Ouch.  The mind boggles as to why you’d do this to yourself…

Just why?

I really worry about one of my colleagues. He’s mentioned on several occasions about his lack of navigational ability, but last night took the biscuit.

On leaving Bury after the company bowling trip last night (i.e. not the normal “departure location”) he took the wrong turn.  His route should’ve been from Point A on the map below to Point B. A nice easy run.  However, the route taken was slightly different…

One hell of a diversion...

Yep – a wrong turning meant that he went from Bury to Norwich, back down to Newmarket – past the place he lives! – to come back to Mildenhall.

I despair…

One of the things that’s very odd (in my experience) with the Chevrolet Matiz I’m currently driving – but only ’til Monday, praise the Lord! – is the layout of the dashboard. The speedo, rev counter and fuel gauge aren’t in the normal place, but are instead slap-bang in the middle of the dash.

You get used to it quickly enough, but it’s still very odd initially to not have the dials in the normal place. In some ways it’s like when one of your mirrors is unavailable (whether it’s fallen off, been smashed off, or just that the car is so full of [whatever] that you can’t see out of the back window) in that you suddenly realise again how often you do check them. Until you get used to it, every time you look for the dial, it’s a little jolt ’til you remember where it actually is.

I’m not a great fan of having the dials in the centre of the dash. It’s not much different – not like you suddenly have to look somewhere completely different, or move your head/neck in order to see them or anything. But it doesn’t feel “right”. After however many years of having the dials in line with the steering wheel, having them in a different location just feels strange, and somehow “wrong”.

As always, I despair of people’s idiocy when it comes to calling 999. (And regular posts and Twitters from Reynolds reinforce this too)

In this case, a woman calling 999 because her cat has been playing with string for two hours. I have no idea whatsoever what makes this an emergency in anyone’s mind (or what passes for a mind in this case) but I do think that anyone who thinks it’s an emergency deserve a punishment served up by a stun-gun.

With the new job I’m actually finding myself in a fairly serious position of trust and responsibility – quite weird, for having only been with the company for two months.

For example, I’m completely responsible for the security of the data, a lot of which is seriously sensitive. That’s fine, I’ve been there before with other sets of information, but the sheer scale of this one is what makes it a bit intimidating. The stuff I’ve inherited from my predecessors is – to be polite – a bit shambolic, with what looks like a lot of “Oh, that’ll do” workarounds. So I’m getting to fix these things, and that can be a bit stressful.

This week has been (and still is, to some degree) a high point on the stress levels, because of two big jobs.

First, I’ve had to change all the encryption methods on the site, to bring it into accordance with some industry guidelines. That means de-crypting the existing data, re-encrypting it with the new method, then de-crypting it all again to make sure it matches the first set of de-crypted data. For 75,000 records. Suffice it to say, there were *lots* of backups in place, so I could roll it all back whenever.

Second – and this is due to be happening either tonight or tomorrow – we’re moving all the database stuff over to the new server. Again, having a seperate server for the database is a requirement of the industry standards but means a lot of work – killing the site, taking backups, copying them to the new server, and restoring the data. We could have used replication to copy one database to t’other, but to be honest I’m happier with the slower method which I’m familiar with in this case, rather than one I haven’t needed to use before.

Along the way, I’m also now a key-holder for the office – something else I don’t actually mind, and have done plenty of times before – but again it’s that responsibility, that trust which I still find surprising. I shouldn’t, but I do.

The final piece of this has started this week, as we’ve now got a new developer on board so I’m now in charge of a team of three developers, having to set up all the infrastructure for development areas, change control, training, documentation, everything. I’m responsible for two other people’s jobs as well as my own. That’s the scary bit – in the case of the new developer, I’ve been the one to interview him, I’m the one who’s said he’ll do the job. If I’m wrong, then he’s going to go, and won’t necessarily have anything to go to.

It’s all a bit of a leap into the – what? It’s not unknown, I’ve run small teams before, and run other businesses before I got back into IT and Web stuff. But it’s a big leap for me all the same, from where I was working last year as sole developer for one of the local councils, and now I’ve got a team, a set of plans, and a whole shitload of work.

Weird the way things work out sometimes, isn’t it?

While out shopping for some bits yesterday, we came across this crossing in a carpark in Norwich…

Crossing to Nowhere

Yep, that zebra-crossing actually ends up in a hedge. No pathway, no throughfare, nothing. Just cross the road, walk into a hedge.

Bizarre