GSH

am running around finalising shit before my flat gets rented out next friday. speaking to gas and electric company and getting things ready for it to be usable. its quite a lot of chasing up, but hopefully for not much longer.

no major news on the contract side of things. one or two things at an early stage but no interviews lined up. no bother, because just getting this flat stuff sorted out will be a big relief and am busy on that. i might have had a nervous breakdown if i had been stressed at work while going through all this other shit.

had football on thursday and it was fantastic. its like meditating and you empty your mind of all the shit you have had in the day, dealing with estate and recruitment agents, and for 90 minutes, you just enjoy being alive, and mobile and running and competing and actually enjoying something completely. am so gutted i was never good enough to be a footballer. turns out i am no good at IT either given the fact i havent landed a new job. :-). fuck i was told everyone was good at something.

its in the back of my mind to maybe just buy a ticket and head out to new york for a week or two. i could stay with my uncle and it would mean i wouldnt have to take time off later in the year when i do eventually get a new contract. will see how i feel over the next couple of weeks.

today i have mostly been listening to gil scott heron - home is where the hatred is, a song about life from the perspective of a drug addict.

anyways, he passed away today. he was a giant of american culture and should be held up with the same historical stature as miles davis, james brown, little richard and marvin gaye, but i dont think he will, due to some of the content of his songs/poems which did not have universal commercial appeal. i suppose songs like 'whitey on the moon' and 'who'll pay reparations on my soul' are probably not what radio wants to play and not subjects that large media corporations want people to become aware of.

after all, how can you advertise sportswear and restaurants after a song that talks about unaffordable healthcare and the high tax burden on lower income people while the government spends those tax dollars on expensive space programmes run by large private defence companies making billions on profits. that would be rubbing peoples face in it and just bad taste.

anyways, listen to some music that makes you think.

bricks and mortar

heard back from that place that interviewed me yesterday and they went with someone else. i wasn't as strong on the NetApp side of things, which is fair enough. not dissapointed though, as the project wasn't as juicy as i had been led to believe. it looked like someone else had already done most of the VMWare work and it was just a question of provisioning LUNS in NetApp and then doing capacity planning and P2V migrations of existing servers of which there were about 50. the Citrix was a maybe and was not planned for at least the next 3 months. not as juicy as i first thought. no bother as i got calls about a couple of other places and we will see what happens with those.

in the meantime my brand new laptop has arrived and she is a beauty. a quad core lovely with bluray and everything else maxed out. we are now cooking with gas. set it up yesterday and today and have been installing windows cluster in vmware, just because i hadnt done one in a while and its good practice. am also going to be doing some more studying and labs on it. feels nice to have a really nice computer. my high def movies that were not downloaded off the internet, ahem....all look pristine on it as well.

football tomorrow night and thats about it. will go round to the estate agents tomorrow who are renting out my flat to make sure everything is on track. hopefully its all good.

a friend of mine is a designer and just got a 1 month job in LA. how cool is that, and why doesnt shit like that happen to me?. probably because Windows/Vmware people grow on trees. very jealous.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - bricks and mortar. it reminds me of last september in california.

must be the one

have an interview tomorrow. less money and not a bank but it might be good experience. its only a 3 month project to install and configure VMware and Citrix XenApp for a firm. will see how it goes.

went to the gym last weekend and am feeling much better since i started playing football again. i train harder in the gym the further my fitness improves. am on a roll and will need to keep it up. weather was nice and bright but very windy over the weekend. its tough cycling when its so windy.

also noticed something else whilst cycling. there must be a sale on ferrari 599 and 599GTOs because i must have seen 6 or 7 just in the last 2 weekends all in the same area and it hasnt been the same car because i saw a red one, grey one, black one, white one. where is this recession everyone is talking about?. clearly rich people are still as rich if not richer because a 599 GTO goes for about £300,000 and to be honest it aint that pretty and it is wasnt one of those parts of london where the young arabs tend to hang around in their lamborghinis and ferraris.

anyways if i was rich i wouldn't drop 300 grand on a 599 GTO. i would buy a ferrari 458 italia for 170 grand and with the rest of the money i would just travel the world. tonight i would be in the Roxy on Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles watching she wants revenge play.

today i have mostly been listening to she wants revenge - must be the one. enjoy.

agents

stressed out the last couple of days dealing with more agents. this time its estate agents trying to get my flat rented out. hopefully we should be coming to the end of it and someone has been found, but its been a fucking pain. estate agents, recruitment agents, one day i am going to be rid of having to deal with them. thoroughly unpleasant experience dealing with any of them. for someone who doesn't have to deal with the shit of having to go to work these last few months, you would think i would have been the most relaxed person in london. hopefully i will be in 1 weeks time when i stop dealing with at least 1 set of agents.

also bought myself a new laptop. in all the time i have been working in IT and with computers i have never actually purchased my own computer. my current laptop is one that i 'acquired' from a previous role a few years back. they made me work like a slave for very little money, so when i left i kind of deliberately forgot to tell them i still had their laptop, which they had originally given me to support their systems 24/7 and for which they didnt pay me extra for.

the way i figured it, that laptop was my pay i was due when i left. anyways, 4 years later its still working but it has been left behind and i am starting to hit some limitations, running on an old processor and windows XP. got a really good deal on the new laptop and i had been looking around for about 6 months so when i saw this particular one had been knocked down, i had to jump at it. am going to be cooking with quad cores, bluray, HD and 6GB RAM in a few days. got a book on powershell and am going to install some VMs and get some practice in.

weekend is supposed to be nice weather. will be out on my bicycle and getting down to the gym. havent been since last weekend, because i have been constantly dealing with agents and it feels mentally exhausting keeping track of everything. thankfully i had football last night and usually after an hour, someone else comes and take over the pitch, but this week nobody had booked the pitch after us, so we stayed on playing. it ended up being 2 hours with no break and we were all exhausted at the end. felt a bit stiff this morning but feel fine now this evening.

have been watching the tour of california bike rice on tv. the big one, tour de france starts in a few weeks. should be good.

thats all folks. take care and dont get too stressed. its not worth it.

today i have mostly been listening to oasis - talk tonight. was never a fan and thought they were vastly overrated. half dozen good songs and the rest was just generic shit. this is one of their good songs. enjoy.

going nowhere

got a call back from the 2 jobs i had interviewed for about a week ago, and i didnt get either of them. the excuses i got were almost like the 2 agents had practiced it, because they both said that i got to the last 2 but i just missed out. whatever.

it was a little disheartening for about an hour but then when you think about it i did that land a job at a bank a couple of months ago and i left after 2 weeks because it was a shambles. in fact, i havent worked at a bank yet (5 and counting) where i havent thought it was shit work and it was going no where.

the only reason i apply for these places is because they pay a lot of money and after posting that chappelle clip in my last post, i really should know better and not be such a fucking sellout whore, and not get down when i dont land one of these shitty soul destroying jobs at firms full of campany men and brown noses whose main interest is not technology but paying for golf clubs memberships. fuck them, i am better than that. feel better now for not getting those roles. there are far too many cunts at places like that, and it been a relief these past few months not haveing to work any.

anyways, i applied for a couple of other jobs not at investment banks, and paying less money but there is some interesting technology involved. will see.

anyways on a lighter not, have a listed to this. its a show on xfm a london radio station and its very funny. i recommend episodes 3 and 4 in particular.

today i have mostly been listening to therapy?- going nowhere. appropriate and an awesome tune from a great album.

down down down

no news from any of the prospective contracts that were in the pipeline but agents never call on a monday. tuesday and wednesday are when you tend to get calls. who knows what they do on mondays, but you never hear from them. maybe they are counting paperclips, or they are at 'how to lie like you mean it' seminars or they are at a group therapy sessions for 'people who make money off other peoples talent'. who the fuck knows.

i have a possible offer for someone to rent my flat. with each passing week i feel more and more relucntant to rent it out because its so lovely. i could afford to live it in now, but the sensible part of me wants to be in a secure interesting contract first, as opposed to be blowing in the wind like i am now. something will come up, i know, but maybe i just need to wait 6 months before moving in.

i did speak to someone about a role last week and even though its only a 1 week job its something i am interested in doing and i hope i get it. i even reduced my rate to what they were looking for so that i could do that small project. its just deploying and configuring new esx clusters on new HP blades but its something i know i enjoy doing, and so i will do it for less money. i dont feel the need to be compensated as much when i am doing interesting work. on the flip side of that, i do ask for more money if it sounds like a boring job, just because i feel they should give me money for making me do stuff i have no passion for.

anyways, i hope they come through with that one week job. there is a moral to the story as well and that is to measure yourself by your skill and ability and what you do by the substance of what it is and who you are, and not by how much you get paid. having worked in investment banks i have met a few talented people but i have also met people that are shite but think they are great because they get paid a lot. these are the shallowest of people who have no passion for what they do and have decided to just do any shit as long as they get paid. whores is the most common term used to describe these people.

here is a clip of one of my favourite comedians dave chappelle talking about hollywood. this was a few years after he famously walked out on a $50m contract for a new series of his show, after deciding he wasnt enjoying it and didnt like the direction his career and life was going in and he didnt want to play the hollywood game. he decided to walk away immediately one day and went to africa for 2 weeks.

i read interviews of some young hollywood stars complaining about losing their privacy and the pressures of tinseltown, and i always wonder why they dont just walk away from it. robert pattison from the twilight films was complaining about it in an interview i read somewhere. walk away from it robert. you dont have to do the films. give up the money, the house in the hills, the VIP section in the club, but they never do. he has millions already and more money than most people will ever earn, yet they still cant bring themselves to leave. dave chappelle was different. he did walk away because he wanted to do work that interested him and $50m was not enough to compensate him for destroying his soul. here is a clip of him discussing it.

today i have mostly been listening to charlie simpson - down down down. a very good song. he used to be in a boy band called busted who were shit. he then moved onto fightstar who were better and now he is doing solo stuff and this single sounds very good. some people (not me) who a can be musical snobs (yes, me), might still hold his time in busted against him, but i have to give him credit where its due, its a very good song. have a listen and make your own mind up.

grilling

had a telephone interview with a large bank today and goodness me that was a proper technical grilling. they asked me some stuff i hadnt been asked before ever and although they were asking for very detailed and specific information on some stuff, the like you dont really carry around in your head, i thought it was a good interview by them. i think its quite unlikely they will call me back because there was some stuff i didnt know, but i have no problem in being beaten by anyone who could ace all those questions. they would be clearer better than me.

one more thing in the pipeline and am still waiting to hear back from a couple of places i interviewed at recently. its all quite a slow process. have been put forward for a role at one of the most prestigous hedge funds in london, but i doubt they will call me in because they tend to only want people with the best degrees from oxford and cambridge and my shitty electronics degree from my shitty university probably wont cut it for them on paper. i still think i could do the job well though.

still, all is well in the world because i have football tomorrow night for the first time in over a month. am gasping to play.

its that time of year when my mind has started to wander with thoughts of california in late summer. i dont know if its going to happen this year, but i really want to get out of london. we shall see how it goes, but i am going to try hard to see some beaches in southern california.

today i have mostly been listening to stromae - alors on danse. they played this at my gym. rap sounds so much better when sung in french.

sail

had another interview today and it seemed ok. also got a call about possible contracts at other banks as well. it was quiet for so long but its all kicking off now. when it rains it pours. one of them is a bit less money but at a bank i was quite interested to work in and also its only a 4 month gig. it might be perfect if i did something like that. its not one of the big mega investment banks in london and i might get exposure to some interesting technology. i get bored after a few months anyways so it could be worth taking less money and then seeing whats out there at the end of the year.

forgot to mention but one of the positives of my 2 week contract was having to be on a train for 2 hours a day, which meant i finished reading my book, hegemony or surival in a few days and i have almost finished reading 'the holocaust industry' by norman finkelstein as well. a controversial but very well written and researched book. will have to buy something else to read or i might go back and re-read something i already have. am a bit thick in the head and i tend to need to read things a couple of times before i absorb them properly.

who knows but my days of leisure might possibly be coming to an end. in an attempt to extend this period of leisure i bought a ticket for the £85m lottery jackpot tonight. actually i decided to cover my myself and bought 2 tickets in case the first one wasnt the winning numbers, i will get it on the 2nd ticket. i am clever like that. have already picked out a nice modest house and all thats left to decide is what car to buy and where to fly to first. argentina or japan. what a dilema.

weekend was quite nice and sunny and i got out on my bike. there was a bit of a breeze which isnt that helpful for cycling fast in, but its nice if you want to take it leisurely which i did. cyclists were out in force around regents park. saw some nice bikes from trek and specialized but nothing really cool or exotic. also had a good workout and am going to try and keep up the momentum and see if i can get a couple of weeks good training in and get a little more definition. its a nice feeling when your clothes fit very snug.

today i have mostly been listening to awolnation - sail. enjoy.

25th hour

finished up my 2 week contract yesterday and i must have done about an hours work in the whole time i was there. still, it was easy money and the people i was working with were nice enough. even captain cockney toned it down a bit and was not in the office that much either this week.

had an interview on wednesday and i have got another interview on monday. am also arranging to see another bank later next week as well. all the roles seem like they might be ok.

there has been a job going at another investment bank and i applied for it because it seemed like a perfect fit for me but i didnt hear anything back. i actually applied a few times for it in case somehow they didnt see my resume but each time i didnt get a call back. i found out that a couple of the guys from the bank i used to work at have just landed jobs there and there are already 3 other guys from the same team that had already moved there over the last few months into the same team these new guys are joining.

it kind of explains why i didnt get a call back. it seems like a bit of an oldboys network thing going on and i can imagine they were holding out for their buddies. initially i was a little dissapointed at not getting it, but having heard what the situation is from one of the guys who is going there, i am glad i am not going for a job to work in that team. have seen it before and it gets political and can be awkward for anyone not in the group. i cant be ass kissing or pretending to be friends with people i am not, just to get a contract. dont get me wrong, both guys are good at what they do, but i think the fact that their original team seems to have moved en-bloc over the last few months to the same bank shows its a bit of a closed circle. no bother though. we shall persist in our search.

today i have mostly been watching 25th hour. i got a high def copy recently and its one of my favourite films.