What has happened this week?
If I say "nothing much" again people will start to think that I am losing it in some way.
As I sit here on an early Sunday morning, looking out of the window to see a dull, cloudy dawn break over the leaden Scunthorpe skies, it still seems that the US/UK governments have troops already in the Gulf and "by god we're going to use them". Even the joint appeals of 1 million protesters, and the heads of two major British Churches seem to make no difference to Mr Blair, the relentless progress towards Armageddon continues. When will Bush and Blair realise - their own people don't want this, this time they don't support them - IT IS PLAIN WRONG. I know Sadam is evil, but there are many "Dictators" around the world who are equally as bad - and our countries supply them with arms - where is the balance.
Over the week I have come across several articles on Google's purchase of Pyra Labs. This is of particular interest to me as they run blogger.com which was my very first blog site, and it is one of the few weblogs that I still use.
If you click on this link and it will take you to one of the articles (the Guardian to be precise). This sort of thing usually encourages two forms of activity on the Internet:
1: Other "large" companies follow suit and start to buy up other companied running similar services ( and I have already read a story of Microsoft already investigating this sort of option)
or
2: The infamous "other large Companies" sit round waiting to see what everyone else does and then nothing happens.
I hope this purchase brings a little bit sparkle to Blogger. Over the last few months it seem to have lost out to the other blogger systems - I do find that it is the hardest of my weblogs to use direct (I use wblogger writer to post from), the worry is what the others may have to to keep up if Google start introducing other services?
There has been two themes to work this week, slobbering dogs and SMT. Every house I went to (or so it seemed) had a slobbering dog. This , I find , harder to deal with sometimes. If the dog is vicious (or large and growling which is the more common) you get the owners to lock them in another room. Slobby dogs are actually quite pleasant, nice dogs - but you tend to know what will happen when you get the phrase " they ever so nice with visitors - they only want to say hello". Next thing you know you have a small to medium sized dog licking your ear - Ugggghhhhhh.
SMT is the bonus/incentive scheme that I was discussing last week. It would appear that thing between BT and the Union have come to some what of an impasse. The Union have sent everyone a letter stating their case, and BT continue with the "come to us and everything will be wonderful" stance. Now, to me at least, BT has shown the scheme in it's true light. For the type of job I do, I could never make anywhere near the "promised" payments, and going on what has happened with other schemes' and projects in the past, all that would happen is that it would end up with the boss saying "your not trying hard enough" (a common answer to the ill's of the firm at the moment - everything would apppear to be the Engineers fault)
So I have withdrawn from the scheme and joined the Union side - if that's the right way to put it. Something has to be done to bring, what initially was a good idea with achieveable goals, back to something I could support (we've also put in for a pay rise and the BT offer was awful - co-incidence?)
Friday night was brill - in the end. Several weeks ago, "she who must be obeyed" volunteered me to be transport for some of the Scouts who were going Ice Skating.
Ian, he's the Scout Leader, has a good system.The week before the School Holidays, instead of having a normal Scout meeting, he takes them out for a treat - and this time it was to be skating.
After a short drive to the rink at Grimsby - most of the boys (17 in all) where excited, but apprehensive - this was a first time trip for many. All the way across, Liam had been pestering for me to go skating, but I didn't really fancy the idea, and because of the rush, I hadn't really sorted anything anyway. Anyway we got there a early so we had to wait for 10 minutes for the Rink to be ready. The lads got their boots and and were ready to go - right on the start button.
To my "surprise" Liam asked "can my Dad skate?"
"Sure! " came the answer "what size boot does he take?"
Apparently, I later found out, because it was a group booking, there were so many "free" passes for the supervising adults - and we had enough adults for them all to have ago.
I've never been on the Ice (apart from snow on the path) before and expected to step onto the ice and slip straight onto my bum.
Staying up-right, obstacle one was overcome. Next was to move forward. Slowly but surely, I managed forward motion - I actually got quite quick. Problem 2 - stopping! . Never did get the hang of this. I either stopped skating and slipped to a halt, or then crashed into the side boards. It was proving a little difficult, at first, to skate and supervise. Liam was having the same trouble as I , although we only got 5 sets of wet bums between us - which for a first go I didn't think was to bad.
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