This is the first day of the rest of our lives, so make the most of it

This may well be of a mantra I am repeating, rather than a state of mind that I have already achieved, but it is something I want and need to put in place.  "That holiday feeling" is lingering much longer than usual, and the work landscape is such that I really need to be somewhere near the top of my game to make a success of the rest of the year. 

This has become the important element arising from my recent mid-year review with my boss, and by boss, I mean my personal development manager rather than my task manager(s), Starfleet being as it is a proponent of matrix management*.  I need to really make a success of my current role.  What I have observed of myself is that I am good at being a success with my peers and those to whom I team-lead, but not always to the powers that be.  This is something I think has two factors: the first is I like to be liked, so work hard at being so, and second that in our large, multi-agenda organisation I do sometimes feel that (task) managers do ask for silly things in silly timescales.  Having given myself a still talking to, I now appreciate that there is no point doing the stuff I think is important if I am neglecting the stuff that my (task) manager thinks is important, because he in turn gives his feedback on me to my (personal development) manager as part of my end of year review.

I think I am gonna need a lot of Vaseline if I am to keep my lips from going dry with all the @$$ kissing.

On Friday, had a good chat with Golfy, who apart from an alarming change of hair colour, is as he always is.  He is enjoying his work and has given SWK some food for thought.  Oh, we also did a Facetime call, which is, as both Maggots attested, "cooool".

 ------------------------------
*  "Who is your manager?" is a question that needs to be answered the with IT Architect's universal answer "it depends". 

And . . . relax

We find ourselves at Friday, and the usual form is for me to tell you about the up-coming weekend.  I may do that, but more importantly right now is a burning need to respond to Golfy's recent blog.  I this he expounds a theory I have heard a couple of times recently about the use of email, or more precisely, stopping the use of email.  The article to which Golfy links sounds like it was written by a Starfleet trooper, and talks about how this person has stopped using email, using social networking tools instead.

The other article I read was about a sometimes competitor of Starfleet who is planning to be email-free in three years, and again plans to fill the void with social networking tools.  Now this is bold stuff, and I absolutely support the boldness, but I struggle to support the logic.  Here's my view.

To start with, I should say that I sit firmly in the middle ground between early adopter and late adopter when it comes to technology.  There is some wizzo stuff out there, and there is stuff where the Scobi jury is out at the moment.

So the main thrust of the argument is that email has become so ubiquitous and so over-used, it consumes way too much of a chap's working day being serviced.  It is also not the best tool to enable remote teams to collaborate and communicate.  The answer is social networking tools, in all their various guises.  So, here is the Scobi guide to some of them (and don't forget I am a middle-ground kind of chap, so this may be a bit basic).

Instant Messaging - this is a killer app.  Anyone who does not use it could not possibly understand why it is so good.  All you need to do is use it in an environment where everyone uses it, and you realise how cool it really is.  It is great for quick, off-the-cuff communications, and you can send files and screen grabs, have multi-person chats and even make voice calls over it.  What it is not so good for is collaborative working on projects, documents, presentations etc.  This works for me when used in the right way.

Screen sharing - not so new or clever, but a fantastic tool for two or maybe three people to talk on the phone whilst sharing one of their screens to review and collaboratively work on a document.  This works for me also.

Wikis - let's not get too carried away, this is a web page with knobs on, and is no better and no worse than a web page.  i.e. it tends to be static, has nothing on it I want to read, and, in Starfleet, is so buttock-clenchingly slow that it will never rock my boat.  When I am enthusiastically informed of another wiki or workgroup or connections has been setup to aid me in my work, my life-expectancy does reduce by a few minutes.  We simply have too many to follow, with too little information to be useful.  These do not work for me.

Teamrooms and other shared web spaces - I read the marketing blurb, and it sounds good.  However when I try to use them, they tend to inhibit rather than improve my working experience.  These may have a very good use, but I have yet to find it.

Customers - oh yes, I remember them.  They are the ones that have different ideas to me, and still want face to face meetings, use faxes, and want to use email for general communications.  Until we can get these folks on to our new social networking bandwagon, we are doomed with any plans to remove email from our toolkit.

None of this is to say that I support email.  It is a burden.  I really cannot keep up with every email on which I am cc'd "just in case I need to know about it" and sometimes I do miss something that is important because something I needed to do or know was in a note right at the end of such an email.  However, with all the volumes coming to my inbox, I do at least have a local copy of it and control over where I file it and if I am organised, I am able to find something at a later date I have filed.

Email is, in my view, a necessary evil, and I am also not convinced that an hour I save on email servicing would not instead be turned in to an hour and a half trawling round the seven hundred and fourteen wikis, shared spaces, archived IM chats and public discussion forums in search of the information I need.

My sense is that the day I am convinced social networking is a good thing as a business tool is the day that it really takes off.

As for Golfy's comments on the commuter laptop brigade, I concur with all he says, and at the same time confess that I was one of those for six months.  The train became the only place to get some quiet time to write that report or read that document.  Oh, and to sort out my inbox.

That was the week that was

So I did the education thing last week, and now I am back, and while I did all the usual handover and cover thing that a chap is want to do these days to ensure continuity for a chap's customer and to be seen to be continuing the perception that we are indeed a seamless and infinite resource. 

It is like having a week off, except without that "not being at work" feeling, mostly because either side of the educating and exhausting day, I was working anyway.  The bit that is the same is the pile of work, all tagged urgent, waiting for me when I returned today.  I am following the Luge principle, and am trying to ensure that every minute of every hour of every working day is moving something forward in a meaningful way, and if that is not enough, which a couple of the things on my plate are not, then so be it.  I can only deal with the possible, and anything more is, but definition, impossible. 

I also had a little chat with Golfy today.  It was something like the X Files, or maybe The Twilight Zone, or maybe even Tales of the Unexpected.  But enough of Golfy's life.  "Check out what my location is on the chat screen", says the Golfmeister, and blow me if he was not in London, at my last customer's office, sitting pretty much in the same seat as I did when I worked there.  I am beginning to think he is following me.  He has been drafted in for a time-boxed period of a month, in which time he will no doubt be working on the considerable backlog, just like I did as part of my exit plan.  And the team is even the same.  I have given him the low-down on the people to watch out for, although on reflection I didn't mention the woman who laughs like a chimpanzee who has just been told the best orangutan joke she has ever heard, complete with the snorty-hiccup at the end as she draws a breath in to her cavernous lungs.  Let's not mention her, and that can be a joy for him to discover one fine afternoon.  I can still see the face of, let's call him Jock, who was much disturbed by the said laughing and who needed restraining on more than one occasion to stop him decking her.

Anyhow, back go Golfy.  He now has a 2.5 hour commute each way to get in to the office, although he seems to have negotiated a part-time attendance pattern which should ease the travel pains.  I wish him luck in the role, and would very much urge him to get down the Subway for an Italian bread sarnie, six inches for the waist-conscious, or a full foot if you just don't care.  I also recommend the chocolate-covered coffee beans in Nero next door to the office.  Pound a box, and if you eat them all you can bounce off the ceiling.  The guys who clean the Gherkin use them to wash the upper windows.  Honest.

I'm with you there, Brother Golfy

Having just read Golfy's blog of woe regarding his contact lenses, of which Major Major would be proud, I felt compelled to share my story.

My story revolves around a door, a front door to be precise.  We are planning, as part of our extension and remodelling project, to replace our double-glazed door with an "original" Victorian four-panel door with stained glass panels, as befitting a house made in 1900.  

Now I can tell you with some vigour that the planning of this door has been both long and complicated.  Should we go reclaimed or new?  LO's uncle is a carpenter and his advice was "go for new".  Well we put that one to bed pretty quickly, as all the new doors we found just looked new, so we were scouring the internet for local reclaim yards, visiting said yards and inspecting their stock.  

It is at this point that we experienced once again the fight or our naivety versus the world.  We imagined we were probably the only people in the country looking for a four-panel Victorian doors.  Perhaps getting over 100,000 hits from Google might have alerted us to the reality, however it did take a visit to several reclaim yards to realise that there might just be one or two others out there looking for the same, because there was not much "stock on the market".

We then found a place 40 minutes away that did have doors by the dozen, however he was a purveyor of quality period door, and had a price to match.  Premium product for premium notes.  As Arthur Daley often said "How much?".

Then we found a localish place that made new doors, but with stained glass done the "old fashioned way" with proper leading, and with glass made full or wrinkles and bubbles as old glass was, and it just looks the business, on the internet anyway.  So one lunchtime I take a trip down, and am blown away by them, they are just what we want; we can get new wood, well made, no filler, but with glass that looks of its time, and let's be honest, once you have painted a door, it is just a bit of painted wood, so we think it is the best of all worlds.  They also provide the surround, with window above, in one package.  We can have our house number made out in the top window in leaded glass also, so we are absolutely "made up".  A quick call to LO and a discussion about which glass pattern we want with the assistance of phone and the internet each end (...second one down on first page, number 121, yes, that's the one...) and an order is placed.  

He then asks if we have lined up a carpenter, and I say no.  He says he "has a man" that does his fitting, and can come and measure the hole, ensure the door is basically trimmed to fit in the workshop, and he can then turn up to remove the old and fit the new in one seamless activity.  That is definitely a result for us, since the coordination of door man and fitter man was a concern, but we are now being offered a one stop shop that will guarantee it all gets done, and done right.

At long last, I am getting to the point of the story.  The carpenter.  We arrange a visit Tuesday evening, and are promised a call early in the day to fine tune the arrival time.  No call, no visit.  This is repeated, and I am feeling rather embarrassed to say this out loud, no fewer than five time before he does finally turn up.  I open the door to a guy who manages to combine sheepishness, slight apology and utter weariness in a single look, but he is actually good and a nice bloke and we kind of manage to move on.  So the door hole is measured, various bits of the old door removed so we can see what surface is behind, to which we will be fixing the door, and overall I am happier now that we are on the way.  

Final comment from LO "He won't be cheap, he is a posh carpenter".  Now there is pith of which Scobi can only dream.*

Now all we need to do is get the door finished, delivered and fitted, and that may end up being a source of another story.  I wonder whether bloggers go looking for nonsense and trouble just to inspire them to write.  Probably not, but it is a theory I will investigate further, since it may well be NLP in action.

Have a great weekend, speak next week.

------------------------------------------------------------

* You may have noticed some silliness around not splitting infinitives, which is what I think that is called.  i.e. in the words of Star Trek, "to boldly go" is technically wrong.  It should be "To go boldly", but of course the former is more punchy, so it stayed.  This is a regular topic on the Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode film review show, which is mostly why I am mentioning it.  Mark is a pedant about such things, and gets the micky right royally taken as a result.  As Winston Churchill is said to have uttered "Not ending a sentence with a preposition is a bit of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put".  Now, I had to Google that to get it right, and should comment that there are a dozen or more variations of the quote, however that one gives the flavour, and that is good enough for me.  It is filed in the same drawer as "avoid cliches like the plague".

On the edge

No, not some caffeine overdose, unlike dear old Golfy who needs to watch what he is ingesting.

You know the feeling.  You are on a roller-coaster of some persuasion, probably best if it is somewhere hot like Florida, or California, or maybe even west of Paris, or somewhere else altogether.  You are at the start of the ride, and everything is pretty straightforward, but you are right at the top and just about to go over the edge in to the first and biggest drop.  

Well, that is where I am just now, on Monday evening just waiting to go over the edge in to Tuesday morning, when I shall be in London and probably getting all the roller-coaster stomach in mouth sensations as well.  

Am I building it up too much?  Of course, where would the fun be without a bit of imagination.  Fear is false experience appearing real and all that, and anyway, I have had a sense of how normal life can be so I have a right to be a bit concerned about how things will go back on the old account.  And I have a tricky solution that should have been done months ago by others, but has not for many good and bad reasons, and right now I only have half a boozers what is needed, and I know that I will need to speak to my customer to get the other half, and that will require the eating of a large slice of humble pie, and also with the expectation that I might get shouted at a bit.  

I hope your day is going well, and that tomorrow follows the same pattern.

Ta ta for now.

A meeting of minds

So I did in the end manage to attend the afternoon sessions of the technical conference, and it was great to catch up with Grinderman and get an update on the London situation, and of course Golfy and Stretch, as well as a number of other colleagues, friends and ne'er do wells.  

The planned Ruby had to be called of due to a number of factors:

• Stretch had to wax his legs or something, and some other stuff about getting plastered
• Golfy just could not be bothered.

So Kenobi found himself driving home at the normal time to spend a rather pleasant evening with his family.  We had cous cous with roasted veg, feta and a delish harissa source, the remainder of which I shall be taking to work today for lunch.  If you are in the Horsham area, drop by and marvel and the wonderfulness that is my lunch.

Back to what might just be nearly my final day today on my current short-term assignment, so may well be back on London duties by the end of this week or early next, which means back to the train commute and overnight stays, which do not fill me with much pleasure.  Maybe it really is time to make some positive noises about moving on, to lay down the seeds of an exit.  Should give me time to leave my mark without it leaving its mark indelibly on me.  If you know what I mean.

Have a good day . . . until the next time . . .

What do you call the absence of anything?

The Scobi Wan Kenobi blog?  The janitor?  Could be.

I realise by my dwindling readership that I ain't blogging like I used to.  In fact I ain't blogging much at all.  So I thought I would write a blog and in the press of a key and the firing if a synapse, I can put right a wrong.  Now all I need to do is think of something to write about.

I am watching "My Family's Crazy Gap Year" where a family spends a year on a catamaran sailing round the world.  They are currently on a South Pacific Island, the precise name of which I have forgotten, but it is a pretty damn long way from anywhere.  Dad is currently snorkeling for lobster, and now the kids are playing with it like a toy.  And finally they have now caught what I thought was a Red Snapper, and are cooking it.  Having seen the trailer, I am pretty sure that the Brown's will be speeding to the coast real soon now.  Dad has tingling in most of his body, his throat is numb, he is getting hot and cold.  They have eaten a Paddle Tail, which can cause convulsions, vomiting and death.  Boy they is ill.  Cut to the adverts, so that we can return to hopefully a bit better news.  

You may have heard on the news, or read in the paper, that the optimum salary to earn is £50k.  Any less and you are allowed to be unhappy, any more and you will be unhappy, but feel deep down that you really should not be so unhappy coz you is loaded.  Hmm.  I was discussing with Brad and Angelina at the weekend about this principle and we concluded that Channel 4 should do a documentary experiment with us, giving us too much money to measure how truly unhappy we can become.  Now to really make this experiment work, I think we need to be given an obscene amount of money.  And it should be in Russian Rubles, provided via a bag switch manoeuvre at Euston Station.  I am going to ask Golfy tomorrow what he thinks.  

Which reminds me, I hope to go to the ITD Technical Conference tomorrow, maybe only for the afternoon depending on my work commitments, where I hope to see a number of people who I have not seen for a mighty long time.  Including Golfy.  And Stretch.  And maybe even someone else.  And if the day is going well, we may even go for a Ruby in the evening.  Result.

I shall bid you farewell for now, and hope to meet again very soon.

Bless you all

Bless all of you who continued to check my blog even though I have written absolutely nothing for two weeks.  I am pretty sure I know who one of you is, but not the other*.  

I have just had the thought that I could write a really short blog, but with dozens of footnotes, so that the main blog is very short and the whole story is told in the footnotes.  Having given it some thought, I realise that is a dumb idea**.

I did have a fantastic two weeks in France.  We ate croissants and French bread, which is the law, and drank red and white wine, ditto, and swam in the swimming pool at least three times each day*****, which while not law, is pretty damn sensible.  We have a suplus of inflatables, the best of which was a lilo for two with drinks holder one side and space for an ice bucket the other side, something like this.  Inflatables have become a bit of a holiday tradition, with the double bed joined by a single chair, a crocodile, a stingray, two rings and a dingy, plus a plane with the rings ripped off (long story******).  The latter is used only for the bucking bronco game, where you have to jump on it, legs astride the fuselage, and stay on for more than 10 seconds, which depending on how blown up it is can range from fairly easy to impossible.

Other than that, we visited markets, went to the beach, boogie-boarded whenever possible, and generally did not much very slowly.  

To say that coming back is a bit of a shock is like saying that Portsmouth FC are pretty bad at the moment.  I just hope that my work colleagues will take it easy on me, which is unlikely since my departure for two weeks is the reason they are in the mess they are in right now, having to pick up all my work etc.

So, onwards and upwards, as they say, and here's to the rest of the summer, and all that life will bring to our happy family.  

Love to you all (even Golfy) and hope to catch up soon.

-----------------------------------------

* That last comment would have been funnier if it had not been true**.

** Well thank goodness for that, I was about to ask for my money back, and as the old saying goes, please don't ask for a refund as a refusal (or punch on the nose, depending on the establishment) often offends.  No offence meant***.

*** I am now nesting my footnotes, which any editor worth their salt knows is not a good thing.  However, in this case, I feel it warrants the comment that, as a rule, anyone who starts a sentence with "not being funny or anything", or "no offence meant but..." or "with the greatest respect" needs to be shot first, and have questions asked afterwards****.  And also as a rule mean anything but what they actually say.  i.e. "No offence meant, but you are a right tw@t" - that kind of thing.

**** Just on a point of order, you can begin to see why the cowboys became extinct if that was their policy.

***** The ladies did tend to attend the afternoon session only.

****** Not that long, they just got bust the holiday before last.

insert title here

A cheap trick, but I really REALLY could not think of a title for this blog.  So, what I do is write a load of rubbish, and see where it takes me.

At the end of the second sentence, I still have no idea.  I can tell you that I have just rung room service who will be "thirty to forty minutes" but in practice could well be here in under twenty minutes.  I am hungry, so that is a welcome thought.

So, what was my day like today?  Well, it was busy, full of loose-end tying, and full of unexpected new stuff to consider.  I have a real focus to get stuff done before I disappear in to the sunset tomorrow evening.  And yet.  People keep getting in the way.  People keep tapping me on the shoulder, asking some dumb-@$$ question or other.  As Golfy would say, WTF*.

Room service has just arrived, in under twenty minutes.  I am GOOD.  And the food isn't bad either.  Not great, but good.  With not much choice, I have picked the best of a bad lot.  The check-in guy said I may get a questionnaire, and if I do, then I shall be offering them some words on the menu.  Sorry for the delay, was just eating my pizza, one of only four veggie things on the menu.  As Golfy would say, why the four.  Probably.

I am going to have a quick shower, then probably will retire to my boudoir and read my new book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  It turns out I did not know much about this book.  I knew it had been made in to a film, but I did not know that the author had delivered this as one of three manuscripts to his editor, before he promptly dropped dead.  And they had not even been published.  I also did not know, or if I did then I had forgotten, that he was Swedish.  Now, I love a bit of Wallander.  I love the dark, brooding nature of things, and I think, forty pages in, that TGWTDT will be the same.  I think I may have even watched the odd Bergman in my youth.  A colleague at work was also telling me how he liked Swedish films, but that is a different story altogether.

That's all for now folks.  Time to retire with my book.  Have a good evening, and do what ever it is that brings you pleasure.  But not that.

So, what was it I wanted to say?

Having read yesterday's blog, I noticed a sentence starting with "so", and was reminded of one of my previous blogs where I committed to try, if not succeed, in avoiding the use of the word "so", particularly at the start of a sentence.

So, I have done some data analysis of my last 94 posts, and have found the following (and remember that 83.4% of statistics are made up on the spot):

• I started a sentence with the word "so" 26 times, including once when I actually started a sentence with two so's
• Of the blogs that contained a sentence that started with "so", the word count was 24% higher than average
• there were twice as many mentions of the words Golfy and 'vannin' in blogs that contained the word "so"
• every blog that did not include the word "so" was rubbish.

So, what conclusions can we draw from these findings?  What insight can we glean from the data presented to us?  What new thinking can I bring to my writing as a result of this information?

Well, obviously, keep using the word "so".  Write it as many times as possible in as many sentences as possible, and maybe even write it twice if I can get away with it (that idea is so so.  Ed.  ha ha).

So, I am now needing one other idea to finish this blog with a bit of pzazz.  As you may be able to tell, I am in my hotel room watching top gear, having just had my room-service dinner (haddock fish cakes and some funny lemon sauce, followed by penne pasta with green and red stuff), quite content knowing I am two paces from the toilet and no paces from a very comfortable bed.  

I suppose I can tell you more about my hotel room.  I booked via the Starfleet inter-galactic booking tool and this was the only one available.  A quick glance at the address showed it to be on Tottenham Court Road, so it passed my "hotel test" for being 1 tube ride away and a short walk the other end.  It is a Radisson, by the way, and very nice it is too.  I can collect some A-Club points in the process.  Unfortunately, checking the map just a little bit more closely reveals it is actually at the far end of TCR, a tube change and 2 more stops, or a walk.  I chose the latter, and with nothing specific to get home for, had a pretty good walk for twenty minutes.  

Check-in was quick, aided by a cheerful employee.  Room service selection was the usual small choice, big price.  However I ate well and fairly healthily for under my dinner allowance, so it passes the room-service test with a creditable 6/10.  There are not so many TV channels as my usual, so 4/10 for that.  The room is well furnished, so 8/10.  The bathroom has a bath, and no mould, and free bath hats, which the family find very useful, so 9/10 for the bathroom.  Coat-hangers are the "cannot be stolen" variety, which is good for hanger attrition, but not so good for my Gloria Hunniford trick for running a hot bath and steaming my shirts on hangers in the bathroom, to save having to iron them.  So 3/10 for hangers.  Also, no biscuits, so 1/10 for that.  Overall score is... sorry, am I boring you? 

Anyhow, gonna sign off now.  Have a good evening, and speak again tomorrow.

P.S.  I wanted to tell you a hotel-related joke, but found these instead.  Nothing to do with hotels, but quite funny, if a little old.

Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.

Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.

Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?

Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.

Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.

Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.

Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year old, how old is he?

Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?

Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?

Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?

Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?

Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.

Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr.. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.

Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere

just a quick note

Busy day tidying up a number of loose ends, as I gently drift towards my summer holiday, which starts next Thursday evening.  I say gently, because that seems to be how time itself is passing.  In terms of what I am screaming at time to get a jolly move on, it is anything but gentle.  Needless to say my anglo-saxon heritage is being put to good use.

Looking forward to the weekend, which will be mostly planning and packing for next Thusday, since I will be in London all week.

I hope you have a good one too.  Oh, and Golfy, very funny, almost laughed out loud. 

What's on your mind?

I am an avid ready of Golfy, Bad Man and Stretch*, and have been picking up a common theme amongst them all, a theme that I myself have touched on from time to time.

We are all, as it happens, troopers of Starfleet, aka Dante for Bad Man, so it may well inevitable that common themes will arise when each of us discusses our work.

So, what is the gist of this theme?**  Well, it is all about the "era of change", departing colleagues and friends, and an assessment of the atmosphere amongst those who remain.  I like Bad Man's view that we are now in the era of "initiatives", which is management speak that translates in to trying to make a pint fill a quart pot.  These initiatives will all start "now is the time to regroup, and to work smarter not harder."  I would like to believe this, but as Bad Man succinctly puts it, in an organisation the size of Starfleet/Dante "fundamental change is all but impossible and dilution of ideas and objectives is a fact of life."  Rather well put I think.  And unfortunately that does mean that we can expect to work harder, and probably longer, to fill the gaps left by those who have departed.  We have been urged by our leaders to "not let the service to our customers drop" and having done the maths, the options do seem limited.

So where does this leave those who remain?***  Cynicism could easily set in, apathy may also be just round the corner.  Optimism has a lot to be said for it, and energising one's self to tackle future challenges is definitely a good frame of mind to be in.  Attack is the best form of defense and all that.  However it can sometimes struggle under the torrent of "initiatives". 

For others, it has been a time to ponder "is this it?" and consider whether alternative roles or companies is the way forward.  I fear the losses to troopers may well continue for a good few quarters yet.  Aghh, I am even starting to count normal time in quarters.  

All in all, I am not looking forward to the next year, as we regroup and try to work out how the hell we continue doing what we do with gaps in the organisation.

Well, it was good to get that off my chest.  Not sure it made for much pleasure in the reading, but you know, some days...

On a different tack, some of my group of friends have been discussing the possibility of going to Glastonbury next year.  Traveling light, sharing tents and other logistic-related discussions ensued.  We are all tempted by the Ness (Gavin and Stacey) approach to such things.  "I just take Femiwipes and tic tacs."  Hmmmmmmmmm.

* This is not to say that I am not also an avid reader of Gorse Fox, however he does not tend to discuss these things as much as the other three.

**Should one put a question mark on a rhetorical question?  Not that this is a rhetorical question of course, but I was just wondering.

***I find myself pondering the rhetorical question debate once again.  Isn't that rather interesting.

What a difference a day (or two) makes

I am, of course, talking about football.  On Saturday, Fabio said he still believes we can reach the final.  Which is interestingly when his bonus clause kicks on apparently.  But I squirrel.  On Sunday, at 5pm, we thought it was all over, and by wotsit was it over.  I fear the economic recovery will be slowed as a result.

I really am not sure I have the answer.  Many have made the comment that they are paid too much, although from my little poll, this was predominantly from Daily Mail readers.  I don't believe that particularly.  I agree they are paid a lot, and maybe that is too much, however they are more than competitive for their clubs, albeit the British teams were not so hot in the Champion's League.  So the vast sums of money they are being paid does not really affect them during their domestic season.

Maybe they did not respond well to Fabio's strict regime.  I would say that they are mostly over-grown school boys anyway, indeed they often do go straight from the cloistered environment of school to the equally cloistered environment of a football club, so this should feel like normal life for them.

And let's not forget that under Sven Goren Erikson, we concluded that their failure was to do with the relaxed atmosphere filled with the inane giggling of WAGs.

Maybe it is because we don't have a Winter break.  I need this explaining to me, because if they have two weeks off at Christmas, doesn't the season end two weeks later, unless they are going to trim some games somehow.  I vote for getting rid of one of the cup tournaments

So, this is my blueprint for success:

• make them pay for the pleasure of playing.  Nothing too extortionate, maybe a month's salary
• employ a manager who is strict but not too strict, and relaxed by not too relaxed, and British this time me thinks
• Allow WAGs in to the compound, but only if they can score a penalty, or can gargle the National Anthem whilst downing a pint of Strongbow
• Only pick players who have not played much during the season, you know, injuries, drug rehabilitation, that kind of thing, so they are not tired
• pay the manager on the average going rate for a decent football manager.  Do not, under any circumstances, pay him, or her, double what everyone else is getting.  And forget about bonuses, they are for bankers and other pugnacious larrikins.  And finally, but most importantly, have some clause in the contract that enables you to avoid paying them off with 3 years' salary when you want to get rid of them.

One last thing to report.  I have seen my first iPhone 4 in the wild.  And I can confirm that it is quite literally just a phone with a touch screen.  I did not touch it of course, because I do not have a licence, or as a colleague suggested, because I do have a, you know, winkie.  I have no idea what he was suggesting, but it made everyone laugh so I thought it worth mentioning.  I think Golfy would be very proud, since I can confirm two things about him; firstly, he does not have an iPhone 4 either, and secondly, he does have a, you know, winkie.  Although on the last point the graffiti on the Worcester toilet wall does suggest that it has, how shall we say, shrunk in the wash*.  It doesn't stop him being a jolly decent chap, but it does maybe explain why he possesses an iPhone 3. 

* As I often say, and my lawyer has suggested I say again, you cannot sue if it is funny.

Golfy Rides Again (or how a fool and his money are parted)

I am absolutely horrified.  Golfy is banging on, again, about the new iPhone 4.  Anyone would think he has nothing better to do with his time, or his money.

However, all that is forgiven since he has found me two different ties that I will seriously ignore.  

The first is a tie pillow.  Now, those that know me know that I do tend to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, or just after the third pint, whichever comes first.  Sometimes they both come at one and I simply cease to exist in the space time continuum that I had previously occupied.  I remember in the good old days when I spent my days in Worcester, and in particular in the Cardinal's Hat in Worcester, I did actually fall asleep through the whole second half of a seminal Cardinal Sin and the Bum Notes gig.  And I was the lead guitarist.  

Sorry for the delay.  Room service just arrived (veggie burger with a side of rocket and Parmesan salad plus a pint of diet coke) and I needed to tuck in, since my stomach was beginning to think my throat had been cut.

The second is an 8-bit tie.  Having started my computing career at a time when 8 bits was more than enough for any man, and colour VGA was just showing off, this does seem apt.  Go checkout Golfy's fine blog for links to these ties, but hurry back or you might miss something.

I am just watching the South Africa vs Uruguay.  The SA goalie has just been sent off.  He looks like quite an honest chap, so I am minded to believe his pleas of innocence, however the ref was not so charitable and has shown him a red'un.  I fear that the hosts may not make it in to the knockout round, and that may well change how the overall contest is received in South Africa.  Even the army may get bored and then who will steward the games.

Have a good evening and speak again tomorrow.

Aiy Phone

You've read the rest, now read the best.  Golfy knows nothing.

So, word on the street there is a new phone on the market.  Apparently you can make phone calls with it.  And other stuff.  Well that's nice then.  My dad is not so in to technology, so he has bought one of those really really simple phones with big buttons that make phones calls.  And nothing else.

So, is the "stuff" worth another £351 of your ill-gotten gains, or is it nothing more than the emperor's new clothes?

To be honest, and don't tell Golfy, I don't really care.  I have seen an HTC with Android, and that rocks.

So, on to other things.  Football.  Interesting.  North Korea, good try.  Brazil, nice one.  Portugal, you've gotta sort out that diving twot coz he is giving your country a bad name.


The next game is on Friday, and I cannot believe the terrible planning, because I am 'vannin' in the New Forest for the weekend.  We are going with our very good friends Homer and Marge*, and are really looking forward to the trip, but, honestly, during an England match.  That really is beyond the pale.  We are going to have to slum it listening on the radio.

Anyhow, that's all for now folks.

* If you think you may be Homer, or Marge, then do not despair.  There is nothing implied or otherwise in the name, I simply could not think of any other couple's names at such short notice.

So here we are then

Spending Tuesday to Thursday in London is a very intense experience.  I do at least a week's work in those three days, yet I also have a day either end working at home which is obviously still work, but does seem like overtime.  All that is to say, today is Friday but it most definitely feels like Saturday.  And we all know what a bummer feeling that is.

Today is, of course, the first day of the 2010 World Cup.  Only if you have been living on another planet, or Gloucester* as we Londoners** call it, can you have missed the fact that we are about to enter three weeks of either "glorious sporting endeavour" or "the wost three weeks of the summer, but never mind, I need to tidy up the loft and paint the kitchen anyway", depending on which side of the spherical divide you sit.

Me?  I love it.  I have to admit that somewhere through the first week the prospect of three games of football in one day between teams I have no interest in does pale slightly, however overall it is a delicious prospect, and I do rather enjoy all the spectacle and the buzz that is created amongst the England-supporting members of the community.  I even love flags, which would probably rank as an extreme social faux pas were I not already a self-confessed 'vanner, and I expect we will have one or two around the house.  It's not for me, it is for my children of course.  I am just trying to work out if I can dye the lawn in my back garden with a red cross, and must remember to borrow the ladder off my dad so I can fit the ten metre square roof-top tarpaulin***.


Tomorrow, England play their first game.  We had planned a family pizza and footy session, but Maggot 1 has just been invited to a sleep-over birthday bash, so we are recording it to watch on Sunday.  Obviously that will be "watch it for the second time" for us adults, but don't tell the children.


Have a good weekend, speak next week, and ...

... COME ON ENGLAND!!!!

------------------------------------------------------

*  Remember, you can't sue if it is funny.

** Did you notice that?  I have only been and gone and called myself a Londoner.  Whatever next?

*** Remember, as long as it is funny****, you don't need to be truthful either.
**** Humour is, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder.

Somewhere different

Today I will be venturing to somewhere different.  This particular somewhere different is a Starfleet office up in the smoke that is, let's say, not on the north of any particular bank or building society.  The purpose of the visit is to indoctrinate a number of new recruits in to the ways my little part of the universe and its associated customer.  The end game will be a larger number of troops able to manage some of the growing workload for which I am my fellow troopers are responsible.  This will set me much more firmly in the role of troop commander, and much less as a trooper, and how that will sit with me has yet to be determined.

What I know right now is there is a job to do, and things I need to achieve in order to satisfy "up the chain", and I am keen to do that.  Whether I have found my next career step is yet to be seen, but watch this space.

And if all that confused the hell out of you, then I am not surprised.  All this talk of Starfleet and troopers and other space-related analogies certainly improves the names-changed-to-protect-the-guilty aspect of the writing, but do not help any with understanding.  I therefore hope that you fall in to one of two camps:

• you are a Starfleet trooper yourself and use similar language - you know who you are Golfy, Bad Man and Stretch ;-)  
• you are seeing me shortly and can ask what the bl00dy hell I am talking about.

If you are in neither camp, then firstly, welcome, and thanks for reading, and secondly, feel free to leave a comment and I can try and enlighten you*.

Until next time, adieu.

*not forgetting the Scobi code of conduct.  Not too much abuse, and spell the words properly.  There are still two S's in to$$er.

Comparisons

I have wired internet in the hotel, freeman's for a member of Starfleet.  Hurrah for technology, although it is ethernet running at 10mbps, which is I believe the network connection speed for the ZX Spectrum.  

So, I am drawn naturally to comparing my first day back in the Smoke with my week off in North Norfolk.  I think it is fair to say that Londoners have less fingers (cheap joke, Ed) but more time for you.  There is certainly no underground system, except the Roy's underground fanbase,  of which I count myself the founder, and only, member.  They do have an extensive Broads network, the maximum speed on which is six miles per hour, four in built up areas.  This is about fifty percent faster than most traffic in London.
A portion of chips in Ken's of Wroxham (probably bitter rivals of Roy, but fair play to the fellah, he has stuck it out) is one pound twenty.  A portion of fries anywhere in London is seventeen pounds ninety-nine.  Probably.


The only other difference is that in London I am staying in a fancy hotel, and in Norfolk, a little white box.  The view from my room window today is rather impressive, though.  I am looking over Oxford Street, and just to the right I can see Marble Arch.  The only view from our 'van was the hairy @rse of the woman opposite doing her "morning stretches".  All I can say is, Marble Arch is slightly smaller, but not as white.


Second day back at work, first in my customer's offices, and the predicted "hard day" was just that.  Left the office at a quarter to eight, but had a simple six stop tube ride and then a one minute walk to the hotel, so it is an improvement on the Novotel, which had a tube change and a fifteen minute walk the other end.  The only down-side is I am not collecting any loyalty points staying here.  And breakfast is £18.95.  Rather a lot, so I had better make sure I eat my own weight in full English.  Unless my wife is reading this, in which case it is fruit, yogurt and a cold bath and flannel wash for afters.


I may well end up blogging every day this week, so I hope that I can attract back some off my many readers, who, it has to be said, have rather dwindled since I have been off on holiday, and working in London.


Come back dear readers, all is forgiven, and all is to be played for.  Now that is a topic for tomorrow.  Football.  You either love it or hate it.  Golfy is broadly neutral, which makes him probably a bit, you know, but I absolutely love it.  The Wan Kenobi clan have their England shirts, flags and age-appropriate drinks at the ready for the first game on Saturday.  

COME ON ENGLAND.

Grass

Such an evocative word.  Someone who tell tales.  Marijuana.  That green stuff my kids destroy.  Take your pick.

Today, I am talking about the green stuff.  I feel pricked in to action by fellow bloggers Golfy and A Bad Man who seem to bang on about the stuff endlessly.  And as for lawnmowers, give me a break.  Anyone would think they have a soul, they are sentient beings, they know the difference between marmite and poo.  

Before any lawyers are summonsed, I am only joking.  You guys need to lighten up a bit.  I LOVE your long stories about your little darlings, stories told with genuine love and devotion, with the occasional sprinkling of hate.  I have to keep reminding myself that these are the same dudes wot take the wotsit out of me for being a 'vanner.  How very dare they.  Just to show there are no hard feelings, here's a little bit of mower porn.  She's a beauty isn't she.  You like her don't you.

So, enough about those crazy dudes, let's get back to the guy who really knows how to rock (his 'van, of course).

Today, I may mow the lawn.  Then I may put up the swimming pool.  You may be conjuring images of infinity pools, loungers and crystal waters.  We can just about summon the latter, but the rest is just that, an image.  Our pool is a twelve foot diameter inflatable, super-sized paddling pool.  It fills to about 60cm deep so does hold a lot of water.  Bung on the cover when not in use and it warms up in days.  And the maggots love it.  With their recent interest in tree-climbing, I fear some Acapulco re-enactments might be on the cards this year, so a few ground rules - pool rules - will need to be in place.

Maggot 1 gets invested today, as a cub.  This is followed by a two hour show to celebrate the pack's 100 year anniversary.  Now, I love the recorder orchestra as much as the next deaf person, and seeing my little darling doing something artistic brings me all out in a luvvy rash.  but TWO HOURS.  He does have a bit of a predilection for a good song 'n' dance show.  You should see his Louis Spence impersonation; pure You've Been Framed magic.  

And he is a bit young to know the full truth about our Louis.


So, that's all for this week.  Have a great weekend.  Enjoy the weather.  And cut the grass.

Another week, another challenge

Another week is nearly over, and I have a whole bunch of new challenges.  I have been up in London for four days and three nights, and that does take its toll.  To put it simply, I miss my family.  I also cannot continue to have three courses at every meal.

Work is hard right now.  I should be grateful I have a job, and mostly I am.  I should also be grateful I am doing a job that, in the main, I enjoy doing.  I am certainly very glad that I do not pluck chickens for a living, or any other kind of job that is based on doing the same boring thing over and over and over.


However, man is never content.  Give me a million, and I want two.  Give me a nice watch, and I want an iPhone.  Give me a pair of ladies underwear...  Sorry, that must just be me.  I find life in the City a hectic, frantic, crazy time, with people everywhere, and no time of day or night whether there is not at least one group of suited beings drinking alcohol.  Do these people not have jobs to do?  They obviously do, to pay for the flash suit and the expensive lager, but it is a job that is obviously heavy on expense-paid lunches, heavy on networking, but light on clocking in and out.  Good on them.

The weekend draws near, and I for one am very keen to get in to it and enjoy some R&R. This weekend we have friends over for the night, and a new cub to be invested. Should be a good one, and with the weather likely to hit the high twenties Celcius, it has the potential to be a great couple of days.  I hope you enjoy yours, and we will speak again next week. 

As a final note, you should check out Golfy's blog.  It has an amazing YouTube clip watching a hand draw a series of cartoons to tell a story of what motivates people.  It is quote a remarkable video.