Wors World
All About Wor

Apr
04

Zebra Finches

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This is the bit that all personal websites/blogs have "Here’s my hamster" where the owner of the web or blog tells you all about their pet(s).
 
Anyway, WP has a fondness for keeping birds and at the moment we are the owners of 2 zebra finches.  I know nowt what so ever about them but it appers we have a "proper" zebra type colouring while the other is all white – can you have a white zebra?  Pictures to follow……

Categorized in Here's My Hamster

Apr
04

Isn’t Electricity Brilliant?

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Electricity is great stuff but not when you have none.  I’m writing this while Jupe, a mate of mine, whos a sparky is adding a couple of new power points to chez Wor.
 
Jupes got the power turned off at the moment so I’m on an enforced break.  But how how am I running this computer with no power?  I’m sure that most of you will have guessed correctly that I’m using a laptop, the very same laptop that I was moaning about only a few posts back.  I guess even cheap, poorly specd laptops have their uses when there’s nowt else on offer.
 
Isn’t Electricity Brilliant?

Categorized in Miscellaneous

Apr
04

The Good Life – Part 1 Update

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After being literally innundated by zero requests for pictures of our cress growing and our new greenhouse, I’ve decided to upload these.  Enjoy
 
 
Later I may treat you all to some pictures of the bread and buns that WP has been baking – please don’t request this in your thousands.

Categorized in Food and drink

Apr
04

It’s A Long Road Back…

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I injured my right knee a few months back, early January I think, while out running with my mate Bunder. As Bunder is running the 2008 Flora London Marathon for Macmillan Cancer Care we were out running early one Sunday morning down the top canal. We had got about 7 miles out when we turned round and started to head back to home. The ground was muddy and slippery and my left leg slipped away from me while my right leg stayed planted causing a shotting pain right inside my right knee cap – "Blast!" I exclaimed to Bunder "I’ve knac%^red my knee, I’ll have to stop". Bunder offered to run back and collect the car while I waited but I reckoned that standing around while he ran the 7 miles would have resulted in me freezing to death! I limped on and after a few minutes the pain began to ease off and we made it back to the car without any further incident.

A few days later I noticed that I was having trouble walking up and down stairs and that I could not put my full weight on my right leg. I took some Ibuprofen, extra Glucosamine Sulphate and stopped runing for a week to allow it to heal. 8 weeks later it’s still healing and other than once or twice in that period I’ve not been able to get out and run. The lack of exercise and my current working situation (working from home with easy access to the biscuits) has resulted in me being the heaviest I’ve ever weighed and as unfit as I was before I took up running back in March 1997.

Thankfully it seems to be finally healing and I’ve managed a couple of local outings this week with Bunder (4.5 – 5 miles at a time). I can really feel the extra weight I’m carrying (making me fear for my poor knees!) and how unfit I am. 2 years ago Bunder and me ran the London Marathon (click here for details of the Macmillan fund raising and here for photos) and I was fit as a fiddle – now I’m only fit for the knac!&rs yard 

It’s a long road back…

[4/4/2008 Update]

My legs are stiff as boards and both feet are sore from running this week.  It seems like it’s going to be a very, very long road back…

Categorized in Running

Apr
04

SAFC

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http://www.safc.com – nuff said?
 
 

Categorized in Football

Apr
03

Jamie P – Part 1

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Well Jamies been deployed for nearly 7 weeks – the time is flying by.
 
He’s sent an email that says he’s receiving the emails, eblueys and parcels.  As you might imagine he doesn’t have much time for replying to these but he’s very grateful for them and I’d ask you to keep sending them to him as it helps keep his morale high.  Thanks everyone.
 
 

Categorized in Miscellaneous

Apr
03

The Good Life – Part 1

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We’ve decided to head in the direction of self sufficiency at Wors World and to this end Wor Pet (WP) and I have invested in a small greenhouse.  The greenhouse is one of those heavy polythene affairs and we’ve put it on the patio in the back garden, weighted down with a couple of hefty concrete blocks.  In the greenhouse we have planted tomatoes, basil, brocolli(?), carrots and something else that escapes me for the moment, we’ve also planted potatoes and are growing cress on tissue paper on the back room window ledge like we used to do when we were kids (so long ago).
 
WP has gone back to using the bread maker in a big way and has produced some mighty fine bread and buns (or cobs, or rolls, or baps depending on where you are from) in both white and brown varities – the brown bread is proving very very effective.  She’s took some to work for her colleagues and they’ve wolfed ’em.
 
Next thing on the agenda are chickens.  A company called Omlet do a really fancy, designer, chicken coop the Eglu, but at £400 it’s a bit too expensive for a first go, they look great though – see here.  I’m currently hunting down chicken coops on EBay to get started and I’m hoping to have one secured by the end of the week.  I’ll report on further chicken progress as and when there is some – I quite fancy the idea of a webcam on the chickens so that I can keep an eye on them from my desk.  My daughter is planning on her 16th birthday in a marquee on our back garden doesn’t like the idea of there being chickens around when her friends come round – it’s a bit too agricultural for her liking and she is not very keen on birds anyway.  She’ll soon get over that when she fancies an fried egg sarnie!
 
Once we have the chickens in place, the jigsaw will be complete and we will have all the requirements for making the finest, organic, egg and cress sandwiches in my village (well maybe in the street).  We’ll be having a weekly Farmers Market at our local community centre before long.

Categorized in Food and drink

Apr
03

Contractors Required

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Had to laugh when I saw that my old employer Experian, who have just made 240 + people redundant so they can hand over those jobs to Perot, were recruiting for those self same jobs less than 6 weeks later.  Obviously I feel heartily sorry for those being made redundant but it’s funny that the recruitments are being carried out for positions with Perot rather than Experian which I guess gets round UK employment laws etc.  The jobs are contracts rather than permanent but they have such specific requirements e.g. knowledge of Experian systems such as e-series and CEMS that only the newly redundant employees could be considered – this’ll be why  Experian have employed consultants to introduce employees about to be made redundant to the delights of contracting.
 
As a shareholder of Experian, I hope that those in the senior positions within Experian know what the hell they’re doing.  I’m nervous as the guy who has driven this comes from a much smaller company (SHL) than Experian and from a completely different market sector.  I’m also nervous about the use of offshore development teams as these teams can never get the close relationship required to ensure that software is developed as the client requires.  I also believe that offshore teams cannot work in an agile manner, requiring that every line of code is signed off before being written and that changes are immediately subject to a compex change control mechanism which is great for the offshore company but cr&p for the client – every change is chargeable.  Sorry, your requirements say "A", you are now saying that you want "A plus a minor change" – 2 days impact analysis, 3 days for project management, 20 days to code the 2 line change etc. etc.  £10,000 please.
 
Experian have stated that they want more agility than they had with the UK based resources, I rather feel that they may find that they have far far less.
 
Check out www.iii.co.uk for a posting by iddycol in 2007 where he points out the mess that Experian were (and still are) in.
 
Let me know what you think about Experian passing all these jobs to the offshore teams.  Post your responses here. 

Categorized in Miscellaneous

Apr
03

When Computers Go Wrong They Go Wrong

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I set out this morning to use my CRM 4 VPC.  I just thought I’d make a backup of the current image before getting started….
 
I have a Maxtor Touch 4 500 Gb (purchased from Tesco for £69.99) and I thought I’d back up the image to that.  I noticed that the Maxtor 4 coulod not be seen by my machine and therefore I couldn’t back it up.  After unplugging the USB connection and powering off and on a number of times I finally ended up having to use the Disk Manger snapin to allocate a drive letter (which had mysteriously gone missing).  After doing this it all well fine until I connected a new flat monitor to my daughters pc.  Somehow the wireless network connection was knac**red.  I’ve tried disabling/reenabling/reinstalling drives and software etc with no luck.  Luckily (?) I’ve had a Dell laptop delivered to replace the laptop I had stolen in January http://worsworld.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?_c01_BlogPart=blogentry&_c=BlogPart&handle=cns!400938DCD454D501!347 and that connects no bother so my daughter can keep up to date with her 99 MSN contacts (the maximum number you can have I believe).  I’ll have to try and sort it tomorrow now as I can’t be bothered tonight. 

Categorized in Computers and Internet

Apr
02

My Stolen Laptop

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On the 20th January 2008, my house was broken into and my brand spanking new Dell Vostro 1700 laptop was stolen.
 
I reported the theft to the police and was given a crime number to pass onto my insurance company which I did on the same day.  My insurance company passed me onto a third party (PowerPlayDirect) to organise the replacement of my laptop.  The third party asked me to send details of the laptop which I did the next day.  For nearly 2 weeks I then had to send and resend the information as I was told that my emails had not made it to them, was not available to them and various other reasons why they could not order my laptop from Dell.
 
Eventyually the info was received and the order was placed.  I was given a delivery date of mid Feb and told to ring the day before to confirm that it was all good.  I waited ’til the day before and rang to be told – no worries, your laptop will be delivered tomorrow betwewn 08:00 and 18:00.  I waited until 18:30 and rang to find out where the delivery was – I was told that the order had not been placed and therefore there was no delivery .
 
The order was then placed and I was given a delivery date of mid March – ring the day before just to make sure.  I rang and was told that delivery was the next day.  Of  course, the delivery was never made.  When I rang to find out why I was told the order was not placed and therefore there could be no delivery .
 
The order was then placed and my laptop was placed on the priority order list and I was given a delivery date of April 18th at the latest!  I was told that this was the latest it would be and that I should ring to find out whether the delivery date was brought forward.  I resigned myself to the 18th and thought "3 months to source a laptop!!"  On Friday 28th I received a courier card to say that they had attempted to deliver a package for me.  I’d missed the office opening hours so called the office next day at 09:00 – I was told that I’d have to ring back on Monday am to organise a redelivery.  The delivery was ordered for Tuesday the 1st of April (April Fools Day of course).
 
The courier arrived at 15:45 and at 15:50 I was called by PowerPlayDirect to see whether it had arrived – I told them that it had and that everything was OK.  I powered up the laptop and discovered that the RAM supplied was only 1G (my laptop had 3G), no inbuilt webcam (mine had a built in webcam), disk drive was half the size, screen was a cheaper version than mine etc. etc.  My laptop had cost £650 and the value of the one sent to me was about £250.  I thought April Fool finished at 12:00!!!
 
I made a call back to PowerPlayDirect and was told that the person dealing with this had gone home and would call me the next day.  I rang them bright and early to be told that a mistake had been made and that a new order would be placed with the correct spec.  I was told that I could continue using the laptop that had been delivered until my replacement arrived.  I’m now waiting for a new (4th) delivery date and once again I’m on the priority delivery list so 5 – 7 working days has been quoted.
 
I’ve asked for an event history from PowerPlayDirect as I’m raising this with my insurance company……….
 
[3/4/2008 Update]
PowerPlayDirect have written a letter to Dell complaining on my behalf.  A rather humorous note is that the reason Dell quoted the 18th April for delivery as they were waiting for the graphics card option that had been speccd – the thing is the laptop that arrived had a simple, on board graphics card only and no special graphics card at all so why the delay?

Categorized in Miscellaneous

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