We had a lovely Bank Holiday weekend in Herefordshire, including the lovely Sunday walk around Symonds Yat Here are some photos of the stunning views across some of England’s finest countryside.

So as we’re in lockdown, I contemplated writing a long wordy how to cope style blog, but I’m not a lifestyle coach and I’d be hypocritical if I started spouting how to stay sane stuff, so instead here’s some pics from last years trip to the Lake District, a memory of recent good times! For more info on the Lake District National Park click here

A little while ago I started to pull together our Instagram feeds so we could share our cat pics more, I’m sitll working on some issues in the plugin I have, but here’s a snapshot below. for the aggregated page (which for some reason won’t update) click here

A quick timeline for you:

• April 2015 – Change job from BMS (as Infrastructure Manager) to Magna Interiors (IT Support Analyst)
• 31st August 2015 – Magna Interiors acquired by Grupo Antolin
  • http://www.grupoantolin.com/en/grupo-antolin-completes-acquisition-magna-interiors-offer-complete-interior-car
• November 2015 – Personal decision made to start looking for a different job – bring on the LinkedIn messages/ Recruiter calls!
• 7th December 2015 –  Job Offer from Dot Net IT (as Infrastructure Technician) – closer to home, slightly different role
• 4th January 2016 – Day 1 at Dot Net IT, have a good feeling about this one.
• 1st June 2016 – Surprise announcement of Epicor’s acquisition of Dot Net IT
  • http://www.epicor.com/UK/Press-Room/News-Releases/Epicor-Acquires-Dot-Net-IT-to-Accelerate-Epicor-ERP-Deployments-and-Expand-Cloud-Offerings.aspx 
• 6th November 2016 – Finally getting around to writing this post.

The statistics for you:

• 1 year 6 months 20 days since last day at BMS
• 4 different companies since then (due to takeovers)
• 3 different job titles in that time
• 1 car, 1 house, 1 wife, 1 cat

Is there a point to all this: Yes, I have been mulling these statistics for a little while now.The last 18 months have been interesting to say the least! Whilst the Magna role didn’t quite work out how I hoped, it did give me some vital real world experience, as did my time at BMS. In fact putting those 2 roles together, with a little of my Uni/IBM life on top and you’re close to how I started this year when I joined Dot Net. The big change for me this year was moving from internal IT (supporting the company you work for) to external IT (supporting customers of the company you work for). And initially this is where all my apprehensions lied. Over time I have begun to face my fears and anxiety when it comes to dealing with people with problems. Normally I just went around fixing servers and systems, not really dealing with the end user so much. Now I feel much more competent at dealing with the people, not just the computer. On top of that I’ve had the opportunity to develop my application installation and support skills, not just ERP, but with VMWare, Hyper-V, Windows Server, SQL Server, IIS, Veeam, SharePoint (to name a few). I also got back to some proper hardware installation work, similar to my IBM days, although this time primarily Dell enterprise level hardware, with some HP. Another major change for me, kind of an aside the customer facing work, is the travelling around. My current base office is 1.3 miles from home, if it wasn’t for the big hill I would walk it! So if I’m based almost from my own back garden how have I put so many miles on so many vehicles… wait for it… more statistics:

• 15 Customer locations
• 2 Company locations
• 9 Vehicles
• lots of miles (haven’t counted due to multiple vehicles!)

It has been a huge personal achievement for me this year to come out of my shell, leave the house at 5am, drive to a random part of the country and introduce myself as the bloke that’s going to make your systems work. Whether that’s hardware, applications, ERP or just a meeting to plan it all in, I’ve done it all this year! So back to my original title for this rather long post. It has been a year of two halves… it started out assisting companies with their hardware and software needs; developing an end to end solution including design, purchasing, installation, training and long term maintenance. The second half has been less of that and more ERP installation, 3rd-line tech support, high-value projects, high-risk projects and everyone’s favorite; high priority/escalated issues. Yes now I can finally call myself a Technical Consultant, and it means I get anyone and everyone with performance issues, installation issues, and additional installs! I won’t bore you all with the details of the day job, but suffice to say I cover a lots of different aspects of technical work across many customers and many industries, it sure does exercise the brain! To come back to an earlier bullet point above, in all the time that I’ve had a couple of jobs and been to a few different places there’s one thing that has stayed the same, and that is home! Nothing beats coming home to the wife after a long hard slog on the M40 or when I left the office 7 minutes ago with no traffic. The reason I put that in the list is because no matter what I do, where I am one day to the next or who I’m working for and with, I will always need and want my home comforts. No words I put on here can thank Hannah enough for putting up with me, but I am forever grateful. Thanks for reading, I’m hoping 2017 will be just as exciting    

Happy New Year to all, 2016 IS going to be a good year, I have a feeling! I am more than happy to say goodbye to 2015, compared to the previous few years it wasn’t one of stunning highlights, that said I did embark on some very adventurous challenges and came through them all with new knowledge, experience and determination. Hence the desire to make 2016 a year to remember! I made a decision at the end of last year to re-evaluate my career prospects and after getting on the books at 10+ recruitment companies, and having numerous conversations about where I was at, where I wanted to be, and what was needed to achieve those things, I realised it was more of a confidence thing than an ability issue. Confidence is one of those things that everyone possesses when in a comfortable environment, needless to say my last role never quite felt settled or comfortable, although I have made some great friends, got involved with some top spec systems and was involved in numerous challenges which we came out of smiling (eventually)! Without being comfortable we struggle to add anything to ourselves that makes us noticed, respected and useful in the eyes of those above. Throughout my life I have known where my natural abilities lie, and I have always had a crystal clear view of what I eventually want to end up doing/being… unfortunately low self esteem and lack of confidence has perhaps held me back at times, not having the guts to go that one step further and push those above to allow me to progress. Somehow I managed to find out about a company in my home town who do exactly what I wanted to be doing from the age of about 10! (I say somehow, it’s a complex riddle of friends of friends etc. It really is a “not what you know, but who you know” situation!) A few emails and an interview later and I was offered a job 1.3 miles from home, doing exactly the kind of thing I thought I could be good at! Roll on a few weeks, including the Christmas break, and on January 4th 2016 I started my first day at my new company. On Day 2 I was given my first customer, by the second week (last week at time of writing) I had had brought my first bit of money into the business on the back of liaising with my new customer, and had visited another customer, who will be keeping me very busy for the foreseeable future. Already I have made that jump from “running internal infrastructure” to “design, install, manage and maintain infrastructures for multiple business” – in 2 weeks! – All because somewhere deep inside myself I found that little bit of confidence to say “Yes I’d love to come for an interview”, “Yes I’d love to join your company”, and “Sorry, I have enjoyed my time but have found another opportunity I’d like to pursue”. Leaving a job is difficult, starting a new job is more difficult, those who know me well may think I make it look easy, but I promise you it isn’t! On top of the learning new things, meeting new colleagues, following new rules etc. you also have the learning how to fit your personal life in again. Fitting it in around new hours, days out in London etc. can be draining at first (trust me it’s a Sunday lunchtime and I’m still in my PJs!), but I am fortunate that my home life is as stable as possible, a loving wife who understands what I do, why I do it and how it affects what we can and cant do, extended family close enough who we can drop in on last minute just to say hi and use their kettle (Thanks Mom!), Family close enough via Internet that you can speak to them any time of day for a pep talk or just to say hi (Thanks Dad) – Life is great, 2016 will be great and I hope everyone can improve on 2015 whether it was a good one or a bad one is irrelevant, make this one count!

It has been 6 months since my last blog post on here! This is not the only thing that has been neglected in recent times, my entire online presence has become somewhat muted as I have thrown myself into the new role outlined in the previous post. 6 months is a long time in anyone’s career, and that is no different for me. I left the world of BMS and my lovely office with glass desk, leather chair and Alienware PC back in April, to join the world of Automotive Manufacturing. To some this would seem a strange move, why change from something that I enjoyed so much to something that carries a lot of risk? The answer is simple, a change was needed, I was in a comfortable job, but there was no innovation, no 21st century drive to have a best in class network and systems to rival those of our competitors. JD Edwards was perhaps not for me, I understand the basics of it, maybe (probably) I could’ve become an expert in time, but as support for my newer ideas lacked I decided it was time for the change. Then came the IT Support Analyst in a 200,00sq ft factory opportunity, a role which so far has provided me with a fantastic insight into how you should and should not run certain types of systems. There is a mixture of world-class systems mixed with outdated ideologies that just about work, but outside of automotive I’m not so sure. Things I love about this role are the technologies in use, all the Enterprise level Cisco networking, VMWare clustering, latest versions of Server OSes etc. I also have some great colleagues, some genuinely awesome people who help make the transition that little bit easier. I also enjoy being part of a proper IT team, I’ve done the one-man-band in an office (which has its place) and I really enjoy being a member of a team where the majority have more experience in the industry than I do, and where we can all bounce ideas around and come up with some nifty solutions to what can be very complex problems. In short, over the last 4 1/2 years since I left university I’ve had the opportunity to really develop my IT knowledge, my team skills, my leadership skills and my overall personality, I am a much more rounded person when I combine everything from these 2 roles, and even with the year at IBM during my degree. I don’t know what will come next, I have a great understanding of where I am, and I have a very good idea of where I want to be. Of course the 2 don’t completely marry up but that’s what ambition is all about.