the weather was beautiful, the car i hired was awesome, the food was lovely the scenery was breathtaking, the women were stunning, the music was great and the football was very good. .....and then i flew into a cold and drizzly london town on monday and had to immediately deal with bank stuff and i found out that someone had bought a mobile phone in my name, which i know nothing about and had to report it to the phone company as fraud and then my 2TB external hard drive died. welcome back to england, its still shit. below are pictures in chronological order of NY, San Fran, Pacific Coast Highway and LA.
i finished up at work last friday and it was a relief to finally make it to the end. when you have a countdown in your head from 6 or 7 weeks out, the end seems so far away, but i got there in the end and you quickly forget how dull and long some of the days were that got you there. i also heard back from the swiss bank that interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and they decided to go with someone else who had contracted there previously. no worries. i was almost dreading getting that job. it was just support and operational work and i would rather do some projects. have got all my stuff ready for my trip to the states for which i fly out tomorrow. bought tickets for maximo park in LA, which was the last thing for me to get sorted. everything else is good to go, i think. my heart and soul and brain needs a break from london and life and work. today i have mostly been listening to kate bush - cloudbusting. when you see the generic karaoke singers that get fame and fortune that far exceeds there skills, its nice to know there are artists that appear to be in music because they want to make music, and not for the money or the fame or the endorsements or the free tickets to film premieres and fashion shows. a friend of a friend is a musician and he knows some producers and one of them passed on a recording he had made to kate bush, without his knowledge. she then added some backing vocals on one of the songs she liked and gave it back to him and said he could use it as long as it was uncredited that she did it. how fucking cool is that. some people just like to sing and are into music. enjoy this wonderful tune.
had a meeting with my teamleader who said i would not be getting a contract renewal due to the fact that i said i would not be able to do the on-call. ...er yeah, i already told you a month ago so that you would have time to find someone else to replace me????. anyways, the 3 other guys in the department are going to be busier than normal because they have got to do on-call one week in 3 and also have to do weekend work as well. i dont even have a tiny twinge of regret wishing i had stayed. i didnt get to do as much netapp stuff and you could argue if i stayed there for a year i would know a lot more, but i would have been de-skilled on my windows server and vmware skills and i dont want to do that. they have also screwed up my timesheets so i havent been able to submit them for the whole of august. they also approved my timesheets late in july so it means i have not been paid for the last 2 months. i keep reminding my boss every couple of days that my timesheets are not working and he always says he has escalated it to his boss, but his boss seems to do nothing because they still dont work. i was quite curious how this bank functioned and it could have been a place that was smaller, but dynamic and cutting edge. they are not like that at all. they have expanded a lot in the last 3 years but you can still see that they have not grown organisationally and proffessionally as their headcount and profits have gone up. its still run as a small bank with small bank processes and small bank mentality and individuals working in the same way they did years ago when it was a fraction of the size. anyways, i finish this friday and thats me done. i had my interview last tuesday at the other bank, and it was ok. i dont know, but i got the feeling they would not go with me. just a feeling. not dissapointed if they gave me a pass as they didnt seem very exciting or dynamic either. none of the investment banks are. i dont know why i keep expecting them to be because i have been in 5 or 6 different banks and they are all conservative bureaucracies with people just guarding their positions. a friend of mine says there is a permanent job going at the private equity firm he works at. am seriously considering giving up the contracting for it. they seem small and dynamic and i would get to do windows 2012 and vsphere 5 and get my hands on all the latest tech. will see how it goes. he is in NY at the moment so i will either catch up with him at the end next week when i am there, or see him before then as he might be back sometime next week. anyways, i leave for NY on thursday. i just need to book a hotel for one night near pismo beach which will be where i stopever on my trip down the pacific coast highway from san fran to LA. everything else is sorted. looks like the car rental place might have new 2013 mustang GTs which would be a result, otherwise it will be the same car as last year, which i will try and get changed to a bright orange challenger, if thats the case. today i have mostly been listening to janes addiction - jane says.
