A day in the life of a Middle Manager...

Britain's Favourite Sitcom

It's official then, Britain's Best Sitcom is Only Fools and Horses. Must admit, as good as Only Fools is I didn't think it would win...

For me it was always a race between Blackadder and Fawlty Towers.

The top 10 were, in order...

1. Only Fools and Horses (22.2%)
2. Blackadder (18.3%)
3. Vicar of Dibley (13.8%)
4. Dad's Army (11.3%)
5. Fawlty Towers (11.2%)
6. Yes Minister (8%)
7. Porridge (6.1%)
8. Open All Hours (4.4%)
9. The Good Life (2.6%)
10. One Foot in the Grave (2%)

I am thoroughly amazed that Fawlty Towers didn't come at least second. I thought it was pretty much universally praised as one of the best comedies ever to come from the UK. Anyway, using the same top 10 as the beeb did here are my top 10...

1. Blackadder -- "I have a cunning plan m'lud."
2. Fawlty Towers -- "Don't mention the war!"
3. Only Fools and Horses -- "you Plonker!"
4. Dad's Army -- "We're Doooooomed!"
5. One Foot in the Grave -- "I don't believe it"
6. Open all hours -- A lovely gentle comedy
7. Yes Minister / Yes, Prime Minister -- Shows how the country was really run. There's a reaon that civil servents get called "Sir Humphrey's"
8. Porridge -- Another gentle comedy, set in a prison.
9. Vicar of Dibley -- Again, a gentle comedy. Some real laughs though.
10. The Good Life -- The original eco-warriors.

So, why do I think Blackadder is the greatest british sitcom? It's simple really, it just works SO well. Blackadder is so incompetent that you can't help but feel sorry for him, no matter how nasty he actually is. Blackadder has some of the greatest comic character inventions ever. Baldrick and Queenie as just two examples. How can you fail to love this series?

Still, Only Fools and Horses won and, I admit, it's been bloody funny over the years. In fact, as the advocate said it has given us a couple of the single funniest sight gags EVER on TV. Namely Del falling through the bar and the Chandelier falling from the ceiling. Absolute class!

So, which of these would be YOUR choice as #1 and why?

Tap Water again...

Looks like Coca-Cola are having a severe case of the jitters about their "purified" tap water. Thanks to a friend who emailed me last night to mention it I had a mooch round a couple of news sites and found that they're delaying the introduction of dasani in France and Germany.

Also as I predicted it looks like they're not going to reintroduce the brand in the UK, certainly not for the time being. Still, everyone was predicting that so it wasn't hard to get right! ;)

The whole sorry saga is available on BBC news, Sky news and probably most other sites as well...

RSS Aggregators

As Carla knows, thanks to various strange programs appearing on this PC, I've been looking for a decent RSS Aggregator for a while. I've tried a few programs but none of them have really grabbed me... On the Mac, things are different, there are lots of readers but a clear (and I mean clear) front-runner -- NetNewsWire. Shrook sounds very cool though, especially as you appear to be able to sync your Mac subs to an online service at shrook.com for when you're away.

On the PC I tried Amphetadesk which is the one I stayed with the longest as its both free and cross-platform.

I tried FeedDemon which is excellent but had a couple of shortcomings (for me)

1. its $29.95
2. I couldn't find a way to customise the group listings or have two users.

Believe me, I don't mind paying for software I'm going to use a lot. I just have to be convinced it's going to be a great piece of software that I can see myself using and being able to customise the way I want. Agent is the prime example of this as it gets used every day by myself and Carla. I was perfectly happy to pay $29.95 for that in 1996!

There are many many others out there like Sharpreader and Feedreader but, on the PC, they all appear to need the MS .NET framework which I couldn't be bothered downloading just to see if I liked any of them...

So, I was starting to despair -- would I ever find a decent RSS aggregator for the PC? It was starting to feel like I wouldn't... Then I noticed a web-based service called Bloglines start to appear in my referer logs. "What's this?" thinks I and toodles off to have a lookee-see. Didn't really look like something I'd use so I promptly forgot about it -- this was about 2 months ago.

I revisited the service two days ago -- it's now my aggregator for the blogs I read that have RSS feeds. It's that good. There are only two three very small niggles I have with it

• It isn't RESTful and therefore doesn't know what I've read and what I haven't -- essentially once the server delivers the XML and shows the contents it assumes I've read it.
• The Javascript doesn't work properly in Firefox 0.8.
• You can't choose the refresh interval (in reality though I guess this is fair enough).

Otherwise its great and, IMHO, can only improve.

Some noteable blogs I like (I was going to give examples here but didn't think that was fair) don't have a feed so I have to remember to visit which I don't every day. They know who they are...

Come on people, get with the program! ;)

Web-based aggregators have one MAJOR advantage... You can get to your RSS feeds wherever you are as long as you have web access. With software solutions if you don't have your PC/Mac with you then tough luck, no RSS.

In terms of web services bloglines appears to be the most popular aggregator and certainly appears to be getting lots of mentions. There are other web-based readers of course, like Rocketinfo and MyWireService but, for now, bloglines is the one for me.

Yet another bug!

IE 5, 5.5 & 6 for Windows yet again...

This time the bug affects using <blockquote> and <div> tags in XHTML or HTML and a:hover in CSS together.

Essentially Internet Explorer for Windows has a placement bug when using all three of the above items - that would be most websites then. Sigh.

I implemented a bit of new <blockquote> code in Carla's CSS last night, you can see the effect in this entry. Of course, it looks absolutely fine in Firefox as usual but in IE there was a strange bug which moved any paragraph or div across to the right by twice the width of the border in the <blockquote> element, but ONLY when you hovered over a link. Whaaaat?

After a bit of searching around I found this page which explained exactly what I was seeing...

The bug is easy to squash though, all you seem to have to do is put a bottom-border element in your <blockquote> CSS. For example, in Carla's corrected code it reads

border-bottom: #eee 1px solid;

and that seems to have corrected the problem.

I hate all these stupid workarounds you have to do for IE. I know other browsers probably have their own bugs to squash but IE seems to be the worst one out there. I suffered from the peekaboo bug as well which had to be squashed and doesn't appear to have worked on every installation of IE6 out there.

Don't MS do proper beta-testing? Oh that's right, I forgot... The general public ARE the beta testers! :(

I said it before and I'll say it again... If you're using IE it's time to at least consider getting a browser which is both modern and supports standards properly. A browser like Firefox.

Ah, the 360 degree review...

And the truth is told! :)

Tap Water withdrawn!

OK, not really ;)

As a quick follow up to a post I made on March 1st I note that Coca-Cola have had to withdraw 500,000 bottles of Dasani from sale because of illegal levels of bromate in the water. The maximum safe level in the UK is 10 parts per billion (ppb), Dasani was found to have up to 22 ppb or potentially twice the mandated safe limit.

So they've taken tap water which has < 10 ppb bromate and made it potentially unsafe.

An official statement is on the Dasani GB homepage.

I expect it will now be very very difficult for them to relaunch this product in the UK as they've had two PR disasters in less than a month... Whoops!

The Happiness Index...

City & Guilds have done a happiness survey which, for me, shows some very interesting results...

The Top 5 "Happy" Jobs.

Position - Profession - % "Very Happy"

1. Care Assistants (40%)
2. Hairdressers (32%)
3. Plumbers (32%)
4. Chefs (30%)
5. Florists (20%)

I find it incredibly interesting that the top 5 professions where the people surveyed said they were 'very happy' doing their job are ALL jobs where you're working with the public and you get to see the end result of the effort that you're putting in. I was listening to Radio 2 during the Jeremy Vine show today where they discussed this survey and there were a number of people who'd gone from really high-flying glamorous jobs to doing something which most people, at a guess, wouldn't really consider.

One example caller who stuck in my mind was a guy who'd given up being an airline pilot to retrain as a plumber. He said that it was the best thing he'd ever done because he got so much more satisfaction doing plumbing than he ever got as a pilot!

The Bottom 5 "Happy" Jobs.

Position - Profession - % "Very Happy"

16. Electricians (6%)
17. Accountants (4%)
18. Pharmacists (4%)
19. Media (4%)
20. Estate Agents (4%)

It got me to thinking (which is always dangerous)...

I can't work out whether it was purely the environment where I used to work that pissed me off so much or whether I genuinely didn't like the job. Right now, I'm leaning more toward the fact that it was the environment where all ideas and possible dissent were actively crushed by senior management before they could take hold. The suffocating wretchedness of being a middle manager in that environment would demoralise anyone.

After some thought, I came to the conclusion that I liked the job but I hated the politics and the environment. THAT was what made me, and many many others, so unhappy in there.

In many ways I'm SO glad to be out of there. All I do wish is that the UK hadn't let me down so badly with respect to getting another job -- it's not that I haven't put everything into trying to get a decent job again, I apply for at least 10 - 15 jobs per week that I KNOW I can do and my CV says so too. Every bite I've had on the CV has turned into nothing -- the recruiter either goes totally quiet (which means they've been told the employer isn't interested) or the ones that DO let you know what's happening call to say the job has been put "on hold". Is the market out there really that bad that employers don't want someone with 5 years+ management/technical experience, that employers don't want someone who used to deal with approximately a £20 million spend?

It seems so...

As I've said in many previous posts the only jobs around and seemingly actively being created are McJobs that pay pretty much negative wages. How anyone can survive on just over £5/hour I will never know.

In some ways though I really do think I should retrain, but to what? All I really know is IT and management... I do have a keen interest in photography but I definitely don't have the cash to buy any of the equipment or software I would want/need to take that line of work up... So, what now?

If one of my friends is right and we're seeing the end of the line for IT in the developed world as it all gets farmed out to places like India, China & Eastern Europe then what do I do?

So, how do you stay happy in your job? What tips and tricks do you use?

Use the comments to leave tips, share your knowledge!

Scarily accurate...

Funny. :)

Courtesy of Kodger, get yours here.

The budget

So, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has finished delivering the 2004 budget for the UK. As is usual for me, I watched the speech attempting to listen for interesting points that were going to affect me in some way.

I ended up making a page of notes, most of which don't really affect me but which I thought were interesting in some way. This entry is a summarisation of those points.

Vehicle based transport

• VED has been frozen.
• 1.9p per litre on fuel -- to be implemented in 6 months.
• 1.4p per litre on low-sulphur fuel -- to be implemented in 6 months.

While I welcome the freezing of Vehicle Excise Duty (otherwise known as the Tax Disc in the UK) I did, unfortunately, expect the rise in Petrol Tax. Petrol is taxed at an absolutely extortionate rate here and can only get worse. Overall reasonably neutral but, for me, this rise in tax will mean approximately an extra £18.20 per year in tax on petrol (assuming use of 50 litres every two weeks).

"Sin Taxes"

• 1p a pint on Beer.
• 4p a bottle on Wine.
• Cider / Sparkling Wine -- No Change.
• Spirits (Whisky mentioned in particular) -- No Change.
• 8p per packet on cigarettes.

These are all essentially inflationary increases and won't really affect myself or Carla. We don't smoke (filthy habit) but we do admit to having the odd glass of wine every now and then; so irregular is it though that the extra 4p a bottle will add up to virtually nothing over the year.

Personal Taxation

• No change in Income Tax rates (10%, 22%, 40%).
• No change in National Insurance rates (11%, 1%).
• Allowances to rise with inflation.
• VAT -- No Change (17.5%).
• Air Passenger duty -- No Change.
• Stamp duty rate -- No Change.
• Capital Gains Tax rate -- No Change.
• Inheritance Tax rate -- No Change (40%). Limit rises to £263,000 from £255,000.

Assuming 1.7% inflation the allowance rise means you're able to earn an extra £80 annually before you get taxed. Whooppee-doo.

I've just tried to outline the important stuff to average people above rather than go into anything else. There were a number of other interesting measures, such as...

• Churches to be able to claim full VAT relief on repairs (currently it's 12.5%) until March 2006.
• Tax relief for film makers to be paid direct to them @ 20%.
• Cap on pension pots of £1.5million (only fat cats need worry).
• NEW TAX -- Small Firms face a tax of 19% on dividend payments.

The chancellor also stated that there were 175,000 new homes being built annually in the UK and this was nowhere near enough. Didn't put any measures in place to increase the number but did state that a "review" would be taking place.

Of particular interest to me was the statement about unemployment. The chancellor stated that employment was at its highest in history and that the "claimant count" for unemployment was therefore at its lowest (2.9%) but said that was only since 1973.

I reckon my position on this will be fairly clear; I think it's total BS. Of the people I used to work with and have stayed in contact only 1 has found a permanent job -- and that is after 7 months of unemployment and hundreds of applications.

The chancellor / government are lying on this issue and must be shown to be. The only jobs being created in this economy are McJobs which pay very low wages and are totally demoralising to do. I know from experience... :-/

I'm also assuming that the chancellor didn't count the 10,500 people they're going to make redundant from the DWP or the 30,000 people they'll make redundant as a result of the merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise departments over the next four three^* years in the total employment count...

Also in the employment section... The government is accepting the findings of the Lyons Review and will be moving 20,000 civil service jobs from London to the regions.

About Bloody Time!

Accountants are finally going to have to register details of their tax avoidance schemes with the treasury too. I have mixed feelings about this...

1. It could be a good thing as it means they'll spot any loopholes more quickly.
2. It could be a bad thing as it may mean it is harder for big business to attract top-level executives.

Not sure really...

Oh, and there was a sop to the protesting pensioners with respect to the council tax. The chancellor is throwing them a bone worth a hundred quid this year -- as long as they're over 70, I guess he's hoping to shut them up for a while. Will it work? Probably not... ;)

The last thing I'm going to mention about this budget is the setting up of the Euro test study, essentially in the next budget we'll find out whether we've met all of the fabled 5 economic tests for joining the euro... Hmm... Part of me says that they'll say "No, but we're so close that if we get back into power we're going to join." I know they've committed to having a referendum but does anyone really think that this government won't just throw all their resources at persuading the populace that joining is the right thing to do? There's NO WAY they'll organise a referendum before they think they can win it comfortably...

In conclusion this budget leaves me a little worse off but that was to be expected really. As the famous saying by Benjamin Franklin goes, "There are only two certainties in life: Death and Taxes."

In all, it was a nothing budget which is to be expected as an election is a maximum of 18 months away. They have to save up all their bribes for the next one!

Think you can do better? Try being a Virtual Chancellor!

^* Corrected by Garry. 17 Mar 04 @ 18:56

Customer service done right

Those of you who read this blog will know that I posted a few days ago about my woes with a shower company and the local water company. In this entry I redress the balance by telling you a little tale of customer service done the right way!

Like most people, I guess, I support the principles of fair trade and try to buy goods which are made in accordance with those principles when I can. One of the easiest fairtrade products to buy is coffee with the major supermarkets having at least one or two brands which comply and carry the fairtrade label.

I tend to buy coffee from The Tea and Coffee Plant in London and have it shipped home. Most of their products are fairtrade and organic so you can feel doubly good about buying from them!

However, just over a week ago I placed an order which had an issue. I was kinda ticked off and I used their contact email address to get in touch with them, not really expecting a reply. Much to my surprise I received a really nice reply from the shop owner apologising for the error and ensuring me the order was being sent out that day and would arrive the next. The order did arrive the next day as he promised.

I didn't rant and rave, I just put my case forward in a reasoned way. This should be a lesson to all -- treat people with a little respect and you'll get respect back, at least in general -- I know it doesn't always follow...

Anyway, I got the coffee which is delicious as always and they've turned me from a dissatisfied customer into a reasonably happy one who will certainly place more orders with them. So, well done to them for treating me with a little respect and turning the situation round! :)

Stuff

Well... Nothing much happening here really, I've learned how the loop system for electrical lighting works in the UK due to buying some lights, ripping the old ones down then realising I didn't have a clue how to wire it all back together and none of the other lights in the house worked any more! That was, erm... "exciting" shall we say? ;)

Other that that, we're spending today cleaning up the rubble as we have a visitor for a few days which should be nice. It's starting to come together so we should be looking reasonably OK by the time she gets here (tomorrow evening).

In other news, my webhost has fixed the problem with MT. It turns out that the latest version can be a bit of a resource-hog and I was falling foul of some limits on the server which stopped out-of-control perl scripts from causing problems. We've now come to an understanding and (hopefully) there shouldn't be any more rebuilding issues (fingers crossed and all that). I'll still be changing the db backend to SQL once I get a chance though...

So really we're just bumbling along and I'm waiting for my prosecution and conviction letter to arrive from the police. What? You didn't know we were almost certainly going to emigrate like Kate & Frank are doing in the next few weeks? Haven't you been reading migratory meanderings? Shame on you! ;)

Once the letter finally turns up I can go for the medical. I sent off the application about three weeks ago but they haven't even cashed the cheque yet... :-/

On the off chance...

... that someone on the ISP "Telus" is reading this and has my email address in their address book... You have the NETSKY.D worm and you've been sending emails to myself and Carla for a week or so.

Your IP details the last time you sent an email were...

d154-5-5-125.bchsia.telus.net [154.5.5.125]

PLEASE run a scan on your machine if you're on telus and, for some reason, you have myself and Carla in your (Microsoft) address book!

Ta...

An ignominious birthday

No, not mine. I found a story on el reggio which stated that March 5th marked the 10th birthday of spam.. To quote:

Today (5 March) marks the tenth anniversary of what is generally considered the first spam message.

On this day in 1994, US law firm Canter and Siegel posted a message on several Usenet newsgroups advertising its services to people interested in participating in the US Green Card lottery.

Quite the anniversary. :-/

I took a quick look at the latest brightmail stats which very clearly show how much of a problem we now have with spam. According to their statistics 62% of all email traffic last month was spam -- that's 62% of 91 BILLION emails or 56.42 BILLION emails. That's an astounding statistic and it only seems to be getting worse... The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 is a toothless useless piece of legistation which provides virtually no disincentive for spammers unfortunately.

So, what do we do? Well, there's Microsoft's latest idea which is an interesting one but I seriously can't see it being adopted - would YOU pay to send email when it's been essentially free for so long? Not sure I would either...

So spamming is out-of-control and we need to counter it... That means tough laws jailing spammers and closing off open SMTP relay servers -- using ASMTP or something tougher in all instances. It wouldn't stop all spam -- far from it, but it's a start.

Another tactic is to ignore it -- this means the problem will only get worse.

Personally, I use Spampal and it gets a better-than 99.9% accuracy rate for me. I still get the spam and storage space is still eaten up on my provider's server when it arrives (if it isn't zapped by spamassassin before I even see it).

It's not a real solution to the problem though, it just stops me (and C) reading the spam as it's already marked and neutralised when it arrives in our inboxes.

All we can hope is that big companies with enough clout will take notice of spam this year and do something to combat it. before it completely destroys email's intergrity -- something it threatens to do this year if it carries on unchallenged.

Hot and Steamy!

(heh, that should get a few hits I'm guessing!)

I'm actually talking about the shower in this house. We've never blogged it but we've had massive problems with the shower over the last 12 months with the shower complaining of low water pressure.

For those who don't know 'cos they don't live in the UK - the majority of showers over here are electric, they take cold mains water then heat it & pump it out of the showerhead for you to get a shower. You can get mixer showers like in North America (and I'm guessing most other countries) but you have to have really good water pressure to use them. In essence, showers in the UK are like glorified electric kettles or coffee makers!

Anyway, we've been having major problems and the shower manufacturer would blame the water pressure and the water company would blame the shower manufacturer ad nausem. This shower has been problematic for quite some time though, needing (among other things)

• a new heating can
• a new power board
• a new pump
• a new thermostatic sensor

etc etc etc...

Basically the company put a new shower in, in parts, but wouldn't just swap the shower out wholesale. The main problem was that when the shower complained of low water pressure it would cut off the heating with the result being that your shower would suddenly become cold. Eventually it would get bad enough that the shower would cut off altogether and you would have to restart it by pressing the 'give me a shower' button.

The end of the line came this week when the shower finally gave up altogether. I was in it -- of course... Basically the shower starting making a wierd noise like the pump was stuck and no water was coming out of the head. Then suddenly there was a rush of AMAZINGLY (and I'm talking boiling) hot water which, if I'd been stood under it would no doubt have given me some nasty burns and put me in an emergency room.

So, I phoned my friendly neighbourhood plumber (and people, if you find a plumber or a building firm which does a good job then keep them close to your heart -- they're like Gold Dust). He agrees to come out this morning to fit a new shower for us (luckily enough we'd bought one a while ago and stuck it in the loft as we knew that eventually we'd get sick enough of the problems to have the shower replaced.)

So he turns up this morning right on time and proceeds to fit the shower and...

It Works! PROPERLY!

I can have a shower without fear that it's going to get cold or cut off! Yay!

I'm not going to name the shower manufacturer involved as I don't want anything further to do with them but if you're in the UK you can probably guess who they are -- they're by far the largest manufacturer of electrical showers over here. All I will say is that their customer service SUCKS and the 'engineers' they sent out were never interested in the problem we were having, instead blaming the issue on the water pressure (which I know isn't a problem in this house).

Anyway, it's fixed now and we can get a nice hot steamy shower without problems. I'm thankful for that and the fact that I've found a builder/plumber I can trust!

Technical problems

If you've visited the blogs on this site (this one, across the pond & migratory meanderings) earlier this evening you've probably noticed that all the blogs were closed down as I was having technical trouble.

The blogs run using berkeley db as the backend rather than SQL and, at some point this evening, the db decided not to play nice any more.

Luckily enough I had a backup from 1 day ago (talk about timely) so I've (eventually) been able to get them working again after mucho pain.

It still feels flaky and I think it may be the server that the site is on that's the issue. Still, I've reported it to the webhost and hopefully something will be resolved.

In the meantime, I've decided that these blogs definitely need to get transferred to SQL - its just much less fragile.

Here's hoping that this post actually works!

So it's true!

Bottled water really is just tap water under another name!

Soft drink giant Coca-Cola has admitted it is selling purified tap water in a bottle. It says the source for its new Dasani bottled water is the mains supply at its factory in Kent.

Oh deary me... Read more on the BBC News site.