Thursday, June 30, 2011

Fitness Foxes

Did you really think about that before you spoke #5

" Can you look for what I think it is to see if you can find it and then I'll go and check and come back and tell you what it actually is"

Did you really think about that before you spoke #4

from a young lady on hearing that the actress who replaced Megan fox as the lead in transformers three was a Lingerie model

" She was a lingerie model with a face like that?"

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Hopefully this will end better then when Homer had to do it

Well I found out at work today that in a update of recruitment procedures they are going to start to introduce psychometric testing for people who want to work for the company.

Of course in order to do this they need to establish a baseline, so they will be putting some existing staff members through the testing to find out what kind of people they should look for to employ.

Hmm, well I pity the poor people who are having to do that. I mean who would want their personality so throughly anaylised like that..... and oh hello boss is there something you need?and why are you looking at me like that?

Yes as you might have guessed I've been asked to do this testing. Now notice I've said asked to, not told too. Which of course did make me wonder if that was actually the first part of the test? Do they mark on how quickly you say yes? Or if you hesitate?

Or maybe their just checking to see how paranoid you are, but I suppos that would only happen if their out to get you? :-)

The only thing I know which is out to get me for definate mind you is my computer at work as it suddenly decided today for no apparent reason to turn itself off completely, no warning, just instantly died. It turned back on straight away though when I pressed the button. IT were baffled especially as I had already done the main IT fix of turning it off and on again even if I hadn't done the turn off part. There were no loose cables, no nothing. It just seemed to decide it wanted a time out.

Which left me watching the thing for the rest of the day wondering if it would suddenly decide to turn on me again.

Maybe skynet is real folks. The revolution could be starting right now......................

and there's that paranoria again :-)

The BBC have now announced when the new series of Torchwood will be starting. However for reasons best known to themselves they will be showing it six days after the US airdate. So in a rare change American readers such as Scully will know what's happened before me!

Anyway

Later folks

Monday, June 27, 2011

By hook or by crook

I can't remember exactly how it started but now every Saturday we alays have lunch out somewhere in Loughborough. Now where we go depends on what we currently "feel like" but we seem to end up going to one place for a little while before moving onto somewhere else.

Now this Saturday we have just arrived at the place for lunch when we noticed a young lad suddenly emerge from the bushes. Now we assumed it had just come from the park next door and didn't think much of it.

Until whilst half way across the car park I happened to glance back and noticed the kid had started to swing a rather large bright orange rope around his head.

And that wasn't all. Attached to the end of the rope was a rather large metal hook which seem to be about half the size of his arm. He then proceeded to let the rope go and fling it uptowards the tree. The hook caught, he pulled it a couple of times and it promptly fell to the ground. Which I initially found amusing.

Until he then did it again.

Now I like to think I have a reasonable amount of interllect even if my common sense can sometimes be lacking to a breathtaking degree, but it only took me a couple of seconds of quick figuring out to realise that his rope was long enough for the hook to reach a car and guess whose car was the only car it would reach?

After a quick discussion Grumpy and I decided to head back across the car park, watching with increasing concern as the rope was let fly again and again and again. The Lad finally noticed us walking across to the car park. Grumpy asked him very nicely if he would mind moving away and doing... well what ever it was he was doing somewhere else. At which point the lad quickly exclaimed
" I wasn't going to hit your car or nufthing" before scuttling away through the hedge.

We looked at each other shrugged and went back across the car park to the entrance. I was just about there when I suddenly felt the need to look back over my shoulder and what do you suppose I saw?

That's right the little so and so had re-emerged from the bushes and was back up to his swinging the rope around. I had enough at this point and decided it was time to move the car!

When I went back across the car park, he saw me coming and simply said
" I told you I wasn't gonna damage your car. What's the problem?"

I simply decided to ignore him and moved the car across the car park as far as I could. I did watch him for a second just I went in and saw he was starting to start to move out into the car park edging closer to more cars.

Slightly annoyed at his antics I decided the only thing left I could was to be even more mature ( i.e act like a grumpy old man) and go and tell the staff that a random kid was enjoying himself by twirling a hook on a bit of rope round his head in the car park.

I think the staff member was worried I was winding her up for a second!

I dunno maybe I was showing my age and it's just now the new in thing with the "kidz" today. Kinda like " ball in a cup" you now get " hook on a rope"?

No?

Oh okay then.

Shameless plugs

Hello there dear readers. Well those of you who are actually here to read this blog and are not here to post the latest round of spam.

I have two shameless plugs for you this evening. The first is for a website written by a former member of our ward.


http://www.mormondom.com/ is a website full of the latest mormon news from well pretty much anywhere.

The second plug is for a friend from church who has just started her blog, starting with her first post about life in Borneo. You can find her blog here http://adventures-of-em.blogspot.com/. Please go and visit her, and if you have time to leave a comment just to encourage her to keep it going as if her first blog post is anything to go by, she's probably going to have a lot of very interesting stuff to blog about.

Unlike some of us :-)

Later folks

Franchise wars 4: Muppets vs green lantern

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Summertime perhaps?

Well the best paid people who the country for guessing things ( that would be the weatherman of course :-) have actually got something right as today as we had rather nice and sunny weather arrive exactly as predicted.

What was not so nice was the extreme heat we suddenly found outselves having to cope with and I'm not kidding about the suddeness. We went from grumpy seriously considering putting the heating on, on Saturday night as it was so cold to me having great problems driving home from church as the inside of the car was so hot I couldn't grasp the geatstick without burning my hand!

And this was in Grumpys car with the Ac!

Goodness knows what it would have been like trying to drive the KA in that!

And for for some reason I seem to be using a lot of exclamation marks today.

Tomorrow however it supposed to be even hotter which is why for once I will be incredibly glad to go to work and spend the day in a nice ac equipped building.

Even if it is a monday and will thus no doubt be the start of another week full of "opportunities".

Later folks

Friday, June 24, 2011

I know it shouldn't but this one is baffling me

I deal with a lot of different kind of customers on a well a daily basis really. There are all sorts of customers from really nice ones to the not so nice ones who can be awkward, bossy and downright rude.

And that last point is often a complete understatement which although unfortunate is a fact of life. If you can't accept that and or are unwilling to accept that, that can happen we all know where the door is.

But even I was taken back when somebody called me a Politician this morning as it must be the weirdest thing I've ever been called and I'm still not totally sure if it was meant to be a insult or a compliment ( Grumpys suggestion was that I should sue for defermation of character!).



It was just a totally baffling thing to have happened. It was even more baffling then the time somebody asked me if I was gay and then declared I must be gay " coz I don't talk proper". In case anybody was wondering I'm pretty sure the irony of his statement went straight over his head.



Although I have come to the conclusion that a lot of the time if we get talked to badly it's because of what I like to call the "non face to face" effect. It's a lot easier to get nasty with a "voice" on the other end of the phone then talking to somebody in a store.




The second effect I've noticed is the "supervisor effect" most of the time if you have somebody who demands to speak to a supervisor, they will accept from the supervisor exactly what you might have just told them even if it is ( and many times it is!) exactly what you have told them word for word.




But at the end of the day it's just all c'est la vie. Another day of fun and games in the wonderful world of customer service.




Later folks





Thursday, June 23, 2011

you know you're getting old when.....

When the latest hit song is actually a "updated" version of a song that was cool when you were a teenager.

And no I'm not making this up. I was more then a little surprised to hear one of the latest songs to be released "return of the mack" is actually a new version/remix/cover/what ever the kids call it these days of one of the first ever songs I bought on cassette when I was teenager.

Yes it was that long ago, when songs came on cassettes, having computers with 32 mb of ram was a lot, facebook sounded like a term of something bullys would do to somebody in the library using which ever books came to end, the Now series of albulms was still in the 20s and I was still under the impression that I would have my own house and family by the time I was thirty.

But I digress.

So if Return of the mack is back as it were ( yes I'm aware of the irony in that phrasing lets just move it along) what else could we see. Jennifer lopez doing a cover of Gina G's oh ah just a little bit? Example doing a cover of spaceman? Or to bring it up to date it would be more like " Spaceman assuming we can get a seat on the russian soyez as we no longer have a shuttle?" Might be a bit hard to do a dance version of that one, oh maybe the prodigey will re-release one of their old songs in a effort to remind people that they used to get really upset at their songs but by standards now a days they seem some what tame and quaint :-)

Institute was pretty quiet this week as most of the class were either A too busy to attend the final class or B just plain gone home for the summer.

Latest update from Elder Engineseer, he's currently serving in his mission office which is based at the London Temple. ( I told him no good would come from being organised and efficient.)

I've also been trying to find a photo of myself I like to update my facebook page, which is harder then you think as I tend to take photos more then I appear in them for a very good reason. Mainly as I'm one of these people who will always be convinced no matter how good the photo I always look terrible in them.

anyway,

Later folks

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

If there is really something in the water I ain't drinking from the water machines no more

The new slogan in the office right now is "there's something in the water" as there are no less then three girls who have not only announced that they are expecting but they are all due in December in literally days of each other ( all between christmas and news years no less).

Of course this means we'll be loosing three very experienced staff members as the run up to christmas starts but c'est la vie I guess. If that's the largest problem we face, I'm sure the managers will be delighted.


Best reaction to the news of the third pregnancy came from one of the shall we say slightly older then average staff members who after doing some quick mental calculation declared

" Was there a power cut in March I missed or does somebody need to explain to you lot that there are other things couples can do for fun and recreation?"

Apparently the first episode of the new torchwood series has been given it's first press airing which means we're getting closer to the start of the series. Yaah! I'm still not totally convinced about the uk/us joint production but I guess we'll see what happens.

anyway later folks

Did you really think about that before you spoke #3

" I can't tell you what's missing but I can give you a detailed description of what it looks like"

Monday, June 20, 2011

Every blog should have one

Well it's Monday. Again. So of course that means the start of another week of work and all of the joys and opportunities that shall bring.

Still I shouldn't complain as for a Monday it's not been a bad day at all. I have certainly had worse Mondays. It was still busy mind you, but the main reason for that was well a very important news story that got chased off the front pages on Friday pretty darn quickly by much more important stories such as Jordan's latest attempt at a reality show being a complete flop, etc, etc, etc.

But to be fair (for once) if you're not involved in the job field I'm in it was very easy to miss the significance or probably even care.

C'est la vie I guess.

I did see one very interesting bit of news today, the person who designed the title logo for my blog which you can see well where most titles usually are ( at the top of course :-) has just one a major fantasy "best newcomer" award for his first ever novel which is pretty darn good. So I have a title that was created by a award winning author. Not everybody can say that now can they?

anyway,

Later folks

Did you really think about that before you spoke #2

overheard on the tv today by two commentators at wimbledon

" Back in 1999, which is quite a long time ago if you think about it because well it is"

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Did you really think about that before you spoke #1

Quote of the day from Friday
" It wasn't refused, they just wouldn't accept it"

Words of Wisdom for a modern ages #1

" It's on facebook so it must be true"

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Biggest promotion ever......

overheard in the office today


R: Hey J look at this
J: My god!
S: ( coming into conversation late) Did you just call R your god?
J: NO!
S: Oh, I was hoping then that they had introduced the most amazing career plan ever then and no one had remembered to tell me.

Things only kids can get away with saying #1

This little Gem is from my nephew who has just had his tenth birthday

"I'm ten now, which means I'm one decade old, which does make me sound old. But if you say ages like that it means mummy is almost 4 decades old which makes her sound ancient"

Worst defence ever......

Two members come over to Physics on Sunday

1st member: " See this is physics"

2nd Member: " Oh right"

1st member: " You should really know his name already as you are his home teacher"

2nd Member " Well it's not my fault that I don't know his name, I've only been to visit him once"

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

the wheels on the bus won't go round and round

Well we were almost treating to the joys today of having to walk from one end of the airport to the other to get back to our cars when the minibus starting to make rather distressing sounds and jerking motions when it left the office.

Fortunatly it managed to hang in to get us back to the car park so we were fine, mind you anybody finishing at 5.15 was probably in a bit of trouble.

However I found the whole thing rather mausing as most of the guys on the bus at the first odd sounds suddenly switched from customer service agents into highly trained mechanics all convinced that they could diagnose what as wrong with the engine.

We had suggestions ranging from petrol in the tank instead of diesel, the clutch had gone, the gears had gone, the axle had gone ( ???) but the suggestion I liked the best from one guy who concentrated really hard on the noises, closed his eyes tight in concentration before opening them and confidently declaring that what was wrong was " that something on the bus wasn't working right".

Okay so maybe he didn't win any points for coming up with a suggestion that was highly detailed but it was technically correct.

I felt most sorry however for the bus driver who had been driving the bus this morning. First time he ever drives it as a cover and it rather spectacurly breaks down by the afternoon. I don't think he's ever going to leave that one down.

Later folks

Monday, June 13, 2011

Well we all know what would have happened if I hadn't

Well I got up bright and early this morning, well as bright as it can ever get on a Monday morning ready to set out for work nice and early as the download music festival had come to a end and we had all been warned to expect very heavy traffic.

After pondering ( all of three seconds) I decided to leave about 15 minutes early to be on the safe side.

And I was correct that it would be on the safe side.

In fact it was too safe! As not only was there no download traffic but there was barely any "regular" traffic either.

I arrived at work to find a lot of other baffled staff members who were there way too early as well who had all experienced the same thing. According to the gossip chain ( and it's not church so I can call a spade a spade here, or a gossip chain a gossip chain in this case :-) due to the weather a lot of the festival attendee's chose to leave the festival late last night instead. Hence the complete lack of traffic!

Fine for them but a little annoying for us. Still at least it gave us a early start to the day and the day started off great, fantastic even. We were getting through work at a fantastic rate, everything was going great and things were nice and quiet. Too quiet we quickly realised and a quick check of the holiday diary revealed that it seemed like half of europe was off on a Bank holiday today. Which was great for our workload today, we're going to be totally screwed tomorrow mind you but at least today went okay :-)

anyway,

Later folks

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Probably the wrong kind

It's been raining today.

Heck lets just call it what it has been doing. It's been raining a lot. Near non stop as a matter of fact in that horrid kind of way which I can best describe in a single word "yuck".

Anyway it goes to prove that the weather has a sense of irony as it starts throwing it down just a day or so after it was declared that parts of the UK are already in drought (and we're only in the middle of June.) However this declaration seems even more bizare as it's still been cold enough at times to warrent the central heating.

Still it will take a few more days of this rain for it to make any difference. However I have no doubt even it was to rain non stop for the next three weeks ( I'm not saying that would be okay just in case the weather is listening mind you) we would probably still be told it was the "wrong kind of rain" for it to make any difference.

Besides it's Monday tomorrow and rain on a Monday never makes for a good start to the week. Maybe it will hold off until the afternoon? That would make for a better week?

Hmm maybe whilst I'm wishing I better wish for some more realistic things as well, maybe 2 million pounds, a army of minions, a intergalatic spacecraft and a love lift that isn't doa...................................

Yes I know that's a completely unrealistic thing to wish for, where am I going to get a intergalatic spacecraft :-)

Later folks

Thursday, June 09, 2011

A day in the working life




  • 6.30am : get woken up more then half a hour before I needed to by the dawn chorus of birds who have decided their favourite perch is directly above my room



  • 6.32am: Contemplate wringing the necks of said birds



  • 6.45am: Give up on trying to get back to sleep



  • 7.00am: alarm goes off. I hit the snooze button for some strange reason



  • 7.05am: Alarm goes off again. I turn it off this time



  • 7.10am: Finally manage to get up ( or roll out of to be more precise) from the bed



  • 7.20am: Time for breakfast



  • 7.50am: Leave for work ten minutes early to beat the traffic around the download festival



  • 8.10am: Arrive at work ten minutes early as there was no traffic for the download festival.



  • 8.11am: Start to curse all of the youngsters going to download for their late get up times



  • 8.17am: Still cursing



  • 8.20am: Bus arrives



  • 8.25am: Bus arrives at work



  • 8.40am: Do first check of the day on my email and facebook ( using my mobile of course). It's the quickest and easiest way to keep up with gossip...... errh I mean information that other people might find interesting or useful ( must remember people at church don't gossip).

  • 9.00 am: Work begins



  • 10am: get drawn again my better judgement into a conversation about the recently banned film " Human centipide 2"



  • 10.04am: Manage to completely amaze/baffle rest of time by almost reciting the film boards reason for the ban from memory once again displaying my ability to have almost photographic recall for useless bits of information



  • 10.05am: Try to remember where I left my Pen



  • 10.20am: R calls Dee a muppet



  • 10.21am: L starts to hum the muppet theme song to herself



  • 10.22am: The muppet tune promptly gets stuck in my head where it likes the view so much it decides to set up camp there for the rest of the day.



  • 10.45am: First break, I decide to check facebook again and find the ysa are especially busy today...... oh I didn't now that.

  • 11am: Back to work



  • 11.01am: L is still humming the muppets tune. Either I'm going insane or it's actually starting to sound quite groovy



  • 11.05am: Wonder where " groovy" came from.



  • 11.06am: Thoughts start to wander.



  • 11.07am: thoughts come back after discovering it's a scary world outside of my head



  • 13.00: Time for lunch and the daily challenge of eating pasta whilst wearing a white shirt.



  • 13.30pm: Back to work



  • 14.30pm: L leaves for the day but I still can't evict the muppets theme tune from my head



  • 14.40pm: KayKay a member of my team who is actually a church member but has been inactive for oh 20 odd years joking asks what would happen if she went to church to announce she's not married and expecting a baby.



  • 14.41pm: I honestly answer it could well depend on the ward she goes too.



  • 14.42pm: S butts in and asks what would happen if KayKay went in and announced the baby was mine. Would people be surprised I'd fathered a child?



  • 14.43pm: I respond not as surprised as me



  • 15.15pm: Last break. I refuse to listen to the siren song of the vending machines packed full of choclately goodness as the afternoon is turning intoa bit of a downer.



  • 15.16pm: contemple the fact that my steadfastness is probably helped by the fact the machines are at the other end of the building and I can't be bothered to walk all that way if I did want something.



  • 15.30pm: Back to work, into the home stretch now which depending on luck can be the best or worst time of the day.



  • 15.55pm: Try not to giggle as D has to explain to someone that a signature for a parcel was not by a foreign person called Mr Ill e gible ( think that one through :-)


  • 16.00pm: First round of people knock off for the day. Sometimes I do miss the early starts


  • 16.01pm: Realise that I don't really


  • 16.20pm: I contemplate the fact that as the system we use has a acronym that is also a well known girls name that many visitors to the office must wonder who this girl is and why we talk about her a lot and moan sometimes she is not working as she should


  • 16.21pm: Mention this to D


  • 16.22pm: D thinks I may need to get out more


  • 16.23pm: Or less. He hasn't decided :-)


  • 16.35pm: One of the girls wonders why there's so many people with the name sello signing for stuff in spain. She asks if sello is the spanish version of smith


  • 16.37pm: Somebody nicely points out to the girl Sello actually means stamp. It's not a name


  • 16.38pm: Said girl shrugs and gets back on with her day.


  • 17.00pm: My usual knocking off time but I'm doing overtime tonight. The office gets even quieter as the next round of people go home.


  • 17.10pm: I manage to worry LP as she notices I'm talking to her and still typing at the same time without looking at the screen. Ahh, the joys of touchtyping.


  • 18.00pm: my actual finishtime for the day.


  • 18.05pm: get on the minbus ready to go home knowing tomorrow that the whole things starts again


  • 18.06pm: The muppet tune starts again in my head. ahhhh.....................

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

132 to go

Now the building where I work doesn't have very many car parking spaces. In fact not nearly enough for the number of staff. So most people end up having to park at the far end of the airport and catch the minibus down to our building.

Parking outside the building is reserved for those with car park passes which are assigned by the very easy method of going by your length of service. As the meerkat would say "seemples".

Anyway our senior today had a list of where people come on the waiting list for car parking spaces. Curiosity got the best of me ( and as I'm not a cat it's not dangereous) and I asked where I am on the list.

Right now I am in postion..... 133.

That's right there are 132 people in front of me who would be in line for a car parking space before me.

I think it's safe to say I'm going to be riding that minibus for quite some considerable time yet.

Later folks

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The wheels on the bus go round and round

Well it's only another week until I can talk about the mid season finale of Doctor Who and it was good one. As with the last epsiode I'm keeping stum in case I spoil what is a rather good episode.

On the down side we now have to wait until the end of the year to find out what happens next *grumble, grumble* But on the plus side between now and then we will be getting the new season of torchwood which is starting to look more and more interesting.

As long as it can keep it's "torchwoodness" about it. If that's even a word. If not I've just made one up I guess so yah me!

It's been so cold this eveningw e've been debating whether to put the central heating on, which is just down right bizare as we're in June for goodness sake!

I'm also going to have to be leaving for work earlier over the next few days as a local music festival will be on and the traffic queues run right down the entire length of the airport which is going to make traffic rather fun.

I just hope it doesn't affect the minibus times otherwise I'm going to have to leave even earlier.

Still getting the minibus today made me realise that I've probably spent more time on that minibus in the past year then I've spent on any other bus in the last three years! It's quite a interesting way to start your day. And end it as well when everybody gets on the bus, swaps stories about their day and all turn on their mobile phones to log into facebook to see what's been going on with the rest of the world.

Anyway,

Later folks

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Mmmm cookie

Well as it turned out we got two surprises at work today. Well intentional ones at least. Firstly all of the drinks machines were put on free vend for most of the day ( admitially little use to me as most of the drinks were tea and coffee.C'est la vie but at least the thought was nice :-) Secondly we all got a choice of a free cake or cookie.

And we're not talking cheap 99p packet of cookies from the local corner shop. These were fresh from the bakers, big as your hand kind of cookies and cakes.

Which although not good for you in the slightest, it has a really interesting way of raising your day.

The bbc has released more trailers for this weeks episode of Doctor Who which are awesome but I'm not going to post them as I'm aware that the last episode still hasn't aired in the USA and I really don't want to spoil anything for my american readers.

They've also posted a nifty little prequel which I also can't post well asides from the final line which is just awesome
" You know what he is, you know what he's done. Gods help us if you've made him angry!"


anyway,

Later folks