Stop the world, I want to get off
Filed under: Light relief, Personal, Personal Develoment — Tags: Light relief, Personal, work life balance —
Posted: 4:47 pm
3 January 2009
Like most people I spend almost every working day racing around seeing people, speaking with them on the phone, rushing home at night to see the wife and kids. This I have done for many years so much so that it has become the normal speed of things and I am always in a rush. More recently though I have started to look at things a little more deeply and found that I don’t like all the rushing but what can you do to stop this? The single thing that made me realise that I needed to stop rushing was when I was taking my little boy to bed, as I do most nights, and he was doing what most 5 year olds do and that was mess about. Now Tom has not had a really normal bedtime routine since he was two before his little brother was born. This is because little Danny was born with problems which meant we have spent the last 2 1/2 years in hospital see www.potter-tate.co.uk for more info. Anyway, it was around 8pm and he was messing and rushing as usual I said to him “come on Tom, I’ve got work to do if you don’t stop messing then no story”. It wasn’t till I got downstairs and sat down at my computer that in dawned on me that in actual fact what I was rushing down to do was neither that important or in fact a “real” job that needed doing.
So I am resolved that while I cannot slow down the work pace while doing on-demand work what I can do is slow down outside of work. I am also resolved to doing things different to the way I have before. So earlier today I decided to walk to our local shop, something which I have NEVER done in the whole time that we have lived at this house which is almost 7 years. The local shop is only about 3/4 mile away and while I going running three times a week and pass it then I have never walked to the shop. You should try it sometime, it’s a surefire way to completely spin out your partner/wife. I said to Julie “I think I’ll walk to the shop”, you should have seen the look on her face. It couldn’t have been more stunned if I had said that I was catching a flight to the other side of the world! So leaving behind a rather confused Julie I walked to the shops, the thing was I ended up looking round with almost schoolboy fascination at houses that I had seen before but never really looked at.
So if you are looking for a New Years Resolution try this, “Do something once a week different to the way you have always done it”.
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Silence is golden…
Filed under: Light relief, Mobile, Personal —
Posted: 9:47 pm
29 August 2008
As you will see things have been extreemly quiet of late. Due to some personal stuff that was happening throughout May/June I had to focus my attention elsewhere for a while, then of course we have had the kids summer holidays which is always great. You get to see the kids more but then after about……2 hours you wish they were back at school and you can clearly remember why you hate the summer holidays!
We have also just returned from a weeks holiday in France which I have to say was an enlightening experience. It is some years now since I travelled abroad so I was a little green about these things but I knew all the normal stuff that was required (passport, GB plates etc). However, being a devout techy I had to take some essentials to ensure that I didn’t loose connection with the world. First stop was with T-Mobile to see what it was going to cost me in terms of mobile phone calls, should clients need me then I want to know how much it will cost me and also to ensure that it was enabled for "roaming". I was told that it was indeed enabled for "roaming" and to make a call back to the UK would cost me "38p per minute" and to receive a call would cost "19p per minute", not too bad however I was then told that I would also be charged "19p per minute" for someone to leave a message and then "38p per minute" to collect them!! Not too much of a piss take. I then asked what the rates were for data usage while abroad…this just go better again. I was told that it was much cheaper than it used to be as previously it cost £7.00 per MB but now it was only £1.60 per MB. Now obviously the young lady that I was speaking to but I am afraid that I do not agree I mean come on, on one hand we are told that we are part of the EU, the European Union, but all that goes out then window when the mobile companies have the opportunity at a pound of flesh. Needless to say I decided to see how much the Wi-Fi would cost on site. During the ferry crossing my mobile picked up a network called "On-waves" which is the maritime network between then English and Franch coast, what a fantastic service. However, when my mobile joined the network I was greeted with the following message:
Welcome to Maritime.It will cost you /min to make and /min to receive calls here. You can send a text for 40p a message and a picture message for 20p. To speak to T-Mobile Customer Services call +44XXXXXXXXXX from your mobile.
Now this was a nice message to get however it failed to provide a clue as to the cost of calls on this network. However, on my HTC TyTn which has a T-Mobile 3G data only sim inserted I received the following message:
You have latched onto a maritime network. Please note making and receiving calls are charged at £1.80/min from this network.
Slightly more dramatic costs for calling, I mean come on £1.80 per minute to make or receive a call you might as well just butter me up and stick it to me!!! Once in france another SMS was received confirming that call costs that I had already been notified of prior to leaving. Once we were at the site it transpired that Wi-Fi usage is charged at 8€ per hour which I just wasn’t prepared to pay, I mean it just doesn’t cost that much to buy it so I ended up spending the week with no Internet access whatsoever which was really quite surreal but oddly pleasant. Some would call me a tight git but I refuse to pay unreasonable rates for services such as this, what do you think?
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Nothing like politically correct!!
Filed under: Light relief —
Posted: 11:13 pm
10 April 2008
I was round to see my dad recently and he showed me a video he’d found on youtube and it had me rolling. The video is of Jeff Dunham with "Achmed the dead terrorist", below is the video for your enjoyment !!!
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