Ironic is the only word for it!
Filed under: Personal, life — Tags: cars, life, Personal —
Posted: 5:31 pm
4 January 2009
I wrote yesterday about doing something you normally do but different. Well yesterday, as you may recall, I decided to walk to the shop which was very liberating however today I am regretting it. For the last couple of months the car has been a little slow starting, you know how it is when you turn the key and there’s the slow churn as the engine struggles to turn before it starts. Today we all got in the car to head off to pantomime in Nottingham, the kids were looking forward to Cinderella, only to find when I started the car it briefly began running only to stutter and die. Now at that point I thought things we’re going to be difficult but little did I know; it was 12:30 and it started at 14:00 with 30 minutes of travelling. After attempting to restart the engine numerous times the battery eventually gave in and said “no more”. During all of the this our neighbor, who messes with cars a lot, saw what was going off and offered a jump start needless to say I snapped his hand off. Sadly, 40 minutes later we were no closer to getting the car started so we decided the best thing was going to be to call the RAC to sort it. Some 1hr 20mins later the nice chap arrived and within 10 mins he’d got it all running again. Said that there was two possible reasons why it had happened, either the “leak back” pipes which were cheap to replace (£1-£2 + Labour) were letting air in the fuel or the “Injector Seals” which are more expensive (approx £200 + Labour) which would also be letting air in. He also noted that our model was the one with the known fuel pump issue which happens between 80K – 150K miles and costs about £2,000 to repair, more good news! But for now the car is running again, charging to be precise, and we’ll be going to see Jule’s friend in a little while before she goes off to Australia tomorrow for about 8 months.
As for the Pantomime that was well and truly missed, £70 down the drain but we’ll see if they can sort something at the box office (doubtful but you can hope). As for me; Would I still have walked to the shop? Too right, in hindsight I just would have took the car out for a run as well yesterday to “keep it going”, ah well C’est la vie.
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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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New year, new start
Filed under: Business, Personal, Personal Develoment — Tags: growth, Personal, personal development —
Posted: 11:56 am
2 January 2009
For those who have followed this blog in the past you will know and see that I have been very quite since summer. The reasons for this are many but most of them are due to personal circumstances which have knocked my life completely off kilter and have no only taken a lot of physical time but it has also significantly hurt my drive on a day to day basis. This in itself is a self perpetuating downward spiral in which you don’t do certain takes or maintain aspects of your life because you haven’t got the “get up and go” to do it but then you end up resenting, even hating yourself for no doing it. Then as time goes by you end up putting things off repeatedly until finally they are way overdue and almost impossible to recover from. Why am I laying this on the line and telling you? Quite simply I have been there and have now vowed to turn things around, it is a hard thing to admit that things have gotten out of control but it is much harder, in my opinion, to recover from.
With that in mind I want to commit, publicly, to maintaining at least two posts a week here whether it tech news, geek stuff or just how things are going. 2009 is a new year and while this is not a new year resolution, it is a life resolution, I just thought that it was a damn good time to start…leave behind the old and move forward.
So let me start by saying happy new year to you, all the success for the future and remember if you want to contact me please use the form above.
Regards
Rob.
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