Archive for Random Stuff

Worrying

// June 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

I find it worrying that in the space of two days I can watch two films… The first of which is the brutal, sexually graphic, glorious “The Killer Inside me” which has had its fair share of bad press over the last week about whether its depiction of sex and violence towards women goes too far. The second is the lack lustre indie flick “Greenburg” featuring Ben Stiller, which apart from a few raised voices suffers not a little of the violence of the former movie - yet does have a few moments of sexual intimacy between Stiller and a much much younger partner.

Of course the worrying part isn’t that I can watch 2 movies in 2 days. It’s that the sexual intimacy of “Greenburg” can have me cringing and hiding my eyes, much more than the graphic violence and sexual rage of “The Killer Inside Me” … I might be wired a little wrong inside.

Lost Finale…

// May 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

So, the Island was real and happened because Hurley and Ben remembered being good firsts and seconds. But astonishingly not explained.

Why was baby Aaron a baby in “the second timeline”, surely he grew up to have a life?

Why does Jack have a neck scar but not a rip in his body?

How had I never seen the Christian Shepherd thing before?

Why do Jack and Juliet conjure up a reality where they’re married, if they know deep down they love someone else?

Why isn’t Walt there at the end?

Could I have cried more if I was a little girl?

So, emotionally very satisfying, intellectually not really… too many questions unanswered. Also loved the symmetry with episode 1 of season 1. And LOVED the score to the episode.

a Progressive agenda..

// May 4th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Random Stuff

As already written about this past week, Progressive are one of my least 3 favourite recruitment joints. I think they read that post and have been harrassing me with emails and phone calls all day Friday and Tuesday… Do you think the email below is too harsh? I sent it already, but just curious… I sent it to all 3 people who’ve been tying up our switchboard at the office.

Guys, in the last week … i.e. Friday and Tuesday, I’ve had no less than 3 emails, 1 call which I took and 2 which I didn’t. “Aggressive Progressive” is an industry moniker which seems to be fitting at the moment so I’ll recap what I told the chap on Friday.

Firstly.

Having placed 4 new developers into twentysix over the last 6 months we’re not looking for anyone at the moment.

Secondly.

With regard to permanents, I have a preferred supplier list which suits me well for most of the roles that I ever want to fill

With regard to contractors, I don’t overly like to use them unless there is literally no other choice – and again, when I do, I have a preferred supplier list

Thirdly.

I have had dealings with Progressive in the past as your records will show – and while you placed the candidate, you did so by burning me in the process and causing me substantial shockwaves from an internal agency perspective – this angered me

Fourthly.

There is very little that annoys me more when it comes to recruitment than agencies that send me CVs that have no names on, it shows in no uncertain terms the level of trust that you put in the agencies you are sending CVs to

So, long and short of it, I have no roles, but if I did they wouldn’t be coming to Progressive.

Thanks

I really don’t like Progressive. There response…?

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the up date.

If the situation changes please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks

I do respect their persistence.

politics being like religion…?

// May 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

Quite rightly we don’t have a general election every Sunday, but it strikes be that the two are quite similar in the way that their following treats them.

“Indoctrinated” at a young age to both, people generally (from my experience of the people I know) go with what they know, choosing to either worship or vote as their parents before them - meaning that seats that were labour 50 years ago, are just as likely to be labour today - except in those constituencies which is marginal - and surely all that means is that there are enough people of different opinion, with grandparents who also had different opinions, that they as a group can’t make up their minds.

People are brought up to believe in something - be that Jesus (or one of the UK minority deities) and/or a political party; in both cases for that entity to be correct forever without ever having to prove themselves.

Maybe if people thought for themselves, and looked at policies rather than just having their eyes drawn back to the same colour over and over again, then Britain could see the kind of change that has been talked about in this election, Britain could be fair; and Catholic alter boys would stop going back to be buggered.

Recruitment rant

// April 26th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Random Stuff

It’s not often that I find myself wanting to praise recruitment consultants – truth be told it’s an industry that I have quite often been heard calling “the modern day slave trade” – it’s an industry which from what I can tell employs bubbly then pushy then aggressive staff whose major talents seem to lie in their ability to use a software package to match required acronyms with the acronyms that candidates might have scattered throughout their CVs. I do not consider this a skilled job, I consider it to be slightly lower in the talent chain than a 2 star McDonalds burger flipper.

So it’s always a real thrill when you find agencies, and more importantly agents who strive on a daily basis to raise their heads above the parapet of recruitment consultant mediocrity to a) know their market, b) offer value for money and c) to offer new and innovative ways of connecting with the agencies they are representing.

The agency I refer to is of course not one of the big players, those “constrained” by databases large enough that they can sit back on their laurels with no understanding of the industry they purport to support – it is in fact a small creative agency that can be found in the centre of Leeds, and agency called Character Creative.

Ran by a young chap called Darren Scotland, they are in my opinion second to none in terms of their ability to connect with the young blood which digital agencies strive to find on a daily basis – they aren’t constrained by huge databases which means that their first port of call is a quick acronym search, they constantly reinvigorate themselves offering new ways to find staff, and pay for them finding those staff. They are in my opinion unique in the market – they are ethical, friendly, and most importantly they are effective.

Character Creative break the mould and set a standard for where all recruitment consultants should aim – to stop being mediocre, and aspire to greatness, or at the very least to providing a service that is more than matching keywords and annoying candidates.

I just need someone to open an agency with the same make up and ideals which caters for slightly more technical staff than what Darren and CC do with their supplies of bright young designers and interface developers.

Incidentally, to go with my favourite recruiter, I offer you my top 3 worst agencies and consultants of all time in no particular order: Anyone at Progressive in Manchester, Emma at Randstad Technologies, and Osh at Propel. Also, Computer Futures and anyone of the 12 people who call me a week are rising very quickly up the top 10.

My Email to Sky

// February 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // FURY!, Random Stuff

Sky have really annoyed me. So much so that I’ve complained.

I have been a Sky subscriber for a couple of years now, and in May last year I upgraded to Sky HD. At the time I was charged what I considered to be an extortionate amount of money for an engineer to essentially come out and plug a new box into my existing cabling.

Since that happened I have only been able to record things intermittently, the Sky planner has only worked for a few hours after the box has been rebooted, and Sky Anytime has been unavailable since pretty much day one. All of these things I put down to only having one input signal - something that I was never told about when I ordered Sky+ HD that I would need. But being in a flat I couldn’t put a second line in and I just lived with the fact that I was getting a degraded service because of this.

Then about 3 weeks ago I returned home to find the message “Your sky card is not made for this box” - with an error code 7. This occurred on the Monday, and like everything else with the Sky service I receive I just presumed if I left it it would come back on. On the Thursday it hadn’t come back on and I gave your customer services people a call.

They had me read my viewing card numbers, software numbers, and other assorted details from the systems page of my Sky box and “sent a signal” which was supposed to pair up my card and box. But this could take 24 hours. I waited.

And then 24 hours later when it was still not working I called up again. And I read out all the numbers again, and was told that a signal was being sent. And it would take up to 24 hours. I waited.

And then 24 hours later when it was still not working I called up again. And I read out all the numbers again, and was told that a signal was being sent. And it would take upto 24 hours. I waited.

The next time I called I was informed that my case needed to be referred to a higher department, and that they would contact me ASAP and definitely get the service working. I waited some more, and then 4 days later I gave customer services another call.

And read out the same numbers again. And the man on the end of the phone talked me through pressing a number of buttons on my set top box, he was polite, knew what he was talking about, and after a 5 minute call my Sky was up and running and working.

However, in the process of making me press these buttons I also noticed that my Sky box was not set to single LNB mode (which I was informed to set it to by the helpful customer services guy) and this has since corrected the issues I had with the planner, with recording, with Anytime.

So my complaint now that everything is working? It turns out that I paid extortionate money for “installation” of my new Sky+ HD box that was never installed correctly AND it seems that most of the staff in your “something is broken” department only know how to take the details of a persons Sky box and press the “send signal” button on their terminal, and if this doesn’t work then they just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

I appreciate that time and time again I was told that money would be removed from my bill for the time I didn’t get Sky, that’s hardly the point though, I pay for a service which could have been restored when I first called up if you had well trained engineers there to answer calls.

As a very minimum I would like my installation fee refunding as it’s clear now that the service was never fully installed, and I have been paying for a service that I have been unable to take advantage of because of this.

At every level of my Sky experience from sales (where I was mis-sold), through to installation (which wasn’t completed), and now customer services in the service (where I was given the run around for over a week) I have to say that I would score you 1/10.

I look forward to your response and hope that in itself it is better than the previous touch points I’ve had with you.

I wonder what their response will be…

Guns

// February 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

Last night while sat drunkenly eating my Chicken sandwich in kaddas, the turkish sarnie shop, a randomer commented on how I could beat him up cos I had big “guns”… How I laughed.

Review and Resolutions

// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Diet and Exercise, Money, Quiz, Random Stuff, Reviews, snZero

8/10 & 1920 x 1200 for the laptop, about the same for the Mac on the TV.

2009 has been and gone now, and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I’ve made a load of new friends through taking over the quiz at The Adelphi, Pin and doing one at the Nation of Shopkeepers here in Leeds. I’ve made a fair few new friends through my endeavour to unite the digital folks of Leeds with snZero, which is still getting more than 50 people a month turning up. I even made random friends in the shape of The Salts girls through a drunken night out early in the year. Truth be told that my facebook friend count has gone up quicker and to a greater degree than ever before. And for this I am happy.

That said, work has been a up and down slalom of emotions, busy for 12 months, new clients, demanding decisions, new people, old people, gone people. And for the first time in my life I think I really know what stress is. Even when I used to work 18 hours a day it wasn’t as stressful as the last year has been. If I had hair I think that it would have deserted me by now. But of course it deserted me ages ago.

On the plus side, I went and lost almost 4 stone in the middle of the year. Granted I then went and put a stone of it back on. But hell, only a couple of stone too heavy … and not “obese” any more. So that made me a happy bunny. Not happy enough, but happy enough to fit into a 34″ pair of jeans - and my black Boss suit from years gone by. So yeah, happy.

And on the minus side, I’m still single. And still have no hair. Though I do have  an ace flat. Rough with the smooth eh…

Back at the start of 2009 I made the following guesses for what the year would bring…

  • Sort out my tooth-ache.. Yeah, I did this. Not had a toothache since March.
  • Cut out 90% of my Coke intake.. Yup, did this too really. Not had more than a can a week really.
  • Lose 1/4 of my body weight.. Probably managed 1/5 … ish.
  • Become financially viable.. I have a credit score of 900/1000 - which must be good? Still owe almost 20k…
  • Blog… Yeah, not really.

So as you can see I managed most of them to a degree of success. 2010 is all about…

  • Lose 1/5 of my body weight.. I want to get down to 12 stone… ish.
  • Become financially viable.. I want to be down to 10k debt by year end…
  • Blog… NO, not really… Though I do want to take a photo a week…

And those are my real resolutions.

last night on earth…

// November 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

My god, for the last day on earth as a 32 year old today has been a mixed bag. I’m apparently “impressive” - it doesn’t surprise me at all, would be nice to be impressive more - wish people would let me get a word in edgeways.

And I’m in London and missing the fireworks. I wanted to be “someone’s definite source of entertainment” in Leeds.

But I have a cool new laptop bag I guess. Taking the rough with the smooth.

Well, here’s to 33!

Disgraceful facebook ad… 1

// November 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random Stuff

I’m all for exploitation, but this seems a little strong… “Single mum? Need cash? GAMBLE”

capture