Parking Policies
Posted: Thu 30 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I swear, I’m never going to understand some people.
In the new job, there’s a large staff car park – which is fine, there’s a lot of staff. There’s no space reservations, or team/department delineations on who parks where – it’s just “find a space and use it”. However, most mornings I’ll see people either:
- ‘Having’ to park in ‘their’ space (and/or getting annoyed because some inconsiderate soul has parked in ‘their’ space)
or - Driving round the car-park (sometimes twice) in order to find the “best” parking spot – despite driving past any number of empty spaces in order to find one closest to the office.
Me, I just use the first space I see. It’s simple. I’m capable of remembering where my car is in the car park, and going back to it when I leave the office.
So I just don’t really understand these little obsessions with having one’s own parking space, or with trying to find the absolute closest available space to minimise walking (one assumes) when you’ve already driven past umpteen empty spaces.
Just bizarre, in my (oh so) humble opinion.
Camera Defaults
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Photography, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »One of the things that has surprised me on my photography course is the number of the people on it who haven’t really played with their cameras at all.
For instance, the great majority still even have the default (and highly irritating) beeps, clicks and whistles that accompany every keypress or option change. During the course, as the tutor describes certain options, you can hear them beeping through the menus, trying to find the things he’s talking about.
Now I have to say that as well as being bloody annoying, I do find that this is quite inconsiderate – both to the tutor, and to the other people in the class. For me, those sodding beeps are really distracting – and I’m sure I’m not the only one on the course who finds them so. But while they’re going through the menus, they’re also not really listening to what the tutor is saying next, which means he’s either got to repeat it, or they’ve missed it completely.
I think sooner or later I’m going to go and silence the cameras in question – but we’ll see.
I suppose that I just find it strange that people seem to be happy to buy a new device/gadget/whatever, and not fiddle with it and try all the options. And yes, I know, I’m a techie geek, and thus fiddling with new things is always going to happen with me, but all the same – wouldn’t you want to try out most of the options on a new camera as soon as you got it? And/or figure out what these arcane settings like Av, Tv, ISO etc. actually do?
Electoral Prejudice
Posted: Fri 17 October, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’ve been fairly good about not mentioning the US Presidential Election campaign, but Holy Jesus Fuck, sometimes Americans scare me.
Some of the sentiments in this report are just bizarre – you have to wonder how people get to be so bigoted and prejudiced. Very, very scary viewing.
High Finance
Posted: Thu 9 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The more that the ‘credit crunch’ continues, the more I realise just how much I don’t understand about finance, and the way it supposedly works. (Although “works” is a pretty loose term for it, in this context)
For example, I simply don’t understand how a country can continue to operate when it has a National Debt of over 10 trillion dollars. I can’t see any world where that makes sense. But maybe it’s just me being simple.
And I don’t understand how local councils can complain on the one hand about their ever-shrinking budgets, and how they’re going to have to make cutbacks to services every year, yet they can also afford to invest millions in an Icelandic bank. (For example, our local council has £12 million there, yet keeps on bitching that it hasn’t got any money, and that services have to be reduced)
I must be simple. I just don’t get how this can be seen as a working system…
Overtaking
Posted: Tue 23 September, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Why is it that whenever you’re overtaken on a motorway or dual-carriageway, it’s never by a sports car, or anything that looks like it should be overtaking everything? Instead it’s always the Minis, or Ford Mondeos.
Just, why?
Yes, it could be a bug…
Posted: Fri 12 September, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »(via The Daily WTF)
4/7/2008 13:22 GMT;BENJAMIN;
Checked power connections and power to outlet. Monitor is on but not
computer. Checked power button on computer's power supply, user states
there is not one. Re-seated power connections, computer turned on for
about 3 seconds and turned off. Details:
Machine Name - DHO00MXL643843
User ID - 99321
Display Name - Burleson, Stephannie
OS Name - Microsoft Windows XP
Service Pack - Service Pack 2
Serial Number - MXL644493
Admin Access - Y OUSite - MN999-EAGAN-ETC
Assigning out per SW, setting pri3.
4/7/2008 14:09 GMT;MAURICE A;
User called for a status because her supervisor wants her to head to
the office if it will be more than an hour ; user will bring the
computer in with her if she has to go into the office
4/7/2008 15:11 GMT;ROBERT J;
contaced Stephanie and she had just finished carrying her pc downstairs
and loaded it into her car.since it is already loaded shi will go ahead
and take it into the Plano Parkway office and I will contact her when
she gets there. I am also contacting Jorge Alvarez, 2nd hat , to alert
him to expect her
4/7/2008 16:22 GMT;ROBERT J;
Jorge is picking up her pc and will connect it for testing
4/7/2008 18:21 GMT;ROBERT J;Jorge in Plano reported that this pc is
packed full of roaches so bad that they took the pc outside, did not even
want it in the building, and took the hard drive out. He will copy the users
data over to a share and i will copy the data to the hot swap pc which they
want to give the user as her new pc. They are going to bag and seal the
other pc and scrap it, as they do not want it in the building.
4/7/2008 19:14 GMT;JORGE H;
cleaned pc. Yikes! connected HD to our pointsec pc, assisted in transferring
data. Had cust test pc.
4/7/2008 20:34 GMT;JORGE H;
I would like to publicly thank Terry for helping me clean out and exterminate
all (I hope) the roaches from this computer, which has been quarantined in an
air-tied bag. NOTE: I hope never to see anything like this ever again,
however from now on I will be more careful when opening computers!
Just Yuck.
More Money Than Sense
Posted: Thu 4 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »This story, to me, illustrates what can happen when you’ve got more money than you know what to do with.
A Russian millionaire buys a £5m house in Sandbanks, Dorset. However, he doesn’t like the house itself, just the land it’s on. So he plans to pull down this house he’s spent £5 million on, and then build another one (allbeit with a new extra bedroom, with its own sun terrace) for another £2.5m.
Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the point of buying a house, only to knock it down and replace it.
But then, I don’t have £7.5 million to chuck down the drain, either.