wolves

its been a nice week not working but i must admit i do get bored at christmas with the bank holidays and everything shutting down (my gym) and just stuffing my face with food. am sure if i was busy at work i would cherish the 4 day weekend, but i was off anyway, so it doesnt make a difference to me. it was the usual routine of revising and studying for my vcp exam. am really getting tired of it now but there only a few more days to go and then on thursday i am going to cali baby!. its so close and i so badly need a break. 


the gym was open these last 3 days and i have gone everyday. i noticed i wasnt studying as hard on days i didnt go to the gym. my concentration was low and nothing was soaking into my brain. am not very clever as it is, so any reduction in mental capacity is a concern. lifting weights clearly triggers something in my brain because i can study harder afterwards. 


thats all folks. have a belated merry xmas and a very happy 2012. 


today i have mostly been listening to ben howard - the wolves. i could have posted the official vidoe but this is much better. 

niki and the dove

have been enjoying not going to work this week. lays ins, in the morning are sooo good. its been a week of interviews (no news), gym and study for my exam. at one stage it looked like i might have to reschedule my exam as i didnt feel like i would be able to cover all the material i would need to, but things are looking better after a few long days of study. 


got a letter from the tax office this morning. they said i had paid too much tax and that they were refunding me £720. it coincides with paying a bill of £320 for my hotels on holiday, and i also had to buy a washing machine for my flat as my one died. that cost £300. perfect timing. The tax office have just paid off the remainder of my holiday and bought me a washing machine. merry christmas. 


today i have mostly been listening to niki and the dove - the drummer. wicked tune. 

midnight city

had a telephone interview with a large outsourcing company that is working with a government client doing a project and i had an interview with a large brokerage that is going through bankruptcy but needs to be wound down in an orderly fashion by the administrators. i got calls back from both of them and both of them offered me jobs, and upon reflection i turned both of them down. 


this afternoon i got email directly by a recruiter for a role at a hedge fund which looks like exactly what i want to do. i didnt apply for the job but she must have been searching people who have worked at hedge funds in linkedin, and my profile came up. they are paying good money and it looks like a long term contract. also i have a second interview at the asset management company i went to see last week and that was also good money and a long contract. 


the job with the outsourcer was ok, but they wanted an answer today and i told them that i had these other 2 things going on, and if they could wait a week or two i might be able to do it if i got turned down, but seeing as they needed to know today and i told them no. the brokerage role looked like a nightmare. an office of 800 people has been reduced to 300 in the space of 2 months. there are offices in chicago and new york and japan and the infrastructure is spread across the globe. i would have been the senior guy in london and was told that i would be getting a few days hand over from the current senior guy, before he jumps ship and starts a new job, and that after that i would be on my own. i would be responsible for AD, messaging, DR, archiving, security, support, and pretty much anything else. 


it sounded like a nightmare. relevant parts of the infrastructure would then need to be brought back to london before they were switched off in other parts of the world. a few weeks ago the connectivity to new york was switched off with out notice. the primary DNS servers for some zones used by applications in london was in new york, and so lots of stuff stopped working. i dont need that kind of hassle. i dont want to sit in an office trying to reverse engineer the network and applications trying to find out why shit was not working. i would not have any prior knowledge of what it looked like orginally. i told them i would pass but if at the end of january they were still in trouble, and i was available, i would be happy to try and help out. part of me wanted to do it because it would have been a challenge, but the sensible part of me knows how big a hassle it could be and i dont really want that kind of hassle. 


hopefully the hedge fund comes back to me. thats my no#1 choice and would be the perfect job. if not i would take the asset management place i am seeing tomorrow. if i get neither i may feel a little silly for turning down these 2 jobs, but hey, thats life. 


today i have mostly been listening to m83 - midnight city. they are playing in so cal when i am there but its sold out. am not a big fan but this is a good tune. 

dream on

finished up at the hedge fund on wednesday and went for a drink with the people on my project in the evening. had a relaxing week at work and did hardly any work, although unlike the chancers, who are also leaving at the end of the month, i didnt go missing for for hours at a time and sit back and yap all day. its just not the done thing. just because you are leaving, others are not and also you dont have to take the piss. 


i did apply for a couple of jobs that caught my eye, even though i was not really planning on doing so, till i get back from california in mid janaury. anyways, one of the places, an asset management firm called me in for an interview yesterday and today i got a call saying the wanted to see me again next week. i also have an interview on monday at another place. will see how it goes, but i dont feel any pressure just yet. am concentrating on sleeping and revising for my exam and then my holiday. 


today i have mostly been listening to depeche mode - dream on

almost done

As i suspected i got told today that my contract was not going to be renewed. they didnt renew the guy in the SAN team who had been there a couple of years after saying they would and so its not a surprise they didnt renew me either, even after saying they would a couple of weeks ago. no bother. i was counting on 2 weeks off to study for my exam at the beginning of january and then i have my trip to cali. 


i bought a ticket to for the lakers game at the staples center on jan 6th. its the same day the other 2 guys from football fly in from australia and their plane gets in at 7AM. what with the massive jetlag and everything, i figured they would be too tired to go to the game that will finish around 10pm that night and so only bought 1 ticket. i sent them the link in case they wanted to go to it as well, but 10pm will feel like 7am in the morning for those guys. 


i also heard from another friend of mine who moved to sydney about a year ago and he mentioned on facebook he was going to san francisco. i mailed him and he will be there same time as i go, so i will meet up with him one evening. its going to be a busy few days of all the good things in life. meeting friends and travelling and watching sports and getting some culture and enjoying life. i cant wait. 


when i get back i will apply with haste for new contracts. i have an interview on thursday, and i got a call about another contract today as well. as usual at this time of year, its going to be me moving onto something new. 


today i have mostly been listening to eminem - wont back down. 

college 84

around 3 weeks ago, when i got told verbally that i was going to be given a new contract, one of the guys in the storage team got told the same. everyone thought he was really good at what he did and that he knew his shit. a couple of days ago i bumped into him on the train and we got talking and i congratulated him on getting his new contract. he replied that he had only had 3 weeks left on his current contract and that he still hadnt got a contract to sign and that he was becoming less and less confident as time went by that he was going to be renewed.
..........yesterday morning he got told he was not being renewed after all. in the last 3 weeks he turned down a couple of potential roles on the word that he had been given about being renewed. basically, they fucked him. 


my contract expires on wednesday. i have not heard anything since they verbally told me i was to be renewed. if they were planning on renewing they should have done it by now. am pretty certain there wont be a renewal now, despite what they told me, especially after what they did to the guy in storage who had spent a couple of years working for them. some other guy in another dept also got let go, this morning, and he had been there nearly 3 years. 


no bother. am studying for my vcp5 and i had booked the exam in just over 3 weeks, under the assumption that i would be free from work for 2 weeks and would have time to revise. am also going to cali the day after my exam, and i also have an interview this thursday. no news from that hedge fund i saw a couple of weeks back but i have seen the job still being advertised. fellas, you aint going to find someone who is an expert on Hyper-V and compellent SANs and also does SQL and windows 2008 and Linux. you can advertise it all you like. it just aint going to happen. you are making yourselves look silly now. 


today i have mostly been listening to timo maas feat brian molko - college 84. wicked song. 

gym and study

you know what happened already. i had a run in with chancer pm. i worked friday night and saturday as well. had one day off today and went to the gym and did my laundry. still not heard about being officially extended at my current place, or any news from the other hedge fund either. same old. 


actually at the gym today i was getting changed and noticed that my t-shirt felt baggy. i have shrunk right down after only going once a week for the last 3 weeks. use it or lose it, as the saying goes. this week normal routine should start from now till i go away in january. am going to force myself to go after work at least one day in the week. next weekend might, or might not be, my last weekend at work as well. can get some condition back before i go on holiday. 


have also booked my VMWare VCP 5 exam as well for the day before i go on holiday. its almost exactly 1 month away and i will study every day. laziness has affected my study and its because i havent been to the gym. when i am working out phyisically its good for my mind and i am more focused and can concentrate. that might be rubbish, but i feel better when i have worked out in a week. 


met up with one the guys i am supposed to be meeting up with in LA. his plane lands at 6:40am at LAX. arrghhh!!!. told him it would take him a while to get through immigration and stuff like that, and that he should text me as soon as he touches down. in the 45-60 minutes it will take him to get through the airport i can grab some breakfast and drive down and pick him up. am sure it will be all fine. 


thats all folks. i should get some news this week about my contract. if i get renewed and i pass my VCP exam i might treat myself to one of these. everyone, and i mean everyone at work has an ipad. not me. i dont do apple. quad core ice cream sandwich for me please. 


today i have mostly been listening to trent reznor and karen O (nine inch nails and the yeah yeah yeahs), - immigrant song. have been listening to it on minidisc. i dont do what everyone else is doing. 

14:53

i worked saturday as usual and it turned into a longer day than we thought it was going to be, but we got through it. feel absolutely shattered and sooo tired. god, i miss having 2 day weekends. i keep reminding myself to keep thinking of the money and california is just over a month away. 


no news on getting a new contract at my current place. people have said they are going to give me a new contract but nothing has been put down on paper for me to sign. also no news from the other hedge fund i interviewed at last week. am thinking they probably dont want me. they asked the agency for more cv's to see who else is available and if they can get a better fit. no bother, if there is someone available with more knowledge and talent then by all means, they should take him or her on. i would like to think there are not millions out there that are better. also i suspect they are making the classic mistake of wanting a specific set of requirements which i think they will struggle to find. windows server 2008 is common, exchange 2003/2010 is also prevelant as is SQL 2005/2008 and HP Hardware is ubiquitous. 


where the skills set get a little less common is they wanted someone who has used Hyper-V. everyone uses VMWare. i have never worked anywhere that runs Hyper-V. i have studied it and done the exam, but not used it any of the places i have worked at. they also wanted SAN experience and i said i had used and been in places with EMC Clariion, NetApp, 3PAR and HP EVA. unfortunately they use none of those. they use Equalogic and Compellent. now from an operating system perspective, the exact SAN a server is connected to is not that important in most cases. its all much of a muchness. they seemed like they were looking for those 2 particular manufacturers. same as with Hyper-V, i have never been anywhere that runs Compellent or Equalogic SANs. talk about going against the grain of what everyone else is doing. they are using a virtualisation and SAN platform that NO ONE is running. still, i would still work there if offered as it will be interesting to fill in the gaps of my knowledge. there are lots of gaps. 


was still feeling ill yesterday at work which made work even more harder. slept for 10 hours last night which is not a normal occurence. if i can get 7 hours of good sleep i am thankful. anyways, today i was still a bit sniffly but i thought i had to go to the gym to wake myself up a bit. i was also going to ride slow as i was not feeling well and i knew i would have no chance of breaking my record while ill. after a couple of minutes and catching some traffic lights perfectly i felt pretty good and so increased the pace to see how far i could go. turns out i could go pretty fast because i rather inexplicably ended up smashing my record. 14m 53s which broke my previous best by 23 seconds. at one stage i thought something might be wrong with the gears on my bike because my bikes gear setting was indicating a gear higher than the one i usually ride in, on some sections. i figured it was on the lower gear but my chain had slipped down or something. clearly it was not. 

above is a pic from my ride back home. it was a beautiful crisp winter day. december is almost here and we have yet to have a prolonged period of shit, wet horrible weather. not complaining, just saying. 


back to work tomorrow, and for how much longer?, i dont know. 


today i have mostly been listening to the maccabess - pelican. so new, it has not got a video. it doesnt need one though. wicked tune. 

the same deep water as you

thats another reason why i hate winter. i have a fucking cold. headache, blocked nose, sore throat and feeling shit. i havent been to the gym because i am too tired when i get home from work but i will make a point of going on sunday and get a long session in the steam room. it clears your head. football got cancelled tonight as well, as we couldnt enough people together. not dissapointed. i really shouldnt be out there in the cold. 


tomorrow its my usual friday of starting at 2pm and finishing late though hopefully we should be done by 10. then its back in on saturday morning. these 6 day weeks over the last couple of months are really taking out of me. only 3 more weeks to go and only 2 more weekends to go. need to keep thinking of the money. keep reminding myself that i will be in socal in a few weeks. 


one of the senior pms took me to one side yesterday and told me that i was going to get a 4 month contract extension taking me up to april. i also got a call today from the agent representing me for a role at the other hedge fund i interviewed at and he tried to convince me to drop my day rate. i told him that it was looking more likely that i would get an offer from my current place and so there was no incentive for me to leave if i was going to get the same money elsewhere. i might as well stay, working with a good team and knowing all the systems. told him i didnt feel the need to drop my rate. will see how it goes. i dont think i shot myself in the foot...but you never know. if my current company doesnt come through with the new contract i could be fucked. dont matter. 


bought a new book to read. its about patrice lumumba, the first elected presented of post colonial congo. have just read the first few pages of the lumumba book as i am reading the autobiography of fidel castro at the moment, but both books are fascinating. if you have the means i cant recommend the highly enough. i might read it on the plane if i havent finished it before i go on holiday. 


today i have mostly been listening to the cure - the same deep water as you. this is from what is probably my favourite album. epic. 

free

it looks like most people got told that they were not going to have their contracts renewed. chancer pm and his team of 3 chancer sys admins are not being renewed. a few other project managers are also being let go as well. one of them was quite good, so thats a shame. neither i, nor the other guy in my project has been told anything. i was told verbally that they might want to keep me for the beginning of next year, but i still have not been told officially or been given a contract to sign. 


by all accounts the ring leader of the chancers has not taken it well, that he is being let go. oh well. also chancer pm came round to my desk and said he wanted to have a chat with me about everyone being let go and if i had been told. i played dumb and said no one had spoken to me and i was planning on leaving in 3 weeks. he then started talking about the project and how hectic it had been and so on. 


it probably didnt need to be said, but i said it anyway. i said he should have fired the ringleader of the chancers as soon as he came in, because he was unprofessional and disruptive and he tried to undermine anyone and everyone that became involved in that project, including me and the chancer pm. chancer pm said he was reluctant to let him go as he didnt want to risk the other 2 chancers leaving as well. i told him, in that case he should have let them all walk away. good riddance. they didnt contribute anything and just bled money from the budget. 


still, its all over now. maybe he will learn the lesson for next time, or maybe not. anyways, i still dont know if i will be staying. for that reason i had applied to another job and at lunchtime i went to an interview at another hedge fund. its only a fixed 6 month contract like the one i have just done now, but i will take it if i get offered it, because i was told that even if i get offered a new contract at my current place it will only be for another 3 months. besides, this other place runs some stuff i havent used before and its always good to learn new stuff. 


i only have 3 more weeks remaining and thats me done. am thinking of my holiday in cali more and more. my brain is tired, my body is tired. i just need a break. not sure if i will have anything to come back to, but its fine. have been saving my money and not being extravagent or taking things for granted. will be fine. 


today i have mostly been listening to twin atlantic - free. 

ghosts

its been a long week and i am still tired all the time. the week didnt get off to the best of starts after i made a change on a database cluster and it ended up crashing over night. when i got to work on tueday morning it was just a barrage of mails. i got onto the server and fixed the problem and then let everyone know it was my screw up. everyone was fine with me and it wasnt a live production server so it was not too bad. i got an email from the head of trading development, who's server it was and he said everything was ok and appreciated me being honest and fixing it. 


after that happened i just tried to keep a low profile for the rest of the week and do my own work and not try and fix other stuff that is not directly part of my project. the rest of the week was fine after that. had to work late on friday night till 11 and had another saturday at work yesterday. only 3 more weekends to go and that should be us done. actually, that will be me done as well, as my contract finises in mid december.


i had a telephone interview for a job at another hedge fund on thursday and they want to call me in for a face to face on tuesday. i still have not officially been given a new contract by the firm i am currently at so i can only assume i wont be there next year. will be good to know i have a contract to come back to after i get back from cali and to know i will be earning, where ever it may be. 


we didnt have football on thursday and i didnt get to go to the gym after work last week either. too much work and too tired when i get home. i am gasping for a holiday. am on my knees. not long to go now. please let it be nice weather in cali. have already started to put a good playlist together for the hours i will be behind the wheel. 


today i have mostly been listening to laura marling - ghosts. 

radioactive

had a weekend off work which was needed. i had to work late on friday till about 11.30, but it doesnt feel so bad when you know you dont have to work on saturday or sunday. also on friday, one of the head project managers took me to one side and said that he was looking to renew my contract in the new year and that there was another project coming through. he said he was waiting for the budgets to be signed off and also for me to not tell anyone just yet, because some people were going to be told this week about whether they were staying or going. 

its good news that they want to renew me, but like i said before, till i get a piece of paper that is official i am not going to assume its going to happen. for the reason, i applied for another job at a hedge fund/asset manager elsewhere. it was more money so if i end up with 2 offers i will have to take the other place. i dont want to come across like a money grabbing whore, but the increase per month is roughly the same as my mortgage and thats not something inconsiderable. i dont want the extra money to buy a flashy car, or an expensive watch. its all going on my flat. every penny.....almost. :-)

i heard back from my friend in san francisco and she said she was around at the beginning of january, so i extended my ticket by a couple of days and am going to drive up and stay with her and her family. it does mean one very long day of driving because i will be driving from las vegas to los angeles in the morning to drop my friends off at the airport and then i will have to drive 6 hours to frisco. still, its only one day and i like driving on the freeways, with my music playing on the stereo and stopping off at random small towns for food in small diners. i hardly drive at all in london so i dont mind being behind the wheel on holiday. i dont get sick of if if its just one or two long days. itnerary as it stands is

thursday - arrive in LA

friday - meet my friends who arrive in LA, do some sightseeing. 

saturday - sightseeing LA and then drive to Las Vegas in the evening

sunday - Las Vegas

monday - Drive to LA from LV and then drive to San fran

tuesday - san fran

wednesday - drive from san fran to san diego. 

thursday - san diego

friday - san diego

saturday - short drive to LA and fly home. 

in all of that i am going to try and go to the beach in LA and san diego. go to balboa park in san diego. maybe see a band play if there is anyone interesting playing and maybe visit the wild card boxing gym in LA where Manny Pacquiao trains. and the rest of the time i shall be mostly chilling. even on the days with long drives i will break them up and stop if i go through anywhere interesting and if the mood takes me. 

we shall see how it goes. best laid plans and all that. 

today i have mostly been listening to marina and the diamonds - radioactive. wicked tune. 

louder

got messaged by one of the project managers whose project i work on (not the chancer PM) and he told me that he had heard that i was in the plans being drawn up for various other projects next year. i had told him about a week ago that i was finishing up in mid december and was looking for new projects, and he had said he would try and find out if i would be needed. looks like i might well be. 


he also told one of the guys in my team that he would be needed in the new year as well. he replied it was good news only if he didnt end up working on a project with chancer pm, to which the reply was that over the next 3 weeks people are going to be spoken to about whether they will be staying or whether they are "surplus to requirements". looks like the chancers and possibly including the pm, are in that group. there has been a definite shift over the last week or two to not give them any new bits of work to do. they should be able to see it coming, especially as they are aware that there are big deadlines and applications going live over the next few weeks. 


hope you saved your 14 grand a month pay cheques. hope you dont end up regretting spending 8 grand on some speakers and 7 grand on a watch. hope you havent got a big thirsty german car and a huge mortgage. hope you havent been living beyond your means. hope you dont you really believe you are worth 14 grand a month because you might be in for a surprise. 


anyways, it good news for me as it means i wont be moving on.....again!, and i really could do with a bit of stability. i also enjoy working with everyone else there and am familiar with their systems so it will be a relief not to have to learn a whole bunch of new processes and people at another place. am waiting till i get told officially and there is a piece of paper with terms written on it and will not assume its a done deal. will still update my cv and send it out for anything interesting. i still might be out of work in the new year when i get back from cali, but i dont have a big car, expensive home cinema system and a flash swiss watch and instead have the money saved, so i will be fine whatever happens. 


today is one of the rare times in recent weeks when i have not had to work on saturday. i get 2 whole days for my weekend. did all my laundry and shopping and went to the gym and cleaned up, so i have no idea what i will do with myself tomorrow. it will be like a 24 hour holiday. 

cycled to the gym today. was fast but not quite fast enough. 14 seconds outside my record. got held up again at some lights and behind some slooowww drivers. weather is not too bad considering its november. slate grey skies but at least it wasnt raining today like it did during the week, and its not very cold yet. any dry mild day, allbeit with slate grey skies, is a bonus in november, as its usually shit. aboveis a pic from my bike ride going home. 


today i have mostly been listening to DJ Flash - Louder. they played it my gym and i thought it was a good song and a good video. not what i would usually listen to, but its a nice change. 

found out

am back in mayfair at the hedge fund this week. officially i am supposed to be there all week but i might try and swing it so that i do my usual thursday and friday back at the head office. i stayed behind a little bit longer this evening and finished off some work that is due in a couple of days time. have not told chancer pm that i have finished early but i gave it to the application teams to check it over. hopefully its all ok and i can have a relatively easy couple of days, unlike the last couple of months. my plan of sidelining the chancer pm is working well. have found myself getting less stressed out and annoyed. i talk directly with all the teams now and keep him well and truly out of the loop. 


am not working this friday night as we have a break week in our datacenter migration project. better enjoy it because it looks like it will be 6 days a week after that until just before christmas. LA trip will be close by then so even when i am on my knees it will pick me up. 


one of the guys in my team has heard from the chancers in the head office and said they are all pissed off. they usually bill for saturday and sunday because they say they do a lot of 'work' over the weekend. basically its a piss take because i have seen them do fuck all during the week on a regular work day and probably less when they are at home on a saturday afternoon. they were just taking advantage of having a weak manager (chancer pm) who knows very little. anyways, this week they were told that they were not to do any work this weekend, which actually means, we are not paying you for weekends any more, so dont even bother lying about working. looks like their gravy train has hit the buffers. 


one of the chancers also said that he was almost certainly going to be leaving in the next few weeks when his contract was up. dude, you should have been gone long ago. you are shit at your job. i cant believe you have been IT for 10 years. you are proper shit at it and you know fuck all. the other day one of the guys had to explain to one of the chancers after they had moved a server to a new vLAN and changed its IP adress, why they were now not able to access it immediately with its name. the concept of mapping IPs to names (DNS) was news to them. £450-500/day!!!. 


actually it kind of makes sense why they were giving me dirty looks at the end of last week. they had clearly been told not to do the weekend and were losing out on that money. i let it be known i thought the work they were producing was horseshit, and the fact i am in mayfair 3 days a week is testament to that. i dont speak to any of them at all and i pretty much told them a while back to their faces that i thought they were doing it all wrong. if it hadnt been for me they might still be secure and hitting it for 14grand a month. oh well. its a good think i dont give a fuck. if they do get let go it does also reinforce what i have always thought. everyone gets found out in the end.  


cycled to the gym and did it in 15.37, which is 21 seconds outside of my record. i got held up badly in a couple of places. shit, a new record was on and i missed it. if it stays dry this weekend i will cycle both days. saturday is a good warm up and then sunday is when records can be set. will check the forecast and hope for a clear day with no wind. if it is, then its on. 


bought a new book to read. its about the dirty war in argentina and the legacy of it and am currently reading the fidel castro autobiogaphy. its fascinating. he is an intellectual and humanitarian and political giant. 


today i have mostly been listening to noam chomsky. 

led zepellin

my splitting headache that i have had for weeks is still here. the only time it goes is when i am at football and the gym. the rest of the time, which is spent mostly at work, its there. worked late on friday night again and was finished by about 10:30pm and then was back into work on saturday just before 9 to do another full day. today is my only day of the weekend and once i have had a chance to catch up on some sleep in the morning, cycled to the gym and back, and done my laundry, its pretty much over. 


am back at the hedge fund in mayfair on monday and actually thats a good thing. have been in foul mood this week what with all the shit at work with the chancers, as well as being very tired and not being able to sleep. am going to try a new approach this week. i am going to actively ignore the chancer PM and only speak to him only when its vital. my tolerance for idiots is very low, which is unfortunate for him. 


all the other guys ignore him. i noticed one of the guys in my team gets up and goes to the kitchen or down for a coffee every time the chancer comes over to near his desk. my team leader hasnt spoken to him much since they had a run in a couple of weeks ago. one of the guys in the support team who had been roped in to fix some shit the chancers had done, replied to an email the other day saying he was too busy now to do the work chancer had given him. chancer didnt ask him if he was free to do it. he just sent him a mail telling him to do it that day. it didnt get done. its still not done. 


i think its the best policy to sideline him. i can not work with him or his team of 3 idiots. there is no way of talking them round to doing things the right way. they are too stubborn, obtuse and incapable and i had been getting frustrated with them. i will just accept the situation and cut them all off as much as i can and just work with the developers and their manager at the hedge fund independently. you are on your own chancers. i will still put out your fires, but i will decide which fires i put out and when, so be careful you dont start a blaze that i can not respond to immediately. you might get burned....or i might let you burn.


we did have a good laugh this weekend on my normal project recounting all the chancer PMs catchphrases. he just comes out with the most shit you have ever heard. "we are where we are", "belt and braces check", "so what you are telling me is...", "my balls are on the line" etc. he has half a dozen that he rolls out every time you speak to him and he is infamous for just talking and talking and talking with out actually saying anything of note. he is a bit like this fella. 





still havent booked my hotel in san diego. i think i might do that at lunchtime this week. have got my eye on a place downtown near petco park. its a 20 minute drive to pacific beach and its a nice part of town to walk around in and there are lots of places to eat. i need my holiday so bad!!!!. 


today i have mostly been listening to  led zeppelin - babe, i'm gonna leave you. on my mp3 player i always listen to the same 5 or 6 albums, so the last few days i have put it on shuffle and it ends up playing some tunes i havent heard in ages. i also have lots of Noam Chomsky lectures on it, so you will get a nine inch nails song, followed by noam chomsky discussing US foreign policy in central america, then followed by a smiths song. anyways, this is what came up yesterday on my way to work. no video, but its not necessary. its fabulous. 

escapists

my teamleader asked me if anyone had spoken to me about a contract renewal. he had heard from one of the other guys that they might be going round to some people soon to let them know they might be needed in the new year. no one has spoken to me yet, and i am going to assume they are not going to and plan accordingly. as far as i know i am leaving in mid december and i am going to make plans for a new contract elsewhere. 


chancer PM has been same as always, an asshole, but thats nothing new. his team of 3 chancers have been same as always, incompetent and lazy. i got into work late today at 9:20. when i got there they were in the office but not at their desks. they do a morning breakfast meeting every day which has no one else in it but the 3 of them. at around 9:45 they were back at their desks, but then at 10:15 they all dissappeared again. at 11am they came back and then at 12:15 they all went to lunch. they were back by the time i got back from lunch at 2pm but at 4pm they got their bags and coats and left for the day. £450-500 day for maybe 4 hours work a day. its a great job if you can get it. 


i also got the impression that one of the chancers was giving me dirty looks today. am not bothered as i dont need their approval or camoraderie. i wonder if something i said yesterday to chancer pm might have been relayed back to them. he was piling on tons more work for me to do which was to fix his teams fuckups. i told him i was too busy with other work and that i would look at it the next day. i also said it took a long time to check because i had to go through every little thing because their work was littered with mistakes. wrong VLANs, missing software on servers, software intalled on servers that didnt need it, missing disks, extra redundant networks, missing networks, incorrect DNS etc.... . chancer PM said there might be many reasons why these things MIGHT come about. i said it wasnt a case of might happen, this has happened and it is happening and maybe they should look at the causes of why, because its wasting time and pushing back deadlines for development teams.  


why would someone install a particular piece of software on a server when it wasnt requested!?. its bad enough they miss stuff, but now they are adding stuff when its not needed. chancer PM said it was because they guessed they might need it, to which i replied, yes, judging by the state of the servers, it looks like there has been a lot of guessing. conversation ended 10 seconds later and today when i have been in the same office as him, as opposed to putting out his fires in mayfair, he has said hardly anything to me. thats right fella, stand back. i am too tired and too close to the end of my contract. 


got football tonight. i need it bad. its the only time when this headache i have had for weeks seems to subside. it also went yesterday when i was at the gym for an hour, but this morning on the way to work it was back. am working late tomorrow night and saturday again. i am sooooo tired. 


today i have mostly been listening to escapists - post gospel blues. sounds a bit like arcade fire, which is not a bad thing. 

lies

another friday evening and and saturday spent at work, but it wasnt too late a finish on both days and thats me done for work this weekend. usual suspects were in at work on my project. one of the strorage guys, one of the DBAs, the PM for my project and my teamleader. one thing we have in common is a utter lack of respect for the group of chancers. the quiet hours whilst servers are being moved or patched or data is being copied are filled with stories of what idiocy the chancers have done this week or how they made fools of themselves in a conference call or in a meeting.

also, i happened to look up the linkedin profile of the main chancer and it was quite something. it stated he was the Team Leader for the infrastructure team and that he had built out a new datacenter and all the server infrastructure including AD, Exchange, Citrix, VMware and even some Linux servers. wow!. reading it you would think he was really skilled and must really know his shit. having worked with him and seen what level of skill he has, i would actually place him in the bottom 10% of people i have ever worked with at any of the companies i have been at. also, its a lie that he is the team leader for the infrastructure team. he is no such thing. he is supposed to be a windows engineer like me but he has so little technical knowledge that he spends his days hiding behind excel spreadsheets and shuffling paper, in the hope of appearing busy and also so no one will ask him any technical questions or ask him to deliver a piece of real work. 

its easy to project a false and misleading image of yourself online. shit, if he was that good, why am i the one being asked to do 3 days a week at the hedge fund for whom he was supposed to be building out application servers, which are now over a month late and incorrectly configured?. why do i have to talk to the heads of trading systems development and then implement what they ask for?.  why has it been decided that all the new servers for the trading systems have to be checked by me?. why is it that the storage team ask me to check any requests for new LUNs or storage reconfigs they get from the chancers?. why is it me that has to work with the DBAs to fix issues with the new production SQL clusters?. weird thing is that the so called infrastructure team leader (the main chancer) has not asked me to do any of this but a decision has been made by senior management that i should do it because he and 'the team he is leading' have show they are incapable. 

isn't it odd that someone at a lower level than the self proclaimed infrastructure team leader has been called in to clear up his mess. strange that. 

anyways, no bother. i worked my nuts off last week and fixed all his shit on one complete environment for one of the trading apps. am back in mayfair this week to check over one of the other trading system application servers, but i think it will be easier than this week, because i already did half of them over the last couple of weeks. also my own project seems to be going well and we are just over halfway through. all has gone smoothly thus far. it could be worse. i could be doing such a bad job that a more junior titled subordinate could be asked to take over and deliver the work i should have done. that would be a heck of a blow to my ego. would probably have to resign as my reputation would be in tatters. :-)

today i have mostly been listening to the stone roses - elephant stone. they announced that were getting back together again after 15 years. i do have both their albums and i think they were a very good band, but i thought the music press got a little too carried away with themselves this week. i wasnt one of those hoping for them to reform. i would have actually preferred if they hadnt because i cant help thinking its purely a commercial decision. all those kids that were at school and college and university first time round now work in hedge funds and will pay £60 for a ticket to relive their youths. not me though. this is back when they were doing it for real. enjoy.

champion sound

its been a busy week at work primarily because chancer PM said yes to every application team that wanted anything done and so i had a ton of work to get done in a short space of time. he was bounding around the office today with a spring in his step when i told him things were on target to get delivered and that me and one of the DBAs had also fixed a problem with a SQL cluster as well. in the meantime his own group of chancers are just bumbling along doing something not very important at all, whatever it is.


i havent been in our main office with the chancer and the rest of my team this week until today but my team leader told me that he had a run in with the chancer pm yesterday as well. again in a clear acknowledgement that his own team of 3 chancers (whose contracts he renewed recently) are useless, he asked my team leader if he could do some work on sunday, to which the teamleader, who has been at the firm 9 years, decided to tell the chancer some home truths. he asked him why he had renewed the contracts of 3 people that are not able to do the work that needs to be done, and thats why he was constantly asking him and me, to work on the chancers project when we had our own project to be getting on with. chancer pm was not able to come back with any kind of answer.


anyways, my team leader refused to work sunday, as he and i are working till midnight on friday and all of saturday on our own project, and so its not unreasonable to have 1 day off in the week. am surprised chancer pm has not asked me yet, and i think he won't. i have saved his ass this week by putting out fires at the hedge fund for him, and although he has pushed his luck way too far this week, even a dumb ass like him knows i will tell him to go fuck himself if he asks me to work sunday.


i also booked my hotel in las vegas for when i am there for 2 nights in january, after 2 nights in LA. all that is remaining is to book 3 nights in san diego and any concert tickets and thats me done. i like getting everything booked in advance and organised. its so nice to just turn up and pickup the car and then go to the hotel and pickup tickets from the will call booth. holidays should be stress free, and i make sure everything is sorted in advance so mine are very stress free indeed. just turn up to places knowing everything is sorted.


had a couple of calls this week about jobs at another hedge fund and bank. havent had time to get back to them as i barely get a minute to stop at work. will call them back tomorrow. i am 7 weeks from the end of my contract and i need to start making plans if i can.


football tonight. is cold outside but i think its going to be good. am well up for it. 


today i have mostly been listening to crystal fighters - champion sound. stick with it, as it starts a bit strange but then really gets into it. they also sing about going to argentina. one day.....

bulletproof cupid

have been in mayfair at the other hedge fund so far this week and its been busy. dont really get too much time to just coast along and get a breather and am on it pretty much all the time. all the developers and managers i am working with seem nice. The head of the trading development team, who is a big cheese, came over to me today and thanked me for getting a lot of the problems fixed, which was good to hear. i was worried i was going to be grouped in with the chancers and be blamed for fucking up their project, but its good to know they are not lumping me in with those idiots and appreciate that i am trying to be part of the solution not part of the problem.


The only downer is that i am still having to deal with chancer PM on a daily basis. he is so far out of his depth its just embarressing. we have conference calls with various departments and he just says the most stupid things sometimes. still, at least he is back in the head office and i am in mayfair and he cant come to my desk every 20 minutes asking me dumb ass questions. he did however stitch me up which is not entirely unexpected. it had been agreed that i would be in mayfair for 3 days working on fixing his project and then i was to be in the main office and working on my own project on thursdays and fridays. today he sent a schedule round to all the senior developers and the heads of department saying i would get various bits of the their projects fixed and working on thursday and friday (when i was scheduled to be on my other project).


what a fucking chancer. you help them out. you give them your time and you work in another office in another part of town clearing up a mess his team have caused. you become the person that everyone goes to for all their problems associated with that project and so you risk your reputation in associating yourself with a shuttle crash of a project. you stay behind and try and get as much done as you can in the 3 days, and your thanks for it is that he dumps more work on you to be delivered at the end of the week, when he clearly knows you are scheduled to be working on another project on those days. some people just cant stop taking the piss. i had to let the manager of my other project know and he was not happy and sent a terse email to the chancer saying it was agreed i was his resource on thursdays and fridays.


in the meantime his team of 3 chancers just bumble along completely unaware of anything. i dont even know if they are even doing any work, or for which project. they cant be working on their own project because they have made a balls up of it, and they are not working on my project, so fuck knows what they do to get paid £450/day. maybe they are at their desks with colouring books and crayons, or maybe they are finger painting. i also heard from one the people that approves timesheets that the chancers bill for 7 days a week most weeks not 6, claiming they are working all weekend on building servers. for those keeping score, thats over 3 grand a week each for people that you wouldnt trust with a pair of scissors let alone be involved in build out a new trading platform.


today i have mostly been listening to placebo - bullet proof cupid. this is from the concert film, soulmates never die. its a instrumental piece and is an awesome way to start a show.

dodge challenger

i didnt end up doing a morning till midnight shift on friday. i knew it would be too much and i knew i needed to stay concentrated for late last night as i didn't want to be switching off the wrong the trading system. that would not be cool and would necessitate an early end to my contract.....or maybe not seeing as the chancers can get away with their catalogue of fuck ups with impunity.

it all went smoothly on friday night and i got home from work at 1.30am and found myself walking to the station 7 hours later, this morning to finish off the work. did most of it last night so it was a pretty easy morning, and i was also surprised to see one of the chancers in the office to provide support if any was needed, for part of his project. he appeared to be doing very little and was not seen after 3pm, which surprisingly enough was when the system he was supposed to be supporting fell over. as usual, i got asked to deal with it.

how long does this shit need to go on for and how many times do i need to put out their fires?. well i got the answer yesterday. it will go on for the next 2 months. its been decided that i have to do 3 days a week at the hedge fund in mayfair sorting out the chancers mess, and then thursdays and fridays in our main office working on my project. wonderful!.

anyways, today i booked my hotel in los angeles and yesterday i booked my rental car as well. someone posted a clip of the hertz car rental at LAX, and i thought i had to get one. it kind of goes against my environmental conscience driving a 5.7L V8, but i figure its only for 1 week in a year and so i am allowed. i am going to book a couple of nights hotel in las vegas and also a couple of nights in san diego and thats me done. cant wait.



i also need to start making a soundtrack for my trip like i always do.

rock and a hard place

the firm i work for has taken over another prestigious hedge fund and its for these guys that the chancers project of building new application servers is for. its quite a high profile project and the team i was in is tasked with another important project migrating to a new datacenter and moving existing application servers and building out the infrastructure for it.

thats the background of whats going on. 2 big jobs split between 2 teams of 3 each. as the chancers project has turned into a plane crash, i was constantly being asked to help them out, which is odd because i have been at the firm 4 months and they have been there a year. anyways, today it got more ridiculous. chancer PM who is heading up the project for the new hedge fund, came over to me and told me that i would have to go to the new hedge funds offices in another part of london (near mayfair/picadilly) and sit with the guys there and help them with any issues. he said it was a political move as they were pissed off as to why their shit was all fucked up and had insisted someone be there and work through the mess and he wanted to send someone who would make a good impression and could deal with them and get stuff done. 

so instead of sending any of his 3 highly paid resources that are dedicated to the project he sends me to go there and to put out fires and smooth things over with the guys there. what a fucking shambles of a project manager you are. its one thing to have people laugh at you and undermine you behind your back, but senior pm has just undermined himself. surely in the last week or two he must have recommended that the chancers get contracts renewed and now days later he asks me to smooth shit out with the project they have been re-hired to complete. are you an idiot. the 2 things are utterly incompatible. you cant hire people to do a job and imply and judge they are good enough to do it and then take the opposite view soon after and imply they are incapable of doing it by not asking them to do what you employed them to do because you dont think they are good enough. 

anyways, this afternoon i went to the other hedge fund and sat with them and went through all the issues with them and told them what i was going to do to get it fixed. tomorrow morning i am there again, but in the afternoon i have to go to our main office to work on my own project. i even offered to spend friday morning with them working on their problems even though i am supposed to be starting work at noon on friday and working till midnight on my datacenter project. its going to be a long long friday. 

its all causing friction at work now. the project manager i report to is getting pissed off because i keep being taken off his project and leaving him with a man less, and having to bail out the chancers. he is worried because his (our) project is going quite well and according to plan so far, and he fears that we could start slipping and something could go wrong because of resources being taken away from him. 

something is going to give soon. in the meantime i am between a rock and a hard place. to motivate myself i bought myself a ticket to los angeles leaving at the beginning of january, and i figured that if i work a long friday that will pay for the cost of hiring a dodge challenger for the week i am out there. how's that for using positive thinking. 

today i have mostly been listening to red hot chilli peppers - californication. dreams of californication are what is going to get me through the next few weeks.

we are augustines

average monday at work. 


talk to storage about new SAN LUN for SQL cluster
check new SAN disks are correctly presented to 2 other SQL servers
check application servers have been installed correctly by chancers
audit and plan for moving VMs to replicated LUNs so they can utilise VMWare SRM. (was supposed to be done by the chancers but they said they didn't know how to do it and it got dumped on me) 
fix issues with new production  trading application servers (originally built by the chancers)
get asked to investigate why backups failed on a particular application server (built by the chancers)
speak to EMC about requirements for installing File Management Appliance as a Virtual Machine. (i dont know what it is, but i had to familiarise myself with it in 5 minutes from a document. head chancer said it was a windows server, its not you halfwit)
....and thats just the morning.


senior PM who will be referred from here on as chancer PM, came over to my desk and just dumped tonnes of work on me this morning. i am not even supposed to be working on your project you chancer!. i didnt say it but i gave him the kind of look that effectively said 3 people were hired months before i even started at the firm, to do that project, so why dont you give it to the chancers whose contracts you just renewed. he verbally replied "errr....well....they dont have that particular skillset....errr....". well maybe you should have hired people with the skills to do the job, instead of paying them £450/day to do a job you know they cant do.

anyways, i just tried to get on with it as best as i could. spoke to the Project manager of the project i am supposed to be working on, and he had words and said i would be working on my original project on thursday and friday....and saturday. its the best he could do. there ship is sinking and people above have said that i have to help bail out the chancers. he thinks chancer PM is a chump as well. 


talked the to the other guys in my original project team and they told me that they had spoken to the head guy of the department on friday night after he had a few drinks and he let slip that there was a new project starting as soon as our current project finished in december and that they already had a list of people that they wanted to work on it. the other 2 guys are hoping they are on the list, and i would happily stay on and work with them. one of the guys is permanant staff and has been there for 9 years, and he said that if he got asked to go onto the new project he would ask for me and the other to be signed up for it as well, and would refuse to work with the chancers. we shall see how it goes. i would love to stay and work with my original team on a project. 


in the meantime i have been getting calls from agents recruiting for a large investment bank. its a bank that i worked for about 3 years ago, but since then they have merged with another bank and they need someone. i have had 3 calls in the last 2 weeks about them and the fact that they still keep calling me leads me to believe they might be struggling to find the right candidates. i originally turned it down a couple of weeks ago, but since being thrown back in with the chancers and there only being 2 months left on my contract, i think i might put myself forward for it. its a 6 month project and the money is miles more than i have ever earned. if i dont get it, thats fine, but i need to put myself forward. come december i will be out of contract and what are the odds the chancers get asked to do the new project and i don't. if recent events are anything to go by, thats quite likely. 


today i have mostly been listening to we are augustines - book of james. wicked tune. no video, no need. enjoy. 

15:23

well the weather couldnt last and by wednesday the sunshine was a memory and normal slate grey skies had returned. still, its not been too cold and friday was quite bright, so i cant complain. it hasnt rained this weekend, so i got to cycle to the gym yesterday and today so i cant really complain about the weather. it is mid october after all. broke my record on my cycle to the gym. i knocked 10 seconds off my previous best time and did it in 15m 23s. i got held up in a couple of places and i know its very possible to dip below 15mins. i just need traffic lights, traffic and good form with me, and i am sure i can do it.


work has been ok, but i have found myself sucked back into the chancers project which is a bit of a pain. the senior pm had not been coming over to my desk, since my 'too many shit people on this project' episode the week before, but this week he has been getting me to do more work that should have been done ages ago. to compound things, all three of the chancers have had their contracts renewed. the head chancer who is a complete waste of space, has been walking around with a spring in his step all week. i dont know officially if they have been renewed, but it fucking looks like it, because they are still here and they are still shit. you do the math. the incompetent senior pm has proved his ineptness once again by keeping those idiots on the project.


 it actually beggars belief. in any other organisation these people would be laughed out of the building, but in an organisation that has a reputation of attracting the best and most talented people, they are so far out of their depth, its embarressing. the people you hire and the company you keep are a reflection on you, and in this case the senior pm has demonstrated to anyone with half a brain, that he has no idea about anything. its such a shame that the project they are working has been ruined like this. am also wondering who hired the senior pm because clearly they must be clueless as well. it seems the incompetence runs deeper that i first thought.


anyways, i keep myself to myself and just get on with it. head chancer who seems to think he is co-ordinating the project (he couldnt co-ordinate himself out of a wet paper bag), had been sending me emails asking for status updates and issues earlier in the week. i ignored them. firstly, i dont report to you so you can fuck right off, and secondly the status of anything is it will be done when i get it done. he sent me a couple of emails, but he got the message and after those first two mails and no replies and i haven't had anything since from him. sometimes you can send a message to someone by not sending a message to someone. in this case the message was fuck off chancer.


i also had this weekend off work. it looks like i will be working pretty much every weekend from now till mid december. i will need to find a way to lift my spirits over the next couple of months so am going to book my ticket for los angeles this week. have found a good deal on british airways which is a lot cheaper than virgin, who i usually fly with, so will get it booked. as is the case almost every january, i will be looking for a new contract somewhere, but at least i can be completely refreshed and holiday'd before i embark on a new project.


i bought an autobiography of fidel castro last week as well. have got quite a bit of a back log books to read through as i also bought a book about the iranian coup overthrowing mossadegh and then the overthrow of the shah, and am just finishing off my current book about the congo. dark winter days are coming so will probably have lots of time indoors to read.


today i have mostly been listening to marvin gaye - inner city blues. some musical education that we may not have been around for but that we can go back and redicover and learn for ourselves. enjoy listening to the wonderful voice and powerful lyrics of marvin gaye.

a very late summer

for all the times i whine about shit the summer is, let me start by saying the last few days have been stunning. we had the 2 hottest days ever recorded in october, today and yesterday. if it was july it would be hot, let alone october. you need to keep reminding yourself what time of year it is. the only thing that gives it away are that shadows are bit longer and the sun is a little lower in the sky, if you pay attention to that kind of thing, which i do.

we had out datacenter move again on friday night, and we were done for about 9pm as we are getting quicker at getting things done. went to a couple of bars with the guys i work with afterwards and was back into work on saturday at around 8.45 to do a few more hours. finished up around 1pm and it gave me just enough time to get home, get changed and out again on my bike to ride to the gym in the fantastic weather.

i dont need hot sunny weather in london because i am one of those people who lays in the sun tanning. it just subconsciously makes me feel better if i can see blue sky and can feel the sun. anyways, i did the same today as well and rode to and from the gym in the glorious sunshine. feel sorry for all those tourists who came over in august which was horrible and showery. anyone in london this past week will get the wrong impression of london though. its never like this. they have the records to prove it.

last few days at work i walked down to the river for lunch just to be outside. below is my lunch spot.

today i have mostly been listening to bush - sound of winter. dont bother watching the video. its so shit. is it really that hard to film a band playing their song in a studio, as opposed to filming gavin rosdale with a £100 camera walking a long the beach like chris martin in the video for yellow. anyways, the song is good.

twin atlantic

weather has been unbelievably good the last 2 days. almost the 2 hottest days we have had all year and its set to continue through the weekend. all that shit i was talking about the air changing and summer leaving us, turned out to rubbish. it was very hot in the sun today at lunchtime. i checked and its exactly the same temperature in LA. maybe this is the gods saying that if i cant go to LA, they will bring LA to me. all i need is a muscle car and thats me set. 

am starting work at noon tomorrow again and working till late again tomorrow and i have to be back at work at 8:30am on saturday. am really hoping i am finished by noon on saturday. work today was as stress free a day as i have had in a few weeks. did a few bits here and there, but didn't have the senior PM breathing down my neck, and usually i would go over and ask for work to do, but i really could do with a few quiet days, to get rid of the pounding headache i carry with me most of the time. 

went to the gym and after a work out and 10 minutes in the steam room, my headache was gone and i felt normal and unstressed. am going to try and not get too stressed out, but unfortunately its not entirely up to me. 

spent the afternoon today, looking up cars and hotels in california for the new year. the world seems like such a lovely place all of a sudden and its all because of a couple of days of sunshine. it will get darker and colder but in the meantime its good for the soul. 

today i have mostly been listening to twin atlantic - make a beast of myself. 

somebody i used to know

i ended up working sunday morning as well, but i had enough by 1pm and i just cycled to the gym for a work out. i get stressed when i dont go to the gym, and i need it for my mind as much as my body.


this week so far has been all go as usual. today i had to build a cluster, install and configure 3 production ESX servers, and configure applications and check 12 other trading servers. quite frankly there are not enough hours in the day to get all that done, and i am going to have to try and finish it all off tomorrow. i am also going to be working late on friday and going to be in the office on saturday as part of the datacenter migration i am working on, which is the project i was originally supposed to be doing. i should actually be be doing all the prep work for that and all this other stuff is extra. its mental.


i have had contracts where i got frustrated at not being given enough work to do, or just repetitive work, and this is most definitely not like that. i jump between 2 or 3 different project in a morning, as opposed to being stuck on the same piece of work for months on end. if it wasn't for the fact that all the stuff i get given is overdue and under serious time pressure, with trading teams wanting them a week ago, it would be a lot of fun. instead it can be quite stressful, but thats not a bad thing if its not an unreasonable amount of stress.....which it sometimes is.


i go from contracts that are painfully dull, to this one which is crazy busy. i have 4 months of not working, and now they want me to work every single day including weekends. lots of time, no time, very slow, too fast. oh well, i can't complain. times are tough out there for a lot of people, and i am being paid well and learning a lot as well. 


anyways, i found another tune for my california mix tape.
today i have mostly been listening to goyte - somebody i used to know. do yourself a favour and listen to it without watching the video. it distracts from the song and i dont like it. its a very very good song.

 

shit people

i worked both days last weekend and i had to work till 11pm on last night, and i did another 11 hour shift today. i also am going to have to work tomorrow (sunday).
the senior project manager gave me 40 servers to check and finish off on wednesday, that he wanted done before the end of the week so they would be ready on monday morning. it was already going to be a tough task. he then told me i had to build some backup servers for a new datacenter on thursday and spend the whole day making that my priority instead. i did so and delivered the backup servers on the same day. he then told me i still had to get the 40 servers finished, despite making me losing a day in doing other stuff for him.

i was also supposed to be working on my own project (ie. not putting out fires the chancers have started), and we had a big migration on friday night and today. i started work at lunch time yesterday and although we thought it would take till 2 am, we were done by 11pm. i then had to be at work for 8:30am this morning to check and finish off the move and that took till around 5pm. i then stayed back to do more work on trying to get those 40 servers done, (by a miracle i only have 3 servers left to do, after a herculean effort on friday afternoon), and then i went home because i had a splitting headache and was just generally annoyed and pissed off

on friday afternoon i had a conversation with the senior PM where told me that my orginal project was not my priority any more and i had to finish the servers which were already very late. i was just stunned into silence that he was jerking me around like this and just walked back to my desk shaking my head in a 'yeah...ok....whatever.....what a shambles' kind of way.

feeling a bit embaressed about being so disorganised and running such a shambolic project he came over a few minutes later to my desk in a bid to appease and sympathise with me. i mentioned a few posts ago that i was worried that one day my internal monolgue that is running in my head which says stuff i shouldnt really say out loud, was in danger of coming out one day. well it kind of happened when he came over to my desk. at the end of his motivational speech he said " well there are lots of problems in the project and ....", at which point i had listened to enough bullshit and butted in and said "the problem is there are too many shit people on this project!". there was a bit of a silence and he stopped what he was saying, shrugged and walked back to his desk. i think he could see the steam coming out of my ears and thought best not to push his luck.

because we finished at 11pm last night and not as 2am as expected, i went with 3 of the other guys to a bar for a drink, after a long evening of work. i dont usually talk about work with them in too much depth, and it was the first time i had spoken to any of them outside of work. turns out the senior PM is regarded by all of them as a bit of a joke and utterly useless. i knew he was, but i had kept it to myself. they already knew what i thought about the chancers, but it was interesting to hear their scathing critiques of the senior PM. you feel vindicated when people you respect have a similar view. you know its just not personal, or you dont like the way he talks. he is genuinely and by common consensus utterly incompetent.

anyway, these last 3 servers out of the 40 are ones i have problems with. one is a cluster, and i just dont know how they install clusters and to what standard and rules they use, and one of them is just busted. come monday morning i know i am going to get shit. after getting the backup servers delivered in 1 day last week and working late into the night and most of saturday on my own project which went smoothly, i guarantee they are going to give me shit for only doing 37 or 38 out of 40 servers, that the chancers should have done weeks ago, but didn't. fuckers!.

i just need to keep thinking of the money. i think i will write it on the palm of my hand "its all about the benjamins" to remind me when i am getting shit from them on monday. it might help my internal monolgue to stay internal as well. am feeling very much like ed norton at the beginning of fightclub, lack of sleep and nothing but work and my internal monolgue starting to take over.



today i have mostly been listening to lonely island - i'm on a boat.