Now all we need is for him to do a time travelling movie and never appear in Star Wars then everything will be OK. continue reading »

Logan’s Run is a 1976 science fiction film based on the novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. It depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources are managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expediency of killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty, preventing overpopulation. The story follows the actions of Logan 5, a “Sandman,” as he “runs” from society’s lethal demand. continue reading »

I’ll have to disagree with the talking part in this one. I think talking in the toilets is OK as long as you are not talking over someone. I hate it when the guys at either ends of the urinals are talking to each other and you’re in the middle. It puts me right off.

I struggle to pee in public urinals as it is. I suffer from stage fright and just can’t go! So people having a conversation over me makes it worse!

I can honestly say that for the first time in a long while, I am genuinely happy in both my personal life and my work life.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of the snow we’ve been having recently has really cheered me up. I tend to get quite down in winter as it’s cold and miserable, but the snow has really cheered me up. It’s been snowing like mad here for the last week or so. I absolutely love snow. I think snow has this magical quality that makes people feel like kids again. Well, at least it does with me anyway. I would honestly love it to snow every day for the next 100 years if it meant we never had another heat wave. I’ve always preferred winter over summer. If you’re cold, it’s easier to warm up, than cool down when you’re hot. Plus, if I’m hot, my skin explodes!

It’s been that bad this week that I’ve had to catch the bus to work. I say I have to catch THE bus to work, but what I actually mean is that I have to catch TWO buses to work; One to take me in to town, the other out of town. I haven’t caught the bus since March when my car was in for MOT, but I assumed that everything would pretty much be the same as it was then. I was wrong. After I got off the bus in town and started to walk to my other bus stop, I noticed that the bus stop had gone! They’d only bloody moved it! OK, they’d only moved it down the road, but I only found that out AFTER I’d walked to the other side of town to the other stop. It sounds like I’m ranting, but I’m not.

On Wednesday I came home after trudging through the snow and being stuck on the buses to a nice warm dinner. To me, that’s perfection. I don’t get the same satisfaction in summer having a salad after a hard day.

A lot of people have been constantly moaning about it and wish it would go away. I know that the second it goes away, I’ll revert back to being a mardy arse.

I really need to start my Christmas shopping. I literally have no ideas on what to buy people this year! None. Zip. The only Christmas shopping I’ve done so far is buying presents for myself. Not in a selfish way, but in a “Buy what you want and I’ll give you the money for it” kind of way.

Anyone any exciting plans for this weekend? I’m off to the pub tomorrow night with a mate, and that’s about it.

I need to take both my sites down for essential maintenance at some point, but I won’t bore you with that.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Image from: http://acottrell.com/tag/snow/

I think I have a virus on my laptop and I have no idea how to get rid of it. It’s been acting up for a couple of days now. I noticed that I keep getting random tabs opening themselves in Firefox which go to one of those sites that bring up a pop up and won’t let you close it unless you click the OK button. Clicking cancel just brings the message up again, and pressing the X does the same. If you click OK, it brings up a download box. If you click cancel on that it starts the whole thing off again. Stupid thing. Then Windows Host Service crashes and makes my PC look like dog shit.

Doing a system restore hasn’t fixed it. That’s usually fixes 90% of the problems I have like this.

I’m trying to get as much stuff off it as I can and I hope to reformat it at the weekend. The thing is though I’ve got about 100GB of stuff on this hard drive and it’s going to take forever to copy over my Wireless network. Suppose I could always start things off copying then watch a film or something? That’ll pass the time.

So that’s my weekend taken care of then! Yay!

I really want this week to be over. I’m mega busy at work at the minute, but I know that it should all be done and dusted by Friday. So that’s kind of an incentive enough for me to battle on with it. My last job was like this all time and it drove me mental because it was never ending! It was just a constant barrage of shit, whereas at least now I know there’s an end to it I might talk about it more on [ESC]ape Testing on Friday, although I have two possible posts in mind already. One is about how outsourcing can’t possibly benefit an organisation and the other is about the Software Testing job market. I’m thinking the latter is more appropriate, but I’m still undecided. I may carry on writing both anyway and queue them up.

I’m working on quite a few posts at the minute as I’m hoping to go on holiday pretty soon. I want to take a break from Blogging for a bit as well just to give me a break and to recharge my batteries, but I don’t want it to affect any of my sites. So I’m writing loads of things now and queuing them up. When I do go on holiday, it will still look like as though writing stuff on my usual Monday, Wednesday, Friday (A post here and on [ESC]ape Testing) schedule when in fact I’ll probably be passed out in a pool of beer and Pringles!

I’d been talking to a Girl I met online for a week or so the other week. Things were going OK until I decided to send her a message after my little accident…

So here’s how it went down…

Don’t send girls emails when you have concussion! You’ll only end up looking like… well, me!

So………………..

I concussed myself at work today.

Keep in mind that I work in and office, and my job involves no heavily lifting or rummaging around under desks what so ever I still managed to concuss myself. The metal shutter in the doorway hadn’t been put up properly and I only found this out when my body made it through the door frame but my head didn’t!

I ended up going to the NHS drop in centre at lunch who referred me to A&E for further tests. I thought I’d be OK, but I was really having trouble concentrating, and struggling to see my monitors clearly. I kept getting headaches and feeling really dizzy and almost felt like I needed to be sick.

I just wish someone had filmed it as I bet it looked hilarious! Painful though!

I’m struggling a bit to write this and I can’t look at the screen for very long, so I’m going to keep it really pants, I mean, brief.

HELO MY NAM IS ADAM AND I LYK MAYKIN WEB SYITES FOR MAI PEEPS I LYK BEER AND WEEBLS STUF!!!11

Why do people write like this? Surely it takes more time and effort to think and write abbreviations than it does to just write the blooming word that you’re thinking of?

And as for the person reading it, they have to spend longer translating your messaging before they’re able to read it!

It doesn’t make you look big or clever, so stop doing it, please.

I’ve had quite a good week this week. I’ve started work on my new project, which I’ve decided to call “Go Banana!”. Things are going OK with it at the minute. I’ve been tweaking the design this morning and adding widgets and things to it. It looks as thought it’s going to be a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun at the same time.

I’ve added a Facebook style “Like” button to the site’s posts. If you like what you see… Like it! I’m also adding this to Go Banana! as well.

This made me laugh this week. I like the bit where he says “Big Booty Bitches”!

Mmm... Blood Doughnuts!

I gave blood on Monday. It’s something that I’ve only just recently started doing. I’ve given blood once before, and was refused the last time I went. Long story short, I’d booked an appointment, and got the flu, so they told me they wouldn’t accept my blood. It went OK this time around though.

It’s something I’d thought about doing for a while, but not really gotten round to doing until my girlfriend told me she does it regularly. She goes every 3 months, but probably only donates every 6 months due to her iron count being very low. Some people have really bad side effects from it and feel really faint during and after giving blood. I think I’m one of the lucky ones as it doesn’t really affect me that badly. I’m usually fine straight after and can drive back to work. You hear all the horror stories from people about the needle slipping out, and being really badly bruised from it, but I think these are all rare cases.

It’s quite a straight forward process; you fill out a form, they test your iron count by pricking your finger, ask you basic questions about sex and drugs, then they take your blood. You lay on a table and a needle is inserted into your forearm. You then have to keep moving your fingers for about 15 minutes, then you get to sit back with a cup of tea and a biscuit! Brilliant.

If you’d like to find out more about giving blood, please visit http://www.blood.co.uk.

Look at them… standing there, ready to pounce on the next person who walks through the door. Armed with a list of special offers and a forced enthusiasm for the store’s products. I am indeed talking about… Store Greeters.

I went into ASDA the other day to buy some vegetables. I knew exactly what I wanted, as I had prepared a list beforehand as I have the worst memory ever. On walking into the store, I was greeted by “Gavin”. Gavin, who must be in his late teens and obviously a virgin, approached me as I walked through the large space ship like doors and proceeded to fire questions at me, like “How are you today, sir?” and “Have you heard about the special deals we have today on ink cartridges?”. I try and ignore Gavin. I avoid eye contact with Gavin. I even go as far as turning my back on Gavin, whilst mumbling “Leave me alone!”. I finally managed to give Gavin the slip and proceeded to the vegetable isle where I’m able to molest vegetables in peace.

As I’m stood there caressing peppers, minding my own business, the ominous “Bing Bong” came over the tannoy and was immediately followed by an over the top, completely false “Hi this is Gavin your in store Greeter for today and I’d like to welcome you to ASDA <> this morning. We’d like to remind all customers shopping with us today that we have a fantastic sale on all of our Ink Cartridges in store. Please make your way to the electrical department, or to the front of the store to find out more. I’d like to thank you for shopping ASDA <> this morning and hope you have a great day. Thanks you.”. You can’t escape him! Even when you think you’re safe he finds some way to annoy you!

Another example of an over enthusiastic in store greeter, was at PC World about 6 months ago. Again, I knew exactly what I wanted as I had made a list, and went to PC World that often that I knew exactly where in the shop to find them. But on the way into the store I was greeted by a young girl, opening with “Hi, are you alright there?”, to which I replied “Fine thank you. And you?”. This was my first mistake. I had acknowledged her, and asked her a question in return, to which she replied “I’m very good thank you. Are you shopping for anything in particular this afternoon?”. We were now having a full blown conversation. I couldn’t back down now. “Urm… I’m just looking for CD sleeves and a CD wallet”. We’re both heading in that direction now, as I didn’t stop to talk to her. I just carried on walking and she started following me! She tells me she knows where they are and she takes me to them. She stands there while I choose which ones I wanted, then goes once she was satisfied that I was definitely going to buy something. Now, if I’m honest, the kind of people who shop in PC World are usually people who don’t like a lot of social interaction… like me. They’d much prefer not to talk to anyone if they can help it.

I wasn’t harassed by this greeter, and she was really really nice towards me, but this is why I now buy all my PC stuff online from Amazon.

I used to work for Homebase a few years ago, and they were just starting to get really hot on this kind of customer service when I left. We were told that if we see a customer down an isle, we have to go and talk to them and ask them if they’re OK. We were also told to make the interaction personal, so that the customer feels “Special”. For example, when we were on the tills, we were told to make comments about some of the customer’s items, such as “Oh that’s a nice plant.”, or “I have one of these in my kitchen”.

It’s such an American thing to have in a shop, and I really don’t think British people are ready for it yet. We’re not very good at it either because it always come across as false and maybe a little smarmy. Don’t forget that the Greeter is also British, and we know that a British person wouldn’t be doing it unless they were absolutely forced to. British people just want to go into a shop, do what ever they need to, pay, and leave. If we get stuck, we’ll ask someone. I don’t think Greeters should be banned from shops. I just think it’s unnecessary and that this is why we have posters, advertisements and other promotional material around the store. If I want a bargain, I’ll look at some of the posters. If I want more information about something, I’ll go to the information desk. If I want to know where something is, I’ll track down the nearest spotty teenager I can find and get them to show me.

Hope I’m not the only one who gets annoyed by store Greeters!