Dog Timekeeping

I’ve written before about how Hound is very time-driven, which is always a bizarre experience. While I know she’s actually fairly autistic, and has her patterns that she gets twitchy if they’re not fulfilled.

But at the same time, she’s still time-driven. Last night, she was wanting to go out for a walk at 8:15. For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t oing to happen ’til half eight. So I told her to wait 15 mnutes, and then we’d go out. (Yes, I know the insanity of talking to one’s Hound like this but he, there we go) She went off to lie down. The next time she got up to nag for her walk was…. 8:30.

However, I do wish that she understood about weekends. Weekdays, we leave the house at about 7.30, and Hound goes for a walk once Herself has dropped me off at the station. Weekends, well, it’d be nice to have a lie-in, but Hound usually thinks that it’s still time for her walk at 7.30, and bounces on the bed.

I have to say, getting dog-breath in the face as a wake-up call is so not a good first experience of the day.


Tosspots

It’s not a common occurrence for me to be pissed off with an agency I’ve worked through. In fact, this is the first time it’s happened. Then again, this is also the first time I’ve worked for a tin-pot local agency, rather than a national one, so maybe that’s part of it.

As it is, I’ve now finished working for them, and I’m pleased about that. The last four months have been a bizarre journey, and while the work itself has been fine, the agency have been utter cunts.

I’ve had to chase them every month to get paid, and they’ve been utterly disorganised the entire way through. They’ve also contacted the workplace every month in order to get copies of paperwork that they’d already got, and just been an utter nightmare the entire way. In fact, knowing that the contract was ‘ending’ on Friday, they haven’t even been in touch with me all month. Not a word, nothing about another contract, or not having anything available at the moment, or anything at all.

So now I’ve finished with them. I’ve had an email from them telling me that while my technical skills are fine, my “personal conduct fell below the professional standards we expect as an agency on several occasions and we no longer wish to have you on our list of suppliers”. Now I have to say, that’s a first. In fact, it’s fucking bizarre – considering that the company I’m working for has extended the contract, and has now got me privately rather than through Clowns’R’Us, and that I’ve actually never not had a contract extended.

However, I have chased up the agency every inch of the way, and been a pain in the arse to them, because they’ve been so amazingly bad. I’ve had to be, or I’d still be waiting for my first paycheck, let alone my last one. So maybe that’s been where my personal conduct fell down – for calling a bunch of incompetents on their incompetency.

I just have to decide now whether to write a shitty email in response to it. It’s very tempting…


Cat Fun

Ah yes. another tale of the Psycho Cat.

A while back, the stupid little fluffy git fell off the kitchen worktop, and bashed his eye on a cupboard knob on the way down. It blew up like a football (well, a cat-sized football) immediately, and resulted in a feline black-eye that took about a week to recede. But after that all was well,

He came in earlier this week, and the same eye was all squinty and closed. It wasn’t causing him pain or anything, and in fact he didn’t even object to us touching the area around the eye. And that is how we knew he really wasn’t well. So Herself took him to meet the local vet.

He had damaged his eye, but it’d got better. Then he did something else to it – obviously no-one knows what – and now it’s ulcerated. Roughly the size of half a 5p piece. (probably about 5mm across, for non-UK readers) Nasty, in other words.

So we now have eyedrops for the fuzzy little fucker. He’s supposed to have them twice a day. This has led to some great fun, as you imagine. Psycho Cat is NOT a happy cat. And because of this, he’s stalking the bed at night, waiting for any sections of flesh to fall within range of his claws and/or teeth. My leg looks like a pin-cushion.


Comedy Moment

Lunchtime yesterday, I saw one of the more amusing things of recent times.

Two cyclists, riding abreast so they could talk to each other, and not paying any attention to what was going on.

The innermost of the two, facing his mate to talk to him, rode slam into the back of a parked car. The car was parked perfectly legitimately, with no problem. It’s just that the cyclist didn’t see it.

He was fine. His bike, on the other hand, looked rather bent.

Sympathy was not forthcoming, from anyone who saw it.


Home

Today’s either going to be really quiet, or really busy. I’m not yet sure which. But either way, I’m working from home today rather than being in Cambridge.

First off, we’ve got this meeting with an architect, to talk about our plans for the new place. That’s the main reason for being home-based today, but it the meeting should be over by about 11am, so that’s great. After that? I don’t know – there’s a lot of stuff I need to get done, but none of it is really ‘work’-based. Instead it’ll be my own odds and sods.

And of course it’ll mean I can take Hound out for a decent walk. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. And she’ll be happy with that too…


Post of the Week

Post of the Week logo

As mike says (and, as withGordon’s post,from where the bulk of this post has been lifted) Post of the Week is ready, and open, and waiting for YOU.

THE MISSION.

  • To highlight great writing on personal blogs.
  • To draw attention to blogs that you might not have heard of before.
  • To point you to one absolute guaranteed humdinger of a blog post, once a week, every week.

Finally, and almost a year after the idea was first mooted, Post of the Week (Dot Com, no less) is ready for public display. I bet you never thought you’d live to see the day, did you?

Absolutely everyone everywhere is heartily recommended to do any or all of the following:

  • Nominate cracking good blog posts for inclusion, via the comments box in the “Call for nominations” section.
  • Volunteer their services as a guest judge, for one weekend only.
  • Publicise the site on their own blogs. Pimp it, kids. Pimp it HARD.

For those of you who don’t know, Gordon “One Man Designs” had the privilege of designing the site, and I did some helping out and bug-fixing (</modesty>) on the PHP in the back-end. Oh yeah, and in a fit of generosity I’m also doing the shortlisting this week. You have been warned…

So, what are you waiting for, get over there and get involved!


Reserved Words

On occasion, I really hate SQL. (This is a geeky post. Don’t bother reading on if you’ve no interest in databases or PHP/SQL)
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