Neil Hopcroft

After being amazed by the marvelousmrchips antics trying to change his flight tickets yesterday, I thought I’d check when my return flight is booked for.

Oops – its 11am tomorrow…but, of course, the Tokyo and Narita offices of Virgin Atlantic are closed and the London office has a *huge* queue on the voicemail, just hope I remember to phone them tomorrow morning to change it, not sure when I change it to yet, since I’ve not heard back from the agency about extending my contract until 18th June….maybe I’ll change it to 20th, then go to Aus if I find myself planless between the end of the month and then…

I love being organised, I’m just not very good at it.

Gah! Busy weekend, will write that up later, but for the moment just a quick note about the plan…

I spoke to my line manager (at least the guy who is sorting out what happens next) and he’d not realised that my last day was in May, he thought it was June…he was a little irritated but seemed like he wanted to figure out some kind of extension – he’s going to ask someone to extend my contract until June 18th (visa finished Sunday 20th), so it looks like I won’t be home in a couple of weeks after all – but that depends a little on how quickly they organise a new contract for me.

Will post an update again once anything more is decided.

No updates on the plan yet. Two weeks to go and we’re starting to realise just how broken some of the deliveries we’ve been receiving have been – dammit software development is a difficult thing to do right, patch on patch, miss one and the whole house of cards caves in. This has to be one of the most complex distributed software development systems in the world and we’re stuck +6 hours or more from the rest of the world on the end of a small pipe across Siberia, no wonder things panic us from time to time.

And my agent is getting pushy about finding me another job…I’m not keen, given the amount of trouble they’ve given me over the last year, but what are the chances that if I don’t pursue the opportunities they give me that they’ll find some reason to not pay my final month?

Do you ever get one of those days when someone comes to you demanding that you fix something that is obviously deeply fundamentally wrong with whatever you are making? Only to find out the next day that the people you are expecting to supply the fixes haven’t even noticed theres a problem.

Tomorrows exercise is to light fires under the right people.

Marilyn Mansons version of ‘The KKK took my baby away’ is deeply disturbing. In a good way. I must check out some more of his music having largely avoided it all these years because of all the kids with too much facepaint.

Indeed, all the tracks on this Ramones tribute (we’re a happy family) are good, with the exception of U2, which probably annoys me as much because it is U2 as anything else.

*ROCK*

The plan, as it currently stands, is that I will be finishing work at Nokia 26th May – one year after my contract date. After which I will fly back to England and spend a few weeks driving around, eating roast beef and talking to people in shops.

There are a few things that could change that plan

– I’m talking to some guys in Finland about the possibility of a job over there, no details yet, but I suspect they would like for me to start asap if we can work something out.
– my current office might offer me an extension for three or four weeks, to run to the end of my visa, but that is now unlikely (due, as far as I can tell, to a paperwork problem), I’m not prepared to sign for another year whatever they offer me (nearly…if it was stupid large money I’d probably go for it, but I can’t see that happening)
– evilmattikinz and the marvelousmrchip are heading Oz-wards, so I might join them for a week or two of frivolity over there, before flying back via Tokyo.

Of course, I’ll post here once this kind-of-plan has actually turned into a plan, with a few more specifics.

Is there anything happening on the weekend 29th May? Is it worth coming back for? Maybe I’ll stay here for a few days and relax (and clean the flat) before coming home…?

Let me know if you’d like me to come visit when I get back to the UK…

Hazardous environment computing

“Initially Mr Hogan carried it in his long johns to keep the device warm. But he later discovered that the PDA worked just as well when it was exposed to the cold.”

Fujitsu/Iridium tie up of some kind, I thought they’d brought down the Iridium cluster after the company folded? Or is the dream of global satelite telephones still alive?

UK’s no.1 fake ID site.

“All are cards are novelty products and so long as they are used for fun you will not be committing any offences.”

A question of quality

“The constant release of new versions causes a lot of grief for IT professionals and CIOs would much prefer to wait for something that actually works and is not full of bugs.”

I see interesting times ahead…

I’ve just had a comment here accusing me of bandwidth theft…which doesn’t make any sense, what do they mean? I used a couple of picture links on that discusson in a ‘my phones better than your phone’ spat with evilmattikins, but please, everyone, don’t follow any of the links on that page, you’ll just get me into more trouble….