Czajkowski

It’s hard to believe I’m now in the UK 5 weeks, it’s been a whirl wind month with lots to do and see and that’s just the house hunting! Looking back at it now it’s hard to believe I got on a plane less than 24 hours after I got home from UDS and went looking at houses I must have been mad.  I was rather fortunate that a lovely dear friend and her family collected me from Heathrow as I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten from there down to Farnham.

The weekend I arrived it was Guy Fawkes night, aka build a bonfire and set it on fire! So being the token tourist we went to the Farnham session lead by candles up a hill and into the grounds of a castle, it was rather pretty and something different to experience.

I viewed a few places to live that week, some places were dives! worse than any student accommodation I’d ever seen and others were fine but you’d never even hear back from them, rather like job hunting all over again but for a place to live! I’ve eventually found a place to live sharing with 6 others from all over the place, but one of the house mates works in redhat who uses debian, what are the flipping chances eh!

So I moved to the UK to work for Sirius, and it’s been an excellent move and proved to be rather interesting, some of the things I’m working on now is organising the UK ODF Plugfest to happen in February, help organise an education conference happening in April to do with open source and education. Behind the scenes I’m working with some education groups and other types of groups in the UK talking to them about using open source. Everyone in the office has been so friendly and helpful which makes things a lot easier! Having a boss that is understanding when it comes to booking time off to go back to Ireland due to flight costs or snow issues is a bonus and something I’m not used to at all so it is appreciated.

Things I’ve had to get used to, STERLING! and not converting it to euro or go crazy at prices, trains, how they run and how to get home and to work via them when they don’t run or stop elsewhere! I am fascinated by the train folks, the people who read on the train standing up, answering emails, or applying make up, how they do this when the train is moving and randomly stops is beyond me.

I don’t know what the next 5 weeks or 5 months will hold for me in the UK, but it’s going to be interesting no matter what and I’m going to enjoy it and meet some new people and get to meet others I’ve been talking to via irc or ml , we plan on organising a Ubuntu UK rugby pub day! so do keep posted!

What a day! It’s been pretty sweet from the moment I walked in the door to finishing this evening I’ve had a great day! Not many places you can say that really. Last Friday I boarded a plane to move to the UK for a new adventure in working with a company I’ve been interested in joining for some time.

This morning I started working for Sirius here in the UK based in Weybridge.  I’ll be working in Marketing Open Source to people/organisations/groups  for the coming months and I’m really excited.

When asked what OS I wanted to use at work, it was rather simple for me to say Ubuntu, and folks to nod and chat and say what OS they used.  This is in stark contrast to any other place I’ve worked at before so made me smile and feel right at home there! Which always helps when starting a new job.  Played around with KDE before I wiped a machine and put a fresh install of Lucid on. Happy days!

The plan for the week is for me to review and go over past marketing strategies and come up with some ideas on things to do and attend or even better organise (which is one of my passions!)

I’ll keep folks updated on the progress and on any events I plan on attending here in the UK, looking forward to meeting more people over here now!

Really glad I made the move and joined Sirius, it’s going to be a fun few months ahead!

Back in April of this year I was made redundant from my job as a Software Test Engineer, it was a bit of a shock and it came out of the blue so was rather in shock.  I tweeted that day I’d been made redundant and was looking for work and I was rather amazed at the responses I got. All good!  But one of interest was Mark Taylor of Sirius sending me a direct message asking would I be interested in working in the UK.  I didn’t need to think about it I knew I did and wanted something different.  I met with Mark and the team at Sirius the following week as I was heading over to Oggcamp anyway.

Fast forward to last week and  I get a mail out of the blue from Mark asking me would I like to work for Sirius.  He explained to me what the role would entail and I knew instinctively it would be great and suited me.  I will be working in marketing, meeting journalists, organising events and attending events all with the aim to promote open source.

When I come back from UDS I’ll be going across the water and moving to the UK and I’m really looking forward to it. Once I sort out a place to live and get settled in I’ll be mailing the UK list and seeing if anyone wants to meet up for an Ubuntu hour be warned now I’m in close proximity I’ll be able to go to more events but also help out more.

SO it seems to collect a laptop is actually a lot of hassle! Go Figure! It was meant to be collected this morning by courier MS Logistics  (I shall add a site link when I get the correct one). Was then meant to be after lunch. Few phone calls hours later, it was meant to be collected by 5pm.

Rang the ever so charming folks at laptopsdirect at 4:45 and was told it would collected by 5pm. No show. Rang back again at 5:10 and was put on hold, the call dropped and rang straight back only to find them closed! So rang the courier to see what the story was, seemingly the courier was sent to the office so in theory my laptop should be gone…. it’s not!

I was promised a phone call back within 5 minutes to get clarification. No call. (seeing a pattern here….) Rang back again, the guy who was due to ring me back  had gone home! I asked the operator at the end of the line did she know if my laptop was going to be collected today, she said no they were closed till Monday. I then asked did she happen to know her website address as I wanted to look them up, she’d no idea of it!!!

So after 15 minutes of a charming conversation as to the whereabouts of the driver that was to ring me and the fact that the Irish office was seemingly closed I was promised a call back……

….. still waiting

I’d been looking for a new laptop for a while as my last one a Sony Vaio decided that it liked to blank screen but remain on most of the time, I rang Sony about this and was told I’d have to pay €850 for this to be repaired as the connection had gone and needed a new screen. —– You can buy a new laptop for flip sake for that price!!!!

So on to the magical internet and had a look around to see what was out there. Found a few nice online stores and to be fair there is a great selection out there. I finally settled upon Laptopsdirect. On Monday I ordered a Toshiba Satellite Pro A20-1PP Pentium Dual Core T2330. It looked good and did what I needed it to do.

Yesterday (20/02/2008) @ 16:00 it arrived at work. I was like a kid! Opened it up, powered it on – FAIL!

Not joking, got a couple of the lads to have a look and see what could be done, error – OS install corrupt please try again.

Got straight onto Laptopsdirect, told them the story. I was to fill in a form that would be sent to be straight away and arrange for a pick up. I thought this was pretty good.

On closer inspection, the laptops spec I ordered was not the one that was delivered andon even further inspection, the display had dead pixels.
One hour later no sign of the form, rang again, got onto another chap, he told me how to get the form online. (could have told me that in the first place) rang up afterwards to make sure they had received it. Was told to wait as it had to be cleared by a manger.

Now here’s the weird thing, they would collect the laptop within 72 hours, and 24 hrs from the time it was collected give me a new one. I asked could the new one not be delivered when the old one was being collected….. No. their courier did not support that. What a pile of cock! and more inconvenience to me.

So today, I’m waiting to hear from them as to when they will collect it from me. I emailed as I’d not heard anything about a collection date or time only to be told it would be tomorrow before they could collect it. (email 21/02/08 @10:57)More pain.

I have emailed back at 11:03 (21/02/08)to say I was not happy with this arrangement as that means the earliest I’ll get a replacement laptop is monday pending the sales people ringing me to find an alternative.

Shall keep you posted!

21/02/08 @12:25 Email has not been replied to nor have sales folks ruung to discuss alternatives for me to order

21/02/08 @ 13:24 Rang Customer services (joke!) Asking when they’d be collecting my laptop, Friday it would seem would be the earliest they could possibly do. Meaning, they get it Monday, and only then could the sales guys take an alternative order from me and delivery by Wednesday/Thursday. Trying to explain this to the person on the other end and her not seeing a problem with this was frustrating, if they could send a laptop to me and collect the one here it would make life easier and make more sense. Complete and utter PITA!

Gone with getting a refund from this crowd, which I don’t get till the laptop is back in the UK.. Back to the drawing board, maybe next time I’ll buy from a shop where I can see it working in front of me, but there is no way I’d buy from this place again.