The more things change the more they stay the same

Since I will be starting a job on Monday which means I have to dress like a grown up, i.e having to wear a shirt and tie the first order of business today was to head up to Leicester to buy some new shirts at Asda. Which is like Wal mart for any of my US readers who've never heard of it. In fact I think it is part of the Wal mart group.

After we had got some new shirts we had to zoom back to Loughborough to do a few other bits and pieces before a hurried lunch before hurrying back home to take Owen out. So I suppose you could say the main theme of the day has been hurrying!

The shopping did seem odd in the sense that it wasn't any different from normal. I used to work during the week and do the shopping on Saturday, then for the past month I wasn't working and still did the shopping on Saturday and from Monday I will be working again and yes still doing the shopping on Saturdays.

Whoever said I was stuck in a rut with certain things?

Coz their right :-)

I spent most of the rest of the day tidying out my room. Yes again. But this time I've been a lot more strict withmyself. I had way too much stuff I was keeping just for the sake of keeping it. So I now have a lot more room, but considering the size of my room that's somewhat a relative term. It more means that theres nothing on the floor :-)

I also did some model making this afternoon. For the first time in several weeks. I hadn't had the inclination to do any or painting for the past month which as grumpy pointed out was probably understandable. I suppose I'm going to have to get used to the fact that my main hobby is once again just my hobby. Not my job.

Still I think it will help as it will enable me to be more focussed on the projects that I start, thus taking longer on them, thus meaning the finished project will be better.

At least that's the theory anyway.

anyway,

Later folks

Times they be a changing

Every so often no matter how planned your life, something will change. No matter how much you may want it to or not. Sometimes a couple of things may change and other times a lot of things will change.


That's what October has been like. Changing or game changing or even life changing to use a cliche. But then again that's what cliches are there for, to be used. That's how they became cliches to begin with.


Sorry just realised I'm rambling.


Well for those of you who don't know or haven't yet figured it out and are wondering why my blog posts have been sporadic this month, well at the end of September I was called into a meeting and given the news that a lot of people in lots of different companies have been recieving recently. My postion was being made redundent.


Flash forward a month to this morning and in a formal meeting that was depressing short my time with the company I have spent almost seven years offficially came to a end and I handed back my security pass.

This geek was out of a job.

However not for long. I have a temporary postion with another company which should last at least until Christmas and once I start there and have my foot in the door who knows? I'll still keep looking for something more long term but right now I'm not going to turn down a job temporary or otherwise as I prefer that to being on jobseekers. Really if theres a more soul destroying place then the job centre I hope never to see it.

It's sad to leave as I can truly put my hand on my heart and say there's not another company like it. Plus the discount and free books weren't bad either. I'm also going to have to get used to having a grown up job as I'm going to have to wear a shirt and tie when I go to work now.

I'm being optomistic however. As a lot of people have pointed out this could prove to be a great oppotunity to advance and develop myself as I search for new employment. Or as one of my friends at work put it, " Today you'll leaving behind one group of colleagues but on Monday you'll have the excitment of making new ones".

It's weird to think that life in my department will continue. Books will still be published, websites will be updated and my colleagues will still come to work and sit at their desks and life will continue despite the empty desk at the foot of the row.

Life will continue and I wish them all well. Somebody asked me if I was mad or upset at whats happened but I'm not. It was just one of those things. If they feel there's insufficent work for me to be there that's just how the dice have landed this time. Getting mad or angry would solve nothing.

I survived cuts many times before and I did a lot better then most of the people who started at the same time as me. They have long since left and moved onto other things.

I enjoyed my time at the company immensly but that's come to a end and as one of my uni friends was told me in a note she wrote in a book for me " never look back and grieve at what has gone and ceased to be. Look forward to the future as who knows what tomorrow will bring."

Well rather then tomorrow in this case I suppose it would be better to say, who knows what Monday will bring? To use another cliche as today marks the end of one chapter, Monday will mark the start of another.

Thank you for bearing with me over this past trying month. I've had a lot of messages of support and if I haven't got back to you to thank you please rest assured they all helped. Normal service should now resume.

The geek is certainly back and he's still grumbling.

See ya later folks.

On a whole different level

It's hard teaching lessons at church sometimes. You can have classes with a wide range of ages and experience in the church. I've only taught a couple of lessons in recent years and it always scared me.

So I did feel sorry for the chap who gave our Elders quorum lesson on Sunday who said something which must have sounded so good when preparing the lesson at home. He was reading statements to give a clue to the lesson, basically a fill in the blanks exercise. The second statement he read was ( slightly paraphrasing here as I can't remember the exact words)

" What activity brings the most enjoyment and fulfilment to a married couple"

There was complete silence in the hall as the same thought probably struck most of the guys at the same time. The silence dragged on as I attempted to stop myself from sniggering. Finally one of the guys put up their hand and asked the teacher if this was a PG Lesson. As in the film certification not the teabags. The teacher looked baffled at this question until another Elder put up their hand and told the teacher that it was okay that he hadn't got the joke initially either as he must have been on the same spiritual level as the teacher.

The teacher still looked baffled.

At which point physics decided to interject with his suggestion.
" Building eternal families"

Which the teacher added to the board and I kept trying to supress the fit of giggles which I felt building as I didn't know if the teacher had yet got what had amused everbody.

We also have another new YSA turn up at church this Sunday. She's just started studying at Loughborough University. She also caused some surprise at what she's studying " Construction engineering management" as we've never had anyone studying that before.

It's been busy the past few days and will only get busier as the end of the week approaches. I have had a successful week as well not as successful as it could have been or I was hoping for but beggers can't be chooser and I will gladly accept any sort of success right now.

Now that probably doesn't make any sense to most of you but it will do by the end of this week as I am planning to try and go back to my ' usual schedule' of posting come this Saturday and yes I will probably explain what has been going on. I'm sure some of you will be baffled at the cloak and dagger and might well say " Is that all?" but it made sense to me and at least made me feel I was keeping the moral high ground even if it doesn't make a blind bit of difference i nthe end.

anyway,

Later folks.

Busy times but better then quiet times I suppose

Sorry for the lack of post right now folks but as I said posts will be a bit sparse until the end of the month. Which I've just realised is only a week tomorrow. A time that seemed oh so far away a few weeks ago but has gotten here awfully quickly all the same.

I've had an extremely busy week as I've been doing a awful lot of running backwards and forwards. On the plus side things are starting to go very well which is good as I had a major downer at the start of the week as things started to pile on top of me. But fortunatly this was one of these weeks where everything turned right around by the end of the week.

It's funny what you can learn at institute sometimes. Not from the lesson material mind you but just in general. The Loughborough chapel actually has a table tennis table which is so old it has wooden fold up legs, a number of canoes underneath the chapel ( maybe their for those people who want to have a really, really well prepared emergency kit), all of the tools needed to play pool, cues, chalk, pool balls etc apart from one rather important piece of kit. A table and lastly apparently we also have a ghost. All four things news to me in the nearly (gonna say this real quiet) 2 decades I've been going to the Loughborough chapel.

I was also impressed to see how the husband of one of the married couples managed to survive the lesson despite managing and this will take far too long to explain how he managed this, comparing his wife with a couple of dictators such as Hitler.

I also managed to finally go out hometeaching this evening with our brand new hometeaching list. It is now actually possible for us to do more then 25% hometeaching. However it didn't get off to the best of starts when we arrived at the first family to be greeted with " What are you doing here? Your supposed to be coming on Thursday!" " It is Thursday." was our slightly hesitant reply as I did wonder if I had fallen through a crack in the fabric of space time. However it was more a case that the person who greeted us had, had a even busier week then me.

anyway,

Later folks

What Ninja cats can do Owen can do better

Spinning Heel kick Attack! and for his next trick Owen will stand on his hind legs whilst balancing on a invisable tight rope
we're walking in the air

Trouble at the ole cloudmaker

There are two things that dominate the landscape around geektown. The first is the M1 motorway. No matter where you are in Geektown you can always hear it, whether it's really loud or quite quiet from where we live that hum is always there. The second thing is the nearby power station. Now I say nearby but it's a good four or five miles away. A lot of people jokingly refer to it as the 'cloudmaker' as most days there are usually columns rising from it's stacks and towers into the sky.

Yes it's coal powered and that for some is a problem.

Apparently since afternoon the police have been battling to keep environmental protesters out of the power station as they have been trying to storm it in a effort to shut it down.

By 3pm the police had to call in reinforcements as they were facing groups 50 strong in places along the perimeter of the power station.

and now a police officer has had to been airlifted to hospital with injuries.

Lets not forget that the main road that runs alongside the powerstation has had to be closed for the whole weekend taking out one of the main routes into Nottingham.

We live in democracy so they have a right to protest just as much as anybody else but I for one can't see what the heck they are trying to accomplish. Yes climate change is bad, etc, etc but how on earth would cutting the power to millions of people help their cause? Your hardly likely to get millions of new supporters are you? You'll just end up with millions of people sitting at home in the dark rather ticked off at you.

I guess it must make sense to them.

This years institute class

Thoughts and ponderings

I've been sitting and pondering for about the past 20 minutes as I've tried to think of what to write. And I'll be honest, it's been hard.

The past two weeks have been the hardest I've had to endure for a while, they've also been among the most busy weeks I've had for a long while but they've also been the quietest.

Which for those of you who don't know what's going on, those statements won't make a blind bit of sense.

I'm still not going to say what's been going for reasons which I hope will become clear later. I have decided to at least aim to stay on the moral high ground no matter how misguided or pointless it may eventually turn out be.

I've found myself digging deep into my 'reserves' as it were to keep going and I'm finding to my surprise that their proving to be far deeper then I imagined.

But I'm not alone as it were. People have rallyed to help, some surprising people to be honest not that I'm complaining of course. But it just goes to show that everyone has hidden depths.

anywy,

Later folks.

Call centre conversations

( none of these were mine before anyone asks and apparently they are all true)

Customer: 'I've been ringing 0800 2100 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can you help?'
Operator: 'Where did you get that number from, sir?'.
Customer: 'It was on the door to the Travel Centre'.
Operator: 'Sir, they are our opening hours'.

Caller: 'Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?'
Operator: 'I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about'.
Caller: 'On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?'
Operator: 'I think you mean the telephone point on the wall'.

Caller: 'Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia ?'
Operator: ' Doesn't the product name give you a clue?'

Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France ): 'If I register my car in France , do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?'

Caller: 'I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please'.
Operator: 'I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?'
Caller: 'Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B' fell off'.

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: 'Woven? Are you sure?'
Caller: 'Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland '..

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator: 'I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on'.

Tech Support: 'I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop'.
Customer: 'OK'.
Tech Support: 'Did you get a pop-up menu?'.
Customer: 'No'.
Tech Support: 'OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?'
Customer: 'No'.
Tech Support: 'OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?'.
Customer: 'Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click''.

Tech Support: 'OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?'
Customer: 'Wow. How can you see my screen from there?'

Caller: 'I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?'.

Crouching Kitty, Hidden Feline

The management would like to apologise for the break in transmission

(best Dr Nick voice) Hi everybody,

Yes it's been a little while hasn't it. First off I would like to say thank you to everyone who has kept visiting even though I haven't posted in a week.

Secondly I would like to say thank you to the messages and offers of support that I have been recieving from many people. It's been a trying week ( with somewhat of a sense of unreality to the whole thing).

As to why this week has been trying well I'm not ready to go into details yet as it's not really appropriate which might sound slightly obscure but that's the way I feel right now. Yes my close friends know what's going on but for a myriad of reasons I don't think it's right to discuss it in the full spotlight glare of the internet right now as with my luck it would probably cause many more problems then it would solve.

And that's probably the most obscure paragraph I've written in a while.

Oh and before any of you worry as one of my friends did what happened has nothing to do with my or any member of my families health. I'm not dying and I'm not seriously ill.
If your friends with me on facebook and want to know whats happening drop me a email and I'll tell you all about it.

So what does all this random obscure writing mean for The grumblings of a geek? Well it's likely that although I will try and get back to my usual daily schedule posts could be sporadic until the end of October and their more likely to be fun/humerous posts rather then anything in depth as right now I have other important things to keep my focus on.

I hope that you'll bear with me and I promise that a actual explanation of what's happened will appear at somepoint and then everything will become clear.

Later folks,

Saxon