• I’ll be enjoying work again
• We’ll hopefully be all settled in Portsmouth
• More of the wedding should be finalised and in place

Let me ellaborate. Work at the moment feels stagnant and slow. Unfortunately I’ve got to the time where I’m just ‘finishing things off’ and ‘tyeing up the loose ends’. That would be fine if the loose ends were the final strands of exciting and interesting work but alas they’re not and nor has there really been much work in those categories.

Come August I’ll be back in a busy, growing, dynamic department. Work flat out from 8 ’til 6 and I can’t wait. Something I’ve learnt this year in a big way is that I’m something of a workaholic. At the moment I miss coming home from work and being tired because you’ve given a hundred and ten percent. At the moment I come home tired because my brain hasn’t really been turned on during the day.

Of course come the middle of August and I’ll no doubt be bitching I’m tired and when I do please redirect me here

Thanks,

Dan

A couple of weekends ago me, the best man and my two ushers went out to choose the suits for the men of the wedding. Surprisingly it went very well, we all agreed on a suit after only the second (possibly third I cant remember) shop, definitely my kind of shopping! I wont post a photo as I’m sure nobody wants the surprise to be spoiled! Job one for this evening, go back and pay for them with a very nice discount

Work has been very busy as we’ve had to recruit a new intern after the first chose to drop us in it a bit and go work some place else. In a way it was quite good for me, the weeks flew by and I got given even more responsibility than the first time around. Also I’ve been involved in a lot more techy work rather than producing excel reports, result! At the moment I’m researching using NFS and Kerberos authentication in the lab which from the sounds of a current third year could be very useful for next year at uni.

Also from the same third year student I’ve got a copy of the coursework I’ll likely face in 6/7 months time. A brief look at it and I have to say I’m a little disappointed, it looks to be more programming than anything else. I’d rather hoped we’d get to do more of the network design out of the Computer Network Design and Management course that I’m on. I’m going to look at it in more depth soon and hopefully start investigating it a bit more whilst still at HP.

Other updates, the wedding planning is moving along very well now as Kita reported and it’s really a case of paying for a lot of it now!

Dan

Talking of which that is an area that has seen a big difference. Getting up earlier has meant I can have a cup of tea at home and go through the wake-up process at home. As a result I seem to be a lot more productive for the first hour of the day.

I don’t know if being more awake has made a difference to my motivation or if it is just the nature of the work I’m getting but it’s certainly improved. I’m working on implementing an NFS system for our lab and it looks like it could well develop, possibly making a management type website. Finally some network work

So that was a brief update, works busy and I really should get back to this conference call…

Dan

There’s no doubting these are interesting times. I remember when I did my work experience with TWR about 7 years ago, I went in on the Wednesday and got taken into the VR suite, when I came out a few hundred people had lost their jobs including my supervisor. That was a very strange environment to be in but not nearly as interesting as what is being proposed at HP, to take a voluntary paycut.

In a way I’m quite lucky in being on a fixed short-term contract, the odds are by the time any of this takes place I’ll be back in Portsmouth. Having said that the way things are being handled around here isn’t half shaping my view of whether I’d want to come back here as a graduate.

I’m blabbering I know but it’s hard deciding what I can and can’t say, I guess really I just need to vent just a little.

Dan

Yesterday I got to formally interview the candidates that will take over my role in July and it was again like the telephone interview, thoroughly interesting and a completely new experience.

I had a 10-15 minute slot in the ‘technical interview’ to test/discuss technical/networky type issues that I come across as part of my job. It started off simple enough, what is a switch/router/firewall? What is an IP address/a subnet mask/a port number?

Then I put in a sneeky one, although it has happened to me a fair few times. “A software engineer has given me his IP address 10.10.1.45, why would I not add this to our firewall and let the address in?” I was a bit surprised none of the applicants picked out the right answer but still, good to keep them on their toes!

Dan

Last week I was looking through CV’s and my input was taken into consideration as to who we should call to arrange telephone interviews for. So that was experience number one and its true if there’s nothing unique on your CV, no sign of ‘geekyness’ or trying to further your learning then it really does get looked over. When you get told in school/6th form/uni that a manager will likely make a decision in a couple of minutes they’re certainly not joking!

Experience two, sitting in on my very first telephone interview on the other side of the table and even fielding some questions. I must admit I was rather nervous for the first few minutes, couldn’t help but think my mobile would go off or I’d spill my tea over the conference phone. Thankfully none of that happened and the interview went fine, my questions seemed to help and were beneficial to my manager, what more could I ask for?

If this is the only really true and unique experience that I get over this 13 month placement then so be it as what I’m learning and have learnt over the last few days is really invaluable.

I’ve got 4/5 interviews left and for the first time in a fair while I’m excited about getting to work in the morning.

Dan

On the plus side I’ve been able to do more and more PHP/MySQL programming which I’m confident will be a huge help come October. I’m thinking I might try some Java as well. I’m expecting more in the final year and so it’d be a good idea to keep it on the brain. Talking of the final year things are rolling nicely work wise and hopefully soon I’ll have a good idea of what shape my project will take.

I’ve just realised I didn’t get around to writing that review of my first 5-6 months working at HP but to be honest I’m not too sure what I’d write about. Sure I’ve learnt and got experience with some HP toys (servers, blades, ProCurve switches) and got to use the HP learning ’stuff’ but other than that, I’m not too sure what else. Working in an office environment isn’t new to me as it might be to some interns and apart from the longer coffee breaks here is much the same as anywhere else.

Sigh, back to the programming.

Dan

Christmas has started for me already with the KAOS rehearsal yesterday and I’ve got the first concert this evening which I’m rather looking forward to. On the trumpet side of things, the practice over the last month appears to have worked well and I got through the 3 hour rehearsal yesterday unscathed thanks to a practice mute.

I’ve been playing with a practice mute in for two reasons, first it is a whole lot quieter and second it increases the pressure on the lips and in the lungs significantly giving me a far harder/better work out than a normal practice. I’d say 5 minutes with the practice mute in is roughly equivalent to 15/20 minutes of normal play and I’ve been doing about 20 minutes a day. Part of me wishes I’d been this disciplined 5-10 years ago, I know I’d be a far better player now but alas I was young, foolish and probably lazy!

I’m now at something of a crossroads regards playing. Thing is Kita comes up with blisters on her lips if we enjoy a kiss after I’ve been playing. She has hyper sensitive lips and anything other than vaseline is more or less a no no. I’m not sure yet whether it is the valve oil or the lacquer of the trumpet which is the problem but I’m going to get a plastic mouthpiece in the new year and see how things go. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy playing and hopefully Ben and I are going to have a bit of a jam session soon.

So its the trumpet or a kiss, what’s the bit in the Bible about serving two masters?

Anyhow, 1.5 hours left and tea time soon. I’m going to write something like a review of my 6 months so far at HP, what it’s been like working in a global company and how it’s shaping my views come graduation time over the Christmas break. Mostly for my record but also to give people an idea and hopefully it’ll be interesting, hopefully.

Dan

I thought this time of year we’re supposed to be slowing down, turning things off etc, you get the idea but no, this week I think I’ve set up more systems and engagements then any other week. It’s nice to say the least, a lot more interesting things, I’ve been learning and having to use the grey matter during the working day.

I’ve learnt quite a bit about HPVM (HP Virtual Machines) and the VSE (Virtual Server Environment) suite (nPars, vPars and HPVM’s). Also, I’ve been getting into the programming and at the moment working on a PHP/MySQL site that should be used for work. All in, much more like it

So that explains why the blog has been a little quieter the last few days, all good reasons!

Dan

I’m getting a lot more experience now, not learning so much in an academic ‘this’ll be useful next year’ kind of way but more business savvy. Having now worked for local, national and global companies its giving me a really good idea of how business’ grow and what makes them successful. To an extent this is what I wanted my internship to be about, I wanted the experience of working in a large company to see what it’s like and have a good idea of the kind of environment I’d like to work in following graduation.

Anyway, those opening paragraphs were really preamble. As the title suggests, the workload is picking up. This is partly down to me being assigned some independant tasks, partly down to more coming into my Inbox and also a fair bit down to some more motivation on my part.

I’ve been looking around the ECE forums (the Uni. departments internal forum) to get an idea of what’ll be needed next year and it looks like there’s going to be a fair bit of programming involved. Seeing as something I struggle with is remembering how to code/syntax et al I’m now making a concious effort to do a good few hours progamming a week. Hopefully this will keep me ticking over but I’d also like it to become somewhat second nature in the same way that HTML scripting is and CSS is slowly becoming.

In light of this I’ve been more proactive on working on small things that could well end up being used by the team I work in. This page is designed to provide engagement ID’s for various teams around the globe, sure it’s not pretty, I’m not too bothered about that unless it becomes part of our working environment. It was just pleasing to program and get it to a usable and stable state.

Sadly part of this increasing workload includes more administrative functions but now with the programming it feels like I’m striking a far better balance

Dan