The waiting game

I was well travelled last week. Tuesday saw a trip to Bracknell to a large I.T. Services company, which was a 2 hours 30 minutes in the car each way from Stafford. An early 5am start to my Tuesday meant I was wide awake when the presentations/assessments began. 11am saw an early finish to a swift morning, and I drove back to Stafford feeling good about my presentation and appearance on the day. Two numerical and verbal reasoning tests on-line that evening saw an invite to an assessment day pop into my email box. So far so good.

Friday was also a day of travel for me, but thankfully I had a chance to lay in bed that morning. A trip to London was in order, this time for a second round interview with an extremely well respected I.T. Service, Consultancy and Outsourcing company. I did have a giggle when I realised that the interviews we're being held at their Old Bailey office.

Friday's event kicked-off at 3pm, giving me all morning and a train journey to prepare. Arriving at Euston, I was ready to travel the London Underground system which I adore so much. Arriving early, I settled into one of the many Starbucks of London to sip a latte whilst admiring St. Paul's Cathedral.

A late travel home (leaving Euston station at 6:30pm) saw me arrive back in Stafford at 8pm. I felt good about my performance during the day and expect to hear if I have the job or not within the next 10 days. Fingers crossed!

Transcending CSS

Over the weekend I purchased a book, going by the same title as this post. I have barely been able to put it down!

I have almost finished reading it, and have to praise the artwork and photos. There is just so much in this book to draw inspiration from.

I just hope I don't get that bug to re-design my home page. I'll keep quiet about that!

Anyway, for anyone interested in web design or anyone who makes web sites, I recommend Transcending CSS: the fine art of web design to you.

Connection Woes

Being a web and software developer, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. Every so often, it is nice to be able to take a break. My distraction item of choice is my XBOX360.

I have used the XBOX Live service for some time now, but for the last 4 weeks, my connection has been awful.

My XBOX360 is connected to my PC, which is connected to a wireless network. There are 3 other machines on this wireless network too.

Whenever I do an "internet connection speed test", I always get good results. I have almost 2 Mbps coming down the cable internet connection and 185 kbps going up.

Occasionally, one of the fellow house-mates will download some music or stream a TV episode, so I can understand why things may appear sluggish at those times. I also have another house-mate who constantly seeds torrents, but that is limited to 5 kbps.

Is there a way to configure the wireless router to give my XBOX360 traffic the same priority as regular internet traffic (so I get an equally strong signal at the times when connected to XBOX live)?

Is there another issue that is ensuring that I have the worst imaginable gaming experience?

This is a genuine plea for anyone with knowledge in this sort of thing to contact me.