Yearly Archives: 2002

Woohoo!

Today the second phase of the intranet for work went live. The last three months or so have been a bit of a slog, truth be told – and it’s been in limbo for three weeks while the design was tinkered with.

At least that one is knocked on the head, just about – now I have to press on with another intranet for another part of the company. Looking forward to this one – although I’ll re-use a lot of code and the techniques I used, it’s great to start on a clean slate and attack something that at least seems new.

To be honest, if it wasn’t for this new project starting straight away I would really have liked to take a few days off. I’m feeling a bit burned out and I just want to swing my thing for a bit – learn a few things and get round to projects like The Feel Good Factory (which has been pending for a year now).

At the end of next week I have my first ever php training course, courtesy of the company, which is pretty groovy. Hopefully it’ll tighten me up in a couple of areas and open my eyes to a few new things along the way.

Interesting to see the chaos being caused by the backlog of teachers waiting to be approved by the government. There are mad stories from newly qualified teachers who applied four months ago, yet they still don’t have the green light.

Cousin Iain’s femme fatal, Emily, started her first job as a teacher on Monday this week, although at the weekend she still had not received her approval documents. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t an axe murderer and, just like most of the other new teachers, isn’t really old enough to have a criminal record as long as your arm.

So what’s taking so long?

My guess is it’s another example of how this country is stuck in the dark ages for the most part. New Labour, New Britian, we were promised around half a decade ago. Funny – still seems a bit like Old Britain to me… but with less teachers, nurses and more taxes.

The weekend down in London was a very good one as it turned out. The PlayStation experience was pretty cool – lots of shiny new games to see and play, plus a fairly decent freebie bag (unusual for these events). Sadly there was no Madden 2003 or Sims on the EA stand (Fliss had primed me to eek out the latter), but an utterly stunning Lara Croft on the Eidos stand nearby sorta made up for that! ;o)

The rest of the day after that event involved drinking in Leicester Square, the Trocadero and O’Neils, before wandering into China town for a very decent meal.

By the end of the day I had that sad feeling you get when you’re on a good holiday and you suddenly realise that the number of days left is less than the number of days you’ve been there. Every hour seems to pass quicker as the sand in the hourglass runs down. It turns out I do miss London after all, along with the myriad of options for spending money that comes with the most expensive capital city in the world.

I think visiting once in a while is a good way for me to keep that positive feeling going. What I noted in December 2001 about London being a chocolate cake that was very nice in theory, but would get pretty sickening after a while, stands true.

In a way, going there back in 2000 was a stepping stone for me – the two years which followed are gone forever now and there’s little point in longing for those days to return at some point. Better to look forward to what and where the future holds than to long for a chapter in your life, long since read.

That said, I’m really looking forward to next time I go :o)