A year in the life of the employed

Ok, so it has been 395 days since my last post, so saying I had been neglecting this site would be an understatement bordering on comical. After a while it got to the stage that so much has happened since I last posted that I wouldn't know where to start, I kept telling myself that I should post after I had finished various things. When those things were finished I would find others that should be finished before it seemed right to post a round up of what has been going on. So, here goes:

May 2006: Kate was offered a job in Dundee (Starts counting down the days till Linwood is finished)
August 2006: Kate moves to Dundee, I start spending some weekends divided between there and Glasgow
October 2006: Submit my thesis for my Msc (Woo Hoo!)
November 2006: Kate starts looking to buy a flat in Dundee (Lease on current flat runs out end of January)
December 2006: We find a flat in the centre of Dundee and put in an offer
December 18th 2006: Thesis accepted with minor ammendments (Woo Hoo!)
December 21st 2006: We get keys to the new flat and spend a very cold night in sleeping bags with every portable heater we can find next to us. (Mmm naturally chilled champange by candlelight)
Hogmanay 2006/2007: Ceilidh at the corn exchange in Edinburgh

January 2007: Moved in with Kate in Dundee
January 2007: Turned 25
January 2007: Have been going out with Kate for a year (Eek! How time flies!)
February 2007: Central heating in the new flat installed
March 16th 2007: Handed in my thesis after revisions (Woo Hoo!)
March 2007: Kitchen redone
March 2007: New shower installed in the bathroom
April 2007: Thesis fully accepted and bound and printed copies sent to the Univeristy Library. Offically passed my Msc, graduate 3rd July 2007. (Woo Hoo!)
April 2007: Have been properly employed for a year
May 2007: Tiling for the kitchen and bathroom finished
June 2007: Kate's birthday, got her tickets to a George Michael concert at Hampden park 17th June which was really good fun. (Really, honestly! I enjoyed it.. hey you lot, stop smirking!)


July 2007: Kate and I have booked a holiday to Lesvos in Greece, Sun, sea and lots of greek food

So, as you can see, not much happening since my last post :-p I may post a bit more frequently from now on :-)

Quote of the Day (I felt that seeing as I'm going to greece for holidays, a greek quote was in order):

A short saying oft contains much wisdom - Sophocles

Job!

I have a job!!! Starting tomorrow I will be a properly employed individual and not a "perpetual student". :-D (Regarding being a student, the thesis is nearly finished, just the conclusion to do and some re edits of earlier chapters).

The company is Infographics and I'll be working on the development team with C# and other Microsofty type things.

The one downside is that the job is in Livingston (right next to MacArther Glen shopping center) but I figured that as I had a car that it wouldn't be too much of a problem. That is until Saturday when my car finally decided to die, with the brakes failing as I was driving back home. Everything was ok, and I got it to the side of the road without an accident or anything, (after driving around a pretty major roundabout, yey for braking using gears/handbrake).

It turns out that two springs had gone, and the primary cylinder that deals with the pressure for the brakes went and it would cost about £400 to repair. Now, my car isn't the best in the world, and is probably worth about £250 at the most so was officially time to say goodbye to it. As I write this it is being taken to the scrap heap! :*-(

Consequentally 2 days later I accepted the job offer in Livingston after a second interview, and am stuck without a car. Thankfully there is a bus that goes there, however I'm looking at getting a new car, and have decided on a proper modern one that isn't falling apart/having vital parts break at unhelpful times/leak etc. I figured that it was best to get the most fuel efficient one I could find, as I will be driving 80 miles a day. It turns out that the most fuel efficient car that I could find was a Mini at 64mpg on motorways! I'll have to see how everything works out money wise but I think it is a very real possibility and I've found a second hand one (3 years old) for sale in the city centre. Who knows, this time next week I could be driving a Mini!

Still, until that time I guess I'll have to be up for 6.15 in the morning to join the real world of work.

Quote of the Day:


The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house. -- Jeff Foxworthy

Google Scholar: We're sorry you might be infected...

For the past couple of days, i've been trying to get some papers via scholar.google.com which up until now has been fine. Two days ago I recieved a warning that my typing the site address into the address bar looked like an automated attack and was therefore blocked. At the time I assumed that lots of people from the department might be viewing the site and the monitoring systems at google might have just made a mistake. No matter, I got on with some other work and tried again a couple of hours later. Again, the same message.

The next day I asked a few others in the lab to see if they could view the site. One could, one couldn't. The difference? One was using Internet Explorer one was using Firefox! Opening up in firefox worked no probs, everything came up straight away. Internet explorer is obviously suspicious!

Arbitrary fact of the Day:

The magic number 142,857

Multiplying it by 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 gives a number that is a rearrangement of the original 6 digits.
7 * 142,857 is 999,999
Adding the 1st,2nd or third digit to the 4th,5th or 6th digit respecitvely sums up to 9. This applys to the numbers made by multiplying 142,857 by 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 as well.

More info here

First draft of Chapter 3 finished!

Well that is the first (and hopefully nearly final) draft of chapter 3 complete. Also, with notes and graphs already made, about 40% of chapter 4 as well :-D About 15 pages or so worth of work to go! Then revisions of the chapters.. references.. more revisions of the chapters.. still it is progress I suppose! I actually managed to keep my vow of not playing Oblivion Elder Scrolls until I finished chapter 3.. 4 1/2 weeks worth of it sitting on my desk taunting me.. it is a conspiracy and Play.com was evil for sending it to me when I had just ran out of excuses for not working on my thesis!

Well I didn't get my new contract (they wanted someone with more experience) so its back to the online sites/recruitment boards and agencies/newspapers etc to find something.

Also we finally get the keys to the new flat tomorrow which is all of 25 yards from the current one (you can even see the new flats windows out of my current bedroom window). Me thinks this weekend might be a bit hectic!

Mum emailed me yesterday with a random piece of triva, this morning at 2 minutes past 1 and 3 seconds the date and time read:

01:02:03 04/05/06

which amused me, along with the fact that today is international StarWars day "May the 4th be with you.." mmm useless pub trivia, if only they had exams in that instead. :-)

Quote of the Day:

Han Solo: Afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?

Princess Leia: I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee.

Han Solo: I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss.

Different sides to contracting

For the past 2 months I've been doing contract work for Hudsons, working for Learning and Teaching Scotland (ok, but I don't think I would have liked to work there longer than the 2 weeks the contract was for) and Health Protection Scotland (a part of the NHS). HPS was a really good laugh, everyone was really nice and work was about 600 yards away from home. :-D Both contracts were IT support mainly, which is ok, but not very challenging (except finding cables in the spagettii mess that was the switch cabinet!) although I had some fun mentoring the new guy who took over from me and got far too stressed when things didn't work immediately(he was better by the time I left!)
Well, as the title of the post suggests, the downside of doing this contracting is that if there aren't any contracts, um you don't have a job. I don't mind too much as I'm back in the lab getting my thesis finished (yes it is getting done, but concentrating on it while working isn't the easiest thing in the world). There is a possibility of going back to HPS in some role (maybe even a development role!) which I may seriously consider as having a stable source of income is definitely better than random spates of employment unless you have enough to fall back onto.
On an interesting sidenote, I was at a presentation today given by Joe Sventek about the differences of research in industry and academia, which was truly facinating and very handy. Also, a free lunch for all who attended was nice aswell :-p


Quote of the Day:

People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it. -- Howard Newton

A new MP3 player

Well my mp3 player has just died (failed hard drive) and so I went down to dixons as it was still under warranty (the only time I've ever taken out an extended warranty!) and so I now have a credit note (in 7-10 days, grrr) to get a new one.

They don't stock iRivers anymore so I'm looking at other brands. I don't fancy getting an iPod, partly for technical reasons (I don't like the touch wheel particularly and the battery life isn't that great) but also because I feel that I would be bending to comercialism. :-) Instead I am considering the Sony NWA3000 which looks really nice and has pretty good reviews (except for the software, although there is a new version of that out which is supposed to be quite good)

On an unrealted note:

Scotland 18 - 12 England

YEY! Naturally this morning I have emailed in to classic-fm's lunch time requests to play some Tchailkovsky for a bit of fun. (1812 overture obviously) A lot of Scottish music has already been requested today, not that we as a nation are gloating much. Bwhahahaha :-D

Quote of the Day:

Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler. -- W.C. Fields

Windows Media Player

This all started with Pete giving me the Serenity soundtrack (which is really good by the way) for my birthday and me looking for software to rip it to mp3 so I could listen to it on my iRiver. While the instinct after reading this posts title would be the problems I had with ripping it to mp3 without locking it down with some DRM monstrosity you would be wrong. Having run windows update, and also updating Windows Media Player, I decided to rip the CD using media player and finding software to unlock whatever crap Microsoft decided to add to it wma files.

Upon running the "Rip from CD" option in Windows Media Player and expecting the worst, I got this option. "Would you like to secure you media files to this computer or leave them open to play on any device. It is illegal to copy CDs...." This alone took me by suprise, Microsoft allowing you to turn off DRM and TELLING you about it. The next section, "Would you like to use the default type type and settings or select an alternative". A dropdown list offering mp3 instead of wma and the ability to change the quality. Ripping the CD took about 3 minutes so no restrictions on the speed of ripping, and I had my CD in mp3 format unhampered with DRM etc and able to play on my iRiver no problem. Congrats for Microsoft for the improvements on its media player!

On a different subject, I see there is going to be a musical about the reign of Margret Thatcher which is certainly something different to read about. :-)

Also, I see this is hosted on msnbc.com which was highly amusing.

Quote of the Day:

"Did I just hear you tapping the rhythm of that song with your pencil? That's $15, pal! Cough it up!" That was a dramatization. Had this been an actual case, the music industry would have confiscated your pencil and brought you to court for plagiarism and copyright infringement. This has been a test of the Emergency Music Industry Anti-Infringement System. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your day.