It frankly fucking annoys me. Everyone knows that most pirated movies out there are DVD rips from screeners - people no longer (according to those I know who do watch pirated movies) tolerate grainy theatre shot movies with bobbing heads and spotty teenagers throwing popcorn in the shot - and so why oh why are FACT (or whoever else) paying good money to “stars” to wag their fingers at me? Fuck off “Gavin” with your stupid floppy hair and twatty lisp. I don’t pirate movies, I don’t want to pirate movies, and I find your words of warning offensive. Twat.

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.

To do this I have another list of things I need to do to hit the target above:

So yes, no alcohol.
And yes, no carbs.
No nuts.
No chocolate.
Run at least 3k a day. Averaged over a week.
Do 50 press-ups a day.
Eat less than 1000 calories (after subtracting diet kcals).
Swallow all required multi-vits and other supplements.

All in the aid of losing 21lbs by July 1st. Not sure I’ll manage it but determined to try.

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.

–

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…?

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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.

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.

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.

I thought nothing more of this until just after Christmas when I returned home from my parents to find there was hot water in my taps - “Strange I thought… maybe I left my hot water on while I was away?” but mostly just ignored it and went around Christmas festivities.

So, about 8 weeks ago I got a new estimated electricity bill. And because it seemed quite high I phones E.ON up to enquire about why it was so high - now of course at this point the person on the phone was a numb nuts and couldn’t help, but did a very good job of reiterating that I should just get my meter read - as I’m in a block of flats the nice concierge man has to read my meter.

So, the next day I asked Barry the concierge to do me a meter reading and then went off happily to work.

When I returned home I almost died - Barry had put the meter reading into my mail box and it was 24,100 units… I was slightly mortified as my head went back to having hot water when I shouldn’t have and I once again visited my boiler.

Turns out - it’s an immersion heater and I’d been boiling water solid for 9 months - at this point in the story I got VERY worried, very worried indeed - stopped sleeping, became moodier than morning, started snapping… wasn’t a good time to be me. 80,000 units of electricity, in my head that must be about 80,000 pounds?! Yes, very worried.

Well, the end of the story comes this past week when I sat in the pub recounting this exact story to a few friends - one of whom did the sensible thing and actually looked up the price of electricity - not the £1 a unit I thought it was, nearer 11p - so I’d gone from owing £80,000 to only owing about £9,000 - funnily, at this point I was really happy. Only 9k?! Peanuts. So much so that I thought I’d go out and celebrate, but decided to take my laptop bag home first.

As I walked into the flat and saw the E.ON bill I thought that I’d been fated to have a shit day after all and it was a 50/50 decision whether to get the pain over with or put it off till the next day.

Needless to say I kinda thought “fuck it” and opened the mail… they’d performed a meter reading, they knew how much electricity I had used, I was in deep shit… Yes, I’d used 44,160 units… I read the bill again, more than a little ecstatic… turns out that Barry the concierge had read the first 4 as a 2. Turns out I had no need to have sleepless nights. Turns out that I owed 250 quid to the electricity company. Turns out that I didn’t need to be a miserable bastard for 8 weeks.

So, do I sue Barry for emotional distress?

—

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.