I started a new job. Its great to have something to occupy my mind again, but I do miss going to bed late and getting up when I want.
Lotus Notes without doubt is a pile of shit, oh my is it crap. They say if you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with typewriters they would eventually come up with the entire works of Shakespeare. Perhaps, but if you put 5 monkeys in a room, give them a 6 months and a compiler they will come up with Lotus Notes.
There is no single thing wrong with it, its just all bad. Whoever designed it was no fan of following standard UI design as menu items appear all over the place, half the time you type in a colleagues email address and it refuses to resolve it until you close the email message and try again. Sometimes it does resolve but when you send it you get a bounce back. I can’t get my head around it, and to be honest I don’t really want to.
Other that Lotus Notes pissing me off, its good to be back.
I had 2 old laptops sitting around the house that were great for surfing the web. Unfortunately they both decided to die at the same time, so I had to shell out for a new one.
I found a great deal at PCWorld, £250 for a reconditioned laptop, 1gb ram, duel core processor, reasonable hard disc and its running Vista. Apart from the battery life its pretty good.
I did laugh however, I was bored so decided to compress the hard drive. I wasn’t bored enough though to wait for the 129 years for the compress to complete.
Wow is been over a month since I last blogged.
I’m still unemployed. January is not normally good for job hunting, so to get out the house (funny how after a month in doors you cant wait to get outside), I went to register for jobseekers allowance for the first time in my life.
I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had a notion that it would be like going to the bank and meeting the bank manger. Ie you walk in, someone shakes you hand and says “can I get you a cup of tea Mr Madden”, “Mr Jones will be right out”. Perhaps even a collection of magazines to read while you wait. If you have never been unemployed then its nothing like that. I had a 9am appointment, I waited outside with 50 other people in the rain and cold until 9:05 when the doors opened. Then everyone rushed in while someone pointed out where we go.
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Thanks for all the well wishes, it’s true, the London part of Skype SDP has been phased out, so myself, Caitlin and Paul are no longer Skype employees. Obviously I am not going to say too much about it. Of course I am disappointed with what has happened. Skype technology is really cool and SDP were making a difference to our develop community.
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Oh my do I hurt this morning.
I went out last night, cool restaurant, very nice. After dinner did the usual pub crawl thing, and as you do in Tallinn sooner or later you end up in Hollywood. Generally speaking Tallinn is really cheap, less than £5 for a couple of G&Ts, this morning I am scratching my head wondering how I managed to spend nearly £80. I didn’t drink that much.
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I was just updating my Facebook “where I have been map” to reflect my latest travel.
I have been lucky enough to travel to a good number of places, even luckier that in most cases someone else has picked up the bill. The trick is to get a business trip to a part of the world you want to visit.
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I went to a bar tonight with a friend from Realillusion. As I went to pay the waiter said “sorry sir there is a cover charge of TB 700” and I hadn’t spend enough to cover it.
Normally you think okay, fleece me and give him some extra cash, however he asked “would you like TB 700 of beer to take away”.
Bonus, 2 bottles of Taiwan beer back to the hotel.
Is it wise to drink beer at 6pm in the evening? Let me add some context to that.
I went to bed last night at 2am and got up this afternoon at 3pm (I’m jetlagged ok). I had to rush to a 4pm meeting that lasted until 6pm when we went for dinner and beers.
Does that count as having 4 beers, a Thai curry, roast fish, soup, lamb ribs, satay chicken and a whole bunch of other stuff for breakfast, or was it dinner?
Either way its 2am again and I am as bright as a button. Trouble is I have an 11am meeting so need to get some sleep. Is it wise to start drinking beer at 2am? Humm lets not go there.
Just arrived in Taipei and am completely knackered. The journey was long, seems like it was weeks ago that I left home. I left in darkness, arrived in Hong Kong in darkness and arrived in Taipei in the dark. When I arrived at Taipei airport I had a scary moment. I went to take some cash out the ATM so I could get a taxi to the hotel. As Taiwanese Dollars are not something you get at the travel exchange at Heathrow I though you can’t go wrong with an ATM. I put my card in the ATM machine and waited, and waited, and waited. After about 45 seconds I started to get a little worried, the machine still said insert card. After 2 minutes I was really worried that it stole my only means of payment. Eventually just as panic was about to set in it said enter your pin. Phew. I tried to take out 100,000 Taiwanese dollars, nope, insufficient funds, I tried 20,000 same problem. Now I thought I was really screwed with no money to get to the hotel.
As I turned around a guy came up to me and said “you want taxi? No problem I give you taxi, you pay at hotel”. Getting into a strangers car is never a good idea but he gave me a limousine hire card and look legit. Besides in my wallet all I had was: 3,000 Japanese Yen, 50 Czech whatever’s, £6.21 and 5 Tesco’s computers for schools vouchers. I was hardly a robbers dream. He took me to the taxi rank and indeed he called a limo over, no boring taxi for me. I expected the guy not to speak English, that’s why I printed out the address of the hotel. The only trouble was the driver didn’t read English, but at least we got to the hotel, somehow. At that point I was too tired to really care. I would have quiet happy slept the night in the back of the car.
Not seen anything of the city yet, the guys at PChome are taking me out to shops in a few hours. Perhaps having problems with the cash machine will turn out to be a blessing.
Laying in bed on Sunday morning after drinking my way though a couple of bottles of wine with the missus on Saturday night I heard her scream from the kitchen. Not thinking much of it, putting it down to a spider on the wall or another of life’s little emergencies that can wait for a few hours. That was until the screaming continued.
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