A stunning image of my car - I can't believe it was nearly FREE!

I received a phone call today, from the garage where I recently purchased my shiny new car…
This caused another minor flutter in the old ticker – was there something wrong with my little baby?

“There is a discrepancy with your paperwork”  - Garage
“I’ll pop in and we’ll get it sorted” – me

Zooooooom… Off to the garage.

The ‘discrepancy’ was the minor issue of me not having signed the agreement to pay for the car AND not having signed the direct debit.
Effectively I had a free car!
Jokingly I suggested that I didn’t want to sign – there was NO intention of this – but the guy did say that I would be surprised at the number of people who would have tried just that.
I signed the  paperwork and left several relieved car salesmen.

What kind of society are we living in?
Someone makes a mistake and someone would try to get out of paying!
It saddens me to know that I exist in the honest minority…

One solution –

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Stress gets the better of us sometimes - please don't take it out on the techies!

Sometimes my job is difficult.
Difficult ~ It’s a simple word which holds ‘oh so much’ grief  and anguish ~ I sometimes feel it doesn’t have the gravitas it should.

Today was DIFFICULT! (caps intentional)

Now I first must admit to dropping the ball here, so some of the issue was of my own making, but…

On Thursday one of our clients had an issue with their server ~ a system critical server ~ so I might be excused when I missed a call, from the same client, that one of their PCs was running slowly. I was fixing the bloomin’ server until gone 22:00 that same evening…
Bigger fish to fry and all that ~ I know it’s not an excuse but even if I had fixed the PC, there was no way it was going to log on anyhow..!

This morning Chris got shouted at and accused of patronising one of the clients staff members. This was not the case, bit the client in question was getting frustrated and lashed out. The sad truth is that the frustrated client thought they knew better and tried to second guess what Chris was asking them to do – and got more annoyed at when their second guess didn’t work.

I got a yelling at from the same person too…

Eventually this got sorted, and the issues were proven not to be anything to do with the PCs in failing general but arose from the clients own naivety.
We took the flack anyway though!

Please remember, we are human and sometimes we drop the ball, but in general WE ARE THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM!

Respect the techs and they’ll do a good job, and please have some patience!
It’s not like we can just press the ‘fix it’ key…

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Fancy something a little different? Llama trekking - highly recommended!

On a beautiful, cold but clear, Yorkshire morning, the GF and I jumps in the brand new Clio she’s purchased and zooms (kinda – it IS a brand spanking new NEW car!) off to the distant climes of Nidderdale.

Going for a walk with a difference - Llama trekking!

We arrived at the site (Nidderdale Llamas) and were greeted by the proprietor and chief Llama woman, Suzanne.
After a brief change of footware ~ it was a glorious day, but there had been an over night blanket of snow ~ we were introduced to the Llamas.

Jack and Bertie were clothed in suitable apparel for a stroll around the locale and farm lands, were equipped with panniers to carry our tea (very kind of them), and we were ready for the off.

A brief introduction to the do’s and do not’s of llama trekking and we were away.

The experience was amazingly good ~ being a hard nosed techie usually makes you immune to the ‘joys’ of  the outside world, we like our interiors gadget encrusted after all. In this case I actually enjoyed wandering about in the winter wonderland leading a llama about.

Trust me when I say this really did surprise me!
It was the GFs idea after all ~ she’s a sucker for the furry animal types. If it happens to have sleepy camel type eyes, it’s just the more appealing…

The llamas themselves both seemed to have a personality; Jack being the lead llama took every lapse of concentration as an excuse to misbehave and tuck into some of the choice bits of local flora; Bertie was a relative newcomer to the trekking experience and as such was a little nervous, but still great fun.

Overall, if you imagine walking a very large, extremely placid, slightly cheeky dog, you’ll not go far wrong. They have some extremely comical expressions too!

Give Suzanne a call and get out for a bit of fresh air!
One of the more enjoyable things to do in the snow…

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If you believe the media, computer games are the mother of all evil where parenting is concerned

Firstly, I have to point out that I have no kids ~ don’t want them ~ don’t like them!

I AM an avid computer gamer though (yes I am nearly 40 and I still like them )

It’s from this vaunted standpoint that I am getting increasingly aggrieved at the constant media attention that computer/video games are bad.

This evening, whilst benumbing my brain with inane televisual ‘entertainment’, I came across a Super Nanny episode proudly flaunting a child with a “Computer game addiction” – note the emotive language used – “addiction”?
The child’s mother was at her wits end when the child would spend hours upon hours playing games (mainly the World of Warcraft line as far as I could see).
The harangued mother also had two smaller girls, both demanding attention.

It didn’t take a genius to realise this wasn’t a case of “Computer game addiction”, but plain and simple BOREDOM!

Amazingly, once the child got out doing things the “addiction” vanished ~ NO SH*T SHERLOCK!

On the same program they tried to claim that the health and exercise regime of the country’s children was also lacking because of computer games.
BULLS*IT!

I would put this down to the usual parental paranoia about letting little johnny/jenny playing out in the streets/parks. Kids are not allowed to scrape knees, climb trees or anything else we did as kids, because parents in general and society as a whole is massively over protective.
There is no personal responsibility left in the UK, everything is somebody else’s fault.

Parents, wise up, if your offspring is spending too long on the PC – TURN IT OFF!
Be a parent and live up to your responsibilities – programs like Super Nanny constantly show that being soft on kids results in badly behaved, spoilt, brats.

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Barclays "Making life difficult" - this should be their slogan..!

Once again I have attempted to venture into the world of finance – this time to open a bank account for some savings…

This proved to be far too inconvenient for the branch of Barclays I popped into this morning…

Off I pop to the local branch, chipper to the last as I strolled in to the branch, waited patiently for a cashier to become free, and advanced smiling…

“[holding the account flyer] Can I open one of these accounts please?”
“I’m sorry sir, you need to see the lady over there [points], but she is busy and she works on an appointment basis”
[Like I'm not a busy person]
“I can fit you in this afternoon at 2:00 or tomorrow if you wish”…
At this point I’m looking non to impressed – I’ll not bore you with my comments…!
Suffice to say I wasn’t too impressed

Ok – now this account NEEDS you to go in to the branch to open in the first place (the terms state you must be an existing customer to open the account online).
NOWHERE did it say you have to go into the branch to make an appointment to open the account, before you go in to the branch to open the account.
This is ridiculous!!

HELLO BARCLAYS! I’M TRYING TO INVEST MONEY HERE!!!

What is wrong in the minds of man, that makes you think that people want your service SOOOO badly that they’ll perform tricks for your pleasure Barclays?
I just want to open a savings account – not apply for £1,000,000′s – it’s not too difficult for you is it?
The last time I opened an account it only took 5 minutes ONLINE, and required not much more than my name and date of birth.

Next time I’ll take my mother (to confirm her maiden name), birth certificate, driving license, passport, National Insurance number, a utility bill (in my name and at the present address), the 4 other cards I have for other bank accounts, all my personal measurements, written confirmation of my memorable date/place/pet, written confirmation of my alpha numeric 16 letter password (from which they’ll only need letters 2 6 and 10),  a blood sample, retina scan, AND a swab of DNA/skin sample.
Maybe that will convince them that I’m me. Though I doubt it…!

Yet another display of stupidity on behalf of the banks…

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