Simpleweb.ie blog, day one. My new
upstart “web consultancy”. I just hope I have enough to eat and
have a roof over my head in the first year. Everything else will be a
bonus. Year two should hint at profit. Year three, I think I'll
retire to a beach house in Barbados. No, I don't know what a 'web
consultant' does either. We'll just have to wait and find out.
08:15
Jeez. What am I not missing by working
from home? Radio reports of a twenty two kilometer tail back on the
city's main M50 motorway. Fifty-five minute jam to hop 12 kilometers
of road. Usually I'd be out in that mess, heading to work. Not any
more! Not me. My present commute is reduced to a trip to the bathroom
in my slippers.
09:06
TO DO: Time to shower. Let the rest of
the world settle into their chairs for the time being. Enjoy the long
weekend? Yeah. Scones. Tea. Coffee. Chats. Then, ring to Eircom,
attempt to usher in a broadband connection, spend half the day on the
phone, then get forwarded to somewhere else. Then get nothing, I
expect.
09:44
Tea break. Flick on the radio. Never
listened to it in all me years in schools and cubicles. WTF? The nation is all frantic with
the moralising about some assisted-suicide case in the USA. I never
knew all this moral panic was going on! I never cared. Don't care
now.
10:35
A cavalcade out loud of about a dozen
emergency sirens driven at bottleneck speed around the bridges and
turns.
11:41
The number for broadband is 1800503303.
Eircom tell me that they won't be able to even look at it for a week.
Test the line and so on. Ports and that. Exchanges, engineers,
upgrades, emails.
11:58
It's pretty shitty, because everybody
in Eircom tells you a different story. That's if you can find someone
to speak with.
12:12
My home office on the third floor
overlooks the car park of neighbouring Brown's Hotel. For no
particular reason, I glance up from my laptop screen to see a
briefcase-toting redhead, tall and skinny, in a tan leather jacket
and tan slacks emerge from the rear exit and walk briskly in my
general direction towards his big shiny car. Taking a quick glance
around him, he spreads at the rear fender and, classy as you like,
whips it out there and then to hang and drain. I'm suddenly the unwilling snake-eye-witness to some serious grime. Sploshing sounds fill the
air, deepening as his hot piss pours out not more than five metres
from my ears. He sighs blissfully.
I'm absolutely eww-struck, but, drawing
upon my own not-inconsiderable experience of uresis and timing it to
mid-perfection, I rap my knuckles sharply on the window and duck
down, snickering. I sneak a peep in time to see our ginger gentleman
friend whip it in, tribbling notably, and glance ashamedly about the
hive of glass through which no water unobserved can pass all around him. Ka-chook, he hops in and puts his alloys into a wheelspin. I mean, come
on! The hotel bathroom is right there.
12:44
The “wait for a week” thing is not
really an option.
13:08
Sighs. My girlfriend is away again this
week. She's gone to Finland for a work conference. And she's stopping
off in London on her way back from Helsinki to see some old school
chums at the weekend. Travels with her work. And she travels with her
friends. Sometimes she even travels with me, her boyfriend of nearly
three years (when feeling whimsical, I suppose.) With the gridlocked economy
belching rate hikes, I can ill afford to eat out in London,
Helsinki or Paris, so-called “cheap flights” or not. I guess I'm
jealous of her freedom. She bought her house in the late nineties
before anybody heard of a property boom and long before I met her.
Really though, I'm pissed off that she has better things to do than
hang with me but if I moan about it, she mocks me and tells me I
sound like a girl. Which I do. Besides, I wonder and worry who does
she squeeze when she's away? Not me. I'm here squeezing nobody and
nothing. I hope she is too. Not, that is. Nobody, I mean. Grr.
13:56
CALLER TO TALK RADIO (animal trader):
We asked the council for a water supply for the horses once a month
at Smithfield Horse Fair. They say it's nothing to do with them
whatsoever and we should call the fire brigade.
14:39
Had a nap - good. Had some lunch and
what's good is I cleansed the microwave. Now I'm sitting here with a
silent land-line that's ready, willing and able to be activated and only
rudimentary mobile e-mail feeding off a card in my laptop. That's not
as good. I'm also trying to avoid a) Listening about assisted death
b) Doing the Revenue paperwork.
23:19
Nevertheless. Eventually got downtown and checked
out diamond rings and wireless gadget things. I'll have to get a
Nintendo DS, with dogs. At 99 easy E, it is priced to sell. One each
for me and Aoife. I just won't have time to play with it. And she's
hardly ever around to pair devices. Diamond rings six thousand plus.
Yikes! Three times my allocation that I had in mind, vaguely, I
dunno, WTF? The jeweller's assistant brought me upstairs into a nice
panelled room and all to show me some engagement rings that made me
feel like I was getting in over my head immediately. Could pay up to
10,000 Easies, easy, for a nice, overloaded, obnoxious one. The
classy shop assistant seemed to imply that I needed to think big, as
the potential for disappointment is never far away.
I could always put Aoife off another
while until my SSIA special investment savings scheme matures, if she
says 'Yes'. Or "shop around". (If she says 'No'.) I got a
brochure, and when she sleighs on into town from her Nordic soujourn,
I'll see what size her cutie fingy. (After I warm her Arctic fox.)
23:48
23:48
The day went well. I bought a pre-owned bicycle for cash to replace the one that was stolen from the basement. Which replaced the one robbed on Grafton street. My debit card didn't work in the Tesco. You win some, you lose some. I think I'll just get rid of it.
I meet Declan here and there outside of the work situation. Fellow web pro, but he's more of a software developer than a user interface designer. He lives by Blackhorse Parade.
It so happens, he goes to Tesco late like me, when it's quiet and that, after 10pm, taking advantage of the 24-hour opening to skulk in and out. With his similar light-footprint, living-alone and healthy shopping-basket, and his IT business.
We chatted a bit, talking shop in the supermarket. He wished me luck in my new venture. Said to call him if I needed anything. I'm ahead of him in some respects. He's ahead of me in others. I know more about ecological detergents (It's called 'Ecover'). He's got a successful software company (in other words, he can afford Ecover). He's the most unassuming guy in the world, but the one word of advice he proffered about starting a new business is to “hang in there” as long as I can. I'll try to remember that.
