Tag: Personal

Is everyone a Jack?

After a few comments at work today I was driving home with the thought that it would be so good to know just one topic inside out – to be an expert in a certain field and not just a guy that thinks he’s smarter than he his and has a bit of knowledge about lot’s of things – a jack of all trades, master of hee-haw. Just another one of my crap random thoughts that will stay in my head. Then I read Gordon’s blog and today of all days he’s posted about a scarily similar topic.

Even worse – I’m pissed off like him. I would love to innovate and lead in a certain topic rather than copy and follow which is one of my better skills (that and Google searching which sums it up really). Reading the comments at Gordon’s the feeling though is it’s better to be a Jack than a specialist. From a career point of view I think totally the opposite as I struggle to describe what I do which if I was a specialist would be easy to determine.

So anyone owning up to being an expert or are we all becoming Jacks? Yes I realise that this is open to abuse and that for most I’m an expert in bullshitting and for Robert I’m an expert in bullying and betraying at Halo. They don’t count, OK!

Shattered

Made the most of the holiday weekend and I can safely say that I’m glad to be going back to work tomorrow. The clear-out on Saturday was followed by lot’s of flat pack building. Also cleaned out the rest of the garage and organised what’s left – for the first time since we moved in the garage is looking tidy…for a garage.

The rest of the furniture is all built and in place but it’ll take a few days of tidying to get back to normal. One thing I do regret is I forgot to order a lock and key for a set of office drawers I bought. I foolishly went into Ikea today for it – never again on a bank holiday. The place was mobbed and you could see three types of consumer

  • Browsers – they walk at a snails pace (now called the ‘Ikea Shuffle) and seem to stop and point at all the room displays whether they are buying anything or not.
  • ‘The Lost’ – trying in vain to make their way through the maze is not easy but on a busy day, with people wanting to take short cuts they had no chance
  • Irish – the place was teeming with them. Day trips from Ireland to the Glasgow Ikea are VERY popular

    • Never mind – a lesson has been learnt.

    Knackered

    Hired a van today and with the help of Graham bought far too much at Ikea and then cleared out my garage. Since we moved in the garage has always niggled at me. 5 windows, a kitchen worktop, some kitchen cabinets and an old decrepit workbench from the 1920’s plus wood and car posters from the sixties had meant I could never get the place organised. Finally it has been.

    The council dump was a bit weird though. No vehicles over the height of 1.8 metres is allowed in. The reason I needed a van was the size and weight of the stuff needing dumped. Looks like they want to encourage you to pay the council to take the sizeable rubbish away. Swine’s. Never mind – a good job well done.

    Site Tweaktastic

    Made a few more little changes. First up is the name. Got fed up with ‘pessimism and hope’ so re-named to the original ‘iand.net’. Was so tempted to move domains to ‘turned on by technology’ but resisted due to costs, hassle and a nagging doubt that I would get bored with that domain and want to switch to something else. So the tagline for the site is ‘turned on by technology’ but who knows what I could be turned on by in the future.

    Inspired by the name change I sorted out a wee-mee image for gravatar and the favicon. Next was the updating blog roll which I’ve missed – ended up back with blogrolling for that one. While on links I’ve removed the redundant ones and also pushed the links section down to the bottom right. Tidy.

    Finally…a contacts form has been added and a stats page re-introduced. Sorted. GeoURL is also back up so you can stalk local bloggers. Soon I’ll have a look at Plogger which looks to be a nice simple gallery…although Flickr may be the way to go.

    Danger – Eyetoy

    The Eyetoy has been out for the PS2 for a couple of years now – I never had any intention of buying one but those nice chaps at Sony sent me one along with Eyetoy chat for doing a questionnaire as part of the ongoing beta trials. I managed to ‘acquire’ a copy of Play 2 and gave it a whirl yesterday. Never have I felt like such a fool as I did when playing these games.

    Firstly you need to wave at the OK and Cancel buttons. Quite why I’ve no idea but there you go – already I had an idea that a few beers before trying this would have helped. First game I tried was Table Tennis. Nice enough but the opponent got in the way of the ball and it was all quite awkward. Next was Goal Attack – save penalties from the comfort of your lounge. Or not – pretty poor game. Onto Kung Fu – damn – while the lighting was fine for the other games I wasn’t distinct enough against my magnolia walls. Final game was Boxing. This started off well – swing your fists and try and knock out your opponent. Good way to vent some frustration….need to swing a bit harder. Ouch.

    I managed to smack myself in the jaw. Surely not what was intended. At that point the PS2 was switched off and the Eyetoy packed away until the next games night. Now – can I sue Sony for the injures I sustained – there’s certainly no warning on the packaging. Mmmmm.

     

    Sprung

    Yes – spring has sprung. The first good weekend of the year weather wise has meant the garden can be appreciated without realising after two minutes it’s bloody freezing and time to get back inside. The bulbs planted last year are flowering well (daffs and tulips mostly) and it’s good to see that the plants we invested in last year have got new growth on them.

    But the front lawn. Oh dear. Needs some serious attention over the next two months. I am on a mission. A mission to seed.

    Tweaking

    Added a fair bit of ‘stuff’ to the website this weekend but all behind the scenes. The Archives are now a bit more funky and you should now see some Gravatar links if you post a comment. I’ve also been tweaking quite a bit of the php that drives the site – there should be context sensitive sidebars and also the times are a bit more friendly although I keep on missing dates as they are peppered throughout the code. I’ve also added in a Plugins page so you can see what’s been added to the default WordPress engine. Most importantly I’ve added in lots of interesting content. Ok – I’ve added a couple of drab posts but what do you expect?

    Joking aside – I tidied up some old posts with images that weren’t displaying properly. I also removed some work posts that while I thought they were innocent enough with hindsight they were better off deleted – you never know who might read it.

    So that’s it – I’m ready to add more dreary posts about the films I’ve been to see and games that I’ve played. Which makes you wonder why I and others blog…this quote summed it up for me.

    “Blogging in itself is stupid, really, and self indulgent (or perhaps that’s just my approach to it). But it’s a hobby, and we are a nation who love our pointless little hobbies. It’s no more corrosive than other hobbies. Or rather, it shouldn’t be.�

    Thanks for the quote Gordon – shame about the snide piece in The Sunday Times.

    Royal Mail

    In the last few years I’ve never really had a problem with the Royal Mail. Sure some things took a while to deliver and it was a pain having to pick up parcels from the depot (the joys of Amazon) but I can live with that. Even one delivery a day didn’t bother me – leaving at 7AM for work meant I never get morning mail – it was always a 5PM event for me.

    However the last few days have been….frustrating.

    Continue reading “Royal Mail”

    It’s been one year…

    …since I picked up the keys for the new house. This has been the quickest year of my life so far but also one of the most enjoyable. The move has been a real change of life for us and looking back I wish I had done it sooner.

    Since moving I’ve done some gardening, some more DIY and also become far more relaxed at home as we no longer need to worry about neighbours, drunks and people being sick over the car. Looking ahead I’ve got some goals I want to achieve by end of year 2…decorate hall (it’s massive, well for me anyway), fill in some cracks on the outside walls, organize garage, develop garden some more and at the tail end of this year or start of next year it will be double glazing time hopefully. Can’t wait 🙂

    Shocked

    Just had The Sun and The Mirror reporters visiting our house. It turns out the family that is missing in Benbecula used to stay in our house (5 years ago). It brings the tragedy even closer to home and makes the small damage the house got last night seem meaningless. It also makes you wonder how the press got this address as it wasn’t the previous owners but the ones before that are missing – irrelevant but annoying all the same. My thoughts go out to the family and their relatives tonight.