Blue skies

The second half of last week was pretty busy at work; there’s lots on at the moment – plus regular hiccups in our Leeds office to contend with.

Wednesday morning I spent in the Tower of London at a ‘Backup Strategies’ seminar. These sort of things are quite common in IT – and I imagine other lines of business too: A reseller of some kind gets several of his suppliers together to talk about some important thing in your business, such as backups, security, storage, web technologies. It’s all free, all you have to do is attend, and there’s a free lunch at the end of it.

Ah yes, the perceptive amongst you will have spotted the flaw: TANSTAAFL. Sure enough, the lunch is just an opportunity to get you sat at a table for a period of time with at least one sales rep from one of the presenters. As you eat the rep makes conversation with you about your business needs and where you see your strategy going… and how this super-duper product they’ve just released is perfect for you.

It’s all a bit of a charade really. The seminars can be useful (as this one was for me) by getting you thinking about new avenues to try, but they always seemed to be aimed at the really (and I mean REALLY) high-end users: The global companies with hundreds of thousands of employees who can afford to spend shed-loads of cash on tiering their storage on a transcontinental SAN. Oddly (I always think) precisely the sort of people who wouldn’t send their decision-makers on a freebie like this…

So anyway, I drank the coffee, ate the pastries and listened to the seminars. The organisers, though, had made a critical mistake; they had organised a sit-down lunch without any tables to sit down at! Very few passed up the free lunch though – people either stood up or ate with plates on their knees in the seminar room. Consequently the sales reps had a hard time making their casual conversation openings. So I had my free lunch (very nice grilled chicken, duchesse potatoes, spinach, artichokes and baby corn, followed by a chocolatey/creamy confection with a delicious orange sauce) and then headed back into the office.

Lovely.

It does seem to have been the week for lunches – I think I’ve eaten out almost every day. Tuesday was Owen, Wednesday was the seminar, Thursday I had noodles with John M and Friday I met Brian, the brother of one of the LGMC boys, who I’d been talking to online for a while. We were supposed to be cycling in to work together (he lives in Clapham) but had his bike stolen last week, so we had lunch instead.

Friday evening though I was away from work early to catch a train to Folkestone. Rob S, my former colleague at Saga, was finally leaving them to work for Veritas (the big software people, not the jonny-come-lately political party!) A few drinks had been organised to celebrate so I headed down to catch up with him and all the guys I used to work with – many of whom I haven’t seen since I left Saga myself.

The train trip down was pleasant, as they’ve replaced the old rolling stock with new, air-conditioned trains. The tedium of the trip was lightened somewhat as I got Bluejacked. I received a pornographic Garfield picture from someone called Kyle and then several flirtatious text notes from someone called KC. While Kyle became silent after the first send, KC and I chatted back and forth until it was time for me to get off.

I’d heard of bluejacking before, but never experienced it. Since then I’ve checked on my phone a couple of times while I’ve been in public and there are a lot of discoverable devices out there. I can see how it could become a phenomenon.

Anyway Emma J had offered me her spare bed and she met me at the station so I could change clothes back at her place. Then we had a pizza on The Leas (the cliff-top gardens overlooking the sea) before heading down to Chambers (the preferred pub) to start drinking. Rob S and Ashley appeared in due course, although Ash didn’t stay long – not only did he have to drive home but he was on painkillers for a back problem. He made his excuses after half an hour or so. After that various other people came by for a few drinks and a chat. Apart form Rob, I think I spent most time talking to Paul C, the network engineer, who is the only one of the guys other than Rob and Emma that I’d really like to keep in touch with.

We generally agreed that we should organise some kind of a regular get together now that two of us have gone our separate ways, so hopefully a date will be set up shortly. If not, now that Rob is working in Reading, I have got a reasonable argument for organising it myself in London.

Managed not to drink too much and got away at a reasonable hour, so wasn’t hungover in the morning particularly. Hopped the train back to town (no unsolicited messages this time) and met Brett for lunch.