The Lair

The gods of Winter have finally decided to make an appearance around here. Not particularly nice to be greeted by a faceful of icy sleet as you step out of the house but at least it fits the most miserable day of the year tag.

My bi-annual visit to town yesterday was made more eventful because the Ouse was being stroppy. Gawked at the floodwaters for no apparent reason (once you’ve seen one flood someplace, you’ve pretty much seen them all); gave my best Yorkshire accent impersonation to random tourists who wanted to know the name of the river and wandered around town.

I was in town to perform the last rites yesterday on a consult/contract job I was doing for most of last year. Not really sure about how to sum up the experience actually. My expectations of employers in the software industry are so laden with cynicism that it takes a fair bit to surprise and astonish. This gig actually did surprise me (in a good way) but unfortunately, the parts that didn’t surprise - or perhaps more appropriately, met my preconceived expectations - ultimately did the deal in. It was, in my personal nomenclature to describe jobs, a grey experience. A lighter shade of grey with the paler positives predominant over the darker negatives, to be sure. It was also an excellent learning experience at the higher end of the curve; the sort of stuff that doesn’t involve writing a single line of code.

And I also have a stock of war stories to rival the best (or worst) that Scott Adams can think up.

Selectivity in recollections is a strange thing, really. Sometimes the good stuff sticks, sometimes the bad stuff does. Years after the fact, it’s no longer possible to even remember the specific incidents or events that led upto the conclusion that something was good or bad - but the conclusion does hang around a lot longer.