I haven’t posted anything for ages, and I’m not sure why. So here’s a Status Report On Stuff:
Annette and I have now finished watching The Mighty Boosh Seasons 1 and 2, and the (superior) live stage show, and Lo! It Is Good. Various quotable bits have, as is our fashion, been quoted about the home where and when they are appropriate. Actic tundra. I’m a cockney. Old Greg. I’m mostly quite mesmerised by Noel Fieldings “Vince Noir” character. Vince is just too cool for school. Annette tells me that Season 3 is being made right now. Can’t wait.
My current efforts at work to move from an engineering role into a tech sales role are progressing nicely. I’m at the contract negotiation stage currently. People (especially geek friends) have asked me why (and I quote) “THE HELL?” I am doing this. There’s a bunch of reasons. Here are some:
– I want to be self-employed, or run my own business some day. Every single book by people who have successfully done this and/or have mentored others to do it says that if you only have one set of skills, it’d better be sales. Doesn’t matter if I’m the worlds geekiest geek[1] with a new product to sell, if I can’t sell it, I’m fucked.
– I am bored with ISP tech stuff. I have been for a while. And I’ve been doing it at ICONZ for long enough now that frankly … It’s all done. The network has been rebuilt to the point where it’s rendundant enough that if stuff breaks, it usually doesn’t matter. The systems work is getting to the point where I can see the end of the road for the redundancy there as well. After that, it’s all just fire extinguishing. Yawn.
– Mo’ Money. My last salary review they said “Great work, everything’s excellent. You get: No Raise.” Not even a CPI adjustment. Apparently I’m “at market”. So I guess that’s about it for tech stuff without specialisation. See [1] below. After discussions with various sales people, I’m pretty sure I can make more in sales.
– Portability. Regardless of how large or small a town Annette and I end up in, I’m pretty sure that some kind of sales gig will present itself.
I find myself excited at the prospect of going to work, for a the first time in recent memory.
Umm, what else….
The iPhone. Looks so awesome. And now I’m hearing about an SDK so you can write your own apps. OH LORDY. I’m still not buying one, because regardless of the awesomeness of the interface it’s a GSM phone made in 2007 and IT DOESN’T HAVE 3G SUPPORT SO IT’S DOUBLE-WEAK AND TWICE THE LAME. Apple, add 3G support to this thing and I will fling dollars at you. Vodafone, offer me a decent data cap 3G account and I will fling more dollars at you. KTHX.
Annette and I managed to get our Druid pair up to level 70 in WoW, and we’re now working on raising 5000 or so gold for l33t epic mountz. I also want to get epic flight form, but then I’m a completist like that. The Burning Crusade expansion is truly rich in quests. They seem to have gone for a “whole bunch of short quests” model, rather than a “sod all quests, all requiring a 40man raid” model like azerothian endgame stuff. It’s WAY more fun. We have plans to go back and check out some instances that we never did in azeroth. Dire Maul, for example. And Gnomeregan.
I thought up a webcomic called “Pippin the Paraplegic Panda” which stars the titular panda as a detective. I am apparently not allowed to draw them, Annette tells me, because they’re “too sad”. I may yet draw it.
The clock in my car used to work fine, but it’s getting more and more random. At first it was just the wrong time, a few minutes ahead or behind, then later, a few hours. Recently however, it’s started showing impossible times like “10:83AM” and in the last couple of days, “8: 3” (Note – that space is intentional. I predict it may soon start to say “3.141” or “I LIVE!” or “I(f)=(2hf^3/c^2)(1/e^(hf/kT)-1)”
That’s about it for the moment. More updates, more regularly, to follow.
PEAS, OWT
[1] Which I’m not – I’m Mr Toad, I’m a dabbler, I can do a wide range of stuff in a middlin’ manner. I lack the focus to obsess over any particular geeky thing – there’s always more shiny stuff and it distracts me. I can admin a system, I can write code, I can switch and route packets, I can set up a VoIP network, I can drive a SAN, I can do ALL KINDSA STUFF .. but none of it as well as an expert in the area. This is a good thing, if you’re a tech manager, or indeed, in sales.