From the front page of the Obby, 26/10/2011

Breakfast was made much more amusing today courtesy of the Crawley Observer and what the youth of today would no doubt call an epic fail.

In such a busy environment as the Obby offices maybe it does only feel like a few months since May 2010…

This time round I found that the people who supply my gas and electricity had got into a bit of a mess, which involved a marathon phone call to customer services to sort out.  They had increased the direct debit for electricity to a ridiculously high amount a couple of months ago, putting me well into credit.  I also realised that I didn’t have a direct debit for the gas after all!

It all got very confusing when we moved house and then changed meters.  We replaced the old key meter with a normal one, but I still had a substantial credit balance from the old address which moved over so I was actually still in credit even though I hadn’t been paying anything.  In between the bills showing a credit balance I found letters demanding payment for an unpaid bill which didn;t make sense.  It turns out that related to the old meter, which was a key meter so wouldn’t ever have a bill to pay.

Got it all sorted out, but I realised that there was a chance I could have had the collection people on the doorstep for it so probably just as well I caught it before it all turned too nasty – and before I started getting in the red on the real bill.

All up-to-date now though.  I’ll have to make sure it stays that way.

I forgot that the captcha plug-in I use always screws up when I upgrade WordPress and I have to de-activate and re-activate it to make it all work again.

I always forget.  I expect I will forget next time I upgrade as well.  Should I be writing myself a process or checklist for upgrading, or would that be really blurring the lines between work and home?

Not as bad as when I upgraded the plugin itself – that lost me all the custom words I had put in there.  I think it doesn’t do that anymore because the custom words are held in the SQL database, but I may be mistaken.  I’ll find out next time an update comes along.

I’m not complaining though.  It is all free after all.

Just tonight I cameout of the supermarket and went to get in the car.  My first thought was “bloody hell Jayne, when were you going to tell me you put a huge dent in the back?”.  My second thought was “when did we get back doors?”, followed by “isn’t that car darker then it should be?”, “who’s nicked our car?” and “Oh, I’m standing next to it.”

Got nearly home and saw Chrystal at the bus stop so I offered her a lift to the station.  Wondered why she was going back home because just before I went out I asked if she was going home and she said no.  It turns out she thought I asked when she was going home and she said “now”.  She must have thought I was being a bit stroppy to to just go out to the shop straight after she said she was about to go home now, leaving her to struggle with her suitcase.

I discovered something myself too.  After listening to the commentary of the whole game on Radio 5 live, I rushed downstairs to see if I could catch the goals on the news.  At that point I discovered that our TV can pick up ESPN and I could have watched the game instead of listening to it.  Bah.

I would have preferred that to sitting through the 5 live commentators disparaging Crawley and taking the piss out of the terraces, the telephone mast, the stadium clock, and anything else they could think of.  Mind you, they did mention that they saw a gritter going past on the A23.  I don’t think the 5 live crew realised what an event that was.

Anyway, well done to the team and fingers crossed that they don’t meet ther Hammers until the final.

OK, it is a little more complicated than a basic clock because it is a clock radio that is also the base station for a cordless phone.  The phone has long gone and we never use the radio, but the buttons are still there.  We must have had it for nearly ten years but I still find it impossible to turn the thing off in the morning.   On the rare occasions when I have to operate it, like this morning when Jayne got up at some stupidly early hour, I just blindly stab at buttons until it shuts up, but I don’t know until ten minutes have passed whether I have killed it or just hit snooze.

It is always snooze though.   Statistically, I should turn it off completely at least some of the time, but it is always snooze.

I look through all of them to see which I just need to read and delete, which I need to read and file, and which need a reply – and how much effort is going to go into the reply.  Whether I reply immediately or not depends on what else is going on.

The other day I noticed one from a Horsham voter asking specific questions about the Digital Economy act.  I decided to put that to one side and answer it properly later on, and moved onto some of the easier ones.  The easier ones are the from letters from campaigns where I have already had exactly the same email from a few other people and so I know exactly how to reply.

This evening I rememberd I still had to answer that Digital Economy act mail and couldn’t find it.  I must have either deleted it by mistake or inadvertently filed it.  I have had a quick look through the most likely folders and suspect I deleted it, so now I am kicking myself.

It is not that one vote matters – and who is to say whther the person would have liked whatever I was going to say anyway – but its the principle.  Somewhere out there in Horsham is somebody who thinks I am just deliberately ignoring them.

On reflection, there could be a lot more.  I find an increasing number of mails from voters in the junk mail folder so there is a fair chance that I might have missed some – but I don’t know about them.  It is the mail that I know I misplaced that is bothering me.

If anybody has emailed me and not got a reply – give it another go and I’ll try to be more careful this time!

Only one end of the nut, so three strings work OK.   I can now only be 75% as bad as normal.  Good news is that a replacement can be had online for just over a quid so not a disaster.  If I could actually play the thing it might be more serious.

Spot the (deliberate?) mistake

My first thought was to doubt the expertise of so-called experts in Google analytics who can’t even spell Google, then I started wondering whether this was actually done on purpose – a way of drawing people to their site so they can point out their error.   I could be over-analysing of course.

Skuds' cooker in the immediate aftermath of the beans on toast incident

Here is a photo of what happened when I felt a little peckish and made some toast under the grill.

My new theme song is:

I’m the self inflicted, mind detonator.
Yeah. Im the one infected, twisted animator.
I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter