New Year, New Template

I've just been reminded that I haven't posted here since the end of August.  Somehow, with a new baby, and a job that's been taking up loads of time, I haven't got around to it.  But it's a new year, so here's an attempt at a fresh start.

Zachary is now 5 months old.  So, to celebrate, here's a picture.

Work has been insanely busy.  I've been technical lead on a project to move our company's middleware infrastructure from OC4J to Weblogic.  If you know what that means, well done!  If you know how to tune Weblogic for scalability, give me a ring!

I've also been doing stuff with RAODS (www.plazatheatre.com).  I've got a small part in their upcoming production of Ladies Day and I'm doing sound design for Frozen (which is coming up much sooner than I'd anticipated. Yikes).

And, of course, I've been blogging far too little.  Hopefully that will change this year.

See you in 6 months!

Terrible Uniforms

I worked at Sainsburys for a year or so in the mid 1980s. Mum quite rightly said I had to get a job as I was old enough to learn to drive and (more importantly) old enough to drink illegally in the Pelican pub in Addlestone.

Unfortunately, I seem to remember this backfired on her somewhat, as I was (and always have been) terrible at getting up in the mornings, especially on Saturdays, so there were occasions on which she had to give me a last-minute lift to the supermarket at around 8am.

There were good things about it - I was earning my first wages, I got to meet new people and I learned how to work a price label gun - and there were bad things; like the fact I spent most of my time collecting stray trolleys from around the parks and alleys of Chertsey, and getting locked in the meat freezer by the bullying butchers. But by far the worse thing was the appalling uniform. I think we got to wear our own white shirt, but the brown, nylon, flappy trousers and brown, nylon, flappy jacket were provided. And a smelly black clip-on tie.

All that nylon mean that Sainsburys employees in the 1980s were walking, talking Van De Graaf generators. We lit up the night sky with crackling aurorae which would move Joanna Lumley to tears. Romances between colleagues were literally electric. If you fancied a girl from the produce department you had to ground yourself on a display of melons before leaning in for a kiss, otherwise you would produce a spark which would leap from your lips to hers, igniting the hairspray on her Lady Di hair-do and leaving her writhing among the greengages, burned beyond recognition, like Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson or that bloke out of Bucks Fizz.

There was one advantage to working with such huge charges of static electricity. As any 'O' level physics pupil knew, it was possible to chain together several people to make a sort of primitive multi-cell battery. If you all held hands and shuffled your Clarks Trailfinder shoes on the lino simultaneously the potential energy would build up exponentially.

There is a legend of the day when most of the Saturday staff formed an electric conga chain: 30 people snaked up and down the household good aisles. As the chain crept up behind an unsuspecting pensioner, the tills supervisor made an announcement over the tannoy: "Mrs Baggins! This is the voice of God. I saw you slip that packet of fuses into your pocket. Now face your punishment!" At this moment the leader of the chain pointed his finger at the old lady's shoulder, in a manner reminiscent of Michaelangelo's work in the Cistine Chapel, and a holy bolt of lightning shot into Mrs Baggins's arm, making her drop her basket on her foot.

Poor Mrs Baggins. She opened a spiritualist church in the town and preached to the faithful four times a week, imploring God to repeat his demonstration in front of witnesses. Alas, it was never to happen again, for shortly afterwards Sainsburys ditched their nylon uniforms for something less fashionable, but made of cotton.

We're rich, I tell you. Rich!

I've been in the new job for three days and already they've given me a paycheck for 10 days work. Result! If it carries on like this, I'll be able to retire by January.

Starting Over

Yippee-do! I shall be starting work again on Monday, at HSA in Andover - just 7 (ish) short months after I left there - this time as a permanent employee, rather than a contractor.

That is all.

West Country Accent 2

How do!

I've been cast as 'Oracle DBA' in my good friend Mike's team of Oracle gurus at Simplyhealth in Andover.

That is all.

Sorry to be so brief!

Get On With It!

A recent post by Andrew reminds me that I haven't blogged here for some considerable time. 5 or 6 weeks I think.

So now, when I'm supposed to be tucked-up in bed dreaming about whatever it is that I can admit to MLYW that I dream about (cheese, Wynona Rider and scary clowns), I find myself composing a post to keep you all informed.

So, my 2 weeks work turned out to be exactly that. Not a thrilling job, unfortunately. I was sub-contracting for a colleague at a large supermarket, installing some database software onto around 350 of their servers. Trouble was, the incumbent permanent personnel seemed to make it pretty clear that they resented a contractor being brought in to do the work when they could have done it themselves - which only begged the question, why didn't they do it themselves? Anyway, I got the job 95% finished and was only unable to complete the task because each time I asked for the resources or input from people to complete the job, it wasn't forthcoming. Hey ho. So my contract finished after 2 weeks.

If you happen to know of any Oracle DBA jobs going - do give me a nudge, won't you?

Now I'm signing-on again and looking for another contract - this time, hopefully, something to take me up to the summer.

In the meantime, I've cast the play which I will be directing for production at the end of May and we are rehearsing the Ottershaw Players Farrago which is on in only, gulp, two weeks. And I really need to learn my lines!

2009? Already?

Howdy do!

It's been a funny few weeks. Things are still very tight on the money front in our household. My contract finished on 31st December, so I've been unemployed since Jan 1st.

In fact, yesterday I went to the dole office (or iJobCentrePlus 2000, as I believe it is now called) to sign-on for the first time in 22 years.

Actually, it was a very interesting experience. Last time I was "on the social" I had to take a bus from South Woodford to Walthamstow and queue up with a grey, depressed, steaming, packed mass of humanity to eventually be processed in a sisyphean nightmare of bureaucracy which made Terry Gilliam's Brazil look like an edition of the Holiday programme.

This time around, I was dealt with moderately efficiently by a Freephone call-centre before wandering around the corner to the warm, bright, friendly dole office (sorry, can't stop calling it that) where I was given lots of friendly advice.

OK - so there's no way we can live on the money they give us, but the experience is a lot better now than it was 20 years ago. And that can only be a good thing.

Which makes it all the more pleasing that today has been rather more positive. I received a text message earlier asking whether I am still available for work on Monday morning. "CHRIST ON A BIKE, YES!", I screamed. Before composing myself and replying in a more professional manner. This is some work which has been one-and-off-and-on-again since just before Christmas. At the moment it's probably only for 2 or 3 weeks. But that's better than a poke in the eye with a herring and who knows where it will lead.

Also today, I got a note from a Radio 4 producer asking if it was OK for them to link to a post here on this blog from almost a year ago, in order to illustrate an online item on redundancy. I'm sure that coincidence means something big and synchronous and Jungian. Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Whatever.

So - I'd better get some practice at getting up early and heading off on the train to London. What's the time now? 5pm I'm off to bed!

Merry Chrimbo

We're making the best of Christmas this year, but it won't be as merry as it has been in the past. Money is very tight, with MLYW still out of work and my job finishing in just 7 days time (and I'll only be paid for 4 of those).

There's a sniff of a possible short-term contract for me which might materialise in the 2nd week of the New Year (fingers, toes and everything else crossed), so I think I should look upon the first week of January as an enforced holiday - unless I can find anyone who needs holiday cover for their Oracle databases!

Our entire family decided has decided to forego Xmas presents this year altogether. Though I'm sure that my nephew Tom will still have a bundle of things to open on Christmas morning. While it will be odd not to have a pile of gaily-wrapped gifts to open on December 25th, that's more than balanced by not having to brave the shopping hoards and it's been great not to have to spend money which can be saved for more essential purchases; like the mortgage payments, or a new, uncracked windscreen...

Anyhoo - it's all been a bit depressing of late, hence the lack of posting recently. I'm sure things will pick up in 2009. We've already made plans in January to meet up with friends we haven't seen for a year or two. We've neglected old friends of late (though it's a two-way street!) and 2009 is going to be the year of catching-up with people - so beware!

Gissa job!

At work my current contract is coming to an end on 31st December, so I'm now looking for a new contract beginning in January.

There's a small possibility that my current employer may be able to offer me a full-time position in 5 or 6 months, which would be nice, so I'm keeping my eye out for a short-term contract to tide me over until then.

To that end, I've set-up a new blog on which I'm going to blog some work-related stuff - with any luck it will function as a shop window.

I've got my fingers crossed that something comes along quickly. We've had a bad year financially, with MLYW being out of work since May, so I can't afford to not have a job for even a week in the New Year.

In the meantime, even this atheist will be praying to Saint Camelot, patron of the lottery...

Lost Coat

Presented for your delectation, an email that was sent around our office this morning:

We seem to have a coat that's been left in [location deleted] on the coat hook. I wondered if anyone has lost one? It's a long female coat.

Two things immediately spring to mind:

1. A female coat? I had no idea that coats had gender. How do you tell if a coat is male or female? If you leave a male and female coat on the same hook, do they breed? Would you end up with a closet full of little jackets?

2. The fact that the coat has been left "on the coat hook" suggests that it's not so much "lost" as "left in a safe place for later collection". If the lady who sent the email walks around our office she will see many "lost" coats, hanging on coat racks, waiting to be found by their owners who are sitting, working - some of them over 12 feet away...

If it's not claimed within 3 days it should be sacrificed to the God of Lost Outdoor-wear: Quetzlcoatl.

Futility

I have to share with you a comment that a workmate made to me yesterday. After a day in which my planned work changed 3 or 4 times, due to the whims of someone else working on the same project, I said that I thought that plans were probably a mythical concept. My esteemed software developer colleague replied:

Well, they do say that no plan survives contact with the ‘enemy’. I suppose in this context, the ‘enemy’ is reality…

Anyone who has ever worked on a large project, with constantly shifting timescales, targets and priorities will know the despair that underlies the observation.

Ssh! Be Vewwy Quiet.

No, I'm not hunting wabbits. I've just been really, really busy.

I started my new job three weeks ago and it seems like my feet haven't touched the floor since. My days are packed. From the 45 minute drive to Andover, through eight or more hours in the office, with barely a moment to grab a sandwich, to the drive back home. It's been a little tiring - I haven't worked so much, or rather, I haven't had to concentrate on the same task for hours at a time, for years.

So it's been a bit of a culture shock. Since I started blogging I've always been able to find the odd hour during the working day when I could write a post. And even when I haven't posted every day, it's not as if I didn't have the time to, but I found myself without the will to.

Now I'm having the opposite problem: if I do think of something to blog about, I don't have the time to put my thoughts into electronic form.

I'm slightly resistant to start blogging at home. MLYW doesn't see enough of me as it is, what with Ottershaw Players duties to attend to, so I'm reluctant to spend an hour each night in the study, typing away.

But hey, it's a positive thing. I've got less time because I'm enjoying my work (for the first time in 2 or 3 years) and the days are just flying past.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I've started my new job. A four-month contract (with a, fingers-crossed, possible extension for another 3 months, if I'm a good boy). I shouldn't really mention where, but sock puppets might give you a clue in the UK...

It's a completely different environment to my last job. Busy, but a relaxed busy, if that makes sense. And with none of the excessive rules, regulations and paranoia that I had to put up with before.

My previous employer's policies were, to say the least, a bit over-the-top. If one needed to claim expenses for a business lunch (say a £2 sandwich from Tesco) or a taxi journey, the expense form had to be signed in blood and counter-signed by my team leader, the IT Director, UK Finance Director, EMEA Head Of Mergers and Acquisitions, Worldwide CEO, The Pope and King Harald V of Norway. The recent papal interregnum caused a 3-month holdup in petty-cash claims.

Any requests for additional IT access or resources were even harder to achieve, and were often turned down by George W Bush, despite the approval of Congress!

In contrast, my new employer is much easier to work with. Today, after only 24 hours on site, I needed to request access to a service which could enable to me to shutdown the entire infrastructure of the corporation, plus, potentially, large chunks of the whole Internet. The request was written in pencil on a Post-It note and stuck onto the monitor of a junior member of the PC support team. He wandered over 10 minutes later to tell me that he'd actioned my request and additionally given me the ability to manipulate the German stock market, control Sizewell-B power station, administer all the blogs on Blogger and fix the results of next week's edition of 'Dancing On Ice' . "Just in case it comes in handy", he said, "but do be careful you don't break anything".

So, I'm writing this post from my new office and wondering what that new button is on the Blogger edit page. I wonder what happens if I pre------
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Surprise!

My last day in the job today and I was pretty gloomy as I finished off the last few tasks that needed doing. Then, minutes before going down the pub at lunchtime, I got a phone-call from an old colleague, out of the blue, offering me a 4-month contract to do some work with him.

Fantastic! My mood swung 180 degrees.

It's obviously not a permanent solution, but it gives me time to look for something long-term. Excellent! And it's work with someone I am already friends with. What could be better?

So - I was going to say this today anyway - thanks to everyone who has been in touch with messages of support and encouragement. I really do appreciate them all. I've been too wrapped-up in it to reply to you individually, or in comments, but it really does mean a hell of a lot. Thank you all very much.

And finally... Wahey!

The Axe Drops

Another long, long meeting today (this one a whole six minutes) and I am to be made redundant for the first time in my life.

It's scary, liberating, worrying, stomach-churning and bizarre - all in one.

I'm lucky in some ways - I've never been made redundant before. One of my colleagues is experiencing it for the 3rd time in 5 years. Ouch!

I'm looking forward to the 'discussion' with HR over how much holiday pay I am owed. They think I am due 2 days money. I think it's 2.8. Not much init, but that difference is worth around £100 so I'm pushing for what I think is my due.

So - Friday will be my last day, with a week's notice paid in lieu. I need a job. Fast!

Looking for Work

As my employer is making fewer than 10 people redundant at this time, they have no obligation to go through a full 30-day consultation period. Which means that I could be given my notice at any time!

So, I'm on the job-hunt!

I've setup a website which sort of documents the sort of things I think I could do for money. Not sure if it's likely to have any effect, but you never know. If anyone reading this has any feedback on my jobsearch site, please email me or leave a comment here.

Short Not Sweet

Well, fuck-a-doodle-do! That was the shortest meeting that I've ever attended in my professional career. I was meeting our IT Director and the HR person to 'discuss' the 'consultation' which would map my future career with this company. My colleague who went before me was in there for 80 minutes. I walked in, was told that there were people in our US HQ who could do my job and that if I could find an alternative employment quickly, they'd be happy to pay off my notice (a whole week's money: whoop-de-doo!).

So.

Bollocks.

My plan was to stay here long enough to sort out our finances so that MLYW and I could finally look for new jobs that we really wanted. Instead, it's back to looking for another DBA job - well paid, but really not what I want to do.

Anyone out there need an Oracle DBA?

Possibilities

I've just seen a job advertised which looks like it might be OK.

Trouble is, it's in Windsor, which is even more of a pain to get to than Staines.

The ad says it's for an "internationally known manufacturer of luxury sports cars". Does anyone know which company that might be?

The salary is better than my current job, so I guess I should apply - though at present I am incredibly ticked off with my drive to work - and apparently it's got "excellent benefits". Though if one of the benefits is use of a luxury sports car we'll have to move house 'cos I couldn't park it in Aldershot!

A Letter

I've just been called in to the boardroom and told that my job may be at risk because of the reorganisation and handed a letter inviting me to a meeting tomorrow to discuss what happens next.

So far no-one here has got away without one, as far as I can tell. I can't believe that there'll be much work done here for the next week or two...

Thus endeth the live blogging experiment for the afternoon.

All Change?

Here's a wee experiment in LiveBlogging this afternoon:

We've just been told that our department at work is about to undergo a major restructuring. It's no huge surprise - we've not exactly been busy for a while - so now 15 of us (managers and staff) are sitting waiting to be called into the boardroom, to see whether we are to be 'consulted' about redundancy...