But to be honest it’s sometimes a chore to get writing long and at least semi-cohesive entries, add to that that I’ve got other more important things that I’m also not doing and it’s no surprise this blogh gets neglected.

So where can you find me now?

Well the facebook pages gets updated once in a while: http://www.facebook.com/imorital

The twitter page gets a similar level of service: http://twitter.com/imorital

And that’s largely it. My local web site has been sorely neglected, but there’s a couple of things I’ll be posting there soon.

In the real world: I’ve been at the new job for a couple of months now. It’s going OK at the moment but is hard work (another reason why I’m too tired to keep this page up to date, but we covered that already).

Adam is walking around confidently now. He still has the occasional tumble, but it’s a joy to watch him getting around, and he also loves to dance:

Other than that everything is much the same. Yeah, I know.

....work has been really busy and I'm not getting any time to myself at the weekends right now.

But I have added loads of new photos at http://imorital.net/photo

I promise proper updates soon(ish)!

Well there's not really been a lot to report of late, it's all just the same old, same old really.

I'm still not working, although I came close. I attended a series of interviews with HBOS, three rounds of two people each time in the order of:

• Technical Test & Chat
• Chat with Support Manager.
• Chat with Testing QA manager
• Chat with Project Manager
• 2nd Technical Test & Chat
• HR interview.

Everything seemed to go well until the 2nd technical interview which was unexpected and my mind went blank on a couple of simple questions. However I think I muddled through on that and at least demonstrated I knew what I was talking about.

It all went a bit wrong with the HR interview though. Normally HR will just chat to you to see if you're a pscho or liar, this particulr HR interview was more technical experience based.

It started off well with the usual 'who are you' and 'what have you done' type questions. No problem there.

Then she moved onto the old 'What's you're worst project' questions. Again, no problem, not every project has been a smooth success you know, but none have been a complete failure... however bizarrely this seemed to be a problem.

The HR woman just couldn't grasp that I'd never been involved in a failed project. I tried to go into specific examples of how difficulties in my projects were overcome, you know, stuff like informing the client, revisiting requirements and code, calling on extra resources, offering to help other teams, etc.

All good stuff I thought.

But she pushed for better examples of this in action.

OK, I thought I'd covered that, so I re-iterated with another example, clearly telling her it was another example and what I learnt from the experience.

But she wanted to know more and thought it was the same (first) example.

So I re-iterated the same stuff again, introducing the perspective of 'the client' and how to cause as little disruption as possible', how to approach impending and blind issues, etc. again making a point of saying this was the second example, and that I've been in similar less intense situations, you know, the working until the last train leaves (or catching the night bus home, even - and here's the key - when it isn't my project).

But she wanted more detail. Unbelieveably this still wasn't enough.

There is no more f*cking detail!!! What, you want me to make stuff up?

I still can't understand it, I've given here concrete examples of very tricky and hairy situations, but because I've never had a project fail it didn't seem enough.

So I didn't get the job. The official line is that I don't have enough experience.

I'm sorry? 11 years solid commercial experience (over 5 years of which was on a high volume real-time trading application), along with 3 extra part years before this (so 14 years total) isn't enough experience for what essentially sounded like an integration programming role (so something similar to many of the tasks I had to perform in my 3.5 years at ICOS)?

You've got to be kidding me!

The weird thing is I wasn't sure I wanted the role before they turned me down, but now, possibly because they've given me the lamest of excuses, I'm livid I didn't get it. I've been turned down for jobs before, but it's never left me feeling like this.

Oh, I'd like to think it's their loss, but hopefully I'm not quite that arrogant. I think the problem is I just can't understand it.

Well, I know Nigel for one has been quizzing me over just why I run a blog and the web site (http://imorital.net), so I’ll clear things up a little.

I’m going to keep the Blog as a kind of diary for those people who may be interested in what I’ve been up to. I will also be posting the usual rants on the Blog also.

The web site will be used for posting my more technical meanderings, but will also be home for other stuff like the jokes list and discussion forums that I just cant do in the Blog.

They’ll probably be a little overlap now and then, but really I’m going for two different audiences.

Well that’s the theory…

Well, it's 00:15 and I can't sleep again, partly due to this bloody heat.

Well I have a solution to the global warming problem, it struck me at some point today, and as with all the best ideas, it's the simplicity behind this one that makes it so good.

As I sat in my lounge today, ironing, I had my air conditioning unit on, so I wasn't too hot.

It's then that it hit me: If we all put our air conditioning units on in our houses or cars with the windows open at the same time, say 3pm next saturday, then all that lovely cold air should cool the planet down quite nicely!

The scientists never thought of that did they?

I'll be waiting for my call from the Nobel Institute.

Well, it's been well over two months since my last update and in that time numerous things have happened.

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, my five and a half year stint with UBS has finally come to an end when I was laid off. This isn't too bad a situation I find myself in, I've put some money aside so I'm ok to live for a while, it gives me time to recharge my batteries and refocus on where I'm going and it gives me the opportunity to get started on my Java Certification.

At the moment I've been off just under two months and time has flown by. The Java cert is going very slowly so I need to focus more effort on this. It's odd as I actually find that when I'm doing it it's fairly enjoyable, but it requires so much concentration that getting into the right frame of mind becomes a problem.

This time also gives me an opportunity to do a few things around the house, although once again this is easier said than done.

Earlier in the week I took delivery of a NAS device. This replaces my now dead backup HDD with the addition that it will also work as a photo and web server (with PHP support). As a result I'll be bringing the web site up to date, and also picking up a little PHP knowledge on the way. Shame it doesn't support JSP, but I can still always host that server internally or in the old location (I really must find out how they lost my database). Anyway, latest progress can be found at http://www.imorital.net or you can view the photo album at http://www.imorital.net/photo

Right then, that's all for now, I'll try to keep updates more regular from now on.

Stu.

I must be getting old, I'm starting to like porridge.

Either that or I'm turning Scottish.

As Dennis Pennis once said to Whoppie Goldburg - "Are you really a Jew or Just Jewish?"

Just to rub more salt into the wounds, I won't be getting any serious gaming in this coming weekend either, but it's all good. I'm off for a weekend in Hull with the boys.

We should be visiting a few of the old haunts, which should be a laugh, but at the same time the last time I did this it all turned out to be a little bittersweet. The problem is I'm not 20 anymore and eveyone else seems so young you end up feeling a little out of place.

Nevermind, after a few beers I'm sure I'll get over it.

Reports may well follow.

I stopped looking at the Amazon order status for my XBox 360 a while ago as it was beginning to make depressing reading. Each time I took a look it seemed the expected dispatch date had been moved back by another fortnight, when it hit early April I got bored.

So I turned to my old friend eBay, monitored the going price for a while, then started making some bids.

Eventually, after several auctions where I lost by £5 (the minimum bid increment) I managed to win one: an XBox 360 Premium package with Quake IV & Call Of Duty for £305 including postage... from Denmark. Still, it was a good price that actually worked out much cheaper than retail.

As usual, minutes after the auction ended I sent the money via PayPal. That was on the evening of 6th February.

When I got up the following morning I checked my eBay account. Imagine how surprised I was to discover the seller, the same guy who I had sent £305 to the night before, had unregistered from eBay.

Bugger!

So I sent our man an email asking him if this was indeed a scam, or if I would be getting the XBox. I figured if it was a scam he wouldn't bother replying and I could start my search again.

Two days later, to my surprise, I actually got a reply assuring me that his eBay account had only been suspended for seven days (no details as to why - quite fishy by all accounts) and that the XBox would indeed be sent.

Nine days passed and our man's eBay account still showed that he wasn't re-registered, so I sent him another email asking for an update.

No reply.

So I sent another, again asking nicely what was going on and pointing out that if I didn't hear anything within the next couple of days that I would be raising a dispute.

No reply.

So I raised the dispute yesterday.

The trouble is, if he never gets back to PayPal I'll probably only get $200USD back, and that doesn't include the $25 PayPal charge for investigating the situation.

This seems wrong to me. They have the guys credit card information and address, why not just charge back his card the full amount plus charges? As it is he stands to make £305, and I look as if I will only get $175 dollars back in return.

Something doesn't add up somewhere.

Anyway, assuming it goes that far I'll try contacting some people he bought stuff from (I'm assuming to up his rating as they were all low value transactions) and try to get his address to contact his local police.

It may not work, but it's worth a try on principal.

I'm still XBox 360-less though.

New Year, same old same old.

There’s nothing going on but the rent here, in fact it’s generally a bit quiet. There have been a few things going on, but nothing of serious interest.

Mum almost sold her house again, to some people who put in an offer last year but subsequently pulled out for the lamest of reasons (apparently they didn’t like one of the [several] local pubs. Here’s an idea, why not go in a different one next time?). This time they pulled out again after deciding it would be too far for the wife to drive into work. Strange that, they’ve visited the village several times before and it was never too far previously. Oh well, back to square one.

I’ve got some office furniture from IKEA, so I’m gradually clearing my stuff out of the dining room. One of the desks arrived damaged, but it’s so far to take it back I’ve decided to live with it. Anyway, once the dining room is clear of computer stuff I’ll be able to get some proper furniture for that room and get some of my books and clutter out of the way. It’s all coming together gradually. I think.

It was a year since dad died last week, so I took a couple of days off work. On the Wednesday 4th Mum, Colin and I visited the cemetery, and then spent a pleasant day in town. On the Thursday we visited my Uncle Mick (mums brother) and Auntie Pam in Maidstone, Kent. That was a good day out; I’ve not seen them for a few years. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to go again while they are both still alive. Pam was ordering Colin and I to attend her funeral, which was a bit bizarre. She is very ill (although put on a brave face while we were there), so it’s only a matter of time, but it’s still not something that’s particularly pleasant to discuss. Still, I guess it’s got to be done.

I’ve been making use of the open fire in the new house. I’ve not had the chimney swept yet, but before Christmas I burnt a log thing that’s supposed to make it safe for a while. I’ll get it swept in a couple of weeks, when hopefully the seasonal rush has died down.

I had a mild flu/bad cold over the New Year, so didn’t really celebrate that. I’m only just getting over it, but you’ll be pleased to hear I managed to live. Bets are off that’s it’s Bird Flu, I’m reliably informed it was actually Bloke Flu.

I’m sure there’s a insult in there somewhere.

Well, apart from my mini rant yesterday, you may have noticed updates have been pretty rare over the last couple of weeks. Sorry about that, I've either been busy or tired.

Well, on the left hand side there you'll see that during the last month I've become a year older. I'm sure being 32 isn't the end of the world, but I definitely feel as if time to do a load of things I never quite get around to is running out. Hopefully this will provide some motivation to do some of it.
My birthday was good thanks (since you ask). I took Mum and Emma out for a nice meal in a bistro at Assington (somewhere between Colchester and Sudbury - closer to Sudbury actually) on the Friday night (my actual birthday).

Then on Saturday, Emma took me to a nice hotel to spend the rest of the weekend in Norwich. The weather was awful (I believe Norwich was the wettest place in the country that particular weekend) but we still managed to have a good time, even if we did get a little wet! Perfect weather for ducks, but surprisingly not too bad for bears either! Anyway, as you'd probably expect, a fair amount of ale disappeared and we eventually made it home late on Sunday night.

Last weekend (the bank holiday weekend) was also quite interesting too. We spent Friday night and Saturday playing with Robbie sorry - I shouldn't say playing, try "exhaustively testing" instead. Who's Robbie? Well he's my latest gadget, a robot vacuum cleaner for the new house (see http://www.irobot.com/consumer/product_detail.cfm?prodid=19 for more details). He's only small but appears to work surprisingly well, even if his intelligence to navigate a room is 'questionable'. I like these toys that actually do something useful too, it makes me feel less guilty about buying them.

Then on Sunday we went over to Emma's mums place for the night. Again, much beer was consumed (can you see a pattern developing here)  and we also went down to Clacton beach for some of the afternoon and to see a firework display.

This coming weekend I should be off to a barbecue for a house warming. Also this weekend Clare and Philip should be moving into their new house, so good luck to them! It seems everybody is managing to move house before me, but I won't get started on that again right now :-(

Imagine this scenario:

You receive a phone call from a person who is involved in sorting out an aspect of the purchase of your house.

This person is calling to ask a few questions about the property you are trying to buy, and also to find out what address correspondence should be sent to. Obviously you inform them (once again) that the old address is now invalid as you have already moved out of there (some time ago) and they should send all correspondence to your temporary address.

All well and good, and I’m sure you’ll agree, not especially taxing to understand.

Now imagine a few days later you get a letter from the aforementioned person – re-directed from your old address.

Obviously this would never happen, after all, I’m dealing with professionals here.

Yeah, right.

I guess the big news at the moment is the fact I’ve finally had an offer accepted on a different new house, and as result I’ve just pulled out of the first one on Mile End Road. The new house is on the Turner Rise estate in Colchester, which is where I was originally looking.

It’s not that I didn’t want the other house, far from it; I’d already planned how I was going to furnish it. It was more due to all this business with the access road down the side. If the builders had been honest with me from the start I would have been in there by now and we would have probably all been happy, but instead they decided to delay me at great personal inconvenience and, as it turns out, not inconsiderable expense.

In the end I’ve decided to cut my losses and go for this other place. The bedrooms are not as large, but they’re big enough for me. Plus the fact it has a dining room, conservatory, parking spaces in front of the garage, a loft (well 2 if you count the garage), it’s not on a busy road. Oh, and the kitchen is bigger and has a utility room too. And a shed ;-)

In favour of the old house was the extra en-suite, the larger and better placed garden, double garage (well car port), and the fact it was brand spanking new.

Frankly, overall I’m convinced the one I’ve gone for is better. OK, it needs a bit of a clean, and the bathroom could do with being replaced in a couple of years or so, but otherwise it’s very good.

I look forward to getting a speedy Internet connection back too! Dial up is driving me maaaaaaaaaad!!!!

It’s only just struck me that we are actually in August already. It’s been a pretty eventful year and time has, quite literally, flown by. Plans have been made and not fulfilled, and loads of stuff that I never planned for has happened.

The trouble is I don’t feel as if, outside of relaxing in Colchester with Emma, that I’ve had any time to just sit back and enjoy things this year, including just spending a couple of days by myself.

I guess in many ways that’s a good thing, but it probably goes some of the way to explaining why I’m so tired all the time.

The trouble is I’ve not actually achieved much worthwhile. Once again I’ve been trapped in another year that’s on hold while moving house. Is this just an excuse? I sometimes think so, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

The house buying is rapidly turning into a farce. For the sake of clarity I'm going to refer to the house I'm in the process of trying to buy as if it were already mine in this account:

I found out on Friday why they've been taking so long getting the paperwork for the new place to my solicitors.

There's a block of empty land behind the house I'm going for. Originally when I looked at the house I was told the company that owned the land also had a house 3 doors down which they were going to demolish in order to build an access road to this area, which they were intending to build houses on.

It turns out the company that owns this land are also the same people who built my house.

The good news is that they allegedly want to build bungalows on the land (although at this stage I don't know how many - they could probably fit 8 or 9 in without too much of a problem), so I won't be overlooked by them from my tower.

The bad news is that the plan to knock the other house down to build the access road has been rejected.

So now the builders have a problem - they have a piece of prime development land, but no way to get an access road to it.

Between my house and my neighbours is a shared drive leading down to the bottom of our gardens and being about one an a half car widths wide. On my side is the double car port. On the other side is the neighbours garage (which I assume was built at the same time as my house so the neighbours wouldn't object to the building of my house). At the end of the driveway is a brick wall, probably about 7 or 8 feet high.

At this stage I have no idea who would own the driveway.

Can you see where this is going yet?

Apparently the builders have a new plan.

The driveway leads to the edge of their land, albeit currently with the large wall blocking access. So they have decided to apply for planning permission to use this as their access road.

This is a problem to me for a few reasons:

1. I don't want loads of cars going past the side of the house at all hours
2. There will be no pathway along the side of the drive, so walking from the front door to the garage will be far from ideal, especially at night.
3. There's not enough room in front of my 'car port' to park a car and allow access past, so essentially I would have to leave the carports as they are and not be able to put a garage door on (As I would have to stop the car and block the road whilst opening/closing the garage door. Essentially this looses me all loft and storage space offered by the garage.
4. Since the drive is not wide enough for two vehicles, should somebody be trying to come in when somebody else is leaving, one person will have to reverse, potentially onto a main road. This is obviously dangerous.

There's probably countless more things I could name, but you get the idea. Obviously this has soured the deal somewhat.

The agents think the planning consent won't get passed for this due to the safety angle, but it's a risk and since they've been turned down once and they'll be fewer people to object since my house is still empty it's more likely to go through this time...

I need to find out how many houses this would provide access to.

The problem is it's a good house, there's nothing comparable on the market at the moment that isn't demanding a silly price (although the house will be less good with a public road next to it.) Just to give you an idea - places similar to what I was looking at this time last year for 250k are now asking 275-280k. Also, in my head I had virtually moved in and I've got everything planned around the place.

So my choices come down to this basically:

1. Carry on with the purchase and hope the plans for access get rejected (and live with it if they go through)
2. Drop out and try to find something that's a good alternative (while staying with mum and continuing to do the extra 2 hours travelling each day, paying for storage, etc.)
3. Rent in Colchester and hope prices drop and something decent comes up some time in the near future (but the problem with this is that they think the area will benefit from the Olympics being in London).
4. Look further a-field (there are some decent houses around - but not within walking distance to the station)

I need to get all he facts from my solicitor before I can make a final decision, but as you can probably imagine I'm not particularly happy about it all at the moment.

I tell you, if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

StuN

Well, it looks like things are moving along slowly with the new house, when I arrived ‘home’ yesterday there was a letter from Abbey containing a mortgage offer waiting for me. As far as I can make out there’s nothing I actually need to do at the moment, the solicitor should be sorting it out, although I’m not 100% sure about that. I’ll give her a call on Monday, and probably nip into the estate agents quickly on Saturday if I manage to get a chance. God forbid somebody should actually call me.

Talking of which, I requested a new insurance quote from HSBC last week. For something that was supposed to go in the post immediately it’s certainly taking its time. Methinks I may shop around a little next week, not good customer service guys, and my motto is to vote with my feet. It’s all very well getting a good quote, but if you can’t even get them to send a quote out to you what are they going to be like should you come to make a claim?

So I’ve now done almost a week of travelling in from my new temporary location (well I was off on Monday, stopped over at Emma’s on Wednesday night and had the disruption to the travel network caused by the London bombings to contend with), so how’s it been?

Well, not too bad so far. I’ve found a decent train to catch that gets me in at a fair time, but the drive to and from the station is quite variable taking anywhere between 40 minutes (with a very good run and being able to find somewhere to park almost instantly) and just over 55 minutes (not including the 10 minute walk from parking ‘near the new house’ to the station). Add this to the 55-minute train journey each way and it makes for quite a long day. At the moment it’s not too bad (I’ve already watched Artificial Intelligence on the PSP and started on Wayne’s World this morning), plus I got to the station a few minutes early today so was able to get a coffee and a Danish to eat on the way in, which was good. I look forward to when I won’t have to drive, then I’ll be able to occasionally get an ale on the way home. Stella seems to be the beer of choice on this route with my fellow travellers. Bago would like it. Nice.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who contacted me to see if I survived the bombings yesterday. It's appreciated.

StuN

I decided to do the 'trial run' drive to the station this morning. I had intended to set off around 7 but was running about 15 minutes late. Needless to say by the time I got to the new house (which is where I was intending to park so as to get used to the walk) all the spaces were gone, so spent a while looking for somewhere up the road where I was allowed to park. All in all it took about an hour door to door (from mums place to the station) which was a bit longer than I expected. So for the next month or so (until I move into the new place) it's going to take me about two hours each way travelling. Going from an hour a day to four is going to be hard, but at least it's not forever and it's actually quite a novelty driving too.

Not a lot else going on really, I'm back to work tomorrow after 12 (working) days off. Trouble is I'm still a bit tired from the move, I was asleep for three and a half hours after getting back home today. I don't really think they'd be too keen on me doing that at my desk tomorrow, still it might be worth a try.

I had a quick look around the back of the new house yesterday. Obviously you can't see a lot on the ground floor, but the carpets aren't exactly what you'd call 'luxury'. I think Emma put it nicely when she described them as 'probably hard-wearing'. I'm thinking hessian sack myself, but we'll see.

StuN