“Experience is what you get…

…when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

-Randy Pausch

-&-

It occurs to me that I have been fairly crap once again. The last post I did was at the beginning of June for a trip taken in May. I am awesome.

Okay, so, what’s been happening…?

Work first I suppose, get it out of the way. I finally got used to being full time and hardcore again and I got my teeth stuck into a new project (frustrating though these big projects always are *le sigh*) and the more experienced developer I was hiding behind ran away to Switzerland and left me doing my job and his! I have to go to many meetings and make decisions and all sorts, it’s damned stressful… I don’t know how he manages; he also does deployments almost every morning (which means getting in for 7.30 to have things done for when the business comes to life and sensible, normal people start work) and after only two I’m entirely knackered… I have a new respect for Lee now…

I feel kind of awesome being the main dev though, I think I work better without someone to hide behind. Pride maybe? Or just the inability to let things go to shit without stopping them? Hell, I don’t know, but it feels good.

Our dev manager is leaving at the end of the month as well! I was shocked when he announced it, he’s been here longer than I have and has been my manager for all except a month or so of my employment. I’ll miss him when he’s gone, he’s a brilliant manager. I just worry about handover and such, he’s bound to do a hundred things we don’t even know about – his arse barely touches his chair for more than a collective half hour each day – and when he runs away to the University job everything might just topple over on our heads.

There’s talk about not getting a replacement; apparently we don’t need management because we’re on projects now. Bollocks. What the hell does Andrew do all that time every day if we don’t need management?? Also, he’s good at being the in-between man with developers and the business; it’s a highly coveted skill of communication (including the ability to say no without it sounding like you’re saying no) that I don’t think anyone else on our team has… I admit I think I do a better job than most (evidence being that I understand what business people are driving at faster than other devs in meetings quite a bit and get results when I ask for information quicker – though maybe that’s the boobs), but I don’t want to spend loads of time in meetings just because communications break down and no one has a clue what’s going on…

We’ll see, I suppose.

Oh, also I’ve started a lovely work of non-fiction I like to call ‘Devs for Dummies’. Yes, it’s a book for non-developer people to help them understand developer people and get the most out of them without making their heads explode. It’s mostly for my company because they’ve gone project-help-book crazy lately, but I’ll stick it up here in pdf form when it’s done in order to share the joy.

Oh, oh, oh, and the Go Ape work trip! I have photos to share from it and everything! It was brilliant – if you ever have the chance to go to one of these do it. It was what we did on our last team outing and while exhausting, it was massively fun to do. We had two people who were afraid of heights in the group, but they both did pretty damned well – particularly Simon who did the entire thing!

There was a lot of messing around with hooks and things, but you generally had that down fine by the end of the first course (of which there were four). Lots of zip lines and obstacles up in the air! The Tarzan swing was especially good. You end up with a whole lot of wood chips in your pants though; if you land backwards after the zip line you inevitably end up on your back in piles of wood chips… which get into your pants. Still, that was the only real downside!

At the end we got certificates with our names and tribe nicknames on them – ranging from Lee Sideways to Simon The Intrepid. I was called fearless… and ended up with The Turtle as a tribe name because I kept landing on my back and having trouble getting up :S

Go APE!

Another interesting development was my recent dabbling with… dating websites. Yes, that’s right, I became what Gav terms ‘a dreg of society’. The websites in question were OkCupid and PlentyOfFish. It was quite fun actually, though I only dabbled for a few days and then forgot about them entirely; they’re pretty low on my priority list, it must be said… I especially recommend OkCupid.

I also did the actual date thing with a guy from work – we’ll call him Navy Man (no doubt he’d be entertained).  We had Chinese, watched Heat and giggled about Al Pacino Tourettes (“She’s got a great ass!”), most amusing.

Oh, I applied and was accepted for my first credit card; a HSBC one because I don’t plan to care about the APR, I want a credit card to pay for things that require a credit card and will be paying the balance each month in full. I bank with HSBC anyway so it’s convenient. I feel all adult. It’s weird.

Umm, what else…?

I went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat with my Mum, Jam and my cousin – the best part was the Ben and Jerry’s afterwards. I mean, alright, being honest it wasn’t that bad and my cousin and Mum really enjoyed it, but after you’ve seen Tosca most everything falls down a few notches and it was aimed more at the youth in the theatre.

It was Rose’s birthday in June and there was no coverage of it nearer the date (because I am shit), so it’s here instead. Twas good – it was nice seeing her (don’t see her enough!!), though she was a bit unhappy for a variety of reasons so cheering her up was the main order of the day; she seemed much happier towards the end of her visit, so we can call it a success. We went shopping and I bought her a dress (the tiger stripe one in the photos) and we went for a nice meal together. We also sat about drinking wine and watching Disney films, which is always good.

Rose Birthday Visit June 2010

Also, a post about Ob and my Ireland trip will be forthcoming. With photos. And videos. It will be backdated to July when it actually happened, so look out for it.

In terms of entertainment, I’ve been watching (as usual) several different series at once. Most of the TV series I’ve been watching have ended until next season, but there’s still Burn Notice (which makes me happy), Brothers and Sisters (several episodes into the second season and loving it more than I did at this point in the previous; I suspect this is how Soap Operas drag people in and steal their souls, watching something this drama-ish just consumes you eventually, one way or another), Merlin (loving it – Ob says it’s for the gay between Merlin and Arthur, but eh), True Blood (I lost love after the first season, though I’m not sure whether it’s because I got into the books and they were soooooooooooooooo much better or because it’s just gone downhill for me – though in the beginning of season three you do get some yummy nudity from Eric (I would watch just for that) so I can’t complain), The Vampire Diaries (started slow, I wasn’t sure whether I was just going to be watching for Damon or not, then suddenly got awesome out of nowhere – the book plot sounds piss poor in comparison to the series, which surprised me – now I’m bouncing on my heels waiting for season two) and White Collar (LOVE – but then the lead pair are awesome and I like this sort of series generally).

Also, I’ve been re-watching musicals. Guys and Dolls made me wear my fedora to work. I just had to. Cabaret as well, which I hadn’t seen in a while and re-loved all over again. Currently discussing going to see the Rocky Horror Show as well!! Will be awesome.

As some people will know or have noticed, I have on and off periods with watching anime; I’ll go through months of not feeling like watching anything and then subsequent months where I’ll watch it alongside or even instead of other TV shows. I’m watching a lot at the moment, though I seem to be darting from series to series a lot; not that I don’t do that usually (I always, as with many things, have a lot going at once) but at the moment I go from an episode of one series then an episode of another and so forth with *counts* twenty-two different series (which doesn’t include series that I’m watching as they come out, so I only have one episode a week or whatever, and series that aren’t in my KMPlayer playlist anymore. Not sure why this is, but I suspect it’s a stress thing. It all seems to be right now. Work is bullying me and there’s an exam upcoming that I need to start revising for… everything just stacks up.

I’m also trying to get up to date with the various big manga I used to follow avidly. I stopped to let some chapters accumulate because I don’t like reading one chapter per week/month/whatever and would rather read a few in a sitting. The problem is, I left the chapters to accumulate for roughly two years and getting up to date is a bigger job than I thought… I’m almost there with Naruto (was reading just because I followed it so much before and need to know what happens, but it’s actually gotten quite good in recent chapters), I’ve started with Bleach and will be doing One Piece because otherwise Ob’s head will explode with the need to spoil me.

What else…?

Writing! Bits and pieces all over… I’m back into Wings and there’s a new fantasy piece that’s stealing my attention as well. Motive is sulking at me out of neglect, which makes me quite sad… A lot of concentration has been going into Forbidden Wings with Ob though. In fact, I thought I’d (rather belatedly it must be said) plug Ob and my Forbidden Wings website, which is also on Google Sites and is a bit lacking in many ways. There are a few chapters of FW up though, if anyone is interested.

Hmm… am beginning to think I should be putting my blog into headed sections: ‘Entertainment’, ‘Writing’, ‘Work’, ‘Play, Travel and Excitement’… I may even try it.

Okay, final thing: Ob, Rose and I are going to the con in October (Ob’s birthday weekend, in fact) and… we’ll be cosplaying. The thought now (we need to buy stuff like now so it probably won’t change) is that we’ll be Bleach characters: Ob as Yumichika, Rose as Soi Fong and me as Matsumoto. Guess why I’ve been relegated to Matsumoto, go on guess.

Right, that seems update-like to me. Joy. Till next time!

->keibuu