Forecaster
Posted: Thu 21 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Sweary Leave a comment »(via Sevitz)
Now this is how a weather forecast should be done.
When can we get the BBC weather to be like this?
No-Fly
Posted: Tue 12 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Creativity Leave a comment »How to break a jet engine in creative ways – Lesson 1
Suck a metal luggage cart into it
I can just see the conversation at “lost luggage” now.
Well, we know where it is.
Yes, it might be a little bit damaged…
Geeky Tattoos
Posted: Wed 6 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness 3 Comments »Really, you’ve just got to worry about some of the people shown on the Geeky Tattoos site.
I mean OK, I can understand (kind of) getting a tattoo of your favourite game characters or whatever – but the text of a 90s geeky meme that wasn’t funny at the time? Not the smartest of moves for later life, I’d suggest.
And as for a tattoo of Wolverine riding My Little Pony – let’s just leave it at “Oh. My. God.”, shall we?
XKCD
Posted: Fri 17 April, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising Leave a comment »Related to today’s XKCD cartoon, I love the text that goes with the image…
Somewhere out there is a company that has actually figured out how to enlarge penises, and it’s helpless to reach potential customers.
You know, I’d really never thought of it like that.
Collection Chaos
Posted: Tue 14 April, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic 7 Comments »Ah, you’ve got to love our fuckwitted local authority. When it comes to bank holidays and religous festivals, this year they’ve decided to fuck about with how the rubbish collections are done – only they’ve pretty much forgotten to let their customers (i.e. the residents of the area) know what they’re doing. And they’re not even consistent on what they’re doing.
In the normal world, collections just become later by one day – so if your collection’s on a Monday, it gets collected on a Tuesday, so on and so forth. I can’t recall quite what happened for the Friday collections – I think they just did them on the Saturday instead, so everything was back in sync for the following week. Simple, easy to remember, no messing about.
But now of course, we’re in the world of alternate collections – so the council decides to fuck about with things.
In our case, (a Monday collection) it meant that our normal 6th April collection was supposed to happen two days earlier, on the preceding Saturday 4th April. Only, um, the council forgot to inform people. Oh, they put it in the local press – except that a lot of people don’t get a local paper (we haven’t received the supposedly local free paper since we moved to the village) and don’t bother with the regional EDP. The booklet with all the Bank Holiday timetable revisions came out to us on – um – 6th April.
This Monday’s (recycling) collection was supposed to happen yesterday – but being Easter Monday, they moved that forwards to today. Well, according to the booklet anyway. Only, because so many people didn’t know about last week’s collections being made at least one day earlier than usual, the council only collected from 30% of homes last week.
So they’ve changed things around again – as you can see on Breckland’s revised collection schedule here – and moved the collections two days forward. So our Monday collection now won’t be collected ’til tomorrow. And how have they let people know about these changes? Um – they haven’t. Supposedly it’s been in the local press – except again, there’s lot of people who don’t bother. It’s not even on the front page of the council’s site – you’ve got to hunt for the bloody thing.
And even better – there’s now a knock-on effect into next week as well. So next Monday’s collection is also delayed, but this time only by one day, so it’ll get collected on Tuesday instead of Monday. Finally, the Friday collection is on a Saturday, and the world returns to normal for the end of the month.
So the supposedly “better” jiggering about that Breckland Council have done with the waste collections for Easter 2009 is actually far more invasive and confusing than the old method.
Ain’t “progress” grand?
Even be
Black and White
Posted: Thu 2 April, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Animals, Domestic 2 Comments »Last week I wrote about having new visitors to the house – including the two cats from up the road, who keep on coming in through the new cat flap. We’ve christened them both Bob (Ninja Bob and Scaredy Bob, to be exact – an explanation of these will follow at some point)
What we couldn’t work out at the time is how they get in to the house without Hound making a fuss. On a couple of occasions, we were sure they’d walked right past her. (and in one case, jumped over her, although that was on the way out of the house rather than coming in) She’s usually quite wary round Psycho Cat, but can be guaranteed to make a racket when new people come to the house – or when people slam car doors anywhere in the vicinity, including up to three doors down. So why wasn’t there any noise or fuss when the Bobs came in?
This morning, we found out why.
Hound just stands next to the Bobs, looks at them, and wags her tail. And I mean really wags, not just a little flicker- she’s happy to see them.
I’m sure it’s because they’re black and white, so the idiot twatting Hound just thinks they’re collies, like her – only smaller.
Misguided Motivations
Posted: Tue 31 March, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As I may have mentioned before, sometimes a phrase or quote from someone just leaves me bemused, and wondering what the hell they were thinking at the time.
This happened to me again yesterday, reading the story about how a communications officer for British Transport Police lied about a significant fact, which then caused a delay in finding the body of a missing woman.
He wrongly claimed to Essex Police that trains were fitted with sensors that would detect any collision on the line. This affected the police’s “perception of the likelihood of Natasha being on the railway lines”, the report said.
“The communications officer admitted he lied to an Essex police officer, initially telling IPCC officers that he did so to end the call which would allow him to get on with his job, and that he actually had no knowledge of train sensors,” the report said.
Now really, you’ve just got to wonder about the motivation there, haven’t you?
I guess it could be paraphrased as “I told a lie so I could get rid of the call, and go back to doing something else. Sure, the call was about a missing 17-year-old girl, but that wasn’t my problem or my job.”
I just think the entire thing’s weird, let alone the motivation for using that as an explanation of why he made that mistake…