Three Fingered Salute

Well, yes. Campman handed in his resignation yesterday. He's given them four weeks notice. This is the begginging of the end in my opionion. They had one of these performance review talks and you can just see it in the rest of the team's eyes. Oh Lord what else is out there ? Unfortunatly not much it seems. I've been scanning the job boards myself and althought there are some that I can go for, they're all within Finacial Services (yuk!).

Little Miss is still trying to get rid of her cold. Both myself and LSW are Knackered. The Alarms went of at 9:00 am this morning so we could get an early start but as Little Miss kept us up all night we're even now not ready to go out. Might have to wait until tomorrow.

I acctually managed a new paragraph in the last chapter last night. It's just a bugger getting the time to make any progress. We've first of all got to get FIL's Website properly sorted before I complete this story, otherwise I'll never hear the end of it.

 

The little miss is not well. She cried and whimpered all night which kept LSW up, which in turn meant she came downstairs and woke me up because she couldn’t cope. This means that LSW is getting more sleep than me at the moment, although it is broken sleep because she’s the feeding machine.

Thankfully the in-laws are up again today and this means that while Grannie sleeps in the nursery next to the cot. LSW and I get some serious sleep. My Cousin, who now has two kids, says the first month is always hell and I’m inclined to agree.

Finally got the N-Gage back from repair but it’s now locked to Orange. Looks like I’ll have to get a cheap PAYG Sim and a copy of Monkey Ball for LSW. I’m going to put the finishing touches to Fil’s first version of the Website and work on it from there. I’m going to make a determined effort to get cracking on the game again.

Wee Lass is very loud when she gets going. For four hours last night she screamed the place down. LSW is beside herself and although I try my best, I can’t settle her either. You can see the strain on LSW and I’m at work trying to stay awake. Someone on one of these chat shows says that kids keep you young, that’s a complete pile of steaming filled nappies. I think I’ve aged five years in the last two weeks.

Work is being understanding. All the pressure is off with only a few tasks to do for a couple of days. Small things for clients One, four and five. The amount of cards and goodwill messages was actually overwhelming.

I got a little done on the story and as I haven’t heard anything from the BBC, I’m going to assume that my end of story entry didn’t get anywhere. The game is still on hold due to lack of time and the fact I NEED SLEEP.

Another week has gone by and I'm still in a daze. It's been a routine of changing nappies, handing Wee Lass over to LSW for feeding and sleep. However, she's been d0wn with a cold and imagine my panic when she stops breathing because she's clogged up with snot.

Neeeddd Sleeeeppp !!

 

It's now almost a week since the contractions have started and LSW is in full mother mode. It's a case of good night, followed by bad night but we are coping. We've had both the In-laws and my parents about this week helping out which has been greatly appreciated.
 
At the moment, I couldn't give a stuff about work, even though client one phoned up about a problem mid week.
 
So, no work has been done on the FiL's web-site, game or story this week because Wee Lass takes priority over everything and that's how it should be. Yup, as boring or cliche as it sounds, I'm now in love with both my girls. 

Well it’s now official. I am a dad. I now have a wee lassie to look out for. LSW is doing very well and how she’s managing on the four or five hours in the last twenty four I have no idea. Called work and the maternity leave starts now. Two weeks of Baby watching, late night nappies and Baby Blue Hormone Filled Wife.

Surprisingly, I’m looking forward to it.

Well two hours of contractions later.... They're not too strong but they are every ten minutes or so now. LSW is actually happy about it, well until she has another one.

Well, that's another contraction (I think). LSW is pacing like a caged animal waiting the next one.

Sympathy here. LSW has just had another pain, quite a bad one really. She was yelling from the bedroom.

I'm desperately reading through the instructions for the TENs Machine !

LSW is very snappish. This is because she's in PAIN, as she pointed out to me!

Things started about 1:00 with her complaining that she had what feels like period pains. Now things are tightening up about once a half hour. I've got the watch out and we're waiting on the next one.

Well! After yesterday I've kind of looking forward to the baby's arrival. What a nightmare, I found out that the interface client five wants, we cannot populate properly and the upgrade for client one had so many problems that it was lucky it wan't pulled.

Today is the due date for the baby and so far nothing. LSW is snappy but that's usual at the moment due to her size and the fact she's very unconfortable.

Got the FIL's Website into a working state. It's fantastic this .Net suff. It's like using VB again!

What with LSW being Ill last night and the thunderstorms I'm shattered. I'm just staying awake at work and I must look very strange to my colleagues. They say they've all been through it and apparently it gets worse ! Yippee !

No new work on either the story, FIL's Website or the game, But I have decided to prioritze. FIL's website functionality is almost complete so I'll be getting that done first, then the story only has it's last chapter so that's got to get out of the way and then finally I'll start work on the multiplayer aspects of the game.

I’ve been turned into a Super Hero. Captain ‘Fix Everyone’s Problem At Once’ or Fepao, which is worrying for Captain Fepao because he sounds like an Italian traffic cop! His abilities are to explain in very calm voice that you have completely destroyed one of client two’s databases and you will have to restore it properly, that clustering at client one has screwed up their system and that there’s nothing I can do and client five is screwed because they gave me the wrong spec.

I swear I was typing emails with one hand, answering the phone with another and trying to explain to one of our new engineers about set up procedure. I like being in demand but this is ridiculous. I’ve been doing some serious thinking about the job here and trying to work out it if I am going to be better off by moving.

I know I’m not appreciated here and TMCM is beginning to take us down a development path I’m not too comfortable with, but I’m five minutes from my house (low travelling costs), they have a flexible approach to working. I.e. as long as you do your 37.5 hrs in a week, they don’t care. And enough free internet access time to search for as many baby related facts as I can possible find. Difficult!

LSW and I saw Shrek 2 last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not sure about the Baby through. It started kicking about two thirds of the way through and did stop until about 1 in the morning. We thought that was it last night but no luck. This means no new work on the game, the FIL’s website or the final chapter of the story. It’s a good job I didn’t stick to those deadlines because I’d have no chance of it working now.

It seems that a lot of the staff here have decided to start calling up agencies and printing off CVs. It appears that the pay reviews have been seen as a bit of a joke. It might be part of management's plan to shut down this site and move things abroad, which would not supprise me.

I've done a lot of work on FIL's website last night. I'm going to get a demo site ready for when they visit tomorrow, with the shop browser ready and willing to go. It will mean staying up half the night to get it ready but it might be worth it for a thank you. I'm searching for the domain name at the moment and I think I've found a Hosting service.

Because of all this there's been no real progress on the game but one thing I am noticing is the similarities between .NET and JAVA and the way both languages are structured. There's not much in it. It appears that the fact that I've been doing all this Java work has helped me understand the .Net framework. This is a good sign as I can hopefully put .NET and Java onto my CV when I need to. (probably in a couple of months)

Well I guess I should be thankful. I got a pay raise yesterday. It was pitiful, less than inflation. Some People didn’t even get one. Kackman, for instance, has been getting problem after problem sorting out the guy in America’s stuff. He’s getting far too many problems back at him and so he gets a lot more flak. So they say no rise for him because he’s got far too many problems.

TMCM basically ripped apart my design for some work on Client One. Problem is that it’s going on site this afternoon and he’s not happy. Well, stuff him! I’ve decided to update the CV. After the Baby is born and settled (which might be never I know), then I’ll go job hunting. Yesterday was the last straw. The problem is bonuses. They are quite generous now that the company is back in profit. Should I stick it out because of them?

Talking about baby matters though, LSW had a night from hell last night. Every time she lied down to sleep, the baby went nuts and kicked her awake. She ended up sleeping sitting up for a while. It was not a pleasant sight this morning. She’s really getting sick of it and she is very uncomfortable.

Did a lot of work for FIL’s website last night. If I keep that up over the weekend then hopefully I’ll be able to get that out of the way and be in everybody’s good books.

It’s ironic really, when I have more than six hours sleep. I feel a lot worse than if I had less. Maybe it’s a guilt thing because I’ve got nothing done on either the FIL’s website or the game for the last few days. Well, that’s not technically true. I’ve got new icons and written the in-game help file for the game, but I haven’t integrated it yet.

LSW is getting really fed up with the Bairn. Apparently it’s in the wrong position and that’s one of the reason’s it’s uncomfortable for her. She spends most of her time doing cat impersonations. This involves eating, sleeping and demanding attention, which is completely understandable.

Lately she’s got into puzzle books. Word searches, Crosswords and logic problems mostly. She says she’s got to do them otherwise her brain will turn to mush. Personally I think it’s because she took an IQ test a month or so back and didn’t do as well as she though she should.

Both of us were really surprised by score. I guess she was expecting to get about 120 or so and instead the value was just over ‘Model’ and ‘Van Driver’ rating. Add to the fact that, either by luck or error, I got a substantially higher score, she’s now determined to improve it. She claims that the Baby is stealing brain power. It seems as good as an excuse as any.