Posted: Thu 5 January, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Resolutions, Stupidity, Thoughts, Time, Weight Loss, Work-related |
This year I’m not going to lay down a big old list of plans. They rarely work out, or I’m just too ambitious – or other things take over.
Take last year’s list, for example :
- Write more
- Take more photos
- Do more websites
- Get more business
Pay stuff offGet off the antidepressants
Not much, really. Yet most of it didn’t quite happen. Work and life got in the way, and things just didn’t quite happen.
Mind you, I did get off the antidepressants, and I did take photos when I got the chance, so that’s not too bad. I also completed a fair few websites, and some other projects – just not for myself.
I think I’ll be keeping the same basic list for this year though. It’s written with the best of intentions – but the knowledge that things change, including my motivation. But I think the 2012 list will be (in no particular order) :
- Write more
- Photograph more
- Owe less
- Weigh less
And that’ll do, I think.
Posted: Wed 4 January, 2012 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related |
So here we are, in 2012. I’ve been insanely slack this winter (and for a fair amount of 2011, to be fair) and I still don’t know what the plan will be for D4D™ in 2012. We’ll see.
As Blue Witch suggested in her comment on the previous post, 2011 wasn’t really a great deal of fun for D4D™ – plus I’ve been busy with other odds and sods.
Being ‘Corbetted’ (as I understand it’s now known) wasn’t any fun at all. Basically, this involves being threatened with legal action because you’ve made comments regarding your personal opinion about someone’s stupidity in light of a very stupid error – and that person then doesn’t have the sense to either contact me (whether by phone, email, or comment on the posts in question) but instead waits two fucking years before complaining through solicitors. We’ll just ignore the fact that Article 11 of the EU’s Human Rights Charter specifically says …
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
After all, Gore Grimes conveniently ignored it, so I might as well do the same.
So that might explain some of why things went a bit quite here.
The other major change for me was that I stopped wanting to write about some of the more personal stuff that’s been going on. Writing that kind of thing bit me hard at the end of 2010, and the effects of that rumbled through into 2011.
D4D™ used to be a place where I could write, and dump my brain when I needed to. In 2011, it stopped feeling like I could do so. It affected my desire to write at all, to be honest – well, that and the stupid levels of commuting, but that’s no decent excuse either.
I don’t know what will happen to D4D™ this year. It may be that it’s coming to a natural end. After all, it’ll be ten years in August – maybe that’s a good closing point. I don’t know yet.
I don’t know that I want D4D™ to end. I don’t know that I want to keep it going. So it’s all a bit up in the air, and I guess only time will tell.
Posted: Thu 22 December, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Driving, Work-related |
Over the last few months, things here at D4D™ have been pretty quiet. Mainly that’s been down to being madly busy, but also it’s fallen off my radar a bit.
So it’s been a tad “Radio Silence” here – even the upcoming Festering Season hasn’t made much of an impact this year. Commuting has taken a big chunk of my ‘non-work’ time, particularly where I’ve been working in London. Overall, my commuting miles since May ’til the end of this week comes to just over 19,000 miles,and that’s just for commuting. Yes, nineteen thousand miles. I must be barmy.
All told, it’s been an eventful year, what with one thing and another. Work changes (as above) took up a big part of those events, and kept me busy.
Writing in general took a back-seat, and D4D™ in particular. I wonder if it’s coming to the end of its life, to be honest – because I haven’t really missed writing here at all.
2012 is now just round the corner, and it’ll either be a time to re-start, or a time to give up. And to be honest, I don’t yet know which option will win.
Posted: Fri 4 November, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Hypocrisy, Legal |
The last few weeks have involved legal threats on behalf of a particularly unpleasant individual who works as a Marketing Manager in Ireland. Regular readers will recall, back in June 2009 that I received an email from this company which broke their own privacy policy – the Marketing Manager in question had used CC for the addresses instead of BCC – and I made some comments about my personal opinion about his intelligence, professionalism, and general competence.
Over the intervening two years, that Marketing Manager has been in touch once – yes, once – to ask (not tell – ask) me to temper my comments. As it was, I felt perfectly justified in my personal opinion of him, so I didn’t change the content. I did write another post, to show how much nastier I could be, but other readers prevailed upon my common sense, so the post was removed.
Yet this wasn’t enough for our Marketing Manager.
Oh, don’t forget, the post was always open for him to put his own point of view in the comments, or to apologise, or to contact me. In 2 and a half years, this man couldn’t be bothered to put fingers to keyboard and explain or comment. Indeed, he never even bothered responding to my email explaining my position, and that it was all a personal opinion.
Then about three weeks ago, I got a letter by email from Gore Grimes solicitors in Ireland – don’t be mean to them about their website – insisting I retract my comments about the Marketing Manager, because they were untrue, (no, the categorisation of this man as someone who didn’t know what he was doing was utterly true) defamatory, (not really – they were in response to his own error) and malicious. (also not true – although I wish now that they had been)
And so I offered a version of a retraction, which wasn’t accepted. So I’ve put up their version instead, and deleted the posts in question.
I’m not allowed to mention the name of this Marketing Manager. I’m not allowed to identify him – so I’m only describing him by his role. I can’t identify him on any site I control, or any social media I use.
Everything I’ve written on D4D™ is a personal opinion. In nine years, only one person has complained about what I’ve said about them. Personally I think it’s bizarre for someone to go running to lawyers instead of dealing with an issue themselves. I think that people who work this way should be named and shamed, but I’m not allowed to do so.
Posted: Tue 13 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™ |
It’s just occurred to me that I missed D4D’s 9th Birthday, which was on 9th August.
So yes, bloody hell, I’ve been writing this rubbish (on and off, and currently more off than on) for nine years. Fark.
Posted: Thu 8 September, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, D4D™, People, Stupidity, Sweary, Toyota IE |
On the 25th July 2009, I referred to the Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland, in derogatory terms regarding his not knowing the difference between CC and BCC when sending out marketing emails.
Following a request from his legal advisers, I am retracting these comments forthwith, and have deleted the original post(s) to reflect this. I apologise for any harm caused.
(This retraction has been approved by Gore Grimes Solicitors. My personal view hasn’t changed, but legal stuff prevails over personal opinion, it seems. Maybe next time he’ll remember about BCC, and privacy concerns resulting therefrom)
Posted: Mon 27 June, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic |
You know, there’s been a number of things that’ve gone on over the last few weeks that I should write about here. And yet, I don’t know, I just don’t want to.
I don’t know whether that’ll change again in time, but right now it feels like D4D has come to a natural pause. There’ll still be bits here and there, I’m sure, but the personal bits that became a theme here? I just don’t want to go down that road again at the moment.
We’ll see, I suppose.