Christmas day

Has been very pleasant. Still recovering from massive flu and throwing back the paracetamol to control fever,

but washing it down with the best damn Christmas meal in years and a nice Chianti.

We are now pausing before moving on to dessert. I have received several wonderful presents from my wife. Including "The CAT of GLORY", 3 ties and a Terry Pratchett book.

sad country for old men

Our mascot bumble bee at the Christmas tree


Recovering from 12 hours of intense flu fever (me not SJ)

Fat cat lives

Not really Naga food, but all the same...



WTH's a "Philly Steak Club" doing in London?

Welcome to post-imperial Britain

Dude! Watch out for the FCO

Sunset tube

Through the wonder of technology that isn't my iPhone camera you too can experience London.

This is Tottenham Court Road tube station. So many people. Are they struggling as much as me? Are they happy sad? Now muslims like Jacko? Crappy jobs? Married? Gay?

Again, through the wonder of technology you can't see the incredible shades of red that were in this sunset. Yes that white blur of sky was red in real life. I think the phone just picks a colour and goes with it.

The long and winding road

So, once again, I am finding myself in a situation where I am being asked to do work which is detrimental to the company asking me to do the work. I often run into this problem in mid-large size companies I work for where the political environment / desire to impress shareholders produces requirements to build functionality on top of dangerously built systems.

Usually these requests are motivated by either (1) a desire to honestly tell shareholders and investors that "the system" is being extended and new functionality is being added, or (2) a manager is focused on being able to tell their superior that they are extending and enlarging existing systems. Usually these two things go hand in hand.

In this case, the code which makes up the system being extended is of such poor quality that in adding to the code base, we are increasing the size of the inevitable job of replacing everything we are doing. For this reason, I feel that what I am doing is morally questionable.

The pragmatic approach to these problems is to bury my head in the sand and accept that this is "someone else's problem." Of course, I think that this approach is largely responsible for the recent collapse of so many banks in this city. I do not know what to do - I'm trying to stick to my word and complete my contract, but it's a bit of a moral quandry.

Business Systems

Just out of a meeting discussing a painful modification to two systems. It's painful mainly because the company is using one of the systems to do something it wasn't designed for, and it's the kind of problem experienced by every large company (and most small ones) I've worked in. At the end of the meeting, I asked the business person who has been with the company longest why we were using the system to do something it wasn't intended to do and was told "Because we're !*%#, and that's what we do."

Now, you would think that when so much money is on the line, somebody's head would be on the chopping block for having made the decision to use the product in the first place. Concievably, you could trace things back to some decision made two or three years ago, and find out who was the force behind such a disasterous decision. However, once again, the spectre of outsourcing raises its ugly head. When asked "why did we do this?" the answer inevitably ends up being, "Well, this isn't how we specified for it to be done. [That other company] just implemented it this way." To which my question would be, "Who signed off on the work received from that company?"

Of course, it's all a moot point, because the company ultimately answers to the shareholders, who aren't interested in such ins and outs. The shareholders just want to know how we're going to make money in the next quarter, and how many expensive employees we have.

So... the job thing in London...

I really thought jobs might be a bit different here, but it appears that my industry offers the same opportunities, and suffers from the same problems in the UK as it does in the US.

A few things seem better:

• more cognisant of theoretical/intellectual concerns in building their business systems


• some openness to open-source software and vendor neutrality

Some things are worse:

• filling in 4 different time sheets every week


• spent 3 hours in a pointless health and safety meeting recently

Some things are the same:

• Many companies are dealing with the horrible legacy of outsourcing their product development to India

So the company I resigned from is still employing me... After handing in my notice, the development manager spoke to me for about 15 minutes, at which point it became clear that the problems I was running into were definitely problems that needed to be addressed. I was therefore moved to a different team while they address the issues. Although the new team is working with old technology, and the work is painfully messy, I have decided to work out the contract in order to come good on my word regarding the initial contract period. I think he offered me this role because he felt bad about employing me, only to have me walk into a crap situation. According to the contract, I could leave at any time given one week's notice, but I figure things will not necessarily be any better in any other company I work in. Better the devil I know...

Meanwhile I'm working on some certifications in the hope that I can be better value for money for future employers. My career seems to be taking somewhat of a back seat, in the sense that I am trying to be less aggressive about pursuing the best opportunities and the latest technologies. I am not at all sure what the focus for this energy should be, but I have at least resolved that it is not worth channelling it into staying at the forefront of my field. I suppose I am trying to listen to the circumstances of my life and sense where I should be heading, rather than trying to shape it myself. It's hard though. So much of what I get a kick out of in life is the excitment of being on the bleeding edge, of getting to know my material as well as anyone else in the industry. Now that appears to be the wrong direction...

OK - back to my painful untangling of messy, hacked-together code again...

Hey, look - I'm ending all my paragraphs with elipses...

St. Obama

From the mildly amuzing to the seriously disturbing, Obama appears to be God's incarnation...

Yes you can

Just a quick uncharacteristically enthusiastic hello to you all on that side of the pond, to congratulate you on your process, whichever way you voted. This morning I am truly in awe of the agility of the US system to change to embrace new understanding.

A welcome of sorts

Now that I have this ring on my finger, I am finally back on terra firma. Or, sorta firma... The week we arrived the banks collapsed and the job market went down the toilet. Then the pound started to collapse against the dollar. Not good when one is paying an american mortgage as well as the 300 pounds per week rent we are expected to pay here...

Nonetheless I eventually have found a job. And then I resigned. But they're trying to keep me anyway... we'll see what happens. Today we went to a pub after church and SB had a roast leg of lamb and I had a portabello mushroom burger that was pants as HMOT might say.

Anyway, I started this newer blog because I had a ghost from the past visiting my old one, and I don't particularly want that. However, the people I do very much want to see it are those in America who I am still missing... naughty mouse, holy man on toast, new kind of dj, flopsy... to name a few. Oh, and Tia if he could be arsed. Which he wont be... 

Any way. Hope things are well with all y'all.