Category: Life
-
Technology: The Great Disabler
We’re pretty tight on security in this company. Not quite Pentagon tight, but tight to the point where some buildings have X-ray machines and walk-thru metal detectors (although thankfully they don’t make you take your shoes off…). Even so, every so often some bright spark in upper management decides to tighten things up a notch, seemingly just for their own perverse pleasure. For quite some years now we have had electronic badge-access to most of our buildings (at least in the United States). So now you can’t get into the car-park, let alone the actual building, without your badge. Hell,… Read more
-
AT&T Suck Ass
A while back, I decided I wanted to upgrade to a BlackBerry. I prefer to communicate in writing rather than on the ‘phone, but find that I don’t communicate as much as I should because I can’t be arsed to get off the sofa and walk upstairs to my study and log on to my PC every time I need to fire off an e-mail. I reasoned that if I could check/send emails from the comfort of my armchair there was more chance of me doing it. Plus, I now get proofreading work assignments via email and I like to… Read more
-
Dental damn
Yesterday I paid a long-overdue visit to the dentist. I had been going to another dentist near my old office, but I stopped giving them the benefit of my extensive custom following certain ‘billing disagreements’ over what turned into several hundred dollars worth of ‘cleaning’ (and I use the term ‘worth’ very loosely…). I didn’t think my teeth had actually gotten any worse since I left school as I don’t really have a lot of tooth left to get worse, on account of the school dentist (who I swear was paid by the tooth drilled) drilling out a large portion… Read more
-
I’ll make you one in woodwork
I finally finished the desk I’ve been building all Summer. I started it not long after the kids broke up for summer recess, and I promised myself I’d get it done in time for Finn starting the 4th grade. As it turns out I over-ran by a couple of weeks, but a career in SAP has taught me that this is close enough to be called on-time. I started on this uncharacteristically-ambitious project because Finn needed a new desk so he can knuckle down to some serious schoolwork (hey, a father can dream, can’t he??). Most of the desks in… Read more
-
Stairs: The Silent Killer
A couple of years ago, I bristled at a fellow employee berating me for running up the stairs at work and not using the handrail. I argued that using stairs is something that we educated people should be trusted to be able to do without the need for further instruction or the helping hand of a corporate mother-figure. Apparently I was wrong. At my last location (which I’ve thankfully now vacated – geez, what a deathtrap that turns out to have been!) there were signs aplenty around the stairwells (of this two-story building!) advising people to hold the handrail, watch their… Read more