Furthermore: October 2003

October 28, 2003

Good news. I have an interview with Trayport on Friday. No updates from anyone else.

October 27, 2003

Spoke to Bill at Sector - recommended to me by a former work colleague. I mailed him my CV. Also followed up with Lime Tree to see whether anything is going on there.

Just had a phone interview with Trayport. It wouldn’t be fair to talk about it in detail, but it was a technical C++ interview, and I think it went reasonably well. Hopefully I may hear back from the agency later today.

No further news from ECM about EDS, but Green Cathedral are not interested in me. Graeme also had something else that he’s putting me forward for, but I think it’s better if I don’t say any more about what it is for now. Probably won’t hear anything for maybe a week or two anyway.

Still no word from Lime Tree. I feel some phoning round coming on this afternoon.

Yesterday’s Run

Did a moreorless standard route - didn’t do Castle Mound, but I ran out as far as Grange Road instead of Queen’s Road and did some back roads at the bottom to come out on Lammas Land and rejoin the standard route from there.

Total time was just under an hour. Weather cold but bright.

I may try to go to the Cantab hash tonight — not managed to go for too many weeks now.

October 22, 2003

Jobhunting

Well, some progress today at last - Simon at Start Resourcing phoned me to say I will be having a phone interview with Trayport. I also got a call from Phil at Lime Tree to say another chap - Nick, I think - would be phoning me to talk about a position in the City. Not heard back yet.

The other thing I did was to brave the Job Centre. Not an experience you’d really want if you didn’t need the money, but I suppose that’s the point. After I got a ticket for the DSS office, and they explained to me I had to go to the Job Centre which is next door, I then had only to take another ticket (it’s like those supermarket Deli systems) from a machine merely wait for an hour or so until someone could talk to me.

It then took about 10 minutes to go through the various forms (which I could have worked out myself), enter me onto the computer (could have been done remotely) and book me an appointment to come back next week. It’s not at all clear to me why it was necessary for any of this to require my physical presence when phone and post would have sufficed, except possibly that the government don’t want you to claim unless you really have to.

You could argue that I don’t really have to - I have some money in the bank (for which I am penalised by not being able to claim certain benefits) and I am not in imminent danger of destitution. I still like to think of these benefits as something to which I’m entitled however, and moreover that if people like me think that benefits are only for “other people”, then it creates a similar effect to the withdrawal of the middle classes from public schools and public healthcare - ie what you don’t have a stake in, you don’t care about.

When that’s the case, you come to see the benefit system as something that should be tightened up against scroungers, rather than something you may need to fall back on at some point in your life. As more and more of us are going to have patchy careers, that seems most unwise.

October 21, 2003

Jobhunting

A quick update:

• Spoke to Graeme at ECM - no news yet
  
• Spoke to Simon at Start Resourcing - also no news
  
• Left a voicemail for Philip at Lime Tree to get back to me - waiting on that (though of course until I post this and get off the phone, nobody is going to be ringing me).
  

October 20, 2003

Today’s Run

Went for a run about 4.30. Took just over an hour to do my standard route, which is:

* Up Perne Road towards Sainsbury’s.

* Left along Coldham’s Lane.

* Up to the junction with Newmarket Road, turn left and run up to the Elizabeth way roundabout.

* Go down the path that leads into Midsummer Common and then run along the river past the boathouses and as far as Jesus lock.

* Cross the river, over the zebra crossing, then up the little road past the playground and follow the back roads up to the corner of Clare Street, where you can turn intoo the back of the County Hall carpark.

* Through the carpark and up Castle Hill for a quick breather - that takes about 25 minutes.

* Down the hill, cross the road and run down the side of the County Arms.

* Follow your nose down to the junction of Chesterton Road (between Westminster College and what was the Town and Gown). Cross there and then turn down Queen’s Road.

* Follow that down, running along the paths of the Backs until you get to the corner of Queen’s Road and Silver Street. Cross there and carry on down towards Bella Pasta.

* Cross the little footbridge and run up towards the river path. Turn right and run along by the river, crossing under the Fen Causeway (I think) until you get to the little bridge that crosses over just by Lammas Land.

* Cross there, and follow your nose along until you get to the corner of Brooklands with Trumpington Street.

* Run along Brooklands, then cross Hills Avenue just at the bridge over the railway. Cross this, turn left into Cherry Hinton Road, and then either just run along this road until you reach Perne Road again, or turn up, say, Rustat Road, and go along the back way to get to Perne Road.

As I say, this took about an hour - weather was nice, quite cold, but sunny.

October 17, 2003

Books

Another placeholder I’m afraid. I’ve been meaning to convert my reading diary to some kind of XML format that I can put online for a while. In the meantime, because I was previously maintaining it in Access and I’ve now gone Linux, I haven’t been maintaining it at all. This has led to a build up of books I’ve read but not recorded anywhere. So just so I don’t lose track:

* Tea with the Black Dragon

* Persuasion - lost it while reading it

* Cryptonomicon

* The Cold Six Thousand

* Carter Beats the Devil (just started)

Jobhunting

Just a quick one - I sent my CV into Phil at Lime Tree Consulting. Not heard back yet. Phoned ECM to see what was happening with EDS - no news so far as they’ve been very busy. Graeme at ECM also wants me to see another company - Green Cathedral, so we’ll see what happens there.

On a different note, I tried to find out how to claim benefits. The Yellow Pages was less than helpful but I eventually found something called JobSeeker Plus. They put me onto another national line, who said they couldn’t deal with me and eventually gave me the number of the Cambridge Job Centre. I phoned them, and they asked me what benefit I wanted to claim. I’d assumed it was their job to tell me what I was eligible for, but I guessed at Job Seekers Allowance, and was put through to another person who told me that I had to go in person to make an appointment.

I can’t understand that at all. I can understand needing to go in person to actually have the consultation, but can they really not take an appointment over the phone? Apparently not, so I shall be down to see them next week.

October 16, 2003

Jobhunting

This one really is more for myself than any potential readers that might be out there. So far this week, I’ve done the following:

* Monday - interview in Cambridge with EDS PLM - waiting to hear back from the agency (ECM)

* Tuesday - went into work. Last day.

* Wednesday - spoke to Start Resourcing about the Trayport job - still waiting for a response. Also to Blackley - waiting to hear if they have anything new.

* Thursday - went into work to take some gear back and meet up with a friend. Spoke to another agent who was given my name by my manager - he wants to see my CV, so I’ve got to get that into him as soon as possible.

That’s it for now. I’ve still got a couple of other agencies to talk to, and then it’s back to hitting the job boards to see if anything interesting is coming up.

October 15, 2003

Redundancy

So after the great resolution of my last piece, I completely failed to follow through. The reason is that I’ve been made redundant from my job as a software developer. This follows the takeover of my company — Mercator Software — by another one called Ascential which is made of the leftover bits of Informix after they sold their database platform to IBM. Ascential have a big pile of money after selling the database, so they are in an aquisitive mode at the moment. Suffice it to say that the UK development operation never looked a good fit for Ascential’s strategic plan, so in the end the inevitable happened.

This is the first day when I haven’t had to go into work, and it’s a strange sensation being alone at home (my wife has taken our daughter out to playgroup). I’ve never not had a job since I started my first one after college almost exactly 10 years ago, so I have this odd feeling of being let out to play, coupled with a fairly profound sense of worry about what will happen if I can’t find another job before the redundancy money runs out.

It’s annoying in a way — I don’t have to find another job immediately and it would be nice to enjoy some time at home with my family, do some jobs around the house and so forth, but I won’t be able to enjoy it until I know where the money is going to come from. Not only that but I feel it would be all too easy to settle into a blissful domestic routine that will be idyllic until the day that the bailiffs come round.

But at least I now have both time and material to write about, so expect a bit more activity on the site for a while at least.