luckykaa

I do find my colleagues pretty tedious after a while.

Project manager talks about work all the time. And he does like to talk. Other programmer I find a little dull and sort of sexist. Lead programmer is fine, but a little quiet. I can cope with that.

Trouble with all staying in the same hotel is that there's a sort of obligation to eat together and travel in together. I rather like my private cocoon of solitude on the way home. Also like having control over when I travel. Still, there's no real obligation to share. I just need to find an excuse that's better than "You all irritate me".

All I want to do is grab some food quickly (possibly listening to an audiobook) and then retire to my room to read.

Or possibly to visit friends.

grumble...

I prefer a much more friendly class of hotel. If I could arrange my own accommodation, I'd be able to manage somewhere a lot better. Somewhere that cooks breakfast to order, and has free wi-fi (although internet on a stick is so cheap these days I wonder how they can make any money at all). To be fair though, I can have a few things to order, and this morning's pancakes were very tasty.

Need to find a better way to get from the City Centre to Bristol Business park.

Also need to get out more. I'm apparently here for 3 weeks after all.

Anyone do gaming (of any sort) in Bristol these days?

Anyone?

Amazon customer reviews make me terrified of buying anything!

I'm looking for a food processor for my parents. Theaverage review is useless to me because the score depends on how useful the customer found it, not how good it it. So I look at the actual comments. I tend to look at the top rated reviews and the low scoring reviews.

On one hand you have the comments "This is an amazing device, since buying it I have found cooking a delight, I've managed to become the worlds greatest chef and have started to make serious inroads into world hunger" and on the other you have "This is a terrible decvice. the blades jammed when i tried making breadcrumbs, I used it once an d a crack appeared. The second time I used it it caused a nuclear meltdown and now the entire area for 30 miles is uninhabitable".

It bemuses me that some people have such troubles with a device that others seem to find so great. What are the 1-star raters doing wrong?

Social life. It's tricky to get that right.

On the whole, I'm often quite happy to have plenty of "me time". I've always been an introvert, and enjoy my own company. Not too much though. I suffer from loneliness just like anyone else. So I need to spend time with friends. This requires a certain amount of effort. Working away from home 5 days a week means I actually need remind people I exist from time to time.

So that means planning. Planning is hard. I never know what I'm going to be in the mood for several days ahead. Nor do I know who's going to be around. I've been pretty rubbish at planning the past few weeks. Last week I saw nobody except the couple of people who turned up to B&B7 (splendid chaps, both of them, bit was hoping for more of a crowd) and spent Saturday and Sunday on my own. This week, I was determined that I'd not have another week like that. Contacted a bunch of people. Got a bunch of responses. Everyone was busy. Texted other friends, assuming there would be a similar response rate. Facebook then starts to fill up with planned events. Suddenly I have half a dozen things I can choose to do.

Need to work on balancing this stuff.

Will have to see who's around next weekend. See if I can get exactly the right number of things to do. Since I have no idea who is around, whether the Pony fan club are planning to hang out in Brighton, or what else might be happening, I guess I'll have to be flexible.

So, still not doing anything worthwhile in the evenings. Actually it's been such a long week. Lots of late evenings. On the upside that means I can justify getting out at ludicrously early tomorrow and heading home before the traffic gets insane.

But this is a problem I have. I hated permanent jobs. I'm broadly a lot happier not dealing with performance reviews and people telling me about my career. The trouble is that I'm always so far away from home and from friends and family. I get a bit lonely. And I'm way to tired to do anything about it. I need a hobby but actually supporting that sort of thing is pretty difficult if there's an actual regular commitment, since I will form time to time have to stay late. And sometimes I really can't face people.

So I guess I'm just rubbish at this life malarky.

To be fair to myself, I did manage to see a friend in London last week. I did do plenty of social stuff last weekend. I just feel I should do more with my time.

This is just a long whinge.

So, this week, I finally managed to get through to Circus Space while they were actually answering the phone, but by the time I got managed all the classes were sold out. Seem to have missed out on the gorilla circus one day things as well.The awesome purple DMs that I'm sure I saw and wanted for my birthday don't seem to have ever existed any more. All a bit diappointing.

Really not happy with how my.Nano rewrite is going. It's better. I've worked out what the problem is with my dialogue. Now I need to address the suiddenly quite glaring issues with a complete absence of any character in my minor characters. Seems that everyone my main character meets is a bored bureucrat. And my heart's no in it. I should probably take a break and focus on something else. It's only a hobby. Why is it becoming a chore? I feel guilty if I don't spend a lot of time reading as well. I really can't work out why. Do I need to justify the investment? Is it that I identify as a sci-fi geek and feel I should want to? Why can't I just sit and enjoy these books when I feel like it?

My concern rhere is that I allow myself to stagnate the four evenings a week I'm away. I spend way too much time surfing the net and arguing with idiots on reddit. Writing is an actual hobby that I feel is self-improving. I want to go out and do something and I can't find anything in Welwyn that appeals. Hell, I should go and visit friends in the vicinity. They're not too far away.

Pah! I'm just rubbish at this life malarky. I should have a great one but I have no idea how to use it.

So, after chronic absent mindedness, I finally get round to booking that trapeze course. I was hopoing to do it online but they only do telephone bookings. I discovered this at 10:30 one evening so felt it was too late. Monday I was too sleep deprived to remember anything. Tuesday I was busy. So I call.

"Your calling credit is running low"

72p might be cutting things a bit close. So onto the Vodafone website. Get as far as the security for my card. It gives a somewhat muddled error that tells me both that I didn't provide correct information and that the service is unavailable at this time and I should try again later. Or their error handling wasn't expecting this particular issue. Try another couple of times. Give up and call.

I hate automated telephone systems. They insist on referring to themselves as "I". It is not a person. It is a machine. It is not at all sorry. But eventually I type all my detail in and it does "get" it.

So all this is doen. I get a recorded messge. "Office hours are 10am to 8:30pm Monday to Thursday..."

IT'S 7:55PM!!!!

Perhaps somebody is telling me I don't want to do this.

I've had an annoying cold since Monday. This is the main problem. Everything else just feels bad because I'm not in a mood to deal.

Work continues to go rather slowly without any concrete targets. I really want to have some designs and specs and actual targets. It's been three and a half weeks and we've started nothing.

Finding lack of useful utensils annoying. I need a knife that actually cuts! Or a knife sharpener. Landlady is a bit of a hoarder. That's why there are 7 pepper mills and no salt. (Also 2 couple of bread makers that are never used and 2 irons for some reason). The result is there's a lot of stuff but never what I actually need.

Landlady asked me to install a printer for her. It was a freebie from her neighbour because hers was out of colour ink. Most of us just buy a new cartridge. Didn't come with cables or installer. Landlady's PC is on its last legs. Windows should not take 5 minutes to shut down. Also found HP's installation software horribly slow. Printer requires ethernet connection to set up wireless. After waiting an hour and a half or so for the whole thing to install, it only printed in black and white. Checked the ink cartridge. No colour.

Spent far too long today getting PC to connect to internet Is a bit of a faff anyway because my room is in the opposite corner for the house from the router - low speeds and frequent lost connection. But even so - I was just getting the "connection issues" wireless message where it refused to give me an IP address.

Had some leftover spinach. Googled for interesting recipes to use it up. Saw a nice cannelloni recipe on BBC Good food. Put it in saucepan. Knocked saucepan on the floor. As expected, there's no useful utensil to scoop up. Also have no remaining ingredients. Sigh. Off to supermarket.

And LJ's been down all week so been unable to complain about it properly. I'd switch to Dreamwidth or something but I refuse to let myself be forced into an action that would effectively legitimise the attack.

Maybe I'm just feeling a lot more introverted than usual, but today I've really found most human contact really irritating.

I wanted to get a piece of software compiling. Project manager was lurking behind me, watching, which is just annoying. End of the day was a meeting with America. The conversation rambled. Didn't really get a lot done. Never do in meetings, I consider them highly pointless activities. Afterwards, people felt the urge to chat about stuff with no real agenda or particular purpose. Honestly, we're all being paid a daily rate. Don;t they want to get away?

Decided to take the room with the overly talkative landlady. Getting her onto the topic of things like keys, rooms, rent and receipts was remarkable difficult. She rambles about everything that comes into her head but the fact that I was there about a room simply didn't do that.

I may find myself not actually being able to cope with her but I can always find somewhere else and at least I have an affordable bed for a week or two. I expect to have a certain amount of space to myself when I actually move in. If not then I can run away figuring renting a room is much cheaper than a hotel.

Unless my mum's right and she murders me.

Decided to stay at easyHotel Not because of price or convenience so much as absence of actual choice. I should have thught ahead when booking a hotel convenient for a major tourist area in July.

And it's cheap. Not in an inexpensive way - it actually isn't particularly. In a really tight-fisted sort of way.

The thing about easyHotel (and easyJet and no doubt easyEverythingElse) is that they seem to actally put as much money into making it feel cheap The orange decor is the first indication. easy could have used a smarter corporate colour. They went for something that looks vaguely industrial. There's no actual furnishing of course, except for a bed. No bedside table and certainly not a chair! Tea/coffee facilities?- you gotta be kidding. I can spend a quid on low quality coffee downstairs if I want.

Internet access? Apparently it's available for 10 quid a day. Or alternatively I could get a month of internet on a stick for that (okay - more if I actually had to buy a dongle). I'm just using the free allowance on my phobile for now.

I do have a TV in the room. If I actually want to use it, I have to pay a fiver for a remote for a day. Yeah.. Right.

Last budget hotel I stayed in was an Ibis I think. That was actually quite pleasant. They provided tea and coffee in the rooms, and a buffet style breakfast. You could see where they'd cut costs but it was in all the places that didn't matter. No monogrammed towels and fitting were pretty simple.

It's not a big issue. I'm only sleeping here. I need a bed for three nights. Just being penny pinched is not fun.

So, had another interview that was a waste of time. I was hoping for a contract position. I seem to have interviewed for a temp position.

I was suspicious right from the start. It simply didn't sound like a contractor position. Not quite sure why. However, the guy said it was a fixed term contract.

A few days before the interview I became suspicious that he didn't have a clue what the difference was between a freelance contract job and a temporary employment contract. Rather than confirm, and possibly get a misleading answer, I decided to ask what the rate was. Contractor positions are always hourly or daily. If he came back with a annual salary (or monthly, but that's rare in this industry) I could safely tell him I'm not interested. He was a little evasive about this, so a plugged away and mentioned that they must have an upper and lower limit, and he eventually came back with a daily rate.

I have no idea where he got that from. When I got to the end of the interview, they explained that they actually wanted an employee for a fixed term contract, and not a contractor at all.

So, unless they're offering a pro-rata salary of a heck of a lot more than they're ever going to offer, this whole thing has been a complete waste of time.

I was slightly confused by one of the questions. I still think I must have misinterpreted.


Class

myClass

{
private:
     char *data;
public:
    myClass(){
        data = new char[16];
    }
    ~

myClass

()
    {
        delete data;
    }
    virtual func()
    {
        printf("hello\n");
    }
};

So, I was to tell them what was wrong with it. I mentioned apart from the obvious (semicolon, delete should be delete[] *) and I also mentioned that the destructor should probably be virtual since it's designed to be subclassed and explained why.

However, they seemed to be of the opinion that if I created then deleted a subclass, then ~myClass() would not be called unless it was virtual. They were both adamant that they were right, which was odd... Because they really weren't. Or maybe I misunderstood what they were getting at.

Wonder if I should email them with proof.

* They always as this but they always pick a type where it doesn't actually matter.

Been whacked by a bug. This is never fun.
( Whining about illness )

Have an interview with SCEE tomorrow. I'm getting sick of all this games stuff. Still, it's a contract and it's at a convenient location.

Need to decide what to wear. Suit or something that I feel comfortable in... I think I'll go for smart casual.

So that's about it since last update. Been ill.

Actually that's not everything... Have the one player, zero collision version of android game written. Yay!

So, broke things last minute at work. Wanted to get things working mainly as a matter of pride. This meant I left later than I wanted to.

As a result I hit traffic.

There was additional snarl up on the A23.

Journey home was very annoying

Was hoping I'd be able to squeeze in a haircut but was back too late.

On the plus side, the news that the Egyptians have managed to get rid of their dictator, and little things like additional consultation on forestry sell off, West Ham being chosen to take over the Olympic stadium (this is mainly irritation about the stupidity of the rival proposal to tear it down and build a new, less useful stadium), and an old lady beating up thieves means it's been a pretty positive news week and makes my personal annoyances seem pretty trivial really.

Still failed to upgrade phobile moan. Am tempted by the HTC Wildfire. Despite its issues (low res, cheapish screen), it's compact and affordable and comes on PAYG. However, after Christmas, they're sold out. No deliveries ntil tomorrow. I'm a little busy tomorrow, so shall try on Thursday.

Today's plan is to make house 10% tidier, do a makeup test for next costume, and posibly try and create a hackintosh if I have time and patience,.

Today's soup is Stilton and broccoli.

The BBC on how Helsinki airport stays open.

Is it just me, or is that a bit of an unfair comparison. Helsinki gets 100 days of snow a year. London will rarely get more than 5, and frequently have zero. Most of the time the airport does manage to stay open in the snow. Spending the extra money for equipment that will be used on average less than once a year doesn't sound like the best investment. How about comparing with Frankfurt or Amsterdam?

I walked out of the house, down the drive and suddenly found myself on a friction free surface.

I currently feel like someone whacked me in the back with a planet.

Ouuuch....

I am not a phycisist. I do not like working in a friction free surface or in a vacuum.

edit: anonymous comment screening because of bizarre random japanese spam. Kind of irritating. There was i seeing 4 comments hoping for some sympathy and virtual hugs and all I get is some Japanese weirdos failing to even spam properly and talking about the exchange rate between yen and dollars.

So, a magazine blatantly plagarises an article. The internet gets upset.

Paul Cornell accuses the internet of hypocrisy.

( Long ramble on copyright within )

Various things have been mildly irritating this week. Traffic from Cheltenham, traffic to Cheltenham, inability to contact person over keys to Cheltenham shared house.

I also saw this article bout druids becoming an official religion from the Daily Hate Mail. The name rang a bell, so So I read up on Melanie Philips. As well as this hysterical article, she also doesn't believe in evolution (it's just a theory! Like heliocentrism), thinks the MMR vaccine causes autism, and is a global warming denier.

I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Philips is simply a troll.

I'm feeling in a Etymology-Nazi* mood today**

I heard today that the word "Swag" is based of an acronym for "Stolen With A Gun". I have no idea where this sort of things comes from. Other similar factoids*** are that Tips was from "To Insure Prompt Service", (no idea what it should be insured against), and the famous but false "Posh" being from Port Out, Starboard Home.

Where do these come from?

Do people really think that in ye old days people spoke entirely in text speak?

*However, this one is a contraction for Nationalsozialistische (National Socialist).

**But clearly not one who cares about clumsy mistakes.

***And for reference, the -oid suffix means like, or resembling so a factoid is not a small fact but just something that resembles a fact.

What to do when you see some guy lying on the street in the rain.

Step 1: Dither a bit and hope that someone else will deal with it
Step 2: Realise that everybody else has gone for step 1 and ended there so walk over to the guy and try to rouse him.
It is possible that he will be roused. If not then go to step 3
Step 3: Check he's still breathing. Try and find a pulse. Shake him gently.
Step 4: Call an ambulance (The number is 112 works in most places I'm a traditionalist so I went with 999*) . The nice lady (or gentleman) on the other end of the phone has some basic medical training and can tell you what to do.
Step 5: Wait for the ambulance to arrive. This isn't going to take too long. Once they are there they can deal with the situation better than you.
END

In hindsight, I should probably have skipped step 1. But I'm only human.
No idea what I'd do in step 3 if there was no pulse/breathing.
I really should get off my arse and learn some emergency first aid. I need to be free when there's a course and to work out which course I want to do. Given that I do LARP and Cons and things, an actual qualification might be useful.
There does seem to be this social convention that nobody else is doing anything so everyone else goes along with it. Damn herd mentality.
I seem to feel this sense of guilt that I've breached some sort of social convention.
I was told by the 999 person to put him on his back. This seemed odd. Isn't the recovery position the right thing to do here?

I think most people assumed he was homeless and drunk or on drugs or something. Thinking about it though, he could easily have been diabetic or something (although didn't seem to sweating, which I think is what you expect). He hadn't been sick or anything. His clothes weren't exactly pristine but nor were they rags.

*Alternatively try 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 - we're not just the emergency service. We're your emergency service.

Internet died this morning. Not a huge issue. Did have work to get to after all.

Still not working when I got back. No reception to complain to here. Decided to go into town and found a Wetherspoons with free Wi-fi. Except it didn't work. Login page didn't let me link anywhere else. Went to the pub near me and thought I'd give that a go., Spam sponsored free wi-fi there. T&C's page didn't work. Other problem is that I need to click a link on an email to confirm that I accept. Except I can't because I have no internet access.

Still looking for somewhere to stay that actually appeals. Think I might need to give it another week. Saw one place. Dirt cheap but way too tatty to feel comfortable in. Also want fewer people (2 or 3 others would be a good size).

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luckykaa

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Entries tagged with ranting

Trouble with working away from home...

Excellent! 5 stars. Or maybe 1 star...

(no subject)

Still need to sort life out.

Naval gazing

(no subject)

What a crapy week

Will everyone please just stop rabbitting!

Wow! This place is cheap

(no subject)

Work and Pestilence.

Well, it's been a good day for just about everyone else!

Today I plan to make plans.

Newsflash. Countries with snow deal with snow better than those without.

Ouch!

Arrr! I be infringin' yer copyright!

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Been a really bad internet day

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