» Unemployed

I've been *very* lucky
Up until Jan last year I worked as a web dev for a new media agency. For giggles I convinced myself I was bored there and landed myself a job as a back-end dev at a financial information co in the City.

Lesson learned: the grass is always greener on the other side. From day one I realised I'd made a mistake. To be fair the co was no less fuckwitted than anywhere else, and with a couple of exceptions the people were decent and good colleagues. I just somehow assumed that being on the "inside" I'd learn that shares, CFDs, FX etc are really quite interesting and I'd enjoy the work.

I didn't.

Although I achieved my quarterly bonus for the first two quarters I was eligible, by the end of the year my motivation was slipping and my boss had given me an informal chat that my performance needed to improve.

So when, three weeks before Christmas they announced that there would be two redundancies and it would be based on performance, I wasn't at all surprised when the next day they told me I was to be one of them. I can't blame them. I knew I'd made a mistake taking the job, and the part of me that wasn't bricking at the prospect of an iminent 50+% drop in household income was actually strangely relieved.

So why am I lucky? Well firstly, even though I hadn't been with them long enough to be entitled to redundancy, they gave me a pretty generous severance anyway (I said that they were decent), essentially an extra month's pay that would cover me until the end of January, and secondly, I got a new job, starting immediately after the New Year, within ten days!

I'm now doing JavaScript development for an Internet advertising firm. I like them, they like me, the work is really interesting and whilst they originally took me on a three-month contract as my skill set wasn't exactly what they wanted and they wanted to see how I'd shape up, they made me permament after just two months.

Now I know the above must make me sound like the smuggest of jammy gits, but like I said, I know I've been exceptionally fortunate, and I will *never* forget what it feels like to be told you're out of a job. It's the worst, even if it is a job you don't enjoy. First time it's happened to me since leaving uni (two decades ago). I hope it never happens to me again, though In today's world, I know it may well one day.

So I have every sympathy with all those posting here who are looking for work, whether it's been a long time or short. I hope that fortune smiles on you all as she smiled on me.

Oh and we've got enough work in the pipeline that we're looking for a second JavaScript dev. So if there are unemployed b3tans with OO JavaScript looking in London, post a reply and I'll point you at the vacancy. Best of luck to you all.
(Mon 6th Apr 2009, 19:07, More)

» Creepy!

St. Mary's Island, Chatham Maritime
"Chatham Maritime" is marketing bollocks-speak for what used to be the Royal Naval Dockyard at Chatham, except for the section retained as a museum. It has a cinema, an outlet mall, a few middling pubs and chain restaurants, oh and "Dickens World", the South of England's premier (i.e. only) Dickens-related theme park. It's quite a nice place, well by Medway standards at least.

Right at the northern end though, separated from the nice(-ish) pubs and restaurants by one of the old docks, lies St. Mary's Island. St. Mary's Island is a recent housing development. Lots of yuppy-tastic townhouses and "executive" dwellings, it's prime real estate and properties there go for way more than the little two-up, two-down terraces that make up 95% of the rest of the area. I'm sure St. Mary's Island is a *lovely* place to live and bring up a family.

It's also where the Royal Navy used to decommission old reactors from nuclear submarines. There are persistent rumours locally that the residents of the island are warned not to grow vegetables in their gardens.

But more than that there's something indefinably creepy about the place. We'd some summers have a drink ouside the pub across the dock from the island, but there was always something sinister about the town-houses across the water. I don't know how to describe it other than that the windows looked "dead". And whilst there was always plenty of traffic to and fro across the swing bridge to the island, you never, ever saw anybody there - no-one walking about, no-one sitting out on the balconies, not even in the best of weather.

All I know is that there's no way I'd live there, and if I had to nominate a Place Most Likely To Have A Mutant Zombie Outbreak, St Mary's Island would be my choice.
(Mon 11th Apr 2011, 16:16, More)

» Iffy crushes

I think my missus wins:
Ed Balls

(and she gives /me/ grief for liking Kathy Sykes!)
(Tue 11th Oct 2011, 20:39, More)

» Flirting

Not a checkout girl
But it was in a supermarket checkout queue. Marks and Spencers in Winchester, October 1996.

Waiting to be served, person behind me pushes into me with their basket. I ignore it.

Happens again. I turn and glare at the person behind me. They smile and say sorry.

Happens again. I ignore it again.

Get served. As I get my shopping out of my basket, person behind me tries to make conversation about something or other. I grunt monosyllabically.

Pay. Leave.

An hour or so later, whilst eating my Marks boil-in-the-bag Sri Lankan curry, a few observations finally begin to form in my brain:

1) The person behind me was a young woman.
2) Quite a cute young woman in fact.
3) AND SHE WAS TRYING TO FLIRT WITH ME

It's just as well that I was so hopelessly slow on the uptake though, as just a couple of weeks before then I'd had an email from a young lady in America who liked my homepage (remember them?), and fourteen years later we're very happily married. But I still can't tell when I'm being flirted with: just the other week I actually said to Mrs Vaino, "The other day when you came over and sat astride me on the sofa, did that mean you wanted to have sex?"
(Thu 18th Feb 2010, 21:12, More)