am chilling. i really could do with a few weeks off between contracts. i need a break. it feels like i have been at work constantly for the past 2 years, mainly because except for 2 weeks off i have been at work constantly for the last couple of years.

today i have mostly been listening to the cure - a forest. this is epic.

linkedin

went out last night in shoreditch and it was good to see all the people i used to work with back in the day. had the usual run for the last train home.

today i feel very very tired. its like a tsunami of fatigue has hit me and i have had a constant headache and tightness in my neck and shoulders all week. i am worn out. just as well that i have to be up at 5.15am on saturday morning because i have to go to work tomorrow.

its my last weekend in london and the next 2 will be in new york and LA. i finally booked my last 2 nights in LA as well. i am staying near the Home Depot center on the friday and then i am staying at a place in west hollywood, a few blocks from the viper room and whisky a go go in one direction, and the troubadour in the other direction. LA might not have quite the historical heritage of london but its in these venues where motley crue, guns'n'roses, and janes addiction cut their teeth, and thats way more relevant to me than some painting of an old king or queen in an art gallery.

heard some news about idiot techboss that i used to have to work with about 3 years ago. he is on linked-in , the proffesional networking site, and he messaged one of my friends letting them know he would be free in a couple of weeks and if they had any work going. my friend said they didn't have any vacancies at the moment, and because he made my days at work so uncomfortable and frustrating, added that he should get a job in banking because since i left i was working in the city and was making a small fortune from it. she forwarded the mails as she rubbed his nose in it a bit. it amused me. i know of a few good, talented guys that ended up leaving their jobs because of him, and he was an asshole.



one thing about linked-in. to me it just seems to be a way of chancers and people with limited skills to get any work. the only people i know that really talk up the benefits of it are the ones that are not that good at what they do. who gives a job to someone just on the basis of who they know or some random person giving them a recommendation. i doubt i would get a contract in a bank on that basis. they don't give a shit who i know, its what i know that people are interested in. anyways i am not linked-in. have done ok getting contracts on what i know and who i am, and not by who i know.

thats about it. i am too tired to write any more. today i have mostly been listening to gary newman and nine inch nails - metal. i am in that crowd somewhere.

long night

it turned into a long night at work on saturday. we started at around 5pm and i was hoping to be out by 3am but i finally finished just after 6am and it was 7am by the time i got home. the only tiny consellation was that it was nice to be going home in daylight. no bother, as its more spending money for me in new york and cali in a couple of weeks. i have to work this saturday as well and i already have a feeling its going to be a long one, but thats just how it goes and you never know, i might get a pleasant surprise and we get everything done in less than 12 hours.

anyways i went straight to sleep when i got in on at 7am on sunday but made sure i was up again at 11.30 and then cycled to the gym. i didn't want to spend the whole day in bed and waste it all away. felt fine and slept like a baby last night.

aside from that nothing else happening. work is work. am meeting up with a bunch of friends and going for a drink with them in shoreditch on thursday evening. i have only 1 more weekend in london before my holiday, which is just as well, as the weather is forecast to be shit all week, and the cherry on the cake is that the tube workers are on strike again, so i will have a fun journey into work. god only kows why they are on strike again. they had their union leader on the news and he couldn't give a reason. is it about pay?, no. is it about people being sacked?, no.

maybe they fancy a few days off work. i have a friend who works on the trains, who used to live on the same street as me and we used to play football together. i see him at my station sometimes when they are shortstaffed due to people taking sick days. i have seen him quite a lot recently, and he always says he is covering because of sickness absence. pardon the pun but the impression i get is that sick leave is at epidemic proportions with tube staff.

anyways fingers crossed that i can get to work at a reasonable time tomorrow and i can get on a bus to somewhere close.

today i have mostly been jimmy eat world - my best theory. good tune. no video just yet coz its new fresh.

prince

this week has been ok, but i have to work tomorrow evening as we are moving a whole bunch of servers for one the trading teams, to a new datacenter and its going to take till the early hours of sunday. the plan is for everyone to finish by about 2am, but there are always some issues and if i get out there before 3am i will be very happy.

also seeing as its one of the main trading divisions of the bank you would have thought they would be really professional and strict about stuff, but they don't seem to be. they sound like a bunch of cowboys. one of their main guys is a bit of a laughing stock and he was in another department but applied to join our team and was interviewed for it internally but he was not transferred and they turned him down. bizarrely he joined one of the trading teams and everyone was stunned to hear that he has just recntly had his contract extended for another year. it turns out he is good friends with the manager who runs the trading team. another case of the old boys network coming to the fore. there is far too much of it going on at this bank. am sure its like this everywhere and maybe i just wasn't aware of it, but it does feel like too much of it goes on at this place. whenever this guys name is mentioned with regards to issues people roll their eyes and i can sense nobody rates him. lets hope he doesn't become famous outside the bank as he seems to be amongst people in the bank.

another of the guys in the unix team has left. thats the 3rd guy in 3 weeks. i think they were working on some projects for the past year that are coming to an end. its similar to the windows team and i really can't see why they would want to keep a few of us and extend our contracts after we complete the project i am working on, which should be done in a couple of months. i had already planned to leave but i get the feeling that some of the other guys are getting worried about renewals. worried that they might not get renewed unlike me who is worrying that i might get renewed. we shall see how it goes.

today i have mostly been listening to genius that is prince. he is very protective of his music and this video might not last for more than a few days as he doesn't like his videos being on youtube and with out his authorisation. enjoy it while you can.