Quick one

• first half of deal going well - one down, one to go
• Caravaner of the Year, hideously addictive, crack cocaine for the middle classes
• Looking forward to a long weekend
• Enjoy yours

Outage

Our internet and phone line has been down all today.  I have therefore had to tether off my phone to get any kind of connection, and it is slow.  In a sense, it is a walk down memory lane, to the days when the main broadband was this slow.

I had to Google the likely speeds for my 3G, and to be honest it is faster than I thought at 6-7Mbps.  I was not sure if that was a real bandwidth possibility or just pie in the sky, so I loaded a Speedtest app, and can confirm that it is actually delivering me 5.46Mbps just at the moment, which I have to say is pretty amazing considering.  It certainly blows out the water my first broadband, which ran at  the nose-bleeding speed of 0.5Mbps but which was, nevertheless, awesome compared to the 64Kbps of my dial-up modem (younger readers may need to ask an oldie about this).

I have been able to get on with bits and pieces, but all at a much slower speed than normal.

Tomorrow I am on my travels to near Bath to visit my client, a one and a half hour meeting that will basically take me all day, with a two and a half hour drive each way.  I am therefore unlikely to blog, but I will be able to get through a shed-load of podcasts.

LO is away Saturday night at a fiftieth girlie night away, so it is just us lads for most of the weekend.  Maggot 2 has a match Saturday and Sunday, and Maggot 1 wants to go over to Pompey to a five-a-side football place with his mates Saturday afternoon, so Sunday evening is likely to be lazy time, as we all get to know each other again.

Have a great weekend, and speak next week.

Busy week.

Been on a two-day conference with my practice, which was fun, interesting, alcohol-laden on the night inbetween, and a great chance to meet more of my colleagues.  I am starting to build, if not quite a network yet, then at least a mesh of acquaintances with whom the next interaction will be the easier for us knowing each other.

First two days I was up at Head Office, helping two new starters with their early induction.  One was ex Starfleet, and the other ex the "phone place" where Brad used to work.

I am now back to the day job, with a client visit in the offing.  For this, I will need to be on my best behaviour and top performance, since I am representing the technical aspects of our unsolicited bid.  It will be fun, and all part of the ever-steeper learning curve.

I had a text and an email from two Starfleet colleagues who are likely to be in line for redundancy.  Both excellent people, good at their jobs, and I would say an asset to the company, but I fear they both suffer from two fatal flaws:

• they are UK based, never a good thing is this new global marketplace
• they are the "good workers but don't shout about it" variety, and that breed of animal is often overlooked, their good bits not fully visible to the spreadsheet-poring managers looking for heads to cull.

Sad for both of them, and sad for the business they leave behind.  Maybe it is progress.  All I know is that, while anywhere near immune from such activities, I have at least, for now, made a positive move that has avoided such a thing for a bit.  I am definitely on higher ground now, higher up the pole, so that gives me some time.  I just need to get good at my job, really start adding value, so that my current employer looks past me if they are searching with their axe for a head to fell.

Enough analogies I think.

Normal weekend for us.  Football was this morning, we lost something like 13-3 to the team in the year above.  Some good points, and some things we can work on, so a good workout, a good test, and only by playing better teams can we really see where we need to improve.

We are at David and Samantha's this evening, which will be nice.

I hope you have a great weekend, speak next week.

That is a bit better

It was inevitable, but never the less it is rather pleasing that it is coming to pass.

After another week, I am starting to feel like I am starting, just starting, to start on the journey to starting to get it.

That is a lot of starts I know, but for good reason.  I am still regularly being side-swiped by acronyms, ffs, and also with impenetrable process and baffling colleagues.  But* at least I am saying words, and they mostly make sense.  Even my "I know this is probably a dumb question"**  questions are hitting the mark.

I have been working from home ever since my training.  I nearly went to head office on Tuesday, as part of a deal I was loosely supporting, but in the end it sorted itself out so I was not needed.  I think things on my main deal will start to build now, with client meetings planned for a week or two's time, but so far my main fear that I would be putting too many miles on the lease car has not come to pass.  I suspect they are savings now that will need to be spent later, but that is fine.  It may also mean that I can fit in a European tour within the upper limit as well.

Last night, we had ten teenagers on a sleep over for Maggot 1's fourteenth birthday bash.  They are a good crowd, but that does not take away from the fact that they are ten basically fully-grown, testosterone-oozing*** lads, like overgrown puppies after one too many Red Bulls, intent on "pulling an all-nighter" and mostly succeeding.  Mind you, they were not so clever at 8.30am this morning as I made the commute from bedroom to study.  Ha!

This weekend we have the usual sport, and also lunch at my parents with my sister and her family, to celebrate my mum's birthday.

For the rest of the weekend, I hope to do not much, though I now have a DIY booklet, not list, booklet, with all the stuff I need to do, and I will probably try and knock some of that off.  To be honest, a Saturday afternoon painting Maggot 1's bedroom (some residual and historical damp patches that my filling and painting the year before has sorted, but it takes a year sometimes for it all to dry out once the exterior is actually water-tight) with the football on the radio is not a bad way to spend a few hours.  I continue to be happy doing anything, if it can be uninterrupted, since that is the complete opposite of a normal working day.

Anyhow, enough from me.  I hope you have a great weekend, at least for those that know when the weekend starts and ends, and speak next week.

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* I know you, dear reader, like things to be correct, so I did just Google whether starting a sentence with a "But" was acceptable, and apparently it is, for some people.  I just hope you are part of those "some people"
** A technique taken from the same stable as "you are probably going to kill me dad . . . " and "I could have bought a £500 pair of shoes, but instead . . . "
*** I have missed using my stars!  Teenage boys stink, if not of body odour (Lynx and the ladies seem to keep that to a minimum) then of testosterone.  I mentioned this to my hairdresser, let's call him Paul Weller, and he told me the day that forty-one rugby players were in for a sponsored head shave.  They had a 2m x 2m bag 15cm deep with hair after the cut, and the whole salon stank of "eau d'homme"

Ahhh

I could get used to these four-day weeks.  As I write those words, I can hear Gorse Fox muttering something about zero-day weeks, but I shall choose to ignore that.

I am now officially working.  I have two deals and a side project on my plate.  This is still not really working me fully but it is getting there.  It is a very frustrating experience being in the position of needing to do stuff with not enough idea as to how to do it.  Everything is different (as I expected); department names, department responsibilities, the client's departments, divisions, groups and systems, and most of it is described with either three or four letters.  I have a little list going at the back of my notebook as I find out the meaning of each one, but what I am finding is that people do not seem to want to slow down too much on the local jargon, expecting me to be able to just pick it up.

Anyhow, it is Friday, the rest of the clan have had the week off, and we head in to a weekend of fun.  We are seeing David and Samantha tonight, and Brad and Angelina on Sunday.  It will be good to catch up with everyone.

We are also blessed with no football at all this weekend.  That means lay-ins, but also a need to do something physical to stop the wild animals from crawling up the wall.  On the subject of football, I have shown Maggot 2 the John Smith's "av' it" advert with Peter Kay, and he now introduces "av' it" in to any appropriate situation.

It has been nearly two months now since I made the leap, and I feel the need to ponder, briefly*, how it has gone.  I have done well to get all the required training completed and passed, which will put me in good stead for the future (indeed, I got an award from my boss for doing so), and I have started to build a network.

The bit that concerns me is simply that I need to be doing a job, and I don't really know how to yet.  I have observed in me the fact that I do like to know all aspects of a role before I feel I can really do it, to understand the ins and outs of a cat's behind, and this may hold me back, so I need to constantly remind myself to deal with what I can with what I know and keep pushing forward.  The trouble is when faced with an issue for which I do not have a clue, I feel so impotent not knowing how to handle it.  Oh well, that is all part of the package, so I just need to grit my teeth, gird my loins and clench my buttocks, and settle in for the ride of my life.

On that note, I wish you a fantastic weekend, and speak next week.

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* thank goodness for that. Ed.

The real world

My first week, post on-boarding, in the real world of work.  This has not been that painful so far.  I have my first deal, actually taking over from one of my clan (at least his surname suggests so) though we have not yet found the family tree intersection point.

The real issue is that this was a deal that was completed, the client put it on hold, and it is just coming alive again.  My namesake is now on another deal, and so is handing over to me.  This at least gives me someone to buddy up with, however I am going to have to be on my own sooner or later, and I know little about the client, nor its infrastructure, nor the account team, nor the very many new three letter abbreviations, aka TLAs, I will need to learn.  It will all come in time I know, but sometimes team members do not have the patience with the new guy.

My other bit of work a mini project to get a new system populated with information for a bunch of different opportunities, one of which is my new deal.  There is some irony in this because I have just spent two weeks being trained in the process, and now there is a new tool to run it.  In truth, most of what I have learnt is useful, but this new tool will change the way we do our bit, and I guess being near the front of the queue of people who are learning how to use the new system will give me some kind of advantage over my more experienced colleagues.  The challenge with this bit is that I am engaging with people on opportunities, and all I have is my classroom training, so I am asking "do you have a wotsit?" they are asking "what is a wotsit?", or worse, "ah, for our proposal, we did not bother doing one".  What does the newbie say to that?

We are off to the New Forest tomorrow in the 'van.  I have installed the new hitch on the it, so it fits on the new car, so it will be a new experience towing with the new car, and without the snake-bar (but with an Al-Ko hitch instead).  Apart from the weather, I am very much looking forward to it.  LO is out tonight at a leaving do for one of her teachers, so we are packing and leaving tomorrow morning.

On that note, I shall wish you a great long weekend, Happy Easter, whether the Jesus or the chocolate variety, or indeed if both.  Speak next week.

Phew

End of training week two.  Phew.  Was gonna try and keep some "...ew" rhyming going there, but realise that would be naff.

I fell ill during the first day, and so spend a fairly miserable three days with a developing cold.  Nothing life-threatening, though were I in any other situation I would probably have retired to bed.

I have really enjoyed the training.  It has given me the basics of my role and my part of the business, which is nice, and I have met a number of peers from various roles, again all within my general sphere, which is doubly nice.  This means I have some general knowledge to use in my role, and the beginnings of a network.  I will now need to get out there to start earning an honest crust.

Today, Friday, I am taking a breather.  I have done the first half of my expenses (an education) and have finished some of the training we did not cover in the course (also an education) and as I type this, I have been watching the weeks news show for NN.  It is fairly light-hearted in style, but actually very informative too, and one item was on the new memorista technology, which by coincidence we used in our final presentation, to demonstrate the ultimate partnership with our client.  You had to be there really.

These two weeks have really taken it out of me, and being ill has certainly not helped, so today I am just catching up on things and taking it a bit easy, ready for next week.  The weekend is a normal one, with sporty things Saturday, and of course the rugby Saturday afternoon, but we are in Saturday evening, which I think is just what we all need.  Sunday we do have "high tea" at A&E's, the third is a series of "Special Sundays".  I suspect that my unwellness will mean I won't be drinking, so it should be fun, without the Monday morning hangover.

I hope you have a great weekend.  Speak next week.

education, education, education

It has been an intense week of classroom education.  I say week, it is four days, with Friday off to recover, and boy do I need it.

The training has been intense - 8.30am starts, usually going on to around 7.30pm, but it has been really good.  There was just a mass of information to offload on to us for these first four days, and that obviously means death-by-Powerpoint to a certain extent, but we did get to practice each bit as well, and to be honest it is the only way to get through the material.  Next week we will have some information to absorb, but we will also be spending much longer working on our proposals.  My boss will be judging the final presentations, so I want to be good.

I am loving the fact that I am actually getting high quality training for my role.  This is not something that is always there, it certainly was not available at Starfleet, so I am making the most of it and really getting stuck in.

I did have a slight embarrassing Tuesday evening, when about eight of the group went for an Indian, and I managed to fall asleep near the end of the meal.  To be honest, it was the perfect storm;  I was very tired from the day's training, we did not get there until 9pm (i.e. an hour from my favoured bedtime) and, worst of all, I was at the end of the table, up against a half-height wall, the other side of which was the bar, so it was very easy for me to catch one the waiter's eyes, and ask for another pint.  Thankfully one of my colleagues was driving, and he gave me a lift back to the hotel.  To avoid any further embarrassment, and especially since my new boss would be present, I drove to the Wednesday night meal, which also started an hour earlier, so consequently there was nothing bad to write home about.

This weekend we have the usual morning of sport, and in the afternoon I will be attending my 'van to fit a new Al-Ko hitch to the van.  This is needed because my new car has a standard swan-neck tow bar, pretty much defacto for any factory-fitted tow bar, but one that cannot take my snake-bar.  This new hitch will therefore provide the anti-snake feature within the tow hitch itself.  We need this to be done for Easter, when we plan to go away to the New Forest.

That's about all for this week.  Have a great weekend, and speak next week.

Nearly a month

As the title suggests, or rather states very clearly and simply, this is the end of week four, so near enough a month, especially as I left Starfleet on the 5th February.

I am still very much liking NN.  I acknowledge that this is the honeymoon period, but even those senior executive notes that in the other place, seems like a load of old guff, feels very relevant here.  I like the tone of the messages, I like the general sense of getting things done.  None of this is really so very different, so really it is how I am receiving it, which is exactly what I wanted and expected.

So, at the end of week four, where am I?  I have been in to the office, on Wednesday, and will have to find a better route because the one I took was VERY slow, and the journey took 2 hours.  The sat nav said one hour ten minutes, which rose fairly quickly to one hour twenty, which I think is what it should take, but I just went a bad way, with lots of bottlenecks of traffic.  I will learn slowly the best route.  Whilst there, I met with my buddy, who worked quite a lot with Golfy, so we had a good old natter about him, and do you know, he is not as bad as the graffiti says.

I also met with three other new starters, two ex-Starfleet, who will be on the two weeks of training starting next week.  I also met my boss' boss - who was actually my boss when I was interviewed, but in the intervening time got promoted, to be replaced by my now boss, who at the time was a senior version of me.

At home, things are fairly steady.  One task that I need to complete before Easter is to fit a new tow hitch on my caravan, one with built in stabiliser features, since my old stabilisation device was a "anti-snake bar", which needs a different type of tow ball than I have (old style with a plate on which to mount the bracket to attach the snake-bar to the car).  I had to do a fair amount of research, visiting the 'van twice just to determine what kind of attachment I have, and it is one vertical and one horizontal bolt, whereas all the videos I have seen assume two horizontal bolts.  I also have a handbrake that would get in the way of some of the newer tow hitches with their long handles.  The one I have found is for smaller, or rather lighter, 'vans, and its handle is all within the dimensions of the main hitch.  It also has two horizontal holes, to fit most 'vans, but also one vertical one which should, I think, fit mine.  I got it new of eBay for a good price, and the person was also able to advise that it would fit my fitting, so I am hopeful.

I plan to recruit E to help me, since he is very practical (that is not to say that I am not), but as importantly, he has a decent set of spanners, including a torque spanner.  As this hitch is the only bit keeping the big white box attached to my car, I am very keen for it to be fitted correctly, and E is definitely the man to help ensure that it is.

Maggot 2's team was unceremoniously dumped* out the cup last week, so our season is over, though we plan to have friendlies regularly, and there will be a couple of tournaments and cups to play for as well.  The friendlies are important, because as of next year we move from seven to nine aside, and there will also be off-sides, as well as the other team not needing to retreat to the half-way line for goal kicks.  Typically, even the best teams are rubbish for half a season, since this really is quite a change for the boys, hence why getting as many nine-a-side practice matches in before the season starts is really good for us all.

I hope you have a great weekend, and speak next week.

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* I say unceremoniously because this is a team we have beaten, but they just wanted it more than us, so fought hard for every ball, and as a result we ended up panicking and booting the ball away, straight to their feet for the next attack.

End of week three . . .

. . .  and still only been in the office once.  Planning a visit next week, to meet up with some new starters who are also ex Starfleet, and hopefully also to meet my buddy.

I have continued to educate myself.  Passed the security exam, failed the managed workplace exam, and may try again if get the time.  Only need to pass one major, and I did my Cloud exam successfully last week, so this is all gilding the lily, thought my buddy did mention that he had heard that the exces are considering making it a rule that we pass ALL the major exams, so maybe I do need to do it now, while I have the time.

Otherwise, not much to report.  Maggot 2's team had a magnificent victory in the cup last Sunday, beating one of the best teams in the league on penalties.  Our goalie has been making noises that he might not want to be a goalie any more, possibly due to the complete lack of action in the last few games when we have won with stupidly high scores.  Having become the hero of the last game, I am hoping he may change his mind, especially as he is at the Brighton Academy as a keeper.

We have lunch for 21 on Sunday, as part of our social group's "monthly get togethers", and it will likely be fully of food, chat, and drink, and Sunday afternoon/evening and Monday may be pretty difficult for us all.  Oh well, you are only young once, or so I seem to recall.

Have a great weekend, and speak next week.

Another week under the belt

I am now a Spartan White Belt, and it happened by accident.

The online training I have been doing for just over a week was all leading up to me taking the core exam.  This was as perplexing as the same questions at the end of each module, and I score 67% first time round, on a test where pass was 80%.  With a bit more research and probably a little bit of luck, I then scored 87% second time round, and so had passed my core exam.

Next step was the to select a major - mine would be cloud of course - and with a couple of inquisitive mouse clicks, I found myself accidentally starting the exam.  To be frank, I have clicked around so many sites and buttons and "go here for further information" links that I a bit punch drunk, so it was less surprising that you may first suspect that I was in the exam.

"Oh well," I thought, might as well at least have a go, to see what it is like, and where I would need to read up.  Thirty minutes later and I had finished it, and with a score of eighty-something, which was a pass.  So, as I said at the start, I am now accidentally a White Belt.

By way of penance, I am now wading through all the training that I only found after I had finished, which is training to prepare for this exam.  It is long, but it is also useful, so I am not complaining.

On the home front, it is half-term this week, so picture caged tigers with too little to do, and you are close to the mark.  We did take the Maggots to a Clip 'n' Climb" last night, and as they were the only two in their session, I decided to pay and join them.  If you are not familiar, the picture below gives a sense (taken from the internet, not our actual one).

This included the "leap of faith", which on paper looked like a fairly innocuous jump from a platform a couple feet up on to a handle about a hands-breadth away.but in person it was, I don't know, two hundred feet up and requiring a fifty foot leap.  Okay, so I am exaggerating, but it was one of those things that looked doable on the ground, but when I got up there, I just could not do it, and had to take the walk of shame back down again.  Maggot 1 did the same, only to then do it when Maggot 2 had a successful go.  I say "successful", when in fact they did not jump for the handle, just jumped off, but from my perspective, that is as near as damnit, and I take my mountaineering hard-hat off to them.

We have an Indian extravaganza on Saturday night.  LO has been cooking for most of the day, and has, on casual observation, used every spice and ingredient that has ever been used to make such food.

On that note, I shall bid you farewell, and wish you a great weekend.

P.S.  Had a chat with BM earlier.  Great to hear from him, and to hear his news.

End of Week One

So I have come to the end of week one.  So far so good.

I drove to Bracknell on Monday, getting there just after 10am, and maybe because I was a little later than a usual day, it took just over an hour.  I met my boss, picked up all the required bits - phone, laptop, badge - and had a fairly good day overall getting setup to be able to connect remotely.

For the rest of the week, I have been at home wading through the induction and onboarding information.  It is the usual mix of videos, speech and text that is online training, and I have to say, so far it is pretty good.  One generic video about "my career in NN" is probably the best two minutes of inspirational (yes, I know, not a word that one often uses in a corporate setting) messaging I have experienced in a very long time.

I am now starting the proper education phase.  They have a program of work with stages of qualification, and I am currently leading up to the White Belt phase.  There is strong wish in the organisation, according to colleagues, for everyone to be white belt.  This gives us a basic understanding of the NN approach and point of view about the key topics in IT, so that we all talk with one voice, and present the same message.  Again, as far as online training goes, it is pretty good and I am learning stuff, rather than being distracted to file my nails or something.

I have started to get a bit restless to be honest.  I would rather be driving somewhere every day and getting stuck in, but a conversation with a colleague, also ex-Starfleet and a month ahead of me, said he had had similar conversations with other recent starters, and everyone has the same feelings that they want to get stuck in and make a difference, but that the organisation, and our managers, understand and expect that we will first be tucked away, getting ourselves up to speed.  The mantra is, know your company, know your business, know your role.  I quite like that, and as long as my boss is happy, then I am fairly content to bide my time, and get this "basic training" out the way.

This weekend is fairly normal, though Maggot 2 is on a birthday sleepover at a friend who is also the captain of his team, so he will be off to training tomorrow with them, and then on to watch Brighton and Hove Albion at the Amex Stadium as part of the birthday celebrations.  It may be a match, Maggot 2 was typically vague on the matter, so I may go along anyway since I do enjoy watching them play a match.  Last week the game was postponed because the manager of the other team refused to play us, and had written to the FA to say as much.  It probably has something to do with the 13-1 drubbing of another Worthing team the week before, but not totally sure whether it gives the right message to the boys in either team.  Hey ho, life in the junior ranks is, as I am finding, always eventful.

Have a great weekend, and speak next week.