Your happy day is here (and gone) again...
So, yet another year goes by.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...
Been an interesting month. Amongst other things, I got heinously sick last month, about just after my last post; spent four days generating phlegm and other nasty stuff. Not pleasant at all. Then there was Christmas - I took two weeks off, one to watch my son, and one for Christmas itself, then the week after... I think I got a spare day that nobody counted, but that's not hugely a problem. I handed in my notice back in November; since I told my boss I wasn't going to tell anyone, I've been keeping quiet on the whole thing, but since then, all sorts of interesting things have come up. More details below on that. Also, I had a birthday, and my osn had a birthday. He apparently had a party today, which I think I missed :-/
So, yeah. In date order, I think. Which means the quitting my job thing. I had to give three months notice, which means my last day is February 13th; there's another job in the offing, from a friend of mine, but that's not confirmed as yet. My current boss would like me to stick around; I pointed out that the holiday situation would be best covered by coming in as a contractor, rather than permanent (amongst other things, there's ten days rolled over from last year (they dropped one, because company policy won't let them roll any more) that they'll pay out if I leave before the end of feb, but if I stay longer, I'll just lose them straight out, so...) to which he said he'd go and look things up. He's now told one of my workmates that I'm staying, which is interesting, because he hasn't told or asked me what rate they're wanting to pay me; I'm damned if I'll stay for the permanent rate, which is on the low side of "market rates", and has been ever since I've been there. There are other perks, which I expect to evaporate once I go on contract, so there's some interest on my part in making sure I don't bend over and pick up the soap, as it were. Plus there's the fact that he's not really doing me much of a favour keeping me on; I'm doing him one huge favour staying around. I expect things to reflect that; if not, I'm not going to stick my head in the blender. My CV is out there now, and I've had a few nibbles, so it's not like things are totally hopeless. I'm hoping that this job with my friend works out, though, so I'm not hunting as hard as I should...
Rant rant rant. Enough of that; if you want more details, apply in person. Heck, if you have a job somewhere in London for reasonable rates, feel free to contact me; my email is in the cv.
I don't think I need to explain being sick; unpleasant at the time, took up all of my attention, but other than that, not really important. More important was the time I spent with my son; his nanny took a week off, so I had to sit around with him. Since I had some spare time stored up, it was fairly cool to be able to spend time with Tornado; sadly, I was still somewhat under the weather from the previous week, and we spent much of the time just lurking at home. I really need to teach him how to play cards, though; I always had fun playing cards with my family, I kinda want to share that with my kid(s)...
After that, a quiet couple of weeks catching up; my fellow unix admin handed his notice in; the third guy in the Infrastructure team, who mostly does Windows, is also looking at moving on. It's a bad couple of months for my boss.
$wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday. It meant I wasn't hugely surprised, but hey, I appreciated it nonetheless. And it means it's perfectly what I want, which is a good thing.
I've been looking at buying myself a laptop to replace the one I'll have to give back when I leave. I was looking at dell, until I found www.ndc.co.uk, which has some dell models, refurbished, from returns, at about two thirds the price. And they do much cheaper delivery. All good. So I'm still pondering which one to get.
And then there's the shed, which we're still looking at. Oh, and Tornado and I went out to B&Q and got a couple of lights, and replaced the 4xspotlight and 4xhalogen lights with a single bayonet, which is something I've been wanting to do for ages now. That leaves the spots in the kitchen and the halogens in Tornado's room, but we can use the spares from the two removed fittings for the moment. And now we can put energy savers in the other two rooms. All I need to finish up doing is climb in the roof and put the insulation down; a tedious, unpleasant job, if only because it's bloody lonely up there... I've got to wonder if listening to an mp3 player would make it more pleasant.
Other than that, things are more or less proceeding according to plan.
Oh, and i had my ring sized, after I threw some washing into the basket and the ring followed; it's been a little large for a while, so this wasn't unexpected, but we had some time free and the place was open, so it all worked out. They did a good job, I can barely see the line where they split it. There's now a tiny blank line in the pattern, but since it's an irregular pattern anyway, that's ok, and it's on an angle, so it's really not obvious unless you look really really closely. And now the ring doesn't fall off when my hands are cold.
The only worry I have is if it's cutting off enough circulation to make a difference. I don't think so, but it's not like my hands have a lot of extra padding on them or anything, so...
Tornado got a stack of presents for his birthday; not least, some of the christmas presents we'd put aside because he had enough already. One of them was a trampoline.
See if you can guess who got to put it together.
My arms hurt. My hands hurt. And Uncle D is mad strong, and isn't allowed to visit anymore for making me look like a weakling, by coming and putting on the last six in less than ten minutes while I spent over 45 trying and failing... ;-]
All in all, it's been fun. And despite spending most of my birthday at home, with Tornado, whilst $wife went out to get her hair coloured and frizzed (she was most upset with what they did, and she's going to have to wait while it grows out, which makes her even more upset), I still had a good day. Heck, I logged into the discworld mud, and I haven't done that for almost two years...
And that's probably enough waffle from me. Until next time. ;-]
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...
Been an interesting month. Amongst other things, I got heinously sick last month, about just after my last post; spent four days generating phlegm and other nasty stuff. Not pleasant at all. Then there was Christmas - I took two weeks off, one to watch my son, and one for Christmas itself, then the week after... I think I got a spare day that nobody counted, but that's not hugely a problem. I handed in my notice back in November; since I told my boss I wasn't going to tell anyone, I've been keeping quiet on the whole thing, but since then, all sorts of interesting things have come up. More details below on that. Also, I had a birthday, and my osn had a birthday. He apparently had a party today, which I think I missed :-/
So, yeah. In date order, I think. Which means the quitting my job thing. I had to give three months notice, which means my last day is February 13th; there's another job in the offing, from a friend of mine, but that's not confirmed as yet. My current boss would like me to stick around; I pointed out that the holiday situation would be best covered by coming in as a contractor, rather than permanent (amongst other things, there's ten days rolled over from last year (they dropped one, because company policy won't let them roll any more) that they'll pay out if I leave before the end of feb, but if I stay longer, I'll just lose them straight out, so...) to which he said he'd go and look things up. He's now told one of my workmates that I'm staying, which is interesting, because he hasn't told or asked me what rate they're wanting to pay me; I'm damned if I'll stay for the permanent rate, which is on the low side of "market rates", and has been ever since I've been there. There are other perks, which I expect to evaporate once I go on contract, so there's some interest on my part in making sure I don't bend over and pick up the soap, as it were. Plus there's the fact that he's not really doing me much of a favour keeping me on; I'm doing him one huge favour staying around. I expect things to reflect that; if not, I'm not going to stick my head in the blender. My CV is out there now, and I've had a few nibbles, so it's not like things are totally hopeless. I'm hoping that this job with my friend works out, though, so I'm not hunting as hard as I should...
Rant rant rant. Enough of that; if you want more details, apply in person. Heck, if you have a job somewhere in London for reasonable rates, feel free to contact me; my email is in the cv.
I don't think I need to explain being sick; unpleasant at the time, took up all of my attention, but other than that, not really important. More important was the time I spent with my son; his nanny took a week off, so I had to sit around with him. Since I had some spare time stored up, it was fairly cool to be able to spend time with Tornado; sadly, I was still somewhat under the weather from the previous week, and we spent much of the time just lurking at home. I really need to teach him how to play cards, though; I always had fun playing cards with my family, I kinda want to share that with my kid(s)...
After that, a quiet couple of weeks catching up; my fellow unix admin handed his notice in; the third guy in the Infrastructure team, who mostly does Windows, is also looking at moving on. It's a bad couple of months for my boss.
$wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday. It meant I wasn't hugely surprised, but hey, I appreciated it nonetheless. And it means it's perfectly what I want, which is a good thing.
I've been looking at buying myself a laptop to replace the one I'll have to give back when I leave. I was looking at dell, until I found www.ndc.co.uk, which has some dell models, refurbished, from returns, at about two thirds the price. And they do much cheaper delivery. All good. So I'm still pondering which one to get.
And then there's the shed, which we're still looking at. Oh, and Tornado and I went out to B&Q and got a couple of lights, and replaced the 4xspotlight and 4xhalogen lights with a single bayonet, which is something I've been wanting to do for ages now. That leaves the spots in the kitchen and the halogens in Tornado's room, but we can use the spares from the two removed fittings for the moment. And now we can put energy savers in the other two rooms. All I need to finish up doing is climb in the roof and put the insulation down; a tedious, unpleasant job, if only because it's bloody lonely up there... I've got to wonder if listening to an mp3 player would make it more pleasant.
Other than that, things are more or less proceeding according to plan.
Oh, and i had my ring sized, after I threw some washing into the basket and the ring followed; it's been a little large for a while, so this wasn't unexpected, but we had some time free and the place was open, so it all worked out. They did a good job, I can barely see the line where they split it. There's now a tiny blank line in the pattern, but since it's an irregular pattern anyway, that's ok, and it's on an angle, so it's really not obvious unless you look really really closely. And now the ring doesn't fall off when my hands are cold.
The only worry I have is if it's cutting off enough circulation to make a difference. I don't think so, but it's not like my hands have a lot of extra padding on them or anything, so...
Tornado got a stack of presents for his birthday; not least, some of the christmas presents we'd put aside because he had enough already. One of them was a trampoline.
See if you can guess who got to put it together.
My arms hurt. My hands hurt. And Uncle D is mad strong, and isn't allowed to visit anymore for making me look like a weakling, by coming and putting on the last six in less than ten minutes while I spent over 45 trying and failing... ;-]
All in all, it's been fun. And despite spending most of my birthday at home, with Tornado, whilst $wife went out to get her hair coloured and frizzed (she was most upset with what they did, and she's going to have to wait while it grows out, which makes her even more upset), I still had a good day. Heck, I logged into the discworld mud, and I haven't done that for almost two years...
And that's probably enough waffle from me. Until next time. ;-]