Facebook

After swapping a few messages with USHW, I've requested friendship with V again on Facebook.

After all the moaning I've done and pretty much giving up on her, I was reluctant to actually click the link (again), but swapping stories with USHW about who's in our friends list and the fact I wasn't 100% certain I'd actually requested friendship before made me change my mind.

Let's see what happens now.

FHM's High Street Honeys 2007

Following on from this post I've got my hands on this year's first shortlist for the High Street Honeys award.

How will the ladies take my eye this year? As with last year, those that took my eye immediately were 'green', those that I wasn't attracted to were 'red' and the others were 'orange'.

Green: 34
Orange: 39
Red: 27

And just for the record, here's the 'green list:

FHM# Name
1 Catrin Birkby
3 Eloise Pickering
4 Jess Chandler
10 Clair Meek
17 Gemma Roddy
20 Laura Perry
22 Louise Pickford
25 Nicola Gates
29 Sarah Hoyle
30 Vicky McGovern
31 Melissa Cameron
32 Hannah Kiernan
33 Angelina Miele
39 Becky Robertson
41 Emma Durnell
45 Amanda Carrington
46 Heather Weir
47 Felicity Lawrence
48 Lisa Berrecloth
49 Tricia Passam
51 Juliet Kendall
54 Katie Green
57 Kelly Nixon
58 Hana Bentham
60 Emma Buchan
62 Gemma Freeman
69 Leah Bramley
71 Sara Doherty
74 Lindsey Cole
77 Vicky Jane
84 Kerry-Ann Booth
92 Katie Ingram
94 Paula Gallacher
98 Francesca Nicolosi

Sunday, Sunday...

I contacted E last night as planned and got a quick reply. We've confirmed the dates, so I can book the time out when I get into the office tomorrow. We didn't swap any news or whatever, but that's fairly pointless as we're meeting up in 10 day's time and can swap news all day long.

I'm really looking forward to that!

Some of my other friends could take a leaf out of E's book regarding contact.

Hmmm...

I've not been in contact with E recently, which is a shame. Not just because I miss her and I like talking to her, but also because she's due home sometime soon and we've yet to nail some dates down to meet up.

It's too late to text her now, but I'll save a message in my phone and send it later this evening when she's liable to out of bed.

Expletive

So FP didn't get back to me at all a few days ago, which is annoying. As with any arrangements made with FP, I don't set much faith in them unless they're confirmed with venues, times and attendees, so it's not as if I was hanging around waiting on him or anytihng.

Still, just to keep the trend going, QC1 managed to let me down spectacularly yesterday. Despite having tentative plans for tonight in place for well over a week now and an email just to confirm sent on Thursday, I was given a text message yesterday at 10 AM asking if we could change the plans to last night at 5 PM. Sorry, QC1, but no can do. I am fairly flexible, but even that's too short notice for me. Grrr... Who knows when we'll next see each other, it's not as if we meet up regularly or anything.

Anyway, that cleared tonight's schedule for FP and I to head out. Supposedly. FP has agreed in principle, but whether this translates to us hitting a pub this evening remains to be seen. I fully expect a decision to be made around 8 PM, last minute as per usual, not the 6PM (ish) that any normal person would choose to make a decision so that others could plan their evenings...

...I've gotta wear shades

I've managed to grab a last minute day off on Friday, making this week that much shorter. In truth, though, it's been a good week. I've been busy doing lots of little things, mainly tying up loose ends from other projects and prepping another one to go live in a fortnight or so's time.

I've sent FP a message asking for beers tomorrow night. Knowing FP, he'll reply tomorrow at half-eight crying off, if he replies at all.

New Baby Needs

I was bored, so I changed the template.

I'm not sure I like this new Blogger template stuff. I want to be able to have columns of stuff on both sides of the main blog, but Bloggers new templating system doesn't easily allow for that.

This'll do for the meantime until I find something I like better (probably not difficult) or I find out how to create a three column blog.

Tiki Bar!

In my continuing quest to find interesting and entertaining podcasts to make my tough days in work go a little smoother (and quicker), I came across the Tiki Bar video podcast. I've been watching it for ages now and the episodes are a little irregular, but it's worth subscribing.

If you know of any other podcasts (audio or video), then drop me a line!

Subjects that might interest me are:
Entertainment (e.g Tiki Bar)
Technology (e.g. GeekBrief)
Soccer (The Guardian podcast)

I am also interested in Travel, Films, Music and probably other stuff that I can't be arsed listing.

and the beat goes on

Work has, once again, transpired to heap stress-inducing situations upon me at a time where thing seemed to be going OK for a change.

I have two projects which are going live this week, though they haven't gone through all the internal procedures we're meant to put them through. Ordinarily, we just move them, but a fuck up from a few weeks ago means that people are a little more wary about doing this. So, I emailed a few people today asking if they could postpone stuff by a week, but the grief I got in return for what was a simple, non-binding request was unreal.

What was even more disconcerting was that one of the projects doesn't even look as if it was tested, so going live before the end of the week will be impossible. This is my boss's responsibility, but he's away doing some kind of accreditation bollocks that's meant to avoid exactly this type of situation. *insert huge sigh here*

I've said before that I don't stress easily, and I don't, but this job just keeps firing these situations at me until it does get to a point where I just want to go postal. There I was all nice and calm and nearly immediately, my stress levels are much higher because while it's not my fault, while my boss is away, it's my responsibility and I really don't have the power to make any big decisions if things are FUBAR.

Still, I have potential beers on Friday to look forward to and definite beers on Saturday with old work chums.

Things that would help right now with my stress levels, but I don't have access to are:

• A long hot bath
• A massage
• Oral relief
• A shag
• A prolonged holiday
• A lottery win so I don't have to go back to work
  

Three years!

It's almost three years to the very second that I first met V.

Weird how these things pop into your mind, isn't it? Despite the fact it was in a different time zone, three years ago, I can still remember it clearly.

Obviously things have since gone tits up with that particular friendship, but it was nice to reminisce for five minutes.

More Facebook

QC1 has joined Facebook and added me as a friend. It's not particularly newsworthy, I know, but there you go. I didn't think she was the kind of person to get involved with internet-y stuff like that. Maybe it means I'll see more of her, so that'd be good.

I'm still in email contact with QC2, though it has slowed a bit recently. We've still not sorted out a "date" as yet, but her college work needs to be completed by the last week of the month, so I'm sure we'll sort something out for after that.

Ooooooh.

Anna Faris in "My Super Ex-Girlfriend". Not only is she cute (for a blonde), but her character's personality is... compatible. *grin*

Oh, and for the first time in ages (or even ever?), Uma Thurman wasn't the most attractive girl in the film! *gasp* 

...

Sometimes I feel that I should stop posting here. I never seem to have anything really positive and happy to talk about, and just end up complaining about my job, my social life and my love life (and lack thereof).

I don't think it's an accurate reflection of my life or even my mental state... For the majority of time, I'm usually quite happy, though I am starting to get a little concerned about how much my current job is starting to annoy me. It's a combination of a few factors: my boss being a twat (not to me, but just in general), our workload (I'm juggling far too much at once) and our working practices (our procedures are woefully inadequate for the amount of work we juggle).

What it means to me is that I'm constantly on edge. I have deliverables pretty much every week in some shape or form and I'm running around to the very last second getting everything in place, only to repeat this a couple of times per week.

The actual work, I can handle, I think. I'm still relatively inexperienced, but the work itself is something I believe I can do. Where I struggle is the juggling of the work. My time management is usually pretty good, but my/our boss always ends up loading us with too much work meaning that the administration side of things (including preparation of deliverables) is never accounted for. If my boss has a project that's estimated at 75 hours worth of work, he'll give me a fortnight to do it (out working week is 37.5 hours), despite the fact I might already be juggling two or three other things that will eat into that time. I'm also not great at "switching" from one project to another. I prefer to work on one thing at a time. Spending an hour here and an hour there doesn't suit me at all... I'm not good at that.

I had to take a few days off this week. I was supposed to do it a few weeks ago, but an error in work meant I had to cancel the time off and go into the office to sort it out. I was at the end of my tether on Wednesday, having already worked over 32 hours on the first three days this week, only for something to go wrong with one of my projects (not my fault, but still my responsibility) late on Wednesday. I informed my boss that I'd need advice, only for him to leave the office five minutes later without resolution. Bastard. In the end, myself and Sarah Silverman co-worker ended up making a decision to pull the project temporarily until I return to work on Monday.

So for the first time in almost three years, I'm seriously considering looking for work elsewhere. I don't know if I can continue to do what I'm doing at the moment and I'm unsure if this job (software development) is as ad-hoc in other companies as it is in my place of work. If it is, I doubt I could cope there either. While I don't stress easily, I don't have the patience to run around, catching errors on the fly when there should be complete procedures in paper form for the running of the team (but again, our boss doesn't give us time to put these together, preferring to load us with project work instead). I'm not in a position to move elsewhere in the company because we're tied into our team for a period of time when we move from another team and my time's not up until this time next year (ish).

Let's see what the next few weeks bring...

yet more whinging!

Later this week, I'm taking a few days off work. These are days I should have taken last month, but never got around to because stuff came up at work and I had to go into the office. Now, with two days to go, a project is behind schedule and I need to get it on schedule by Wednesday night which is going to take a lot of work and probably two long days tomorrow and Wednesday.

It's kinda due to a lack of knowledge on my part, but also to do with a lack of centralised knowledge and training which I've been suggesting to the boss for months now. it makes is harder for us to do our jobs effectively and efficiently, but also makes it harder to integrate new people into our team.

I will get this project back on schedule and I will get my two days off.

I'm looking forward to them, but more importantly right now, I think I need them.

Future plans

The next few months are going to be busy, in a good way. E's coming home for a week soon ( we were chatting last night) and we've already made tentative arrangements to meet up. With any luck, I'll have her company for a whole day and evening (contrast that with FA2 who travelled from the same place, stayed for a couple of months and didn't even call while she was in the country). During that time, I plan to set down my plans to visit her, which will call on her to make some time available to do some travelling. I think she'll be up for the idea in principle, but she's already taking a load of holidays to come home, plus some family is returning with her for a while. That could well eat into any holiday time she has planned for the next few months at least.

If she can't or won't spend the time, I'm not sure I'll do the travelling. I'm not throwing my toys out of the pram or anything, but I prefer travelling with others. The act of sharing the experiences make the experiences worthwhile. I enjoyed my time in NZ when I was there a few years ago, but then entire adventure would have been so much better from my perspective had I been sharing it with at least one other person. E would understand, and hopefully, she'll be in agreement when she's home. We can spend the next few months deciding exactly where to go, what to do and what to see. That in itself will be fun.