On thursday, friday and saturday we had something of a kickoff at work. Intended to get all the projects underway, get everyone onboard and motivated to kick ass and have fun at work.
It failed.
I came home with a terrible “I don’t really wanna work there anymore” feeling. I’ve always loved working there for alot of reasons but after all this I don’t. I’m hoping that feeling goes away or the people in charge starts taking my complaints and suggestions seriously ’cause I don’t wanna go job hunting again.
This weekend we had a kick-off conference thing planned for the entire IT department at work, which is a total of 13 people. The last 2 events we’ve done haven’t been that successfull so my expecations weren’t high at all. And when we got there and there was a guy there that started talking that we were gonna learn to communicate better and that’d help us professionally as well as privately. My usual “yeah right, as if he knows my job, this ain’t gonna help me one bit”-persona kicked in but I am at least gonna hear him out. So I listened to him carefully and followed his arguments and stuff he said and… well, I don’t think he said much I didn’t already know and not alot that we couldn’t figure out for ourselves and most of it was “ofcourse”, but his way of presenting it and giving real life examples and adapting to exactly how it would help me every day thinking about those things and how to deal with people of different personalities and handling stuff like that, it was quite interesting. And it certainly will affect me professionally, no doubt about it. Personally?… probably not, but we’ll see. Overall a very good weekend. And I got to do a bit of cooking when we actually had to cook our own 4 course dinner which was pretty fun. Just too bad it sucks cooking dinner when you’re single 🙂
I tried avoiding the camera as well but one guy from our Gothenberg branch caught me and I’m pretty happy with the result! (yes, photoshopped slightly)
Most problems I had last weekend seems to be solved now. Going out christmas shopping today with my sister. Better late than never.
Some news from work ; Our lawfirm used to be run by the partners of the firm, and even if they knew the law very well and made a ton of money they didn’t really know how to run a company of Vinge’s size. So about a year ago they hired a guy to run things. That guy is like the personification of alpha male, really cool guy. One of his way of running things is to make sure the administrative staff is happy. Not only the lawyers but the others too, the janitors and the IT department. One of his ways of doing that has been to make sure we’ve been included in for example the trip to the Czech republuc- And now he’s doing it again but giving the administrative staff a $1 400 (10 000 SEK christmas bonus!! How sweet is that! Unfortunately half of that is going to tax, but still…
Unfortunately it’s not all good. Another of his projects is making sure everybody is included on the new website with a staff directory, even the IT department. So we had to go get our pictures taken by this professional photographer that came by. He was really weird, ordered us to smile, slowly, in small stages from neutral to right out laugh. Unfortunately I suck at that, I either look neutral or laugh. But the result looked like this. Not too bad if I may say so!! And no, I don’t wear a suit at work, that was just a coincidence!!
Hate to sound boring but there really is nothing happening. Working and playing WoW is pretty much it right now. But I’ll break that pattern this weekend when I’ll be busy doing other stuff and then head off to Scotland to check what’s happening with the relatives over there. Oh, gay pride week again but for once I haven’t noticed it at all!
When I landed in Prague last friday and met the team (“Eventyr”) that was gonna take care of us during the weekend I noticed one of the girls and thought to myself “I so know her!”. Unfortunately you can’t just go up to a beautiful woman like that and say “don’t I know you?” unless you wanna get laughed at. At some point during saturday morning it hit me – she worked for one of our companies in the building next door back in the old “Min Dator” days, like 8 years ago!! So I finally got it and talked to her and indeed, it was her. But then she kicked me in the nuts when she had no clue who I was…
During the conference we had a teambuilding exercise and the most interesting thing that happened was when we were gonna split up into small groups of like 8-9 people. Everyone knew me because everyone that has worked there for a while have talked to me so many times they know me and all the new people had their IT intro’s with me so they knew me too. And I knew everyone for the same reasons. And I know when which lady got married since I had to change names and stuff in the network and I know when people transfer between offices. The problem was – alot of them didn’t know eachother! And that put me in a kinda unique position during all this since I had to introduce people, team up the girls to talk about wedding preparations and stuff since one had gotten married just a few months ago and I could easily strike up a conversation regarding the pub around the corner of our office in Brussels since I know this guy just came back after working for 2 years in Brussels. That was fun and unexpected.
Here you can find my report regarding what went down in the Czech Republic during the weekend and here you can find some pictures as well.
To put it mildly it was an awesome weekend! I was afraid it might turn out to be boring and “same old, same old” but it was just great fund and actually motivating!!
Oh man what a party!! We left on friday morning (and I mean morning, sipped my first beer at 7 am!) arrived in Karlovy Vary at noon, spent some time in the town and had a wild friday night. On saturday it was time for a conference and some teambuilding activity (that was actually the most rewarding teambuilding I’ve done, and I’ve done alot!) and then the most posh dinner I’ve ever been to (got away with skipping the tie though!). Another wild night and today we took a 4 hour walk through Prague and then headed home and I’m exhausted…
BUT MAN WHAT A PARTY!!!!
(pictures coming up tomorrow)
Tomorrow morning I’m off to Prague! Yay, finally going out of the country again like the good old days 🙂
But this time I’m going with the entire lawfirm and it includes a posh dinner. I’ll see how that goes. Will let you know when I get home which should be sunday night… SHOULD be…
After all the stuff we’ve been doing last year with the entire IT structure at the lawfirm we thought we should have a little small party. And that party was held on friday. Started at 3 with some stuff we did just to motivate why noone was answering the helpdesk, then small dinner and afterwards a musical. Yes, you heard me, I actually went to a musical! It was the swedish version of “Beauty and the Beast” and I’ve read some great reviews about the Broadway version as well as the swedish version. But I’m not a musical fan but I thought I’d give it a try. Which I did. And I’m STILL not a musical fan! At the pause some of us agreed this wasn’t for us and since there were plenty of bars around and it was friday so we ended up there drinking free beers (sponsored by the two consulting firms, including my old employer, we’ve hired for some of these projects).
Fortunately for me we had a Star Trek day on saturday which is just what I needed – sitting back in a dark theater watching good Star Trek!
And so it finally happened. I got an extension on my contract at the lawfirm which means I’m legally employed here until I screw up bad enough to get fired. At first I was employed on a quarterly basis, but then they decided to extend it to the end of the year and now I can finally rest my worried little mind about being unemployed. Not only that, I got a $300/month raise too. Merry Christmas!
(and everyone that knows me IRL are going “I told you!”, yeah, you did, but I’m the worst case scenario planner that I am I need to have it on paper!)
Over the past three week’s I’ve migrated about 230 mailboxes from one mailsystem to another. And some small errors pops up here and there and I end up having to go through their mailboxes to find that one mail among thousands to see if it’s worth doing manually. And I’ve seen alot of fun stuff while doing it! Some fun legal things about company mergers that you wish you’d seen about a year ago but also some fun private stuff. I _accidentally_ saw a mail from a girls ex after they had just split up and man was he pissed! So even if it’s a really boring thing to do, those small things makes it worth it 🙂
Now I’m just pure lazy! I was reminded I even have this place today when I bumped into one of the managers of the projects that had me travelling the globe. And it made me feel all kinds of happy so I went through my logs and updates during that time and it’s so funny reading it now 2 years later 🙂 I think I should make some kind of special section on this site (or even design a new one) for all that stuff. I actually wish Blizzard would have some kind of melt down at their datacenters so I could get my ass out of the cyberworld and do stuff!
I think I may have spoken too soon. When I was thinking about it I think I owe september 11th 2001 for working here at the law firm! Because at the time I was working as a consultant hired out on a long term assignment to the biggest swedish airline (SAS). But after september 11th and another accident in italy they got rid of all their consultants to save money fast. So it was back to the office for me and just when that happens this law firm called wanting more people and I was the only one in idle mode. And who knows, if I’d been at SAS I might not be allowed to participate in the world tour of 2003 & 2004 🙂 So I guess I was affected after all.
This kinda stuff never gets old! Let me translate – an 18 year old girl says she got raped at a party. The lawyer to the guy who’s accused is requesting that she wear the same jeans and tries to strip in front of everyone at the court to prove that they were too tight for any rapist to forcibly remove. If it wasn’t such a serious matter I’d laugh… And no, I’m not taking sides to if he did or not, I’m just scared at the fact that the legal system is so good at protecting the accused but doesn’t really care about the victims…
Speaking of serious – alot of you are probably wondering what happened to my headache? I wish I could say. The truth is that it’s almost gone. But I still feel … weird up there. But I’m still not sure if it’s mental or something actually wrong with me. Right now I’m in a holding pattern to find out if I’m gonna get a steady job or go unemployed from october 25th, because that is the only mental thing I can think of that can cause this. If it doesn’t get better after that I’m gonna have to get some kind of checkup of my head but right now I’m just waiting. And playing too much WoW…
I let that update stay up a liiiitle bit longer than average because it was a good post 🙂
Let’s talk classes! It’s been pumped up as an issue by one of our politicians dissing a reporter for saying she was from a worker class and as it turns out she wasn’t. Now my question is… are we still doing that? Putting people into classes? And who’s to say who belongs where? I mean, is there a certain limit as to how much you can earn before you get bumped up a notch? In this title obsessed world where the guy (or woman) sweeping the floor is a “sanitation engineer” you can’t really go by titles? And what am I? I’d like to think I’m worker class. I’ve made my own money since I was 15, did my time flipping burgers and my friends at work are the janitors. Sorry, custodians. But I have an engineering degree, work at a lawfirm and make a decent living? I thought this entire class-thing was outdated but the socialist seem kinda strict about it…
Maybe I should clarify what I said about work yesterday. As computer tech jobs go this is one of the best jobs to have (short of the one I had at the state department) and it’s definitely the best place to work at. But somehow it’s gone from the “yippi, another day at Vinge, admiring all the gorgeous women and occasionally answer the phone and help someone with some lame computer problem”-attitude I had when I worked here for over a year back in 2002 and 2003 to “oh do I have to?”. But I’m still admiring the women. And answering the phone 🙂
After I donated blood about three weeks ago I didn’t get a single headache (except for June 3rd, for obvious reasons) but during the weekend it came back 🙁 And now I don’t know just how much of this is psychological or physical! Because during these 2 weeks I was fine, didn’t get headaches, social, updated this blog, online chatting with friends and stuff, but now after it’s back I’m getting this depression again when I get up, go to work, work enough not to get fired and can’t wait to get home and when I do I just crash in my couch and can’t motivate myself to do anything more than I really have to. So it could all be me going through a depression right now – only problem is I don’t know what I have to be depressed about. Except this headache that just won’t quit. Next week I’m having a wisdom tooth removed to eliminate it from the equation and if that doesn’t help I’m off to see a neurologist. But I’m still hoping the Doc is right and it’s just something temporary that should go away by itself since all tests show that I’m as healthy as I should be.
This will be my last update as a 20-something guy. In 6 hours I’ll be a 30-something guy. So let us recap the past 10 years:
After 1 academically failed year at the University in Växjö, I moved back home, got a job I liked at great company. Got new friends, co-started a Trekker organization, started my home theater system, got an interest for Formula 1, got to go to Greece, got a promotion, got to go to Kenya. Moved to my own place (blasting housewarming party!). Got another promotion to the best job I’ve ever had (developing our e-commerce site), took a few trips on the party-boats over to Finland (another blasting party on my 25th birthday). Company went broke, got a drivers license, re-educated myself to pc techie, started working a little off and on at a lawfirm. Celebrated one sister’s 30th birthday in scotland, lost my best friend, got a job at the state department, travelled around the world, celebrated the other sister’s 30th birthday, visited Africa while suffering from salmonella and then got to go to Italy. Helped organize the first Star Trek Convention in sweden (ever) and spend a few days in the company of Tim Russ. Had a few lazy months as a consultant inbetween jobs. Finally got the boot and a headache that won’t go away and got a steady job at the lawfirm and bought the last piece for a home theater (projector)… and that brings us up to date.
Overall a good 10-year run I think. And to start my 30’s I’m gonna have a good get together tonight at The Dubliner tomorrow night (everyone’s invited) and then off to see the F1 race at Silverstone!
I hate wanting to kick myself in the ass saying “if I knew then what I know now…”. I usually say it when thinking about how I hated school or something that’s a few years off, but in the past two days I’ve gone through my last two years of updates and reading all the stuff when I was travelling and all I have to say to myself is “if I knew then what I know now”. But “then” in this case is only two years ago. Which means I must’ve learnt alot of stuff in the past two years. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so indifferent to my current job, cause let’s face it, you can’t beat travelling the world, staying for 2 weeks in every country, living in hotels, doing something you’re good at, eating at restaurants everyday, making tons of money and everything on the tax payers dollars.
(yes Ricki, I know!)