test please delete

[NickFitz]

I believe this is my 8000th TPD post

[NickFitz]

I think this link is really annoying.

The black underline is a bit of a giveaway though - here's how to fix that

[NickFitz]

Maybe this link is better.

Ah, already fixed

[NickFitz]

dept manager has just had a "word" with me for not attending an optional meeting.
I said there was another one next week and I might attend it.

It turns out next weeks is a follow on from this weeks.

Like I give a toss

Ah, one of those "optional but compulsory" meetings

My first job after Uni was at a digital systems engineering company about eighty strong. A friend of mine had already worked there for about three years, and tipped me off that the annual Christmas dinner, though paid for by the company, was such a tortuous ordeal that he'd given it a miss after his first, and recommended me to do the same.

When the MD's secretary came round on her annual visit to the cage where they kept the engineers, she asked me if I'd be coming.

"No, I don't think I will," I said.

She stiffened.

"Well, of course, it's entirely up to you... but Roger [the MD] thinks it's important that new people to the company should participate in events like this."

"I see - but I still don't think I'll come."

She looked at me.

"I think Roger would really be quite put out if you were not to come. Are you absolutely certain?" she asked, with a hint of Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday about her.

I weighed up the situation, and decided to attend for the good of my career.

It was wretched, this enforced jollity and the miserable pretence that we all wanted to be together for the occasion because we happened to work for the same company

I was out of there a few months later anyway, so I should have stuck to my guns

[NickFitz]

... but my shadow has a 100 mile journey back and isn't going until 4pm. Wouldn't be too impressive if I just got my coat and went

Screw them. Why let yourself be dragged down to a shadow's level?

[NickFitz]

You don't realise how much stuff you just "know" after doing this stuff for as many yonks as I have...

And how impenetrable it must appear when you encounter it for the first time.

Earlier, I showed the guy I report to at NewClientCorp the moderately complex SQL statement I'd concocted that does in about twenty-three seconds (on thirty month's worth of data) what the existing PHP solution does in about twenty minutes (on one month's worth of data).

He looked at it and said "I'm not even going to try to understand how that works."

[NickFitz]

Glad to see you're enjoying yourself...

7 weeks and 1 day to go...

[zeitghost]

Hello



Hello Nick...

[zeitghost]

...

[zeitghost]

...

El Zeity

got
a
00*
155,700

!!!
!!!

Merely for completeness or something

*subject to revision in the event of newbie posts...