Thursday, March 24th, 2005
Today has probably been my worst day of work, ever. I know it’s probably exaggerating to say that. I mean there was the day in September ‘03 when I made a couple of mistakes to the amusement of everyone else, but when I was new then and people laugh at you, it can be pretty hard.
Today though just seems like the culmination of all the bad stuff that happens in the office. I basically code, all on my own (I have had people help me on occasion, but I’d say 98% of it is my own work) one of our core systems. Little did I know when I took this on how much work it would be. The initial release in March last year went well. People were very pleased with how easy to use it was and how reliable it was compared to it’s predecessor. Then we needed some new features for new clients, so I worked on those, and they were delivered on time, and with few problems. More and more people were put on the system. I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive about the rate the company put clients onto the system. After all, this was the first system I’d created, and I wasn’t sure how it would cope with 100s of users. Would it still work?
Seemingly it did. However, as is always the way, the more people used it, the more people used it in unexpected ways, exposing things that caused in unexpected results. So they needed fixing. Unfortunately during this time, new features needed to be implemented. This is seemingly not a system that likes to stand still.
In the main though, that’s ok, I tried to write this system in a flexible way, so it’s easily extendable. So new feature requests are always coming in, and I try and cope with them. That’s the problem though, I try and cope. I just can’t seem to do it anymore. I get demands (and they really feel like demands) on when the next version will be out, why isn’t this bug fixed, why haven’t you changed this, if we want this feature, how long will it take?
Planning seemingly doesn’t figure in the scheme of things anymore, so it’s constant knee jerk reactions to a “crisis” (which is usually because somebody made an “assumption” at some point and never asked those in the know about the system). The crisis more often than not turns out to be 1 client out of 350 on the system having a problem with something.
The result of all this stuff, and it’s incomplete because I seem to have lost the ability to concentrate, is that I’m just not happy doing this job anymore. Problem is, I need the money, so I have to stay, and I don’t know what else I want to do for a job.
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005
Does it do the same to you?
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Thursday, March 17th, 2005
Ok, with screenshots popping up around the place, and payday looming, I’ve gone and ordered GT4. Well, I had to right? Broadband should finally to be coming to my area by June, and I’ll need to practice if I’m going to take advantage of GT4’s new online mode. Is it wrong that one game can cause so much excitement?
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Monday, March 14th, 2005
Came home from work today, after a weekend visiting Kate in Bristol. Although I’d mentioned I’d ordered some t-shirts this morning to Kate, as I’d had no dispatch notes I was wondering where they’d got to. I had an odd feeling on my way home that there would be a parcel for me, and there was!
It was from Angry Shirts, containing a “Kill Your TV and a Kill The Trendy. They’re pretty cool, although it does strike me that maybe I should buy some other clothes rather than t-shirts next time! Hmm, anyway, these do have the advantage of probably being very rare in this country, and that’s good.
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Thursday, March 10th, 2005
Whoops, looks like I broke the site with my last update, which I foolishly didn’t check because I was heading to bed. Even before that, I’d been ill for a couple of days – was off work as a precaution due to my earlier bout of glandular fever, which is why I wasn’t about for much of February.
Yes, so I’ve been moving the comments stuff about a bit, you shouldn’t notice any difference, apart from hopefully comments will soon be available on the photos site using the same code. Mmm, efficient I hear you cry. Yes.
Not much going on this weekend – can’t afford GT4 yet unfortunately because I’m still paying for London. Going just on the time of the last paycheque was a bad idea! Oh well, it was worth it. If you’ve got a laptop, I recommend the Georgian House Hotel, booked via lastminute.com as it was quite reasonable and included breakfast and broadband internet. I didn’t take my laptop though.
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Friday, March 4th, 2005
Well, in all forms, silence doth prevail. First off my website goes down because I hadn’t paid this month’s invoice for my hosting. Did that, and it still didn’t come back, paid next month’s invoice and still now website. One support ticket later and we’re all tickety boo. I love how quick SiteHQ are at responding to support queries. Long may it stay that way. Unlike Mistral who I have been dealing with in work, who are proving a bit of a nightmare. That’s work time stresses though, and I don’t want to think about them now. Although work does stress me out a lot at the moment, so I’m usually tense at home and thinking about something to do with it. Not much fun, especially when your employer is said to have low stress levels in a survey.
This evenings annoyance stems from Formula One. ITV has decided that repeating a Bond film is better than showing the first proper action of the season. “Nevermind”, I think, “I might lose the picture, but I also lose James Allen, so it’s not all bad” so I check the schedule, and it’s on Five Live Sports Extra. A digital station, and I have no digital radio. That’s ok though, because being the time of night it is, I should be able to reasonably stream it over a dial up connection. Apart from it’s not being streamed over the Internet, so I can’t get proper live coverage of the one sport I love from any source. AARGH!
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Tuesday, March 1st, 2005
Am I the only one who is very afraid of the government bringing in control orders? I can’t see them hanging around very long if they are brought in, because they are a fairly obvious breach of human rights. You can’t deprive people of their liberty without a trial, it’s just wrong.
I even had a dream about it last night, I was watching a TV advert saying “Seen someone you know who should be under a control order?” and a contact number you could ring to put them under surveillance to see if they did need one. Scary stuff…
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