Tales of a Trainee American

A warning that this post contains dentistry details. If that sort of thing makes you weak at the kneeeedc ..,, sorry, briefly lost control there... anyway, as I was saying, if dentistry isn't your thing, you'd best be advised to look away NOW.

( Finally, We Meet )

Now... what else?

I still don't have a job - that really shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as I'm sure you'd expect me to post here the second I did get a job. It's not the sort of thing I'd expect to keep quiet. Anyway, I keep spamming my resume at Monster and Dice and CareerBuilder and the like, and I get a hit-rate of about 1 interview per 30 resumes. Ish.

I also realised, what with the film coming out and all, that I'd not actually read Watchmen. Many times I'd gone into Borders at lunch time (back when I had a job), and poked and prodded it in the graphic novels section. I'd probably read the first page or so. I'd never handed over any cash. Well, I changed that, making use of the Amazon vouchers I received as a leaving present to get hold of it. The idea being that I could read it, watch the movie, and be justified in my disappointment. From reading on IMDB, it's clear that ( SPOILERS?!! )

And that, as they say, is la vie.

Today, I quit the job I've had since 1 April 1997. My last day will be (officially) Friday 5 September, however with 5 days' holiday to take my actual leaving date is Friday 29 August.

My US visa also arrived today, but not without much fuss and palaver and other comedic happenstances. I had the MD running around like a headless chicken trying to find me - I was in the office of one of the other directors formally handing in my notice (and, er, forgot to tell anyone that). Never mind that the useless tossers who deliver secure mail on behalf of the US Embassy claimed to have attempted to deliver it on Monday (though nobody in the office has any recollection of anybody calling for me at all), the first I knew of this being on Tuesday when they called me out of the blue. Whatever. I have the documents, nobody can stop me now, for soon, I Will Be Invincible muahahahahahahahahahahaha!!

Right... so now I have to:
- Book flights.
- Arrange a mover.
- Get stuff to/from my parents, which is complicated by the fact that they're going to be in Brighton most of next week.
- Get a new job (I have my visa now, I can technically start looking).
- Sell my car (but not until Aug 20 at the earliest) (T-reg (1999) Skoda Octavia 1.6GLXi, 41,500 miles, good condition, FSH, probably going for around £1200-1500 though I'd need to check.)
- Anything else I've forgotten?!?

[Edit] Hmm, seems I've under-valued the car, it's probably closer to £2000 as (a) the mileage is low and (b) my particular model is perhaps the best in the range for reliability, driveability, longevity, and so on.

I entered the text competition in thelondonpaper on Friday, and prompty forgot about doing so. (I answered the trivially simple question "What colour is The Angel, Islington on a Monopoly board?".)

I was reminded about my entry at about 12.30 today when I got a 'phone call to tell me I'd won £50 :-) So that makes Monday marginally less tiresome that it normally would be.

I am currently doing the text searching equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack. Needless to say given this is my last day of work before Christmas, I am somewhat not bothered.

I'm inconvenienced because tomorrow, Torquay are playing away at St Albans City in the Setanta Sports Cup. Hardly the greatest competition on Earth but nonetheless it's just up the road and I'd have gone along normally except I'm committed to driving down to Devon.

Hmm, what else, that's it... shopping. We've still not done any Christmas shopping. I narrowed the options down to:
1. Stop off at Cribbs Causeway near Bristol on the way down tomorrow. It will undoubtedly be chaos (there are only 7000 parking spaces and this is by far the largest shopping centre in the area - probably a catchment area of, what, easily 500,000?).
2. Use parents as babysitters and head off to Plymouth/Exeter on Sunday/Monday.

I figured 2. would be best as it is less stressful as it doesn't involve maneuvring a baby around crowded shops but I've been vetoed. Personally I don't believe that either Plymouth or Exeter will be that bad.

Okay, a poll!

[Poll #1109656]

Alan Sugar's Rolls Royce! Spotted parked out the back of our office, opposite the City & Islington College, is Alan Sugar's Roller - numberplate AMS1, as seen in The Apprentice. A few minutes after this was taken, a traffic warden appeared and the car drove off!

Yesterday afternoon we headed down into the wilds of Sarf Lundun to warm clarisinda and papaspoof's new home. By the time we got there, both the sun and the barbecue were already doing a good job of it. Many people were there, Aliza was finally proved to exist, and apart from some brief fussing she had a great time and was photographed a lot. She even managed to smile in a couple of shots.

This morning, I've been far more productive than is normal for a Sunday:
- Completed my 2006/07 self assessment form for work.
- I've finished up my Child Tax Credit application.
- I've submitted my 2006-07 Tax Return (which required the exact same bits of paper as the above...).
- I've paid off the Virgin credit card bill.
- I've re-organised a few online accounts.

In about an hour, we'll be headed into town again to meet up with my sister and her SO for noodles.

Next: write my review of The Prefect (which I know matgb may be interested in).

Right now I wish I could upload photographs from work. I guess I'll just have to use 1000 words instead....

And a link to a map location: City Road/Colebrooke Row (just NW of the circle; my office is pretty much right under the circle).

The junction of Colebrooke Row and City Road is a tight one. In fact you can't turn left from City Road into Colebrooke Row unless you're on a bicycle (or right for that matter, but that's a moot point as City Road is one-way at the junction - apart from a Bus Lane but I'm not taking that into account). There's room for regular-sized vehicles to turn left from Colebrooke Row into City Road. It's still quite tight, especially with a no-entry sign and a traffic light getting in the way. Then there's the traffic island with various signs and lights on it opposite the exit. Hopefully, you get the picture by now.

Right now, there's a sodding great artic truck blocking up the junction. There's no way on earth it can make the left turn. It can't back up because there are parked cars all along both sides of the road and, well, there's no way the driver would be able to get the trailer to swing out to miss them. It can't make a wide arc in either direction because the traffic island is blocking it. It can't make the left turn because it'd end up demolishing the no entry sign, traffic light, and possibly a low wall. At least it's reversed back a bit and isn't backing up City Road traffic all the way to Kings Cross (and probably on Islington High Street/Upper Street and St John's Street as well). It's just backing up Colebrooke Row, apart from those cars willing to go round it and squeeze through the very narrow space afforded by the bicycles-only entrance from City Road.

I'm looking forward to seeing this truck make its way out. It'll be amusing. More amusing than the work I'm doing right now (anyone have any idea which installation of Apache is the one that is actually running on our development server? Not the one in /usr/apache2, it would appear, but it's definitely Apache 2 because the header says so!)

I do have a picture on my 'phone, which I'll upload when I get home.

Edit: We're all speculating on ways the driver could get the truck out of its predicament. Work Being Done --> 0.

Edit 2: Enter the police. This would be a good conversation to eavesdrop. They're probably having a good laugh. Did I mention that the truck is Dutch (not that it matter that much really I guess)? Oh, and another police car, this one arriving with lights flashing.

Edit 3: In amongst that, he did have another go at getting it out; what a time for my phone's memory card to fill up! (I knew I should've slotted in one of the 2Gb cards I got with the new camera.) The new coppers have white hats. Does this mean anything?

Edit 4: Finally, with the aid of the police (who removed a couple of bollards from the small traffic island that separates the cycle lane at the entrance to Colebrooke Row), the obstruction has gone. I have enough pictures to create a semblance of a story, so I guess I'll attempt that this evening.

matgb subtly prompted me to update. So I figured I ought to.

There's not much to add about our second week in the States, except that we went to Da Bronx Zoo (the correct name of the Borough is Da Bronx; none of this "The" crap) and saw many animals, the Gorillas as ever providing the highlight and the most entertainment. I took a great picture of one of them with her mouth wide open in a yawn. Once I've transferred them, I'll get a gallery sorted out. Come back in about 2009 if you're interested.

The flight back was great: Aliza was well-behaved and slept through most of it, I watched The Departed (not as good as Goodfellas, but that would prove very difficult), and whilst we landed a little later than expected (queue to take off at Kennedy due to the previous day's air traffic computer crash, and less-than-favourable weather conditions en route), it was not too late to keep on with our plan to make use of Virgin's lounge to grab breakfast before heading back.

Except... some muppet abominabal fuckwit working for BAA baggage handling decided that the assorted strollers and buggies that had been stowed when we boarded were best being sent to baggage reclaim, rather than being brought right up to the end of the jetway so that the assorted babies and toddlers could be easily transported the entire length of Terminal 3 to the arrivals hall. It took them 30 minutes or so to work this out, before we had to walk the length of Terminal 3 with kids in arms. Oh joy. At least we had the benefit of fast-track processing at immigration, and of course by the time we got to baggage reclaim, everything was out and ready to pick up. Our taxi back was 5 minutes from giving up and going home - he'd left messages which of course I couldn't pick up due to having my 'phone switched off on the 'plane and going through immigration and customs!

Yesterday, I mostly monged, bed before 10pm, though I did catch the most recent and most excellent Dr Who (quite by accident as well, channel surfing after the end of the Canadian Grand Prix; I have to admit, Lewis Hamilton is as good a reason as I can think of to start watching F1 again on a regular basis).

Today I came back to work, ploughed through the mountain of emails, and that, as they say, is that. Do stay tuned, though.

I've just realised that the reason I'm getting an error is because I've tripped over my own security feature that was designed to catch out manual changes to a file that isn't supposed to be changed manually.

That'll teach me to implement things that actually work proper.

A couple of days ago (on the 28th), we were informed that "due to an oversight" we'd been paid a couple of days early. Presumably the "oversight" being that someone forgot it wasn't February any more. Then today this happens. I can hear the Twilight Zone music ringing in my head.