I asked for an update from my manager regarding relocating to London with the company today. She passed on the request and was told that, “a relocation package may not be available for this type of move”. Whatever that means! I really do feel like I’m being shafted here at the moment — trapped in a …

Today Dee updated her CV and applied for eight different roles down in London — and that was just the start of it! Some 700 results on the search page of one job site, advertising salaries that seem a little ridiculous. (Actually, it makes me wonder what “The Bank” think they’re doing, offering such …

Today I got to do a little Java coding, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I installed all the requisite software — Eclipse, Java, MySQL, Tomcat — and started the “live stats” application. I’m doing it as a Struts application, more to remind myself how Struts hangs together and experiment with it, but …

I’ve installed Sun Java 5 and 6 now, and the Eclipse IDE. In theory this means I can actually start doing some coding — and on a Saturday night that means code, sake and Asahi beer! I’ve got a couple of things I can try out too — the Google API’s I mentioned in the last post, for example, and also a …

Well it’s nearly the weekend and none of my gear — the RAM replacement, a new HDD to piggyback the NAS, a copy of (ergh!) Vista — has arrived from Ebuyer. So, for this weekend at least, I’m stuck with the laptop. That’s a 1.3GHz Celeron laptop with 256MB of RAM and a dodgy keypad; it’s not the most …

I’m currently writing a novel in which all my friends and family play key roles. It was supposed to be my “nanowrimo novel” back in November, but I didn’t complete it then and haven’t got much further now. That said, I really do want to finish it, just so I can say I did (and perhaps get on with the …