Matt’s Journal

Not Long Now

Posted by Matt under Wedding, Work

The wedding is fast approaching and it’s all hands to the pump to get it sorted. Invitations have finally landed after some hanging back on the order from the supplier, loads of RSVP’s coming back which bodes well attendance wise!

We have to make payments on the honeymoon, the photographer, the video guy who is doing a DVD of the wedding, the wedding cars, the food and venue. We still haven’t sorted what we will be doing on the wedding night accommodation wise, perhaps staying in a local hotel will be an idea.

Katie has been going great guns in her new job, securing a £6,800,000 contract in her second week (yes that’s million!), meaning she is the golden girl at the moment. Our house expectations have picked up with both of us earning a decent wage now, we are looking to get a three or four bed house instead of a pokey two bed flat we looked at the start of the year.

I can’t wait for the day of the wedding, I’m sure Katie is different but there are no nerves and there certainly won’t be on the day.

Shall I invite freaks and geeks from the internet? No chance!

I’ll Sack Them

Posted by Matt under Rant, Work

10pm last night, I am laying in bed dozing and dropping off to sleep. Im falling into a deep sleep just as my Matrix Revolutions ringtone blares out and scares the crap out of me. It’s a phone call from a private number. In these sort of situations, I think one of two things:

• Someone in my family is in desperate need of something and it can’t wait til morning.
• The f**king cleaners at my workplace have set the bloody alarms off at work.

So, yeah, the cleaners had decided to set the work alarm off and as I am the office manager, I am the mug who needs to go sort it out.

I get there, walk into the building with my tracksuit bottoms and my fleece jacket on looking like a homeless guy, to find three cleaners going about their business as if nothings happened. I ask them why the hell the alarm went off, getting massively aggressive that cleaners even think about cleaning at 11pm at night and then ring the alarm engineer to get it sorted.

Unless they work at more socialable hours so that if the alarm is triggered a person isn’t in the midst of sleepy time, they won’t be cleaning here again!

Texperts Application

Posted by Matt under Happy, Tech, Work

Last week I was browsing around MoneySavingExpert and came across a company called Texperts. Texperts are a mobile search company who pretty much answer any question you fire at them, you simply text a question to a specified number and they reply in a few minutes with the answer you need!

Anyways, to cut a long story short, they have a quiz on there to see if you are good enough to become a Texpert. They ask you questions on a chosen field and you try to answer them within the time limit. Me being the geek I am, I ended up with around a 90% score, meaning I would be put forward for the chance to make money working in my spare time for Texpert.

I received an email today telling me just that:

Dear Matt

Well done! Less than 2% of people pass our Tex-Factor challenge.

Because you passed the challenge, I would be delighted to be able to
offer to engage your services as a Texpert. Unfortunately, we are
experiencing a 2 month wait for our training programme. However, I
would be grateful if you would let us keep your Successful Application
until the next available slot in a couple of months time (hopefully
less). Please let me know if you are happy for me to get in touch with
you and I will keep your details. If I do not hear from you I will
assume that you are no longer interested or it is not convenient.

In the mean time you also have the privilege of joining an exclusive
Facebook club. Only the elite 2% who pass the Tex-Factor are allowed in
to this group, so join us and be a member with pride!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4345184908

I hope to hear from you soon.

Texpert

Looking it up, you can make between £6-10 an hour, which would definitely help pay the bills! As it reads above, I have to wait a while but it’s something to gloat about for the next five minutes!

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Posted by Matt under General, Work

I found this through a discussion at work:

Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. Source

What do you think?

Clients: Who Needs ‘Em?

Posted by Matt under Angry, Rant, Work

I work full time for a training company, but i also run my own media company with 3 other people. We have been doing work for a client of ours for about eight or nine months now and we have had nothing but troubles.

It ranges from non-payment, to going back on decisions regarding print media and website additions, to plainly not doing hearing or receiving anything from them at all.

The most recent example of the lack of coordination between our client and his business partners are when I received a phone call this morning. It went a bit like this:

Business Partner: Hi Matt, where’s my access to the website?
Me: I can’t give you access, we are building a website in the background and I don’t want to stop our progress if you were to add anything to the root of the domain.
Business Partner: Oh, so whats happening with the site? Seeing as it’s my website, I should be able to see it should I not?
Me: Yes, Ok, if you want to see it that’s not a problem.
Business Partner: So, send me details of the log on and I will have a look at it.

You might read that and deduce that he is just a little frustrated and merely wants to see the website. The problem is, this guy has thrown his weight about before with the end result being that we went to the client and simply asked; “Who are we working for?!”. The client was telling us one thing and the business partner another.

The client apparently had a word and nothing was heard from his business partner…..until now.

To me it’s all part and parcel of the job, but if we had received the wording, the design specs and the notes we needed from the client when we asked, we would be a hell of a lot further down the road with this project.

Am I Going Anywhere?

Posted by Matt under Work

It’s got to the point where I need to decide what to do with my career/life. I have a good(-ish) job that pays extraordinarily well for the area I live in (that said, I am not a slacker, I think I do the work of 2-3 people in a larger company). Here lies my dilemma, I am stuck in a job where I am a manager, but only of three people, the other two used to be in my position and were so overcome with their work they don’t do it anymore, therefore I am by orders not to even ask what they are doing. There are constant politics on who’s done what and who’s fault it is and I’ve decided that enough is enough, I need a place of work where I am working hard and seeing my efforts rewarded.

I am going to look about for other jobs, I will have to be very lucky to find a place willing to pay me what I am on now but I will try nonetheless. I have management experience, I singlehandedly run the IT in this place and I have some intermediate to advanced websites under my belt.

Anyone want to hire me?!