1thing.co.uk

Who here remembers the A team?  That was Hannibal’s catch phrase.  The ending line of the show.  The baddies would be all done in and there he would be, big fat cigar in his mouth, looking as pleased as punch. “I aint gettin on no plane with that fool!” is my favorite but you cant use it to descirbe the feeling of satisfaction of completing a piece of code that’s been dogging you for days.

Well that’s how I feel.  I love it when a plan comes together.  Often I’ll sit down with clients and draw up a plan of works to be done.  The things I’m going to do that will help their website business and what the goals and milestones will be and how we’re going to measure them.

Well this week I finished the code on workonpaper.co.uk and the site is fully functional and working as I intended it to.  All the links are Google friendly, the artwork displays nicely, everything is in it’s place.  Being the perfectionist that I am I’m already looking at ways to tweak and improve it but right now it is done.

My other favorite saying is “I’m as happy as dog”.  My wife once asked me to explain and it’s now one of those banned sayings.  Well?  You cant be all things to all people all of the time.  Sometimes you just have to be you.  Happy days.

Let it never be said that I dont appreciate my wife. I guess that most people will have seen the joke that goes around about the 1950’s wife and all the things that she should do before her husband gets us, comes home, goes out, etc, etc.  Well my wife does most of them. 

When I walk in from a hard days work the house is clean and tidy, there’s always dinner in the oven, a cup of tea on the side and a beautiful wife whoose happy to see me.  Even if happy can be translated as “You’ll have to have the kids coz they’re doing my head in”.

So thank you for looking georgeous when I came in tonight, for having the kids ready for bed so I didn’t have to fall out with them, for having a cup of tea on the side and fish fingers and chips on the table.

We have a rule in our house. We’ll, that should read we have several rules in our house.  But one of the most important ones is that Sunday’s are for God, Church and families and not for work.  We dont work on Sunday’s.  Occassionally there are exceptions to this but on the whole Sunday’s are more guarded than fort knox. 

Why?  We for starters we believe in resting on the sabbeth.  Although admittedly this usually means you’re more knackered than you would be if you had worked as running round with the kids is more exhausting. But it’s about resting from the norm and spending time where it counts.  It’s easy to miss the people around you all week without realising that you’ve forgotten they’re there.  This week I’d worked nearly 100 hours by Saturday.  It’d been exhausting.  I’d seen little of my wife or my children and unfortunately it’s been like it for a while. So Sunday’s are when they are guaranteed to spend time with me and we can catch up on the small stuff.

I think if asked Sunday’s would be my favorite day of the week.  That is after Rugby Saturday.

In my line of work it always helps to make a copy of the file before you change it.  99.9% of the time you never need it and it’s just a precautionary excercise but every now and then you get that phone call that says “You need to put it back now!”. 

Today was that day.  Late on Friday night I’d made changes to a clients site as requested and put the changes live.  Not life or death changes just a few new pages here and some text changes there and then off to bed.  Anyway on our way to pick the girls up Saturday morning the client calls in the car and speaks to Mary.  “Can you revert the site as it shouldn’t be live yet as we haven’t completed the negotiation!”  Opps!

So today the backups came into play.  I dont always do it but generally I’ll make a copy of the file, date it accordingly, make the change and then load it up.  Today it was as simple as change four file names and put them back.  We can breathe easy.  Everyone can stand down and no need to put the pants on the outside of my trousers.

On the minus side I missed out on MacDonalds.  But then that’s a small price to pay and every super hero needs to make sacrifices here and there.

WFH, I love it!  Sorry, I’m told my boss reads this, “Working From Home” it’s a real benefit and it means I can concentrate more on what I need to do without disruption. Therefore getting the job done quickly, efficiently and to your new deadline.

Yeah right, good job I’m not a permie anymore.  Lets be honest.  The truth of the matter is that you can get up at your normal time, get on with what you need to without interuptions and then do whatever you really want to do by lunchtime. 

There’s no need to spend an hour (or in my case 2 - at the moment) packed into a tin can getting to work with everyone else.  You escape the idle chit chat about last nights TV, football results, whoose going to win the Six Nations (England of course!).  You dont need to kill time baiting the Antipedean’s about whatever sporting event they’re loosing at (unfortunately that’s proving a bit tough with Englands dismal run).

If you’re like me you’ll do twice as much work in half the time and then still have time to spare.

I wouldn’t want to do it everyday though as it would loose it’s appeal, a couple of days a week suits me just fine at the moment.