Category: Life

No, not me, as well know I don’t get much done other than write blogs and dabble with websites 😉

Last year, my excellent IFA cashed in my endowment insurances as they weren’t generating the required money – this money I put towards the mortgage but also I kept some aside for some work on the house (which, after all, should increase the worth of the house). So, this summer we’ve been getting quotes from local businesses for some work – external painting, guttering replacement, tree pruning and, biggest project of all, getting rid of the slabs and gravel from the back and converting it into a nice lawned area with corner garden plots. Nice.

The estimates are in and we’ve contacted the appropriate people and…. nothing. We leave messages. And nobody gets back to us. It’s as if they’re really not bothered.

And we wonder why skilled Polish workers are taking over the industry! Maybe they seem to be a little more interested.

Well, I’ll give them a few more days…

Ahhh, the old Blue Screen of Death (or BSoD) – that lovely screen of blue with white text that greets you when Windows goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Normally, my stress levels hit the roof as a result of one, but I guess I must be getting better at sorting them now, as one such really bad one today hardly made me bat an eyelid.

I was using a product named DriverMax to look for outdated drivers – it now has functionality to download and install them as well. So I let it. Some people never learn.

One reboot later and I’ve lost all network capability – any attempt by Windows to re-install it caused a fatal BSoD.

So I calmly reboot, access Safe Mode via F8 and run a system restore for earlier today. Ta-da – now working. And DriverMax? Not being used.

Ok, I may have said I was working on a mysterious new project but at the moment I’m tidying up a couple of sites – this one for a start.

You’ll therefore hopefully notice a few changes…

1. I’ve added topic counts and links to topic-related feeds.
2. The old social bookmarking has been replaced with ShareThis (and thanks to Tony for putting me onto that).

But – and more importantly, but probably not so noticable – I’ve finally gotten around to making my blog valid (i.e. the XHTML. Or most specifically, the sidebar, which is what had the errors in it).

Next up, I’ll be working on the Copy+ site – I’ve already had a tidy up of the forum.

I’m not feeling too well right now. Really sore throat and generally grotty (at least it didn’t happen last week whilst I was away).

Unfortunately I was joking at work today about a meeting I wanted to get out of, and suggesting I might pretend to be ill.

Bum.

I was in York last week with my wife and her sister (and my daughter, but she’s not relevant to this particular story). They were shopping at the Cath Kidston store there.

Now, personally, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than have anything to do with their particular brand of flowery, old-fashioned, chintz, but they (the aforementioned wife and sister-in-law) love it. And my sis-in-law bought a red flowery weekend bag (which my wife already has) for the knock-down, bargain price of £40 (I’d put a picture of it in this blog entry but I can’t find it on the companies site. Plus I’ve just eaten). However, when she got it back to our holiday cottage (which was not exactly nearby) she found a fine but deep but all the way along one side of the bag.

So, they rang the store… you’re probably now expecting one of my woeful tales of bad customer experience but…. and they’re going to send a replacement out. Free. Without wanting the old one back.

I guess the kind of people who buy Cath Kidston aren’t people trying a con, so are quite happy to accept the word of the casual customer. And how refreshing it is.

Well done Cath Kidston in York.