My first appointment today is covering for another inhouseIT IT Manager - Jim - who's wife had a baby last week. For some reason, he's chosen to stay home this week and tend to dirty nappies, rather than deal with PC's and Servers - still, both can be shitty jobs at times!! I've only met Jim a couple of times, and he reminds me of one of my college mates - Belsham - they have an uncanny resemblance - but I digress.

It's a run-of-the-mill job - nothing too heavy - which is just the start to the week that I needed. The guys are really interested in the whole exchange program that I'm involved in, so for those of you who don't know, here's a brief history. inhouseIT UK has been established for about 3 and a half years now, servicing small to medium businesses as an outsourced IT department - long and short of it, companies who have IT needs, but can't justify paying for a full-time IT guy - we step in, do the work, build a relationship, and become an integral part of their IT and business needs. inhouseIT USA has been going for a few years longer, offering a similar (more advanced) level of service, but both companies take a pro-active approach to servicing their customers - we don't want to wait for the phone to ring with the customer having a problem - we want to stop the problems from occurring in the first place!

A year ago, someone was working for us and was browsing the web one day, when he stumbled across this American company with our name - my Directors were interested, and began the introduction process. As both companies were not in direct competition with each other, the guys in the States were quite welcoming. Things progressed to the point where Glen and Steve visited here earlier in the year - they wanted to find out how the guys here did things, how they maintained their success, what clients they looked for - all the business elements really. It was discussed about being a novel idea to send a representative from each company to the other - Hiep was chosen from here, and I was chosen from my company.

To be completely honest, I was shocked initially - what a fantastic opportunity! A few years ago I was working for WorldCom (now MCI) and had a similar trip organised to Frankfurt for 6 weeks - I had such an excellent time there [Stuart - 3 days man, 3 days I was suffering heart palpitations! Who's idea was it to snort those vodka-red bulls in that cellar?? Oh yeah, it was mine! Oh well, great days!!] and the experience of working in a foreign country was superb - but 3 months is a long time. I had so much to sort out, and knew I'd miss my family, friends, and of course my Mighty Gillingham - but that's all history now - I'm here and loving every minute of it!

The clients here think that's it's such a great thing that two completely separate companies, from different countries, can meet in these circumstances - considering the many similarities in how we both work - and I must say I found it rather odd too! But things are working out really well here - well, I've had no complaints that I know of - and I hope Hiep's enjoying his time in England. I'm gonna set him up with Craig so he can go to the football - not too sure whether that's a good or bad thing, but I'm sure it'll be a good experience for him!

Anyway - back to work - and the afternoon job is a bit more heavy-going - my kind of thing! Plenty to do, not enough time, under pressure, shag Server up, fix Server, arrange to book a further timeslot for chargeable work, but leave with the client happy - everyone's a winner! I have a quick look at our database and see that I've booked over $4,000 of chargeable time in the 3 full weeks I've had here - come on!!

Not much to tell about Monday night - quiet night in with a big plate of nachos and the delights of American TV - any of you who haven't seen Will and Grace yet, you really should watch it - it's funny!

END OF DAY 24