Be Excellent To Each Other

I have spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa, being quite unwell, which was nice. Strangely I don't feel too bad now, but I would have put bets on me not surviving the day a few hours back. Full body aching, mild delirium etc...
Seems to be a fair amount of illness going round at the moment.

Despite the fact our customer facing stuff hangs off DirectGov I haven't looked at it for ages; good to see you've got rid of the fucking Easyjet branding.

In fact I didn't realise DirectGov had been superseded, is that a recent thing? Our very recently redseigned relaunched (i.e. two weeks ago!) register and login pages still have a DirectGov banner, should we be removing it to keep up with the cool kids?

There isn't one day this week where I was well enough to go to work, really. Need to catch up over the weekend.

So clearly, I'll get pissed tonight, tomorrow with my parents, and then talk Curiosity into being a drinking buddy on sunday.

Recent-ish, the move for all government content to gov.uk started around 6 months ago, but there are still a lot of agencies that need to move over. Directgov is dead though, never to return.

It was very annoying, as I actually had a fair amount of stuff I needed to do today and get ready for Monday, which I'll have to do over the weekend instead.

You sound a lot like me this week, only a lot less erudite.

I'm having a fantastic day of walking the local valleys tomorrow with some visiting friends (basically a bucolic pub crawl), except for the FUCKING RAIN.

I actually like gov.uk in format terms, but the level of reduced information from the predecessors (i.e. Treasury) is much disappoint.

Blame the Treasury for that All the government department sites control their own content, we just publish it for them.

Usually when I'm at home I have the radio on. Today, BBC Parliament - all day they're showing the BBC's coverage of the 1979 election night. Quite odd to watch it knowing the outcome (no spoilers). Odd mix of names I recognise and those I don't too. Ah, the joys of political nerdism (as I write, the Liberal party have just held Liverpool Edge Hill )

Quite interesting in some ways, the original Liberal Party, before the Alliance formed and all that. Had a considerably higher share of the vote than comparable third-parties in other European countries, yet such a teeny amount of actual representation, 4 or 6 MPs if they were lucky. No wonder their decedents are so in favour of voting reform.

Being at work on a Sunday is irritating.

Being at work on a Sunday is extra-irritating when they're doing facilities maintenance so the aircon has been off for two days and the place is somewhere close to surface of mars temperatures.

Being at work on a Sunday is extra-extra-irritating when they're doing more facilities maintenance and when you go for a dump you find out there's no lighting in any of the bathrooms on any of 16 floors in the building.

Not as irritating as checking the car this morning.

Realising you had left it unlocked over night, and some shit had nicked my iPod and £2.50 worth of change.

Oh well

That *is* irritating.
I've been forgetful enough to leave the house unlocked a few times and always got away with it.

It could be worse, I suppose. If they had broken in you'd still have lost the iPod but would also have a repair bill.

I had not used it in ages, so I am thinking it was in the car, as I can't find it in the house.....

Yes I agree, I reported to the police, and it turns out it had happened to about 4 other folks.

Haven't most cars for years automatically locked if left alone for a minute or so with no keys in the ignition?

Binned a load of 8 and 16 bit games today. Feel horrible doing so but I have them all "digitally" anyway. Kept a selection of stuff to mount as some kind of art display and will sell the rest on Ebay.

Do point us the right way when listed.

Will do.

Felt bad but due to circumstances there was other more important stuff to preserve today. It's not like I can't play any of the games anyway. Holding onto deteriorating original media is pointless.

I think I went in and out of consciousness 3 times while reading this.

So you can lock yourself out?

They only auto lock if you unlock the car and don't open the door

I had taken the shopping in but forgot to lock it.

I know, I know. Basically the space where it had all been for the past 20 or so years is suddenly going to be demolished in 2 weeks time.

I had to take a view that there was more important stuff to save today. Also alot of the boxes had been orphaned from their disks anyway as I preferred to keep my Amiga and CPC disk games in disk cases. As I could not find either of my 2 cases, someone has chucked them.

I think it's more important to just be able to play the games on original hardware where possible using modern storage (my Amiga, BBC and C64 all have solid state storage attached), than keeping some tatty old boxes with media which is literally disintegrating.

I remember the pain of throwing away most of my remaining Amiga games a few years ago... I'd sold the bulk of my collection with my 1200 in 2003 but held onto some of the games for some reason. I found the boxes going mouldy and browning, some quite severely, so had no choice but to fill up the recycling bin. Had contemplated keeping the floppy disks but assumed they'd all be too far gone, as most barely worked even back in 2003.

Still have the rest of my 8- and 16-bit software collections intact, but that's all just ROM cartridges and cards now. And doing my best to keep it mould free.

So you can lock yourself out?
[/quote]

Not if the keys in the ignition.

Not if the keys in the ignition.[/quote]
You are confusing me?

I stopped the car, took the keys out. Took the shopping in the house 3 trips. Just for got to lock the car. How woul the car auto lock in that situation?

Need to try it myself. I will report back!

Mine is set to auto lock when I set off or unlock but don't open any door.

Amused to learn Justin Bieber (who I know nothing about) is kinda off his nut: http://t.co/D0gElakvyU

Although, really, I struggle to imagine a world in which a kid in his position isn't a few ciders short of a picnic...

Slow news day?

I am displeased. This generally spells trouble for other people.

It wouldn't.

The only cars that would are those with keyless entry that work on a proximity sensor rather than a button.

DailyMash made me snort just now.

This whole situation made me realise that I haven't actually read the Anne Frank diaries, so I now have it on my Kindle.

Seems that way; The Sun's headline today is about one semi-famous person being annoyed at their semi-famous ex-girlfriend continuing to phone them even though they've split up. I know The Sun is hardly cutting edge journalism or anything but to put a story on the front page of your paper that's of interest to literally two people in the entire world (or four if you count their publicists) is surely a new fucking low.

You should have built yourself a Project Unity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9AY_xQr ... r_embedded

Is anyone else watching "The Village", or, as I like to call it "john Simms life is made a misery by God"? It's pretty good, you know, and you should be watching it. I've enjoyed seeing Simm suffer week after week, his only hope of escape is to toil away even more.

That music at the start is from Burnin' Rubber on the GX4000.

Remember I have that Skype interview coming up on Wednesday? Well, the person interviewing me wants to do it at 3pm that afternoon. I therefore decided to be all sneaky sneaky and tell my line manager in my current job that I have a dentist appointment for Wednesday afternoon and so really need the afternoon off.

He's turned down the request.

Fuck. Now what do I do? If I call in 'sick' now on Wednesday, that's going to look more than a little suspect.

I'm actually seriously considering just taking him to one side now, coming clean about what it is I need the time off for and just telling him I'll come to work as normal but will be buggering off for an hour around 3pm to take the Skype call. I can not take a lunch break that day or something. My line manager's manager's manager already knows I'm looking at other job possibilities anyway, as we've known each other for years and he knows I'm struggling financially with the commute and everything, but obviously this is something we've so far kept between us.

I'm fucking annoyed with myself for not just throwing a bloody sicky now.

Your line manager appears to be a dick.

Just call in sick.

Isn't he legally obliged to let you have the time for an interview?

He's generally an alright bloke, but gets a bit funny sometimes with booking time off at short notice. We've got everyone in on Wednesday though, so I didn't think an afternoon would be a big deal.

His justification is that the schools are back from Easter holidays now and some of our customers are schools. Hmmm.


No, of course not. He could refuse that as well.

I suppose calling in sick is the only real answer, but it's going to look very dodgy now.

Just tell the person doing the interview that you can't get that timeslot off from your current job. They'll be aware that you're working at the moment so you don't need to hide that from them and it's hardly unexpected that you can't just down tools and wander off in the middle of the afternoon.

Just say that the toothache has gone into overdrive, and you *really* need to go to the dentist.
Then phone in sick if he still refuses.

I thought something similar, but I don't know now if that's just whilst you're under threat of redundancy.

Passive-aggressive dating profile jumps the OKC shark: http://www.okcupid.com/profile/ModelGir ... ly_visited

Schools shut at 3pm, as teachers are workshy. Just call in sick, or say to him "Look, to avoid embaressment on both our parts, it's not really the dentists, it's the GUM clinic OK?"

Just book holiday, as soon as you are able to do so and, contact the person doing the interview and explain that this is the soonest you can do the interview due to current work commitments.

There is something about redundancy and 40% time off being reasonable a week to find other work*, but I can't remember much else.


*there are conditions, but i forget.

I've never refused a leave request, and can't see a situation that could feasibly arrive where I would. It's just a dick thing to do in my book.

I agree, completely.

Via Sinister Agent: http://donottouch.org/

edit: Ooh, good point. There's an naked lady in it, so NSFW.