All moved...

I've not updated in a while, it's been a busy 2 months.

Made a lot of progress since early June: House was sold, 2 cars sold in the US, 1 car purchased in the UK and we've moved in. Marina and the kids (and the dog) arrived last weekend in London.

Given the way house sales are going in the US we were very fortunate with regard to selling. School finished on Thursday, we left on Friday and closed on the following Monday. Timing could not have been better.

Thankfully we downsized a fair bit prior to loading the container for it's 5 week trip over the pond, but looking at the size of the truck/lorry it's safe to say we still had a lot of stuff to move. Somehow we've managed to get everything into the house though the attic space is being used.

The UK quarantine issue for the dog was thankfully managed by Marina, we handled it all in the US as we had the proper amount of time. The amount of paperwork and proper sequencing of it all was important but that too is behind us and the dog now has it's own 'pet passport' for travel to/from the UK for the rest of her life.

Given various travel and family visits we will not settle into the new 'normal' until sometime in September after the kids have started school. It's good to be all together again, the distance bit was tough for everyone - except perhaps for American Airlines which I've racked up 72k miles on already this year (along with another 8k or so on a BA flight in there somehow).

Changing times

Left the house in New Canaan yesterday afternoon for the airport for the final time. The next time I return to the USA the house, and my 2003 silverado, will be sold. We bought the house 5 years ago this month, it was a great house and we will miss it. While we were in Stamford when the kids were born, this really was their house.

The movers are showing up this morning to start packing up the house, by Wednesday everything we own in that house will be in a 40' shipping container bound for the UK. I'm told it will be in the hold of a cargo ship mid next week on it's 7 day trip over the pond

No regrets with the move to London, have to do new things, but this has been difficult. Will miss all of our friends in New Canaan.

virginmedia....

I moved this last weekend from Holland Park (London - W11) to Belsize Park (London - NW3), and asked virginmedia to move my cable box and cable modem. The original order was indicated no problem as both sides were wired.

Woke up to no service in the old flat, expected, no big deal. Disconnected everything and brought it to the new house. Connected it, no go. Called and was told needed new gear - I protested as (a) pain in the arse for me; (b) costs them money. In truth don't care about (b) personally but care a lot about (a).

Knew that the electronics were the same but they simply would not listen to me. Went out and picked up a 3-3G USB dongle for email access for the few days..

Gave virgin my work address to send the gear to but of course when I got home on Monday and Tuesday had the UPS slip there saying they tried to deliver. ARGHGHGHGHGHG. Called Wednesday am and confirmed they had 3 boxes for me. Re-routed to the UPS depo, which is thankfully only 10 minutes away.

Get to the UPS station, pick up the 3 boxes:
Box 1: cables
Box 2: another set of cables, exact same as 1
Box 3: cables (same as 1&2), wireless router, cable modem and cable box

So 3 sets of cables which I didn't need as I had from the old house. A cable modem and cable box that were IDENTICAL to what I had. I then had to call them to GIVE THEM the serial numbers/mac addresses of the units. I'm sure if I had used the old ones they would have worked.

I really don't understand as I've now got an extra cable modem, cable tv box, wireless router and 4 sets of wires - AND - it took me 5 extra days to get up and running...

Waste of my time and their money. Did I say I don't understand? They really wasted their £££s on this one

Status Update

Yes, I've been bad on posting - though to be fair - follow me on twitter as I use that.

It's been a very busy couple of weeks since starting at the BBC 5 weeks ago. While I do not pretend I've figured things out I am starting to understand how the place works. I'll leave the what we are doing to the official postings - coming soonish. What I need are more hours in the day as I usually run out of time.

On the housing from I've moved out of Holland Park (W11), to the Belsize Park (NW3) area of London over the weekend. We've rented a 5 bedroom house near where the kids will be going to school in the fall. I should be able to drop them off at school most mornings which will be nice after this year of not being with the kids. Hopefully they won't hold the last 9 months against me later on in life.

We've got an offer on our house in the US, hopefully closing 3 days after the school year ends in 4 weeks. Still a lot to get through so in the interest of not saying too much am going to let this run it's course.

Regardless, we will have the movers show up in mid-June to put everything into a 40' container to get it to London. Everything should arrive mid/end-July. Marina and the kids will be coming over around then as well as we've no furniture in the house. Bit of a pain actually, but I'm working insane hours, traveling to the US and am generally busy so I'll deal with an empty house.

Marina has sold just about everything that can not come over. Electrical equipment in particular is a pain, though anything without a motor can come over which is good. They either have 110/220 power supplies or a transformer will handle the conversion.

We've sold the mini-van and the truck and a4 are both on the market. The 2003 silverado can't come over, but if we do not sell the a4 guess we will be driving a left hand drive convertible as our only car here (ideally we sell it and pick up a used estate wagon).

Beyond that I'm back in the US every other weekend for the next month and then I'm all but done travelling for the rest of this year. Made platinum on american by June, hopefully I won't make executive platinum this year...

iPhone and the Blackberry

As I've posted in the past I've wanted a iPhone but given international travel could not justify one. When I started my current position, which has `something` to do with mobile, decided it was time to try out the iPhone full time and give up the Blackberry.

I've had the blackberry since the early days, well before there was a phone and it looked like an over sized pager (am I dating myself with that reference?). Marina will tell you I'm more than addicted, but it is a great tool for keeping up on email.

So for the last 6 weeks I've been using the iPhone exclusively for work email. It is good and bad.

Good: Unit is solid, screen is great, watching movies and listening to music/podcasts is great.
Bad: With the exception of personal email using the keyboard for email is - well - difficult. Battery life is fine if you charge mid day.

I've ordered a blackberry for corporate email, I've tried. I need email to work quickly, be on the unit at all times for the bus, train, plane (yea, real push is coming...), have quick cut/paste, fast and accurate typing (look at some of my recent twitters to see my typos).

That said, I will not be getting rid of my iPhone if I can help it. It's too good for everything else. Granted, I will end up carrying 3 units on a regular basis (n95, iPhone and 8800), along with a smattering of others for testing as well as the occasional US mobile (bberry 8820). But I don't think I'm normal.

On a side note, after ~10 years I'll be getting rid of my US-646 mobile soon. I'm still using the 8820 (see other post a few months back) but only when it is on wifi for free calls. I've dropped all data and moved calling to the bare minimum along with the wifi calling option. Once my family is in London I'll cancel it completely. For all the gripes, I've had a good run with the US T-Mobile folks, but I live in the -44- country code now.

New Role at the BBC

I've been mostly out of reach today as me and my family were sightseeing in Paris the last two days. Opted to travel light and leave the laptop behind. Otherwise would have posted this earlier today once the news broke.

I am glad to announce that as of next week I am starting at the BBC as the new Controller for BBC Audio & Music (A&M) Interactive and BBC Mobile. I will be reporting to BBC Future Media & Technology (FM&T) Director Erik Huggers. Along with my new team we will be responsible for the all BBC’s output on mobile platforms and the multiplatform delivery of Audio & Music content.

I will be spending the next few weeks with my predecessor, Richard Titus. Will be good to have a real transition on taking a new role, something I've not had the opportunity of before. I wish the best to Richard in his new role.

I am looking forward to starting and working with my staff on getting products out the door to consumers again.

A few links to stories today:
Official BBC Press Release
PaidContent-UK
Guardian-UK

All this said, this will likely be the last posting from me in regards to this role on this blog. I'll use the official BBC blog for anything work related and stick to the purely personal here.

I have hopped out of the building

As of this afternoon I've formally left the employ of UK VOD LLP (eg: Project Kangaroo) as it's CTO. Somewhat bittersweet ending given our the regulatory hurdles that we had, but what can one do?

It would have been nice to have launched the product to the public to see what consumers thought, but in the end it was not to be with this structure.

As to what is next for me, not able to say today but what I do know is that I will be staying in London. Marina and the kids will be moving to London sometime this summer.

I am somewhat offline for the next week as everyone is in town, we will be looking for a place to live, showing the kids their new school and taking a quick trip to Paris for a few days.