And it’s called One Day To Go, because tomorrow, it’s Lord of the Rings in the cinema.

Argh, hard day at work yesterday, didn’t finish until 7:30pm, got paged at 9:00pm. Had some issues to fix during the day, and as usual, a number of concerns about the stuff we’re putting in, ah well. Today wasn’t much better, arrived early to discover two of the systems missing from the network, then had to convince the network guys that it was their issue, not mine, and that the servers were fine honestly, which is always a battle. Finally sorted at 11. Then had another high-strung debate with project members over direction and standards. Luckily, one of the team had organised a pizza-hut lunch, which helped. Then spent the afternoon breaking stuff and restoring it.

I think my new year resolution will be to keep my gob shut, keep my ideas to myself, and just do what other people tell me, without thinking, since it’s obviously the thinking that causes me to go head-to-head with other people and cause too much stress.

I need a t-shirt which says ‘Whatever it is, yes, fine by me’ on the front and on the back, ‘Because I don’t need the stress of explaining to you for the 1000th time why your solution sucks, and why there are other options you should consider instead, so that we get a solution which works for everyone’.

Perhaps all my ideas are crap, perhaps all my solutions and suggestions are flawed, perhaps my experience counts for nothing because it isn’t good enough, perhaps I can’t frame an argument in the right way to help others understand its value, but frankly, right now, I don’t care. I’m keeping quiet. The company encourages ‘thinking outside of the box’ and ‘innovation’ on one hand, and then demands conformity and playing by the rules on the other. I can’t juggle that anymore.

The fundamental truth of being employed seems to be that dumb lazy people are happy.

Well, I’m a bit calmer today, although work is still 95%-hassle and 5%-fun. Still, it pays the rent and the mortgage.

Had to eat chinese food yesterday to avoid cooking and to assist in relaxing, and today was no different. The chinese near us has started doing new things, fried squid in chilli and ‘spiced salt’ for example, although I think I’ve over-dosed on their chilli and spiced stuff, so it wasn’t that brilliant.

Drinking two litres of Ribena in a short period left me feeling rather queasy as well, but I struggled through it.

Started playing with SpamAssassin. If you run a linux box and get as much spam as I do, it’s a life saver. I suspect it would run under NT as well, if you can get perl installed.

Argh, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, red tape, rant, pointless management circles, fume, people who can’t delegate, rant, fume, rant

After putting all the effort in to the new website, I almost feel obliged to make a diary entry, which possibly isn’t a bad thing.

Running out of money this month, but I must remind myself that I paid £600 towards the visa card, knowing that it meant using the visa card later in the month (we spend about £300 a month on it generally, so paying more covers the things like the computer and pays them off quicker). So not doing too badly, it’s going to be a visa christmas and a repayment new year though 😉

Work is picking up, because we are finally moving forward on the project I’m on, finally getting users migrated across, finally getting to fix things and actually do stuff, instead of endless thinking, debating, theorising and writing.

Off to Meadowhall tomorrow (there’s probably a website for that if I went looking), to do our Christmas-in-one-shopping-trip thing, where we buy everything for everyone and generally get it over and done with in one fell swoop. We want to kill each other by the end of it, but it beats shopping every weekend for three months before-hand, and still fighting.

Still no movement on the house, but it’s Christmas, who buys houses at Christmas. Ah well, by the time we do sell it, the mortgage will be so low we may actually not generate more debt by doing so.

90% of the presents purchased, along with wrapping paper, cards, et al. I don’t want to think about how much I just put on the visa card.

Argh! Too early for a Saturday

Excellent, the diary page has ‘wrapped’ around, you need to use the ‘previous 10 entries’ link at the bottom to see the other entries (and there won’t be 10, but I couldn’t be bothered to get the code to work out how many there were, so it always says 10. Someone mention Concern for Order and Quality?)

1. Why do I use … so much?

2. Meant to say, the best thing about work of course, is that the team I’m part of is excellent, definately the best bunch of folk I’ve worked with, and there’s some stiff competition from my ex-British Steel workmates.

So, there you are, wondering what to buy me for Christmas, and wow, you’ve just won the lottery so you have loads of spare cash, how handy.

Buy Me This Please 🙂