Alex

10:38 am: Good
The weeks before my holiday were snowy bedlam. The holiday itself was awesome bliss, and then the week after it was chaotic armageddon. But just now, this morning, from the moment of waking up until here - it's been a really good day. Sure, I'm still busier than a one-armed extreme coder, but we've actually had unmitigated successes, and insolvable problems suddenly resolved. The day feels like a nice one too. LJ is even reporting that others are having good days too.

Here's hoping it's a good day for a lot more people, and recording that it's definitely been one for me.

09:32 am: Melt
I was able to swing into a B&Q a couple of days back. They had a wonderfully discreet hand-written sign on the entry to the gardening section: "We have run out of shovels, rock salt, and coal", and written in one side, "and wellies!" But they did have some bags of sharp sand, which is very cheap, and could hopefully make the difference between my flat's car park being like Teflon, and my flat's car park being like, well, sand paper.

I couldn't use it on Tuesday when more snow was coming in (which put me on foot and bus on Wednesday, again), so I went to use it last night instead. I applaud reality for the trick it had played - it used all the rules, but I didn't see it coming. They don't pack sharp sand in perfectly dry conditions. 6kg of sand had frozen in my car's boot into a solid lump. I had to bring my sand indoors to thaw overnight.

The last two weeks have felt weirdly hallucinogenic; otherworldly. It's been a combination of lack of sleep and fatigue (thanks to getting up early, getting home late, walking all the time, and repeated digging and shoveling all week long), and the orangey-grey light that a snow layer casts over a nighttime town. There's been the getting up early to deal with whatever the snow had done and to get into work on time. There's been the tromping through a white wonderland all insulated and shut off from it. At work, because they hate us, the heating has been at around 24 celsius all the time, so we're all falling asleep and spaced out all day, too. Then there's the tromping back home again somehow, improvising, using unusual paths, and taking four times as long as normal. Eating in the evening has been random and unplanned - from whatever food could be quickly grabbed, or from whichever restaurants have managed to open. Then it's late to bed again having tried to shovel out a car or a path, and simply having to add two or three hours to each day just to travel somewhere. A particularly odd feeling has been not driving - it's such a part of my life to have suddenly removed. I feel like life has been rerouted through tunnels of white for the last two weeks.

The irony of going on my first skiing holiday next week is not lost.

I do like the elegance however that in many cases snow reduces both society's capacity to cope, but also society's need to cope. Take the police: they're needed to keep the roads moving and people safe. But I bet they have a load less car crime to deal with at the same time.
("Oooh, I'll just steal this Beamer" -driveSkidWhrrrrr- "Oooh, I'll just abandon this Beamer about three foot from where I took it".)
I bet a lot of MOT garages can't open. But I bet a lot of drivers don't care. Shops and restaurants can't open because the staff can't get in, but then neither can the customers. And whilst the bin men have been notable by their absence, thanks to the weather it's not a desperate problem. My bin might get a bit full, but it won't start to smell. Sticking stuff outside is every bit as good as keeping it in a really big freezer.

As testified to by my bag of sand.

02:54 pm: Dig
For lunchtime today I helped shovel out the main work car park. It's a downhill entrance and uphill exit, and we're only allowed to use it because the council has disowned it, meaning no-one else was about to dig it out for us. So about five team members grabbed shovels and broom and dug out the entrance/exit, plus tracks to the bottom of the hill.

I like the fact that out of everything I'll do today, digging out the carpark was the most productive, will help the largest number of people, will last the longest in terms of achievement, and was the only bit of today that I won't be getting paid for. It was even good exercise.

Every carpark in the industrial estate is similarly snowed under, but I like the solution everyone else has taken: double parking down the main (ungritted) road, jamming it up even without the risk of freezing or further snow fall. Hometime on the estate is going to be hell.

Me? I followed the money: I'm parked in the local shopping centre. It will cost a lot come the end of the day, but I'm in the carpark people are actively paying to keep clear.

06:17 pm: Shovel
I spent a certain amount of today shovelling water. This went rather well, as metaphorically it's also what I spend my day job doing. I didn't try to drive anywhere, but there is now free space around my car, and indeed, a visible car. Of course there is more snow coming over the weekend, but in many ways this reflects my day job too.

Thanks entirely to baloonworld and yamamaya, the weather reports keep setting me off. "The Met Office has issues an extreme weather warn-" "EXTREME!....sorry."

02:10 pm: Snow
You can't tell, but it's even snowing in my icon.

I get pretty excited by snow. Blame growing up in south coast Hampshire, where we had one snow fall ever as a youngster, bringing the total number of snowmen ever made to two. I'm making up for lost time.

Snow everywhere! Specifically targeted against me, of course: Bristol caught 15cm, Cheltenham shut down, Wells is well layered, Southampton had stranded drivers everywhere, and Basingstoke, belle of the south, has around 24cm, and I know this to be true 'cos some got in my boot. I was nominated snow monitor, and 7:30am found me making calls to some very sleepy-sounding colleagues telling them that Cheltenham was canceled. Each time I heard relief in a sleepy voice that knew my call was the last thing standing between them and hiding back in bed until 11am. Me, sucker that I am, made it into Basingstoke work however. Well, I sit opposite management, and they live just down the road, so I knew they'd see me. Also I have a lot of work to do, and alas, no broadband yet in my Basingstoke house.

But I've had fun. Went out for dinner in the snow last night, just to see town covered in snow - and make my third ever snowman! Witnessed a big, snow-tyred 4x4 demonstrate why snow driving is such a pest - he was stationary, because further up a snow-covered hill a much-less-well-prepared car was stuck spinning his wheels. It's not about your driving - it's about everyone who went before you. Then I waded into work today. I have new snow kit for my holiday, so it was important to test it all out. (Well, not the helmet or goggles.) It was surreal to walk through calf-high snow, feeling warm and dry. I guess that's why it all costs so damn much. My snow boots in particular turn skiddy slopes safe, and feel like I'm wearing slippers. Awesome.

Got in by 9:45am today. Reception say that this building normally has ~700 people in. Today, less than a hundred arrived. Props to the canteen staff who all made it. The project office is nearly empty, and we took the opportunity to head out at lunchtime and enjoy the snow-filled park. Snow kit makes snow-ball fights much less conclusive.

By the way, if you've been watching BBC News when they've done on-location bits about the AA - their headquarters is two buildings down from me. When they pan right to show the snow, that's where I work. We're contemplating going and standing silently off-camera poised with snowballs. Also, the slideshow here shows our carpark in photo 2 and the park in photo 6.

Quiet night tonight as well, but I'm still not tired of the monochrome beauty that solid snow fall brings with it. Day or night, until the food runs out, I'm enjoying this weather.

02:13 pm: Travel
So the plan would have been as follows:
Today - Basingstoke.
Tomorrow - Cheltenham, Bristol, Basingstoke, Southampton.

Now it's more like:
Today - flee from Basingstoke, to maybe Bristol or somewhere to be in a more snow-friendly starting point.
Tomorrow - still Cheltenham, death before dishonour, I'd love an even slightly laid-back project. Then wherever the hell has passable roads to it.

I wish I could just hole up in Basingstoke, sadly enough. I could even walk to work, let alone work from home. But no, our project has as much slack as Simon Cowell's waistband. So now the back of my car is packed with two cases - one with enough clothes and toiletries to live and work out of for a few days wherever I end up, including possibly hotels. And the other has some of my new ski kit, partially for safety (always be able to walk two miles to help during any car journey), and partially because I can. Though I am kidding about death before dishonour - we have set up a...what do some American schools have where they agree what order to call each other during a snow day?...anyway, one of those in place for tomorrow morning. I just hope the morning finds me somewhere I actually have housekeys for.

02:23 pm: New
Some workplace vocabulary translations:
"Happy New Year!" - "Oh good, you came back after the holidays."
"Hiya mate, how's it going?" - "I've completely forgotten your name over Christmas."


Christmas holidays were lovely, and probably about the right length in honesty - though I'd take an extra two days for perfection. We spent some of them trapped by snow fall falling everywhere that wasn't Oxford, where we really ought to have been, and others of them staying up far far too late. We also went walking in winter wonderlands at least twice over Christmas itself, and enjoyed the peace of an awesome Christmas dinner eaten by Christmas-tree candle-light. We cleared serious amounts of allotment up, and made friends with a winter robin.

And we swapped really cool computer games as pressies, then played them lots.

I was also home with the family, where even more Christmas dinner was devoured and pressies distributed. We had a hilarious dysfunctional pub meal. My favourite bit was because my sister got a new bike (how young does this sound?), we hauled out and dusted off mine too, so I could go with her on a test cycle. Not only did we discover new areas of our home village, but it was a lovely recapturing of much younger days, when we basically cycled around in exactly the same way.

I even got enough sleep. I'm normally a thoroughly competent sleeper, but the last weeks of work apparently wrecked that. Out of a possible 17 nights of sleep over my holidays, I managed 5 decent ones. Fortunately that was enough, and I feel back on keel again. It's scary to look back and see how much of my travail was being amplified by being utterly and totally knackered. As fortune would have it, last night was another very poor night's sleep, but at least I now recognise which symptoms of today arise from that. I can remember that during the holidays I felt optimism again. I keep forgetting that I'm automatically optimistic and don't need an excuse - it's scary that I was so tired I didn't see despondency as a problem.

Now it's back to the grind. I have a very anticipated ski-ing holiday coming up on the 20th - my first, and I'm very excited. But the serious, serious deadlines have all also moved into the exact same time period. I think the next few working days will require an incredible amount of work - even more than before Christmas. But I have happy chirpy memories, and more crucially some decent rest, to help me out.

10:10 pm: Incoming
It's been a heck of a week last week. Apparently Christmas and the end of the year are a big surprise time and again to projects and corporations. This year is no exception, and unfortunately my corporation thinks I should be a big part of their traditional period of year-end denial. Two days holiday & a Sunday evening have already been casualties, and the ugly part is still coming (Tuesday afternoon, probably).

But, I've just had a lovely weekend, back home making up some missing time with the parents, and even little things like my car are working a lot better. It seems like December is going to be a fight this year, so I just thought I would take a moment to note that nevertheless I'm having a lot of good days. Just, you know, not last Thursday or next Tuesday.

10:55 am: Drat
I've been trying really hard recently to avoid both obscenities and blasphemies, on the basis that both were sneaking in more and more frequently. Obviously there are reasons such curses were on the increase (hint: work), so I strongly feel the gap where they were. Are there any good one- or two-syllable replacements I'm missing? I give myself "damn" as my new "FFS" - there's not much else polite to work with around that level.

I just had to tell my Engineering manager - *the* boss in charge of my pay rises, promotions, and indeed continuing right to turn up at all - that he can't come to one of my meetings. To discuss crucial time-critical customer things with a customer. He's a really good bloke and I had the right reasons, but I was really missing curse words immediately the conversation ended. Though it was a concrete example of the "imagine your desired outcome" preparation method. I'd anticipated this talk from a couple of days back, and had idly imagined the few good ways it could end. I found myself automatically using the mental script from that scenario, and it seems to have worked without down-sides. Except, you know, having to tell my manager "no".

02:42 pm: Served
My car is in for servicing today. Over lunchtime, I was reading a white paper on resisting social engineering attacks when the garage called with the list of extra "problems" found. I found myself surprisingly well prepared.

11:25 pm: Borders
I completed Zelda: Twilight Princess today. That brings the number of Zelda games completed up to: one; and the number of console based "roleplay" games up to three. Count in PC-based roleplay games, and I'm at five. Summary: I don't seem to get round to completing computer games, so I kinda feel achieved with Zelda. Plus I love the world the game evokes. Also, I schooled Ganondorf without needing a single Fairy or healing potion. Oh, so you're a twisted demigod are you? Well I completed the Cave of Ordeals and no longer need to use Z-targetting, so suffer.
(I also had full Hearts and all the bottles - thank you very much to Herself for the crucial tips on that.)

Borders has gone into receivership! I'm gutted. Oxford's one had late opening hours, and was a bit of a landmark. More than once we went out for dinner, then went book shopping afterwards, grabbed the next in a series each, and came home to put on the good coffee and have homemade cake and books. (If we stayed up late we'd swap over books halfway through...)

We heard it had happened on the radio today, so we made it to their closing down sale whilst the shelves were still full. I've escaped with half my Christmas shopping done, and ten books and maps with a collective discount of over fifty quid. That's a good haul, but not worth losing the ability to buy books at 10pm at night. We did all we could to help, Borders. For all those dark, warm evenings of coffee, cake and our latest books from you - thanks.

04:58 pm: Steam
I have made the mistake of processing my day-job work faster than normal the last week. Thus they have given me even more. That note about getting something done by giving it to busy people? Damning. Note: look less busy.

One for those with computer science in their background somewhere. If you suddenly, totally unexpectedly, came face to face with a segment of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine that was only a pane of glass away from you, would you also have the urge to lick it? Really think about it. The Difference Engine, right there. It's not a clear-cut situation.

(Note: Only the urge, not the action: the glass case is obviously impenetrable and non-tasty.)

We had a good weekend, including an entire Saturday of hanging out with computer geeks and media geeks (game designers and coders, plus the "death page" guy from the BBC website), drinking, and visiting Oxford's Science Museum during it's Steam Punk exhibition. The exhibition was small but awesome, especially as the second gallery was of genuine Victorian artefacts that still fit the Steam Punk ethos. Some of the art in the first gallery was truly beautiful - I have photos, but must be somewhere not-work to upload them. The second room was jaw-dropping, as it was all real stuff, but was not out of place. And was of course where they had quietly placed the Difference Engine segment as the central piece.

02:03 pm: Simulacra
IBM models "cat brain".

If it didn't overclock until it was nice and warm, then go into SLEEP 3600, then they didn't do a good job.

10:19 am: Succinct
I just got linked to an article, but stopped reading half-way through due to a sad truth: people have usually said all that makes a difference in their first two sentences. The rest is ether justification - and you usually already know if you'll trust their opinion - or filler.

03:37 pm: Combat
The MOD is - very quietly - conducting a public survey about the MOD and Armed forces. It's running until the 26th of November, and is part of the build up to the Strategic Defence Review. It's been quite low-key, but here's the page describing it and the link to it, if you would like to fill it in:

MOD page:

MOD White paper page about survey.

Survey:

Link also on the above page, in the "External Links" section.


I thought some of you might like to register your thoughts there.

This BBC article talks about the age of cyber warfare definitely dawning...again... (I felt it was pretty well established when the Russians went after Georgia's online infrastructure before invading.) There's a somewhat naíve line in here - a pundit states that governments aren't prepared for cyber-attacks, because it's not like conventional warfare where you can see what weapon was used on you and who has it. Erm - I think our government is very concerned over attacks where you don't get to see the weapon or who used it - we call it terrorism (or "asymmetric warfare" in more general) and prepare for it all the time. Cyber warfare is just one more example.

11:24 am: Prompt
Have you ever had a day at work where, actually, things aren't going too badly, but nevertheless you're bored and just want to interact with some "normal" (i.e. wise enough not to work where you work) people? Maybe a day such that, aware that your email delays all incoming mail by about twenty minutes, you put up lightly provocative LJ entries, just to get into some sort of conversation?

Well obviously I don't have days like that, but I do think it would be appropriate to weight the value of people's votes by which news outlets they pay attention to. With Radio 4 listeners given the maximum multiplier, naturally.

02:59 pm: Risk
The first "worm" for the iPhone has a little publicity, but I like the headline my security newsletter put on it: "Three quarters of voters in a poll about the iPhone worm believe that creator [...] had 'done users a favour'."

Passive aggressive much? I also suspect that Apple workers make up some of that poll group - this worm only hits unlocked "jailbroken" iPhones.


( Risk Management. )

04:13 pm: November
( Longish recounting of the weekend. )

04:39 pm: Correct
Wow. Every work decision that I've made today has been borne out to be the right one with about an hour. Every single one. This is not sarcasm - I'm making all the right decisions today and can immediately see the positive results.

This is really unnerving. I have to assume I'm about to get run over by a bus or dropped by an armed gang on my way home, to maintain equilibrium. So this is just to say it's been awesome knowing you all.

04:32 pm: Hurry
Quick! I'll give £5 to the first worthy charity that someone links me to with online donation abilities. Because it will be the only worthwhile thing I've done today. My gosh I hate work sometimes. The only actual "work" I've been able to do today has been a documentation review - and reviewing documents isn't real work. At least if I hand some money to a worthy cause I'll have done something to make a difference to the world today.

Harrump.

Edit: elmyra has saved me from a mediocre day, and found me a charity that's nearly more relevant to my day job than I am. Hurrah for Bletchley Park, a cool place I have indeed visited. They benefit by £6.41. I've also lumped a fiver at Sight Savers Internationl, because I've given them money before, and I think they can make far more of a difference to the world with the money than I can.

And incidentally, in the time between my entry and this edit, I filled in *two* Powerpoint status presentations about the work I've done this week. Thank goodness for charities.