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Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-06-28

June 28, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • I really enjoyed the summer ball on Saturday night. Yesterday we visited Mannington gardens for Father's Day. It was really good. #
  • …there were lots of pretty roses and I probably took at least 100 photos! #
  • It looks like all the systems are borked this morning. Sigh! :-( #
  • Just bought lunch at a fast food place, asked to eat in, but when I turned round I realised there were no free tables! So I ate outside… #
  • …as I didn't fancy eating my lunch at a table with a bunch of total strangers! #
  • I had a really nice evening yesterday. We had a team meal at The Spice Lounge. I think I'm starting to feel more settled in the team now. #
  • It was so hot and sticky last night it was hard to sleep. I can't even open my window to let in any fresh air because it's noisy outside. #
  • Feeling fed up. A combination of hot weather & worrying about a potentially inaccurate email I sent out yesterday meant I had little sleep. #
  • Plus I have my mid-year appraisal this morning and I don't feel in the right frame of mind for it, as I've been so busy and feel tired. :-S #
  • I'm feeling happier now. I sent out a corrected version of that email before anyone complained about it, and my appraisal went well. #
  • I have a long weekend ahead of me! I booked tomorrow and Monday off as holiday. I'm in the mood for baking a cake this weekend! :-) #
  • Why are there so many stupid people on the internet this week? Is all this heat frying people's minds or something? #
  • By the way, my last comment isn't aimed at any of my online friends, just people on certain forums I visit. #
  • I've just uploaded the photos I took at Mannington Gardens last weekend. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparkleworld/ #
  • I'm happy because I had my blog turned into a book, and it arrived today! I'm really pleased with how it turned out. #
  • @sparkleworld got a grade of 85/100 on @grader. Check it out: http://twitter.grader.com/sparkleworld #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-06-21

June 21, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • Feeling overwhelmed because I have so many things to do today, before the weekend is over. #
  • So, the weekend's almost over. However, I managed to get more done today than I expected, so I'm pleased about that. :D #
  • There's a really bad thunderstorm outside. I got home just in time! #
  • I've just been Rickrolled! #
  • I'm going to a summer ball later tonight. #

One month later…

June 14, 2009 0

Over the last month I have been very busy learning my new job and there has also been a lot going on outside of work too.

My sister Suzanne’s wedding took place on 28th May. It was a really nice, sunny day. I wore a pink dress which I’d bought from Coast in House of Fraser. I bought my whole outfit from there, including a pair of shoes, handbag and necklace. Both the wedding service and the reception were held at the Oaklands Hotel. My nieces Anya and Emily were bridesmaids and they both made speeches during the service. In the early evening, we all had a roast dinner with beef and Yorkshire puddings and there was also a buffet for the guests later on in the evening. Suzanne and her new husband Paul are currently on their honeymoon in the Maldives, although they are due back tomorrow. For the first week of the honeymoon, Anya and Emily stayed round our house, and for the second week my other sister Sarah stayed with them in their own house.

I’ve been to the cinema a couple of times – firstly to see Coraline in 3D, which was really good as the 3D was very realistic. It seems that 3D technology has moved on quite a bit since I was younger – it is much better compared to the days when you had to wear those red and green glasses. The second film was Night At The Museum 2, which we went to see last night. I really enjoyed the first one 2 and a half years ago and I thought it was really funny. This one was good too, but I think overall I preferred the original.

I’ve also been on a few walks in the countryside at weekends – a month ago we went to Thornham in Suffolk. We last went there a couple of years ago, but this time we had a meal in a local restaurant and we also visited Hoxne, which is another pretty village nearby. A few weeks ago we visited Fairhaven Gardens, which I enjoyed as we hadn’t been there for a few years. Then a couple of weeks ago we visited Redwings Horse Sanctuary. I took photos at all these places and you can see these on my Flickr page.

Towards the end of May I co-hosted a nightclub night with another member of the IVC club. We went to Optic nightclub and I really enjoyed it. However, not as many people turned up as I expected, as a few people said they were ill or something else came up so they couldn’t make it after all. This brings me on to my next topic – I’ve been ill yet again. About 3 weeks ago, I caught a cough and cold. I was actually coughing quite badly at Suzanne’s wedding, but luckily I managed to keep quiet during the main service! The cough has nearly gone now, but I still felt really tired and run down last week.

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-06-14

0

in Twitter Updates @ 1:00 pm
  • I've been feeling a bit moody, nervous and unsettled over the last few days. Let's hope this week will be better. #
  • Feeling happy because the final confirmation letter about our holiday in the Lake District has arrived. We have about 9.5 weeks to go! :D #
  • I have a busy day ahead of me – today I have a meeting, a meal out and a workshop to attend. #
  • I had a good day today. We discussed the plans for our team intranet site and I will be in charge of creating it. #
  • Also, we had a nice team meal at a Belgian restaurant, where I had wild boar sausages and fries. #
  • I had a really weird/funny dream last night. Unfortunately, the reality is a bit more mundane. #
  • …I dreamed that my office was transformed into a nightclub for 1 night only, and a famous rapper came to perform! Weird!:-o #
  • I think the dream was triggered by Mum saying yesterday that the people where I work are lucky to have lots of parties/meals out etc. #
  • @RustlingRagazza, the rapper was Ludacris. The funny thing is, he's not even my favourite rapper! #
  • I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.8. I love the automatic upgrade feature; it makes it so much easier and hassle-free. #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-06-07

June 7, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • You know on Facebook there is a “Like” link that you can click if you like someone’s status update?… #
  • …well, sometimes I wish there was an “Unlike” link you could click on status messages which use bad grammar or which don’t make sense. #
  • I’m creating a book of my blog using the Blurb Booksmart software. It’s a very painstaking process, I’ve been working on it for a week… #
  • …and I’m now about 72% of the way through. That’s why I’ve been so busy recently and why I haven’t blogged/twittered much #
  • Team meeting straight after lunch. As there are several new people, we all have to do a speech about ourselves. I’m feeling nervous! :-S #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-05-31

May 31, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • I had a nice bank holiday weekend. I had a meal at Fatso’s on Saturday night and yesterday I went to Fairhaven Gardens. #
  • Yesterday morning I couldn’t stop sneezing and now my nose is blocked. This is the 3rd time I’ve been ill in 2 months! :( Could it be… #
  • …the stress of moving jobs? I wonder when I’ll start to feel more settled. #
  • I’m going to buy a monthly bus pass today, as I’m fed up with blowing all my cash at the weekend and then having no bus fare the next week! #
  • It bugs me how the local paperboys/girls always start slacking during school holidays and I can’t read my morning paper until the evening! #
  • It’s my sister’s wedding tomorrow! :D I kept coughing today though, so I hope I’m not going to be like that at the wedding. #
  • I visited my old department today to collect some files. It’s like a ghost-town now – most of the desks were empty! It was quite eerie… #
  • …especially when you consider how vibrant that department used to be. Lots of people have left and there are still more due to leave. #
  • This is a test #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-05-24

May 24, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • Just realised I haven’t tweeted for 4 days! I had a really good weekend. My sister’s party on Saturday night was brilliant! #
  • I just received a spam email titled, “I’m going to sue you”. :-o #
  • I’m looking forward to the weekend as it’s a bank holiday weekend! I’m going to Optic nightclub tonight. :-D #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-05-17

May 17, 2009 0

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • I had a lovely day today. We went out for a meal and then went for a walk in Thornham and Hoxne. It was a nice sunny day too. :) #
  • It’s the 2nd full week of my new job and I’m already feeling more confident, mainly because I have to speak on the phone quite often. #
  • I’m fed up with Explanation Documents which don’t actually explain anything! :-o i think I’m going to end up re-writing a lot of them myself #
  • My first study book for my Microsoft exam arrived yesterday. Over 700 pages! I hope I won’t find it too difficult. #

Weekly Twitter Updates 2009-05-10

May 10, 2009 Comments Off

in Twitter Updates @ 11:59 pm
  • I’m already getting bored of all the bad puns and lame jokes that people keep making about swine flu! #
  • Trying to muster up the courage to update my blog. It will be an epic task as I haven’t updated for several weeks now. #
  • Day 2 of my new job is going nicely. :-) #
  • I’m looking forward to having a nice curry when I get home tonight. #
  • At my new job this morning I created my very first report on my own, so I’ve been feeling pleased with myself! #
  • @alanjlee In many ways I do prefer my new job. It seems more relaxed & I don’t have to spend ages dealing with errors & change requests. #
  • It’s my stepdad Terry’s 65th birthday today! The doorbell is constantly ringing with people coming round to bring cards and presents. #
  • I see Mother’s Day is #2 in the Trending Topics. We already had Mother’s Day back in March! (It’s always before Easter here). #
  • I can see this turning into yet another evening where I don’t get any work done! #
  • Wow, what a day today has been! Both horrible and good at the same time! #
  • Today has been one of those days when I wish my feelings weren’t so sensitive. :-S #
  • @Iva_83 It’s a long story, but I’ve just finished writing about it towards the end of my latest blog post. in reply to Iva_83 #

Odds and ends

May 9, 2009 2

Now that it’s the weekend I’ve finally got time to blog about the non-work related things I’ve been doing recently.

During the Easter weekend I had my belated birthday party. We had a meal at Old Orleans restaurant and then we went to the cinema to see The Boat That Rocked. The best thing was that all 4 of my closest friends could make it – we hadn’t been out all together for several years! It was just like the old days when we were still at high school.

In April I hosted my first IVC event of my own – I arranged a meal at Malaysian Delights and 9 people attended. I was really pleased as it all went well. I’ve got a nightclub evening coming up soon, so I’m looking forward to that. Last week I went to Quasar Elite (the laser-gun game) but I wasn’t very good at it – in fact my score was the lowest out of the whole group! I enjoyed it as it was a new experience for me, but I don’t think I’d be that bothered about going there again. At least I now know what it’s like, as I have been curious about it in the past. I didn’t really expect to be very good at it, but I wanted to give it a try.

2 weeks ago I was sick and I had to go home after being at work for just over half an hour. This was the second time I was ill in the space of a month. No-one else in my family caught this bug, so I’m not sure how I got it – it could’ve been something I ate. I felt very weak and lethargic for most of that weekend. I went to Felbrigg Hall Gardens with Terry, but we had to return home after less than an hour as I felt so tired and lacking in energy. There weren’t that many flowers in bloom anyway, but I did take a few photos.

On Wednesday it was Terry’s 65th birthday. We plan to go to Malaysian Delights (what yet again, I hear you cry!) tomorrow evening to celebrate.

On Thursday 28th May it will be my sister Suzanne and her fiance Paul’s wedding. Finding a dress to wear at the wedding is proving to be difficult so far; I rarely ever wear dresses these days, and the ones I tried on yesterday evening didn’t suit me. Suzanne has her hen night on 16th May, so I’m looking forward to that.

My new job has been going well, mostly. I’ve created several ad-hoc reports so far. This morning was very tense though – I completed a report to a very tight deadline. I wasn’t totally happy with the layout of it, but I thought I’d better send it out anyway in order to ensure I met the deadline. All the necessary data was there, although the report wasn’t very elegant or user-friendly. I had to create the report using a pivot table in Excel, and I’m not an expert in constructing pivot tables (yet), although I know enough to get by.
This morning, I received a phone call from the person to whom I sent the report. I wasn’t too worried about this, as I thought she was just going to ask me some questions about how to use the report. However, it actually turned out to be a complaint! :( The lady said that she wouldn’t be able to use the report to extract the figures she wanted, as the drop-down menus weren’t working correctly. All the figures were there, but it would be very time-consuming for her to get the high-level summaries with the report in its current format. She didn’t sound really angry, but she wasn’t very happy as she urgently needed the report to be ready for a meeting later in the afternoon.
She was quite senior – in fact she’s the head of a department. I was really nervous during the phone call and I could feel my voice was a bit shaky, and that made me feel embarrassed. I apologised for the problems with the report and told her that I would make it my top priority to put it right, and that I’d ask other co-workers for advice if necessary. She seemed a bit happier then, although she said she definitely needed the report by mid-day at the very latest.
Straight after the phone call, I told my manager what had happened, and he helped me to rebuild the report. He was very patient with me and he showed me exactly what to do, so I should be better at creating pivot tables in the future. The new version was a lot easier to use, as you can easily see the summarised data. I managed to get the revised version of the report sent out just after 11am. I felt so relieved!
When I came back from lunch, my inbox contained a thank-you email from the lady, and she said the new version of the report was much more user-friendly. I was very happy about that, and it helped to put my mind at rest.
On Tuesday and Wednesday morning I had a co-worker training me on how to do ad-hoc reports and I was “shadowing” her for most of the time. Unfortunately she had to go home at mid-day on Wednesday because she was ill, and she hasn’t been back since then. So I’ve been completing several ad-hoc reports on my own, although I have been asking other colleagues for advice on where to find the raw data when necessary. I probably haven’t had as much training as I should have done. I would’ve preferred to have had more training before I began handling actual customer requests on my own, but I don’t suppose there was much that could’ve been done about it. I do feel bad though, as I hate to feel that I’ve inconvenienced someone, especially someone who is quite senior within the company. In future when I’m creating a complex report, I think I’ll ask one of my co-workers to peer review it before I send it out, until I build up more experience. Maybe I’m being too harsh on myself, as I’ve only been in the job for a week so far.

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