Crazy Special Offer! (More Tesco madness)

Can anyone explain to me how, unless you want three jars of Oregano, 3 for £1.60 is a good offer?

Consumerist Christmas

I went up to Tesco yesterday and in the reduced section there was a huge stack of cut-price mince pies. Now I know that mince pies (unlike hot cross buns) are a year-round food, but they are associated with Christmas, and indeed Mr Kipling, the manufacturer, has thoughtfully put a design on the box that features a gas lamp, snowy fir trees and a cottage with lighted windows. They've even adapted their trademark "exceedingly fine" phrase, and called them "exceedingly merry" mince pies. I don't think that it's unreasonable to infer that these are mince pies that are particularly designed to be bought for Christmas. "Just the thing," you may think as you buy your seasonal provisions, "some mince pies in an attractive Christmassy box." So why, in the name of heaven, do these mince pies have a best before date of 20th October? They're a food associated with Christmas in a Christmas-themed package and they are going to go off a whole one sixth of a year before Christmas even starts!

I know that retailers make a lot of money from Christmas (though I have my own opinions about that) and I understand that they want to start selling Christmas-themed goods as early as possible to maximise profits, but it just seems bizarre to sell things in Christmas packaging that won't even make it into November.

When the Internet is great (and when it isn't)

Yesterday I exercised my prerogative as a citizen who needed advice and went to the Citizens' Advice Bureau. (I note, by the way, that I've been a grammar pedant and put an apostrophe in their name, whereas they don't.) I'd been on their site to find the location of the nearest branch, but I hadn't clicked on any of the links there, because I wanted to talk to someone face to face and get an informed opinion. I'm a great believer in the internet as a source of useful information, and in education to help people sort out the information from the misinformation and the opinion dressed up as fact, but I actually wanted someone else to give me advice.

So off I went. I'd remembered the location from the website, and it was a straightforward walk - until I got to where I thought the CAB should be, and discovered it wasn't there. No worries. Thanks to the wonders of GPS, Google Maps on my phone showed me where I was - which turned out to be exactly where Google said the CAB should be. I wandered up and down a couple of side streets and eventually asked a couple who were getting into their car. They told me I needed to walk another 100 metres down the road - and when I did, going way past where Google said I should go, there was the CAB.

After a wait, I was seen by a pleasant and enthusiastic member of their team, who listened to me, and then gave me a few leaflets but told me that my main source of information would be their online advice guide. He couldn't really give me advice, he explained, because there were too many variables. What I really needed to do was get information online, so that I could make up my own mind, and then go back to talk to them again if I needed further help.

So there you are. The advice bureau advised that I should go to the internet for information. The internet is great for telling me that there's a CAB within walking distance, but not so good for finding it exactly. I suspect that the Advice Guide will give me a similar level of macro information, but I'll still need individual guidance on how to apply it to me.

There's a point at which information available to everyone becomes information that is of decreasing use to any one individual. Current iterations of the internet are moving towards personally useful information for everyone, pushing ever further away the point at which "widely available" becomes "personally inapplicable", but my feeling is that there's still some distance to go.

Thingy Whatsit and the Doodahs

I had a brief conversation last weekend about how bands aren't called "First-Name Second-Name and the Somethings" any more, and since then I've had occasional "Yes!" moments when I've thought of another. I suspect I might have alarmed the person who was walking down Shirley High Street as I was cycling up when I suddenly shouted "Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers." I had fairly strict rules for myself about this - it has to be two names, followed by "and the" and a noun. So Martha Reeves and The Vandellas was allowed, but not Martha and The Vandellas (or Antony and The Johnsons). It didn't have to be an actual name, and I allowed more than one word after the "and the" - I could have Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars or Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt Kickers. Both of those, by the way, I considered for a subcategory of "really long names in the format name-name-and-the-noun".

I suspect I've had about as much mileage as I can from this. We need more bands with names in this format - except that unless you're starting a kitsch tribute band, having a name like that is going to make you sound as dated as Brian Poole and The Tremeloes.

Online/offline balance

The problem with having a busy and productive day is that that doesn't necessarily include time spent sitting blogging or updating Facebook. So if I'm having a really boring time, I have lots of opportunities to tell the world about it, but if I'm doing anything that makes me think "I'd like to tell the world about this" I'm too busy to do so. So I had quite a good day yesterday, felt quite happy because of some news that I will write about another time, wished my eldest son a happy 20th birthday (I've been a parent for twenty years. Twenty years!), just generally got things done. And the only time I spent online was ordering books from Amazon that children need for college. And now I've run out of time to write anything insightful because we have to get ready to get Rachel to Fleet, where she's doing her Modern Trio at the Tudor Rose Festival.

Congratulations Western Michigan University

You have made my day.

For anyone who hasn't found this site (I got there via Reddit); go to the home page and then press z+v on your keyboard.

Edit 17th Oct: Western Michigan clearly got wise to the number of people accessing their site and removed what I assume was a student joke. If you missed it, pressing z+v changed the central panel to say "Zombies. Classes cancelled. If infected stay home."

Good while it lasted.

Being ill does not guarantee more time

Having spent the last couple of days with stomach cramps (still in evidence) and vomiting (hopefully resolved), I've noticed how often I tend to think that because I'm ill I could get more things done. There's a train of thought that goes "I am ill, therefore I will get fewer things done. I am doing fewer things, therefore I will have more time. I will have more time, therefore I will be able to get more things done."

Now you know this is mad, and I know this is mad, but it doesn't stop it from rattling round on a loop in my head; I decide that since I'm not at work I'll use the time at home to catch up on work; I'll get all the jobs done around the house that I've not managed to do when I'm healthy; I'll write more and blog more and be artistic and creative and...

Of course what happens is that I look at all the things I want to do, and think to myself, "Actually, I don't feel very well."

[Redacted]

I have just been asked by my employer (who shall not be named) to remove my last blog post, as it mentioned my employer in connection with my dissatisfaction with my job. I might be leaving this employment sooner than I'd planned!

Genuinely, this is what I can see right now

I think that it probably says everything you need to know about our household that on the computer desk there is a (non-functioning) laptop balanced on top of the printer, and on top of that there is a D&D miniatures Rock Titan. Someone has put a pair of safety scissors in the Rock Titan's hand and balanced a cute toy puppy on its head.

Honestly, this is how I live.

Click below to see the pic.

On being adored

There's a lot to be said for being adored. In Moulin Rouge Ewan McGregor sings, "The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return", but there's a very special feeling that comes from knowing that someone, somewhere, thinks the world of you. Someone has a photo of you placed so that you are always in the corner of their eye. Someone checks your Facebook page several times a day, and when there's nothing new to see, looks through all the pictures that they've already seen a thousand times. Someone wonders what you think, imagines what you might say, constructs variations on variations on an imaginary conversation with you about the nothing-very-much most important things in the world.

Of course it won't last. It's not love. But it is, right now, just wonderful.

I have been robbed

Rather annoyingly, I had several emails today from PayPal, the last one of which said they they had limited access to my account while they made further checks. It turns out that someone calling themselves Arthur Waller has somehow taken two payments out of my current account via PayPal, the first for $163 and the second for £178. It's not fun being stolen from - oddly enough, being a Christian, it's not hard to forgive "Arthur Waller", but it's difficult to see how we'll make it through to the end of the month if we don't get our money back pretty promptly. Do I believe that living as a Christian means forgiving people? Yes, certainly. Do I genuinely believe that God will help us get by with a lot less money than we'd planned on having? Erm...

Update 00:40: just got an email from PayPal to say that the investigation has completed and the funds will be returned to my account within five working days.

Some things come back to haunt you

The recent rain and wind have removed several layers of advertising from this billboard and revealed a Tory election poster. Unfortunately for David "I'm sorry that wasn't in the manifesto" Cameron, the promises he made are still out there. Let's hope he sticks to them better than these posters did.

ICU baby (shakin' that ass)

Not convinced

I've made some changes to the look of the blog - mostly by starting off with one of Blogger's templates and then trying to fine-tune it. To be honest,I think it's going to need a lot more work. I'm tempted to go back to my old layout, but (a) I actually want a fresh start, and (b) my old template seems to have vanished.

Hello again

One of the (several) things that I was going to do today but didn't get around to was giving this blog a bit of a makeover in preparation for starting a more regular posting schedule again. Unfortunately, as so often happens, life got in the way (in this case, my phone started playing up - freezing, saying I had texts but not displaying them, etc.) so I've spent the time that was earmarked for blog renovation trying to avoid doing a hard reset and then doing it anyway. But I decided that I'd get a quick post on here anyway, even if it's only this.