"Temporary Retirement"

....."I" has left the building!

Am on a 3 week break between jobs. Great :) Bit of shooting, exercise, motorbiking and general catch-up on life.

Some of my friends call it "temporary retirement" which i quite like.

Change is in the air

I'm in my last week of work at my current employer! I have been here 2yrs and 8 months. Sacked? Made redundant? Bankruptcy?

No. I am one of the lucky ones. A new job found me. Started talking to some folks back in October. Interest started to pick up then i started doing some of the chasing and hey presto i start on march 23rd. I will be working in the UK as employee #1 though i do know some of the folks in the USA. All seem very nice. Looks like a good opportunity. Good company, right attitude. What more can you do to check? Nothing. You just have to start and see what happens.

Don't be afraid of change!

Funniest book reference

I'm changing jobs and decided to read up on distributed systems. The image to the left is of a book i purchased. The book is very well written and really hits the spot in covering a complex topic. It's hard to find a good book that covers a wide range of sub-topics really well. I recommend it.

However, the thing i wanted to bring your attention to is one of the references inside this book. Here it is verbatim:

"Alonso, et al., Web Services: Concepts, Architectures and Applications.
The popularity of intricacy of Web services has led to an endless stream of documents, many of which can be characterized only as garbage. In contrast, this is one of the very few books that gives a crystal-clear description of what Web services are all about. Highly recommended as an introduction to the novice, an overview for those who had read too much of the garbage, and an example for those producing the garbage"

What a beautiful reference. It is also a great piece of marketing as i went and bought a copy off amazon.co.uk! In a couple of weeks i will let you know if Alonso, et al live up to the reference. IN the meantime back to tanenbaum and van steen.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....

The UK does not do snow! We had alot of it this week. Everyone's been on about the travel situation, councils are running out of grit....all fairly negative.

But on the positive side. It was beautifully sight to see. I also couldn't believe the sheer quiet around. People were walking and what traffic there was did not make much road noise. There have also been nice stories of neighbours helping out elderly relatives. One example: a roofing contractor in the next village couldn't work so he sent his blokes around to clear paths of all the elderly folks in the village and then they took on the local kids at snowballs. isn't that great?

Town planners!

I was in Seattle recently and i came across this motorcycle parking. Yes - that is parking for THIRTY motorcycles. They obviously make small motorcycles in America! Unfortunately i could not find a way to demonstrate the scale but it's it's safe to say that you might be able to get 2 bikes parked within the yellow triangle. I would love to see how the fit 30 in!?!

Sorry for the slightly blurred photo. I was laughing so much when i took the picture!