27 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, People, Rants at 10:25 pm by alby
It’s not often that I get annoyed by scams. Most are easy to see and ignore. However one from yesterday has really hacked me off.
N came home from school looking terribly excited. Apparently they did a poetry competition at school some time ago (first we’d heard of it mind). She waved us a serstificate wot said that she’d won and her poem was going to be in an anthology of the best poems in the competition. Hurrah! Very well done little girl.
Very pleased for her. She was beaming and proper excited. A published poet! At 5!
Then we get the bumph. The book is apparently a proper book and will be in the British Library! Well ooo. Doesn’t every book published in the UK get put in the BL? I thought so.
And then we get to the price. £16.99 per copy!
For a kid’s book? Forget that for a lark. We just bought a hardback, illustrated Alice in Wonderland for a quid. Is this anthology of children’s poems really worth 17 copies of Alice?
Cue some harumphing.
Well this morning it turns out that pretty much everyone at the school who submitted anything is also “a winner” and has got their own poem published in this book. Some were calling it a scam, others were upset as they’d already paid for it. Who wouldn’t want to see their child’s work published?
I don’t really blame the school for this, mind you they could have checked the internet say as there are loads of complaints about these scams. But aren’t the people responsible for this scam just scum? Horrible thing to do. The children are so excited and who could refuse buying their published work?
Well us for a start. I expect a strongly worded complaint to the school to be forthcoming soon.
Permalink
26 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, Work at 2:20 pm by alby
Finally!
I’ve just spent the last few days writing an academic essay again. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a proper one of these. We had a practice one a few weeks back but that was only 1000 words and didn’t count for anything. This one counts as about 17% of my year’s work.
It’s been quite a while since I managed one of these. It’s not actually completely done and R wants to review it before I’m proper done too. Mind you as far as I’m concerned I only have the referencing stuff to do.
It’s a strange course this year. It’s a masters in “Advancing Health Care Practice“. My main problem with it is that the first year is all the tedious airy-fairy stuff about “leadership”. You know the kind of thing, all meaningless buzzwords and little actual objective knowledge. At least that what it feels like. I’d far rather be doing next year’s course which is looking at healthcare research.
Only another 2 essays and one final “bring everything together” assignment and I’m done with this subject.
Huzzah!
Permalink
16 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, Self-indulgence at 9:03 pm by alby
Hi all.
This year I hit an arbitrary milestone in that I have my 40th birthday in May. At present I have no special event planned but I’m contemplating one.
A week or two after my birthday it’s half-term for N. That’s the week beginning the last weekend of Bungay for those of a juggly disposition.
So my half-thought through plan is the weekend to Monday at Bungay followed by the rest of the week camping somewhere in that region. Any and all welcome to come and join us for however long, starting at whatever point, over that week.
I’ll look and find a good site and then around for nice hotels or B&Bs near there and then campers and non-campers catered for.
Any if anyone knows any great camping places around Norfolk/Suffolk then do let me know.
Cheers.
Permalink
11 Jan 2011
Posted in Life, Work at 9:13 pm by alby
Latest news for me is that the lovely private practice that I work at has run out of work for me. A major shame. My last day is this Friday.
I didn’t get a huge amount of work from them (half day a week) but it was a nice bonus and the people there are lovely. I was only maternity cover anyway and should have finished back in September last year so they’ve not been bad to me. They might still be able to offer me Saturday working and a Pilates class or two, fingers crossed.
Does mean it gives me a little more time with the family (yay), more time to work on my own thing (yay) and a little less money (urgh).
Permalink
27 Aug 2010
Posted in Life, Rants at 2:18 pm by alby
The flat roof of my place has been a pain in the proverbial for some time. I think it started when some kids found a way to sit on it to natter. Alternatively it could simply have been wear and tear. I’ve been at the place for 8 years or so and the roof hasn’t been maintained at all in that time. So now it leaks – quite a bit.
I spoke to a company to come and estimate me a repair job. They dutifully did and wrote me a detailed plan and costing for the job.
I phone them up and said please do come and sort it.
The woman on the other end of the phone said. “Oh you need to sign the form that came with the letter and send it in.”
Can I find the letter? Well what do you think?
So my roof is still leaking.
Got to R’s place yesterday after work to discover a minor flappage ongoing as water was now dripping into her bedroom. Thankfully small amounts though considering how heavy and persistent the rain was yesterday.
She phoned the landlords who said it wasn’t urgent. Oh really?! Not urgent that there’s potentially a hole in the roof letting in water. I suppose you could argue that it’s unlikely to ever rain in the UK so there’s no hurry.
Oh wait a minute….No you can’t!
Grr.
Permalink
11 Aug 2010
Posted in Life, Self-indulgence at 3:50 pm by alby
I had my toe hacked at yesterday.
Fun fun fun.
I went on a hike way back in Dec 2007 in South Africa. It was excellent but pretty hard work to say the least. The relevant point is that the second half of it was marred by large amounts of toe pain.
Since then my left big toe has played me up with ingrowing nail and random shooting pains. I’ve seen a local podiatrist who’s dealt with it on and off for a while but he strongly advised me to get it properly seen to.
Which needed a nail op.
I had it yesterday. Was great fun. Injections x4 as the first set of local anasthetics didn’t fully work. This has happened to me before at the dentists. Is it possible to be less susceptible to these meds? And then they hacked off a thin strip of my big toe nail before killing that part of the nail bed in the hope that it won’t grow back.
So I couldn’t drive home. And I can’t wear shoes with closed toes. This should be fun as it’s against work policy to have open toed shoes. They say 5-6 weeks healing. And no swimming pools or swimming in the sea. Well that’s one activity for my upcoming hols done in.
At least it’s not so sore this aft.
Permalink
19 Jul 2010
Posted in Grammar!, Life at 8:53 pm by alby
Walking down the street in Derby on Saturday I noticed an Indian restaurant. It was closed but only ‘cos it was the wrong time of day for it to be open. Whilst there I noticed a couple of signs on the door.
The first was a local newspaper review saying how wonderful the place was.
The second said in its entirety:
“This Area Closed Due To Private Party.
Sorry For Any Incontinence”
It really really did. I have a photo on my phone of it (just can’t get bluetooth to work to get it on here grr).
Permalink
08 Jul 2010
Posted in Life at 8:21 pm by alby
After sorting out my Windows mess up I now have a further screw up caused by that wondrous seat of all that is good and holy, Apple Inc.
Itunes suggested I update my OS for my iPod. Clicked ok then.
So it downloaded something and now my iPod doesn’t work. At all.
All it gives me is a screen which is a graphic representation of “plug into iTunes”.
I plugged into iTunes. This led to a message saying “You need iTunes 9.2 – please download.”
I did. It didn’t work.
This happened last time I updated iTunes. I got past it by uninstalling it and then reinstalling the newer version. I did this again today.
Apparently there’s a program I’ve never heard of that isn’t there and for some undecipherable reason this means that I can’t install iTunes new. This is something called “Bonjour”. I’ve never heard of it before, it seems to do nothing beyond screwing up installing iTunes, it’s sat in my program list when I try and uninstall it but won’t uninstall. It also doesn’t appear on any searches of my files despite it being sat there in the list of programs. And as it’s nowhere to be seen I can’t even manually delete the thing. Words not suitable for family newspapers are passing my lips.
So I’m left with a useless iPod telling me to plug into iTunes. And an inability to get iTunes installed.
I bloody love computers! Apple and MS have caused me no end of bloody trouble this week. Where they get off on letting us know how bloody helpful their products are and how we can’t live without them I just don’t know.
Pile of shite from both of them and a plague on both their houses.
Permalink
06 Jul 2010
Posted in Life at 8:43 am by alby
Help!
Laptop had 2 updates recently. First was a windows update, second was an iTunes update.
I tried booting it yesterday and got an error. So Windows reverts to a screen with 2 options. 1 is start normally which takes you to the Vista loading screen and never gets anywhere – eventually it brings you back to the options screen IE back where it started.
Option 2 is Windows Repair – which does nothing. Literally it takes you back to the options screen immediately.
This leaves me unable to boot my computer. I have no Vista disk since MS feel that me having a disk to be able to help with this sort of thing would be a bad idea.
I only really need the access to get to my files. I have loads of photos and documents I don’t want to lose.
Can I get a disk of Linux or Windows from somewhere that will give me access to the system to get the files off and onto my external harddrive?
Any hints or advice appreciated.
Cheers.
Oh and while I’m at it does anyone know why my iPod’s iTunes store doesn’t work? Whenever I search for something it switches to the home screen. So at the mo I can’t download podcasts from the iPod or my PC.
Permalink
30 Jun 2010
Posted in Life, Work at 6:45 pm by alby
I just got home after my last day at Willowbrook Medical Centre.
I started there on 1st April 2002, a notable day really. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that Willowbrook is basically where I really learned what physio is and how to do it properly.
In my time there I’ve worked with a number of folk but the core team of staff has stayed pretty static.
The room was really too small for 2 staff to be there at the same time, the heating was all over the place and the car park is a pain (those 2 “spaces” aren’t actually “spaces” they’re places to walk through, that’s why your car is touching both cars to your sides!)
But the people were what counted. I’m going to miss them.
I’m not actually leaving the team, just that site. We work across the city so I’m going to be in Leicester some more,just I’ll be working over on the west side.
Strange feeling this evening.
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »