Martin W Smith

I can’t believe this is only the beginning of week 2, it feels like we’ve been stuck in for months now.

Today followed the same pattern as the last week, I get up work, exercise, online training, read and watch TV.

For work I have a new piece of to do which is actually quite interesting and is allowing me to use my Python skills in Jupyter Notebook for data analysis. Before lunch I went for a jog to complete week 4 of Couch to 10k. I’m not really enjoying it if I’m honest, I don’t like jogging. It’s a good way to burn calories though.

After work Hailey and I did a pub like quiz on Zoom and Kahoot with some friends, it was a bit of fun and a good distraction for an hour. After that I wanted to have a go of Call of Duty on my Xbox, but as usual there was a new mandatory update, so I couldn’t play it. I really like the Xbox, but I get sick of updates every time you try to play a game. I can’t just play when I want.

I completed another Datacamp course tonight, I think there are 10 left to do in the Data Science Track.

That’s it for another day, join me tomorrow for another exciting installment of my life in lockdown.

It was my turn to get up with the youngest this morning while Hailey had a lie in. We’re both really lucky because our kids aren’t early risers, so most people would consider my wake up time of 9.30 a lie in too. I was actually up before Lucie, probably because of the clocks going forward.

I made Lucie breakfast and we played a few games of Barbie UNO that she got for her birthday. Then while she was watching on her ipad I did some more courses on Datacamp.

In the afternoon, I went to our local shop to get a few bits we needed and managed to get some loo roll finally. We were starting to run out. Hailey and my eldest Nat went for a jog. They are doing Couch to 10k too, but are about 6 weeks ahead of me. They’re out for about an hour. While they were out I did some exercise in the house. I’ve been doing push ups, using an app that supposed to build you up to doing 100. Today I did 64, not in one go, but in sets of between 14 and 16. I mixed in some speed rope skipping and kettle bells.

In the evening we watched the new version of Lady and the Tramp on Disney+. I didn’t enjoy it at all, but my wife and girls did. I can’t say I like the original that much. This one was much the same, but somehow they managed to add nearly 40 minutes to the runtime. Way too long for a kids film at nearly 2 hours.

Once the kids went to bed Hailey and I continued to binge watch Friday Night Dinner, it’s nice to actually watch something together for a change.

Summary of Week 1

One week in lockdown and we’re all still alive and well. It hasn’t been too bad to be fair. The kids have done well to keep up with their school work and Hailey has done well to keep the kids on schedule.

I worked from home fairly regularly before all this so it hasn’t been too much of an issue for me. I have a desk setup in a spare bedroom where I do my work. It can be quite challenging at times to communicate with colleagues when you can’t see them face to face. It’s something we’re just going to have to get used to.

I’ve done some form of exercise everyday this week and plan to do the same next week. Apart from on Friday, I’ve managed to stick to my diet pretty well. I’m aiming to lose 2 lbs this week.

Plan for Week 2

My plan for next week is mostly more of the same, work, exercise, online Python/Data Science training and reading. I still haven’t finished the book I’ve been reading, but I’ve only got about 40 pages left. I want to have that book finished on Monday and start something new. I think I need to do something a bit creative next week as well. I might try and take some photos or maybe have a go at drawing again or something.

Stay tedious, stay safe.

Apparently it’s Saturday, the only reason I know is because my alarm didn’t go off this morning. I had a long lie in this morning, Hailey got up with the youngest. I’ll get up tomorrow morning while she has a lie in. Supposedly the clocks go forward tonight, I’m not sure what difference it makes.

I went for my jog this afternoon, this is Day 2 of Week 4 of Couch to 10k. The last 5 minutes were horrible, I think I’m going to struggle massively next week. I’m back on the diet today after the cheat day yesterday. I actually look forward to my diet days because I always over indulge and end up feeling ill.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Hailey and I watching multiple back to back episodes of Friday Night Dinner while the kids were on the trampoline or on Facetime with their friends.

I finished another Datacamp course tonight, I’m doing the Data Science track and have completed 9 courses with 12 to go. I’ve not done as much reading the last couple of days as I should have.

This evening we watched more Friday Night Dinner, we are now half way through Series 3. Rock n roll baby!!

See ya tomorrow losers.

Today is weigh in day and I’ve lost 1 pound, whcih is the lowest loss I’ve had for a while. It was to be expected though after the chinese takeaway we had on Saturday. I’ve now lost 2 stone 3 lbs in total. I allow myself a cheat on weigh in day, so I’ve had 3 hot cross buns. We are now about to have a Domino’s Pizza, although right now I feel a bit sick.

Hailey, my wife went out to Asda today to do not only our shopping, but my Mum and stepdad’s shopping too. Apparantly there was queue outside but it went down quite quickly and everyone was keeping their distance. There was plenty on the shelves and she got enough supplies for a week, still no bog roll though. We’ve probably still got enough loo roll to last another week.

Tonight the new series of Friday Night Dinner starts, so Hailey and I have started watching the old series again. We watched all of Series 1 and 2 episodes of series 2. It’s a great TV series.

Will be back tomorrow with more banal rubbish.

I’m sorry I lied, nothing exciting has happened today, it was pretty much the same as yesterday. Although last night I did manage to buy a few bits in the local Co-op, that might be considered exciting these days.

I did Week 4, Day 1 of Couch to 10k. It’s already starting to get harder, I’ve never been much of a long distance runner even when I was young and skinny. I was more of a sprinter back in the day. I completed it all the jogging parts without stopping, which is the main thing. Tomorrow is my weigh day, I’m not expecting much of a loss as we had a Chinese takeaway on Saturday for Mother’s Day.

I spent a bit of time today helping my eldest daughter with her Maths, the only subject I’m any good at. A lot of what she’s doing though I’ve had to google so I can understand it.

I’m still reading the same book, it’s getting to more complex topics, so I’m having to read it quite carefully to understand it. The Datacamp videos are working again so I’ve done some more of the training, I’m learning some really useful techniques.

I didn’t mention it the other day, but on Tuesday I watched the first two episodes of The Mandalorion on Disney+. Like all stuff Star Wars, I kind of enjoyed it, it’s not great by any means, but watchable. I think Series 7 of Brooklyn 99 starts tonight, this is one of my favourite TV series. I’ve really been looking forward to it.

That’s it for today, back tomorrow with more riveting action from my house. Stay in, stay safe, don’t believe blog titles.

The problem with doing a daily blog when you can’t really leave the house is that nothing much changes from day to day. I have my schedule now as follows :

7.30am Get Up and make a coffee
7.45am Start work
10.00am Make another coffee
12.00pm Go for a run or take dog for a walk
1.00pm Have yet another coffee
2.00pm Daily call with work colleagues
2.30pm Lunch
5.00pm Finish work and start some online training
6.00pm If I haven’t been for a run I’ll do some exercise in the house ie Push ups and speed rope etc
6.30pm until bedtime read, write blog, watch TV or play on X-box and have dinner

It’s not at all exciting, but keeps me busy. All of that is inter mingled with helping the kids with their school work. I’ve also pressure washed the trampoline so the girls can use that again.

I’m managing to stick to my diet, although all I’ve had for lunch the past 2 days is 2 boiled eggs. We need to go shopping really, but we don’t really want to go to the supermarket. There are no slots free for delivery’s for the next few weeks either. I am keeping up with the exercise however.

The Datacamp website is being a bit buggy today, which is hampering my online training a bit, but I’m still managing to make progress. I’m also still reading the same book that I’ve been reading all week, I’m currently about half way through it. I want to try and make a big dent in it tonight though.

Tomorrow I can do it all again, yay!

Last night our mighty leader Boris Johnson announced to the country that we would be put into lockdown. No going out unless absolutely neccessary, for work, one walk a day or to get food or medicine. All non essential shops are to close.

This morning I went for run 3 of week 3 of the couch to 10k down the Worth Way near my house. I only saw a couple of other people out, but we kept our distance from each other. I’m running out of my usual snacks so, keeping to the Keto diet is going to be tough unless we go shopping soon. I’ve managed to avoid eating the biscuits we have in the cupboard, the kids are eating them all for a change.

I’m still reading the Statistics without Tears book, it’s not a long book, but I’m not a fast reader and I’ve been working. I hope to have it finished by the end of the week. I’ve also been making progress on the Data Science Datacamp track, what I’ve learnt from the book so far is coming in handy with the courses.

My wife has been working hard to keep the kids on schedule with their school work. The girls did the Joe Wicks exercise video on youtube the last 2 mornings. They’ve been really good and still working hard even though they aren’t at school.

Disney+ launched today, so there’s more stuff to watch in the downtime. I’ve left them to watch High School Musical while I write this and continue my online courses. I might treat myself to an episode of The Mandalorian later.

Improving Body and Mind

These are interesting times to say the least. Here in the UK we are still in the first few weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic and for now I will be spending a lot of time at home with my family. I am self employed and luckily for me my primary client is still going ahead with the project I am working on for them. At least for the time being anyway, there is no certainty ever, but least of all right now.

While I’m still healthy and able to work from home, I want to make good use of the time not spent commuting. I need to lose some weight for a start. I’ve already lost 2 stone since January, but I want to continue my weight loss. My plan is to lose a further 2.5 stone. A couple of weeks ago I started the Couch to 10k program and I’m half way through week 3. Assuming we don’t go in to full lock down, I plan to continue that, obviously avoiding other people while out on the runs. I also skip using a speed rope and do some basic body weight exercises. I’ve ordered some resistance bands to add a bit more to my home workouts.

Sticking to my diet is either going to be easy or hard depending on what food we can get from the supermarkets. I’ve been following a low carb diet which has really been working for me. I hope to continue with that, unless carb heavy foods are the only things we can get, in that case I will just control the number of calories I consume.

As far as my mind is concerned, I plan to finish the the Data Science courses that I started on Datacamp and read more of my backlog of books. I’m currently reading Statistics without Tears by Derek Rowntree.

I also plan to keep this blog updated daily with how the diet, exercise and learning is coming along.

I started this blog back in 2009 in the hope of documenting some of my projects and having a place to store code snippets and ideas. I ended up writing 8 posts in 2 years. I’m planning to resurrect the blog for 2018 and posting to it regularly this time. We shall see how that plan goes over the coming weeks.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I thought I’d write an update on what’s been going on in my life in the past year.

The Good/Bad Old Days

Up until last August (2010) I had been working for the same company (although with different divisions and multiple name changes) for over 9 years. The company I worked for was a large multi national Aerospace and Defence firm, with an office close to where I live. I’d previously been working in London and the commute was getting a bit much, so I took a bit of a pay cut to work closer to home. The job started off well, I got involved in a lot of projects and learnt lots of new skills. Eventually though things started to change, I got insourced to another division and things just went downhill from there. I stayed because I had a family and the job was close to home and it was just easier to stay. I wasn’t happy but I was still learning new skills and there were promises of promotions and pay rises in the future. Each year though the pay rises got smaller and the promotions never came, dispite my efforts. I was working hard and producing excellent results, but there was always some reason why I couldn’t be promoted this year.

In April of last year it all came to a head when yet again I didn’t get the promotion I was promised even though we had just completed a major project that I had really put my heart and soul into. I had really stepped up to the mark for this project, taking on a lot of extra responsibility and really taking a lead role. Dispite all this when a lot of my colleagues who worked on the same project were getting bonuses and I got nothing. This was when I decided it was time to take the plunge and move on, nothing was going to change where I was so there was no use complaing about it, I had to do something about it myself.

Around about the same time the company also announced redundancies and that I had been put on the at risk list. To be honest there were a lot of other people who were more likely to go than me so I didn’t really think that I would be made redundant, but it still gave me another reason to get out.

Time for a Change Me Thinks

I started looking on the job sites and getting my CV updated, I soon realised how under paid I was for my level of experience, which made me even more determined than ever to find a new job. I initially looked at just the permanent jobs, I’d thought about contracting in the past, but thought it too risky now that I had a family to take care of. Out of interest though I had a look at the contract vacancies to see what was out there and what kind of rate I would be looking at. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I knew contracting paid well, but I didn’t realise how well. This was when I had a change of heart and decided that I would open up my search to include contract positions as well as permanent. I still had a job then so I wasn’t in any hurry and if I did get made redundant I would get a payout that would last me a few months without a job.

I submitted my CV to a few of the job sites and applied for some jobs, both permanent and contract. I got a bit of interest, mostly for permanent roles, but I had really started to warm to the idea of contracting. I had started to look into contracting and realised that it would suit me down to the ground, I wouldn’t be tied down to the one company, I’d be able to get involved in different projects and I would get paid better. I knew there would be risks ie. no job security, no holiday or sick pay or any other benefits, I could be out of a job for long periods of time between contracts. I reasoned that as I was getting paid a lot more than I was I could put enough money aside so that if I was out of work for a while I would still have enough to live on while I found my next contract. I’ve got quite a wide range of skills so I wasn’t partiularly limited on the roles I could apply for, so I concentrated my search on contract positions. At first I didn’t seem to have much luck, I put this down to my CV, so I rewrote it several times and started to tailor my CV for the job I was applying for. Eventually I started to get more calls from agencies but my being in a permanent position with a months notice really hampered me. Firstly because of the months notice, a lot of contract positions are looking for an immediate start so that put me out of the running for most of the jobs I applied for. Secondly because I wasn’t already a contractor, but a permanent employee wanting to move into contracting, I didn’t have the right experience.

Nice Rolls!

After applying for a lot of jobs, I eventually got an interview with Rolls Royce Motors, it was just a telephone interview but the job spec seemed to match my skill set well. The interview only lasted about half an hour but I thought it had gone well. That same day I had a call from the agency offering me the job and I accepted and they emailed me the contracts for me to sign.

This was great I, my first contract and a good daily rate, pretty much doubling my take home pay at the time, but I didn’t sign the contract straight away. The only downside was that the contract was only for 10 weeks, it was a bit of a risk leaving my permanent position for a job that was only going to last 2.5 months, I had to think it through carefully. After much consideration I decided to go for it, I could have been made redundant in the next few months anyway and the redundancy package being offered was worth less than a few weeks work at Rolls Royce. 2 days after I was offered the job I signed the contract and handed in my notice, so far it’s been the best descision I ever made, I just wish I’d done it sooner. The Rolls Royce contract lasted for 5 months and I managed to secure my second contract before my first was even up. it seems as though once you’ve got your first contract the next one is easier to get.

It’s still early days yet, I’m still only on my second contract (currently hoping for a renewal) and anything could happen, but if things carry on as they have been I couldn’t be happier. Even if I don’t get another contract after this one, although I really hope I do, I’ve managed to pay off all my debts and have paid for a holiday to Disney World in June for myself and my family. Contracting might not be for everyone, there are some definate risks and very little stability, but for me the benefits have outweighed the risks. I just hope it continues for as long as possible I can’t imagine going back to a permanent job now.