Morning all

It has been clearly brought home to me in the last week that I now have 2 bosses, one of whom seems determined to make their (my 2 bosses) mutual boss sweat by making his decision vis a vis my job look like a bad one. Unfortunately the way he is choosing to do this is by running up by back. I have got myself stuck in the middle and this may pan out into a bridge burning situation.

It breaks down like this;

my firm in HK has 2 departments most easily described as Big Projecs and Small Projects. Years ago when there was tons of work around, everyone worked for BP. When work started to get a bit lean, SP sprang up, doing shopfronts etc for a couple of deep pocketed clients. SP always had a somewhat unofficial position within the company until last year and was referred to as "the department of small works." You can work out how much respect they got. I work for SP. My new project (Korea) is for BP. I now have one boss in BP and one in SP. The boss of SP made a deal (I think) to release me temporarily to BP on the understanding that he would get a particular staff member from BP to transfer to SP and that I would complete current projects. Seems that this was not the understanding of BP. I have transferred, I must complete all current projects for SP, but no new staff have been transferred to SP. My SP boss seems to hold me responsible for this, although I suspect that the truth is more like; I'm the only one he can get at.

The upshot is that the payrise I agreed with BP has been changed to a "Project Allowance" meaning it gets reasessed at the end of the BP project. A pathetic move, as they'd have to take a very negative line indeed to justify taking it off me without actually letting me go. Further; I sent out a delivery recently in which one component was missing, for this I have been accused of doing "half a job" which is a little harsh to say the least. SP boss has clearly decided that he has nothing to gain by mollifying me and so I think I'm in for a little bit of a rough ride over the next months. That or I'll get the free time I've been after, anyway.

What nonsense

Politics aside (well not really...) and Wired today reports that;

The Department of Defense is asking for an exemption from the Privacy Act, which outlaws secret databases on Americans.

The exemption would be a little pointless unless it was backdated...

For anyone interested in space and that; Spaceship one, the X-prize competitor, will attempt the first privately funded sub-orbital manned flight ... TODAY. I read about this project a year or so ago and they had planned to complete by this August, so they migth actually do it on schedule... Not much time left as the X-prize expires at the end of this year. To won, Spaceship one will need to take 3 people to 100Km altitude and return to earth, repeating the same trip within 2 weeks. Apparantly a ticket costs 100K USD. And Bubble thought we were buying a house this year...

The Guardian lists what they say are the the hundred best British albums of all time. As they say; If the beatles came second; who won? Not sure If I can agree with their choice, but I more strongly object to Blue Lines getting No. 7, when Mezzanine fails to get a mention. Queen do not figure, which I also feel is a gross omission. On a brief count I own 10 albums on their list, which just goes to show you, really.

I failed to win with my black poo entry in the corporate rebranding competition last week. The (well deserved) winner was a very simple banner reading "NEW LABOR". This week the challenge is physics gone wrong. See what I can come up with.

Bubble's off to China, so I'm playing computer games like a good boy for the next month.

Must get some breakfast in; I wonder how smelly the cat litter gets after a month...? Might be a deadly experiment.

Bomber out