Matt Charlton

It’s been a while since my last proper blog post, I guess its down to lack of time, if you like – or at least lack of time to think about things.  Being away with work on your own presents you with such pockets of time in which to reflect.

I’m out on the road this week.  Covering for a workmate because he’s just become a daddy (awwww). I’m equipped with a rental car, some servers and some UPS’s and rack mount kits.  The UPS’s weigh a bloody tonne! – especially when you’ve got to carry one up stairs and through a good hundred meters or so worth of classrooms.  I managed to get on site about 30 minutes early which is a good job, it turns out that the guys had to be off for around 3:30 as the place gets locked up fairly sharpish by the caretakers (how I miss working in schools during the 6 week holidays).

Its great to get out from behind the desk and meet the customers face to face – its something I really enjoy doing and I’ve always liked delivering training (I almost went down that route of technical training and I still think from time to time about the possibility of getting into teaching IT), passing on information, knowledge is satisfying.  There’s nothing quite like it.

So my rental car – a white Vauxhall Astra Estate.  It’s not bad, it’s taking a bit of time to get used to driving a petrol engine again.  I can’t believe how fast the tank seems to be emptying – I can see myself filling the thing up 2-3 times this week (I might fill it up tomorrow night when I get home just to be on the safe side as I’ve already used 1/4 of a tank of fuel).  Today was the first time I’ve really driven anywhere on my own – especially for work.  I’ve driven back from Bridlington a few times and from York plenty of times.  This was pretty much a complete first for me though.  I really enjoyed it. Aside from my arms hurting (damn that UPS was heavy).  It’s amazing just how tiring it is driving from place to place too – it takes a lot of concentration and it can feel quite draining.  I’m more tired tonight than I have been for a while.  Don’t think I’ll be having all that late a night to be honest.

I’m sat in the Premier Inn now, or rather I’m lying on my bed, propped up with pillows (the chair by the desk isn’t really all that comfortable).  It’s only about 1hr 45 from home but since I have another installation less than 3 miles away from here tomorrow it seemed silly to do another 170 miles home and back on top of what I did to get here when for the sake of a hotel room cost I can save some fuel (and some time).  I can’t believe how many times I’ve stopped in a hotel with work since the start of the year – it’s fun but its not something I could do week in, week out.  It’s nice to know that work have the confidence to send me out to customers to do installs too – it’s also good for them to know that if it comes to it and we need someone to go somewhere in a hurry, I can go.

Today didn’t go too badly, aside from not being able to get something working when it really should have done.  I spent a little too much time trying to troubleshoot it rather than just leaving it for us to sort out remotely.  Problem is a lot of what I was planning on doing training wise hinged on getting this thing to work.  It became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to get the thing up and running so I had to call it in to support.  I then overcompensated by going too deeply into a few bits and pieces but most importantly I left with the customer feeling happy and satisfied with the job.

The hotel is connected to a Beefeater, breakfast tomorrow morning is paid for but Dinner tonight I have to pay for and claim back on expenses.  “Table for one?” came the question as I waited patiently by the “wait here to be seated” board.  I expressed my embarrassment at having a table for one but she told me they regularly had tables for 1.  The glamorous life of a travelling businessmen, eh?  Fillet steak was very “meh”.  I should have gone for the rack of ribs or the mixed grill, maybe even the burger.  Still at least I’m far away enough from the pub for any noise to not reach up here.  I mentioned in a tweet it was rather strange to be sat in this restaurant by myself.  I kept expecting Sue to walk back in from the toilet or somewhere but she never appeared.  I guess I’m used to chatting and making small talk over a meal and when its not there I feel a bit strange.  It’s like eating food on my knee at home in front of the TV without the TV and in a large empty restaurant…..so not very like that at all I guess.

I’m glad the install tomorrow is at 9:00 – it gives me plenty of time to get everything working and explain the system to the customer.  As long as I don’t encounter any problems tomorrow, things should flow a little more smoothly too.  Depending on what time I finish I’ll either head back to the office or head straight back home.  I need to pop in either tomorrow afternoon or very early (pre 7:30) Wednesday morning to pick up the gear for the install on Wednesday.  The customer has asked for as early a start as possible from around 9:30 so I’m going to aim to get there in good time so we can get started.

The install on Thursday isn’t too far away although theres the potential for a lot of driving as I head down to Birmingham for that installation on Friday.  Busy week.  Just hope my back holds out with all this lifting and driving :p

Its made me realise just how weird this sort of a job can be in relation to an 8:30-5pm job.  As soon as I parked up in the school car park I wolfed down my sandwiches I’d packed this morning and went out to the school.  I was about 30 minutes early but I’m glad I was since I encountered a few problems.  I didn’t stop until 3:30 and then I drove to the hotel.  Makes you realise how lucky you are to have things like lunch breaks in the office and stuff – out here you’re at the mercy of the installations diary and you have to work around that.  If you encounter problems it means you might miss lunch, you might not be getting home until later, much later.

I was planning on doing some coding but I just don’t think I have it in me tonight.  I just want to lie down and watch a movie – I’ll see if theres anything decent on freeview in a bit, if not I have ghostbusters 1/2 and the back to the future trilogy on my laptop to keep me going.

To sum up – I’m having fun, but sometimes I think this should be a 2-person job (especially with the weight of some of the kit!), though probably more so I have someone to talk to over dinner.  Still, I guess the flipside to the table for 1 scenario is the waitress thinking that you and your installation buddy are a couple…..

Well – it’s been interesting, I’ll say that much.  I think it must be coming on for what, nearly 2 weeks since my last blog post? *checks*.  Oh my.  May 25th.  That’s disgraceful.

Some blog this is, it might as well be a monthly magazine, shame theres no content or pretty pictures.  Meh.

Anyway – interesting couple of weeks.  I’m no longer welcome on KAPS paranormal ghost investigations, but I won’t go into that here suffice to say that the owned didn’t take too kindly to me taking part in the setting up of a new paranormal investigations group called Crypt Kickers.  Website is on http://www.cryptkickers.co.uk and we can be followed on Twitter @cryptkickers We are also on facebook.  Come sign up for the forum!

She also cited my past blog posts (where KAPS were mentioned in only a positive light) as being an issue.  Apparently my blog posts about Fright Nights, another paranormal investigations company upset the owner due to me implying that their insurance didn’t cover guests when KAPS’ did – this was pointed out to me as untrue and I removed it as soon as I was made aware.

The funny thing about this blog, well it’s maybe not so much ha ha funny as odd funny is that it’s mine.  I can do what I like with it.  It’s full of personal opinion and not a lot else (unless its quoted or referenced specifically).  I understand that I can’t write things that could be construed as libellous or slanderous because I could theoretically get taken to court, blah blah.  Other than that, I have free reign and that’s always been the case and I’ll write about what I like.

Maybe in the future, I’ll be writing about exactly what happened with KAPS, maybe I won’t.  Either way, it’ll all be truth and it’ll all be my own opinion.

So, anyway – back to more important things, we’ve set up CK, it’s going really well and we’re laying down a bunch of groundwork and there’s a lot up in the air at the moment, we can’t reveal all that much at the moment due to potential issues with certain people trying to possibly cause problems – not something we want at the moment.

As a result of this, my weekends and evenings have been pretty rammed full of website setting up and maintenance, forum maintenance and just general geekery.  I haven’t had much time for anything else.  We’ve got so much TV to watch I don’t think some of it will ever be seen. At least I managed to get through 24.  Really enjoyed that.

I was away in Manchester yesterday with work, we had a conference.  It was a great day and I ended up being chief photographer.  That was nervewracking.  I haven’t picked up the camera for months and I was faced with going somewhere I had no idea was or what awaited me.  I took the tripod with me just in case – good job too, a lot of the conference was in low light.  Luckily I found myself a little alcove and set up in there for most of the day.  Managed to come away with some shots that I’m really proud of.  Hopefully work will be fairly happy too.  My shoulder is killing me – carrying around the slingshot with 6 lenses in it was maybe a little overkill but I used most of them!

What else has been going on?

Hmmm.

Oh yeah – it’s mine and Sue’s wedding anniversary next Wednesday, I’ve booked the day off and I’m taking her out for a meal.  Other than that, I have no plans, maybe I’ll take her to the cinema, maybe go bowling.  It might be nice to recreate our first date sort of thing.  We went to see Rugrats at the cinema. awwwwww

I’ve got to go to the Trafford Centre on Saturday – my iPhone seems to have developed a physical fault, the left hand side appears to be coming away from the body, its clicking when pressed and I’m getting some distortion on the screen.  No way is that going to last another 12 months, I’m going to take it over and see what they say.  Hopefully they’ll replace it with a refurb for me.  I might take out applecare for it whilst I’m there.  I’m also going to let Sue have a play around with the macbooks that are there so she can figure out what size screen she wants and things.  I think she’ll really love one.

I was using my macbook pro earlier (I’m using it now, but that’s not the point  – I’m blogging, this is something I can do on my iPhone for god’s sake) – I imported the photos to iPhoto and decided I wanted to view them in a slide show, I press play and it starts playing music and gives me funky transition effects.  I can then export this as a mov file, stick it on a disc, burn it as a dvd – it’s all just so easy.  I always used to put macs down, they were always the lesser machine, always the thing people used when they couldn’t use a pc.  A pc for babies, etc.  I was wrong.  This is the best machine I’ve ever owned.

The other good thing about it is that there are no vents on the bottom of it, which means I can sit like this in bed and type with it on my knee and not a)burn my legs b)set something on fire.  It’s all good.  The other thing is that it seems to have a semi decent wireless card on it.  My netbook one isn’t very good – I sit/lie on the side of the bed which is directly next to the part of the wall where the hot water tank is – big metal thing with metal pipes, it just zaps the signal.  This thing is uploading to my webspace, playing some music from last.fm and letting me blog straight to the web.  Yay.

I’m sure there was something else I was going to write about.  Oh yeah that was it – Work conference.

We had a guest speaker there from a company called Mindstore – Klaus Nigel Pertl.  He was fantastic.  He talked about taking time out, relaxing, making time for the real thoughts to come through and things.  It all made sense and I’d love to go on a Mindstore training course proper, sounds like a lot of good advice.

One of the talks given by a school talked about a stereotypical student who goes to the cinema on a Friday night, goes home and tweets about it/posts a review on a blog.  Gets up the following morning and plays on his Xbox 360 with people from all over the world, watches a video sent to him by his friend on youtube, video conferences with an uncle who lives abroad and is staying in Saturday night so spends it talking to his friends on facebook.  Gets up and goes to his mates house and watches a blu ray on his PS3.  It went on further with more examples. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is – this student was me.  That was my weekend.  It’s scary.  I’m so plugged in, so wired to the net, to technology it scares me.

When I take a step back and think about it, it worries me.  Technology seems to make things easier, it can also make things harder.  Spending too much time with technology can make it hard for me to relate to people again.  I mean people are weird.  At least machines generally have a reason for going bananas.  Anyway – I need to take a step back.  I need to stop spending so much time on the laptop and I need to maybe change the e-mail fetch period to maybe an hour rather than 15 minutes.  I don’t need THAT much access to my email.  It’s nice and all but I don’t need it.

We’ve booked a week away in October, a week in the countryside there won’t be any 3g signal, hell theres hardly any 2g signal.  I might even read a book.  You never know.  I think I need to maybe try some meditation and deep breathing exercises.

I hate that my parents were right about time flying as you got older – they weren’t kidding.  I want my life back! It’s this whole time perception thing and the flaw of how we measure time.  You know how the summers used to stretch for what seemed like months when you were kids – that sort of thing, look it up – it’s interesting reading.

The funny thing is – personal life is crazy at the moment, but I’m really enjoying work – loving it.  I need to find a balance somewhere!

Anyway, I came to bed early, and I’ve spent an hour typing stuff, I’m going to go to sleep now.  More frequent mind dumps to come over the coming days.

So it’s Comic Relief tomorrow, we’re going to miss a lot of it because we’re going to Zoe’s 21st.  We’re taping the good bits

We’re having a bit of a thing at work tomorrow, we have to go in dressed up.  I’ve been through loads of different combinations in my head and I think I’m settled on a Jedi Robe/Slanket with the lightsaber.  I’m going to have a 2nd “costume” or funny change of clothes underneath consisting of my Spongebob Squarepants T-shirt (something I’d never usually wear for work) and maybe sorts.  We’ll see :p

We’re also having a bit of a cake/bun sale.  I decided to buy some mixes today and Sue and I spent this evening baking.  Well, mixing the egg and water/milk in and stirring it a bit before spooning it into bun cases (for those who don’t consider that baking :-p)

The muffins look pretty good, chocolate ones look okay too although they haven’t risen as well.  With the buns instead of using the rice paper we decided to try to draw some Frogs. 

This is my effort.

Not the best in the world, it got some more jam on it and is now a red nose bun.

Sue’s were much better.

I really enjoyed this, it was nice to spend time together doing something fun Hopefully this will make some more money for Comic Relief tomorrow too.

It’s been a strange couple of days at work.  We’ve had some staff changes and as a result I’ve been given some more responsibility which is great.  It’s made me realise just how much I missed being in charge of something (for want of a better phrase).  I’ve been drawing up processes and thinking about procedures this evening. 

Providing the procedures I put in place are correct and they’re followed through, everything should go smoothly.  If I’m on holiday or off sick for any reason anybody should also be able to pick up where I left off and carry on with it. 

BETT last week was amazing, it was great to meet so many customers and see reactions to Frog 3.0

So, thats enough about work. 

I decided to jump on the scales this morning for a mid-week check up, wish I hadn’t bothered.  I’m 2lb heavier than Saturday’s weigh in.  I know I might lose this weight by the time that Saturday rolls around but it’s made me think more about the exercise and the impact that it has on the way my weight loss will progress. 

Plans to go to the gym this week were foiled by some strange pain in the side of my neck, possibly one of my glands.  The pain seems to carry from my ear down to my shoulder.  Using some of the diclofenac left over from the accident last year seemed to keep it under control today at work.  I’ll monitor the situation and if it’s still an issue next week, I’ll call in at the doctors. 

I’ll probably be the first person in work tomorrow morning, that’ll be strange.  It’ll give me a chance to catch up with some tickets and finalise one or two things with the system I’m putting in place.  Need to double check a few things.

I really need to get the IMDB challenge back on track, I also need to devote some time to the Xbox and 360.  Aaaaaaaaaaand I need to do some spring cleaning. 

There’s just never enough time!

It’s been a few days since I wrote anything with any substance.  Some people would say I never have (hardy har har :p).  I’ve got 10 minutes to kill in between bunging my lasagne in the oven and waiting till I can put my Tesco light chips in the other oven. 

It’s been a long couple of days, Sue has been working Long Days so I’ve been getting up at around 6:20am to get her to work and then going straight to work myself.  I guess I could have gone to the gym but god only knows what sort of a state I’d be in now if I had.  Spent just under three hours on the phone today.  As far as support calls go, that isn’t too bad, especially when you consider there was only me today.  Still - one more day left and then I get to go down to London to go to the BETT conference. 

The buzz in the office over the last few days has been fantastic.  I’m really looking forward to it.  Everyone is so psyched up about Frog 3.0 – we’re really excited.  It’s a fantastic product and I think the customers are going to be amazed with it. 

Had a bit of a headache this morning before I managed to get out for lunch, seemed to clear up this afternoon which is always good.  Headaches are bad enough on their own, couple that with concentration and phone time and you’re not having a good day at all. 

I’ve got more than enough points saved up already this week from exercise (walking to town and back from work) and saving points every day that I’ll be able to have the main course I’m thinking of on Thursday night without actually using up any of my allocated points for the day.  I might even be able to stretch to a potato skins starter or something.  Pudding I’m not sure about.  If I’m full, I’ll leave it. 

I’m not planning on drinking much (if at all) whilst I’m doing there.  Going to stick to the diet drinks (maybe diet coke and vodka – that’d work.  Looks like there is 1point per shot of vodka, which is less than a bottle of bud at 1.5 points). 

Fingers crossed that when it comes to Saturday morning and weigh in time that I’ll have still lost something or at least not gained anymore.  I’m quietly confident that I’ll see a reduction again this week though. 

Very hungry tonight, got 4 points left that will go to waste if I don’t use them (can only save 4).  Might have a small bag of maltesers or haribo later on, we’ll see.

Time to go and stick the chips in