Natural selection surely?

Don't get me wrong health and safety regulations are a good thing. Anything which reduces your chances of ending the day in a hospital bed rather then your own bed is a good thing in my book. However I don't think health and safety should be a replacement for sheer common sense!

A handyman who fell off a ladder whilst pruning a tree because he leaned it against the branch he was cutting off rather then the trunk sued his bosses and actually won. Not only that the Hotel where the man was working at was also fined as they hadn't done a risk assessment for employees working in the garden or given them training as to where to place the ladder when doing the pruning.

and no I'm not making this up.

I would have thought it was fairly obivous that if your leaning your ladder againist the part you are sawing off you about to get a very harsh lesson from gravity!

Still I suppose it's like Engineseer says you can design idiot proof systems but you can't do anything about system proof idiots.

Election update! Don't know, don't care and still bored. I already know how I'm voting listening to what are essentially sales pitches between now and May 6th will not change my mind.

The scientists from we've still got nothing better to be doing right now have just finished a study where they have found that women have a inbuilt fear of getting fat that doe not exist in men. Stay tuned for their next studies into if water is wet and if cold actually is cold.

anyway,

Later folks.

Ironys up to no good again

Well there was bright sunshine this morning along with clear blue skies. Just the kind of weather you want to see where your getting in your car to go for a eight hour shift in a office.

Speaking of Cars it cost me thirty quid to fill two thirds of the tank today. It used to cost less then that to fill the entire tank. Petrol is now a massive £1.20 on average around geektown. Everyone is still blaming everyone else for the high petrol prices so it's no clearer as to who is to blame. All we do know is that when the price of oil goes up the price goes straight up at the pumps but if the oil goes down we're told it takes several weeks for the change to filter through to the pumps. Strange that..

I was extremely annoyed to see that they have cancelled the remake of Surviours ( when it was finally getting good) meaning that we will once again be left with a TV series cliffhanger that will remain forever unresolved. Still at least Doctor Who is still around and Primeval was saved from the scrap heap.

A news report has claimed that katie price aka Jordan is apparently a complete diva off camera treating her husband and staff with complete contempt. I find it very hard to believe this story as I imagine most other people would as well.

Jordan is actually off camera at some point? Impossible.

They've released another new trailer for Iron Man 2 today. It looks very, very cool and it was quite clever as well as the trailer is 'interactive'.

Anyway,

Later folks.

In the news today

How not to finish a driving lesson.

Make it stop

With nearly a month to go of campaigning before the general election on May 6th I'm now completely and 100% fed up to the back teeth of it. Despite all of the promises, arguments and gloss all the parties put out it still comes down to a playground style squabble between three groups of people all claiming they know best and the others don't.

On the plus side if we do get anyone canvessing round here Owen will probably scare them off fairly sharpish.

In the news today was a interesting job for sleepy people as a big store was advertising for a sleeping bag tester. That's right paying someone to spend their time sleeping. It probably wouldn't be the most interesting job in the world but it would be the easiest one.

It was very weird being on lates this evening as the last time I was on lates it was Dark when we left the building today it was light. It's easy to see how people who are more extreme shift patterns shall we say end up with completly screwed up sleep patterns.

Engineseer is due to report to the MTC on Friday. If any of you want to be added to his mission email address drop a note to his brother Black Widow via facebook. If none of you know who that is drop me a email via facebook and I will let you know who he is so you can then send a email to him. Yes I know that's a bit complicated but it's in the best YSA tradition of never making things easy when you can add a couple of layers of complexity to it.

Anyway,

Later folks.

the 14th Article

This year the course in Sunday school is the old testament, right now we're at the point all about Moses and there have been so many frequent references by people to the Dreamworks animated film that there has been a suggestion of a 14th article of faith
" We believe all dreamworks films to be correct as long as they havebeen rendered correctly..."

This is a joke by the way in case any of my american readers wonder exactly whats going on the church here in the UK. :-) We're not going all appostate and just making stuff up.

Well I'm on lates this week which is good as it means I'll get a lie in every day but then it's bad in the sense that I won't get home till late. Of course Irony has chipped in as usual with me ending up on lates this week because it's a especially busy week this week church wise. I'm going to miss the next YSA FHE, the monthly presidency meeting and the start of Institute after the easter break. D'oh!

The weather has still been nice today but a lot colder, although in a weird turn around it actually got warmer towards the end of the afternoon. Which just goes to show you can't make any safe guesses when it comes to weather round here.

anyway,

Later folks

So how long will this last then?

It's been a bit warm today. No scratch that it's been very warm, the kind of warm where not only can you leave your coat in the car when you go shopping but also your jumper as welll whilst you seach out your sunglasses. It's been that nice.

Of course with any good weather in the UK comes the inevitable horde of people telling you to " Enjoy it while it lasts" like anyone who doesn't live in the UK isn't painfully aware that our weather is rubbish a fair amount of the time.

Still I was feeling in a positive mood so I decided to make the most of it.

I used some of my bonus money from this month to treat myself to the new Now 75 album. For those of you unaware the " Now" albums are compolation Cd's which are usually released every six months or so . The next one will be Now 76 and so on and so on. I started collecting these albums a long time ago, in fact when they were still on tape, only a handful of people had cd players and Mp3 players were still a distant dream. I think the earlist one I have is something like Now 28 which just goes to show you how long I've been collecting the things.

Grumpy seems to be coming down with a cough and cold which means he will probably be even grumpier then usual for the next couple of days. But to be fair I'm usually never in a good mood when I'm ill either so I can't really say anything.

The second episode of the new series of Doctor Who was on tonight. It was good, the new doctor is starting to come into his own although the accusations of Amy pond only being there to be a "sexy companion to draw in male viewers" are probably not likely to have been dispelled in the slighist by after the first week of running around in a kissogram police womans outfit following it up with her running around wearing a nightie and dressing gown which do get "wet" at one point. I've put that in inverted commas as if I say anything else it will ruin the episode for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Anyway,

Later folks.

3 weeks and counting

I was talking yesterday about how twenty years seemed like a very long time. Well I'll tell you what doesn't seem like a long amount of time. Three weeks. Yep three weeks that's all the time I have left on my probabation. Three weeks until D-day, or decision day for the bosses do I stay or do I go ( don't worry I ain't going to sing) a day which seemed like such a long time away six months ago.

I know I shouldn't be paranoid about it as I'm exceeding all of my probabation targets by a large margin ( I'm in "regular" full timer targets for all bar one and I've almost cracked that) and my boss has told me that he's very happy with my progress, but I've been promised things by bosses before and we all know how that turned out last time.

No, no, no...... must not be paranoid. I just need to keep giving my usual 110% attention to detail and effort and the dice will fall where they will fall. I just know I'll be a lot less paranoid in four weeks time regardless of anything else.

I've been pondering how the last six months have changed me. I've got a lot more confidence in my skills at work, I had a difficult customer today who didn't bother me at all and she was at least 20 times more difficult then anything I had dealt with at my last place. I've discovered that I can communicate on a non geeky level, my capacity for learning remains undimished and my reserves of determination, grit, courage and stubborness are far deeper then I had ever imagined.

anyway it's the weekend now which means two whole days to myself before starting another round of lates next week. However I can't complain as it does appear that I have managed to dodge having to do a Saturday shift this month. Yah me! I think.

Later folks.

Two times ten

It's not often that when someone asks what you were doing exactly twenty years ago that you can remember almost perfectly outside of it being a world changing historical event. Well I remember precisely where I was twenty years ago tonight. I was sitting on the front pew of the Loughborough Chapel as my family and I were baptised and became members of the church.

Which is a scary thought really as twenty years is really a rather long time isn't it? I did recieve a email from one of the Elders who baptised us wishing me a "Happy birthday" . Twenty years and something may change but this Elders humour certainly does not :-)

I was wondering where would I be without the church? This was intended to be deep philosopical thought to ponder on but all I could think of a quote by physics when somebody asked him in one Sunday school lesson where he would be right now without the church
" At home in bed on a Sunday morning, 10% richer" :-)

The first episode of Warehouse 13 was on tonight. It has potential but it moved at such a sllooowwww pace. Hopefully it will improve with time as there is far too little sci fi on tv at the moment.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Just one or two eggs.

A quick pic to show the one or two eggs that the frogs have laid in the pond

Stranger from another land

Previously when new series of Doctor Who have started it was easy to go into work and discuss the various ins and outs of the episode as lets face I was pretty much working in the mecha of geekdom ( microsoft aside).

Now in my new job it's a lot more difficult, well it's pretty much impossible to be honest. As basically I've gone from the mecha of geekdom to the exact opposite. In fact there's no one who could be remotely described as geeky in my team or even on my side of the office. Most of the guys usually spend all day talking about football and they might as well be talking a different language as I don't have a clue what their talking about.

Which is probably how most people feel when I started talking about sci fi.

Oh well, c'est la vie I guess.

I've started a new modelling project or rather a old project that has been gathering dust for a while. I have been painting a "new" army to represent some characters from a novel called Salamander by Nick Kyme. It's been quite fun to do a project and take a nice long time on it as I don't feel pressured anymore to being doing things constantly as after all it's now my hobby instead of my job. This should show in my painting as I'm not rushing..... Hopefully it should show in my painting. Please let it show in my painting?

Work was once again extremely busy but I was much more in the grove today and it showed. I'm hitting the Kpi's for the "regular" full timers now asides from one. With one I'm midway between probabation and full time targets which is frustrating as hell but I'm improving gradually ( but too slowly for my liking :-) which is the main thing.

anyway,

Later folks.

Watch Out Owens about

Whats everyone looking at? Do I have something in my teeth?
Owen demonstrates his new submarine attack mode

Why do I have to keep bringing it back if your just going to throw it away again?

See I stand guard just like a meerkat. Seemples!

Well I got in here somehow so there must be a way out

Cut the power

We're having to make sure that we unplug everything when we go to bed tonight ( in case we forget in the morning) as the electricity board is cutting the power in our area of geektown for most of the day to apparently do some sort of essential works.


Grumpys not too happy as this means he won't have much to do. I did suggest that he takes Owen for a very, very, very, very, very long walk. Although Owen seemed to like this idea somewhat unsurprisingly Grumpy did not.


Well we're already one day into the forthcoming election ( May 6th) and I'm already bored of it. The trouble is they've been going on about it for so long it really is boring. Which I know is a bad thing to say but I've already made my mind up and to be honest no last minute campaigning is going to be changing my mind.


Work was, well pretty darn insane to be perfectly honest. It just went nuts for near enough the entire morning. It didn't help that I like most people was a bit " Punchy/all fingers and thumbs" as the four day weekend seemed to have a surprising effect on the flow of things. I was back on form by the end of the day but that and the crazyiness meant it was a long rather frustrating day all told.


Still heres to tomorrow. Make it bring less crazy and more sane.

Later folks!

A long weekend

Sorry about the lack of bloggage for the past two days, it's been a really busy weekend with lots of running back and forth and time just kinda seemed to get away from me.

First up, the new Doctor Who is good. He didn't quote totally sell me on his " Doctor" as he still seemed to be channelling a bit too much of David Tennant at time but he was a lot better then I had feared and there were some great one liners especially when he told the aliens " I'm the Doctor. Basically.......Run!"

The new companion is also very good as well and there was some great chemistry between her and the Doctor and that short police womans skirt was finally explained. She was a kissogram!

The one thing I certainly didn't like was the remixed title music. They should have known to leave alone what wasn't broken!

There was a YSA get together at Miss Swanns on Saturday night which was a lot of fun especially as she had bought a karoake game for her Wii. I was even encouraged/told/forced to sing at a couple of points. I think my performances can be best described as doing nothing to disprove the fact that Singing is not one of my talents.

It was also very funny at one point when some of the YSA choose to sing Lady Gagas " Poker face" song and some of the YSA realised (with horror) for the first time what the actual lyrics to that song are. Three of them in particular were especially horrified as the looks on their faces was priceless and some YSA asked if the song had always included those lyrics. It just goes to show how easy it is to miss things when your listening to music.

I spent the rest of the time this weekend taking things relatively easy, doing some tidying up, reading some books and doing some painting and modeling. It's been a really nice four days and I'm feeling all calm and relaxed.

Now I just have to see if this feeling will survive work tomorrow.

Here's hoping.

Later folks.

Ripping it apart at the seams

It was really rather nice to have a lie in this morning although it wasn't as long as I was planning as I was woken by a sudden urgent knocking at the door. I investigated to find no one there which was a bit weird until Owen suddenly poked his head around the bathroom door. He had obivousily been sitting outside my door and his wagging tail was what I had heard as opposed to a "intentional" knock.

I spent most of the morning doing some painting and modelling. Not terribly exciting but I found it a relaxing and it helps my creativity no end to actually being putting something together.

We had a YSA activity at the chapel today. ( pictures to follow), as there was a Easter theme there was even a Easter egg hunt. Although the girls who organised it did take a lot of time to produce some wonderful looking clues it turned out most people didn't look at them in the mad dash of YSA around the building as they looked for choclate and not just any choclate, it was that special kind everyone loves. Free chocolate!

Anyway,

Later folks.

The icing on the egg

It snowed last night which in itself wasn't a big problem. What was the problem was that a thick of lay of snow stayed on the car and promptly froze solid. Which left muggins here with one heck of a problem when it came to deicing as the ice was too thick for the de icer to well doing anything really and it was also thick enoug that the scraper wouldn't work.

Which left me with the only option of sitting in the cr with the heaters on full hoping the ice would melt as I watched the time steadily tick away.

I finally managed to get the ice clear so I could leave after 15 minutes! Which meant I was very late. I wanted to rush but I kept it slow and steady as it was possible that if the roads it hadn't been gritted there would be lots of ice around and the last thing I'd want to do is to tangle with Black Ice again.

Fortunatly I had no problems, which is something I can't say for one car owner who had went into a ditch alongside the side of the airport, there were already three people stopped to help and I didn't slow down to take a gawp as form biter experience I know that doesn't help after you've had a accident.

I was able to get into the office with ten minute to spare and spent a anxious few minutes watching my computer boot up so slowly. Why is it computers next go fast when you need them too? One of my friends at uni had a theory. He reckoned that all computer have secret emotion sensing chips. The more hurried or frustrated you are the more difficult it will be. It seems a stupid theory until the next tiem your computer plays up on you.

I'm moving desks next week as our team leader has decided on a change round, as apparently it helps the team overall as we get a change to mix better and learn from other peoples techniques.
It also means I get a window seat :-)

There was very much a Friday feeling through out the day even though it was Thursday. But I guess that's what bank holidays do :-)

So I now have four whole days before I have to be back at work. I am so going to enjoy my lie in tomorrow.

Later folks.