Rental Car – Again

Posted: Thu 23 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Travel, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

I’ve just gone through the process of sorting out a rental car for next weekend, which should make life a lot easier.

Basically it means that on the Thursday, I can pick up the car, sort out stuff in Cambridge, then I either go up to Norfolk on the Thursday night, or I can get up to the new house directly on the Friday morning.

The bizarre bit, though, is that it is only costing me about £5 more to rent the car Thursday – Monday than it is to rent it Thursday – Friday. My brain can’t quite process the logic of that one, I’m afraid…

Snotty Blackberries

Posted: Mon 13 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness, Work-related | 2 Comments »

I got in to work fine in the end – and yes, the trains were a lot emptier than usual. All told, not too bad, and it meant I got to read through some of the OU Course material.

Anyway, while chumbling through a whole bunch of waffle and crap about Management, I was looking round the train carriage, and I noticed just how many people were using Blackberry machines. I really can’t believe that all these people are so important to their workplaces that they have to get their email pushed to them wherever they are. Of course, I know, Blackberrys are a “status symbol” that also supposedly says “look how important I am”, and as such it’s not something I’ve ever really bitten on anyway.

Personally I just wouldn’t want one. Hell, while I love a lot of the ideas on my little XDA, I’m almost certain to get rid of it next year when it comes to renewing my phone contract, and go back to a standard-type mobile. I simply don’t use the features enough on the XDA to make it worth my while to upgrade again, and particularly so while the poxy thing continues to crash on a regular basis.

But what I understand even less is the people who have both a Blackberry AND a mobile phone…

Bizarre

Posted: Fri 10 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness | 2 Comments »

As I think I’ve said before, I’m a member (or gullible sucker, whichever) of one of those mail-order book club things.

Usually, they’re not too bad, and at least I get the books I want while not paying through the nose for them from Waterstones etc.

Anyway, this month I’d ordered The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, one of my favourite authors. And that’s definitely what the delivery note said they’d sent, too.

Only when I opened the box, it wasn’t the Book of Lost Things at all. Instead, it was this…

Mustn't Grumble, by Terry Wogan
Yes, “Mustn’t Grumble” by Terry Fucking Wogan.

Now really, how the blinking chuff do you get those two mixed up?!? The mind boggles…

Total Nutter

Posted: Thu 9 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: News, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

OK, I was wrong about the Strangest Story of the Week.

It’s actually this bloody idiot who for some reason decided to try lighting a firework that was, um, stuffed up his arse.

I honesly can’t even begin to think of any reasons why someone would think this was a good idea, let alone amusing. But there we go – I’d say it was a Darwin Award waiting to happen.

My favourite quote, though, has to be:

“We received a call stating there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding.

“He sustained fairly significant injuries in the fact that there’s huge damage to that particular area.”

Mastering the fine art of understatement…

Surreal

Posted: Wed 8 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: News, Weirdness | 2 Comments »

And the award for “Most Surreal Story of the Week” goes to this little gem.

You just couldn’t make it up.

Out Of Whack

Posted: Wed 8 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

In fact, my entire week is completely out of kilter following that long weekend.

It is Tuesday today, right?

Chaotic

Posted: Wed 1 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness, Work-related | 4 Comments »

In some ways you just have to love my ex-employer, if only for their crapness.

It’s now a solid month since I left – and I have to say that so far, even with the joys of travelling etc., it’s been a bloody good month. But this morning, just for the hell of it, I tried to log in to the servers at my ex-employer.

You see, I had this nagging feeling that – despite all the company’s protestations that they knew what they were doing, and were a professional organisation – my account, username, password etc. would still be active. They’d promised to delete my account – and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty standard procedure, that if someone leaves a company, their username/password is changed or deleted so they can’t get on to the system and do anything nasty. The same thing applies to giving back your office keys, security pass, or whatever.

But with my ex-employers, nope, I can *still* log in to all the systems, into my work email, and on to all the servers, websites, and databases.

It really is fortunate that I’m not the kind of malevolent nasty person who would delete things, or change data, isn’t it?

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