Posted: Mon 31 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Thoughts |
I don’t know if it’s just me, but the recession of the last year does seem to have had one (slightly) positive effect this weekend – the number of TV adverts for “Bank Holiday Weekend Sales” appear to have dropped through the floor.
After all, there’s now no :
- MFI
- Sofa Warehouse
- Allied Carpets
- [several others I can’t currently recall]
who always used to do that kind of sale.
Of course, there’s still bloody DFS, (Although they just seem to have one big year-long sale) and B&Q and Homebase are both doing “15% off everything” weekends, but still it seems like there’s nowhere near as many Bank Holiday Sales this year.
Mind you, it could also be because I’ve hardly seen any TV over the last week or so…
Posted: Sun 30 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work |
It’s a Bank Holiday weekend, which of course means we’re doing stuff on the house again.
To be exact, this time it’s the garage that needs sorting out.
It’s not actually a garage – whoever built the thing fucked it up, so it’s round a dog-leg corner behind the house, and thus well-night impossible to park a car in. (Of course, that just shows I’m getting old – who the hell parks their car in their garage these days?) As a result, it’s been a storage tip spot for stuff since we moved in.
It still will be a storage place, but we’ve sorted out a lot of the stuff inside it this weekend, taking out the bits we don’t need and/or putting things in far more order.
So far, it also means that I (with some help from Herself) have :
- Put up an offcut of the kitchen worktop, for use as work-surface (and storage surface) in the garage
- Put up two lots of ladder-hooks, and hung ladders from them (which haven’t yet fallen off again)
- Put up another set of hooks for a couple of other heavy odds and sods to hang off
- Done two runs to local tips, one with everyday rubbish to our normal recycling place at Snetterton, and one with tins of paint etc. to the rather more serious one at Knettishall
There’s still plenty more to do, but at least we’re getting somewhere. Even more importantly, it’s beginning to look like the garage will become properly usable space after all…
Posted: Sat 29 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related |
I’ve been doing some more research into the enormous price-rise by National Express East Anglia from the 5/6th September (as written about previously here and here) whereby the ticket that used to cost £39.50 has gone up to £74.
What it looks like is that National Express East Anglia have added a “peak time” definition to travel between Norwich and Cambridge – although they don’t say as much on their website. As written about in Part Two, the T&Cs for Off-Peak tickets still say…
For National Express East Anglia journeys it is valid for any train scheduled to arrive at London Liverpool Street or London Kings Cross at or after 1000, Stratford (London) after 0950, Tottenham Hale/ Seven Sisters after 0940. Not valid on any train departing London Liverpool Street or Kings Cross before 0930 or between 1629 or 1834 inclusive (1900 from Kings Cross) although travel is permitted on the 1636 from London Liverpool Street to Braintree, for destinations Hatfield Peverel to Braintree inclusive.
Which makes no mention of peak-travel times for non-London trains.
But if you look on National Express East Anglia’s own Journey Planner (That link only goes to the front page, you can’t easily link to inside the Journey Planner) and look at travel between Attleborough and Cambridge, the off-peak ticket is only valid for travelling after 10am.
I think I’m going to have to do some experimenting with this while actually travelling on the train – that should be fun!
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |
I know I’ve written about this before (on a couple of occasions, to be fair) but it does now look like my laptop is seriously dying.
In fairness, it’s just under three years old now (Bought it in mid-September 2006) and in that time it’s been heavily used- lugged around from Bracknell to Cambridge for three months, used between Attleborough and Cambridge for another eighteen months all told, used daily at home, taken on holidays, and now being used a lot in London. In that time, it’s spent most of the travel-time rattling round in a backpack, sharing space with all my other daily junk. So it’s been beaten within an inch of its life – the CD tray is cracked and just about unusable, and there’s a few other knocks, scratches and cracks.
They keyboard has been ropy for a while, but now it’s badly interrupting my typing flow when I have to beat the shit out of certain keys ( A, U, M and N, for example – non-essential keys all. *ahem*) in order to get a response out of them.
Finally, it’s beginning to wheeze a bit. During this week I’ve had a few instances where it’s lagged massively, just from the stuff that’s been running at once. I know, I could run less stuff at once, but sometimes that’s just impractical – I’ve been using it all, so I’ve needed it.
And as such, I’m thinking that it may just be time for getting a new laptop. It needs some thinking about, but the need is becoming stronger, for sure.
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, News, Thoughts |
Filed firmly under “No shit, Sherlock” comes this story courtesy of the Department of Health…
English holidaymakers are turning to drink on their breaks with the average adult consuming eight alcoholic drinks a day, a survey suggests.
Blimey, what a revelation. People on holiday drink more. Who’d have thought it?
As usual, the “survey” consisted of only 3,500 people (from however million who’ve been on holiday over the summer) and there’s no indication of the age ranges for the survey. So at best it’s “dip a finger in the water” guesswork.
Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Stupidity |
I’ve just signed up for a website dealing with audiences for seeing the recording of TV shows, and had a confirmation page with the following text on it…
VERY IMPORTANT: Please ensure that your email spam filters will allow mail from [email address] as have just emailed you about you’re registration.
Now that’s got some scarily bad grammatical errors in it.
I wonder if I should email and tell them?
Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related |
Following on from yesterday’s mini-rant about National Express East Anglia‘s huge price-rise coming in on the 5th/6th Sept, I’ve kept on looking for more information.
Unsurprisingly, National Express East Anglia’s website doesn’t really mention fares at all (although there’s plenty of references to penalty fares) and the upcoming fare-rise doesn’t appear to feature in their news section either. They still talk about off-peak fares, but it’s nigh-on impossible to get one. I’ve gone through ’til November using The Train Line’s website, and any time you ask about off-peak tickets you just get a “Not Available” (if you can even find the access to the off-peak tickets.
As the National Express East Anglia website itself says in the terms and conditions for off-peak tickets,
In most cases off peak day tickets are not available for travel on trains arriving in London before 1000 or departing from London before 0930. Travel is also not permitted on services departing from London between 1629 and 1834 Monday to Friday, except for travel to stations between Hatfield Peverel and Braintree inclusive on the 1636 departure from London.
None of the trains I’m using fall into these categories – I get in to London at around 1015 on the Monday , and was leaving at 1615 on the Friday – but still, the off-peak tickets appear to be completely unavailable after 6th September.
And for the pedantic and picky among you, yes, there is a cheaper off-peak ticket via Norwich – but that journey takes at least an hour longer, takes me to a less-useful London station, and is one of the more renownedly unreliable lines in the country…