rihanna

one of the guys got married last week and he posted on facebook everyday before the wedding about random shit he was doing, and then he facebook posted on the wedding day and now he has gone on honeymoon and its been 3 days and he has posted everyday from his honeymoon. what the fuck?!!. 

you are having that great a time on your honeymoon with your new wife that you feel the need to tap around on your phone and be constantly posting random posts and pics?. i suspect you might not be having that great a time if you are on your phone on your honeymoon. also, he is away in a foreign country and the data roaming charges must be costing him a fortune, but i guess its a price worth paying to project a certain image of yourself on a social network. 

its like he is almost too self conscious when in reality not many people actually give a shit. here is an interesting interview, part of which deals with bands being too self conscious and the rest of it is about society and politics and lots of other interesting things. 

even though it was a 4 day week, it was a struggle. only 4 more weeks till i am out of there. its strange, but had they given me a 6 month contract and i knew i was going to be there for a while longer i would feel more motivated and happy to be there. the fact i know i am leaving soon has completely shot my motivation to bits. this is always one of the toughest part of contracts, when you just need to keep going when you know you will be gone soon and your mind is on the upcoming holiday or the next contract. 

part of me was thinking i should have just booked  a week in los angeles, instead of tokyo, and i know LA quite well now and i could have gone down to san diego for a couple of days and just spent a week laying on a beach in socal and going to baseball games or MLS, or even seeing a band play. it would be easy and very stress free. instead i am going to one of the most crowded cities in the world staying in a metropolitan area of 30 million people. sometimes i wonder if another big bustling city is what i need right now. i am fed up enough with london as it is. 
......and then  i think, no way, its tokyo and its going to be amazing. i think it will be. my mind just wants to take the easy way out sometimes. its a symptom of fatigue. i am on my knees with tiredness these days. 

this is song that was mentioned in the interview i linked to. i agree it is a great song and she is one of the few people doing interesting things in pop music, as opposed to just going back and recreating exactly what was done before and adding nothing to it. 

bullshitters

work today after the 4 day weekend and as expected it was a struggle, but only 3 more days to get through till we hit the weekend. my dull headache has returned after subsiding for a few days. too much lawyer and accountant shit to deal with outside work with regards to my late fathers taxes and estate. the govt manage to turn personal sadness into stress and anger by through the seemingly calculated use of utter stupidity. 

in other news, CV's have started turning up at work for new infrastructure architects. me and the other contractor were taking a look through them. personally i would pity anyone coming into an interview with him who had written something on their CV that they actually did do, because he would catch you out. anyway, someone had sent a cv and i could hear him groaning whilst reading it, because the guy had written he was an expert in 'cloud computing'. its a generic term that means nothing really and is often used by bullshitters and non-technical people. 

it reminded me of this where i said someone got a job at a massive US internet company which i wont name directly but it could be one from google, yahoo, facebook, twitter or microsoft, and they had written they were an expert in "computers" and the "internet". i showed him the guys profile and he was shocked that someone who spoke in those terms managed to get a job at a serious tech firm. it felt slightly vindicated in my own views about it. fuck me, i am no techie genius but if someone wrote they understood "the internet from the wires up to the app", and i interviewed them, they might be on the receiving end of some specific questions about the make up of TCP packets and maybe a few questions on configuring OSPF on a juniper router. i might even throw in a question about the physical cabling order of pins in an RJ45 connector. if you mention wires, i will give you wires. you cant be writing shit like on your resume and not expect to be quizzed about it. 

i have been looking at my CV and whilst its not the most impressive thing out there, i can back every word of it up. hopefully i will get asked to interview and not embarrass myself over the next few weeks and months. 

this is funny. 

riptide

we are in a 4 day weekend and its needed because i am on my knees. i had not had a day off from work since last july and i feel shattered. as i mentioned  before, i would have been going on holiday in a few days but my request got denied when i asked in february and so i finish my contract in mid may and this weekend i booked a ticket and hotel in tokyo for a week at the end of may. the perpetual headaches and the constant stress and hassle of dealing with shit outside of work as well as in work means i am looking forward to being somewhere completely different for a week and its going to be a life saver. 

i am still having to deal with stuff from when my dad passed away and its been nearly 2 years. Her majesty's revenue and customs are complete cunts. they want to check my dads tax return from april 2012 to may 2012 when he died. its 6 weeks and we already paid the tax, but they want to check it again. fuck me, someone grow a brain there. unless he had income of more than 10 grand in that 6 week period which would take him above the threshold to pay tax, he does not owe anything. seeing as they have all his tax returns going back years, they can see his monthly income from his state and work pension would not be 10 grand in 6 weeks, but they still have sent me another huge form to get filled in. they have sent the letter under the premise that i might be owed a refund for paying too much tax. i dont want a refund, keep the fucking money!. i wonder if dave cameron had to put up with this shit when his old man died. no probably not, eton boys are connected and dont get treated like cunts, thats for the rest of us lower classes. 

anyways, my boss who turned down my holiday has said he is going to be working from home all next week because he has work to get done. sounds like bullshit to me. when projects get down to the wire you need to be in the office and calloborating face to face with the people you are working with, not working from home. the other permie is also working from home on tuesday as well, and the third permie is on holiday. so, out of 5 staff, its going to be the 2 contractors in the office. make of that what you will. no wonder they had to torpedo my holiday request on the premise of a lie that they were going to give me a 6 month contract, when in fact they only offered me a 1 month extension so that they can all take time off themselves. had i known in february that i would only get a month extension i might not have turned down some of the potential job opportunities i got in march and the beginning of april. as a contractor you have to be professional, and i did not say anything, but i think i have been treated a little poorly.

no bother. only 5 weeks or so till i fly to the land of the rising sun. part of me just wanted to fly to southern california for a week and lay on a beach, but i thought i would freshen my mind and try something new.