soapyfrog blog

The last few weeks have been quite difficult for me.

Work has been generally unsatisfactory as there is way too much support/management and not enough hands-on development work. This was made worse by my boss taking a couple of weeks in Asia followed by three weeks on holiday, and all this at a particularly busy time.

Net result? ultimate responsibility, 60+ hour working weeks and being permanently on call.

Well he’s back now, so at least I no longer have to cover his role and generally having an extra body in the team spreads the support load around a bit more.

I even had yesterday (Friday) off in lieu of the bank holiday I had to work a couple of weeks back. Very nice turning the raspberry off

Good news now is that I have one more week in the office, then two weeks off on holiday. Hurrah!

We’re going on a Euro road trip, in part, inspired by the Top Gear search for the best driving roads in the world.

Itinerary goes something like this:

• London -> Luxembourg -> Geneva -> Nice+Monaca
• Nice -> Menaggio (Lake Como) – staying 3 days
• Menaggio -> Davos – staying 3 days
• Davos -> Baden Baden – staying 3 days
• Baden Baden -> Spa -> London

The six days in the lakes/alps will see us visiting Col de Turini, the San Bernadino Pass and Stelvio Pass as well as many other interesting bits. The trip up through the Black Forest is supposed to be amazing too.

All in all, should be eight countries/principalities and something between 3800 and 4000 km

Can’t wait. Herman’s quite excited too

The last few months have been very busy at work. It’s not just the long hours, but the lack of genuine free time during the evenings and weekends.

I manage and support a system than runs from Saturday afternoon through to the following Saturday morning. All maintenance and upgrade work happens in that window on the Saturday.

When I do get a bit of free time, I just want to chill out.

So it’s fortunate that this weekend, I have no work scheduled (thank’s Rich!!), it’s Eurovision and that’s an excuse to revel in silliness and have not a care in the world.

At least until that Sunday 3am bing.

I had a good weekend. I took Friday off (in lieu of daft hours worked previously) and went to visit aFj for hurtling, beer, sausages, catching up, and soup. Yesterday, I went food shopping and bought a lot of chocolate and other bad things.

This is all very therapeutic, but unfortunately, has had an unwanted effect on my waistline.

I’ve been around the 101kg mark for a few weeks now, but this morning have definitely hit 102kg with signs of hitting 102.5. Not good.

So what should I do now? There is still much chocolate loveliness in the house, so maybe I should just eat it all to get out the way?

My gym membership resumes on Wednesday (suspended for a month whilst I was recovering from operation), so that should help.

Right. Decision made. I’m off to consume two packets of chocolate digestives and the rest of the brownies.

I’m feeling thinner already.

On Saturday, we went out for a drive. One of those pointless trips you make for the sake of it. Not actually going anywhere; just going for the pleasure of being out and about behind the wheel.

Well, I suppose we did go somewhere and it was at least partially planned.

This was a lower Kent loop, from home in E14 London, out to Saint Margaret’s Bay, then Dover, inland a bit toward the Houghams and planned to have lunch at the Lighthouse in Capel-le-Ferne.

It was too early though, we pressed on toward the marshes: Lympre, Burmarsh, Newchurch,Ivychurch, Lydd-on-sea and Dungeness.

The marshes are unfeasibly dull – I knew it’s all flat, but it was just dull.

Dungeness, on the other hand turned out to be quite interesting, what with the strange cottages on the ‘beach’ and, power stations and as wife puts it, the eeriness.

From there on to Rye, where we stopped for a potter and some lunch, then back home via Tenterden.

All in all a nice drive. All places we’ve never been to before and found a few nice roads for hurtling.

For those concerned about the planet and hateful of unneccessary journeys, fear not. Herman has only done 6000 miles in the last year (and ever), so probably emitted a lot less carbon than hippies in Priuses doing 20,000 miles a year (evey year).

Last September, my employer’s holding company went bankrupt, taking all our money and forcing us to go into administration.

An evil British company bought out the bulk of the parent company in the US and a very nice Japanese company bought most of our business here in London, parts of Europe and Asia.

All very good, but it was always on the cards that a merging of staff would occur and that people would move to a different building.

Now our building is by far the nicest, so nearly everyone came to us. We also had a lot of space left by the thousand or so people that lost their jobs.

Unfortunately, my group has now had to move. Not to the City, but to the darkest, most miserable part of the building we’re already in.

No longer can we wave to Reuters employees who have nothing better to do but take pictures of us and publish stupid stories. No longer can we admire the views of All Bar One on a summer’s evening. No longer can we complain about bright sunshine on a fine autumn afternoon.

No, we’re in the cave. Miles from any window. And no pencils in the stationery cupboard.

Still, at least the tea machine is a bit closer now.