The relationship between a vendor and client can sometimes be quite fraught, especially when negotiating a price for a job. Watch the following video. Has this ever happened to you?
June 14, 2009
June 2, 2009
It Takes Guts!
The following item was posted by Paul Crabb on SfEPLine, the e-mail discussion group of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
“A recent Freecycle announcement:
‘Does anyone have a small fridge in working order. This is to fit under a
worktop. My friend runs a local village bowels club and they need a fridge.’
I bet they do, especially in this heat!”
How to Use an Office Chair
Christine Lindop, who is a fellow member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, recently bought a new office chair and was somewhat bemused by the instructions that came with it. The User’s Manual had some wonderful pronouncements such as:
“Headrest height: It is the most suitable height that the scruff is fully supported by the headrest.”
“Arm-pad angle adjustment: It’s the available method to lighten the harm to the hand, that one puts the elbow on the armrest naturally according to the working need, and avoid working without elbow support.”
And best of all:
“Seat depth adjustment: It’s the best depth when the haunch is full on the seat, the waist is crutched completely and the inturn of the knee can not touch the seat brim.”
As Christine commented: “And to think all these years I’ve been sitting with a partly crutched waist…”
May 10, 2009
How to Spot Symptoms of Swine Flu
My friend Briar Singleton has recently shared with me the following symptoms of Swine Flu:
Look out for any unusual blemishes or rashers.
Unusual behaviour: Doing things you would normally find a complete boar.
Bad temper: Things start to easily rind you up.
High temperature: Feeling that you are absolutely bacon hot.
Chills: Feeling like you need to hog the duvet or curl up in front of a crackling fire.
Developing a sty in either or both eyes.
Urgent cravings: For a large glass of swine or stuffing yourself on apples.
Wanting to fight: Shouting things like “Gammon, have a go if you think you’re hard enough”.
Having trouble with the truth: You’re always telling porky pies.
If any of these symptoms show, then immediately call a hambulance, and go to the hogspital for treatment. Smokers please note it is a non-smoking facility, so you won’t be able to have a snout. If it’s a false alarm, you can trotter off home, but if the symptoms return, you may need to go to your local farmacy for some oinkment.
Another treatment for Swine Flu: Spend the night in a smoky room and in the morning you will be cured.
FIFA has banned Mexican Waves at soccer matches to prevent the spread of infection.
With all the information we are receiving about Swine Flu from the media and the government, there is no danger of us being pig-ignorant about it!
May 6, 2009
May 5, 2009
The Backup Song
A few months ago, in a blog post titled “To Buy or Not to Buy” my friend Vanessa Cobb bewailed the fact that her computer had been playing up so much that she had been forced to think about getting a new one. She did so through the eyes of Hamlet. If she had left it too late, and the hard drive had failed before she had backed up her files, she might have thought of this song.
Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be,
And there’s a millstone hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data’s gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.
May 4, 2009
Some Song Titles to Make You Laugh
My previous post was about my nephew’s rock band. They don’t play Country and Western music, so I’m sure they wouldn’t touch any of these classics, which are listed on the Freeman Institute website:
- I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim Is Gettin’ Better
- I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
- Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed
- Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ‘Cause I’m Kissing You Goodbye
- Her Teeth Were Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure
- How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?
- I Don’t Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling
- I Fell In A Pile Of You And Got Love All Over Me
- I Flushed You From The Toilet Of My Heart
- I Keep Forgettin’ I Forgot About You
- I Wouldn’t Take Her To A Dog Fight, Cause I’m Afraid She’d Win
- I’m Just A Bug On The Windshield Of Life
- If You Don’t Leave Me Alone, I’ll Go And Find Someone Else Who Will
- If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?
- Mama Get The Hammer (There’s A Fly On Papa’s Head)
- My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him
- She Got The Gold Mine And I Got The Shaft
- She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger
April 26, 2009
I’ve “Always Never” Followed Rock Bands – Until Now!
I’ve never been much of a fan of rock music – I prefer the music of the 1940s big bands to that of present-day rock bands. However, I’ve started to realize that my nephew Matt Lockyer has become a seriously good musician – he is even taking a music course at college. His band “Always Never” regularly plays gigs locally here in Tiverton and attracts quite a following. A recent press report in the Mid Devon Gazette described Always Never as “Four hoodies with more chops than the meat counter at Morrison’s” who play “a seriously good set of grungy metally stuff that manages to be aggressive and progressive at the same time”.
But don’t just take my word for it! Visit Always Never’s MySpace page and sample their music for yourself. You’ll be pleasantly surprised – I certainly was!
April 19, 2009
Aargh! Twitter is Taking Over my Life!
I’ve recently started using Twitter to promote my business and to network with other business people after being introduced to it by Thomas Power and Mark Shaw at Ecademy. I’ve found it a very useful tool, so much so that I’ve effectively stopped using Facebook. But I found Twitter so addictive that there was a danger that it would take over my life. However, there are plenty of tools and advice available to help prevent this from happening.
For example, Tim Ferriss has written a post on his blog in which gives you five tips on “How to Use Twitter Without Twitter Owning You”. His first tip is not to post and read tweets at the same time. I’ve followed this and his other advice and found that I don’t waste valuable time using Twitter.
Here is some advice of my own. On Twitter, it seems that it is very important to get as many followers as possible. To do this manually is very time-consuming, even if I use a “personal assistant” such as Mr Tweet. However, Gary McCaffrey has developed Tweetergetter, which automates this task so efficiently that every day I am notified (by Twitter) of about half a dozen (or more) new followers, without any effort on my part.
The problem then is to respond to these people to welcome them and thank them for following me. Luckily, there is another tool, called TweetLater, which allows me to automatically send a welcome message to all my new followers and to automatically follow anybody who follows me.
Another trick is to choose just one application to send, view and manage all your tweets – and stick with it. I started using Tweetfox, which is a plug-in for the Firefox browser and which regularly notifies you of any incoming tweets (and allows you to post tweets) while you are using Firefox. However, I sometimes found it unnecessarily obtrusive and even more annoyingly it used up too much memory or bandwidth that it prevented me from viewing Google images and video selections on YouTube. It even prevented me from accessing my own blog here on WordPress. So I uninstalled it and now use Tweetdeck which in its latest version has the added advantage of allowing me to update my status on Facebook at the same time as I post a tweet.
There are dozens of other Twitter applications to explore and over the next few months I shall probably be trying some of them out. When I do, I will endeavour to give my opinion of them in another post.
