Dom Davis (The Blog)

One of the perks I get at work is £80 to spend on wine a quarter. If you’re frugal you can get a case with that, however, I’ve been leaving my money to sit and accrue. After over a year I realised I had nearly £300 sat in my account so yesterday I decided to spend it.

First things first, I wanted a bottle of something expensive to celebrate Nubbins birth. I believe the most expensive champagne we do is the Louis Roederer Cristal 2002, a single bottle of which put a £139.99 hole in my account. No idea what it’s like, but The Zozo and I will be cracking that bad boy open shortly after we get Nubbin home.

Next up some “cheap” (when compared to the Cristal) bubbly so we can celebrate with others. I’ve always liked Veuve Cliquot so a couple of bottles of that were shoved in the basket. I’m pretty sure my mum prefers Moët and I don’t think The Zozos parents have a preference so a couple of bottles of that were also purchased so we can also celebrate with then. To round off the order and fill a 6 bottle case a cheeky bottle of Bolli was also added. Might save that one for Christmas. After 9 months of being near tee total The Zozo will be able to drink like a queen for a while

Wine choices made I then had to go speak to a wine advisor to place the order for me (audit and fraud prevention means I can’t place my own orders in the office given it’s wide open to abuse). Total cost of the order: £290.94 (with free delivery for being and order over £150). Total cost to my bank account: £0.00. Not going to complain about that price

The past few weeks at work have been very bad for my back. Lots of sitting at other people’s desks, using computers at a funny angle and sitting all hunched thanks to the stress of a fairly major release we’re about to do. Sadly it’s got to the stage where Something Must Be Done because it was giving me headaches and causing me pain and discomfort.

The first thing was to sort out my chair at work. Despite having one of the better chairs in the company it lacks all the adjustment I’d like and, while it’s not making things and worse, it’s not improving matters either. Thankfully I have and all singing all dancing chair that puts you in just the right position for sitting in front of computers all day. Since my computer is at work already it made sense for the chair to join it. It’s only been two days but the difference is already noticeable.

Step two was to sort out the knots in my back. This is being achieved by seeing Vince at Cromer Massage who spent an hour last night trying to sort out the mess that is my back. The result is a much improved, if tender pair of shoulders. It’s going to take another couple of sessions to fix things properly but then I expected that. I’m hoping a combination of gym followed by massage on Saturday will kick things back into shape.

The downside of having a bijoux residence, such as Little Cottage, is that careful planning needs to be done when buying stuff. If something comes in then something may well have to leave. Normally we’re very mindful of this and, as a result we happily fit in our home. Nubbin, on the other hand, doesn’t give a monkeys about this and is acquiring stuff at an alarming rate.

Both The Zozo and I have been preparing for Nubbins arrival for a while now. We replaced our bed with on that had loads of storage under it. We’ve cleared out things that are not needed and put masses of stuff in the loft.

A few days ago Nubbins bed arrived. It’s a very cool hammock thing that gently rocks Nubbin to sleep and keeps them comfortably wrapped. It’s also quite large. It became quite obvious that, no matter how much we moved stuff about we just didn’t quite have the space.

The elephant in the room here is my ‘office’. One side of the bedroom has my computer, filing cabinet, bookshelf and various other bits and bobs, all of which takes up rather a lot of space. If we could move the computer and pack up the desk we’d get quite a large area back and we’d all fit neatly. The $64,000 question was where would the computer go? Storage was not an option here.

In the end I killed two birds with one stone. I’m forever bitching at work that the hardware I have access to at home is vastly superior to that at the office. Work are also reasonably happy for us to supply our own hardware, provided we support it. A quick chat with my manager later and all was agreed.

Yesterday I drove into work early with the computer and set it up, moving the work supplied hardware to a desk behind me for the time being. I still need to transport my chair to the office and pack away the desk in the bedroom, but for now I have a fancy setup at work and we will soon have oodles of space at home

Yesterday I had what can only be described as a brain fart. I was putting my half full (and thankfully plastic) glass back on it’s coaster when my hand just let go of the glass several inches above the desk. Don’t ask me why, just happened.

There were two immediate consequences from this course of action. Firstly the coaster, which was a printed tile, broke. Annoying, but not the end of the world. Secondly my drink went everywhere.

Now the human brain is a remarkable thing. Within fractions of a second I had assessed the spill, identified which bits of technology now had liquid on them and ranked the items in terms of damage limitation versus cost.

First step, keyboard off. It’s an expensive wireless model and would need to be replaced by a much less expensive wired keyboard. Turning it off should stop anything shorting.

Next up dry laptop. It only got a few drops but it’s a high cost item and I’d be lost without it. Better to be safe than sorry.

Now return to keyboard. I have a roll of bounty in my drawer (don’t ask) so grab a few sheets, moo up excess liquid, place keyboard upside down on another table.

Now move headphones which are dry, but may not stay that way if the spill spreads. Dry and move sunglasses. Should be fine, but their carbon fibre and may delaminate if left in liquid for too long. Move mouse and check for liquid.

Mop up spill. Much bounty used but we need to make sure the desk is dry and not sticky.

Finally return to keyboard and clean out between each key before tentatively trying…

…and watching loads of spurious characters get typed when keys are pressed. Arse!

Work provides us with Cherry keyboards. I find them hideously uncomfortable and, after years of using keyboards with minimal key travel, I can’t type with them. Now the hope was that, once it had dried out, my nice wireless keyboard would be fine, but in the interim I decided to pop to Temple and get a nice Apple keyboard. I find them comfy and I’m used to the key layout. Worst case I have to use that from now on. Best case I have a spare keyboard.

Ever since I joined my current company I have been jumping up and down and shouting (quite literally in some cases) about how we Should Be Doing Things Differently™. This is not a poor reflection on where I work, I am simply passionate about what I do and believe you can always strive to improve things. I’m quite happy to put in tiny, incremental changes and have goals that are years in the future. Expecting to do more than this is usually a recipe for failure and disappointment. Occasionally, however, people take notice and change happens rapidly.

Yesterday I found out that the CIO of our parent company wants to investigate some of the methodologies I’ve been pushing, and not in a “could we have a 5 minute chat about how this could work” type way either. I’ve been given budget, free reign to change what I need to change and a month. At the end of the month there will be a pretty hefty deliverable, a demonstration to the higher ups and a decision on if this new way of working gets rolled out group wide. No pressure

I work in an old converted flax mill on the top floor. It’s an open plan office which has some of the original features of the mill, including the roof beams.

Under the eaves, where my desk is situated the beams are an occupational hazard as they come down to head whacking height. Normally at least one person will bang their heads every month and I’ve had my fair share of knocks. Yesterday, however, I didn’t so much as bang my head as clobber it. I was talking to someone so wasn’t looking as I moved to walk away. I was about to head home so I was moving at a fair pace when *BAM*, I hit myself round the head with several thousand tons of building via the medium of a roof beam.

The side of my head took the brunt of the blow and it was all I could do to stand there and just keep blinking. Still, I didn’t pass out or throw up so I figured I was fine, if a little stunned, so I resumed my journey home, albeit with a raging headache.

Rather oddly both sides of my head were tender this morning when I washed my hair. I also have a slight bump on my head to remind me to take care when walking under the eaves. I suspect I’ll be extra careful for the next few months and it’ll be a while before I next clonk my head.

Yesterday was a very exciting day for me at work in so far as the IT team closeted themselves in a meeting room and we officially launched what had been a black project as the underpinnings of a Two Year Plan. Now, I’ve been in IT for a long time and I know a project is nothing without a name and this one has many. Overall it’s project onyx which is a nod to it’s skunkworks roots. Internally phase one is nucleus. We’re off to a cracking start if you ask me. The names are cool and they’re lower case. Unlike previous projects I’ve spearheaded though this one involves designers. Oh yes, I have logos. We cannot fail

Programming is not brain surgery¹. There’s a complete lack of blood, gore and drilling into peoples skulls for starters, but if we stick with the analogy we shall see for why.

My current task is, in brain surgery terms, the equivalent of rewiring someones brain while they’re awake and talking to their relatives. One wrong move and we’re in trouble; tricky. I do have an advantage though. I can make copies of my patient (we’ll call him Bob) and test the procedure over and over again without the relatives until I get it right. Still tricky, but not as hard as having to go in, all guns blazing on attempt one (good thing really, we’d have a dead patient otherwise).

To make life more complicated I’m trying to do this while being interrupted to perform splenectomies, tonsillectomies and other spurious tasks at the same time. Damn near, if not very actually, impossible. The past week has seen the metaphorical hospital littered with dead copies of Bob.

Unlike a brain surgeon, however, I have an alternative. You see I don’t really care about Bob, I just know he needs brain surgery. What I can do is have the relatives say goodbye to him, have them leave the room for a bit, shoot Bob, replace him with someone that doesn’t need brain surgery and, when the relatives come back, tell them it’s Bob.

While we’re on the subject I wouldn’t get too attached to Sally either. She’s scheduled for her op next week.

¹ It’s not like rocket science either, but then again few things are. It’s one of the few professions where you can put some very expensive equipment (and possibly a handful of highly trained people) on top of, or strapped to one or more tubes of highly explosive material, set fire to the end and call it a good idea. We do have people do the equivalent in programming but we shun them because it’s rarely a good idea.

Once again the 31st of January is loomin and, once again, letter from Her Majesties Blood Letters and Flesh Collectors are sending threatening letters about the fines and interest if I don’t file my tax return and pay any tax owed¹ by the end in the month.

Unlike the days of yore this years panic is nothing to do with me being too scared², lazy or disorganised to hand my tax return and has everything to do with the management company for my flat and my mortgage company.

My accountant had most of the paperwork she needed 6 months ago. In fact, I was so organised that she was very impressed. Everything was filed neatly, receipts with attached to purchase orders, things were grouped and put into clear plastic pouches and everything put into a folder for her. All that was missing was the details of the service charge and mortgage for my flat which was problematic because they both work December to December. With that I promised to send the information as soon as I had it and we left it at that.

The management company sent the 2010 details through early this month and I emailed those to the accountant with a note saying I knew we were still waiting on the mortgage company and I’d sent it as soon as.

It’s now mid January and still nothing. So I called them. Before being put through to the customer services operator I was told, via the medium of recorded message, that statements were being posted between early January and the 28th of February. Great. So not only do they do their paperwork at a hideously inconvenient time, they then wait until it’s potentially too late to tell me. The girl on the phone told me if I called back with a few details they’d be able to read the information I needed out over the phone. Somehow I can’t help but think that just posting the mortgage statements before the end of January would be cheaper than having staff spend ages on the phone calculating details needed for peoples tax returns. Lunacy.

Anyway, at least for next year³ I know I can call them and will do so May sometime. In the mean time I await my draft accounts and, more importantly, the discovery of how much I owe the tax man. It’s not something I’m looking forward to.

¹The Inland Revenue, unlike the law courts, work on the premise of guilty until proven innocent. If they think you owe them money fines and daily interest are accrued. Ignorance is no excuse. If, in the other hand, you are owed money the onus is often on you to prove it. When you finally receive the cash no interest is paid on it. This explains why people are always so happy to get a tax rebate as if it’s a gift, despite it bring money the government has stolen from you which they’re now returning without interest.

²The Inland Bastard Fucking Revenue (as they were then) and I had a big fight some years back. I won, bur only after much stress and investing several thousand in my accountant over a period of two months. The irony being that I was in the wrong which just goes to prove the system is hideously overcomplicated and prone to exploitation by those with the money to afford very good (and creative) accountants.

³And by next year I, of course, mean this year, in about 6 months time.

So, annoyingly, having not undergone a general anaesthetic yesterday and, therefore, not having had my insides poked about a bit, I can no longer claim I’m unfit for work¹. The upshot of this being that I’m now on a train to Norwich after having not had a lie-in with The Zozo. I shall then be spending the day at a desk and not with The Zozo, who had planned her days off round this little adventure.

While the fact that they didn’t ram a telescope, laser, and God knows what else where they have no right to ram anything isn’t something that upsets me greatly, there are knock on problems. Its going to have to happen at some point so time off needs to be rescheduled (again, this bring the second cancellation); this isn’t as easy for The Zozo as it is for me due to the nature of the work. I’ve now got 3 days of stuff I was going to do Wednesday-Friday while convalescing which I need to cram in elsewhere. Worst of all, I miss a day off with my wife. Our next day off tomorrow, resplendent with lie-in, isn’t until Boxing Day

¹At least no more than usual.