A Merry New Year and Happy Christmas and all that. I have spent my eating season once again in London with a fantastic Christmas lunch put on by some prominent Adelaide orphans and Im now preparing for New Year’s Eve with the folks in law to be (or some other more politically correct phrase). I still have two and a half weeks until returning to the muppet show and I hope it seems like an eternity, although give the current climate, the number of people I know out of contracts, and the exchange rate (2.06 english pounds to 1 aussie dollar?!?!), even the muppet show may not be such a bad place to be. (I reserve the right to change that opinion the first day back!)

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1 day until one month off from work. Did I say woohoo already? Woohoo. Probably the most mentally required break I’ve ever had!

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No, not those wonderful Jim Henson creations. I mean people you work with, or for. Muppets, if you will. I work for the head muppet (but I won’t call him Kermit, that would be insulting to my favourite frog). A team leader of a technical team, who dabbles in technical issues without any suitable technical knowledge, and seems to have been appointed blindly by someone who understands even less about the area than the appointee. A team leader who has no leadership skill, no personal touch and not the tiniest of instinct when it comes to being a leader. This is the man I work for. I have 8 more days. As Diana rightly point out, this is a good thing. Muppets (T-8)

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Tomorrow I have to take the Life in the UK test. I hopefully pass this and then provide the proof in my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain. I can understand why I should know about equal rights in the UK, when elections are held, what kind of democracy the UK has, and even how laws are passed, but for what reason do I need to memorise facts such as how many members there are of the Welsh Assembly, or what % of the population is Jewish/West Indian etc? Anyone? Relevance? Please? (I doubt most UK born and bred residents know those answers, but if you ask me who is top of the Premier League or what the UK interest rate is I’ve got you covered). Update: I passed thankfully!

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Rapidweaver does this for you, but if your building a site manually just discovered a cool option. It’s been around a good while but given I’m a very casual with my websites, I hadn’t seen it. The Enkoder form obfuscates your email address so it can’t be farmed by robots, protecting you from extra spam.

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Counting the clock down the December 19th. End of contract day, but no matter what happens I’ll be off for about a month anyway. Pity I won’t be able to fit a ski trip in there somewhere, will just have to wait till March!

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