Wall Street

Well, it's taken them three years to finalise, but the council finally announced how everyone is affected.

In those 3 years I have gone from being optimistic that I would see a rise in salary to being hopeful of a favourable result and finally apprehensive that I may be amongst the 16% who faced a cut. As it transpired my worries were born out and in three years I face being £100 worse off per month.

There are two reasons I find this frustrating:

One - the work I do for the council brings in around £60,000 a year in profit.
Two - a guy in social services who hasn't been with the council for 7 years and only handles internal stuff is around £6k a year better off than me.

I am not feeling bitter that my colleague is on a handsome salary and one that I feel I deserve the equal to, but I am bitter that the whole Job Evaluation scheme is meant to be about 'valuing staff' and 'equality'. Basically its all a bunch of bollocks.

As it is I shall be appealing in any case. There is also the chance I will have a new job description soon as well, forcing them to re-evaluate. And seeing as the new job has more of a junior management slant I should be okay. In the meantime I shall seeth away to my heart's discontent.

Rush Hour

Two blog entries in one day. I should be careful not to burn myself out.
Anyway, here is an illustration of why I now enjoy walking to work. Nothing is worse than sitting in endless lines of cars and taking ten times as long to get home than you know is possible without it being rush hour. Instead I walk briskly home listening to my IPod unfettered by the agitation and resulting ire that driving brings.
The only annoyances now are having to follow Marlboro smokers down the path, taking in lungfuls of acrid smoke and my crap Philips headphones falling out of my left ear.

The Beach

Monday was the day for Sky being installed in the flat at last. We were told the engineer would call round between one and four in the afternoon and so we decided to go for a walk along Exmouth seafront
When we arrived it was decent weather and we walked the length of the beach. Along the way we noticed the roads and paths were covered in sand. By the time we decided to head back it had become apparent how this occured. The wind had picked up and the sand was stinging our faces as we wandered back to the car. Halfway back it started raining as well and so we got soaking wet and covered in sand. Then we found the Sky bloke had turned up an hour and a half early, just to cap it all. An infuriated call to Sky soon sorted that out and the chavvish engineer was back and finished within the hour.
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment.

The Moneypit

Why do people make such an effort to make their homes look like poorly thought out B&Q displays at Christmas? The only thing that makes it worse is the 'we have to be first' syndrome causing the biggest offenders to erect their gaudy crap in November.
This delightful display was found on Rifford Road last night. I shall keep a sharp eye open for the next idiot to try and compete on that road. In the meantime I shall investigate Exwick, the usual location of bad taste seasonal decorations.

The 39 Steps

Broadband has now been installed in the flat and I am able to resume being a sad bastard by sitting at my computer at every spare moment. Perhaps I shall finally get around to finishing a new design for my website...

Walk The Line

Now that I live in town I can no longer justify tailgating my way through the barriers at County Hall. And seeing as I live a virtual stones throw from work I chose to walk today. I was actually rather surprised by how much I enjoyed the pre-walk jaunt.
It's a lot colder now it is hometime. I have just made it to the hospital, so a ways to go yet. Expect further observations in the coming months.

For A Few Dollars More

I was given the address of a great website that prints custom mini business cards using your own photos from your flickr.com account. I convinced myself it was a cheap way of putting my freelance details around.
So I signed up, selected the photos I wanted to use (50 different colour photos) and decided on my web address, name, number and email address and my flickr.com avatar. They look great, are a nice size and distinctive. And best of all 100 cards cost less than £14.
So I did a selection of black and white photos as well and the company sent me two boxes by mistake! Bonus!
To take advantage of this great site visit www.moo.com/flickr