Time to break out the suit and tie again, another client has signed up. Not really sure I can do more than a couple hundred thousand dollars of improvements for them, as they're an order or two of magnitude smaller than I'm used to, but I'll consider it a challenge. They're mostly white-collar, not out in the field, so that's prime territory for me ( Read more... )

The paint seems to have blended fairly well. Go paint ( Read more... )

BRB, government interview to attend.

As ego boosts go, it's nice to be able to pull aside a rep from a well-known international consulting firm, say "We should go knock eight-figure socks off the government budget mavens together," and have them not only take me seriously, but say they'll go pull in some international favours to see if they can make it happen ( Read more... )

Another call from a recruiter today offering a possible full-time position with a half-billion-dollar-a-year group of companies. The details were sketchy, so I'll be having a chat with him tomorrow to fill in the gaps. It doesn't seem to pay brilliantly, and isn't really the consulting gig I was after, but I'll let him say his piece ( Read more... )

I decided that if I'm going to be a business-type guy, I'd need to get some kind of leg up on the business types who've been schmoozy-cruising since I was in short pants ( Read more... )

More fixing up the house before the open day next week. Got the mailbox repaired - it had been leaning at several drunken angles since the night some equally drunken yobs from the pub down the street had wandered past and decided to use it for kicking practice. Had the oven cleaned out by the same team which went over the railings, doors and jambs ( Read more... )

Just finished Ken McLeod's Engine City. OK, if a little pedestrian for my taste. Alien gods, immortality-granting spiders, biological assemblers, and the modification of what it means to be human, and the things which registered most interest for me was the lightspeed drive. Not superluminal, but exactly lightspeed, with the appropriate time ( Read more... )

Well, it looks like the credit crunch has bitten and it's time to sell the house ( Read more... )

Moving up from half-hour to hour-long guitar lessons as of next week (I hope I remember, as it means turning up that half-hour earlier). Basic lessons are progressing - I can now bash out something which still has all the fluid grace of a spastic zombie tumbling down a hill in a burning harp, but at least now it sounds like a spanish zombie.