1 Month to go…

Posted: Mon 26 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Festering Season, Travel | Leave a comment »

Bah, HumbugJust think, this time next month the Festering Season will be over, and we can all go back to “normality” once more.

Of course, the coming month is one of ridiculous work levels and travelling – on Friday we’re at the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham, on Saturday we’re down in Esher for something for Herself, and on Sunday – hmm, what’s Sunday? – oh yeah, Herself is doing a craft show locally. Then in a couple of weekends time we’re down in Reading for the Saturday night – being sociable etc.

There’s also a whole bundle of other things going on, but that’s the main stuff I can recall for now.

Still, one month to go. Not that I’m counting or anything, you understand…

Business Redesign – About Me

Posted: Tue 23 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related, Writing | Leave a comment »

With the redesigned business site, one of the things I seriously need to update is the entire “About Me/About The Business” page. It’s never been great, but now needs to contain a lot more information than previously.

The thing is, believe it or not, I’m utterly crap at writing that kind of thing. I don’t like writing self-promoting and self-publicising stuff, although I know it’s a necessary evil in the context of having a business. Freelance Switch had a piece about this kind of problem with a couple of ideas I might try out as well.

Then again, maybe I should just write it as though it were a blog post, and that might come up with something workable.

Long-Term Residents

Posted: Wed 12 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

I must admit, on my first reading of the story yesterday of the couple who have been living for 22 years in a Travelodge hotel (and I use that term very loosely) my first reaction was “Why?!?”, closely followed by “Freaks.”

It’s taken me a good 24 hours to get past that reaction- and if I’m honest, it still comes back to that on occasion. Personally, I couldn’t stay in a Travelodge for 22 days, let alone 22 years. I’ve written before about staying in one, and about their dodgy booking practices (although that appears to have stopped now) – but I have to admit that they’re comfortable to sleep in, if nowt else.

However, seeing one of the quotes from the couple, I can understand their motivation a bit more.

“The Travelodge room suits us so much better than our first-floor flat in Sheffield, which has no disabled access for Jean. It’s important as she now suffers from a bone disease and uses a wheelchair.”

Now yeah, fair enough – their disabled access isn’t bad at all, usually.

But still, twenty-two years in a Travelodge. Fucking hell. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

Overtaking

Posted: Fri 7 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Driving, Travel, Weirdness | 3 Comments »

Over the last few weeks, as I’ve said before, I’ve been doing a lot of driving – commuting between home and Cambridge, roughly 110 miles per day. In that time I’ve also seen a huge dollop of bad driving. I’m not saying I’m a perfect driver – Gawd knows, I’ve made enough mistakes as well in that time. But there’s a couple of things that drive me mental every time I see them, and they both involve overtaking. Just for reference, this is usually done on motorways and dual-carriageways, rather than single-carriageway roads.

First, I don’t get the entire thing of starting an overtaking manoeuvre and then indicating. It drives me potty. OK, it’s slightly better than the tosspot BMW drivers who all appear to have their indicators turned off by default.

Second – and this is the big one – is the people who pull out to overtake, and then either stick at 5mph above whatever vehicle they’re overtaking (and so take forever to do it) or even worse, slow down! Why? What’s the fucking point? Well, except for being the sort of selfish festering bell-end who enjoys blocking up lanes and screwing things up for other road-users, of course.

Vindicated

Posted: Wed 29 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Work-related | 2 Comments »

Is it wrong to feel slightly smug?

Over the last six weeks, things have been going mental with the site redesign at work, and lots of hours have been put in. The preceding three months have involved me doing a lot of work on the back-end of the site, while others have been faffing with design, wireframes, ideas, and the like. One person in particular has been doing sod-all, but making out they’re the centre of all the work.

In the last six weeks, they’ve been banging on about how all their stuff is done – but it hasn’t been checked in to the version control system, so no-one else has been able to see what they’ve done. And during that time, all my work – and all the work that the other people on the team – has been checked in, visible to all, tested, and done way ahead of deadline. And all the way through, I’ve been saying that the person hasn’t done what they’ve said, and that things will go horribly wrong – each time to be told by others that I’m too cynical, that of course they’ve done what they said, and blah, blah, blah.

So on Friday and today, the day before everything goes live, they’ve been complaining that things ‘suddenly’ don’t work, and it’s turned out that the relevant sections done by this one person have gone horribly wrong, and aren’t actually anywhere even close to completed. In fact, it’s being questioned whether any valid work at all has been done. Everything has turned into a last-minute panic for those sections, and the person has been working all weekend to complete them – as well as working ’til very late tonight.

And it’s been acknowledged that actually, my cynicism was accurate.

So yes, I feel slightly smug. And really rather vindicated. It’s a good feeling.

Regular Dumping

Posted: Fri 27 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism | 1 Comment »

You really have to wonder about some people, don’t you?

Not content with taking a shit out in public, this guy apparently made a habit of it, ‘regularly’ getting caught short. Sorry, but if it’s a regular occurrence, then be prepared for it, you know?

Swearage

Posted: Sat 21 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, D4D™, Sweary | Leave a comment »

Every so often, I realise that my swearing is becoming too commonplace, and it’s losing any useful impact or utility. It’s not a process I’m conscious of in general, but I do always suddenly get to a point where I think “that’s too much, it’s getting boring now.”

So I’m now going to cut it right back down again – I was going to cut it out completely, but there’s a big project at work that’s due for a deadline of the end of August, so there’s no chance of it being a complete cut-out.

But the plan is that I’ll be cutting it right back down from now, but definitely for the entire of August. It also means that I get to play (yet again) with new swear-words to replace the old standards, and that is almost as much fun in its own right.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →