I just installed a new disk drive in my PC, I was vaguely surprised that it worked immediately - I mean it should do but things often don’t work that should do. Anyway, it popped up happily in explorer and showed it already had a file on it. I openned it and there was the warranty and the how to contact technical support in the event of problems.  Good move, saves all the waste paper of printing it and as long as the drive works you can read it. Of course if the drive works you don’t need to read it and if it doesn’t then you do - but you can’t.

This tells me 2 things:

a) Seagate tech support must a be quiet place as only people who don’t need them can get their number

b) Joseph Heller is alive and well and working for Seagate

Here I am back from my US trip - sorry I didn’t get much chance to blog from there. Yes I had wireless access in my hotel room but a) it was flaky & b) I spent most of my time in the bar

So having had a very pleasant trip and by comparing that to the fairly disastrous one I had many years ago I can now give an informative guide on how to do a US business trip.

Go to the east coast. OK not a choice you may have but the travel time and time difference made NY a much easier option than LA.

Fly direct. It may sound strange that the definition of a direct flight can include landing in between times. The point is you and your luggage stay on the plane. Last time I made my connecting flight but my luggage didn’t.

Fly club. Oh yes! I flew with Silver Jet who only do a single class “economy club”. It wasn’t a great deal more to pay (I wasn’t paying so no big deal but at least it doesn’t look bad on the expenses) and the service was (to my plebeian expectations) excellent. It may be worth checking your contract, some companies expect you to travel cheap upto a certain distance but allow a better class for longer journeys.

Hire (assuming you’re driving) a TomTom - or if you own one get the company to buy a US map. Last time I spent 8 hours driving round LA looking for my hotel on the useless hire car map. This time a calm voice redirected me every time I went wrong - and I went wrong. Driving on the wrong side, in a strange car, reading weird signs and not knowing basic geography (like is Boston north of Newark) increases my already high propensity for getting lost.

Take your laptop. Well obviously. But it has all sorts of uses, email / instant message / voip, play CD’s, as an alarm clock (I never trust hotel alarms or wake up calls until I’ve tested them!), and most importantly as a radio. The one thing I miss more than anything is Radio 4 (sad?) and although I had problems with the wifi one morning I did get the odd episode of the archers (very sad?). Also take a patch cable, more reliable and secure than wi-fi!

And the one thing I forgot - take some tea and milk (even if powdered). With a little cunning I was able to bodge the coffee machine into dispensing hot water onto a stolen tea bag but I had to have it black or else it was “creamer”

Any other tips?

Did say it was all change here? If anyone has any knowledge of TUPE (Transfer of undertakings - what a new employer has to offer you when they take over your current employer) I’d be interested in your comments.

I’m glad of the protection we have in the UK - a lot of guys over in the states are just out on their ears. Basically the law says the new employer has to continue your employment with as good or better terms & conditions as you had. However, easy as it sounds it’s a bit more complicated than that. What about all the stuff that is not in your contract but accepted practice - do you pay for tea & coffee? If the office moves (a short distance) what about extra travelling time / costs? If the office moves a long way do they have to offer relocation or can they just make you redundant?

Then there are share options. I had a load of share options at $15, I sold some at $25 last year (making $10 a share - hurrah!) and saved the rest for when they were worth $100 (ever the optimist) or at least $25+. Because the company no longer exists these were automatically sold at the take over price of $16 - hence I’m a long way short of what I was hoping to get. The problem(!) is I’m actually  a few quid better off than I was so I probably don’t have a complaint in law - I’ve just lost the hope of having a good deal more. It’s a bit like the shopkeeper giving you your lottery stake back - yeah you haven’t lost but you were expecting to win.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever received “free money” with such a bad taste in my mouth.

Did say it was all change here? If anyone has any knowledge of TUPE (Transfer of undertakings - what a new employer has to offer you when they take over your current employer) I’d be interested in your comments.

I’m glad of the protection we have in the UK - a lot of guys over in the states are just out on their ears. Basically the law says the new employer has to continue your employment with as good or better terms & conditions as you had. However, easy as it sounds it’s a bit more complicated than that. What about all the stuff that is not in your contract but accepted practice - do you pay for tea & coffee? If the office moves (a short distance) what about extra travelling time / costs? If the office moves a long way do they have to offer relocation or can they just make you redundant?

Then there are share options. I had a load of share options at $15, I sold some at $25 last year (making $10 a share - hurrah!) and saved the rest for when they were worth $100 (ever the optimist) or at least $25+. Because the company no longer exists these were automatically sold at the take over price of $16 - hence I’m a long way short of what I was hoping to get. The problem(!) is I’m actually  a few quid better off than I was so I probably don’t have a complaint in law - I’ve just lost the hope of having a good deal more. It’s a bit like the shopkeeper giving you your lottery stake back - yeah you haven’t lost but you were expecting to win.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever received “free money” with such a bad taste in my mouth.

My wife’s boss has left so she’s filling in along with her boss’s boss. She’s finding out all sorts of new things - for instance

“Do you get the emails?”

“No xxx (old boss) used to do that”

“I’ll show you how”

Turns out old boss didn’t get the emails - apparently 3 years worth is about 5,060 mails.

They were a bit worried about something very, very urgent that should have happened in June but when they realised it was June 2006 and the world still hadn’t ended they decided it couldn’t have been that important.

Maybe requesting a read receipt is worthwhile sometimes?