Healing Heels

Posted: Mon 11 September, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Health, London, Thoughts, Travel, Walking | Leave a comment »

Over the last three weeks, I’ve managed to damage and hurt my feet more than I have in the previous year or more.  And it’s all preceding a walking marathon at the end of September, so it’s been a little bit stressful.

It all started (as I wrote at the time) with an ill-fated walk to National Burger Day, during which I discovered I’d destroyed the insoles of my current walking boots.

New boots obtained, I wore them and tested them on the 3rd September, with walking to and around Meatopia, then going on to do a concert in them. All told, I was on my feet – in new boots – for 16 or 17 hours, and while I didn’t actively damage myself on that one, I was definitely hurting by the end of it, and changing shoes to drive home was a joy.

Then over this weekend just gone, I went back to London and did an eight-mile walk – but with different socks. And because of that, I ended up with a huge and red-raw blister on one heel.

I’m done now on distance walks until the actual event at the end of the month – so everything will be healed up and fine by then.

As it is, though, right now my confidence is at a low about completing the marathon.  Events (and boots) have conspired against me somewhat, and I’m just trying to decide on my best options at the moment, whether to go with my old (and broken in) boots with new replacement insoles, or stick with the new boots and decent walking socks. Honestly, I don’t know which will be best.

I’ll still be going, and I’ll be doing my best. I’m still 75-85% certain I’ll complete the course.  But if I’m in danger of causing myself serious harm, I’m going to stop and not complete it.  I’ll do my best, but not at the expense of serious damage.

And if I do drop out, I’ll sign up to do next year’s one instead, and be better prepared for that.

New Boots

Posted: Wed 30 August, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: 2016/17, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Gigs, London, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel, Walking, Weigh Less | Leave a comment »

As I’ve mentioned before, at the end of September I’ll be doing the Shine Nightwalk marathon in London. I’m mainly looking forward to it, although I can’t deny that there’s a dose of trepidation to balance things out a bit.

Anyway, following a particularly ill-fated walk last week, I discovered that my boots – the ones I was planning to do the marathon in – are pretty much destroyed inside, to the extent that they’d caused me some really unpleasant blisters during that walk.

So of course that’s meant I’ve had to buy new boots for walking, and now have to break them in over the next couple of weeks in order to be ready for the end of the month. Thankfully, the ones I prefer are more like trainers inside, rather than being hard-core ‘proper’ walking boots, so the process shouldn’t be too complex/painful. (Crossing my fingers like no-one’s business there)

In fairness, it’s not the first time this has happened when I’m doing one of my bigger walks – I should know better by now.  Indeed, the first 10km walk I did, the boots I was planning to use fell apart on the morning of the walk, so I ended up doing it in my normal everyday Cat boots instead, and came to no harm.  But still, a marathon is four-and-a-half times that distance, so I’m trying to be a bit more prepared. (Not massively so, but enough that I don’t make a complete twadge of it all)

Anyway, the new boots arrived yesterday – fairly impressed, ordered them on Saturday through Cotswold – they were even on a better online price than expected – for supply to the local Cotswold store, and they arrived as expected, even over a Bank Holiday weekend. And the wearing-in process starts today.

The proper test will be on the weekend, when I’ll be using them to walk from Euston Station to Tobacco Dock (four miles, give or take, depending on which route I aim for) for Meatopia, then five-ish back to Camden for a concert – and then a similar Euston -> Tobacco Dock and back on Sunday for the same thing.  If they’re not broken in by then, I’m going to have problems.

There are a couple of other walks between now and the end of the month (I changed some plans around to give me time to do so) and all should be fine by then.  But we’ll know more when it happens…

“Quiet” August

Posted: Fri 25 August, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Day Trips, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Getting Organised, Gigs, London, Sociable, Stupidity, Travel | Leave a comment »

When this month started, I said it was going to be a quiet one, before the storm that is my September.  And of course, me being me, it hasn’t really worked out that way at all.

Instead there’s been several visits to the cinema, a bundle of social evenings with food and the like, catching up with people, three or four London days, and all of that jazz. In some ways I’ve been busier in August that I am in usual months – the difference has been that I’ve been based from home, rather than weekends away.

Looking back, it seems like this is actually pretty much standard – last year was the same, and so was 2015. (although there’s no ‘busy’ post as such, I was still doing a lot of stuff)  So that idea of a ‘quiet’ month is… pretty much bollocks, really.

And then yesterday was a late afternoon / early evening visit to the National Burger Day event down in London (which will be a post all of its own, I’m sure). Still to come this month I’ve got another big walk over the weekend, a cinema visit, and a social thingy, and then the idiocy of September, which currently includes (but is not limited to)…

  • Meatopia on the Saturday and Sunday  (although the Sunday is somewhat based on what’s going to be on, but I haven’t bailed on one yet)
  • as well as seeing the Sisters of Mercy on the same Saturday evening. (Yes, I’m a lunatic)
  • possibly a pub-crawl of sorts
  • Seeing Coriolanus in Stratford-upon-Avon
  • Walking a full marathon overnight in London at the end of the month
  • Two other concerts as well as the Sisters of Mercy.

So yeah, daftness abounds. As ever.

Moving Emails

Posted: Mon 14 August, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Amazon, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Technology, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Over the weekend, I ended up moving a lot of my email processing over to Amazon’s “Workmail” product. So far, it’s gone pretty well, but we’ll see what happens over time.

The email server/service I was using (via a company I do a lot of my hosting with) was generally OK, but had some significant issues which they didn’t appear to be able (or willing) to fix. The main one was that emails with attached files – particularly PDF and Word documents – would occasionally disappear. They wouldn’t bounce back to the sender, and they wouldn’t tell me (the recipient) that something had gone wrong, they’d just disappear with no notice to anyone.

Generally it’s been survivable, but last week there were things for HMRC and others that didn’t make it – things that were, safe to say, bloody important.

So I’ve moved the primary accounts over to Workmail, and it’s been quite smooth.  The setup didn’t take long, and while there were a couple of teething errors when it came to migrating the emails from Old to New, it all worked pretty nicely.  Once I knew what the hell I was doing (and/or looking for) it became even easier/better.

After that, the main ball-ache has been putting the new accounts onto all my devices, and getting everything to syncronise properly again. It’d be nice if you could just push the new account to your devices, but that’s a level of tech that’s above and beyond what we’ve currently got, sadly.

Still, it’s all worked, I’m fully moved over with all my key accounts, and it hasn’t made me want to throw computers through windows. Even that is pretty noteworthy, I think.

Working Motion

Posted: Mon 24 July, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Change, Domestic, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

This week, I’ll be changing office.  Nothing major – just at the other end of the building from my current one, and on the back of the building rather than the front.  There’s a number of reasons for it, but it’s mainly because the front of the building is a sun-trap, and it all turns into a rancid sweatbox. The back of the building is cooler (or at least more consistent) and that’ll be nice.

I also wanted a bit of change – it’s not a major one, but it’s still a change, a new view, and sorting out all of that stuff.  As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m in a bit of a stasis block at the moment, with no change in (for me) way too long when it comes to house, job, contract, clients and so on. Location-wise, I’m likely to be staying where I am for another year-and-a-bit, so moving office (even while staying in the same building) means just a bit of change.

I’m sure there’ll be more coming in the future, but for now, this should be enough.

Along the way, I was also pleased to see, when I prepared to move the office, how little crap I’d actually accumulated in the eighteen months or so that I’ve been in the current one. I was able to move everything within an hour, and had a half-bag of rubbish to get rid of along the way. And that was it.

So on that score, it’s all been pretty successful.  For the office itself, we’ll see how it goes, but all told it’s not really much of a change, so should all be fine.

Something New – Quick Update

Posted: Wed 19 July, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Last week, I wrote about starting off with getting a new card from Monzo, and how things had gone so far.  At the time, I was waiting for the card to arrive, so I could connect it to the account and so on.

The card actually arrived on Saturday, rather than the expected/predicted Friday, but I can live with that.  Even out of usual business hours etc., it was a simple case of opening the phone app, doing the linking process, and it was immediately sorted with the top-up I’d put on it.

I’ve used it for some payments over the last few days, and so far I’m really impressed. It’s all been painless, and the updates and notifications come through to the app so fast you can’t really believe it’s been that quick.

As I said last time, I’ll write more about the entire thing in a month or so – but right now, yeah, I’m actually impressed with Monzo. Let’s hope things stay that way.

Something New

Posted: Fri 14 July, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Technology, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Over the last week or so, I’ve been trying something new (well, new-ish) in the financial sector – Monzo.

I’ve been aware of a few of this type of “new banking” start-ups of late, but Monzo interested me when I read this article that talked about how closely it kept track of payments, and their whole customer service set-up.   In my own experience with banks, it’s customer service that is their greatest weakness, so I’m interested in how other ‘non high-street’ new financial organisations address it.

At the moment it’s “only” a pre-paid credit card option, driven entirely through a smartphone app – but they’ve got their banking licence, and are aiming to be starting a current account as well, again all driven through smartphone apps.

So far, the experience has been pretty good. (Note – for purposes of this, I used my iPhone – I can’t say anything at all about the Android version) I got the app through the App Store, and went through the initial stages.  Basically, just a name and date-of-birth for verification purposes, and then they order your card.

This took some time – but the expectations were managed all the way through, showing the queue of applicants, where I was in that queue, how many people were before me, and how many after.   Now, my cynicism kicks in slightly here, as I noticed that the number of applicants always stayed around the 25,000 mark, so it *could* just be a steady flow of incoming customers, or it *could* be all smoke-and-mirrors guff to make me think they know what they’re up to.

It took about four days to get to the top of the queue (I could’ve jumped places if I’d promoted Monzo on social media, but frankly, fuck off) and once that happened, I got a notification to say so.  This was where the identity stuff came in, and needed address details, plus an in-app photo of driving licence for proof-of-address, and a 5-second video to prove I’m real.

I’ve done an initial top-up (of a completely manageable amount – if the entire thing turns out to be a scam, I won’t be screwed) and the card has been sent to my home address. It’s due to arrive today, at which point I’ll have to connect it to the app – slightly annoying, as surely they know all the necessary details already – and then it should be ready to go.

I’ll write more about it in a month or so, once I’ve used it and seen how I feel about the entire thing.  So far, though, it’s been an interesting and positive experience – I hope it continues to be so!

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