Construction Project

There's very little that can't be accomplished with a little ingenuity and a virtually unlimited supply of cardboard.  I suspect that the space shuttle program was conjured up using only these raw materials.

Take, for example, the water closet I mentioned in my last post.  I have spent literally hours watching "This Old House" reruns, so I know a thing or two about old houses.  My instincts and extensive training tell me that this WC must have been added some years after the house was originally constructed.  Unfortunately, in the late 1800's when indoor plumbing was coming into fashion, hygiene hadn't yet been invented, and the Victorian owner who added the toiletof course didn't include a sink.  (Some well-intentioned but misguided owner later installed a towel warmer, but unless one is meant to wash one's hands in the toilet, there seems very little point in having a supply of warm towels when there's no basin).

Since it's unlikely that we will ever require the services of a third toilet, particularly one without a nearby sink, we decided to put in a coat rack and use this WC as a coat closet.  The downside of this is that we'll be hanging our coats directly over a loo, which, if you stop to think about it, is just a bit over the line you don't cross when you're living in a First World nation.  The solution, of course (short of tearing the thing out) is to cover the toilet up.  Somehow, not being able to see the toilet makes the idea of storing our clothing in close proximity to it more palatable.

I have more free time than I know what to do with these days, so I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon engaged in a measuring, marking and cutting frenzy, at the end of which I'd succeeded in covering the toilet and tank in cardboard, and in covering everything else within a 10-foot radius in blue permanent marker.  Regardless, our Water Closet Storage Unit is a go.

Thus emboldened by my early success in the cardboard construction trade, I set about today to put a floor in the attic made entirely of cardboard boxes.  I've upgraded my tools, though, having purchased new blades for my utility knife, I'm much more productive and surgical in my cutting than I could ever be with mere scissors.  Tomorrow, I'm considering covering the walls of the downstairs shower so we can use that as a utility closet.  Maybe I'll try building a car...

I expect that these alternative construction skills which I'm now honing will find a use later on when many of us from the industry formerly known as Banking are living under bridges.  If anyone needs me, I'll be in the fourth shanty from the left; the one with the indoor cardboard toilet and no sink.

Moving With Children - Redux

I'll admit it.  I hate change.  Actually, that's not true.  I love change, I just hate changING.  This may come as a surprise.  After all, I DID uproot a perfectly content family and move them to the rainiest, greyest, most expensive place on the planet on a whim, but that's different.  That was change initiated by ME.  That kind of change is A Good Thing.  Moving to London, Good Thing.  Buying a Mac, Good Thing.  But today, due to events largely outside of my control, we moved house.  Not a Good Thing.

For starters, there's the issue that it wasn't ME who initiated the change, it was our landlord.  He's lost his job in South Africa and has to move back, so he and his family need a place to live.  As our lease was conveniently at an end, out we went.  And there's the fact that the only house we could find that would actually fit our American furniture (for example, we brought with us a bed the size of Texas), is kind of on the wrong side of town and has very little storage.  By very little, I of course mean none at all, unless you count the shed and the spare toilet room that we've pressed into service as a coat closet.  Yes, there's something unsettling about having a slash in a room full of jackets, but it's either that or leave them outside.  

Then there's the heat.  The house has no thermostat, just a timer.  So our house has two temperatures: hot and otherwise.  I didn't discover this until after we'd taken possession of the place.  Caveat emptor, you may say, but seriously, would YOU think to check whether there's a means of controlling the temperature in a residence you were considering living in?  Who the hell installs a heating system with no thermostat?  I had the managing director of the estate agency around to validate my findings (or lack thereof), and he tried to sell it as a benefit by drawing a comparison to his under-floor heating system, which apparently needs a few hours notice to heat his house.  "But with this system, the house will get warm immediately"  As he was quite posh, "immediately" was pronounced "ee MEED jut leah".  Gee, thanks, bub, and I suppose you'll give me the rundown on the fab Instant-On Lighting, right?

But then, there's the kitchen.  Ah, the kitchen; the soul of the home.  Except that our soul is apparently a hard little pimple on the ass end of the house.  Diminutive counters and a dearth of cabinet space, an aging electric stove squeezed into a corner and fixtures from the Thatcher era make our kitchen the culinary equivalent of a double-breasted suit, shiny with overuse and two sizes too small.  Julia Child is doing turnovers in her grave.

So why, you may well ask, did we choose to move here?  In actual fact, it's really not as bad as I've made it sound.  The house is very old, but it has some gorgeous and seemingly original Victorian features, like big thick doors and chunky moulding (I do love moulding) and intricate ornate plasterwork on the ceilings.  It's an Upstairs, Downstairs sort of place, we've got the fancy rich guy part, and a couple of Russians have the servants' quarters in the basement.  I wonder if anyone's told them what I like for breakfast.  

The kids bedroom is also large enough that we can fit both of their beds AND both of their dressers in.  Now Michael won't have to sleep on the pullout mattress under Caroline's bed, and he can keep his clothes in a proper dresser, not the plastic 3 drawer thingy we've had him using.

It also runs about £300 a month less than our old place and, get this, includes a gardener twice a month, so it appeals to both my unemployed status and my terminally sedentary nature. Woohoo!

I'm sure that once we get everything unpacked and put away, and once we get used to the chavs down the street and the Russians living in our basement, it'll all be fine.  It's funny, though, that the kids seem to have inherited my distaste for changing.  Tonight, his first night sleeping in his OWN bed, Michael wanted to sleep on the pullout mattress under Caroline's bed.  You just can't win with us.

ShiteBank

I'm never going to be the guy they nickname 'Happy', but having spent a fair bit of the morning raking fox crap out of the garden, I was in an especially curmudgeonly mood when I tried, vainly, to contact a knowledgeable human from my bank.

Normally, I avoid talking to people from banks if it is in any way convenient to do so.  Today, though, I had a question that couldn't be answered by pressing numbers on the telephone keypad.  Today, I actually needed to speak to someone in a branch office.  You'd think a big outfit like my well-known multinational bank would have this sussed out.  Hell, my little credit union back in the US sprays their contact numbers pretty much everywhere.  Not so here, though.  

Being put at risk in someone else's country brings with it its own set of challenges, not least of which, that of finding a way to remain in the country legally after one's employment expires.  Obtaining a visa is a relatively straightforward affair.  You either meet the requirements and you get the visa or you don't and you don't.  Simple, or at least it would be, except that the Home Office is changing the requirements next month.  Starting from 1 April, applicants need to have a Master's degree or better; I have a Bachelor's.  This means that I need to get my application in before 1 April, and if I make any kind of misstep on the application, I won't get a second chance.  The application is 70 pages long.  That's a lot of opportunity for mis-stepping.

I've hired a lawyer to help me out.  Really, I just wanted someone else to fill out the paperwork and to make sure that I get everything just right.  And this getting everything right is, as often happens when lawyers get involved, where the wheels came off.

Applying for a visa involves paying a lot of money and going on a scavenger hunt.  I needed my diploma (stashed away in a warehouse in Delaware, along with Rosebud and Jimmy Hoffa), copies of my last 12 months of payslips (easily obtained online, except that I don't have access to my company's systems anymore), copies of my bank statements for the last 12 months (I have 9 out of 12, what does that get me?).  All of these hurdles finally cleared, I thought it would be smooth sailing, until my lawyer called today to tell me that I also need a bank statement that covers right up to the date I apply for the visa, which will be this coming Friday.  

And so it was that I found myself today, shoes full of poo, attempting to patiently reason with some lackey deep in the bowels of my bank's call centre.  Normally when you want a copy of a bank statement, you order it, they send it to you, it arrives a few days later.  In this case, that's not adequate.  I need to prove that, as of the day I apply, I have £2,399.  This is the amount that the government deems necessary to support me and my family (not sure how anyone would live on this for any length of time, that much might get you a decent meal down the pub), and that I've had that for at least three months.  So on the day that I apply for the visa, I have to get a bank statement that shows that, on that day, I had that much in my account.  

I'm sure you understand the impossibility of this task.  Even if the bank did happen to issue a statement on that day, I'd never get it on the same day.  One might reasonably assume that if one went to a branch, one could obtain a statement.  But then, one would not be dealing with my bank.  At my bank, not only do they not publish the phone numbers for the branches, but customer service is wholly unable to communicate with anyone in a branch.  

You will probably understand my frustration, therefore, at the below exchange:

Lackey: "I'm very sorry sir, but I cannot connect you to a branch office.  We do not have their telephone numbers."

Me: "OK, then I'd like the name of the manager of the Canary Wharf branch."

Lackey: "I'm very sorry sir, but I cannot provide that information.  We do not have that information."

Me: "I need a statement that includes all the activity up to the current date.  Can I get that in the Canary Wharf branch?"

Lackey: "I'm very sorry, sir, but the branches cannot print statements, but I can request one for you."

Me: "But will that get to me on the same day?"

Lackey: "I'm very sorry sir, but I cannot guarantee that it will reach you on the same day."

Me: "But I need it on the same day or it's useless.  Can I print a statement online and have the branch validate it?"

Lackey: "I'm very sorry sir, but I cannot say whether the branch can do that, you will need to speak to the branch."

Me: "HOW CAN I DO THAT IF I CAN'T CALL THE BRANCH?!?"

All call centres go to the same training course to deal with unhappy customers.  As soon as you ask to speak to a manager, they pretend that they can't hear you and hang up.  So tomorrow, I'm going to trek an hour across town to the branch in Canary Wharf and hope that they are marginally less incompetent than the people in the call centre.  At least when I ask for a manager, they can't hang up.

Love It, Love It, Love It!

No, not being redundant (or, more accurately, 'at risk of redundancy'), but my new MacBook.

OK, technically it's OUR new MacBook, and I do have to fight Michele and both of the kids to get some time with it, but that notwithstanding, and at the risk of sounding geeky, it's got a really high coefficient of cool.

I've been a PC user my whole life.  No, really - I started using DOS 1.0 when I was about 8.  I remember when there was no such thing as a subdirectory.  I remember Cassette Basic.  I remember 8MB hard disks.  I remember punch cards.  OK, the punch cards weren't actually for the PC, but I do remember them, since my mom used them when she was studying computer science in college and used to take me to her classes.

When I was in college, the computer labs had Macs and PCs running DOS.  Windows only made an appearance in my last semester, and then only in some of the labs.  I always used the PCs, even when it was the last week of the semester and everyone was finishing their papers and I had to wait for one and there were rows of available Macs.  Here I must admit to being a computing elitist; I've always thought of Macs as hand holding pieces of trash.

Until now.

It's really about the design.  I'm a big design freak.  I am disproportionately annoyed by badly laid out carparks; don't get me started on the barely usable Sky+ user interface.  It's total crap. Crap+, even.  But I digress, and I'll post something about that eventually.  It's crap.  The MacBook, (we bought the 13" aluminum model through the employee discount website on an impulse just before being put 'at risk') on the other hand, is sleek, yes, but it's also got a well thought out functional design.  

First, there are two large areas on either side of the mouse sensor where I can rest my meaty paws while I type.  The aluminum stays nice and cool, so my palms don't get all sweaty and sticky, and they're just the right size that the edge of the laptop doesn't cut into my hands.  I'm sure my hand position isn't 'proper', but who cares, I'm comfortable.

Second, there's the mouse sensor itself.  I've been using IBM Thinkpads for years, and have gotten used to the little red eraser head of a mouse in the middle of the keyboard.  But the Thinkpad mouse has a serious flaw - and I've encountered this on every single Thinkpad I've used with operating systems from Windows 3.1 through to Windows Vista - the damn thing has a mind of its own.  The pointer would float across the screen even without me touching it.  When I wanted it to go the other way, I had to fight with it.  Not so on the MacBook, the mouse goes where I put it and stays there.  Period.  There are also no mouse buttons to futz with, just tap the pad to click.  Now I've used Thinkpads with trackpads before, and the first thing I always did was to disable them, because the sides of my palms would always touch the pads and move the mouse around as I was typing.  Again, the MacBook doesn't suffer from this problem.

Next, there's the keyboard itself.  The keys are spaced far enough apart that even with fingers like sausages, I seldom bonk the wrong key accidentally.  Here again, this compares favourably to my Thinkpad, whose Backspace key is blank and shiny from erasing the typos caused by its teensy little Chicklet keys.  

Now, lest you think this a paid advert for the MacBook, I'll throw in my two complaints about it here.  First, there's no Delete key.  Well, there is, but it doesn't behave like a PC's Delete key, which removes characters to the right of the cursor.  The Mac's Delete key acts like a PC's Backspace key, removing characters to the left.  Try as I might, I cannot seem to find a key combination that emulates the behaviour of a PC Delete key, so a beer to the first person who can tell me how.  Second, the X key falls off at the slightest provocation.  This is surely a manufacturing defect, which I expect would be corrected in short order by taking it to a repair place.  With all this redundancy time on my hands, I may just do that.

OK, back to the upside.

Scrolling on a Thinkpad requires a carpal tunnel-inducing hand contortion involving holding down the mouse button with your thumb while simultaneously keeping the aforementioned willful mouse pointer confined to a horizontal space roughly the width of a helium atom and moving the mouse pointer vertically with the eraserhead.  On the Mac, you put two fingers on the sensor and move them up or down, left or right as appropriate.  Good design.

In Windows, to switch between applications, you hold the Alt key and press the Tab key repeatedly until you find the one you want, then you let go of the Alt key.  On the Mac, you swipe horizontally on the sensor with four fingers and click on the one you want.  Good design.

In Windows, to zoom in or out on a photo, you muscle the mouse pointer over to some sort of zoom control.  On the Mac, you pinch (to zoom out) or, um, unpinch (to zoom in).  See - I'm getting more creative already and making up verbs.  To rotate, you turn your thumb and forefinger clockwise or anticlockwise as appropriate.  Good design.

There's very little technology that doesn't disappoint me the minute I take it out of the box.  My iPod was one.  My TiVo (God, how I miss my TiVo) was another.  My, er, OUR MacBook is the third.  Thanks, Steve Jobs!

The Axeman Cometh

So it finally happened.  The GFC (that's 'Global Financial Crisis', according to my friend Simon; personally I prefer 'Global Friggin Cockup') has claimed another victim: me.

I was not entirely surprised when I got the news last Thursday that I am being 'put at risk' of redundancy.  After all, business isn't what it was a year ago.  What has surprised me, though, is just how OK I am with the whole thing.  Now, don't get me wrong: I've been working for the last 24 years, so not working isn't something I've ever learned how to do well.  I also can't help feeling a certain sense of loss over leaving the company I've called home for the last 13 years.  Hell, I've practically grown up there.  But there is something really energizing about not knowing what comes next.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with UK labour laws, 'at risk of redundancy' means that I technically still have a job.  As far as I can work out, though, this job appears to consist mainly of sleeping in, catching up on my reading and sprucing up my resume.  They call this 'gardening leave'.  I'm supposed to use it to look for another job internally, though of course, if there were many jobs internally, we wouldn't be in this situation.  At the end of the 90 day gardening leave, I become a free agent.  I'll get a severance package and that, as they say, will be that.  13 years gone.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: I'm not bitter.  I'm not.  I was paid pretty well for my work, I got to do a number of really interesting things, I travelled a bit on someone else's dime. The company certainly doesn't owe me anything.  I'm also confident that it isn't because I was a poor performer, or because someone didn't like me, or because I smelled bad.  It's simply a case of being in the wrong role at the wrong time.  

So what will I do?  As I said, I had a strong feeling this would happen.  Michele and I talked it over well in advance, worked through a number of scenarios, and decided to pull the trigger on a plan we'd been cooking up for a while, that being to take the kids and travel.  We'd planned to do this in a few years, so the timing isn't quite what we'd have liked, but it's as good a time as any.

Unfortunately, the act of making significant decisions in the abstract and after a few glasses of wine is always fraught with danger, this decision no less so.  Last Monday evening, I noticed the email count on my blackberry starting to tick inexplicably backwards towards zero.  I assumed this meant that I would get the redundancy call on Tuesday.  As I watched the detritus of my daily work life float gently away - 700 mails became 680, then 650, then 600 - my first emotion was a tremendous wave of relief.  Finally, the uncertainty about my job, the waiting for the axe to fall, would be over and I could get on with living.  200 mails.  150.  100.  When the count reached 50, my euphoria was cut short by a wave of stomach-flip nausea brought on by the realization that I would be without a job, without a home, without any of the security I'd spent my adult life scrabbling for.  This forced me, on my journey home that rainy night, to consider what this really meant; and to conclude, logically, that having a job is better than not having one, especially when you've got kids.

Turns out that the incident with the blackberry was a total fluke.  Tuesday wasn't the day, Thursday was, and when I finally did lose my email, when that eventually happened, was completely unlike the experience of Monday night.  The temporary loss of my email was just a serendipitous event, because it forced me to think concretely about what losing my job really meant.

So for now, I'm keeping my options open.  There are other roles internally that would be interesting.  I have a strong network outside the company that I might be able to leverage.  Travelling is still a viable and attractive possibility.  There may be other outcomes as yet undreamt-of.  The possibilities are endless and I have the luxury of time to consider them.  Who wouldn't be OK with this?

The timing of the blackberry thing was kind of weird though.