Dopey Doris

I enter the world that is WH Smiths. My heart sinks, Dopey Doris of one of two people on the tills. That means that I have a 50% chance of being served by her. I hang around seeing if the queue would die down and so I could pick the person who serves me… But no… I study the pattern on people in the queue and join it at the right moment. I should get the other sales girl,. What I don’t count on is the chap three ahead of me wanting to chat to the sales girl, She tried her hardest to get rid of him but he hung around for ages. Long enough to break the sequence and I ended up with Dopey Doris. I just stared at the pile of free books on the counter. I think she got the message and didn’t have to be reminded that, as someone who’s buying the Telegraph I’m entitled to the free book

Band practice was fun last night. Normally I’m following the other band members and just pick up the beat from them. Bit I now have an electronic metronome. So I, or rather that, sets the beat. It is to try and ensure that we play as tight as possible. So I lead the beat, which I really should but in the past I’ve not kept a constant speed and I think that the others realised how much we were playing untightness….

It's the lies I can't stand

You may recall my blog about an e-mail that Emma sent round about her winning the lottery. Well I heard yesterday that she didn't win the lottery, she's got another job... Apparently it was all a joke...

or was it because there wasn't going to be much money in her leaving collection...

More Store Staff

Been earning fiancée points this week by buying the Daily Mail and the Telegraph from WH Smiths. The former has a free DVD of Darling Buds of May on offer and the latter has a Paddington Bear Book as freeby. Now I’ve mentioned about poor sales staff before but never had a rant about WH Smith staff, or don‘t think I have. Anyway, They are a bit of a dopey lot in my local branch. One in particular is really bad. I was hoping that I wasn’t going to get her. Stood in the queue watching how it was going to pan out. Dopey woman was on the left, branch manager in the middle and not quite so dopey but still quite dopey on the right. OK Middle Middle person was serving someone, guy two ahead of me went left, guy in front went right… Great, Middle woman should be free first… oh no… dopey womans customer only had a paper and finished far too quickly. My heart sank.

She scanned in papers and asked if I would like some half price chocolate? No thanks. Or to pre-order the new Harry Potter book… erm again that was a no…

She added the DVD to the pile…

Can I have the book that comes free with the Telegraph please? I ask

She hands me the bag.

Is the free telegraph book in the bag? I ask again

Oh I was getting confused with the DVD she replied

We stared at each other for what seemed like ages until she eventually handed me the book

Well there is so much free stuff and offers to think about at the moment I said jokingly. Its hard to keep up

I was trying to make humour out of the situation.

Her face went completely blank and stared at me - mouth open.

I just hope that I don’t get her tomorrow…

Weekend

Well another weekend come and gone. Where did it go?

Friday night I spent a couple of hours typing out an on-line job application form. Only to discover after submitting the form that it hadn’t saved most of my information. Now some of you might think that as I do the website for the council and it was on that same website that I was doing the applying on then it would be up to me to get the programme right. Well no, the recruit system was bought by HR and is nothing to do with us web guys. Anyway I was really tired and so I sent a e-mail to HR saying that the system has not saved my info and I would e-mail it to them over the weekend. I hope this is going to be OK.

Saturday was going off to football. Walked through the Lakeside Country Park on the way to Southampton Airport Station. I wanted to pick up a geocoin in the All Steamed Up cache and to see if I could spot any interesting birds to add to my Hampshire List. Got coin OK but no new birds, Though I did see that the Great Crested Grebes that are normally on one of the Lakes did have about 4-5 young with them. Ahhh nice…

Got to the station and I noticed that the train were only going as far as Southampton. Engineering work was forcing them to have a rail replacement bus service between Brockenhurst and Bournemouth. Thinking about it. It would take me a while to get to football in that case and more importantly longer to get home. Sue was desperate to ensure we got to the party we were going to that night at the moment it started. So I decided not to go to football and went home instead. Spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out my train photos on fotopic.net. I’m planning to blog more about that another day.

Noticed that a friend of my had removed the link to my blog from his. Well two can play at that game and I removed his from mine. I know that was very childish and even though I really like this guy I hate being felt like I’m being taken for a ride. I’m the most loyal of friends but I also expect some loyalty in return. Is that too much to ask.

Went to the aforementioned party in the evening. It was Sue’s friends daughters 18th birthday party. So I was expecting lots of records from people with such stupid names as ‘snoop snoopy versus snooty shirty’ or the like. But no this group of teenagers would rather listen to hits from the 70 and 80. The DJ was miffed he hadn’t bought many of those records. Not only did these kids know the songs existed but knew all the words and all the dance moves as well. Now to me that speaks volumes about the current music industry if their main target group i.e. teenagers would rather listen to stuff produced before they were born that to anything that the industry is producing today.

Sunday

Spent most of today sorting out the pictures I took at the party last night. The kids didn’t seem to mind about this strange middle-ages man taking pictures all the time. Took nearly all day to load them up and that was via a 56k modem. Heavens known what it would have been like if I used my normal PC with its 33k modem. Watched train videos whilst wanting for it to upload. Then spend another evening re-doing that job application. It’s for a Business Development Officer at the Library in case you were interested.

And now it’s Monday morning and I’m on the train hading for another boring week of work.

Work is crap

Well, my blog today is really just a copy of Susan’s one. Yes work is crap for me too. To answer her questions

What have I actually achieved today that has made a difference?
Has anything surprised or delighted me?
Has anything made me laugh?
Do I feel proud about anything I’ve done today?

I too have to answer no to all. Did I laugh or even raise a smile today. Nope. Even the joke e-mail that came round that everyone thought was hilarious (a clip from a US TV show of some blokes messing around with folding chairs) I just thought was a bit pathetic.

Strange that in nearly every aspect of my life outside of work, things are going good. I can see thing will improve in those areas, but in work, things are just going to stagnate and maybe get worse. There must be more to life than this…

Catch up

Another while since I blogged, again many apologies to you all.

Tuesday was a sad day, off to the funeral of Sue’s Uncle. Even though I only met him a couple of times it was still an emotional day. I guess seeing the people I’ve met from Sue’s family being upset, will affect me.

Wednesday. Band practice with my new drum sticks bought off eBay. They are OK. We didn’t play too well tonight. Our timing was all over the place, of course being a drummer that’s down to me!

Thursday – Been thinking about our geocaching of late. Sue and I haven’t done much of it recently. We currently on 441. I suggested that we try and hit 500 by the end of the year. And to my surprise she agreed. Still it sonly about 6 a month, surely we can do that.

Friday, After speaking to Charlie yesterday about the bands timing, he suggested I buy an electronic metronome. It arrived today. Hopefully once I’ve worked out the number of beats/min of all the songs we do, Timing shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Saturday. Sue’s off to her parents to deliver Mothers Day gifts. I went to football. Normally I catch the 11.07 train from Eastleigh and change 2 or three times on the way to Pokesdown, but today was different. We are playing Millwall, who’s fans have a bit of a reputation. So I walked to Southampton Airport Station via Lakeside Country Park. Picking up some more birds for my Hampshire list on route. E.g. Greylag Goose, Great Crested Grebe and Coot. My Hants list is now on 24. Anyway back to the football. Decided that trains from London were a no no. I know that I’m perhaps over cautious, OK there is no perhaps about it. But I just want a quiet life. So Down to Brockenhurst by a Virgin Voyager, and a new one for me. Then onto the stopper to Pokesdown. Glad to say that we won 1-0 but I’ve never been so nervious at a football match for ages. I don’t know why. Just really wanting the team to win. Train home was full off Millwall supporters but luckily no trouble.

Photos

Sue's colledges has issued its propectus for next year and I'm really glad that they've included a couple of my photos in it. Add to my portfolio.

Also someone has written to me wating to use my photo of a greek registered aircraft aicraft (http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1029463/ in a book his compiling on Greek Airlines and Airliners. Lmited market for that one I guess but still adds to my portfolio.

Also my latest Photo a Day on pbase.com received a nice comment within minutes of being uploaded. It's nice to have poeople appreciate the stuff you produce.

OK for some - got this e-mail at work today

Good Morning All

Just a quick email to let you know that I am leaving IT as I have won the lottery and don’t need to work anymore. My final day will be Friday 30th of March and I will be heading out for a beer or two.

Will confirm location but suspect we will go straight from work so please put an hour or so to one side to come and say goodbye.

Thanks

Emma

Dead and Alive

Officers found Jeni, 49, alive but fatally wounded.....

(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6440961.stm )

Garden and SBS-1

Busy day working in the garden. Cutting down trees, pruning and sowing the broad bean seeds into pots. Got a lot done today. Still spring will soon be here and then it will by just one job after the other in the garden.

Spent more time on the www.openatc.com site again today. There is a problem with it in that it relies on users connecting up their system to provide the data. There was nothing on this area until about 4pm. It was good after that, just a bit cold sitting in the garden. Really wants me to get a SBS-1 box and be able to see the aircraft I real time and when I want to.

Watched Hayley Mills in Wild at Heart tonight for the first time. She was good but that show is really bad. Surely she can get better work than that. I guess that filming in Africa is a real draw.

Great Day

Went out this morning to the Swanwick Nature Reserve and we did the Flight Reservations geocache. Good cache, very easy find. Dropped off a number of travel bugs, one of which we’ve had since October. Shame on us. It was really good to get a cache under our belt again. It’s been ages since Sue and I have done a cache together.

Nice nature reserve. Must go back there when its less muddy.

Off to the gardens centre. Sue and I both said that we were going to have a tea/coffee there and MAYBE a healthy snack. We both arrived at the café in the gardens centre and just knew that we were going to have lunch there. It’s great when your relationship gets to a level where you know what the other is thinking and wanting.

The real reason to visit the garden centre was to buy seed potatoes, broad beans seeds and I thought that I might buy some onion sets. I’ve got seed but thought it might be easier and quicker to grow them from sets. Anyway a bag of them was only £1.49. In my great garden plan for 2007 I had planned to buy some first early potatoes as they take the shortest time to grow and thus when they are harvested I might get a chance to grow something else in that plot before the summer is out. However, we mostly eat potatoes in their baked variety and that means having main crop ones. So my great garden plan 2007 has already been altered, just one week after devising it. I will have to publish the plan on this blog soon, so you can all see what a great plan it is.

Back home. There is a website called www.openatc.com which displays aircraft flights in almost real time. I’ve enjoyed looking at it before but tonight was the first time that I have sat in the garden and tried to tie up the aircraft on the computer screen to those flying overhead. OK the computer was some 6 mins behind but once I got the hang of it, I was amazed on how good it was. Saw lots of nice aircraft which I will be putting on my aircraft spotting blog. I hope to spend more time on that programme tomorrow.

Was getting a bit cold outside, so I packed up and realized that I had just enough time to do tea and sit down to watch Harry Hill’s TV burb, one of my favourite programmes on TV at the moment. Then I nice evening watching the comedy film Over the Hedge, which I thoroughly recommend.

My friend Stu up in Loughborough has just had his, erm, manhood pierced and a ring put in it. On his blog he’d put on a picture of it but you had to click on a link to see it. I haven’t wanted to see it and so I have never clicked on the link. Why would I want to see another mans bits?? Sue got curious tonight and clicked on the link to see the picture. I was outraged. So used my work laptop to do it!! Lets hope they never so a search of PC’s at work an find that one. It would take a lot of explaining.

Good things today
1) caching with Sue again
2) Nice Nature Park
3) www.openatc.com

Bad things
1) Sue using my work laptop to look at porn.

Drumsticks

I’ve got the best boss in the world, ever. How many bosses buy you drumsticks when they know that you have broken your last two pairs of drumsticks. They’re really posh ones as well, will save them for best.

More updates were done to my bands website last night. I’m really glad that Dave is doing that site. It was my idea initially but I just haven’t had time to do it.

Blogging on the train again thanks to the works laptop. Just past the flooded fields around Christchurch. Feel sorry for the farmer but the bird life seems to be doing well with the amount of gulls/egrets/swans on the water. There was even a couple of Grey Herons there as well tonight. Thinking about it I must check whether that patch of land is in Dorset of Hampshire. I always assumed the former and so I haven’t counted any of the birds there in my Hampshire list.

Looks like Sue and I might do a cache tomorrow. First time we have done one together for ages.

No Respect

Had quite a good night last night getting my pictures sorted out a bit more. Adding them to my pbase.com account. Also I got my band website up and running. OK So it was my mate Dave who has done all the work and all I’ve done is copy the files onto the webserver. I asked him today whether he thought that we should do a band blog but he never dignified my question with a reply. So I take that as a no.

Also started a new 'blog' to record my aircraft sightings and photos. Exciting stuff eh!

Earnt loads of Fiancée points today. Went to pick up the Ricky Gervais tickets today. Also went into WH Smiths today and noticed that The Times had already started their book of the week promotion. So bought the book for Sue. Two lots of points to me today.

Sent in an update for the guy running the Hampshire Bird Watchers List this evening. It's just a list of how many different species have been seen in Hampshire by various bird watchers. So far I've seen 18. So I’m currently bottom of the list. Nearest person to me has seen 44. I spoke to Sue about me being so far behind and she just made a L shape on her forehead and started saying ‘LOSER LOSER LOSER’. Hmmm what's the point of Fiancée points when they don't earn you any respect.

Monday morning

Yippee, AFC Bournemouth won on Saturday. 2-0 against Doncaster, who is now managed by our former manager Sean O’Driscall. “Discall what’s the score”, we were singing, great atmosphere, you really should have been there. Cherry Bear took a whack on the back of a leg after a metal barrier was accidentally pushed over by a toddler trying to reach Cherry Bear. I’ve never seen a bear in such agony. If he was a real bear I suspect they would have had him put down.

The forecast for Sunday was rain. In a way I was glad as this would mean that I had the opportunity to get some stuff done on our websites that I’ve been wanting to do for ages. Also thought I’d do some planning of what I’m going to grow this summer in the veg plots. Unfortunately the planning seem to take forever and so I never got the work done on the sites that I wanted to do. They always say that plumbers have leaky pipes in their own house, well this web site designer has some of the worst websites you’ve ever seen. Very frustrating.

As I write this blog I’m on the train. It’s the early one. Yes I managed to catch it. Yippee but boy am I tired. Didn’t sleep well at all last night again and woke up with a huge headache. Luckily the Aspirin seem to have done the trick. Wonder how long the will last. Neil is off work all week and so I don’t think I’m in for a good week at work, but then again when am I ever.

Catching up on other things, In my consecutive number plate spotting game I saw 59 the other day. Parked just around the corner form my house. I’d seen it before but forgotten about it, otherwise I could have had 5 in one day the other day when I saw 54 to 58. 59 where are you.

Paid off the rest of my money for my long weekend Spotting in Holland / Belgium in May. I just hope that there is sufficient ffudsin the bank to pay for it. I daren’t look.

Yet again missed seeing the lovely Hayley Mills on TV last night in Wild at Heart.

My PC is playing up at home, I just can’t seem to load the blogger home page on it. Hence my having to load up the bogs at work. Wasted time trying to get that sorted a well this weekend.

Too much Violence

Few days since I last blogged – sorry about that dear reader.

Wednesday’s band practice was a good laugh as normal. However, playing our hard punk tune ‘Faith in you’ I managed to break a drum stick. They slowly wear out when you play them, so I knew that it was going to go soon. What did surprise me was that I also broke one of sticks in my spare pair.. Perhaps I was being a bit too violent.

Thursdays train trip home was good. Had an e-mail conversation during the week with a fellow plane spotter who works on the railway. Well a change in shift meant he was the guard on my train home tonight. Nice to meet him and have a good chat. Just before Brockenhurst he went off to do his duties, only to return a minute later with a free cup of tea for me, that he obtained from the shop. Many thanks, very refreshing. Then had a text from the boss. Normally texts from bosses aren’t good news and should be avoided at all costs, however my immediate line manager is great, even if the rest of them are a bunch of *&%$^^%. Anyway, we were getting a new scanner at work and I asked him if we could get one that scans 35mm slides, as we might need it in future. OK he knew that I wanted to scan all my aircraft slides and the text was to say, bring in some slides, for testing purposes of course, as the scanner had just been delivered. Great News

Friday – Tested the new scanner at work. It’s OK, colours aren’t great. Will have to play with the settings, but some of them are coming out OK. Example is http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1044253/

Got a new ‘Drivers Eye View’ video off eBay. Birmingham Cross City route. Been on the look out for ages for it. For those that don’t know it a video showing the view the train driver gets when he’s driving the train. On the ones produced by Video 125, there is also a commentary talking about the line and the places you are passing through. If you are ever in Birmingham have a look out for the cross city trains. They don’t half many funny noises are they full away.

That brings us to today, Saturday. Off to football later. Hoping for a Bournemouth win.