work

i went to a conference this morning and one chap gave a presentation which included some doctored street signs. here is one for you.
he also showed a picture of a weener van which was good !

my usually very quiet office has become very noisey of late. people have moved their desks in to what was a conference room and we are now much more than we ever were before.
the result has been less fridge space, more noise and a lack of suitable drinking vessels. i’ve resorted to drinking from a milk jug.
actually, it turns out the handle is better than a mug and you get more drink in so i may have turned a potential disaster in to a stunning drinking container victory.
here i am considering the situation:

i went to a colleauge’s birthday ‘do’ this evening. it was very good.
here is the place:

they had crisps, nuts and bread rolls on the bar which was a nice touch:

one good thing about the dark mornings is that you can see in to people’s offices as you walk to work !
here is an office with pieces of paper taped to the walls. it’s the remains of a brainstorm no doubt. perhaps for short sighted people ?
i’m sure one of the pieces of paper said “buy some post-its”. but i could be wrong.

cut backs mean john walter and pete all need to share the same desk. it looks cramped but they enjoy the company.

it’s been a while since we’ve seen odd job pete doing an odd job around the office. today he’s decided to remove the ice monster from the freezer section of the fridge.
he’s got an elaborate plan which i’m not convinced about.

here is pete a bit later with the ice:

and here with the ice-less freezer compartment (don’t look in to his eyes or you will turn to ice):

i can confirm that it takes the same amount of time for Peter to defrost the fridge as it did for me to have a conference call on the exciting topic of broadband migrations.

my office has come up with a nice idea to try to keep us awake during the day. they’ve placed some random holes in the floor.
i’m going to go to the local charity shop in a minute and buy a cheap rug to put over the top. i’ll then put some nuts in the middle of the rug.
if any wild animals come in to the office, they’ll be attacted to the nuts and will fall in to my trap. we can then cook them for our tea thus saving on sandwich costs AND keeping us safe from wild animals.
and all for the cost of a cheap charity shop rug.

i was priviledged enough to be invited to a friend’s leaving do today. lots of ex-colleagues were there including some i hadn’t seen for a number of years.
here is chris and his collection of passport photos. i thought i’d found another collector but in fact he was just a proud father:

here are some of the assembled:

and here are phil and keith. both now retired and having a great time. both of these people had a great influence on me when i started working with them 6 years ago:

john at work has found a key and is trying all the locks to see which one it fits. he’s a modern day mechanical prince looking for his cinderella.
unfortunately he’s completely failed so far, so we turn to you the reader to help us. do you recognise this key ?
if he can’t find where it belongs he’s going to have to go to the cobblers to get a new lock built. and his shoes repaired. and maybe buy a trophy and a cat identity necklace too.

it was the conference finale last night. much food, good conversation and a live band (which seemed to be playing their songs just too slow to dance to – so i didn’t for once !).

this morning (saturday) was the last formal part of the conference. it was a different venue so the walk from the hotel was only 10 minutes rather than the usual 30 minutes.
then it was free time this afternoon before the gala dinner this evening. i’ve even bought a new belgian shirt for the occasion.

a few people from the conference:
these people are mostly greek:

this chap is from the UK. here he is featured with a giant bottle-top / ash tray. this impressed him and hopefully it will impress you too:

the title of this conference is sort of related to the Internet being everywhere all the time. and that’s been my experience in Ghent. free hotspots in the hotel and the conference centre.
perhaps it’s only the UK where people try to charge you for everything ?

for anyone that doubted it, here is a dreadful picture of the president of the conference organisers welcoming us all along.
he’s also appearing on the big screen behind him. it’s just like reading festival isn’t it ?
i’m speaking at 5pm on friday. chances are everyone will either have left or be asleep by then. i’m tryiing to think of whether there is anything clever/comical i could do with the big screen (in addition to my comedy powerpoint slides)

my company is 10 years old this year which is not bad. i’ve been there for over a third of those years and with every year i stay that proportion increases.
part of the fun day was an it’s a knockout tournament. i wasn’t in a team as i’m useless (generally) and also we weren’t sure when the kids would run out of steam and need to go home. this proved to be a wise decision as we left about 10 minutes in to the games and you’ve seen what happened in the car
here is my boss transporting water on his head:

and here are some other colleagues getting wet:

it’s like a saunarium in my office today thanks to the lack of committment shown by our aircon machine. still. it’s all good fun

interestingly there’s no maximum temperature rules for UK offices. here’s the official guidance. There’s a man trying to mend it somewhere in the building so hopefully we’ll be icey cool again by tomorrow.

yeah, two weeks off work (if i ever get through today). so i’ve set the blog up to run without me for a few days and we can catch up again next weekend.
so, if you stick to the main index page you’ll get new content every day. what a treat.
if you are an rdf-feeder (don’t ask if you don’t know) then you’ll possibly get nothing for a while. i’ll try and keep an eye on comment spam.

the world of telecom regulation is a funny old thing. there’s not many of us. here are two people who do similar jobs for other companies. it’s colin and nancy. nancy is the fincy of matt the webserver landlord. see how it all fits together ?
one day i’ll draw you a big family tree type thing and you’ll understand everything. but for now, why don’t you start your own funkypancake family tree and we can compare the results ?

finally the Starbucks next to Ofcom, the telecoms regulator where i spend lots of my week, has got wifi ! So, at last i can access my emails when i have ‘trapped time’ between meetings.
they have nice cakes and funky music too. i can see myself spending a lot of time in here …