Tuesday 10th January 2006, 03:13

Yet another large gap between entries (nice that people are still bored enough to check back now and then though :-p). At least I have a reasonable excuse this time, I've had little time to pause for breath in the past month or so. Moving house, starting a new job and flying to the States for the first time all within a few days of each other has just been crazy.

So anyway, I have a flat...on my own now, after *someone* dropped out on me :-7 But it's probably worked out for the best, given I can leave all my junk everywhere and not have to worry about it. Of course I'd probably have to unpack some of it first, given I didn't actually move in until the day before I started work it didn't leave much time to pack stuff away neatly. Thankfully this is where parents who know how to do things like assemble furniture and put things in drawers come in very useful. The flat is nice, fairly small but perfectly adequate for my needs, and a 10-15 minute journey to work is pretty sweet.

The new job has been great so far, in that I haven't actually had to do anything. A couple of days induction included a Ricky Gervais video on company values (okay so I never really got The Office, but it was fairly amusing), and being told that we weren't allowed to abseil off the top of the buildings. Shucks. Otherwise it's just been a great deal of trying to remember faces and names, admittedly with limited success but I'm getting there.

The flights out to the States were fairly uneventful thankfully, and there were plenty of distractions on the plane (though I can't decide whether the little map that constantly informed me we were at 36,000 feet was a good thing or not). Definitely had it better than the sales and marketing grads who missed their flight, and then had a catering van crash into the next one. Whoops.

Over here has been fun, currently staying in a pretty nice hotel in Bellevue which is ten minutes or so from Seattle. Some things are taking a while to adjust to (four lanes of traffic each way pretty much everywhere, customer service that's actually genuine), and we found time to visit the Space Needle on Sunday which was entertaining. Today has mostly been catching up with the grads from the other 35 countries or so involved in the scheme I'm on, and sitting through a barrage of PowerPoint presentations whilst attempting to assimilate at least some of the information coming my way.

Anyway, apologies if this post has been less than exciting or coherent but I'm still shaking off the last of the jetlag. Hopefully I'll get the chance to pause for breath and write something better when I get back to the UK. Oh, and happy new year all (especially to those who I didn't see or don't remember the party :-p)

Monday 7th November 2005, 14:46

Okay, I admit it, I got bored of journalling. Chronicalling the activities of someone who leads even a vaguely exciting life is one thing, but there's only so many times you can write "got up, played games, applied for job, played games, got rejected, played games, went to bed". Once the job-hunt was over there was even less to report. I played games. I occasionally went out, for example when there was a power cut and the sun wasn't shining too brightly. I made feeble efforts to shuffle the junk in my room around to give it the appearance of near-tidiness.

And suddenly it's less than two months until I start work. Visited them a couple of weeks ago for an induction day, and it finally hit home that I really have a job and I'm really going to be expected to do actual work. How I'll adjust to this after almost a year of hardcore mooching I don't know, but I'm looking forward to finding out - the repetitive boredom of doing very little week in week out is getting a bit much. I start on the 4th January and fly out to Seattle on the 7th, which is very cool but also very daunting.

Headed to Newcastle over the weekend. Whoever designed that city's road systems had clearly just been dumped, and therefore decided to take out all of their pent-up rage and frustration on the hapless drivers in the region. Main roads randomly split up and change direction, traffic calming measures clearly designed to infuriate even the calmest of drivers are liberally scattered across the city, and low walls are hidden around every parking space and driveway to ensure no car remains unscratched. Still, we made it there somehow, and much fun was had and drink imbibed.

Thursday 8th September 2005, 15:23

Whoops, no updates for a while. If I remember anything interesting that's happened over the past month I'll be sure to mention it, but it's all been a bit of a blur. As you can see there's an addition to the site in the form of a webcam, now everyone gets to see how often I get away from this chair. I'll try and add to this entry as I think of things, just thought I needed to post something to demonstrate I haven't *completely* forgotten this journal.

Monday 1st August 2005, 11:53

Or at least the last few days, anyway. So I had my MS interview last Wednesday, a full six months after I submitted my initial application. An interesting experience, everyone actually seemed pretty relaxed which made a pleasant change from the usual stressed and painful form these things take. So I went through a couple of interviews, a group exercise, and of course my presentation, and thankfully nothing went catastrophically wrong (although the laptop running Windows Vista did lock up two minutes into my presentation to do some "file indexing"...ahem).

Thursday I visited Altius, which was a far more intense experience than I was expecting, especially since half-way through the guy got someone technical in to interview me. I thought it had gone okay, but apparently not since I got a call from Oxbridge on Friday informing me Altius didn't want to see me again. Apparently this was due to a lack of outside interests, and concerns about how I would fit into the culture there, although technically I was fine (as ever). This did vaguely irritate me since they could have made that judgement fairly easily from my CV, but I did get the slight sense I was being used as something of a benchmark due to being the first grad they'd looked at in a while, particularly from Oxbridge recruitment.

Still, as it all turned out the swift rejection from Altius was for the best. A nice lady from MS called me Friday evening and asked if I wanted a job. I nearly bit her arm off, figuratively speaking, so the contract should be arriving this week. I can't believe I finally have a job, after countless application forms, interviews, silly group exercises and presentations. Even better most of my friends seem genuinely pleased which is nice given the anti-MS sentiments I know a lot of people harbour. It's just such a weight off not having to worry about what I'm going to be doing now, I might even be able to do something useful with the time before I start work (don't expect miracles though). Of course I'm still not entirely sure when I *do* start, I believe it'll be January 2006 but all the details should be in the contract. So hopefully I'll have plenty of time to sort out all the logistics, particularly where I'm going to live given the job is based in Reading.

I'm nearly employed. Woo!

Monday 25th July 2005, 16:14

So, I went to see Oxbridge about this job with Altius. On the whole it went pretty well, and they're putting me forward for the role...woo. This is despite me getting a measly 7 out of 10 on the numerical exercise they gave me; my brain has definitely seized up due to lack of use (and possibly too much lubrication). But this was made up for when I went through a case study with them, they weren't quite open mouthed as I discussed the various merits and drawbacks of a Christmas tree business, but it was close I reckon. I think I've been through that sort of thing so many times by now I can do it without intervention from my brain, which is definitely a plus.

Whilst being interviewed the guy who runs the recruitment consultancy came in and asked me a few questions. He really couldn't understand why I did the Cowen stuff last year instead of finding a proper city job, though I didn't use my usual line about studying in my final year rather than doing crazy things like job-hunting. I told him about my plan to start in a technical role and pick up business knowledge as I go along, moving to a more business centered job in the long-term. Interestingly he said that's what a lot of technical people do, just that they tend not to plan it. It kind of disconcerted me when he asked why I couldn't just skip the technical part of it... I guess it's because I still enjoy working with technology, and no matter what I end up doing I want that to be a large part of it. Have to wonder though whether that's the right choice - indecision however has paralysed my job-search for this long, I really can't afford for it to do so any longer.

Anyway, got an interview with Altius themselves on Thursday. Oxbridge are also possibly going to circulate my CV to some other random companies, so that could be interesting. I've also got my Microsoft interview the day after tomorrow, it's come around quickly but I feel reasonably prepared. Of course I'm fully expecting them to rip the presentation I've prepared to pieces, but to be honest the chances of someone coming up with a genuinely new, exciting and workable idea are relatively remote. But as long as I can do it without forgetting what I was talking about or the laptop exploding I should be okay.

Went to quite possibly the last full-scale LAN party there's going to be for a while this weekend...Steve and Kate are moving away to somewhere northern and silly in a month, meaning we'll once more be bereft of floor space. Still, was fun as ever. Having second thoughts on granting referee priviledges to everyone I know in Enemy Territory though, certain people think someone being better than them is a legitimate reason to kick them. If anyone is going to be an unreasonable bastard on my server it'll be me, dammit. Made it to Lloyd's too, think I had a good time but my memory of the whole evening is fairly hazy for some reason...

Finally got round to doing another level on NotPron, pushing me up to 67. Can't remember if I've linked to it before, but it's well worth checking out for those people with time to waste. And I've hit the top of the league table on Leafy's Lair; don't know how long I'll stay there mind, but the challenges seem to be stumping most people which is good.