job – Page 3

Second Place

I came second in the Cymru Prosper Wales “Enterprising Student” competition, which earned me £100, this morning. Pretty much made my late night and early morning worthwhile. Now I’m back at the office. Needed to come in this afternoon to deploy a new version of a piece of software to a client.

Think I pissed Claire off by trying to bum a lift into the office. Gave up and hoofed it in the end (tried to get the bike fixed – something’s gone wrong with the gears – but the bike shop didn’t have enough hands-on to get it done ‘while I waited’).

Knackered. But full of creamcakes, which is good.

In the absence of this work deadline and CPW, things should return to normal tomorrow. Then I can get back to some much-needed Three Rings code.

I need to get a t-shirt printed with “I’m blogging this” on it. Yes, I know ThinkGeek do one, but it’d be cheaper to have The Don here in Aberystwyth print one for me than to pay international shipping charges, considering it’s only a one-colour print.

Quacks Do Echo, Thank You Very Much

At long last, I feel justified! As a long-time arguer (as much out of reason as playing devil’s advocate) that a duck’s quack should make an echo just like any other sound, recent research reported by the BBC demonstrates the fallacy of the widely-accepted myth!

In other news, it looks like my suggestion to Paul to go in to Burger King and meet the manager paid off – Paul now has a job:

About time I updated… I have a job. Sure, it’s only at Burger King (I start on Wednesday morning) but it’s still a job. They’re keen to work around my studies, so I get more hours now and in the holidays, but during term time I just work evenings and weekends…..

Having fun getting an Infra-Red transmitter to work under Windows 2000/XP (Microsoft removed the Virtual COM ports because they thought it would confuse users) but it works fine now…

Stan has done no work in the bathroom or on the living room since I last updated, although a set of stepladders has appeared, suggesting he intends to work sometime in the near future, though I won’t hold my breath

We all had Toad in the Hole last night. I was consulted for culinary expertise, although I don’t know why. I can’t really cook. While we’re on the topic, I nearly conned Claire into doing some cooking, but she twigged half way through chopping the potatoes and went into the living room for a lie down to recover….

I’ve sneaked a copy of DVD Maestro onto Dan’s PC so now I can master a DVD at home and bring it to D&Cs to burn. Convenient, as I can’t find a SCSI DVD-Writer anywhere….

That’s all

Early

Like Kit, I woke up surprisingly early. Then decided to go back to sleep and as such will now be late for work. Ah well.

Need to get ready for a presentation I have to give at the Park Hall Hotel tomorrow as my contribution to the Cymru Prosper Wales scheme, which funds small businesses in rural areas for employing undergraduates, and has been slipping my boss a few to give me a summer job, which I’d have had anyway. Hmm…

Paul left his shoes here. Does that mean he walked home barefoot last night?

Anyway, off to work…

Bovini: A Week Well-Spent

It’s been a busy week. I’ve spent a lot of my time at the office, trying to get the replication model for Bovini working – causing much stress as it failed time and time again. For those of you without a grounding in computer science theory, replication is the art of making data be identical (and editable) in several places at once without the fundamental problems that this goes on to cause, such as data identity conflicts.

In this particular case, we have two master copies of a database, and five smaller copies of a particular one-fifth of the data each (plus a little shared data), split around seven UK sites, and who’s computers can only be made to talk to one another between the hours of midnight and 4am each weekday. So: not only does the program I’ve been writing (and sweating on, crying over, and shouting at, this week) have to pull all the data back together and spread it out, it also has to detect whether two users at different sites edit the same piece of data during the same day, work out who’s most likely to be ‘right’, and ‘fix’ the data accordingly. Or, if it’s not sure, know who to ask for assistance. It’s a clever program.

And now it seems to be done. And working. Great!

Unfortunately, working like a dog on this little project has only taken time (and energy) away from my preferred software project – Three Rings – a program I’m writing for free for National Nightline. I’m likely to have a busy weekend catching up!

Regardless, tonight… will be a night for relaxing – Bryn, Claire, Paul, Kit and I are going to spend the evening in the Ship & Castle, drinking Real Ale and playing Chez Geek. A perfect way to end a week.

Timewasting

Look what I found while I was wasting time on the ‘net this morning.

Eventful

Been excessively busy this last week: lots and lots of work. Pulled a 16-and-a-half hour work day on Wednesday, fixing the entire network where my co-workers were unable to. It’s a lot nicer now. In other news, I won an eBay auction for a copy of the 1974 edition of Parker Games “Careers” board game, which is fab, and Claire, Bryn, Paul, Kit and I have been playing it all week.

Three Rings schedule looks tighter and tighter. Having some doubts about getting it to a stable 1.0 release by next weekend, the deadline.

Tonight, sometime after midnight, my awful ex-, Reb (if you ever hear me complain about my ex-, it’s undoubtedly her) dropped me two text messages out of the blue asking if I’m awake and to call her, in capitals (followed by two “X”s, which I take to be kisses). I can’t be arsed. I’ll drop her a text in the morning and find out what she wants.

Right now, I’m going to coax Claire to bed for rumpy-pumpy. ;-)

Progress!

Working late. I’ve got Club 977 (best 80’s cheese on the ‘net!) playing as loud as this computer goes, slamming out code at a rate more productive than I’ve been all week. Finally got past a bug that’d been troubling me for days. Phew! Just in time for a meeting tomorrow!

I’ve been getting a lot of concerned attention after my post, “Stress!”, earlier (I didn’t think I had so many avid readers). Thanks, all of you; you concern means a lot, but really – I’ll be okay: I land on my feet, remember! Just need to get my head down and get on with some stuff, that’s all, and a little bit of de-stressing onto the web was good, too.

A few more lines of code, methinks, before Claire arrives (she’s kindly giving me lifts to and from work while I’m being a lazy bugger and not sorting out my bike, the star).

Take care, y’all;

Stress

Things that are causing me excess stress and reduced sleep:

WORK

I’m writing program features that have been paid for, but may never be used.
I can’t keep a pcAnywhere connection to the client open for more than a few minutes.
I’ve been abandoned to sort out the database replication by myself.
A colleague insists upon demonstrating how stressed they are about their upcoming deadline, as if I needed reminding about mine (I’m already past it, and the client keeps phoning me to tell me all about it).
Pulling extra hours isn’t actually getting that much more work done.

HOME

I still have lots of Three Rings to go, most notably a file-storing system, and I can’t find a way to focus on it.
I have heaps of laundry to do…
…oughta tidy up, too…
…and sort some things out with the bank, with my parents, with the Dept. of Comp. Sci…

But, above it all – the killer:

I can’t find the motivation to get on with any of it, and it’s all building up into a mammoth heap of incompleteness.

End of rant.

Grindstone

Claire called me up at work to taunt me about the fact that I’m working late. Well; okay, she didn’t, but she night as well have, because I’m still at the office, slogging away at a chunk of Bovini for a deadline tomorrow, not making much progress, and I only spoke to the client earlier today about how things look like they could go okay… (moral: never get optimistic with clients)

Anyway; to cut a long story short, I don’t expect to get out of here any time soon, and it sounds like everybody’s having a great time without me. <sob>

I want to go home.

New Site Preps For Launch

The new version of AvAngel.com is under full developmental swing… and within a week or two it’ll be uploaded. Of course, you know what we’re like for deadlines, so don’t hold your breath – but if you don’t believe us, catch Dan online (e-mail him for his ICQ number) and he’ll show you what he’s working on!

The new site will include a brand new interface and a host of new features… I’m not going to give away too much unless you catch me online or come round to my house, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

Oh, and for the time being, I’ve uploaded my new CV, ‘cos I’m looking for a job…