Longest Reign

Posted: Wed 9 September, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Media, People, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

Today, Queenie becomes the longest-reigning monarch of the UK – 65 days, 7 months and 2 days (at the time of writing, naturally)

I’m not the greatest fan of the monarchy – although neither am I a disliker of it as such, I’m just completely ambivalent about the entire thing – but that’s one heck of a time, however you look at it.

Whatever though, it’s always good to be able to resurrect this image – and yes, I know, it’s Photoshopped, rah rah – which you can’t help imagine is what she’s doing to Charles on a regular basis…

queeny_digit

Privacy Breach

Posted: Wed 2 September, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Agency Idiocy, Business, Corbett, Customer Services, Geeky, Laziness, Marketing, People, Stupidity, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Yet again, today there’s a story about another place revealing a confidential list of customers in emails – and as usual, in what’s known as a Corbett round here (courtesy of a certain Irish marketing person) it’s looking like the leaker sent the email using CC instead of BCC.

In this case, the information is even more sensitive than usual, as it’s people who’ve used a particular STI clinic in London, and may have also revealed their HIV status.  Oh, bloody whoops.

It amazes me how often this seems to happen – and how easy it should be to fix.

The first answer is, obviously, train people.

But after that, it’s about defending against laziness and stupidity.  But even that’s pretty easy.

All it really needs is a block on recipients in CC.  If you’re sending an email and it’s got more than (say) 10 addresses in the CC field, it simply asks if you’re sure you want to send it with those people in CC rather than BCC.  That’s an email-client thing – but is easy to do.

It can’t be that difficult – my own email clients all already ask if I want to send an email with no attachments if the message contains keywords like ‘attached’ or ‘CV’, after all.

A similar thing could be done on the mail-server as well – put in a rule that if there’s more than [defined limit] of addresses in the CC, it doesn’t send without an authorisation, an acknowledgement that this is OK.

There will still be the odd blithering fucktrumpet who manages to send out a whole mailing-list in CC (or even To) – but at least make it harder for them to do so.

Surely that’s not asking too much?

 

All Lit Up

Posted: Tue 18 August, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Cynicism, Green, Laziness, Own Business, People, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

In the office building I share with a bundle of other companies, I find I have my irritations. I know, shocking.

One that regularly annoys me is the way people shove on all the lights – even in public spaces where they’re not necessary – and completely fail to then turn them off again.

At the start of the day, people come in and just automatically turn on every sodding light – regardless of the conditions outside, the time of year, or of anyone else in any other offices.  In short, the entire place is lit up like fucking fairyland – even in the height of summer, when you don’t need the lights on at all.

The same applies in the toilets – again, an area that at this time of year really doesn’t need any illumination other than daylight. But no, on go the lights, and then no other fucker turns them off again.

Of course, I don’t mind people turning on the lights when they need them. What bugs me is that they then don’t bother to turn them off when they leave the rooms/facilities.

But the thing is, everyone pays a piece of the electricity bill. You’d think that would encourage some responsibility, some desire to only use what’s necessary. But of course that’d require some vague sense of altruism, of being interested in something other than self, of just giving a shit about things.  And that’s what’s missing.

Grrrr.

Ten

Posted: Tue 11 August, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, People, Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

Ten years ago today, I finally passed my driving test. How time flies when you’re blatting round the country, and all that.

Prior to passing, driving had never really bothered me – I’d usually lived in places with decent public transport links, and when I hadn’t there’d always been friends, or lifts.  It also helped to own very little for a lot of that time – there were a few occasions where I moved by train, and could still do it in one journey, albeit with three or four bags.

However, now I wouldn’t be without my driving licence (and car, naturally – or at worst the ability to rent one whenever needed) and would hate to lose it. If something were to happen that made me lose my licence, I’d have to change everything – house, job, life in general. It would emphatically not be fun.

It still surprises me, though, how much I’ve changed in that ten years, and how much my attitude to driving has changed too.

Because I was such a late adopter of it – pretty close to mid-thirties – I thought I’d stay with using public transport, and that I wouldn’t drive much. Oh, how wrong I was.

In that ten years, I’ve covered *at least* 180,000 miles. That’s just a calculation based on the two cars I’ve owned, and doesn’t include hire cars, Herself’s car when we were together, or any other journeys. With all that included, it’s probably damn close to 200,000 miles in ten years.  Considering I’ve had some years (like this one) where I’ve been working far closer to home than others, that’s still quite an average to have been covering.

As I’ve said before, I really don’t think anything of a day trip involving two hours driving each way – one of those can add 4 to 500 miles to my total on its own.

Oddly, the general attitude to driving and miles seems to be a family trait – my brother covers even more miles than I do, Dad always used to cover a fair amount too, and none of us think anything of doing journeys that most people class as “too far”. Or maybe it’s just being daft that’s a family trait…

Fridays

Posted: Fri 31 July, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Domestic, Milton Keynes, People, Thoughts, Weirdness, Work-related | Leave a comment »

This year, I’ve been renting an office in a building in Milton Keynes – it’s been a good deal, and is suiting me pretty well.  There’s lots of other small and medium businesses in the building, and my floor contains quite a diverse range.

However, Fridays are invariably odd here.

I don’t know why/how, but a significant number of the companies and businesses here just don’t seem to come in on Fridays. It means my floor of the building is like a ghost-town, and it’s just a bit weird.

I don’t mind, it’s just something I’ve noticed that seems strange.

Where There’s A Will

Posted: Tue 28 July, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Legal, News, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

In the news today, there’s a lot going on about the person who’s managed to get her mother’s will overturned, and thus inherit a third of the money from it, despite the mother’s written explanation of why she didn’t want her daughter to get anything.

Personally, I find this kind of thing deeply unpleasant – not least for the greed it shows, and the all-round contempt for final wishes in this case. I think if a will has been made out with certain intent and intentions, that’s what should happen.

As it is, in this case the person is going to use the proceeds (although what’ll be left after legal costs is another question) to purchase their house from the local authority, which appears to have ‘always been what was intended’.

And – again, personally – that’s what drives me crackers, that expectation of (and reliance on) inheriting money, and even making plans for the money that will come when parents die. I’ve known a few people of similar mindsets over the years, and it always leaves me cold, that whole “Well, when they’ve died we’ll be able to [x]” attitude. It’s just unpleasant.

I know parents die – it’s a logical assumption that they will do so.  But counting down the days ’til it happens, effectively looking forward to them dying, that’s just wrong. (Again, and as always, in my opinion)

As and when my folks go, I would hope that their will says “We’ve spent the lot, and anything else can go to the cats home”. I’d be fine with that – and you can be damn sure I wouldn’t be fighting through the courts because it was “unfair”.

 

Grrrr, People. They really do piss me off sometimes.

Spaces

Posted: Sun 26 July, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Laziness, Milton Keynes, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about laziness – and noticing a lot of it, as well. As such, there’s likely to be a few more posts about it, while it’s in my head.

One thing I’ve noticed over the last few weeks is around parking on weekends. Milton Keynes, for those who don’t know, has no shortage of parking spaces. It’s basically a fucking huge car-park with added shops and housing.

And yet every weekend I see drivers queueing to get into the multi-story car-park that’s the absolute closest to one end of the shopping centre. Queueing past loads of spaces that are empty (and cheaper than that multi-storey one) and fucking up junctions, all to get to the closest (or at least perceived to be closest) parking place.

I don’t get it – but then, I’m the idiot who walks from one end of central Milton Keynes to the other, because I’m too lazy to be bothered with driving it and faffing with parking. So who am I to judge?

(Not that I’m judging, I just find it weird to queue for spaces in an expensive multi-storey when there’s tons of closer street-level parking)

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