YEAH! (kinda)

Awesome, the money from the last contract has just eased gently into the business account and is sitting there glowing like the little pile of gold it is. My beady eyes glisten with moisture as I apportion it to the various bills that need paying, a nice big food shopping spree and a load for saving for the winter. Life is peachy surely?

Well sort of. The contract was for a US company paying in dollars. I live in France and I live in Euros. The recent history of the exchange rate between dollars and euros looks like this:



I just re-read my GCSE Maths text book to confirm this next statement and therefore feel it has been independently verified: graphs that point down are not good.

This graph points down. This is not good. In fact it's really shit news. Not only can I hear the impending thunderclap of doom, but somewhere within the din I can make out the delicate pop of a tube of lube being opened.

It may be time for a think on how to do this without getting pumped by every currency dealer between Chamonix and New York. Maybe holding onto it for a few weeks to catch a spike when the dollar gets stronger for a day or two. More likely is that it may be time to bite the bullet and wonder if maybe Northern Rock had more customers like me, they might not be broke.

P.S. I really feel sorry for any of the customers caught in the crossfire of this Northern Rock fiasco. I only hope one of the big city banks steps up to the mark and takes an initial hit to get the company back on track.

Chirpy Days

It's amazing what a bit of willpower can do.

Sister came over for a great couple of days and we managed to get in a meal at Katy's restaurant Le Delice in Les Houches which was fantastic as always. Then a trip into Chamonix with a few friends for some cheeky beers at Chambre Neuf followed by a few later drinks rounding the evening off in the Monkey Bar.

We had a stroll up the Gorges des Diosaz the following morning from Servoz then up to Vaudagne for a brief mooch around and back to Cham for Jen to have an afternoon nap while I boshed out some work. Italian dinner compliments of Casa Valerio and then a movie and a snooze.

Really ideal couple of days to spend together and have a natter and a bit of a wander around the valley - I was really stoked to be able to sort out the free transfers from and to Geneva for her as well as introducing her to my friends out here. All in all it was a great couple of days. My brain was resetting itself quickly - much quicker than normal and really think I might have beaten this thing, at least for the time being.

After an early-morning transfer I managed to get some nice time with Abi too and we loafed around the house eating and having a giggle and watching CSI before crashing out early. We set off from Abi's place this morning to go hike up the Tete de Balme at Le Tour but it was blazing hot and conditions weren't ideal to get to the very top so we stopped midway and admired the valley before coming back down. The view from up there is fantastic and although I mention it a lot - still never tire of it.

The brilliant thing about walking around ski areas in the summer is you get to see all the different hidden gullies and tucked-away routes and interesting features of the mountain. Many of these little beauties were duly filed away in the memory banks, including a rocking alternative option to the Le Tour home run consisting of a really steep, wooded section with a great narrow path. With blue skies and only the sound of crickets chirping us along the walk home it was a beautiful way to spend Saturday.

Well I've made a load of progress with my next contract over the past day or two as well now and am feeling so much better about it all. I hope that I can polish off the old contract this weekend - draw a line underneath it, put in the final invoice and move on. There's a load of work to be cracking on with that's piqued my curiosity and got me back into wanting to program and create and develop and build the project. Awesome.

Mad Busy

Just been manically busy for the past week or so and it doesn't look like it's going to let up for a few days more at least. Going slightly mad but I guess I was always slightly mad anyway. In a few more days or a week or so I hope peace will return and I'll be able to go climbing for a few days in some clear skies. I might even try to squeeze in a couple of hours with the newly married Mark from All Mountain Performance today up at Coupeau on the gnarly crag there. I've never climbed there before but it's dead close to Cham and there's some pretty stiff pitches it so should be fun. Plus I've not climbed for a few more than a few weeks now due to the endless tourists in August and I think the exercise is really, really needed.



Moving house has gone relatively well. On the 31st I packed up all of my gear (and Andy's) and put it into storage temporarily until the 6th/7th where I can get it out and move into the office and make it home. I stayed for a couple of days with a friend at her chalet and have done a couple of nights in the bed in the office. Chris is off on the 7th and so will get the final move done then. Looking forward to having a more permanent place to rest my head and I sleep like a log here so tis all good. Plus I know have ... a BATH! Yes! All I need now is a little rubber ducky to play and splash around with.

Contracts are my main stress. I'm finishing up the old one and starting a new one and they've managed to overlap by a few days. The old contract is inches from completion and as ever the end of it is a little more mad than the start. The new contract is in two parts - the reskin/upgrade of a large site and the support for another large site. This is good because it's ongoing and will keep ticking over. I'm just getting my head around what's going on with the technicalities of the site - luckily it was originally built by a mate I used to work with, so know my way around his code which is a major bonus!



Driving transfers is going dead well. I've been taking over from Shaun driving quite a lot recently and have been zipping in and out of Geneva lots. Even managed to get a few hours in between transfers yesterday to go into a shopping mall in Geneva and have a root around. The Swiss are so organised man! They had little green lights above the parking slots in the multi-storey parking that turned red when a car is parked in the slot. How groovy is that! Plus Swiss rush hour is like the least rushed rush hour in the world. Everyone's polite and casually let other cars cross lanes and stuff. It's really trippy after being in London where people would kill for that last place on the tube. These guys are just so ... nice ...



All in all, I think I'm preparing well for the interseason and ready for the winter. Over the next month or so things should solidify and all this hard work will be rewarded by powder days and beautiful snowy adventures.

Bits, bobs and bastards

Bits
Work is all-encompassing at the moment. Days are long and am going to bed and getting up way earlier than normal. We're doing a contract with a pretty tight series of deadlines for a company based in the states so combined with getting into the office at unreasonable o'clock, we're also doing project meetings on skype that start at 6pm and then finishing up work afterwards.

It's all going very well and they're very happy with what we've currently done and already talking about more work and subsequent phases of the project. Chris and I are learning loads about a new sector of trendy business where there's loads of work out there and we're getting paid by the hour to do so. We've even got our next contracts lined up. Fantastic.

Bobs
Met a really, really nice scottish girl the other day but unfortunately she's gone back to the UK this weekend. But have been emailing each other and whatnot. We're talking about hopefully spinning it so she can come and stay over in a while for a few days and do a bit of skiing for a few days. Hope so anyway.

Bastards
Left my car in Cham the other day tucked away in a little car park close to the station. Some idiot smashed the driver's side window - they didn't steal anything, just smashed the window. As the gendarmes are pretty swift and fairly unyielding I decided to forgo getting his window fixed just yet as there's a few other things starting to go wrong with him. He's been really, really awesome and still has legs but I can hear the faint sound of an overweight female warming up her voice...

I've been thinking to replace Merv as the upcoming winter is really going to test him. He currently desperately needs some new front tyres but over the winter will need snow tyres and more than likely require snow chains putting on and removing every trip to and from the farm - a serious pain in the arse. Also he could really do with a service as he's developed some squeaky brakes and a few minor noises that sound like one of the wheel bearings is starting to stiffen. The driver's side door really needs to be fixed as it's permanently locked and in general he could do with life on the valley floor - not being bounced up and down a cracked, steep, narrow mountain road every day.

In the mean time I've borrowed Crampon's missus' fiesta as she's got a new work car. The fiesta's currently sitting around the farm not being used despite being in extremely good nick despite a couple of minor and very treatable things. The exhaust muffler's been knocked and needs replacing but she's away for a month and we've agreed a deal where I can get the exhaust fixed and use it while I'm getting Merv fixed - or more likely seeing if I can sell Merv and get a better car more suited to the snow (hopefully the fiesta - which already has snow tyres!).

Luckily there's a cheap mechanic who owes Fred a favour or two and can get the exhaust done for an extremely reasonable price. Sweet!

I guess sometimes you just need a prod in the right direction from fate or God or whomever to get something started. Getting new transport has always been on the cards and Merv has been unbelievably helpful. With the recurring work it's a good time to get the situation sorted before winter rolls in.

Now Wash Your Hands (NWYH)

I feel really sorry for Chris at the moment - client interfacing can be difficult at the best of times and his relationship with his current ones - Now Wash Your Hands (a new media company, here's their website) - has turned really sour. He's written about it on his blog about them not paying him for the work done.



I've got to say - I really like the Eastenders game that is the contract, it plays well and looks very cool. It's written using Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash and Flash Server with XML and all sorts of other natty technologies. It has a lot of streaming video, functional animation, scoring and all sorts. I think it's very cool and would slot into the Eastenders section of the BBC website very nicely indeed. Obviously there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that I don't (and don't need to) know about but the whole thing looks pretty sketchy to me.

I hope it gets resolved soon, the situation's not doing either NWYH or Chris any favours as Chris is out of pocket with the months of work and Now Wash Your Hands are looking like one of the really bad, unreliable new media companies that's only held together by spin and bullshit.

Sounds like everyone needs to feel the love a little more.

The Lost Valley

It's been raining with very minimal pauses for breath pretty much since the ski lifts closed a few weeks ago. The valley looks very cool with clouds rising from the forested mountain sides all around like some sort of primeval rain forest. It's making the whole place have a slightly surreal ambience - probably down to the stark contrast in view to what we've been looking at for the past 5 or 6 months. It really does feel like some valley lost in time Jurassic Park style though.

So woke up this morning and got into work early. It was pretty nippy and the clouds shifted for a moment and looking up the mountain saw that freezing level had dropped so much overnight there's been a dusting of snow above around 1800m! Unreal.

The view from the office this morning.


I've also officially started my new contract today and it feels really good to get into geek mode. There's some really technical problems to solve with compressing databases which need to be done first and foremost. It's also programming in ASP, an older language that I'm intimately familiar with. I've been programming in PHP recently and it feels a lot newer and trendier. But I've got to say it's really nice to write in a language that flows naturally, albeit with its own "quirks" and some horrific syntaxing. It's very cool though, and the bonus is I can write large swathes of it and it just works with no bugs.

In other news, I'm looking after Ava and Digby - two dogs that belong to a friend. I know them dead well and it's nice to come home to wagging tails. Been giving them plenty of pats and tickles and they're very chirpy. I'd sort of like to get a dog but with those two so close it's a wicked substitute, plus it means I just get cool time with them and not have to deal with them chewing my slippers. I've seen a few geckos roaming around on the stone outside the house and have been thinking about catching one and keeping it as a pet - feeding him the flies we catch. I'll release him after a bit back into the garden but would be a fun pet for the summer.

Gecko.

Time to focus

So now it's just a question of waiting til the first contract starts. We've got a working environment to develop from, there's work coming in. Just a question of waiting now for that first payment to signify the official start. Feeling a bit nervy, feeling a bit like we're going to have to miss powder days. Mostly just feeling that we need something to get our teeth into so we can start really earning. Everything's there, just need that project to focus on.

It's happening, can feel it more and more. Things are now about to hit full speed and it feels good to be on the brink of getting into a routine of work and sitting down with the computer for 8 hours to get a load of stuff done.