Il y a beaucoup de, erm, News.

Okay, so I've not updated for a while. The act of writing an update for over here is influenced by my motivation, and my motivation is partly influenced by my working life. Once I tell you that over the past two weeks my working life has been abrading my motivation slowly and painfully (with a rasp, perhaps), you'll understand why I haven't updated for a while.

The last thing I mentioned over here was the Unit, and its construction over the May Bank Holiday weekend. It's still not entirely complete, but now all that remains is the addition of two glass doors, which I'm guessing will have to be specially made. And perhaps a bit more woodstain needs to be applied in areas I've had to hack at to recess hinges, etc.

There have, gradually, been developments on the work front. For starters, most of last week was spent floundering in a lack of systems knowledge as I attempted to track down problems in systems that even Dr. Frankenstein would have shied away from creating. The week before that is but a hazy memory, other than the words "Sarbanes-Oxley".

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 is a major piece of US legislation concerning Financial Auditing, penned directly as a result of the Enron mess and other natural progressions of capitalism to its logical and ultimately corrupt conclusion. It has a big impact on IT, because of the role IT plays in both facilitating financial transactions and providing an audit trail of such transactions. The client for the account I currently work on has now started to address SOX issues, working towards the first SOX audit at the end of this year. This has lead to much mumbling and grumbling amongst the workers here who already feel they are weighed down by bureaucracy, and much making of SOX/socks puns. Both of which started to drive me up the wall almost immediately.

I'm not sure how much I've said about prospective job opportunities that have been knocking around. There's one in Coventry, on an account for a different subsidiary of the same company as the account I currently work on, then one out Leicester way for an account I will refer to as Snap! (work it out for yourself, I'm not naming clients).

As the Coventry one is ultimately the same company as my current account, I can only assume that the lack of any developments since I first heard about the job 3 weeks ago is largely down to them being as bogged down by SOX as we are.

The Snap! one has had a little more happening. I have an interview with the account people this afternoon. I'm not entirely sure how formal the interview will be, or how many people have been shortlisted, and I still only have a vague idea of what the job entails, but it sounds promising.

I saw the penultimate episode of Angel on Friday, and though the show seemed to be floundering for a few episodes, it seems my patience has paid off, because all is now set for what will hopefully be one hell of a send-off. Angel has always had fairly understated season finales and in some ways I hope it stays that way. Let's just say that the episode title for the finale, Not Fade Away, sounds startlingly apt.

And I got Season 4 of Babylon 5 on DVD last week, finally. Along with the whole of Firefly on DVD. This was part of a package from Amazon, which had been pending awaiting the publication of Absolution Gap, by Alastair Reynolds.

The previous book I was reading was, for the record, Empire of Bones by Liz Williams. It took me a while to get into this, but in the end it was worth it. I found the second half quite gripping and the ending didn't leave me disappointed.

So I've now started Absolution Gap. So far, so good, although the concept of the "scrimshaw suit" has me shuddering every time it is mentioned. Still, without a dark edge it wouldn't be the same book. Like Revelation Space there's a fair amount of jumping around the time-line, which I have no doubt will converge as the plot threads do. It's less disorienting than it was when reading RS, possibly because I know to ignore it up to a point and just take it as a hint as to how the threads will converge.

I guess the last bit of news is the car. I've decided it's time to change my trusty old Polo. I've also decided I want to change it for a trusty newer Polo, and by the look of it I can afford a 2000 or 2001 one, depending on if I decide to get a 1.4 or not (which I think I should, given that it should be more fuel-efficient for all the commuting). Also, buying Parker's Guide at the weekend has suggested that I should be able to get about a grand for my old Polo, despite of the state of some of the paintwork (there's a massive patch on the bonnet where the lacquer has flaked off). I'm trying not to get too optimistic about what I will manage to obtain, and getting anything does depend on my getting a bonus this year (which hopefully I will find out about this week - next week at the latest), but it's difficult not to at the very least come up with a ball-park figure of the number of chickens, even if I don't actually count them.

There's plenty in the news I could rant about, but I'll be restrained just this once.