Changing Plans – Follow-up
Posted: Wed 30 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Depression, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »Currently, the change of plans for next week is being dealt with OK. As always, it involves sending out a spudload of CVs to available contracts, and seeing what floats back.
At the same time, the way I feel this week means I wouldn’t mind having a week at home, where I can get some outstanding stuff done. That wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
So it’s a matter of seeing what comes up. In an ideal world, another contract will come in to take the place of the now-dead one, but it might be a week or two. We’ll see.
What this entire thing has done though is put me back in the frame of mind where actually I’m really tired of what I do. Again, I’ll see whether that feeling stays, but it could be that it’s time to look at moving on to some new field, something I actually want to do rather than “just” something I’m good at. (and that I usually enjoy doing)
Mind you, changing to something else I want to do will take time – I’ve a couple of ideas for it, it’s more about having the time (and the money to take the time) to get going on them.
I dunno – I know that while things are OK at the moment I’m also a tad depressed about the entire farce. I’m tired of it. So I’m going to take some time, think about where things want to go and/or need to go. We’ll see what happens.
Changing Plans
Posted: Tue 29 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Agency Idiocy, Charm School, Customer Services, Depression, Domestic, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »Today I got a call from one of the agencies I’ve been dealing with, and all of a sudden everything changes.
The contract I was supposed to be starting on Monday has been cancelled. Apparently the directors of the company in question have decided that the project won’t go ahead, so they’ve pulled the budget for it.
And lo, no job for me. All my paperwork had been signed, ID stuff sent and the like and now it’s all for fuck-all.
This is one of the things I hate about contracting over having a “proper” job – and that’s a pretty small list, believe me – that things like this can happen at the drop of a hat. If it were a ‘proper’ job, the project decisions and budget would all have most likely been sorted well before it came round to getting someone to do the work. It’s something that seems to have been happening quite a bit this year, and it’s not something I’ve seen prior to this. Sure, I’ve had one contract come to an end before it was supposed to – and I’ve had plenty more extend well past when they were supposed to finish – but up ’til now I’ve not had to deal with ones that get cancelled before they start.
It leaves me at a bit of a loose end, as I’d already closed off the current contract to end on Friday so everything was ready for Monday’s start at the – now non-existent – new place.
So I’m back to square one. Sending out updated CVs, talking to agencies, going to interviews.
I won’t deny, it’s been a serious hit on me today – I’m not feeling great anyway, so this has just been kind of the last thing I needed. All told, it makes me want to chuck in the entire thing and head off to Pastures New (or at least Pastures Different) with a totally different job/career/work-life.
It won’t happen yet, no matter how much I want it to – but I think it’s something I need to start properly working towards. (And I know, that’s not grammatical – I just can’t think of the grammatical way to put it)
In summary? Today’s bollocks. Next week ain’t looking good, either.
Final Week
Posted: Mon 28 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »Today’s the start of my last week working in London. Happy, Happy Day.
I haven’t minded being in London, and I know I could do it again if I had to. It’s not an ideal situation, but if the work’s there, then I can do the travel and stay away.
I also know that after last week, I will never do the “driving into central London on a regular basis” thing again. That was certainly a step too far for me – if the drive had actually been just the mooted two hours, it would’ve been OK, but with the extra time involved and London traffic, it was a killer. By Friday I was in no fit state for anything.
Overall I’m glad that I’ll be returning to a more sane working set-up from next Monday. I’ve got the job done here, and everyone seems happy (which helps too) so all told it’s been a fairly successful contract.
Now, roll on Friday.
Killer Week
Posted: Mon 21 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Charm School, Driving, Own Business, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »This week is looking like it might turn out to be Not Fun.
I’ve got some pre-existing bookings during the week (I wasn’t expecting the contract to extend…) which means I’m working in the office on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This means that I’m going to be driving in to the office instead of using public transport. And I suspect that will not be fun. It’s likely to be at least two hours each way – although I’ve done drives like that for work before, and at least I will have a break between each one, rather than doing three or five days on the trot, which would leave me looking like a stunned monkey by Wednesday (as it did when I did that for a week down to Basildon last year)
Needless to say, on those days the blogging content might be a bit thin on the ground.
Still, it’s only three days. And then one more week entirely in London. And then I’m done.
Final Stretch
Posted: Thu 17 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Getting Organised, Own Business, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »This morning I’ve done all my necessary bookings and payouts for the last couple of weeks of this contract. (I know, I’m being organised. It’s as much of a shock to me as it is to you)
That means I’ve pre-paid my Congestion Charges for next week (Don’t ask), as well as booking my train and hotel for the week after.
All sorted – and after that, I’m just going to be commuting to Cambridge, so my main expense will be petrol. (diesel, whatever)
Thankfully, this contract’s been OK – it’s had good and bad bits, and there’s a couple of people I know I never want to work with again, but it’s been pretty good over-all. But I can’t deny, I’m going to be happy with not working in London again for a while after this. I can do it, and if it’s where the work is then fine – but I couldn’t do it long-term, I know.
Firefox vs. AVG
Posted: Tue 15 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Technology, Work-related | 5 Comments »As part of setting up the new laptop over the weekend, I’ve installed (among other things) AVG for anti-virus and Firefox as my main web-browser.
Bizarrely, I found that when I was entering a URL in Firefox, the Enter key wasn’t working – I had to click on the ‘Go’ arrow in order to get it to go to the URL. Now, I never click to go to a URL, always just type it in and whack Enter, so this was going to be something that was deeply annoying if it stayed around.
It turns out that AVG installs a toolbar/add-on in Firefox called “AVG Safesearch” and for some reason it’s that add-on that was breaking the functionality for the Enter key. I don’t know why this is the case – it strikes me as just something that hasn’t been tested properly.
But if you’re having a problem with the Enter key not working in Firefox, the first port of call is to check you’re not running AVG Safesearch. As soon as it’s disabled, everything works fine.
Most odd.
Laptoppage
Posted: Mon 14 September, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »Following on from the recent post where I wrote about the fact my current laptop is/was dying at a great rate of knots, I ended up ordering a new one and it arrived (without prior warning, which is always a bit of a worry) on Friday.
It’s nothing hugely special, just a Dell Inspiron thing, but it will more than fill my requirements for the forseeable future. There’s a twin-core beast of a processor, 4Gb of memory, and a 500Gb hard-drive, coupled to a monitor with a 1600×900 resolution. I got the extended battery, as it’ll still get used on a regular basis while travelling and so on.
And even better, at the time I ordered it it cost me exactly £500. If it lasts like the last one did, it’ll be 2012 by the time I think about getting another one. God only knows what the basic spec will be by then!
It’s got a couple of idiosyncracies – I think the weirdest thing is that for the first time ever, I’ve got a machine that doesn’t have any indicator lights on it for hard-drive, battery charging, etc. It’s *very* strange to not have them – or maybe this is a new trend that I’ve just not spotted ’til now.
As always, I’ve spent time over the weekend copying files over, archiving/deleting stuff, sorting out software installations and the like, but I think we’re pretty much there now. I’m still missing my CS3 install, but I’ll get the disc back for that sometime (and there’s no real hurry) and then it’ll all be done.
So it’s nothing hugely special – but it’ll do, and it cost me less than half what a commensurate MacBook would do. I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got, thanks.
[Update : Having looked at Apple’s on-line store, an equivalent MacBook Pro would’ve cost me from £1,500 – so I’ve got what I need for one third of the price of the Mac. Can’t think why I don’t want to go Apple, can you?