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The Family Bandwagon

Our family is spread out across the country and across the world, and what better way to keep in touch than a collaborative digital journal?

Sunday 1 July 2007

No more late nights, let's move!

It's been a while, I know, so how about an update?

Last week was my last week in Support, and I'm very happy about that! No more late nights, no more midnight phone-calls where I'm expected to a) know what is going on, and b) actually care. My ex-team, not the most public of folk, decided to do away with the customary goodbye presentation and instead slinked over at around 5pm with a bottle of 15yo scotch whiskey and the whispered caveat: "we're not doing speeches, the office is too quiet. Bye."

Fine by me! I turned up on Monday to the new office, new team, with nary a backwards-glance. I'm a developer now. In the bank, that's like being a real person -- rather than the burakumin status that Support seems to foster. I've thus far achieved nothing of note, trying to get access to everything I might need ... and I've already done more interesting work that anything I did in Support. (In this case, "interesting" means I've written a little application for tracking what I spend my time on. It consists of a little floating "task" or "context" bar which sits above everything else and has buttons for "meeting", "phone", "coding" ... the idea is you can quickly record what you're doing, and the application records how much time you spend on each thing. Perfect for contracting, or even just for the weekly report that we're expected to produce every week. I might even let Dee use it in whatever contract she starts.)

On that, Dee has started looking for new work. It's looking pretty good thus far -- the rate she's asking for seems quite a lot to us, but is fairly tame compared to the market-rate. Even better, as I've not left the company our income continues across the move i.e. we don't have the extra pressure of trying to find both a job and an apartment. Which is good, since finding a flat is a little bit harder than previously expected.

It's not that there are flats available -- more that they move so quickly that we need to just turn up, pick one, sign the lease and come back up north to pack. I flew down to London last weekend -- and boy are my arms tired *badaboom!*. Anyway, it was a 6am flight down to London from Edinburgh and I met a friend (Mark) I went to Uni with who is currently staying near Paddington. The day was long, we saw a few apartments, but nothing was really ideal. Sigh.

I came back to Edinburgh the same day -- it was cheaper that way -- so as you can imagine I was a little shattered the next day. (If unsure, try a sixteen hour day *wink*.) I was, however, conscious enough to go through the photos of the places I saw and discuss them with Dee. No good, time for a change of gameplan -- let's keep the same budget, but start looking for one bedroom places north of the financial district .

Don't worry Mum, we're looking at places close enough to my work (and Dee's projected work) that we can walk in each day, or at least ride bicycles. No "tube" (the London Underground) for us! Not if I can help it, anyway.

Anyway, we haven't found a place yet but will keep you posted. We're planning on both going down next week, so fingers crossed!

3 comments:

  1. Was that 2am your time or just very late here but reasonable where you are?
    Are flats more expensive in London? Glad to hear you enjoy your job more now and it's great that you can transfer while still employed.
    Great to hear from you. Keep in touch.
    Love to you both

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  2. hey glennnnnnyyyyy... what platform does your app work on? only linux? have you got one (or could you make) one for windows xp? i'd like to keep track of what i spend my time on at work.. i think it's mostly email and web searches at the moment (although i spent a lot of yesterday and this morning in the workshop... that was fun!).

    anyway.. sounds like you and dee have things going according to plan (mostly).. i'm looking forward to seeing you both in a couple of weeks. :)

    *hugz*

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  3. Wow babe that was a huge update!

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