Thursday 20 November 2008

I've almost completely lost my voice

Some would say that's a good thing, but personally it's a bit of a bugger, for instance I had to ring up a motor spares place in Carmarthen, after ringing Kwik Fit for a laugh, where they wanted £78 for a back exhaust box for a Peugeot 205.... So I asked how much the part was without fitting, he knocked £10 off !!! .... Oh how I laughed at that quote.......

Anyway I rang up the "cheap" place in Carmarthen and sure enough he had one for £26 !!! but the hardest part was actually trying to tell him what I wanted, I mean he isn't a spring chicken and I usually have enough trouble telling him what I want when I can speak properly....... but he must have thought "who the hell is this hissing, warbling bloke and more to the point what does he actually want ?"

Well after about 25 minutes (I kid you not) I eventually got across what I wanted, the hardest part was saying "exhaust" that came out like "sssssssssorrrrrsssttttt" .... anyway I now have a pristine back box for a pug sitting in the dog bed in the kitchen, much to Roxy's disgust, so I will be under the Pug tomorrow hissing away as I remove and fit the new "ssssssssorrrrrrssstttt" shouldn't be a long job and it will stop the Pug sounding like a Formula One racing car as it pulls away (The kids loved it.... unfortunately the coppers wouldn't)... anyway it will all be done and dusted tomorrow all being well, that reminds me I must try and find some gasket paste, I'm sure I have some hidden away in the workshop.....

I'm feeling tons better, but far from out of the woods just yet, I have the most excruciating coughing fits at night, but thankfully I only had one last night not my usual three or four, so I'm getting SOME sleep, It's definitely flu, a cold wouldn't last this long with me, but it looks like my immune system has woken up and is kicking some influenza arse.....

Job wise the market is almost completely flat, it's rather depressing when you look and there are less and less jobs on offer, but I'm an optimist and I'm sure something will turn up soon.... it has to !!!


Oh and I just have to put this photo up of Freya, makes me smile every time I see it :)


Wednesday 19 November 2008

This amused me about the BNP

I was browsing the Register and saw an article about the BNP (British National Party) saying that their entire membership list had been published on the internet.....(how careless ....grin)....they are basically a bunch of racists who hold pretty extreme views.... anyway I followed all the links and eventually got to a public forum where some if not all of the "members" of this forum were bleating about having been outed, the really laughable ones were the ones who said

"My God if this gets back to my employers, I will lose my job !!!"

and then the ones who pleaded innocence by stating "I left in 2006 how can this be, my name shouldn't be on the list ????"

(I had a brief visual picture, flash before my eyes of him trying to take off his jack boots and ripping off his Adolf moustache in a great hurry as he typed his response on the forum.....Gott Im Himmel !!!)


Hmmm maybe he should have thought about that before joining the BNP if he is THAT ashamed of which party he belongs to !!!

As for me, well I don't care who knows that I got thrown out of the SS for being too cruel and heartless ..... (that was a joke by the way ....well you never know these days.... a firebomb through your letterbox can seriously singe your carpet !!!)... there are some right nutters out there, I wonder how long this little gem will float around the media, makes you wonder if it takes the heat off the government about the Baby P case or/and the economy ????? you know important things.....

planned ? nah.... complete concidence ..... of course..... how silly to even think it.....


indeed......

anyway that's enough of that drivel, I'm still not having much luck finding a job, the job market needs a defibrillator in my opinion, it's definitely not bringing forth much luck for anybody it seems, my ex colleagues are having similar problems finding a job, so it's not just me, all I can keep doing is to keep looking, I suppose.

right I'm off to bed, or should I say the sofa, mainly because I have man flu and the second I lay in bed I start hacking away constantly, keeping my room mates awake, I've dosed up on benylin night time, and I'm starting to feel the effects of it, so I had better stop now before

s
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Thursday 6 November 2008

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Disaster Central

I spent most of the morning re jigging my CV, to conform to the standard that is about these days, it's more achievement based than technical knowledge, employers and agencies want a more rounded picture of what you're like apparently, bugger what you can do just tell me what you've done !!

I was put onto an agency that is provided by my ex employer to use their services to find me another job as soon as possible, I did mention that if need be I would get a job anywhere just to pay the bills, but they advised me not to do that as it would detract from finding the perfect position for me.... I have to disagree though when you need a regular pay packet anything will do... anyway after I finished doing my CV and sending it off to be assessed, I decided (stupidly) to bleed a rather troublesome radiator in the house, it's the one in the front room, we have two, one at either end of the room, one of them works but the other one remains stone cold no matter how much nuclear super heated water we pump through it.

So off I went in search of tools and a towel, I fashioned myself a cut off milk carton to catch the water and managed to bleed three of the bleed points.... THREE I hear you say ... hmmmm yes it seems there must have been a run on single radiators when these were put in because they are two small singles joined together, which doesn't make them the easiest of things to bleed...

Anyway I started to unscrew the last bleed valve and the pressure of the water blew the screw from my hand... oh well I thought I'll find that later it can't have gone far... so I filled up the plastic milk carton and then tipped it out the window.... you know what's coming now don't you ?

YES .... I threw out the screw with the water, it had been blown into the milk carton !!! I didn't figure this out until I had hunted high and low with my finger over the high pressure and HOT water coming out of the radiator, it took me over 2 hours of alternating fingers because they were getting burned until I found a solution by stuffing Cranium dough/putty into the hole, it held long enough for me to go outside and search for the bleed screw, which I eventually found in amongst the fallen leaves....lucky !!!

I ended up with fingers like one of the Zombies off the living dead

The Xbox recluse has run up a massive bill on the land line ringing his girlfriend all hours it seems, not to worry though it's coming out of his wages, the amount he spends on chatting to his girlfriend he could take her out on a nightly basis and have a good time..... ahhhh young love, so innocent, so full of promise..... so what !!! anyway he is being told tonight under no circumstances is he to use the house phone to ring her, he can top up his mobile then he can see the money being frittered away himself, rather than having a shock at the end of the month.......same applies to the other ankle biters as well, the phone bill is getting ridiculous in fact the only one who hasn't run up the phone bill is Freya, but her level of conversation at the moment is a bit limited as are her circle of friends....

The rest of today I spent recovering two hard drives from a friends computer which had the unfortunate situation of being hit by lightning killing it instantly, I've got nearly 90% of her photos back the rest has been trashed..... I just need to buy CD's/ DVD's now to copy all of the photo's on it, thankfully I had bought a 16GB USB pen drive for £17.99 from Play.com which was well suited to the task..... it's ridiculously cheap for a full 16GB of storage, and I filled in what was left by cooking dinner, cleaning up and generally being a house husband :¬)

roll on tomorrow for much of the same ..... :(

Saturday 1 November 2008

Well that's it.....GET OUT !!

It was only meant to be a 6 month contract but in the end was just over two years, but now it's come to an end, mainly because I didn't want to move to Rotherham or Mumbai in India, so had to take redundancy, so I'm officially unemployed as of yesterday the 31st October, bit of a bummer but there you go that's business for you, somebody has to take the fall, and at least I wasn't sacked for incompetence or lack of performance, in fact my annual review was more than pretty damn good and I had glowing references and was recommended for a pay rise, due to the improvements I had made to the procedures, however it was more a case of last in, first out, as is usually the case, I feel sorry for some of them quite a few are VERY close to retirement and they have seen their pensions slashed by the trillions lopped off their investment fund pensions by the credit crunch and they have very little hope of being kept on to top it up.

The HR man who gave me the redundancy news even told me that he would be perfectly happy to give me a more than deserved verbal reference which is outside of the company policy of only supplying references through the HR department, which is unheard of, but he couldn't put anything in writing as he would be hung drawn and quartered if they found out, as did my old line manager, so I must have been doing something right whilst working there :).... plus I wasn't escorted off the premises by two security guards, which is the usual policy when somebody who has had access to an entire corporate network infrastructure, including all the passwords (well I set most if not all of them) it must be a worrying time for them though "hoping" their ex employee's don't go off the rails and bring their systems grinding to a halt, which is probably why I am gagged by a confidentiality agreement not to divulge sensitive information or bad mouth the company until 12 months have passed (weird ?)

Anyways I have no complaints about the company, they did ok by me :¬) plus I got a leaving present !! a bottle of Capt Morgan Rum and a card signed by the remainder of the office staff, after the "week of the long knives" they have been put through.... the lucky few or is that unlucky ? insomuch as they now have three times more work to do with the same pay !!! unlucky methinks :¬)

I've got to admit, the job was becoming a little stale, I had done all the improvements to the LAN and servers that could possibly be done, it was "tweaked for maximum smoke" I had automated most if not all of the mundane tasks whilst there, so things were becoming VERY routine and required very little thought to resolve the problems as they presented, so in a way I'm glad I was made redundant but it doesn't help on the cash front, but a man of my talents won't be sitting around for very long, I do have irons in the fire, and if push comes to a shove I will get a job wherever that might be, and not necessarily in IT, although I will have to dumb down my CV, it wouldn't look very good an "IT Guru" applying for a job sweeping floors at B&Q.... they might detect that I'm not really serious about staying employed there ;¬)

it's pretty hard though how do you explain away the last 18 or more so years of "high tech" employment ? and your motivation for taking a manual job ? "ohhhh I fancied a change !!" ..... GET OUT !!!

The only thing that concerns me is that with the current economic climate this isn't the best time to be made redundant, and employers are laying off rather than taking on, so we shall have to see.