Posted: Mon 6 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts, Work-related |
For the first time this year, I’ve had to scrape the ice off the car windscreen before I could go to work.
Well OK, for “scrape” read “Use the heated windscreen, and hot air blowers”, but the concept is the same.
Posted: Fri 3 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Thoughts, Work-related |
Over the last couple of days, while fighting with a terminal sense-of-humour failure, I have had one small ego-boost, which was much needed.
While demonstrating the new system I’m working on to a group of people in the office, my own details came up, including my age. And all of the people in the demonstration expressed serious surprise that I was nearly 37 (this time next month, in fact). And no, that didn’t mean they all thought I was older.
Without prompting, they had all said they thought I was – at most – in my very early thirties. And only one person thought that – the rest said 30 on the dot.
It’s funny, though – back when I was eighteen or so, everyone then thought I was about thirty, too. OK, so I usually take that as meaning “You look fuck-rough“, people’s perceptions of my age have stuck at thirty. What used to be (almost) insulting is now a compliment.
How weird is that?
Posted: Mon 22 September, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Web Development, Work-related |
A quick self-reminder post : Interface Design guidelines.
More people should read this – it makes sense, despite being a bit geeky.
Posted: Tue 9 September, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Travel, Work-related |
“OK, so we’ve got this huge abnormal load to take through Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. It’s going to screw traffic up royally, because it’s roughly 1.25 carriageways wide – and just about the entire route is dual carriageway at best. It’s also only moving at a maximum of 10mph, and needs a police escort, outriders etc. So by that point well, we’ll be pretty much taking up two carriageways.”
“Oh fuck, of course, there’s the A11 between Brandon and Thetford, and that’s only a single-carriageway each way. So for that one we’ll really screw things up traffic-wise.”
“So I know, let’s time it so that we’re on that section of road at 7am on a weekday. No-one will be using it at that time, will they?”
“And even better, let’s not give out any warnings at all. That way, we can piss everybody off, because they won’t even see it on the local news that morning, or hear it on the radio traffic news reports until it’s way too late for them to avoid it. You know, just to add icing to the cake.”
Or at least that’s what I imagine the conversation must have been like, when planning to do the journey with this load. Fuckwit bastards.
Posted: Thu 14 August, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, Work-related |
One of my more grotty journeys to work today – primarily caused by this accident.
I left home at 7am, and finally arrived in the office just before 10am, on a journey that normally takes an hour door-to-door.
Suffice it to say that my brain is more than a little bit frazzled today…
Posted: Mon 11 August, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Own Business, Thoughts |
This morning, Motley Fool emailed me about a new story on their site, “How to stop falling into arrears [on your mortgage]”.
It’s not a bad article, but to me point one on anything about “How to not fall behind on your mortgage payments” should be just
1. Make your mortgage payment on time. Pretty much all the others can wait a bit, or a payment plan can be organised if you’re in schtuck. But for Christ’s sake, keep the roof over your head.
(Note : Rule 1a would be just “Make sure you pay everyone on time”)
In business, the rule should be
1. Always, always, always make sure you pay HMCE (both tax and VAT now come under this title). Everyone else comes second to HMCE.
To me, if you keep those rules in place then the rest is (in comparison) easy going.
Posted: Mon 11 August, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, Own Business, Work-related |
Another week starts off with me driving to Cambridge each day.
In fairness I don’t mind the drive – I object to the time I have to get up, but it’s still better than driving down to Essex.