Red's Place

If you haven't noticed by now, its a new year. London for once did us UKers proud, a seriously good set of fireworks that rivalled the Australian spectacular. Wow. Only £1.3m, and I suspect we all paid ;-)

This blog started in 10th Sept 2004, and has been kinda routine, but not on my "essential" must do list. Therefore I'm considering cutting my 'losses' as it were. I suspect my readers are those who also blog, so you'll know who you are.

Don't expect any posts on here, but I'll leave the site here, until I make a final decision :)

Well, maybe one more post.

So, there I've been signed up to Match.com for the last few months, without any real mission in life to do anything, when over Christmas I receive on my PDAphone (Microsoft blackberry) the notice that I've been "winked at". WTF?

So I scrabble around with the very small version of IE and manage to browse the profile of the 'winkee' (it’s a word). To find there is absolutely no way I would have bothered had I been the one doing the 'winking'.

So what is an on-line wink, and what is the etiquette supposed to be. The winkee is someone who to me seems the opposite of the items I put in my "must match" areas, of which I've been incredibly frugal, I think I've got one out of the 25+ categories.

I can see why it might work this site, purely because it has so many more people, but its kinda reinforced that anyone matching my interests/options lives either in the big smoke, or the other side of it. Typical. You can't win when you're too lazy/scared/reluctant/insecure/procrastinating to even think about writing to anyone.

Is that what these scientists are tying to say, that our weather causes us to be depressed? If that's true, how do countries with 6 months of darkness cope? Or is that easier for the human mind?

As someone who loves the bright sunshine (although not the sweltering heat) I love this idea. I'm well aware I'm more "on form" with ideas at work during the summer months. Perhaps everyone has a mild form of SAD, and we call it "hibernation" in animals?

1) Friday - told work laptop is beyond economical repair, just after I've got all the accessories set up for this one. No way will my manager pay for the equivalents.
2) Sat AM - find my car's 5 disc CD changer is dying
3) Sat PM - find its totally dead
4) Sun - keeping fingers crossed that when checking tyre pressures at local garage and the inflater got stuck to valve, it hasn't broken the seal.
5) Still in the nothing ventured area of the on-line dating stuff.... gotta stop procrastinating I guess.
What if fine isn't good enough? What if I want extraordinary?

Listening to a lot of snow patrol recently, well I would next week but see point 3... pah...

January, is this the bad month for electrical items?

So its gonna cost me £10 investigation fee, plus my lunch hour, to get the CD changer issue looked at.

Now the door on the washing machine has conked out. Arrrrghhhhhhhhh.

Plus its getting COLD, and I mean COLD ... at work. Much warmer at home.

January - who likes it?

Had an expensive weekend, got the MOT done, which needed the rear brakes doing. Then new tax disc... (ouch, that's gone up a lot since last year) and then I bought a new washing machine. A lot on the card in one day...

Was pondering whilst spending the 3hrs waiting in the garage, what is going on in this country? Does anyone think about what the customer wants, or is it all just cover up and deceit? In my line of work technical accuracy is vital - yet I think the industry has lost that. Due to constant cost cutting the idea of getting it "right first time" has vanished.

Stupid thing is, if the accountants pushing the cost cutting only knew it, getting it right first time need not cost any more. Customer satisfaction would quadruple, and business would soar. It just takes a little planning and a little organisation. All lost when your teams are 'virtualised' and people have no moral due to job losses.

Think I blame the civil service they're good a "managing decline". It doesn't seem to matter which party is voted in, the service has people with 50yr careers telling the politicians what is possible. Not really a democracy is it.