the good the bad and the ugly

i got my new laptop on thursday from work. after complaining about how small it was i really should be a bit more grateful, because i looked it up on the web and it turns out they have given me an almost £2000 pound laptop. to put that in perspective, my new core i7, 6GB RAM, blu ray, HighDef screen beauty that i bought myself a couple of weeks ago, costs about half that.

i also did a bit of work on thrusday as well. nothing major but just building a few ESXi servers, which is better than sitting at my desk doing nothing. if i have something to do i am happy. i dont like being overly stressed and swamped but i also dont like being idle. all in all, everything was good the last couple of days of last week at work.

the bad.....well nothing that i can see yet.

....and the ugly....well i got talking to one of the project managers who i thought was a little bit too chatty and loud for my liking, but seems fine enough. anyways, he was telling me that he was a contractor as well but that he was contracting through one of the senior project managers who has his own firm and who also works at the hedge fund, and that the senior project manager was skimming his own slice of commission. basically the PM is paid a day rate, and the senior PM takes a slices (not normal) and then the recruitment company takes a slice (which is normal), and then you get whats left over. this PM then spoke to the official recruitment agency and found out how much they billed the senior PM, and from that he worked out how much the senior PM was skimming. turns out its nearly 30 grand a year that the senior PM is skimming.

it doesnt sound illegal as such, but it does sound like a very big conflict of interest, in that this senior PM has a direct personal financial interest in the people working under him. it could affect his decision if it came to hiring and firing people or giving raises. i heard that a similar scheme was run by a previous senior project manager at the firm and both he and 4 others that were in on it, were fired not too long ago. this could get ugly. still its nothing to do with me and i dont know the precise details, and i will be a good contractor and keep my mouth shut and get on with my work. the PM that is being stiffed is currently working his way out of the situation and transferring his contract to work directly for the firm.

glastonbury festival this weekend. i have my views on it that i have written about before, about it being for mainstream acts and that its an event just for middle aged middle class wankers who aren't into music desperately trying to be cool. basically its a giant cluster fuck of big bands and the media. christ, you should listen to the BBC presenters gushing endlessly about every single band and performance, even the performances that are clearly shit or at best just average. clearly they have never been to a proper show, like lights in the sky tour by nine inch nails. they would die of a fucking heart attack if they ever saw that.

anyways, i have been watching it from the comfort of my sofa as opposed to crawling around in the mud like some farm yard animal or a middle class middle aged wanker. the kills were very good as were the gaslight anthem. u2 were ok, but only because they started their set with 5 songs for the achtung baby album (their last good album), and not any of their recent shite. i switched off when they started playing songs about sexy boots and vertigo. coldplay were on last night, and whilst they play very well together and are clearly well rehearsed but they just seemed a little clinical and they had that false sincerity that tony blair used to do as well. sorry but its true. warpaint were very good as well, i really enjoyed their set.

today i have mostly been listening to the kills - no wow. this is the first song the kills played at glastonbury. that performance is not on youtube yet, but this is them performing it live in amsterdam a couple of years ago. allison mosshart is too cool for school.

Tiny laptop

When is the soonest you can start?, they asked me last week on monday. I said wednesday woud be fine, and they told me to come in then. You would have thought that they might have been busy and had a ton of work lined up for me to given the urgency in wanting me to be here as soon as possible.

Over a week later i am still sat at a desk, which is not allocated to me. I have the use of a pc, but its not mine so i cant install any of the software i will need and hence i have done no work. Come on fellas, you are supposed to be better than this.

Yesterday they ordered me a laptop which will be my own pc. I would prefer a powerful desktop with 2 monitors like everyone else has here. Thanks, but its tiny and got a 12 inch screen and given that i have to work simulataneously on SCCM console, and have remote desktops open, and VI client and mail and messenger, i dont think its a wise choice. As far as i can tell, only desktops have big monitors and there dont appear to be spares kicking aroound for laptop users on any of the desks.

People are still nice and am trying to be positive, but when you are a sat at someone elses desk for over a week doing nothing and have the prospect of working off a tiny laptop for 6 months, it hardly fills you with joy.

Still, must not grumble too much, could be worse. They didnt order me a netbook or an iPad and they didnt tell me to download the citrix receiver and ask me to work off a VDI on my tiny xperia phone. Always look on the bright side of life.

Today i have mostly been listening to....to be added tonight.

days of heaven

am at that stage at work where i am doing nothing as i wait for my network access to come through. i can see there is work to do but i just cant do any of it yet. arghhh!!!. am trying not to get too frustrated but its hard just sitting there doing nothing. the day drags on and i just want to do some work to keep the boredom at bay if nothing else. hopefully not too many more days of waiting.

weather has been shite the last few weeks. showery and cloudy for the whole of june so far, but have still been cycling to the gym and not crashed once which is a bonus. still lots of silly drivers in london town even on my 'safe' route.

went out for drinks with some of the guys from football on friday night. one of the guys that used to play with us emigrated to australia a couple of years ago, and was back for a visit. he also was good friends with the other guy from football who got sent to prison about a year ago and he went to visit him in prison.

managed to get some more details about what he got sent down for as opposed to the explanation we were given initially which was 'gangster shit'. turns out he got found guilty of 3 counts of grevous bodily harm (GBH) and 1 count of armed robbery. also turns out the GBH was pretty sadistic. think of mr blond in reservoir dogs and its not too far off it. christ alive, what on earth was he thinking?. i dont recognise that person at all, but he did it and i think has admitted it. he will be eligible for a parole hearing in 3 and a half years but there are no guarantees and if that doesnt come through it will be another 2 years later that he could apply again. what a waste of life.

me and my friends grew up in working class immigrant neighbourhoods in london, and i know quite a lot of people that i went to school with and played football with that have gone to prison or started doing drugs. dont want to sound bad, but i am actually quite proud of myself to have avoided all that and to have made my way to a decent job at a hedge fund, although in lots of peoples eyes hedge funds and investment banks are full of criminals. maybe i aint so different after all.

was talking to a friend of mine who saw the new terence malick film, tree of life and i asked her what she thought. she said it was ok but quite slow. i am a big fan of terence malick and i love all his films but his new film hasnt been released in england yet. i started to wonder if maybe it might not be as great as i had hoped for, but then my friend added that she also saw the film sister act 2 on tv the other day and thought it was wonderful. jesus wept. watched the film days of heaven last night. a lovely beautiful film. recommended.

future starts slow

the new job wanted me to start as soon as possible, so it was my first day at the new contract. all seems pretty good so far. i got my security pass sorted on the first day and although i am sitting at someone elses desk i have a log in and the rest of my access is coming through. its not like i have been dumped on an empty floor entirely on my own. they people there have been helpful thus far.

not sure if i am going to stay in the building that i am in now, but its the best building i have ever worked in, and i have been to quite a few big investment banks who have tonnes of money. this place is off the scale compared to them. everyone has two 22" widescreen high def monitors, brand new PCs, really nice chairs and desks, and free lunches and breakfasts. shit i thought it was just the googles and facebooks that did shit like that. seems hedge funds got the benajmins too.

i have also had the usual calls from agents but have been turning them down. i really do feel like getting stuck in to some work and dont even want to consider anything else. am planning on working hard these next 6 months, and i doubt i will be asked to stay longer. am working on a specific project and after that, i cant really see the need to have any extra people on board. i will go when the project ends and thats at the end of the year. no bother. could do with a trip to southern california in january for some winter sun.

its started raining about 2 minutes before i was about to leave the house and go to football tonight. texted the guys and told them i was stuck at work and couldnt make it. didnt really feel like walking to the station in rain and then coming home at 11.30pm on the train, wet and cold after playing football in a storm. cant afford to be getting ill and i would rather go to sleep at a decent hour and be bright and alert for work tomorrow, not sleep deprived and sniffly. dont want to take the piss in my first week.

today i have mostly been listening to the kills - future starts slow. enjoy.

new contract

i got a call today from the agency that put me forward for the job i interviewed at on tuesday. they have offered me a 6 month contract and it looks like once i get through security checks i will be starting in around a week. the firm is a hedge fund in central london and it will be a good name to have on the CV to add to my collection of investment banks.

as i predicted and is always the way with these things, i then almost immediately got a call to invite me for an interview at a very large investment bank. nothing for ages and then 2 come along with in a few minutes of each other. i nearly blew it out having accepted the job at the hedge fund but i think i might just go along and see what its like. this particular firm is a huge global organisation and have a reputation for being a bit of a sprawl and not fun, but i am curious to see what they have and how they run things. it is a lot more money, but to be honest that wouldnt be the reason to take it if an offer was made. i could have been paid double what i was getting at my last contract and i still would have hated it. i dont want to hate my job.

part of me was thinking of getting a late ticket and flying off to NYC tomorrow and the price was quite reasonable but the weather is a bit changeable there at the moment and if anything i am in the mood for beaches on the west coast, so i think i will do that instead later in the year. i dont think it will be in september but after my contracts end at the end of december or beginning of jan. its just the way things have worked out.

it also transpires that the couple i rented my flat out to are idiots. i gave them 2 sets of keys, but i only had 1 key for the remote control gate for the parking area. i told them to take care of it as its quite expensive and i only had 1. they were careful for 3 days and then lost it. i got a call from the estate agent asking me to order another one. in fact they lost 1 complete set of keys including passes to get into the building, so i have to order those as well. fucking idiots. 3 fucking days. in the meantime they are having to park their car on the street which costs money as they didnt but a residents permit, because you wouldnt need one if you had a space you could use in the secure gated parking lot. they are also going to have to cough up £80 for 2 new remote gate openers. well done idiots. hope you will be more careful next time. cant wait to get my flat back from them next year and do it up nice and move in.

today i have mostly been listening to bruce sprinsteen - the ghost of tom joad. i sometimes get the impression artists sometime run out of things to write about once they become rich and successful, because their lives and experiences become seperated from what was normality. quite often they lose that fire in their bellys that drove them on when they were unknown and also they might fear alienating audiences and lose out on sales with anything that might sound different to what gave them that big audience. springsteen clearly didnt mind all that when he made this. stripped down acoustic recording singing about experiences and things he had seen and heard whilst living in california. i think its one of his best albums. enjoy.

crash #3

about 4 years ago i had a bad 6 months where i crashed off my bike twice on a particular road. first time i went over the handle bars and landed on my head and my shoulder. my jaw didnt fit right for about a week and my shoulder was screwed for about 6 weeks. second crash was when i hit a bump in the road which knocked my chain off and the bike just went from underneath me. i took some skin off on my hip and elbow as i did my body slide on the road. since those incidents i changed my route to a slightly longer but less hazardous route going on back roads, and have not kissed tarmac since.

today as i left the gym it stated to rain a little. i figured i would try and beat the rain and cycle home the quick (crashes) way. after all what are the odds?. i got to that one particular road which is about 2 miles long. i was going along minding my own business when a bmw z4 came up along side and then cut across to do a left turn, with out indicating, or seeing me right beside him. i slammed on the brakes, skidded a bit and then high sided and flew off the bike and hit the road.

unlike the last times i crashed i didnt feel any particular pain straight away and i got straight back on my feet, smiled at the driver and said "well done mate" and picked my bike and walked away with it. about 15 seconds later i got a really sharp pain in my left knee which was what must have taken the full impact of hitting the road. i managed to cycle the rest of the way home, but my knee is grazed and a bit swollen up and i am limping. i should have fucking known better to cycle that way. lesson learned.

why is it that people that drive bmws tend to be cunts. audi's as well. the other thing i noticed was i felt quite calm and almost relieved when i bounced back up from the road initially. its probably why i didnt say anything to the driver of the car, which is unlike yesterday. on that occasion a lady in front of me did a sudden and random u-turn in the road and she nearly hit a woman who was walking with her 3-4 year old kid and pushing a pram. the driver then had the nerve to shout at the woman whose pram she nearly hit. i was about 10 metres away cycling up to them when i saw this and on that occasion i did get angry. you nearly kill the womans baby and then you shout at her from inside your audi?. i pulled up alongside and said some choice words which were quite harsh. i even shocked myself when i said. shit, where did that seething vitriol come from?.

anyways, i shall now officially ban myself from the other route and go back to my longer and safer route.

today i have mostly been listening to audioslave - be yourself.

scuppered

last summer when i left my contract i deliberately didnt try too hard to get a new contract because i timed it to be off work in june when the world cup was on tv. i ended up going to 1 interview and they made me start straight away so my plan for relaxing in front of the tv watching games everyday was scuppered.

this time around i have been buying a flat and now have been involved in the hassle of trying to rent it out. amidst all that i have done a couple of short contracts but i have also been to a few interviews recently and i have missed out. it was after a few rejections that the seed of an idea to head out to new york and california was planted in my head. so it would be about right then, that it is now that my phone goes red hot about contracts. i have an interview on monday and another on tuesday. i turned down another interview from a company that wanted to call me in today, and i am waiting to hear back from another place next week to see if they call me in. just when you make a plan it all gets blown out the water and its scuppered. typical.

i shouldnt really complain. its money and a job and one of the roles that i am waiting to hear back from is an absolute peach. probably wont get it, but if i do, i will be heading out to cali in september on my holiday and living large...well...renting a camaro and seeing some bands play in hollywood. same as before.

in other news, my flat has been rented out and the people have moved in. they seemed nice and its a bit of a relief. its a fucker paying the mortgage on a place you aint even living in. hopefully the next few weeks are quiet and its easy money coming in.

weather has been nice these last few days. hot and sunny today. will be out on my bike tomorrow and am in the mood to set a good time.

today i have mostly been watching the trailer for girl with the dragon tatto. 2 reasons, 1 is that it looks really dark and 2, the song playing is karen O from the yeah yeah yeahs singing immigrant song by led zepplin and its produced by trent reznor. its wicked.

and if you want some music, here is the arcade fire - speaking in tongues. great bands and artists go through a phase where they just make better and better music and are so in tune with the times. arcade fire seem to be right in that zone right now. have a listen and you will see what i mean.

new coldplay song got played on the radio today. i dont know if you still read this V, but if you do, dont hate me for saying it sounded lame. it just sounds like a band who have run out of ideas and are just writing songs for stadiums and radio but that doesnt actually speak to people, or at least me.