Strike!
Posted: Fri 3 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism 2 Comments »Maybe I’m just naïve, but I really don’t understand how mail workers going on strike is supposed to resolve their dispute.
Royal Mail’s trying to cut costs, partly by laying off up to 40,000 people. Now if it were me, I’d be looking at getting rid of the fuckers that were knackering my business by striking…
But strikes don’t – in my perception – engender sympathy from the public for the plight of those on strike. Instead it’s all “fucking strikers”, and “making a pain in the arse of themselves”, particularly when you start wondering whether they’re also still getting paid full wage while standing around doing sod all.
So how does striking resolve the issue?
Spam Mail
Posted: Thu 2 August, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky 1 Comment »Recently, I’ve been getting shedloads of spam email (or it could be viral email, I suppose) with subject lines like “You’ve received a message from a Schoolfriend!”.
In a way it’s quite a smart way to do things – which makes me wonder why it’s not been done before now – and I suppose it’s a development from the entire “See Anna Kournikova nude” and so on that used to pollute the web. But at least it does make you think “Oh, OK, I might click on that” – well, I can see how it would make people think that. Me, I look at the email and see it’s still purportedly from “Lazarus Matthews” or whoever, and then I know it’s crap. (Although some now come via “FreeWebCards” or somesuch, which adds to the ‘reality’ until you look at the email address itself, rather than the ‘pretty name’ and see it’s from zxc@abc.com or wherever)
Mind you, I’ve still no idea what this particular bunch of spam is advertising or what information it’s trying to get hold of – but I can at least see why people would click on this one in the mistaken impression that someone had emailed them…
Real or Fake
Posted: Wed 1 August, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »I must admit, I really don’t get the entire hysteria about ‘faked’ TV programmes. (the latest one is here, about the ITV documentary of a man dying with Alzheimers)
Now while I fully understand the problems with the ‘live’ TV shows with the faked winners of phone-in prizes, this supposed revelation that TV programmes are cut and edited to show a certain story – or cut and edited to link things together that didn’t actually happen at the same time – is (to me, anyway) a complete no-brainer. After all, how fucking stupid would you have to be to think that – for example – David Attenbrough is just walking around finding all these super-rare animals? Or that he’s the one diving with sharks, whales etc.?
To me, documentary programmes are actually the worst culprits of the lot (as Matt says in his comment on Dragon’s semi-related post) – where a so-called survival “expert” appears to have been in the wilderness for days surviving by drinking rancid horse piss or whatever, when he’s actually shacked up overnight in some hotel. But at the same time, again, what form of crackhead would actually believe he’s out there ‘alone’ when there’s a bloody huge TV crew around him?
I really don’t understand why all this crap about “TV is lying to us” is coming up now. It always has lied to us – well, since the invention of video-tape, anyway, as that’s when TV stopped being broadcast completely live. Every non-live programme is recorded, cut, edited and hacked about until it bears little (and sometimes no) resemblance to what actually happened. With dramas and so on, you know it’s fiction (OK, you’re supposed to know it’s fiction) and thus prone to cutting. But the documentaries and docu-dramas are still, to some degree or other, also fiction – they merely show portrayals as the director wants them. It’s not reality. Never has been, never will be.
Actually, one of the more interesting things about Attenborough’s “Planet Earth” series (I think that’s what it was called) was the ten minute mini-documentary bits at the end of each episode, which went some way to showing that a) it’s not all just David Attenborough finding all the animals, and b) that it could take days, weeks or months of filming before finding that elusive animal/bird.
But in the meantime, anyone who thinks that documentary programmes on TV are filmed as is, and are accurate portrayals of reality, well, they’re just delusional crackheads in the first place.
Regular Dumping
Posted: Fri 27 July, 2007 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?
Delivery Details
Posted: Thu 26 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised 2 Comments »As I’ve mentioned before this week, a couple of weeks ago we ordered a couple of water-butts from Greenfingers.com. Because they were likely to be delivered while we were both out at work, I also left a note in their “special instructions” part of the order process to say that if we were out, then it was fine to leave them in the garden behind the house. All well and good.
Anyway, I got a call from Greenfingers, telling me they were going to send the butts out the next day. Again, all well and good. After that, though, it all got a little bit surreal.
“Now, sir, you’ve added a note telling us that if no-one’s in, the order can be left at the back of the house”
“Yes, that’s correct”
“Well, can you also write the same thing on a piece of paper, and tape it to your front door? Our couriers need to have permission before they’ll leave anything at a property”
“But I’ve already authorised that to happen, by adding the special delivery comments”
“Ah, but the courier needs authorisation from yourself”
“He’s got it. I’ve given it to you, and thus by proxy to the courier”
“Well all the same, can you leave a note taped to your front door?”
“Let me get this right. You want me to advertise to all and sundry that a) I’m going to be out all day, and that the house is empty, and b) that there’s a good chance there might be some good stuff out the back. Do you want me to leave the door open for the courier as well, just to make sure?”
“Is that a ‘no’, sir?”
Now tell me, what’s the point of passing on a special request like that, if it’s not going to make it to the people who’re doing the delivery? And what’s the point of leaving a notice like that on my door?
As it turned out, the water butts did get delivered, and did get dealt with just fine. Even without a note on the bloody door.
Practicality
Posted: Tue 24 July, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »Over the weekend, we got a lot of small (but necessary) jobs done, some of which I found to be really quite satisfying. It has to be said, I’m about as practical as a teapot made of salt, so it’s been good to have done some practical “DIYish” tasks that’ve gone smoothly, and had good results, rather than my normal disastrous attempts.
One example of this was that we put the rotary washing-line thing back in the garden. And this time we used a different base, so it went in straight. I don’t know how, but the first time I’d done it with one of those poxy ground-spear things, it’d gone in straight up ’til about halfway in- I know it had, I’d checked it with a spirit level – but by the time it was all the way in, it was angled at about 30° Not ideal, as you can imagine – and it also meant I bore a certain amount of piss-taking about the entire thing being utterly skew-whiff.
The new base we got was one that screwed in to the ground – much easier to do, until the last couple of revolutions, at which point it became quite tough, and the supplied lever wasn’t really up to the job. Still, application of another length of steel through the handle rectified that – if there’s one thing I do understand when it comes to DIY, it’s what leverage and/or fulcrums can do.
Secondly – and this was something that I hadn’t previously screwed up – was the installation of two more water-butts, along with downpipe-diverters, so that water coming down the drainpipe from the guttering gets diverted into the water-butt, until it’s full and then it goes back down the drain. All very clever, I’m sure. Thankfully I didn’t design the bloody things, I just fitted them.
And it was remarkably simple. Worryingly so, in fact – which meant that neither I nor herself actually trusted them to be done correctly until we’d emptied a two-litre bottle of water into each gutter. But lo, they worked perfectly first time.
Even more satisfyingly, having installed them on the Saturday morning, when I checked them on the Sunday following the rainy Saturday night, the butts were full. 100L in 24 hours. Not bad at all. Even if it does mean we’ve now had to buy some more, and they’ll be getting connected together to the current ones once they arrive.