Where was I... Oh yeah - I went to see Al on my way back from Bournemouth Airport on Tuesday night. Came into work on Wednesday to a mountain of emails and voicemails. I'm not a big fan of working for big companies and this latest role is just knocking that further and further home. I've been away for about a year and a half and the only thing that has changed is the amount of paperwork! People often say that the rich and the famous live in ivory towers. Well in business today, empires are built on piles of paper. Process is King and ownership of signoff is power. Sad really. Me and my mate Stephen were chatting about how things work well in our industry, over a couple of beers.
Small, organic teams that can react to change and implement new features and changes quickly. It's not difficult to structure the organisation that way and it works very well in Sweden where the corporate structures are much flatter. But it doesn't allow for empires to be built so it ain't ever going to happen in any of the big companies that I've worked in recently. Sad really because I've been cursed in the past by having jobs that I really enjoy and want to get out of bed to do. So now when I'm in a role that sucks and where I spend more time watching my back and defending my corner it is very difficult to get out of bed in the mornings.
Anyway - enough about that. I'm three weeks down with twenty three to go!
Went out on Wednesday night with Steve. We went to the Lord Derby in Odiham for the monthly bike meet. It was a really sad turnout though. Over the last year, the Police and a local landowner have been shoe horning the thousands of bikers who turn up into a field, and charging a pound a time for the priviledge. It's killed it. Where there used to be thousands of bikes out, now it's down to maybe a hundred. But there's no charging for parking anymore and hopefully the event will pick up again.
Steve's new bike was a lot faster than mine on Wednesday night. My bike wouldn't start, leaving me stranded outside the pub waiting for the RAC man to turn up. The RAC man didn't have a 5mm allen key and had to use the one out of my toolkit. I wasn't too impressed with that! But he got the bike going with a jump start and I made it home. I've got the battery on the Optimate so I'll have a look at it this weekend and hopefully I won't have to visit the bike shop for a new one.
Went out bowling with Lee, Jen and Hannah last night. It was a laugh and I managed to score over 100! It seemed a lot harder than I remembered though - I used to easily score nearer 200 but it may be that the memory is a little jaded!
Got a party this coming weekend. Should be good. I'm going to be sleeping in a teepee! Watch this space :)
Finally... In other news... Tough Guy is getting married on the 30th July. It's all been a bit rushed so that Paul can get out of going on a stag do!
