Category: Life
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Internetting as a Contact Sport
I’ve been avoiding the ‘social networking’ sites for a while now (I’m not exactly a social person at the best of times…) but recently I’ve started to feel a bit left out, as everyone else I know seems to be joining in, and my paranoia had me thinking that maybe it’s all some great club and everyone but me is having a jolly old time of it all. I don’t normally make a habit of bowing to peer pressure, but when Farhad told me I needed to sign up for Facebook I thought I may as well jump on the bandwagon. I’m… Read more
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Back in the Saddle
You have to admire their powers of persuasion. The project that was trying to pressgang me a while back have finally managed to second me onto their team. Officially I’m on an 80/20 split, but both projects think they are the 80% so my workload has increased from “Ridiculously busy” to “Sleep, what’s that?”. The work itself is about the same (Change Management / Knowledge Management), but this new project is just starting out so it will be nice to be able to make the right decisions from the outset as opposed to coming in mid-project and trying to get… Read more
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More Rolling Than Coasting
I’m currently in Florida, on the second leg of a two-week family vacation. We arranged this quite some time ago, and decided that we’d drive across as it would work out cheaper than flying. Obviously I hadn’t counted for the rampant rise in gas prices, or the fact that the Explorer only gets around 17 miles to the gallon when I made this decision. But even so it was still cheaper to make the 2,000 mile round trip by car, especially as there were seven of us (the in-laws are also over). Plus, my loathing of air travel would see… Read more
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Stimulate, my arse!
Over here in God’s Chosen Countryâ„¢, the economy is going down the pan. You can see it on the news, sense it on the streets, and feel it in in your wallet. Everything is more expensive, from gas to a gallon of milk (or from petrol to a pint of milk, if you prefer) so everyone has less money. Thankfully, God’s Own Governmentâ„¢ is in control and taking measures to rectify the situation. In a bid to ‘kick-start’ the economy, earlier this year Dubya announced a series of economic measures that included a one-off payment to every tax-paying American (or legal… Read more
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Refining my appearance
After four months on my new project, I finally got the chance to travel beyond my cubicle. All the way to our refinery at ‘beautiful’ Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We’re implementing (among other things) a new dock management system, and I had to go and train some of the users on how to use it. The site is on Scenic Highway, but I think this must be an attempt at suspension of disbelief, because you’d be pretty hard-pushed to find a place less ‘scenic’ than this – it’s just a huge collection of tanks, pipes, and chimneys which takes up all… Read more