One Year On

Oh how time flies! On Wednesday I will be celebrating my first year's anniversary working at Heywood. It's hard to believe that the time has passed so quickly but looking back, a lot has happened really. We've had new starters, some leavers and I've learned more about software development than I did in 4 years at university.

I've recently started looking at some Java quizzes and books in preparation for taking my OJCP exam which I have to do before the end of the year and despite having learned a lot, there is still a lot more out there to learn. I'm lucky to have been put on a couple of good projects recently. A couple of nice product enhancements that have had a small enough team for me to contribute to a large section of it. I've also been able to specialise in a couple of areas which is always nice because it finally means that I'm not always asking for work or asking people how to do things and instead work from those areas comes my way and people ask me questions about it instead.

This type of event requires baking - and lots of it. When it was my birthday, I went a bit baking mad and bought in rather a lot of cakes and biscuits which means that I now have something to live up to when these sort of things come round again. This weekend will be full of flour, eggs butter and sugar in various guises - I'm still yet to decide on the final line up of treats but I will need to make my mind up soon and get prepping unless I want to be up until the early hours on Wednesday morning finishing things off.

Another milestone this weekend is that I will be joining the 21st century at last by purchasing a smart phone. It's something I've been looking at for a very long time and I had this debate two years ago when I went with the Sony Ericsson Elm and whilst I don't regret that decision, technology has moved on and I think now is the time to take the touchscreen plunge. I'm still looking for a reasonably budget phone but now that I'm earning, I can afford a bit more and so I started looking at the Sony Xperia series of phones. I eventually narrowed it down to the Xperia S or the Xperia Go. Both had many of the same features but I was offered a very good upgrade price for the Xperia S from Orange and so that was the top runner. Today I went into town to the Carphone Warehouse and to the Orange shop to see if I was going to get a better deal in-store. I've heard all about these price matches so I thought I might be able to get a bit of a discount. Turns out I've got it all wrong and the cheapest I could get at the Carphone Warehouse was about £220 which I was certainly not willing to pay for. The Orange shop did better at £159 but were unable to match the £30 discount I was going to get from Orange online. So for a £15.50 a month contract with 50 minutes, unlimited (ish) texts and 200mb of data plus £129.99 for the phone I decided that that was a pretty good offer. The website thought so too because the first time I tried, it decided it was going to take all of my details and then break showing me a page that simply said an error had occurred. I phoned up to check whether it had been processed or not, which it hadn't. I asked if I could buy over the phone but they were unable to match the online price. Thankfully, the second time I tried, everything went smoothly and so I should be in possession of a new phone by the end of Tuesday. Of course, I have to wait in for someone to deliver it but with a bit of luck I can work from home and then come in after the delivery.

Finally, I will leave you with my earworm of the moment. Apparently this song has been around for a couple of years but has only recently come to the attention of the UK radio stations. It is so upbeat and I love the accordian section - there should be more accordians in music. The band are Of Monsters and Men and the track is Little Talks.