WeeManDan

It was interesting yesterday meeting Kita’s Dad, my Father-in-Law to be. As you can no doubt have picked up from Kita’s blog she hasn’t exactly been looking forward to it.

We all met for drinks yesterday evening at a bar in Oxford (neutral ground) with Zach (Kita’s brother) as a mediator basically so Kita and her Dad could talk through their differences. A fair bit of it revolves around the wedding but I think the wedding has really just highlighted problems that exist regardless.

I felt/feel a lot of it is down to communication, specifically a severe lack of it and that seemed to be what most of the talk centred around. We’ve all agreed to meet up more often, starting as soon as possible. We’re meeting up on the 27th for a late Christmas and I’m hopeful that things can begin to pick up again. I think my part in it all is going to be largely taxi but if that’s what is needed then that’s fine.

Don’t really know what else to say. It’d be nice and I think beneficial if and for Kita and her Dad if they could get along well, it’ll be interesting to see how the next couple of months go and I’m guessing that should give a better indication of where things are at and what the wedding will look like.

Dan

So much for work picking up, its shot off the top of the scale!

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

It’s interesting working for a global company at this time. No doubt many of you will have seen the recent Register articles about some of the ways in which HP is dealing with the ‘crunch’. Obviously there’s a lot I could say but seeing as this is a very public place and finding it on Google is easy enough I’ll zip the lips and just say that it’s interesting.

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

This Christmas, just like the last 4-5 Christmas’ that have come before, I am playing in the KAOS (Kidlington Amateur Operatic Society) Christmas Concert (22nd and 23rd December). Thing is for the last 10+ years I’ve been playing the Cornet and Trumpet on a daily basis. Since going to Uni it’s been more like a couple of times a week, now though, not being in any bands, well, I haven’t played since May!

I’d forgotten how physical it is to play a trumpet and I don’t think my heart, lungs or diaphragm knew what hit them today. Thankfully my fingers were up to the challenge and could get around most of what I was practicing and in the end I’ve managed to play for about 30 minutes so far and hopefully do another 30 minutes a bit later.

I’m guessing to get up to speed for the concerts I’m going to have to do at least 20 minutes a day. Down side to that is no kissing the Mrs’, her hypersensitive lips mean she ends up with quite nasty blisters if I’ve been playing and I suspect this is down to the lacquer. I’ve seen a few people playing with plastic mouthpieces and wearing gloves when holding the instrument so its not the strangest allergy but I can’t imagine a plastic mouthpiece sounding that good and I think it would feel a bit weird as well.

Wonder if scrubbing my lips will help?

Dan

That’s what the three of us were up to last night with some members of the home group we’re part of in Reading.

For me it was quite an eye opener; very humbling but also surprising.

It’s quite incredible how these people live, carrying all their worldly possessions with them, most of them barely filling a coat pocket. Many of them are on the street down to past mistakes, getting mixed up in alcohol and drugs but equally there are those who appear to have just had the worst luck imaginable.

I couldn’t get over how nice most of them were, hugely respectful of us and ensuring we had space and time to set up some tables for putting tea and coffee. Sure there were those  who were impatient and grabbed for things but for the most part they were very polite and not at all what I was expecting.

I guess that says a lot about me more than anything. I was expecting more of a manic free for all and was worried about my phone being pinched, so it was tucked away in my concealed jacket pocket. It’s wrong of me to have stereotyped these people in that way and yes, for me it broke most of my preconceptions.

I said it was surprising and for many reasons; how polite they were, how far off my preconceptions were but also how fussy they were! Pret-a-manger (sp?) provide FAITH, the group that run this programme, with all unused sandwiches and salads from the day which I think is pretty awesome of a high street company. Anyway, it was quite surprising to see how fussy the people we were giving them to were, I kind of figured that if they haven’t eaten all day then they’d be happy with anything. Likewise we ran out of sugar for hot drinks and most of them then turned down the tea and coffee.

Perhaps though, that this is another thing I should ponder? Come to think of it, it’s wrong of me to think that just because they’re homeless they’ll eat anything almost like a stray dog. They’re people and therefore deserve some kind of choice, although I guess you could equally say they should be happy with anything, stale bread and water?

Yes it was a huge eye opener for me and humbled me in a way I’ve rarely thought of before, too be thankful for the small things we take for granted, food on the table and a warm bed.

Dan