I have a new job! And other musings.
Fuck me - an update! TO LIVEJOURNAL!
I remember when LJ was cool and invite-only, a place for emo rants and general moaning, but it was cool none the less. It was social networking before SpaceBook and MyFace came along, so I wonder what went so wrong - maybe they just didn't make it easy enough to upload photographs?
I actually prefer LJ to Facebook, but nobody uses it so its largely useless (of course, I've set it up so that this automagically forwards to Facebook as a note anyway, so that people will actually have a chance to read it). And if you are reading it and have a Livejournal, by all means drop me a comment so I know that I'm not the only one - http://kushan.livejournal.com .
When I last properly used Livejournal, everyone used it. Then I got bored and stopped and suddenly nobody else uses it. Then I created a Facebook account and suddenly everyone uses that. Then Google+ came along, I joined it and a couple of days later, everyone was using that, so I wonder if it works in reverse?
Anyhoo, enough jabbering.
I started my new job this week. This job came out of nowhere - I interviewed for it over a year ago, but they hired a different guy. They gave really positive feedback, but he was just slightly more experienced than me. Luckily, he got sick of the commute and quit after a few months, so they called up the recruitment company and asked specifically for me. I got the phone call on the Monday to interview on the Tuesday and was offered the job later that day, to start just over a week later.
That start was Monday of this week.
From Random stuff
That's what the office looks like. As you can see, it's pretty nice - a world apart from Virgin, where you'd be lucky to find a section of carpet that wasn't stained and the only seats were shitty plastic things (half of which were moved to the meeting rooms because they didn't have enough chairs for them).
The company itself is fairly small, there's only maybe 15 or 16 people that work there (including myself), but overall it seems pretty successful. The people are nice and friendly, there's perhaps not as much banter as at Virgin, but I think that's more to do with people just being busy than "un-fun" or whatever.
A testament to the "success" of the company is the machine I have. I'm the new guy, not much better than your average student intern and yet the machine I work with is pretty beefy - quad core i7 (With HT so windows thinks there's 8 CPU cores in there), 4GB of RAM and a 22" 1080p display. This is how IT should be done - up to date equipment, equipment that can handle the task at hand, not hand-me-downs and cheap, crap machines that can barely run more than a web browser.
The company makes a range of tools that basically test credit/debit card machines, like the ones you'd find in Tesco or whatever. They make cards that can test the machines, software that can test the cards and all sorts of other bits and pieces that somehow tie it all together. I'll be honest, I don't understand how a lot of it works, but apparently that's completely normal. Credit cards are complicated things, inundated with bizarre standards (standards that aren't actually adhered to half of the time), millions of acronyms for terms that don't make much sense anyway and generally are a boring affair, but compared to what I was doing previously, it's not much worse. And for the extra money (think in the order of a pay cheque 50% bigger than before), it's worth it.
The first week went by without a hitch. I was slightly shocked when we had a meeting and the boss quite literally said "So, has anyone got any suggestions on how we can make your lives easier?" then when someone asked for a new type of card printing machine that was 3x the cost of the existing one, he replied with "well, I'm happy with that, as long as it's not 20 times the cost - do what you need to do" I could have fallen off my chair in disbelief. That never would have happened in my old job, in fact the opposite was the norm - frequently being asked to do more for no extra pay and nothing to say thank you for it. Got an issue or a request? Yeah, good luck trying to get anyone to listen to it, let alone acknowledge or do something about it.
Something else that sets the new job apart from the old - pay reviews. They actually happen! Plus, they are on an individual basis so if you put the effort in and do the job well, it'll be reflected. Mine is in 3 months, so that already-nicely-boosted pay cheque will hopefully go up even further before Christmas, depending on how well I do. Even if it doesn't go up, I'm still a lot better off than before.
So all in all, things are going well in the world of work - and things outside of that aren't too bad either. Oscar is growing up fast, I suspect he'll be crawling any day now. He's figured out various bum-shuffling techniques to get from one place to another, although he still occasionally falls over.
Lana has been absolutely fantastic this week. The commute to work is longer than before, it takes about 90mins each way so I still get up at the same time every day, but come home a fair bit later. This means Lana has to do more around the house, mainly with looking after Oscar. However, she's still found the time to tidy up, iron my shirts and still somehow manages to get dinner ready - I really am spoiled by the woman and don't deserve her.
Anyway, I believe I have chatted enough for now, so until next time (knowing the way I update LJ, probably sometime next year), toodle-oo!
I remember when LJ was cool and invite-only, a place for emo rants and general moaning, but it was cool none the less. It was social networking before SpaceBook and MyFace came along, so I wonder what went so wrong - maybe they just didn't make it easy enough to upload photographs?
I actually prefer LJ to Facebook, but nobody uses it so its largely useless (of course, I've set it up so that this automagically forwards to Facebook as a note anyway, so that people will actually have a chance to read it). And if you are reading it and have a Livejournal, by all means drop me a comment so I know that I'm not the only one - http://kushan.livejournal.com .
When I last properly used Livejournal, everyone used it. Then I got bored and stopped and suddenly nobody else uses it. Then I created a Facebook account and suddenly everyone uses that. Then Google+ came along, I joined it and a couple of days later, everyone was using that, so I wonder if it works in reverse?
Anyhoo, enough jabbering.
I started my new job this week. This job came out of nowhere - I interviewed for it over a year ago, but they hired a different guy. They gave really positive feedback, but he was just slightly more experienced than me. Luckily, he got sick of the commute and quit after a few months, so they called up the recruitment company and asked specifically for me. I got the phone call on the Monday to interview on the Tuesday and was offered the job later that day, to start just over a week later.
That start was Monday of this week.
From Random stuff
That's what the office looks like. As you can see, it's pretty nice - a world apart from Virgin, where you'd be lucky to find a section of carpet that wasn't stained and the only seats were shitty plastic things (half of which were moved to the meeting rooms because they didn't have enough chairs for them).
The company itself is fairly small, there's only maybe 15 or 16 people that work there (including myself), but overall it seems pretty successful. The people are nice and friendly, there's perhaps not as much banter as at Virgin, but I think that's more to do with people just being busy than "un-fun" or whatever.
A testament to the "success" of the company is the machine I have. I'm the new guy, not much better than your average student intern and yet the machine I work with is pretty beefy - quad core i7 (With HT so windows thinks there's 8 CPU cores in there), 4GB of RAM and a 22" 1080p display. This is how IT should be done - up to date equipment, equipment that can handle the task at hand, not hand-me-downs and cheap, crap machines that can barely run more than a web browser.
The company makes a range of tools that basically test credit/debit card machines, like the ones you'd find in Tesco or whatever. They make cards that can test the machines, software that can test the cards and all sorts of other bits and pieces that somehow tie it all together. I'll be honest, I don't understand how a lot of it works, but apparently that's completely normal. Credit cards are complicated things, inundated with bizarre standards (standards that aren't actually adhered to half of the time), millions of acronyms for terms that don't make much sense anyway and generally are a boring affair, but compared to what I was doing previously, it's not much worse. And for the extra money (think in the order of a pay cheque 50% bigger than before), it's worth it.
The first week went by without a hitch. I was slightly shocked when we had a meeting and the boss quite literally said "So, has anyone got any suggestions on how we can make your lives easier?" then when someone asked for a new type of card printing machine that was 3x the cost of the existing one, he replied with "well, I'm happy with that, as long as it's not 20 times the cost - do what you need to do" I could have fallen off my chair in disbelief. That never would have happened in my old job, in fact the opposite was the norm - frequently being asked to do more for no extra pay and nothing to say thank you for it. Got an issue or a request? Yeah, good luck trying to get anyone to listen to it, let alone acknowledge or do something about it.
Something else that sets the new job apart from the old - pay reviews. They actually happen! Plus, they are on an individual basis so if you put the effort in and do the job well, it'll be reflected. Mine is in 3 months, so that already-nicely-boosted pay cheque will hopefully go up even further before Christmas, depending on how well I do. Even if it doesn't go up, I'm still a lot better off than before.
So all in all, things are going well in the world of work - and things outside of that aren't too bad either. Oscar is growing up fast, I suspect he'll be crawling any day now. He's figured out various bum-shuffling techniques to get from one place to another, although he still occasionally falls over.
Lana has been absolutely fantastic this week. The commute to work is longer than before, it takes about 90mins each way so I still get up at the same time every day, but come home a fair bit later. This means Lana has to do more around the house, mainly with looking after Oscar. However, she's still found the time to tidy up, iron my shirts and still somehow manages to get dinner ready - I really am spoiled by the woman and don't deserve her.
Anyway, I believe I have chatted enough for now, so until next time (knowing the way I update LJ, probably sometime next year), toodle-oo!