Antisocal Types

I've worked in IT for 22 years, and, I suppose that means I've come in contact with many hundreds of people; probably a few thousand. Until 3 weeks ago, I would have completely disagreed with the stereotype of the IT geek - the socially inept, typically male, awkward person, who lurks around in their dark little dungeon of an office.

Well, I can tell you now that they still exist.

I've been working on the customer site next to an office where they lurk. They sometimes come through the room I'm working in - but even when confronted face to face with a cheezy grin and an "Hello!" from me, their eyes slide down to the floor and they sidle past, trying to pretend they haven't seen me. It's too bizarre. Even when they come and work in the room I'm in, they steadfastly refrain from eye contact, and never speak. Odd.

I know that there is a correlation between people with Aspergers and IT jobs - and I think that's because the 2 mindsets have matching qualities; attention to detail, interest in "things" not people, focus. Mutually beneficial, I'd say. However, I'm just shocked that (a) I've not really seen this before (b) they all work in the room next to where I'm currently sat.

Quite alot more tills

The final 100 tills have arrived making a total of 200. There's quite alot of stuff in there.

After the night shift

After working Friday and Saturday night 12 hour shifts and then Sunday night as a 16 hour shift, Dan came home yesterday lunchtime, shattered and ready for bed, only to realise he'd forgotten his key. Knowing that I wasn't at work at IBM, but on the customer site, he couldn't just pop in to Thorpe Park to get my key. So, completely exhausted, he had to sleep in the car!
When he woke up, he was thinking a bit more clearly, and remembered that he has a sister who lives less than a mile away, so he went over to Vanora's for tea, crisp butties (thanks Bazza) and chicken and chips (in a butty as well!).
I didn't get home until about 6:20, and poor Dan was completely cross-eyed by then. He *tried* to stay awake 'till 7, but failed. He went to bed at 6:50.
Lets hope that the 12+ hour kip over night has set his body clock right.

Working hard in Mac

This was saturday evening and we were all full of curry. Still a few days to go on the whole upgrade project. But it seems to be working. Technical info (SAP Upgrade from 4.6 to ECC 6 with a 1.4 TB database)

I love work...

...I really do! In fact both of us do. It's kind of sad, but kind of good at the same time. We like to do a good job. We enjoy doing a good job, and we get frustrated when that doesn't happen. It makes for interesting conversations over the dinner table. Dan asks me about testing (he has to go through rigorous loops for the FDA on the boxes at AZ) and I ask him all sorts of things about the clever stuff he does!

However...

...holidays are good too. Without them we'd not be quite so keen, I don't think, to work as hard as we do. We'd probably not be as sharp or focused. I reckon we'd just not be as bothered!!!

Our next THREE hols are planned out already.

1) Cottage in the lakes (an open fire and a pub within walking distance are the 2 essential requirements when we do a search cottages4you.co.uk) there will be wine, food, LOADS of chat, I'll probably write lists, letters, blog posts. Ahhhhh Bliss.

2) Nice, an unspecified week with a weekend in Pompey at the beginning. We're thinking some more Pompey action, or possibly another cottage somewhere half way home - maybe cotswolds?

3) New York and Las Vegas - wahhhhhhh! I'm excited about NY, I've been on several occasions before but never this long. We can really relax, get into the time zone, walk all over the city, and generally make ourselves at home. Then of course, Las Vegas. I'm kind of dreading and looking forward to it all at the same time!

After that, well it's going to be Venice later on in the year! Not booked but definitely planned! How great are holidays?!

Where am I?

Being away from home gives you plenty of time to think about things - and of course for me that means fodder for blog entries!

So, the last few days I've been thinking about the importance of home to me. Even though I looooooooooove travelling, I like coming home even more. "Home" is hard to define...! For example, it's not just my address. I can be living somewhere but it's not "home".

I have to be surrounded by my things, look, I can't help it, I'm a Cancerian!!! Let me quote

"...one of the strongest urges in this watery sign is the urge for security. For what's known and familiar, comforting and safe..."

Dan mocks me unmercifully for (a) the amount of stuff I bring with me when we go away and (b) the fact that I like to unpack it all and arrange it in the hotel room in order to make me feel 'at home'! In fact, I'm looking round the hotel room in Raleigh and seeing all my little bits and bobs around me now! Yes I'm feeling quite at home here...!

One of the things that is contributing to that though is that this is my second stay here. I knew it already, from the previous stay in August. Whilst I'm happy going to new places, I'm happier when I already know what to expect. I think this is partly my Cancerian nature, and partly just because humans are creatures of habit.

How many times, when you're on holiday, do you go back to the same bar, same restaurant, same beach? In fact, how many times have you been on the same holiday? When you have a limited amount of holiday, it takes all the guesswork and risk out of the equation. There's a guaranteed success that you'll get what you want.

But what do I do when I have to navigate the unknown, like when I was pootling around Brussels for my Visa? It's not like I want to only ever go to places I've been before. How do I cope?

Well I get an awful lot of info about places I haven't been to before just by doing a bit of gratuitous browsing. Also, maps help. What did I do before Google Maps, and the internet? Well actually to answer my own question, I collected alot of leaflets in folders, and spent alot of time ringing people to ask for information! My own personal interweb.

I remember feeling really really lost when 1st moving to Portsmouth. No car, no real 'getting about' skills learned at that point. Took me about a year to get my head round what I needed to do. The year *after* starting at the Poly, I joined all the student societies, went to all the freshers events, got bags of leaflets, timetables and info. I actually got the skills to organise and orientate myself.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognise my feelings of lostness. I just feel unsettled, and unhappy and don't always know why. It's usually not until afterwards, sometimes several years later, once I'm familiar with a place, once I feel 'at home' there, that I can look back and see where my distress stemmed from. So I can look back now and say that I saw those symptoms when I 1st moved to Portsmouth, to Leeds, and even on my 1st visit to Raleigh.

So where is home now? Funnily enough it's a place and a person! Dan is definitely part of where my home is. Although having all my bits and bobs around me helps; which is why we need a BIG house ;-)

Having a really nice time

So I'm in Raleigh again, not for the 1st time....I was here in the summer for a quite traumatic visit.
But this time it's all been rather lovely!

Firstly, it's a lovely town and has a very high quality of living. On previous visits, I was a bit confused by the town layout, I didn't think there was a "proper" town centre and wasn't sure where to head for when looking for 'town'. I'm not good in a place if I've not done reasearch, I feel quite disorientated without maps and prior knowledge (it's a failing, I know): this time I did a bit of digging, and discovered that the old centre of town was boarded by North, South, East and West streets. So, on Sunday we drove into town and then stopped & parked when we crossed West St. Instantly we were in the centre. There was a capitol building, and some museums, so we were able to do some culture - the sport hall of fame, arts, civil rights history through the eyes of one reporter. It was very interesting. Even though this is my 4th visit to Raleigh, I felt that this was the first time I got my head round the history of the place.

Anyway, we're here because SMA Microsystems, an IBM Business Partner are here, and they've been hired by Arcadia to set up their new store (for New York) to prove it's all going to work when they open in March.

So I'm back in the Marriott - it's directly opposite a huge shopping mall (7 or 8 lane highway to cross though!) but it's very handy for the airport and really good for the work location which takes us all of about 15 -20 minutes in the mornings and evenings.

Work has been engaging but has gone well. I've been able to test loads of the system. It's great. Normally I spend all my time documenting things which are wrong!

It's still hard work tho. Awake most mornings at 5:30 grabbing my emails, aerobics at 6-6:30, shower and down for brekkie at 7:30, leave for work at 8. Arrive at SMA at 8:30, an hour or so to get the 2 systems up and running, and check and answer emails and respond to queries and requests. 10am we go on the call with the UK team (it's 3pm for them) and discuss our yesterday activities and their today activities! Confused....?

Each day this week we've had quite large brekkies and haven't really had lunch so we've been doing full on 9 or 10 hour days without a break! At 6 - 6:30 we head back to the hotel and either step out to the mall for dinner or have a few beers in the bar. I think they're getting their money's worth out of us, that's for sure!

The reason I was there in the 1st place

My recent traumatic travels to Belgium and the US did actually have a purpose - although it was difficult to remember it at the time - when I was trying to get to Brussels - or when I had to spend an unexpected night in New York - I was actually there to help my customer test out a new store that they have opening soon. The store itself will be in New York - on Broadway to be precise, but we were doing our testing at a company called 'SMA Microsystems' in Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's a very nice part of the world. I've been before, to visit my friend Tim, who moved out there many years ago, and who has settled out there and made a very nice life for himself. It was nice to go back and see how things have changed - and stayed the same - in 14 years!

My business trip was with 3 of my customer colleagues who I work with back home in Leeds. They were all out there because of their different technical skills, and their focus on different parts of the system. Our basic remit was to get the store set up (40 tills) and run a week's worth of tests to simulate all the combinations of activity which the NY store will do when it goes live.

The facility we were in consisted of a huge warehouse with benches reaching across the open space in the middle - each bench sat about 6 tills on it - we had 2 store servers and 4 workstations and printers - 2 shoogles - the shoe lookup system, and 2 style advisor kiosks. It was a massive set up. The store is going to be huge!

As you can probably see - it's not exactly a 'lab' environment like we have back here in the UK; raised floors and under floor aircon. It literally was a warehouse.

• A big metal box,
• in 90+ degrees of heat,
• and high humidity.
• EEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!

The fomal business wear lasted 1 day. After that we were in shorts (well I had cropped trousers!!)

Needless to say the only thing we could think of once the afternoon started drawing to a close was a cold beer and a shower. In that order.

Last day in work!

I can't believe it's really here! You look forward to something for so long that the 'looking forward' is the reality and you forget that the event itself is actually approaching! The last few 'big' holidays (and some of the not so big ones) there has been so much to do, work wise, and at home, that I've ended up working 'till really late on the last few days before going away; and a couple of times this has resulted in me doing my passing out trick on the plane! Not a really good way to start the holiday. This time we decided to take a day or 2 off before actually leaving the country so that I don't collapse in a heap on the way. Sod's law dictates that *this* time though, the pressure isn't so intense, and I'm not actually in the middle of anything, and don't have too much handover to do. So, a nice steady day, a clean handover, and a nice night out with a couple of the sisters-in-law & their families to get the holiday season underway!