Posts

word of caution

Take my advice. Never buy flowers for your wife. Ever.

I am working at home, trying to finish a report. I don’t have a home office so I work on the kitchen table.

For the last couple of days, two things have been slowly nagging away at me like a dripping tap.

My wireless mouse sometimes loses the will to carry on working at such a frantic pace. It squeakily demands a cup of coffee or just half an hour of ‘Richard and Judy’. I stoutly refuse so the mouse pointer slowly descends vertically down the screen which is fairly irritating and virus-like.

Broadband for the masses

Last night’s ’ Money Program' was about the increasing consumer demand for broadband services and the various options available from the suppliers.

Broadband services from the major players (Carphone Warehouse, BT, NTL and newcomer Sky) were all reviewed for various households with different requirements.

British Telecom has an incredibly strong brand with the older generation. One grandmother on the show simply opted for a BT Video Phone because she implicitly trusts that the service will work because ‘it is from BT’.

Guilty Pleasures

OK. I own up. Although I have superb taste in music, I can’t help but hum along whenever I hear No. 2 on this list.

‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ by Blue Oyster Cult also falls into the same category.

Saxondale

I really enjoyed this comedy co-written by Steve Coogan.

The opening sequence features Coogan struggling to keep his calm in an ‘Anger Management’ course and is always hilarious.

Unfortunately, the final episode of the series was on Monday night but, no doubt, it will be endlessly repeated on BBC3 in the near future.

in utero

I just watched this but I am starting to wish I hadn’t.

knowledge management is hard

Knowledge management presents a difficult challenge particularly when you work in a relatively small department of highly intelligent, technical consultants who are scattered around the globe and travel a lot.

I just started another blog as an experiment to see whether we can try to improve the way in which we share knowledge and communicate with each other. Searching email archives is so 1990’s, don’t you think ?

The blogging interface and the set of CMS features isn’t as rich as WordPress (or alternative Content Management Systems) but that’s not really the point.

wheels on fire

Arrived at a client’s offices in Birmingham this morning just as Radio Five news reported a major power cut affecting businesses and homes in the area.

Apparently, vandals had set fire to two tyres and rolled them into the electricity sub-station last night.

Whatever happened to the good old days of getting drunk, singing songs and placing red cones on top of traffic lights.

Still, the outage freed up two hours for an interesting discussion about disaster recovery.

Hook Norton

As predicted, another fantastic weekend.

rare occurrence

‘Far, far away’ by Slade, from 1974, as the music used to entertain customers placed on hold.

Hats off to Vodafone corporate. I was actually a little disappointed to miss the end of the song when my conversation with the agent resumed.

Ferguson's mind games

‘He (Ruud van Nistelrooy) is a striker who can score upwards of 20 goals a season and there are not many of those going around.’

So why are we selling him them ?

Let’s wait and see if Saha, Rossi, Ronaldo and Ole manage more than 20 goals (between them).