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Friday 20 April 2012

And . . . relax

We find ourselves at Friday, and two cheers for that*.

This week has been long and it has been hard.  Some of this has been to do with the accumulation of fun that naturally occurs during time away.  Like the mail on your doorstep, it tends to pile up with no regard for human dignity and a chap's well-being.  The rest of it has been to do with some really big, hairy problems.

You know when you are at a party, or anywhere in a social setting with at least some people who are unknown to you, and you are circulating, and you are asked the "What do you do?" question.  "I work in IT", you say.  At this point about fifty percent glaze over, or see someone over the other side of the room to whom they just have to speak.  The other fifty percent then ask "Oh, who do you work for?".  Once you have delivered the "Starfleet" answer, a further ninety percent get a call from their baby-sitter.  For that tiny percentage who are still talking to you, the next obvious question is, as I have discussed before, "I know someone in Starfleet, you probably know them".  If not, then it might well be "What do you do?".  I have experimented with several different answers to this question and based on the blankness of the look, have concluded that the easiest and most effective answer is "solving problems".  And that is about it really.  There is a lot of devil in the detail, but basically it is about being faced, every day, with a bunch of problems, and looking for ways to solve them.  The sad fact that many of these problems are those of trying to get a behemoth like Starfleet to do your bidding, or more precisely how you work out a way round Starfleet not doing your bidding.  This naturally leaves only a small amount of your time to actually, you know, talk to your customer and stuff like that.

This weekend, we are having a Dinner for Eight and look forward to seeing Brad and Angelina, who are staying at our Saturday night.  We can hear all about Brad's marathon exploits and be rather glad that our ambitions do not point in that direction.

Have a good weekend, and speak next week.


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* too tired to do three.

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