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

Hurrah! Bank Holiday long weekend!

Oh wait, it’s 6am and I’m working. Got shed-loads of stuff to do today.

Fortunately, I’m only on call tomorrow and have a few system checks to do. No stress. It’s just the last chance to prepare everything for the big MSCI rebalance next Friday.

Monday, I’m in the office all day.

Why do they call it a ‘bank holiday’ when everyone has a day off except banks?

I’m also creeping up in weight. Am now 103.5kg, so up about 2kg from low of a few weeks ago.

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.