Monthly Archive for November, 2005

The upsides to being an IT Contractor

Published on November 29, 2005 in Personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
Enjoyed a meal out with some old friends & former colleagues from the Ernst & Young Birmingham IT Team. Had a really good time and a lovely meal at Chez Joules in Birmingham City Centre.
One of the upsides I found to being an IT Contractor (and now an IT Consultant) who moves between many different customer sites is the many friends you make along the way. I’ve often mentioned I’m really lucky to have such a diverse circle of many different friends, and my time as an IT Contractor contributed to that circle significantly.
Many people say that being an IT Contractor or Consultant is lonely work, but I often find the opposite. It’s what you make of the situation I guess as I now count many customers and ex-colleagues as some of my closest friends.

Xbox 360 Rush

Published on November 29, 2005 in Computers and Internet. 1 Comment
Microsoft‘s Xbox 360 Next-Generation console was released last week to much fanfare.

I’m not much of a game player but own both a Sony PlayStation 2 and an original Microsoft Xbox
- both purchased a long time after their original releases, and both
for very good bundle prices. So I find it hard to understand the folk
featured in this article at TechRepublic who queued throughout the night in a vain attempt to secure some of the very limited stock of this new console.

Of course, this is also coming from the guy who still regularly plays games on his Sega Dreamcast and Atari 800XL, so I’m probably not at the cutting edge of video game fashion.

Back home in England from Prague

Published on November 29, 2005 in Personal and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
Had an uneventful flight and got home safely very late last night. There were more than a few tired lads at the end of the weekend and only a couple braved beers on the ‘plane home!

The weather in blighty is cold and snowy though, especially around the South-West of Birmingham where I live. I’m not kidding when I say conditions were better in Prague!!!

Am spending the morning drinking lovely English breakfast tea (which I’ve so missed), catching up on the news and watching silly folks in oversized cars trying (and failing) to do the school run on the hill outside my house. It’s icy, it’s slidy, but they still attempt it. No crashes so far (we usually have 2 a day outside my house in the really bad weather) but some close calls. I’ve very little sympathy for these people – what could be nicer than walking the 15 minutes to school on a crisp English morning instead of clogging the roads up further, polluting the environment further and not getting anywhere quickly anyway!

Ahh – glad to be home. ;-)

Taking a trip to Prague

Published on November 28, 2005 in Personal and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , .
I write this blog entry from Hotel Atlantis, Prague, in the Czech Republic. A dozen or so of the lads and I have come out here to celebrate John’s Stag Do. He and Karen and getting married in a couple of weeks, and we’re all sat here waiting for our taxi to take us back to the airport.This is the second time I’ve been to Prague and the City is beautiful. I’m no expert on Gothic Architecture, but I know what looks nice. :-)

The weather hasn’t been at all bad. Cold, but the rain and snow held off for the most part. I’m told the weather back in Birmingham is much worse!

The less said about the non-sightseeing aspects of our trip the better. So I’ll sign off now. ;-)

The Cottage in Lowton

Published on November 24, 2005 in Personal. 4 Comments Tags: , .
Well I’ve gone and done it! After searching around for a few weeks I’ve finally found a 2nd home in the North-West that is just beautiful.

After I’d narrowed the short-list down to about 4 properties, the GG joined me in the North-West last week to give the perspective to house hunting that only
a woman can. There was little debate about which one of the four was our favourite!

It’s a 2-bedroomed cottage in a little town called Lowton. Lowton is about 15 minutes from one of my main customers in Warrington, and about 30 minutes from another in Manchester. Ideally located outside of the big cities in almost the countryside, it has a lovely pub across the road (where, along with some lads from the IT Department of said customer, we scored miserably in the Tuesday night pub quiz recently, but I did win a bottle of wine for a correct answer in a bonus round – huzzah!) and the all important newsagents opposite, with Indian takeaway next door - spot on!

It’s a White fronted cottage with an open plan living and kitchen area. After much haggling, my offer on the place was accepted last Friday. I’m chuffed!

More and more of my work seems to take me to the North-West so I thought now was the right time to find a base to increase that work from. Living out of hotels is ok in the short-term, but having somewhere to call “home” makes travelling that much easier.

Now there’s just the small matter of finding a larger Birmingham office for the business and a few employee’s to spread the load. 2006 is going to be an exciting year, I can feel it already!