Month: July 2003

Every now and again one of the wheels on my chair crunches for a second if I shift position too much or sometimes if I even just move the mouse. And every single time I think there is someone standing behind me and I turn around thinking someone is reading my screen.

For some reason, that sound makes me really paranoid.

Going to see a preview of Hulk with the lads from my team on Saturday night and I’m looking forward to it.

Managed to win a game of chess last night which I was quite happy about. I’d gone from a streak of 8 wins to a streak of 4 losses so closing that off is a good thing. Headed to bed pretty early, I’m not feeling 100% at all so couple of extra hours sleep was a good idea I thought. Today I’m mad as hell. I’ve had another few days worked wasted and well, I’m mad as hell. I don’t know what to do about it tho.

The vending machine on our floor has been demanding exact change only all week. This has lead to a sever caffeine and sugar rush loss across the technology department, this has been funny to watch but not funny to suffer through. I was chatting in the kitchen yesterday afternoon and the three of us were just standing by the machine and it took a couple of moments to realise we were glaring at it and anyone who had the right change. It still wants exact change only despite 4 days of people who had the right change putting in the right change. Someone will eventually snap and email facilities, it will not be me. I can beat it!

I’m listening to the an old Stereophonics album; You got to go there to come back thanks to the joy of iTunes and it’s not bad actually, perhaps worth picking up. There is a bit of older live stuff on here too and I like that a lot. I heard a copy of the Evanescence album yesterday and while the single is tolerable with hints of it could have been really good, the rest of the album is pretty much a luke warm version of the single and it can all be classified rather simply as goth wankery. Cute chick tho and you know that counts for a lot.

I have to say I’m a little surprised. I sent some comics to a friend in the US a few weeks ago and my taste was vindicated when she really enjoyed them and in fact went out and bought some more books in the series. Let this be a note to you all that Barry Ween is just fucking awesome. I have a Barry Ween tshirt I got last week, I have to wear it more. But anyway we were talking earlier in the week and she wanted to go and buy some more stuff and I gave her some recommendations, prime ones being Fables and Lucifer. Fables was sold out in her shop, but she picked up the first three Lucifer trades. I was pleasantly surprised by this. Had that been me I would have picked up the first one and given it a try, not got the first three books in a series which I hadn’t read myself. That said, I was again right but I was also quite pleased.

I’ve not been posting much lately, I seem to have missed a couple of days which is funny as I could have sworn I had posted some stuff yesterday but then again, the week has flown by. Not fast enough of course, but we are getting there.

Seven minutes is not enough for a game, I need increments if I’m going to play a seven minute game.

Fuck. I had that one won well.

The Internet is Shit

Working at some stuff which now all makes far more sense. Getting different details for 3 days running was getting just a little old. Now that I have what I need it’s all flying ahead.

Yesterday was quietish, kept busy and a few of us went out for pool last night. Wandered down to the club to find that they had free 9 ball on all night every Monday. So that was that, the night was settled. Got home, watched West Wing and went to bed.

I hate this country so very much. The fact that Britney Spears is not a virgin is fucking headline news. How is that fucking news? Yes, I just realised what I typed. Fuck right off, thank you very much.

Tonight is CSI and The Shield, so home after work for a quiet one. I didn’t sleep very well last night and I think I have a mild cold so probably a good idea.

Oh, I watched Captain Horatio Hornblower earlier today. A really good movie based on the excellent series of books by C.S. Forester. I read most of the books when I was younger and loved them. I note there has been a hell of alot more made in the new series than I than I had thought and more in production. Something to pick up on DVD at some stage.
I’d love to be able to track down all the books again and read the saga from start to finish. I had most of them or rather my dad did, but still there are a few I never got to read. Hmm I had thought they were out of print, but I see Amazon has a lot of them listed.

Wow, some looking around the net has just told me that Alexander Kent, author of the Bolitho series of books which I also loved is in fact Douglas Reeman. Not only that, but there are still new Bolitho novels being published, the 26 came out just last month. I have to look into getting these at some stage too.

I love this. Bring on London. E-Mail Mobs Materialize All Over

I’m now annoyed. I just lost a game of chess because of time despite being in total control of the game and chasing the king with a queen and a rook. Fuck.

I’ve not done much today. Wasted a few hours on the electric interwebnet, read a little and watched some TV. Not much at all there really. It’s been quiet online too, not too many posts on message boards and almost no-one on AIM. The holiday weekend in the US might have something to do with that.

I love broadband. It’s something I’ve grown very use to but I love hitting enter after tpying in and url and not having to wait.

Fresh air is also a good thing, I have a little breeze coming in over my shoulder and it smells nice and fresh.

Listening to lots of R.E.M. at the moment, mainly been the more recent stuff but right now I have Green going on and it’s so wonderful.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t even sing (say, say, the light)
I’m very scared for this world
I’m very scared for me

[19:00:18] Nick: how about some proper pool?
[19:00:43] Dave : nah played enough pool last night to keep me going for awhile
[19:00:54] Dave : tho on that note were you not going to send an email about some pool next week?
[19:01:14] Nick: that is true, i was indeed
[19:02:30] Dave : I had thought about going to blockbuster and getting something but then realised I was in fact too tired/lazy to bother
[19:02:45] Nick: hehe
[19:09:17] Nick: did you go over to Iains house to paint today?
[19:09:28] Dave : shit
[19:09:37] Nick: oops
[19:09:40] Dave : I knew there was something I was meant to be doing today
[19:09:45] Nick: eek
[19:10:47] Dave : ah well
[19:11:04] Nick: sure it be fine
[19:12:17] Dave : yeah I’ll give him a ring tomorrow

Damn.

I noted something down in my PDA a couple of nights ago. It was a phrase which I came across somewhere that I wanted to post and maybe talk about (or around).

Meeting Culture.

Thursday evening I was looking for some information about a project I was working on. I was pretty much kicking my heels up without it. So I dropped someone an IM to remind them I was waiting on the details and that it was now holding me up. Now as it turns out there was quite a bit of confusion on the issue and the request I had originally been given wasn’t very clear and was in fact wrong. We talked it over for a couple of minutes and weren’t getting anywhere. The guy in question said lets leave it and we’ll set up a meeting in the morning with everyone involved to talk about it.

Now it’s about 4:30 and I need that information to do anything else so right off the bat, that’s not all that helpful to me. Secondly what I need is so very simple, it doesn’t call for a meeting. I need three four digit numbers and a running order for them. That’s all. They are pretty standard numbers too, stuff which 18 months ago I could have run off without a thought and a hell of a lot more than three of them. Since then the numbers have changed and I don’t even know the criteria to go and look them up.

So anyway at this stage I’m getting a little annoyed and it’s probably showing. I said there was absolutely no need to hold a meeting about this, to just please go away and get me the numbers. Stick them in an email to me and I’m good to go. After a few minutes sorting out the confusion I got the numbers and got back to work.

Now, it’s not all that uncommon to have meetings to talk about things. Meetings are in general good things. I’m down to two conference calls a week for the next while as I concentrate on some other stuff but I’d normally be involved in at least six and often many more than that. But, each one of them is for a reason and we know going into the call what the agenda or the point of the call is. Of course there are regular or semi regular team meetings, but these often take involve heading out for a coffee or the like. Some people won’t go to meetings without agendas and a number of people are right *unts about
having full agendas or the like before they go into meetings. Some of those are so anal about not doing anything without an agenda and a fully detailed one at that. Of course in the real world, things rarely follow an agenda. About the only meeting I go to which follows it’s agenda are bug scrubs where the agenda is to simply scrub the bugs.

Anyway that’s some work stuff for a Saturday afternoon post, and here’s some more.

Came back from what was pretty much a week off work to find there was a lot of change. We’ve known for a while that my boss is moving on in the company, came back to find out that the manager of our sister team is also moving on and as of yesterday they are both in their new roles. So this left both teams a little um lost shall we say? My team in specific has known about Dave leaving for sometime and been worrying about what was going to happen and not being told anything. Anyway we have now merged into one team which to be honest makes perfect sense and is something we’ve been expecting for some time. We will be getting a couple of senior developer positions (ha) and a new team manager sometime in the future.

So yesterday we went out to a nice Persian restaurant for a long lunch and then last night to the pub to have some drinks. It just had to be done. Played quite a bit of pool down there, Dave and I got into a little competition (as we tend to do). Pushed the others off and monopolised the table for a while. Played for first to 5 and Dave came back from 4 – 3 to take two in a row and the night. It was all good fun. There was a (mainly) good crowd down there, so there was a lot of pool and a lot of fun. Ok some was not so fun but that’s not a subject for discussion.

Reading some comics this morning, Exiles volume 3 and 4 were ok, some good stuff in there. Bruce Jones’ third Hulk trade wasn’t great but it was ok I guess. I’ll give the next one a try and see how that one does. I have Daredevil: Typhoid Mary to read today and other than that, no plans. Cinema tonight maybe, Bruce Almighty looks kinda funny