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Life

A Christmas story: a book, a frame, my wife and a courier

My wife loves books. She loves Agatha Christie. And she loves pictures on the wall. So what could be better than to combine then all?

A company named Spineless Classics sells a number of prints that are made up of the words from classic books. Seeing they had A Murder on the Orient Express, I thought it would make the ideal present.

But things did not go smoothly.

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Automattic Life

What’s on my desk? 2022 edition!

A year later and more desk changes! I took the opportunity of my sabbatical this year to move things around, particularly on the walls, whilst also removing a number of things from the desk itself. Add to that some new tech and it’s a different workspace for 2022.

Categories
Life

Honest advertising?

I’m constantly surprised by how honest some UK advertisers are being, without the general public realising what they’re saying.

Take BT. They will charge you EXTRA to have a broadband backup service, referring to when your internet goes down as a “broadband nightmares”. It’s YOUR PRODUCT.

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Automattic Life

A Day in the Life of a VIP Support Lead

Many years ago I wrote a post about my life as a Support Engineer at WordPress VIP and it’s been very popular, particularly for those interesting in applying. I kept it up to date but, some time ago, I stopped doing so. Why? Because in January 2021 I became a Support Lead.

I look after the EMEA Support Team (so, that’s people from Europe, Middle East and Africa. Right now, we don’t have anyone in the team from the Middle East). As I write this there are 8 people in the team (myself not included), consisting of 2 roles – Support Engineer (SE) and Customer Success Engineer (CSE), the latter being a developer role.

So, it’s time to tell you what my day is now like.

Categories
Automattic Life

5 things I learnt from my sabbatical

During this year’s VIP GM, I did a 4 minute “flash talk”. It was about my sabbatical. A lot of the talks were thought-provoking and educational. But not this one.

But, there are takeaways.

Here it is, presented in a blog format, with added pictures and content.