Traffic Bulletins

Posted: Thu 12 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Weirdness, Work-related | 2 Comments »

On my commute, I have the travel bulletins set to be on, which means they interrupt whatever else is playing. (radio or CD) That’s fine – the travel reports are occasionally useful (although more often not) and can give me some warning if the roads are screwed. Mind you, most of the time they don’t do the warnings until I’m already in the jam – although that’s a separate issue.

What does grate though is that my commute appears to be in the footprint of no less than three local radio stations, so I end up getting all of the broadcasts, at roughly the same time. Which usually means that I miss the one I want.

It would be really useful to either

  1. Be able to ‘mute’ certain stations from the travel report  or
  2. For the stations to have an ident at the start, telling you which station’s broadcast you’re listening to. Then I could quickly cancel the ones I don’t want, in time to hear the one I do want.

Of course, it would also be useful if the presenters weren’t sometimes complete dickknuckles, and manage to screw up the use of the “Travel Alert” button like they did this morning. At some point they’d obviously missed pressing the button, so when they pressed it at the end of the bulletin, it was actually the ‘start’ trigger. Which meant it was screwed for the entire morning. Bell-ends.

B-O-R-E-D

Posted: Wed 11 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Geeky, People, Work-related | Leave a comment »

More and more I’m coming to the realisation that I am so not a data geek.  I use data and databases all the time, but I don’t usually deal in big data systems that need epic sizes of database and insanely complicated methods of getting that data in and out of those systems.

This current role is now my third over the years where I work with exactly those types of system. Crapco back in Bracknell/Wokingham – and in a weird coincidence that’s also where I last did any intensive cycling – were the first. A duller bunch of people you couldn’t want to meet, and I hated it.  The second was about 2, 2½ years ago, an educational company in Cambridge. And now a tech company in Cambridge.

The thing is, they’re all very similar – as are the people who work in them. In all three cases, the people involved were (in my eyes) ineffably dull – all had been with the company for at least five years – and deeply insular about their work. They didn’t want to teach anyone else how to do stuff on ‘their’ system, primarily (it seemed) because they thought their own jobs would be at risk if they told someone else how to do things, or were in any way helpful at all.  It’s just a mindset I simply don’t understand.  After all, if you’re swamped enough that you can justify an extra person, surely it makes sense to then get that person up to speed so you can reduce that work pressure. But no. And it’s all so “This is *my* section!” and cliquey that it just does my head in.  No-one wants to teach how to figure out where things are going wrong, it’s like a “oh, figure it out yourself” type thing. And don’t get me wrong, most of the time I can evaluate how things are working, and where things are going wrong.  In environments like these though, you can’t do that. It’s been made so insanely complex over the years, anyone coming in new is effectively fucked from the start.   And that’s the position I find myself in. (Again)

Couple that with one simple fact from my side – which is that when it comes to these kind of companies, I simply don’t care enough about their data to want to work with it and worry about its accuracy.   “Oh, but it’s 0.001% out on those figures.” And?

All told, it’s a lesson I need to learn, I type of place I no longer wish to work in.  I’ll be OK here for the remaining five months of the contract – but I won’t be renewing after that.  I’ll probably keep my options open too, by keeping on looking for other roles…

Getting Back To It

Posted: Tue 10 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Writing | 2 Comments »

As regular readers may have noticed, I’m making an effort with D4D™ to write a bit more again, and get back into the routine of writing here.

Things have trailed off here a fair bit in the last two or three years – and how the hell has it ended up being that long?!? – but I do want to keep on writing it, so we’ll see how it goes.

As things stand, I want to get back to writing more anyway. Having a routine with D4D™ is no bad thing for that – sure, it slightly affects the time I have available for the other writing projects, but it’s always better than avoiding doing any writing at all.

With luck I’ll get back into having at least one thing a day for the most part. Time will tell.

2013 Phase Three

Posted: Mon 9 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 2012/13, Domestic, Health, Weigh Less | Leave a comment »

This time last week I wrote about starting the final third of 2013, and what I wanted to be working on with that. Part of that project/phase is to be healthier, and ideally weigh less too.

Because of the change in working location, I’ve had to stop my membership of the gym in Luton, where I was working before. There’s no point in my having a gym that’s 30 minutes away in the wrong direction, and that thus I now wouldn’t be using at all.

I may sign up for a gym in Milton Keynes, as I’m there a lot more often, but I don’t know yet, and I don’t need to decide right now.

What I am doing right now is

  1. Cutting out bread for a while, to see what happens.  I’ve never really done this before, so it’ll be interesting regardless.
  2. Related to one, changing some of the stuff I have while at work, lunches and the like.
  3. Getting out and walking/cycling more.  I went out for a short cycle ride yesterday for the first time in *cough* years, 3 miles in 20 minutes, and I’m hoping that’ll improve pretty quickly.

All told, it can be summed up as “Eat less/better/differently, exercise more.” Whether things will change or not remains to be seen – after all, things only really started yesterday, so there’s some time to be taken yet.

The plan is just to get into a routine on this stuff for the moment, see how it all goes.  I’ve got the plan in my head, but we’ll see how things work out when the real world gets its ass involved.

Scoring

Posted: Sat 7 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 2013/14, Bankruptcy, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

As part of both the Five Year Plan and rebuilding post-bankruptcy, one thing that’s really useful to know is one’s credit score, as well as what records are being held, and what they say.

So I’ve signed up (briefly) to Credit Expert, the happy smiley public face of the credit-reporting/scoring agency Experian.

It’s been an interesting process so far. When I registered to look at the record, I got told I’d got an existing account. Surprising – I did use them about eight years ago while with Herself, but nothing since. So I’ve had to go through a bundle of hoops in order to resurrect the old account, on a defunct email address/domain, because ‘we can’t have two records/accounts for the same person’ (according to their customer services clowns) despite that second account having a new email, address, phone number, and details. (Indeed, it’s kind of spooky that they can make the connection at all, based on the sheer level of change that’s gone on)

Annoyingly, this ‘use your old account’ process means I can’t take advantage of their ’30-day free trial’ offer, but I can live with that, to be honest.

Still, it’s letting me check all the relevant information, and I’m quite surprised to see that things are more positive than I’d expected. I was fully braced for seeing a score down near zero, and rebuilding from there. Instead, because of the ongoing accounts I’ve held over the last year (and more) it’s sat in the “fair” bracket. Which is quite amusing, when you think about it.

There are some bits I want to check out, particularly a couple of accounts that still say there’s large amounts outstanding – despite them being part of the bankruptcy process. I’ll find out what needs doing with those, as (I think) they should be sat along with the other accounts that read “closed”, rather than “In Default”.  But I’ll find all that out, and figure out what needs doing.

There’s a long way to go yet, and I have no intentions of ending up back in the same situation I was in last year. But I do want to rebuild, to know I can make use of these things should I ever have to, want to, or need to. It’s not a quick process, but these first steps have shown me that perhaps – perhaps – the process won’t be quite as slow and drawn-out as I was expecting initially.

Common Sense (Or Lack Thereof)

Posted: Fri 6 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, BMW Drivers, Cynicism, Driving, Fog, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Following on from yesterday’s horrid (yet spectacular) crash in Kent on the Sheppey Crossing, the BBC’s now carrying a story saying that various people are wanting warning signs, lighing etc. on the bridge to prevent such an accident again.

The thing is, I don’t see how that’s going to improve things. (other than in the context of Being Seen To Be Doing Something)

The accident(s) happened in thick fog. As such, I would suspect that the actual primary causes of the accident(s) were

  1. Fog
  2. Drivers going too fast
  3. Drivers not using their lights/foglights
  4. Drivers being dickheads

I get the idea of warning signs on the crossing – again, in that context of Being Seen to be Doing Something – but I can’t see how they’ll improve safety. After all…

  • If they’re warning of thick fog, will people be able to see them in – um – the thick fog?
  • If they’re giving warnings, won’t they also be distracting the attention of dickhead drivers who don’t seem able to multitask?

If the warning signs just read “Don’t be a fucking moron”, it might help. But even then, it would be helping far less than drivers simply not being fucking morons.

 

You Shall Know Him By His Scent

Posted: Fri 6 September, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Health, People, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

At the new workplace, there’s one particular individual who – to be blunt – stinks.  It’s so bad that you can tell when he’s been somewhere, the smell lingers for a good ten minutes or more once he’s been in a room.

Personally I’m just thankful that I’m not sharing any space with him, and at the same time feeling true pity for anyone who does have to.

But what blows my mind is this : if you smell that damn bad, then

  1. Surely you can smell yourself, or at least be aware of that odour issue?  and
  2. Surely someone else has mentioned it to him?

With Option Two in particular, I really hope they have – I’d hate to have to be the one that breaks it to him. After all, I’m not the most tactful of people…

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