Craig K

The first hurdle is there only to trip you Jul 10, 2006 No Comments

I'm conscious that all I have been talking about is computers. Ok, to be fair I do now work in IT so stuff like that happens.

What I have been neglecting more is that I also work in an office, now that is an odd place.

During today I had notepad open and I just typed a few things that I noticed around me:

• Those who think they are busy are running around, those who are busy are sitting at their desks.


• The guy with the most feature filled phone finds making a simple call hard enough.


• Every time I feel I want a break, in the back of my mind there is this niggling little feeling reminding me that I'm being paid a fair bit to work. The really strange part is that quite often I know full well that getting up and wandering around (i.e taking a break from the screen) will help me to think a great deal, but still it doesn't seem to move me (maybe it's the chair).


• Office work is all about image and impression. Today a work experience kid came in for a bit. He would have seen me sitting at my huge desk, on my fully adjusted chair, sitting in front of a very impressive looking computer with more screens than I expect he has seen before. My desk is covered in papers, lines of code and expensive looking pens. On my screen is yet more lines of the most complicated SQL he could ever have seen (he probably doesn't even know what SQL is). How is he to know that I don't know what I'm doing?

Ok, now for the more IT stuff....

I now know what it means to deal with other peoples code. Today's task was to take a block of about 350 lines of SQL and fix two bugs in it. One being that the results weren't ordered as they should have been, and the other being that some percentages went past 100.

Now the most SQL I have even tacked it about 30 lines, and that was quite bad enough. This however was written in India by a man who really didn't know much about what he was doing (although annoyingly, enough to make people think he did). This man has since been sacked if that gives you an idea of the code. It was slow, inefficient, wrongly formatted and more insightful comments could have been written by deaf monkey in a darkened room with nothing more than litmus paper and a cows anus to write with.

The worst was to come. I spent about 2 hours on the servers picking my way through it, going through the 7 or so (unnecessary) temporary tables it created, reverse engineering it as best I could. It just didn't make sense, I could not get the number to add up, I could not get thing to be recognised that should have been.

After a while I started to realise that there was something that was more than just wrong. I went of to my college who gave it to me and we poured over it for about 40mins.

We came to the conclusion that there was a lot more wrong with it than people had first thought. Not only did the things I mentioned above not work, but almost all the numbers were wrong.

Now for something to be used as a report, that's not a good way to go about getting ahead of the competition.

I have now been given the task of rewriting it. We think it can be done in under 100 lines, not 350....

Ok, some of you will be somewhat surprised to head that I don't live inside a computer> nor do I spend my who day sitting in front of one.

On Sunday I went to a little "party" for a charity I have been helping with since July 2004. They are called PAGEANT (Projects Aiding Gambian Education And Natural Talent). Now I normally help them by packing lots of heavy items into truck, lorries and even 40ft shipping containers. This was a party for one of the Gambian school headmasters who had been flown over and was attending all sorts of courses etc.

As this party I was surrounded by loads of supports of the charity, many of whom had been to the Gambia on trips etc.

I am now toying with the idea of joining their ranks by making a visit myself. You see I got on very well with this Gambian headmaster, he runs a scout troop out there so we instantly had something in common. I am considering making a trip next summer (nice and hot) so I have a week when the schools are still open s o I can visit a few of them, and then a further few weeks so I can go camping with their scout group as they go after school finishes.

The idea is very much in the "tentative" stage, but thoughts are gathering pace in my head. I think it would be a really excellent learning experience for me, and a good opportunity to teach a few Gambian scouts some new tricks.

The idea of going alone is a little bit much for me, but I have a few people in mind I'm thinking of suggesting it to to see if they what to join me.

Watch this space.......

(no, the other one)

Spinning around Jul 7, 2006 No Comments

Ok, so I have now been working in London for 4 days now. It was just this morning I found another way to adjust my chair. My chair is the coolest thing known to man (bar maybe the slinky). I can change just about anything on it. In fact, here is a list of the things I can change (note, I list both armrests because I have them set very differently):

Seat height
Seat angle (tip forward of back)
Seat back - lower back hardness
Seat back - maximum back angle
Seat back - how easily the back reclines (so speed it reclines at)
Left arm rest - height
Left arm rest - angle
Left arm rest - position to the side
Right arm rest - height
Right arm rest - angle
Right arm rest - position to the side

Obviously it has wheels and spins too.

I think I might swap it for one of the even nicer ones we have going spare actually.

Well, today I spent my time finishing off the flash based documentation/help screens I have been working on for a couple of days. It's to support a web based application that goes live in a few weeks time. Next I move onto debugging some SQL I'm told. Something about some percentages going over 100....should be cool

I also spent some time dealing with my system account. I was setup on the wrong domain by mistake when I started (well, I did move departments, so I will let them off for that one). I put in to change domains and what they did was make me a new account on the correct domain (with all the access I need) and migrate my settings. It all went through today and worked for the most part. Only issue now is that because I had an external e-mail address when my new account was made, I now need to have that e-mail address relinquished by the old account and amended on my new account. So for the next few days I will only get internal e-mail, but I get quite enough of those as it is.

I have come to realise that e-mail is used for EVERYTHING. I have maybe had 70 e-mails in the last few days, and I'm not even in the directory yet! It turns out that the reason it is used so much is because all emails are logged for 7 years, so everything that is said or asked of people is logged. It's a way of being more accurate than word of mouth. I can see the reasons why, but I don't get why I have to do all the rules for my outlook configuration myself, why can't they have a few default ones. I mean, is it really crucial that "the servers in Berlin will be down for Sunday next week" goes to the top of my main box and not some hidden place by default?

Anyway, enough of that.

I need a T-shirt that says "IT Service on call". I seem to get phone calls and text messages at any time day or night asking for help with computers. I'm on my third this week already! I guess it has given me yet more ammo in my war against Belikn 54g routers.....

Oh, actually, to go back to the subject of work for a moment. I feel the need to boast about the fairly standard machine I'm using there as a developer. Its has a 2GHz Xeon processor (so dual core), 2GB of RAM and a Matrox card running a pair of very thin 19inch TFT's. Installed it has almost anything I could want (all of the MS dev stuff, all of Macromedia and Adobe stuff too) and we are allowed to install what we like on them. So as soon as I have mine I will pop Firefox 1.0.7 on it. I say as soon "as I have mine" because I haven't got one yet, but they have a spare, we just need to do the basic image first and then patch it up. I have been using the desk of one of those in Singapore at the moment for a new product roll out.

This world has its ups to go with all the downs I get. It nice to see a little justice for once.

Edit: Oh, and I just remembered something else I need to be saying...

My side hurts. It hurts rather a lot. It hurting is a tribute to how scared of spiders I am. I jumped up so quickly I pulled a muscle in my chest. Anyone who knows me well will know how fast I can move when near them, but this is just silly.

A different world Jul 3, 2006 No Comments

I think women should have big ears. One that stick out a fair bit, although quite thin still, not huge ones in all directions. The idea being they don't have to constantly put their hair behind them because it keeps getting in their way. If they were larger (or even just a bit hooked) then it would stay behind them through the roughest of circumstances.

When I said women then I wasn't actually 100% sure that was right, should I be saying girls. Hmm, actually, girls seems a big young and women seems a bit old (well, in my mind at least). I guess the interim is teenager, but that's just odd. Why is it during the part of your life when you learn about/explorer sexuality is the one time you are not distinguished from the other. Strange.

Right, well today was my first day at Merrill Lynch and while I'm on firsts it was my first day in a "real" working environment. I feel as most of the people who read this are very much in the thrust of education (and holiday) I shall enlighten you on this deep dark world.

We in the IT industry think we use a lot of what we call TLA's (Three Letter Acronym's). We are correct, we do use a lot of them. What we don't often realise is that the business word uses an awful lot of them too. Now in your head combine a business (think big) and IT (on a large scale). What you have left is a new language. I say language because it is beyond a code or even a dialect.

I think an example would be MLFC. This stands for Merrill Lynch Financial Centre. Now that's very simple, its just a building. Now say it fast (something like EMMILLEFFSEE). What happens is it goes together to almost form some strange new word. Or an even more annoying one. FX mean for Foreign Exchange. Noe what happens when you say FX quickly, you get "effects". So you might get "How are the current effects going". That's even worse than a new language, it's buggering up the meanings off words we already know.

Ok, enough on that little rant, down to the day/cool stuff. My day started at 10am in London. This meant I was up at 6:50am here. I did this partly to get ready for Tuesday (tomorrow) when I have to come in at 9 and partly so I had time to wander around a bit before I started. I got up on the train dripping buckets of sweat ("nice warm day" would not being doing it justice) and had loads of time to walk to all the little stations round there and find the quick routes around. I then turned up at reception at 10am as instructed. Seems today was when a whole load of summer temp staff started because the queue for getting security passes took forever. I was waiting/being seen for about an hour and 20mins. Anyway, got that all done an dusted and went up to meet the rest of the team. After about half an hour of sorting out logins and chatting we all went down the pub for about an hour and a half. I'm told this is not how the normal working day goes, but I can dream. We chatted and just generally socialised over a few drinks (on the company card) before I was shifted onwards. You see, there is a change of plan, I'm not going to that department, I'm going to work at its sister department about 15mins walk down the road because they are short of staff. I've been told I'm being thrown in at the deep end, so that should be interesting.

Ok, the cool stuff about working in offices (well, this one). For one thing I look important as hell, and that always has to rate highly on the coolness meter. Next is a matter of coolness very close to my heart, air conditioning. This stuff (especially today) is a God send. Its single disadvantage is when you exit the building. You get hit by this wall of warm air and it's nasty. Another very cool thing about where I work is us developers get dual 19inch TFT monitors with amazingly cool thin bezels and fun stands. Oh, and the chairs, they just rock, they must be like £300 each. It has the best part of 10 different things you can change, even the way the arm rest points!

Ok, I need to stop with the "school kid excitement" style entry, but trust me, they were cool.

The hours are exceptionally flexible and the environment is very relaxed. Its more, "You do your work to the standard we set and we don't care after that" sort. Also, what you wear depends on how long you have been there, hence a manager of 20years service is in shorts and t-shit...in an office!

Ok, things that are not cool.

I am have been told that someone was fired for dropping a few tables by accident on the live system. Apparently they weren't even very important tables but it caused about 30 people not to be able to do any work for a day, and that costs more than that persons salary. Myself I haven't even added the Live environment database servers to my SQL sever list.

Another not co cool thing is the travelling. It could be worse, but it doesn't mean I have to like it as it is. It's an hour each way and it's a very busy route. I didn't sit for the journey up much really.

Hmm, I can't think of that many bad things, well that's a good start. I'm sure more will make themselves known in time though.

Time has come Jul 2, 2006 No Comments

The problem with blogs (or journals) is that they are at their most interesting when you have something to say. When you have something to say you are normally doing something to give you cause. That something is normally making you busy hence you have no time to write about it.

Now we have the situation which is no end of trouble. It leads to shit, boring entries that go nowhere. I should have something to say but the moment I started to write this my mind went blank of all the things I have done recently that are journal worthy.

In recent weeks I have been tidying up loose ends and preparing myself for my new placement at Merrill Lynch.

This has meant more than just buying a few clothes, this has meant doing all the things that I wanted to get done soon now as I don't know how much free time I shall have.

The first of these is the geeky one so I shall get it out of the way first.

I upgraded and reinstalled my computer. This meant going up to 2GB of RAM and 820GB of disk space (although only 520 can be used due to RAID). For this I had help from my glamour's assistant. The task was simple. Make backups, wipe disk, add RAM and disks, partition disks, install Windows, install Fedora, put data back. Was it that simple? Was it hell.....

I'm not going to go into details but I had trouble with RAM, SATA drivers, audio connectors, boot loaders, pretty much the works. I installed XP maybe 8 times in 3 days.

I can report that it is mostly working and is now at the stage many of my projects stay at. It mostly done, just a few little odd bits here and there to sort out then I'm done. So I think we can call this the "1 year install" then, because I will just never find the time to finish it.

Ok, non computer people can start reading again now.

Of course one of the things that goes with starting a full time job is that you have to give up any part-time ones. For me this meant I had to stop working at the primary school where I'm their "technician". As such I have done maybe 800% the hours I would normally do this week to leave their system in a state where it can manage until the end of term. My replacement doesn't start until September.

I have finally sorted the school laptops (second hand) into good and bad piles. So the bad pile got ripped apart for spares to eek out the lives of the good pile. For this reason this photo exists.

On the Wednesday of this week I went shopping up in London with my friend George (sorry, no image for him online yet). I spent the grand total of £300 on 7 shirts, 5 ties, 2 pairs of trousers and a pair of cufflinks. I do at least feel like it was money well spent as it brings my wardrobe up to more the standard of my future colleges.

This rather neatly bring me onto tomorrow. Tomorrow (well, fast approaching today) is the big day on which I start. I have to be there at 10am which is a nice realistic number for their part, but it still means getting up at a time I have deemed only useful for emails, news and eating

Free Jun 7, 2006 No Comments

Note to all joggers: If I walk passed you, it's time to stop and go back inside.
Note to all cats: making yourself look 4 inches taller doesn't scare me.
Note to the girl who just asked me if I wanted a burger: no, not if you cooked them dear.
Note to self: go to the toilet before the 3 hour exam.

Ok, rather momentous day. I have finally finished my exams, and with that my second year of my degree. As is always the case, I had the worst exam saved up until last. Oh how I looked forward to Systems analysis and design.....like hell.

That said, it actually wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had convinced myself it was going to be, so things went as well as they could. Man I love making points in my blogs that mean nothing and help no-one.

I think a fair amount of my concern stemmed from a note written on (and well worn into) one of my exam tables during my databases exam. It read "I failed Systems analysis and design here 24/04/93". And who says exams get easier over time....

In the general panic stricken revision sessions a group of us have been "putting on" prior to exams we managed a fair amount of revision, but we also came up with some good ideas. We thought about exam orientated t-shirt slogans. For example, for the marketing exam a t-shirt with a "porters 5 forces diagram" on it....what are they going to do...tell us to take it off :P (well, actually make us not sit the exam, so don't point out my flawed logic).

My suggestion for today was one that read "I'm going to fail this exam" on the front, and then on the back "but I'm going to take you with me". It strikes me as the suicide bomber special now that I think about it.

Now that I have nothing to do for a few weeks before I start at Merrill Lynch, I hope to be able to make a few more entries. I won't, but I hope to and that's what counts.

Your breathing rights have been removed until further notice Dec 17, 2005 No Comments

Ah yes, is that time again, twenty-two minuets past midnight, surly this must be due an update.

Ok, round-up of recent events:

- The reason why my website (and all those I host with Jonners) have been up and down like a bloody yoyo, followed by a down with no return. They changed nameservers. I found this out by sending them a long (insulting) email asking why my site was down after the recent upgrade. I have since sent an email back explaining it was all Jonners fault (as is often the case).

You see, we have a contact email assigned with them. This is now set to mine, but it used to be set to Jonners hotmail. Had it been updated 3 months or so ago when he moved to gmail....like hell.

Suffice to say, all sites (bar the ones I haven't spoken to yet) are all up and are purring nicely on the new server.

- We have now ceased all lectures for Christmas.

- My (very legal) Server 2003 Enterprise box found the point where my temper frays. I reinstalled it having put up with far too many random restarts. It's probably because I'm running it on an old test rig, but I don't care, it works now, which makes a change.

Today was a good day. It was a good day to the extent that from about 5pm I have had a nice big grin plastered to my face.

As part of my degree we have to do a year of real (paid) work in a vaguely relevant industry. You can get out of it, but I had no particular wish to (it being one of the things that attracted me to the course in the first place). The Uni has a placements office who are there to help you, but you are assured that they don't do it all for you.

Last Wednesday (07/12/05) I got an email about a good placement at Merrill Lynch The placements office had just sent a blanket email to everyone on 2nd year computing courses telling us that it was the last chance to apply to them. I made an effort, wrote a covering letter and sent in my CV.

The following Tuesday (13/12/05) I got an email from Merrill Lynch asking me to come up to London on the Friday (today) for an assessment day. Suffice to say the 8:45 start in London concerned me a touch (in retrospect, rightly so, that was an un-godly hour I had to get up at). I left the house before the sun was up and I got home early and still watched the sun set from the train.

I'm not going to go into detail about the events of the day, but trust me, as the day went on I so wanted to work for them. It was such a great place, they had so much money it was almost untrue. I will take this opportunity to point out that we had no idea what the salary was going to be but I would have still be more than happy to work there even if it was low.

I was told at the end of the interview that we would get emails to tell us if we got in (there were 3 places for 9 of us (we are just those who made I there, I think there were several hundred apps)). In the knowledge I was going to have to wait, I set off home.

Soon after I endured the train home and was recalling the days events to interested parties (mum and my brothers) I got a phone call! I got in :D

I could not be more happy, I am so looking forward to this. (not to mention the salary was bloody good (and trust me, I mean that)).

I'm so happy zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz