The Day Today

I have the week off from work and have new things to think about. The more I looked into contracting the more interested I became, however there seems little point in setting up a company as practically the same benefits are available if you become a ‘flexible employee’ through an umbrella company. This path would probably be temporary, but there appear to be a few contracts out there that deal with 2nd/3rd line support, and systems/server/network administration.

The other path that has now presented itself is a permanent role in Tampa, Florida. This is where my department’s function will continue within the company (the aquisition of a company in FL resulted in the redundancy of the UK staff). I would be supporting the application as I have been, as well as several other applications. Of course this is tempting, especially if they sort out the visas but there are a few hesitations.

Could I move so far away from friends and family?
Okay so it’s not Australia, and many of my friends have already said they’d love to visit but this is possibly the hardest part of my decision.

Would I have the same cost of living?
What I mean here is will my pay be relative to my pay in the UK, or will it be more/less?

Do I still want to work for the same company?
I have to decide if I want a completely clean break or if I am happy to work for the same company. In the last year we have experienced several cut-backs, or maybe this new location will have more autonomy? Also, if I leave I get redundancy (severance) pay that I was already planning to spend on a Macbook Pro and put the remainder towards property in the UK.

I have asked some of these question of our Human Resources team, and am currently considering during this for a trial period (not sure how long that trial will be). If things weren’t to work out I may still be entitled to my redundancy money.

Thanks for reading. Happy Holidays!

This is the big thing I’ve had in mind recently. I will soon be made redundant from my job and need to find something new. This year I have been for a few interviews (both before finding out about the redundancy and since) and have been offered two jobs, both of which I turned down for different reasons.

As the redundancy applied to an entire department I have seen people leaving already and one of these turned to contracting and started his own company. This has an appeal to me, even though I don’t specialise in application development as he does. I have now started to look into contracts that involve systems engineering, application support, helpdesk support, et cetera, and there appear to be a fair number out there.

This isn’t about making more money - although I’d be disappointed if I made less - it’s about variety and independance. I have almost come to the decision that I will try this path as there’s practically nothing to lose. If it doesn’t work I simply go back to a permanent job.

Today I started my research into contracting, and there’s plenty to read. I’m starting with ITContractor.com as there seems to be some good advice there. I’m also keen to hear your thoughts/advice either as a comment to this entry or send me an e-mail. If I do go ahead with this then you can expect me to write about the whole process.

Finally, if I start my own company then I’ll need a company name. I’ve had a few suggestions but nothing that’s really grabbed me so if you want to help me out there then that’d be great.

The night before I left for Australia I took some photos for a local band and then downloaded them to my parents computer (I was staying there because I was getting a lift to the airport) in order to maximise space on my memory cards for the trip. When I got back I intended to grab these photos before returning to my flat in London, however I returned to find the folder I had downloaded them to was empty.

It’s not clear what happened, but somehow (I think an over-zealous parent with a delete key) these files had vanished. Now I wasn’t being paid to take these photos but I was asked to take them based on some I’d taken of the band at a different gig, and I hardly wanted to say to the guys that I couldn’t show them the photos because my mum had deleted them!

After an initial panic and checking of the external backup drive (a backup had been done since the files were deleted but not whilst they were on the machine) I thought about attempting to recover them from the hard drive. It was at this point that I remembered the Recycle Bin, and that not everyone shift-deletes (as I tend to) or empties the bin frequently (also something I do)… Voila! The photos were there and I was able to restore them and prove the date/time they were deleted. I now have them on my USB key waiting to be put onto my machine at home. Sometimes we overlook the simple solutions.

All these photos are rapidly filling up my hard drive, so today I ordered a 500GB drive to replace my two 160GB drives currently in a mirrored array. Once I get the new drive working I’ll order another one and restore the mirror. The extra 340GB should keep my going for a while!

Well I’m back from the land down under and I had a great fantastic time. There wont be a proper post today because I’m incredibly tired and have over 250 e-mails in my office inbox to get through (suprised there’s not more after 3 weeks away!) Whilst away I thought some more about my work situation and will write an entry hopefully this week with my current thoughts as I wouldn’t mind some opinions from some of the people that I know read this blog.

(photo credit - jonbro)

I can get angry. Angry at a major lack of innovation in the computer industry. Sure, we have our terabyte hard drives, 100″ screens, and quad core CPUs, but still our operating systems and hardware fail to respond to simple commands in a timely manner. I’m talking about stopping and ejecting when the computer is confused.

It’s happened to everyone. You’ve put a scratched up CD in the drive, and the CD drive decides to whir the disc around at high speed to figure out what’s up. All fine so far. Then you press eject and… more times than not, the drive will keep spinning the CD, freeze up the computer, and generally make your life a misery. Eject should mean.. spin down and eject that disc now.

Even worse is when the disc starts out okay, you begin to copy a file across from it, but then it hits trouble. Rather than being able to press the stop or cancel button and get an immediate resolution, it’s more common to have it freeze up your operating system (or at least the shell aspect of it, on the Mac Finder will freeze but other apps run okay) but still not actually “stop”.

What’s up with all of this? Make stuff happen when we tell it to happen.