Tor popped in today – After giving birth on Friday!
I have been heard to say that this was the EXPECTED approach to childbirth – I WAS only joking though!! I really don’t need mothers and/or feminists to be up in arms..!

She popped over mid morning, mainly to check on her other two boys – namely Chris and I – to see if we were still ok without her controlling presence.

Needless to say we were fine… (kinda – we had run out of milk again )

This little news article caught my eye though: Off to school at Calne aged seven hours
Even I’m not that draconian, but it shows that some people have a realists view of the world.

I think she has been heard to say that the reason she did it was to show that you CAN have a career AND be a mother in the same lifetime. Though I think this is not the current thinking where parenting is concerned.

Personally I think that the mother concerned should make the decision FOR HERSELF – not being swayed by the ‘experts’ or outside forces. There are too many ‘do gooders’ saying one thing and ‘evil corporates’ expecting another.

Just let the people decide for themselves, we are adults after all!

I fully expect Tor to be back when she feels it’s the right time AND NOT BEFORE!

I’ll expect that moaning to start soon then… 

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I’m one of those strange people who think that credit is a BAD option.
I grew up in a family with little spare cash flowing around, and as such like to squirrel away a little cash from time to time.
It’s with this in mind I try to keep some cash in a savings acount – In this case the Santander eSavings account.

Now this account was originally opened with the Abbey (National – for those old enough to remember), before all the banking fiasco started, and gave a good level of interest as time went on.
Then the banking crisis hit and savings rates were crushed.
Abbey were one of the banks under threat, but was ‘rescued’ by Santander – not a positive step in my opinion.

After recieving very little interest from the account for a while, and now that things have calmed considerably I moved the account balance to a new account on Monday – with the usual banking delay for a BACS transaction this finally hit my account on Friday (this is the 21st century for goodness sake – 3 to 4 DAYS to do a transaction )

This I thought would close the account – how wrong could I be!!

I logged in to the account this morning, just to check – still not closed – so as a courtesy to the bank I called them to ask to close the account.
Havnig passed the security check to verify my identity, I asked to close the account, as there was a nil balance.
I was told this was viewed as a transaction and required me to pass ANTOHER security check
After trying to guess my ‘memorable date’ and failing I was told she couldn’t close the account!!!
STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!
How could I possibly manage to move money using the ’security’ that was previously enough – and not be able to close an empty account?

I hold another account with another bank, not closed for a similar reason. The Yorkshire bank has an account with about 30p in it because they “counld not give me the pennies” when I went to close the account.
That was about 6 YEARS ago!

What ever happened to customer service? Why do we have to jump through some ridiculous hoops just to perform simple tasks with OUR OWN MONEY!?!?!?

‘Effin ridiculous!

It’s kind of nice to know that the banks will have to administer the accounts, costing them money (albeit a small amount).

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We supported an event held at the Bradford Grid – the Bradford Grid Enterprise Expo, as an exhibitor recently and all was good

The event was a well attended affair, with a curry lunch thrown in – Chris says this wasn’t why he wanted to attend, but I’ll reserve judgement on that one…

There were several free seminars also available ~ offered by various experts on a wide range of topics, aimed at offering some sound business advice.
It’s seldom that businesses get FREE impartial advice from the experts, but this seems to have been one of those rare occasions.

From our own perspective, it’s the first time we’ve exhibited at an event like this ~ but it definitely won’t be our last, having gained many new leads and contacts, all looking for a trust worthy IT supplier.

I personally didn’t attend, me being the prime product of our company, but Chris said he’d enjoyed it immensely. Though it was ‘hard’ (especially eating the curry I’ll bet It was created using proper ingredients ~ none of your pre-made rubbish in a Bradford curry )

I could have done without the panic to get some leaflets printed too – Tor ended up delivering them about 10 minutes before the event started
The ink was still wet!

There are some images of the event here, if you would like to browse…
Bradford GRID Enterprise Expo images (kindly provided by John Steel Photography)

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Glancing into the rear view mirror on the way back from a client meeting this afternoon, I was shocked to see the K.I.T.T. car from the 80’s ‘Knight Rider’ series!

Wow!
I was persued like the ubiquitous bad guy for a few miles before losing them in traffic, thanks to my advanced driving skills
(Actually I guess they were going the same way as myself for a while and turned off somewhere but a boy can dream )

It was indeed a full replica of the car from said series ~ Most impressive!

I couldn’t quite see if ‘The Hoff’ was driving but I’d guess not…

Such a shame…

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It still amazes me that some of the funky production machines I get to work with still run on VERY old technology.

As a for instance, today I got to work with an industrial laser cutting machine.
Not quite the same as the famous laser from the Goldfinger Bond film, but it was still cool to watch.

The control system runs from a PC base, controlled using an old MS-DOS system, and some clever ISA slot cards.

These dinosaurs of the PC age are not obsolete to all but a few geeks (I have to admit to installing MS-DOS 6.22 on my new Intel i7 920 based system! ) and, it seems, the manufacturing industry.

The 6.22 version of MS-DOS was originally released in 1994, and became ‘End of Life’ in 2001. The ISA slot system architecture was from WAY back in 1981.
With these two beauties controlling a machine worth many £1000’s,  keeping them running becomes more and more important ~ They simply can’t be easily replaced.

It’s kinda good that the antediluvian engineers who remember how to fly MS-DOS based systems are becoming more sought after though
It means there will be a use for us long after we fail to understand PCs.

Long live geeks

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Tor’s witty response to a client who said I “quite like computers” was “Is the Pope ‘quite’ Catholic!”

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