You don't have to be mad to work here...

b

ut don't worry training will be provided.  That is indeed what Simon from work (that sounds a little weird to say that just yet...) told me on my first day.  Two days in and still not anymore comfortable I have to say.  Today was spent attending the training course for the software product (known as "Prestwood" or "Professional") that users/financial planners would normally attend.

The first day was a real onslaught, a barrage if you will of financially technical information, and today was a day spent actually using the product which I will be providing support for in just a few weeks time, mmm not at all scary there...

It was very productive in a way to actually get the experience with the product itself.  It is a very powerful product which obviously has to cope with all the possibilities out there which can be done with money, or capital as I should really call it lol.

A lot of the day was spent running through a case study, so that equaled lots of data entry.  It wasn't so bad a day, it was still a lot of information to take in, and I don't think it's gonna ease up for a while.  This guy, Chris, the other guy along with Simon that is based in the same room as me did actually say that we are not expected to know the complete ins and outs of being a financial advisor because if we did then we could do the job itself - all that is expected of us is to master the software and get it doing what it should be doing.

As an unexpected bonus, we went off to this pub for lunch on the company.  It's actually been my first proper meal since moving into this B and B in Stourbridge if I'm completely honest.  Yep, we took a short drive out of Kinver with Diana, the trainer, and the two ladies, Lynn and Sue, who were on the course to the Fox Inn - a nice little place hidden away on a small road running through some woodland.  We got a look at the menu beforehand, and well a lot of it was unsuitable for me so that really shortened my options.  I did opt for the steak, which upon arrival was told that it was being done medium, which would have been fine.  In actual fact, the steak was pretty rare, very bloody in places, tough to cut and very chewy = not the most enjoyable meal.

My free time is spent catching up on TV shows.  I started watching season 1 of Curb Your Enthusiasm and have finished it off in the last day or two.  I actually looked to see if I could find some other seasons on the ol' intermaweb but to no avail.  I've now started watching, or rather rewatching Heroes.  I watched a load off the back of a recommendation from my good friend Adam (thank you buddy) but then stopped when I went to Coventry for the course at JBC.  It then got aired on BBC2 and I again started to watch it from the beginning there, but lost track even quicker than the first time thanks to people's drinking habits getting more and more unhinged.  But this time through I promise I'll see it through, especially considering that season 2 of said show begins airing in a few weeks, possibly sooner.

It only dawned on me today that once I have moved in, I will have to sort out an Internet connection.  A lot of my stuff won't be moved in to this new place until not this weekend, but the following weekend which will be only slightly less lame than my current situation in the B and B.

Here's putting an end to my rambling...

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testing the WLW text template plugin

Just posting some stuff to see if this works, the enlargation (it's a word!) of the first letter of the post seems to work from the template just fine.

The problem seems to arise when working with the span which is responsible for masking the majority of the post, lame!

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Ma First Daiye....

Hey, so here we are, long time no blog but it's time to share again.
A lot has happened in the last few weeks, especially considering how little I've been blogging in these last couple of months so it's a bit of a mystery what's actually happening right now.
I'm sure I'll be able to expand on the events of the past another time, but in a revision session, catch up type thing, it's best just to spell out the simple facts so that you can pass the exam (There is no exam).  Basically, off the back of this JBC Course in Coventry I have managed to get a job hurray for me! Yeah, today was in fact my very first day, so it's pretty scary to finally be part of the rat race proper.I am working for Prestwood Software based in the Stourbridge area, who offer financial planning software, and my job is to provide support for this software product to its users.  Also somewhere down the line, within a year or two, I will be able to move into the programming side of things, which is what I really want to be doing with myself so feeling pretty optimistic.

I have had my first day, indeed the first day of five week's worth of training, to get me upto speed with the software product, how the company operates and more generally the, frankly scary, world of financial services.  Yep, I have my own desk and PC in the offices.  The PC itself is running Vista so that will be good to get some hands on experience with that.  My first day started off with a crash course in financial services, learning what endowments, annuities etc are.  I was asked a few times how I was getting on, what I actually wanted to say was what a mindfuck all this information is - I was feeling really stretched and my concentration levels seemed all over the place.
The main reason for that is probably the living arrangement I am currently engaged in, and other arrangements I am chasing. Simply put, Stourbridge is too far to commute from Wem so I set on sorting out my own place.  Unfortunately time spent chasing this other job in London (more on that later), I was only able to spend Tues to Fri of last week flat hunting.  That being said, I've done rather well I thought and with the help of my good friend Wilson [picture missing] I've decided to go for this house in Kidderminster.  Kidderminster being a short train ride from Stourbridge for those geographically-challenged people (like myself). I sent the application off for that on Sunday, and if all goes to plan I could be moving in this Saturday. I am very pumped about that, my very first place plus being in Kiddy I am quite close to Wilson so I won't be in a new strange land completely on my own, which is a bonus.

Yeah, so currently I am shacked up in a B and B in Stourbridge. It's not too great, put simply it's a room with a bed(double) in, an ensuite bathroom and a TV, the TV being a big surprise.  The only proper benefit is the price, this place being cheap.  Money is getting very tight, and the whole application process and the required deposit all adds up to a small fortune.  Yeah, so slumming it a bit in this B and B till Saturday when it hopefully should get a load better.  I should be contacted on Thursday with regards to my application but hopefully it should be fine and I'll be in my very own place before I know it.

Continuing my trend in offline blogging I will no doubt build up a backlog of blog posts while I seek to find ways to spend the time at the B and B, especially lacking the money to go out, have a pint or two, go watch a film etc... It's ok, as you may have guessed by now, I've brought my laptop and my trusty external HDD to provide with TV based fun to keep me sane.
Here's taking the first steps in becoming a working professional...

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Hey! Who stole my post!?

Another post and more playing about with some blogger hacks.
This time it's the advent of post summaries. Not long after the birth of this blog, I've thrown some fairly large posts at it, and well even the author yours truly, has found them a bit daunting to go through.
Enter post summaries, hopefully a solution to the whole problem, and also a producer of more clicks on the blog (which for me obsessing over site tracking statistics, can only be a good thing!).
The idea works by again relying on CSS and good ol' "span" elements to seperate up the post in question

and then place a "read more!" link on the page, hopefully just like the one you clicked, and then you'll be taken to the whole glorious post and the treasures that lie within.
Unfortunately, this is just a bit of a trial so there are no goodies this time, but keep clicking and you're bound to win - get hit by lightning a couple of times to increase your chances further..

Here's thinking what else can be done to this blog which is not actually content-based?!?!...

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Smooth with a capital Smoo...

Two posts in one day, I truly am on a roll. Again, I have been on a search to spruce up my blog. I found this little method to largen and indent the first letter here. It's a shame that you have to physically force the style settings. Perhaps with a bit more research, I could get a little script to do the hard work for me when I hit "submit" in Windows Live Writer or an alternative offline blog writing tool thingy.

I'm also looking into lobbing on a chat widget into the already crowded sidebar, which makes me think it may be time to adopt the 3-column layout hack - again there
's no simple high level way to do that, you have to physically go in and play about with the CSS styles, and in my experience it gets a little awkward getting a layout that renders well in all (majority of) browsers. I would just develop in wonderful Firefox but the n00bs that buy their computers from PC World enforce Internet Explorer development on us and that's always fun, although not seen how vers 7 renders - if you ask me it is so much closer to FF now, I'm of the opinion that as FF is open source, the lazy Microsoft boys went in and reverse engineered 7 from it, mmm...

Here's wasting time looking for Blogger hacks...

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New blog stuff

Hey ho! Here I am putting off doing some work so I thought I'd waste time by playing about with the ol' blog.
Couple of changes, some more noticable than others. First one should be pretty obvious if you were to scroll down, and that's the inclusion of two tag clouds. It's probably the only thing lacking from Blogger when compared to Wordpress is a native tag cloud implementation (oh, and trackable statistics, but that's really for us admin folks). Of course there are a couple of scripts out there that can parse the standard "labels" list; I probably could have knocked up something myself, but why reinvent the wheel??

Yeah, so I found two scripts out there that can do the job, and not wanting to commit to one just yet, I've thrown them both into the sidebar to see what they look like. Also, I'm trying out the (semi-)new blogger widget, the poll widget! Yeah, so it would be great if you could place your vote and after a bit of time I'll commit to a cloud and remove the rather lame looking current list.

Another change is the inclusion of the twitter badge. I've been aware of the micro-blogging tool but had been hesitant to adopt it. Saying that, I was over on Major Nelson's site(Xbox live updates + other news) and noticed he had the twitter badge up and running and thought it actually looked quite neat. It's very much like the "status" feature on facebook, and I usually try and have a bit of fun with that, so thought I'd chuck it on the blog as well - in a small effort to try and get me back into the blogging routine. I have a few more interesting pics taken on my phone which I may well share, but the quality's not great; especially with my shaky arm LOL.

Another small change, hardly noticable, is my swapping of my Last.fm profile. I've been slowly adopting "Jimiminar" for every online handle/identity out there and well my last.fm profile was lagging behind. Cue a shiny new profile and I've just swapped over the quilts/recent tracks but it should be business as usual...

Here's trying to find something else to put off work...

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Toilet graffiti...

Hey, overdue a few posts but for now I will share this pic I took, admittedly a little too merry on the last night of the Rythmns of the World Festival.



I'm not sure what it is about it that I really like, but it struck a chord with me and it definitely seemed a step above all the other graffiti scratched into walls which I've had the opportunity to read.

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