A Day in the Life of Ivan Codemonkey
It's rare that I actually consider any one of my days worth mentioning to others. The odd event, when they ask me how I am. But today felt a lot more like a series of noteworthy events. Maybe it's all a matter of perspective. Well, of course it is; furthermore, I suspect that in a weeks time, this post will be the only sign that I ever thought today was special
It started much as days should - emails, facebook, a few hellos, some kittens, and then into work for 9. As I tried to find lightswitches, the words of Franklin P. Jones came back to me:
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
At least, however, there was no-one to claim I wasn't working.
What was slightly more surprising was that I did get on with my job, and actually managed to make some demonstratable progress by the time my boss arrived at 10. Sharing an office with your boss is something I do not recommend, even if all he can see if terminal windows. So, the standard pleasantries were exchanged, and we settled into work. Work, for my manager Rob1, is mainly making phone calls and trying to keep the entire world working towards something - or, at least, that's what it seems like. And I get to write the websites. So, about four phone calls not being picked up in, we actually decide to check whether it's actually a holiday or not, as no-one around the world seems to be in their offices. Turns out, of course, that people were just lazy on a Monday morning, or still in a Sunday evening2. And then, it started. My dear laptop Chloe has managed to burn out another power brick - you could hear the sound of fizzling electronics from across the room. More disconcerting, despite being hot enough to hurt to pick up and making some of the most horrible noises, it was still managing to deliver the correct amount of power. So, later, I'll be looking to send that back off to the retailers, and it was new only a couple of weeks ago.
I naturally take position at the only machine left in the room - an Imperial ICT WinXP build. At least it had an audio jack, so I could listen to music whilst waiting for it to do anything. It also had what appeared to be a 1080p screen (I forgot to actually check) and, once I'd deleted the three copies of my roaming profile which it mounted in the wrong places and installed an x11 server and ssh client, was vaguely usable for the purposes of work. Working on remote machines seemed like a good decision (even if it weren't already needed to actually test the code on an HTTP server).
At some point, probably around lunch time, lunch rolled around. I did attempt to perform my trick of leaving after and returning before Rob (if I give him the impression I never leave, he has to pay me more - right?). We got back to find the paperwork required for us to actually have me paid, including a letter of understanding3 which needed the blanks filled in. I must say, it may only be the first time I've ever been asked to write my own contract, but it wasn't really that fun. Once I'd managed to straighten out all the styling in consistences caused by the poor use of Office 2003, and filled out the blanks, I started to notice some interesting issues. For example, I'm not allowed to be called an employee, and I don't get holidays. I can technically only work on campus, and I put in a lovingly broad line for the type of services being supplied4. Oddly, there was no mention of any kind of confidentiality, so I can at least mutter on about the weirdness.
Then, it was time to start signing things. I would have much rather done this bit digitally but, of course, no-one in finance would have had a clue what was going on, and ICT would (rightly) say they didn't recognise my public key as being trustworthy. So, it was time to coax the printer back into life which was, for once, not a surprising amount of effort
This brings me up to about 3pm. I know this, because this is where things started to go downhill. The exam results started coming out; I made it through, but they'll be a couple of faces missing from around college next year :(. I was rather disappointed to find myself listed as being in the bottom 40% of the year - reasonable estimates based of the expected curves for Then, the form which look like it could be sent in electronically came back with a not asking for it in original paper format and with the request for a copy of my passport attached. At this point, the printer decided to stop working. And, I mean big time stop working. So, off to find a printer, hand forms in, and drag one of the ICT people across
I still have no idea what's wrong with the printer - one of it's internal test pages came out a solid black rather than text, and another with the colours dis-aligned by over 3 inches. There was some interesting jumping around switch boards trying to get hold of the relevant person - who turned out to work out of Leeds, an almost viable excuse for not appearing in Imperial College, London's registry.
I left the office when my server disappeared off the internet - which rather hindered my ability to work with the code on it! Getting back home, I find that the entire internal network has disappeared - despite everything still being connected, and all the right lights flashing. So, I pick the route between my desktop to the worlds as the first thing to try and fix. I had it down to only the router, 2 switches, and four pieces of cable (i.e. everything except the network card in the machine itself, which auto-negotiated with another IPv6 card just fine), when the entire lot decided to come back up. I don't know why. And, having thrown in a couple of hours work after that to give me some leeway later this week (I get to fill in my own timesheets - as long as I can prove it all - too), I'm not sure I can bring myself to find out.
Well there we go. My day. It seemed nore interesting as it happened. But, oh well. At least I've posted something