Living in interesting times

Sorry, this is a bit of a whinge and I have a more entertaining post lined up for later today which includes the words 'rillettes', 'bavaroise' and 'ceviche'. So probably best to scroll down to the tune, skip the words and wait for the next one...

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic, and it reminds me of a curse raised by the great Terry Pratchett - 'May you live in interesting times'. Our new rental fell through spectacularly on the day we tried to move in – we were supposed to gain possession last weekend (the owners being the ones who pushed the tenancy date forward two weeks from what had originally been discussed), but when we rocked up it was still being worked on by the owner. When we questioned it we were told that the owners kids had been sick so he hadn’t had the chance to fix it up, 'it wasn't like a bought house' (I have no idea what that means) and they didn’t appreciate our attitude in requesting that the place be clean, empty, unbroken and ready to move in to on the agreed date. There was a bit of low grade shouting, he told us to piss off, we gave him the keys back and we’re on the hunt for a house again (with a month to go before our lease ends).

In some ways it's a blessing as they obviously would not be good people to have as landlords, but dear god I'm bored of driving around & looking at houses. It seems to eat into every part of my life -  to spend time doing anything but hunting through the real estate sites, booking viewings or driving around checking out suburbs feels like wasting valuable time. I'm not exercising, not riding and I can't get any cheese or beer brewing on as it would be a pain to move. Terry Pratchett also says that 'people say there's no place like home. That's rubbish, there are a million places just like home, it's just that you haven't chosen to live there' and I'm trying to keep that in mind as we view one broken down house after another...

Works pretty full-on at the minute as well. It seems like I'm the backstop of every problem so something similar to this seems to happen far too much in both the software side and the project planning side - 

• Another consultant finds an issue in their specialist area
• They ask me if I know why it's happening
• I have a quick look at the configuration, try and figure out what it's supposed to be doing and say no, I can't see anything obvious. It'll need to get logged with the UK team.
• The support guy gets told to log it, but as he's new and the information he's given is overly brief he has no idea what the problem is.
• I sit with him and show him how the area works, what the problem is and how it should be logged
• I proof-read his call and make sure it makes sense
• The UK team ask some dumb questions that our support guy doesn't know enough to answer, so he sends them on to the consultant
• The original consultant can't understand the questions and asks me to assist
• I send back the reply they need to give, which goes back to the UK via the poor support guy. I try to spend some time with him as part of this to help train him up, as he's a good kid and he wants to learn and not just shuffle emails about.
• The UK respond with a fix
• I send the fix on to our technical team who installs it on one of our local systems
• I tell the original consultant that the fix is on and needs to be tested 
• They tell the support guy to test it
• They local system isn't set up the same way as the clients system so the support guy can't test it
• I configure the local system so that the support guy can test it
• I assist the support guy in the testing process
• The support guy decides the fix is OK but asks me to double check
• I send the OK to the tech guy to install the fix on the clients site
• The original consultant then reports in the project meetings that they've fixed the issues on site.

All of this whilst overloaded with my own stuff to do. It's also worth noting that all three of the people I'm supporting in this way are all paid more than me..... I don't really handle stress that well and although I should be meditating, practicing mindfulness or other such zen noodling I just seem to be wandering round in a permanently tense state with a constant vague sense of unease in the pit of my stomach (which if you think about it is the source of the phrase 'worried sick'). I'm also waking up every morning at 3am and worrying for a couple of hours before dozing off just before my alarm sounds, which isn't the best.  

 Alrighty, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.....