Happenings and things

by Phil Long

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Well, it’s been mostly a quiet week, but with added funkiness; most notable of which is that I’ve been asked to be best man for my mate Dave’s wedding. Which is nice. I think I’m possibly as much honored as I am terrified; not least as apparently the tradition of ‘best man’ comes from the concept of the best swordsman, to ensure the bride is not taken away by competing families or something, according to a co-incidental discussion taking place on the inaccurately-titled ‘footy’ list.

Generally I’ve been feeling pretty positive at work, although nearly two days building the rota for 2009 had me a little tetchy. Most people who’ve been there for more than a year are well used to me at rota-creation time and were careful to steer clear and advise others to do likewise – and I’m thankful for that. It has to be the most tedious, frustrating, and mind-numbing task ever (apart from, perhaps, sorting through 5,000 Vampire: The Eternal Struggle cards as I observed Tufty do this weekend). Using an Excel spreadsheet to rota 85-ish staff is just *not right* – it’s basically not evolved since what was used at U-Net/VIA Net.Works around 7 years ago! Bad. Oh, hang on, clear, distinct colours aren’t the default in Office fucking 2007. Style over substance. Stop imitating Apple badly please, Microsoft. Actually, it isn’t strictly 85 staff – thankfully one of our Central Monitoring guys created a rota for his team which is spot-on, so that’s saved me (and his Team Leader) a major job. Win!

Finally for the blog part of this post, I’m off to London tomorrow. Heading down just after 6pm – to visit Dom and Racquel and undoubtedly consume copious amounts of alcohol. I saved very small amounts of money by not booking before Monday. Those 2.5%s will add up, you know!