Yes - I'm still here

Life is seriously hectic at the moment and I don't have a lot of time to post, so here is a quick one

Thanks for all the smiles and support guys. I do feel a lot better.

Work is taking up a lot of time at the moment. Meetings with suppliers, reviewing their inputs and preparing for a big customer presentation in a month. Add on the extra 2 hours of travel a day, not a lot is left.

I'm trying to really cut down (eliminate) internet usage at work. This is going well, so thats a sign I'm engaged and positive. I do have the occasional temptation but I'm resisting. I'll have to type blog entries into a text file and upload it at lunchtime.

Anyway time to go 10:00 is my bed-time

What does the O stand for?

Oh my god its early. This is one of my favourite lines from Good Morning Vietnam and seems rather appropriate now. As I write this its 06:35 and I'm on a train heading towards London. To get here I had to get up at the rather unsocial hour of 5:30. Enough of my whinging, what have I been up to?

Spent a week on Holiday in Yorkshire. Great place if a little cold and damp, especially if you are staying in a static caravan. At least it had a gas fire to keep us warm. Visited several different places though the kids (and my favourite) was the National Rail Museum at York. I must be an Engineer, being able to touch Mallard the fastest every Steam Engine was fantastic.

New job is going well. Have a meeting with a sub-contractor this morning hence the reason for the early start this morning. Got some interesting news from the company the day before I went on Holiday. I'm offically on a 3 month trial period and my base location is still my old office. If all goes well and nothing bad happens then I'll transfer permenantly at the end of the 3 months.

Although this may seem a little odd it is actually good news for me. As I'm still based on the South Coast I'm now allowed to claim travelling expenses to my new office during the 3 month trial - result.

I'm very glad to report that my mental health is also much improved. The new job is making me think but in a wider view rather than microscopic view of specific technical detail in my last job. Had the first appointment with the Psycologist before I went on Holiday and he's told me to get exercising. He believes that by getting my body back under control and losing some weight will help me even more. He even said "Right - when do start doing more exercise?". Something tells me he'll be asking what I've been upto when I go back next week.
To show willingness I've been researching the Fitness Centre that is on the office complex I'm now at. Gym Membership is £28 pm somewhat more thant the £1.55 I paid at my last place. I tend not to use the gym equipment anyway. I just want changing rooms and a locker. They offer a runners membership for £15 pm This allows access to the changing rooms and stretching area along with access to the fitness staff for advice. I suppose if I'm forking out money for this then I going to make sure I run. I've got an appointment with the Gym staff on Friday....

Oh I like this

Been a baptism of (friendly) fire the past 2 days on the new job front.

Yesterday was my first day and we had a major design review with the customer. I sat/stood at the back of the room all day and stayed quiet. Everything went well at the review so good start. To prove what a small world it is one of our sub-contractors is a chap a know from about 7 years ago.

This morning was a visit to a Sub-contractor that is just inside the M25, so I had to battle with the worlds largest car park. OK it was a little after 9 when I got on it and wasn't anything like as bad as I'd expected.

MrsW is beginning to wander if my job is now that of a food critic. I've been on the job 2 days and someone has given me lunch on both days. And to cap it off I received an invite to my new division's christmas lunch in London!!

You can probably tell my smile is from ear to ear!

New Job

I've got a new job!!

After searching through the internal vacancies and applying for a couple of jobs I had an interview this morning with the program manager and the Chief Engineer. I was asked to hang around after the interview while they discussed things between themselves. 5 minutes later they came out and offered me the job.

So I'm now the Deputy Chief Engineer of the project. I won't say too much about the job (commercial sensitivities etc) but it will involve a lot of travelling to meet suppliers and customers. The only downside is that its 40 miles from home and there is no direct train. I'll have to trade in the car and get a company car and the cost of fuel will be a fair bit, but I think I will really enjoy this job.

And to put icing on the cake I've just had an e-mail from Hampshire Rugby - I've been allocated the 2 tickets I asked for the Scotland v England game at Twickenham.

End of an era

I've taken some serious body blow's the past 2 days.

Received a letter from the company yesterday requiring me to attend a discipline review about my internet usage. I was absolutely horrifed and very very stressed to the point where I couldn't stop pacing up and down in my own home. Made a few phone calls and someone from work came round to see that I was alright.

The review was today and I found it very stressful and broke down on several occasions. Fortunately I had brought along someone that I trusted to act as a representative. I tried to point out that my internet usage is symptomatic of my overall lack of motivation and difficulty in concentrating. The manager and HR struggled to understand this and at one point weren't going to allow input from the company doctor. They did however speak to the Doctor briefly and will await his report to see what if any action is to be taken.

Then the real body blow. After the formal completion of the review I was told that the customer have requested that I be removed from the project and their site with immediate effect. I was absolutely distraught about this. I have spent the past seven years of my life working on this system - seeing it into operations, sorting out its teething troubles and finally preparing for a major hardware upgrade. To leave the project in this way is heartbreaking.

So what now? I'm still directed to be away from work, but I, HR and the management team are endevouring to find me a new job within my Company. I'm very hopeful - I'm a good worker its just I'm having troubles just now. Some project or other will want me as long as its not on a customer site!

Management Directed Time

Had a bad start to last week, picked up in the middle and fell apart on Friday.

Got spotted on the internet by a Senior Customer manager and had some explaining to do, well not really I was on and I shouldn't have been and I wasn't going to lie. This is problem I have, when I'm down I'm very easily distracted and can lose motivation, hence internet usage. Somebody found something interesting for me to do. Turn an IBM pSeries server on AIX into a Linux server. A lot of geekyness ensued.

Had an appointment with the Phsyciatrict hosptial that will be doing my Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. They just wanted to sound me out a bit to see what they could offer. In the end they decided on anxiety management CBT. They did suggest a group session but that is Mid-morning 25 miles from work. Not great timing. However my CBT will be a lot closer to work.

Towards the end of the week I was still trying to get the server up and running, wouldn't reboot so was giving the Internet a hammering looking at all the Linux forums trying to work out what could be wrong. In the end managed to work out it was firmware issue on the IBM machine itself and not Linux. Did another re-install and off it went, yipee. came of out of the lab and sat at my desk for a couple moments and checked what was going in the world. Had just gone to Apache's site to download a webserver when I got called into a quiet room and was told that I had been spotted on the internet again and the customer had complained!! I was shocked how could they??? I had been in the lab most of the day and researching issues as directed by the customer. I nearly broke down there and then. My managers were supportive and said just to go home while they sorted the matter out. I was in tears in the car.

Got a phone call from my managers manager (do you call them grandmanagers?) this evening. He hadn't been able to get to the bottom of it but feared that until something was sorted my mental health was seriously at risk. He told me to talk tomorrow off as management directed time (Company pays for it). He was at great lengths to point out that this was not discipilnary action it was for my own wellbeing. He needs to talk to HR but I think he wants me to be moved away from the glare of customer attention to a comapny site so that I don't have the stress of worried about whether the customer thinks I'm slacking or not. You can't say fairer than that. With the exception of doing my apprasial when told not to, I have had a great deal of support from my managers and for that I'm truly grateful

Putting it back together

Been a naughty boy and not blogged for a week, so better do some catching up

My mental health is continuing to make good steady progress. I am finding it a lot easier to get out of bed in the morning, even on weekends. This to me is a great sign as the difficulty getting up in the morning was one of the first signs I was in trouble this time last year. I'm certainly a lot less tired which shows I'm getting some quality sleep, though I still have the occasional odd wakening in the small hours.

I think people at work are a lot happier with my performance - the old Rob is out and about much more often and I certainly feel much more self motivated.

So work is coming back together what about my fitness?

Well..... I've done a few short runs in the past week 3 or 4 miles. No objectives or goals to them, just run at a comfortable pace for the fun of it. Swimming is coming along as well I'm nearly at the stage of being able to do 2 lengths of front crawl. Backstroke and Breaststroke I can go a lot further in. Refereed an U-16 Rugby game on Sunday which was hard work in the heat, some poor sod broke his arm in the first 2 minutes. Could tell by just looking at it nice little bulge in the forearm.

Anyway enough of my ramblings night, night. I'll try and not make it a week till my next update.