The past month has been a good one. New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun, and the following week gave me a good chance to relax. The Wednesday after the New Year, gave me and many of my good friends from Sixth Form a chance to catch up, while scoring kills on each other in bouts of Halo 3. That was a lot of fun 
I was back to work at Phones 4U at the end of the week, finishing the last few days of my Christmas contract, which ended on the 13th. Last day went pretty poorly to be honest – apparently, sales don’t really pick up until March for PAYG phones. I did get a good seeing off though, so the day ended well. Still waiting to hear if I be re-contracted, but even if I don’t, it was a good experience. Although it does mean finding something new.
Went to see my parents and sister the week before my birthday, to see them for that and finally deliver my Dad’s Christmas present. He was throroughly pleased with his brand spanking new Xbox 360 and it happily complemented his new HDTV and surround sound system. Xbox 360 + full HD = mindblow So when I visit now, I’ll be sure to take home a few games to see them in all their glory!
I bought myself a nice new 24″ monitor for my birthday, a long wanted update to my humble 19″ of the past. The monitor is Samsung SM(Syncmaster)245b and is a real plus, in a number of ways. The first is the extra space on the screen to do things. I can be typing something out, while reading from a website, both on the same screen. The next is the colour on my screen is now properly calibrated, so their aren’t any washed out colours and everything is bright and beautiful 
Finally, is the increased resolution (max 1900×1200) and of course, the ability (in conjunction with my uber 8800gt graphics card) to play pc games in “HD” quality and at decent framerates. I can still manage to play Crysis on high (no AA) with a playable framerate. I should really write a review for this too… maybe some other time.
On my birthday, I received a nice sum of money (to help a little towards paying for my present), birthday cards from a number of people and numerous messages on facebook and through my phone, and I again thank everyone for those should they be reading. Uni that day was ok, not too bad, but not amazing. At the end of the day, the flatmates and I were going to go out, but decided to stay in and get drunk, and of course we all had a laugh. Didn’t get to sleep til 7.30 in the morning, but that’s to be expected on your birthday.
Speaking of sleeping, my brain still doesn’t understand the concept of morning, and I’m still trying to train it into believing that there are about 3 or 4 hours before the middle of the day. Going to be sleeping a lot earlier over the coming days (and weeks?).
Got things sorted with BT today. After calling three times; being cut-off mid-sentence in one call and redirected twice back to where I started in the other, I finally got through to someone that actually helped for a change. BT seriously need to get their act together where call centres are concerned (-__-)
The man I had on the phone explained to me so much, but in the end it took his supervisor “Charles” (yeah right) to be able to properly explain that my bill had been misprinted (obviously) and that the line rental charges were for not the previous months, but the coming three. They are, however, supposedly sending me a cheque for the £203 or so that they have debited from my account. I also cancelled the direct debits for phone and broadband, and will pay them when I’m good and ready and not have “surprises” landing on my bank statement.
I had my interview with StepStone at Reading (On behalf of Microsoft) on Tuesday. That went pretty well; getting there left me with a few close calls with regards to getting trains, however, but overall it went ok. Reading has the most useless town centre, due to traffic lights on every junction you can think of. So that made me late, even though I left the train station half an hour before the interview sessions at 3pm.
Luckily the interview session was specified at 3pm – 5pm, so I wasn’t late to my specific interview. The other bonus was that they were generally running late too and we didn’t end up starting until about half 3. The group of us there were shown a video – an introduction, so to speak, from previous interns showing what it’s like to work there. After the video, other previous interns were there to answer questions and, meanwhile, a number of us were taken to do the “video recorded interviews”. My interview was last, so by then I had had time to think about what to say. The interview itself was structured similarly to the telephone interview, so there weren’t any surprises as such. Overall it went OK, not amazing, not bad, so now I just have to wait 1-2 weeks while they finish the rest of the interviews, and filter us all out. If I do hear back, the assessment days will begin in the week commencing 23rd Feb.
I’ll be writing my review of the N800 tomorrow, ready to send back on Monday, as the two week trial is up. I think I’ll create a new section, so I can post the reviews there – if possible. I’ll have that done Tuesday at the latest, and will post it here sometime next week. Some of you may have noticed the photos appearing in the right column, ready to be used. Tomorrow must be a busy day, or I’ll feel like a bum for not doing anything. On the list is a haircut and that review among numerous other things.
Some important dates ahead in the coming month. The first two being Pancake day of course, and the start of Lent soon after. Haven’t thought of anything to give up yet, as I need something sensible. Giving up my computer is not, because I need it for assignments, contacting people and all the other stuff I do with it. The Xbox is a possibility. 40 days of none of my Xbox games though is a bit rubbish though. Looks like I’ll just have to have a think. Valentines day is also on it’s way, so I’m something magical is bound to happen… meh maybe.
So February’s on it’s way and it’s about 3 months to my exams. Woo. Hoo. I swear it doesn’t even feel like 08 yet and time has just flashed away. 4-5 months and I will be in a placement somewhere doing a 9-5 job. Weird. Well, in some ways, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll make a nice change from lectures and seminars, and may resemble something more… fun? As long as I’m coded some program, I’m sure to be happy. Just downloaded VS 2008 (Visual Studio) and am going to have a bash at coding another language, but this time a little more hardcore. I want to learn c++ and start coding some real awesome things for my N95 8GB, because it’s just begging me to use the built in accelerometer (a device that detects how the phone is oriented in 3D space – i.e. have you turned it on its side, or are you looking at it the right way up). I took a look at c++ earlier, and the basic concepts are similar to Java and C#, so I kinda have an advantage there already.
Last time I posted, the post deleted itself somehow and nothing showed up, which was rubbish. I have a copy this time, so here goes…
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