Archive for the 'work' Category

Being pulled four ways at once

Grandad December 15th, 2007

I am going through a very bad time at the moment.

So much to do and so little time to do it.

I am being pulled four ways at the moment - home, business, blogging and The Book.  At least one of them has to suffer.

quartered 

Business is kind of mad at the moment.  I was trying to wind that down a bit, but it seems every day, I get a call from someone new wanting me to take on more stuff.  This Silver Haired Internet Technology thing started as a laugh but it is beyond a joke now.  I am working flat out at it, but for each project I finish, I find two new ones to replace it.  I can’t tell them to go away, because I want to go to France next year, and I need the money.

Blogging is fun.  But because it’s fun it is having to take a back seat.  I feel bad about that because I don’t have time to leave comments, and comments are a lot of what it’s all about.  I have been tagged again [*sigh*] but it’s an interesting tag so I intend to do it.  Sometime.  It needs a bit of thought which is why I can’t just lash off a bit of drivel.  And I don’t really have time to write stuff for my own blog.  I’m actually typing this with my toes, while I do other things with my hands.  It’s that bad.

Then there is The Book.  That, to me is the most important at the moment.  I always wanted to write a book, but it was one of those dreams, like climbing Mount Everest, that I always assumed wouldn’t happen.  Now that it has come down to it, it is a lot harder that I expected.

The other night, herself wanted a bedtime story, so I read her the first few chapters.  She was delighted.  Last night, she wanted more, so I started reading out the next bit, and realised that I had gone horribly wrong.  I couldn’t read it out it sounded so bad.  So that is a lot of work to be deleted.  Bugger.  Knickers.  More work.

So, you see, something has to suffer.  Apart from me.

So it has to be the blogging…………

The government should get a pay rise

Grandad December 4th, 2007

Yesterday was a pain.

I decided it was time I balanced the books, and I hate anything to do with accountancy.

But it must be done.  I have suppliers who must be paid, so I must make sure I am being paid.  That’s the way it works.

It used to be a lot simpler in the old days, when I just grew my own.  I had no supplier, so my accounts could be done on an envelope.

But then they got tired of just smoking and baking, and they started wanting to sniff and snort.  That was the time I had to get an alternative source.  That wasn’t easy, as I had to import the stuff, and every time a container load came in at Dublin Docks, the b*st*rds went and confiscated it for some reason.  I think they were setting up their own trade, and using my supplies.

So I had to start importing on the West Coast, and with the cost of petrol these days, that’s expensive.

My biggest customer is the government.  Judges, police, barristers, teachers and nuns account for a lot, but the government beats them all hands down.  Bertie alone owes me €37,426.89 and that’s just for last week.

Frankly, I think he is overdoing it a bit.  It is certainly affecting his memory, as he is extremely confused about past events.  It also affects he speech very badly, though he was never that hot to start with.

Dbertie

It is costing him a fortune, and it’s no wonder his friends have to give him a dig out, even if they don’t realise they are his friends.  Frankly, if it weren’t for the back-handers, and the under-the-table deals, none of them could afford to pay me.  And some of them are becoming a little indiscreet.  Cowan keeps using expressions like ‘drawing a line under the past’.  I know when he says things like that, he it itching to get down to the toilets for a quickie.  They are always talking about ‘lines’ these days, even though I have warned them to stop

Bertie rightly gave them all a big pay rise recently.  It goes some way to paying off their debts, but frankly it’s only a tear-drop in the ocean.

I think Bertie and the gang deserve a much bigger pay rise.

Because I’m worth it.

Office parties

Grandad November 22nd, 2007

I have been following a series over on Manuel’s site at Well Done Fillet.

It has been giving me nightmares.

He has been running a wee series on the Christmas Office Party - that most horrendous of events in the business year.

It always seemed to start around July, when someone would pipe up "What are we doing about the Christmas Party this year".  There would be howls of protest ["Aw,Jayzus - it's f*cking July, for f*ck's sake"], but the machinery would be set in motion.  The fights would start.  The younger crowd would want to go drinking and dancing, and the older crowd would just want to get drunk.  So there would be pitched battles as to the type of venue.

Then there was the location.  There were always pitched battles over that too, as staff came from all over the eastern half of the country.  And everyone wanted it in their own patch.

The party itself was sheer hell.  We all had only one thing in common - work.  So what did we talk about? Yes.  Work.

Office parties always brought out the worst in people.  The bossy ones became bossier and the shy ones usually ended up in tears in the jax [toilet].

There was always some pervert who used to go around groping the secretaries behind the filing cabinets, but then I had to do something to pass the time.  Didn’t I?

The one good thing about the party that I used to enjoy was going around telling everyone [especially the boss] what utter w*nk*rs they were.  If they remembered the next day [which was unlikely], I would deny it and say it was someone else.  I started some great post-party fights that way.

One other nice side effect was that for about four weeks after the party, no one would talk to anyone else, so we used to have peace in the office.

Close Encounters

Grandad November 15th, 2007

I was reading through some blogs today, and I came across a post by Bad Ambassador about an encounter at Heathrow.

This brought back some memories.

Some years ago in 1994, I was over at Heathrow doing a wee job.  I won’t say what the job was because it was a wee bit illicit.

Anyway, I was staying at the Ibis Hotel on Bath Road in Heathrow.  And I was working in an office about half a mile along Bath Road.

heathrowwalk
My lonely walk

For those of you who don’t know Heathrow, Bath Road is one of the main roads out of London, and it runs parallel to the main runway.  So it’s a great road for plane spotting.  My hotel room overlooked the runway, and even though it was triple glazed, it was still quite noisy.  I didn’t mind as it was great fun watching the planes taking off and landing.  Another thing about Bath Road is that it is always solid with traffic.  It is a very busy road.

One evening, I left the office to walk back to the hotel.

The first thing that struck me was the complete silence.  No traffic.  No planes.  Bath Road was completely deserted.  and this was around half five on a weekday afternoon. And the airport seemed to be shut down. It was surreal.

One car sped past with blue lights flashing, but that was it.  Silence.

Then I saw a soldier in full combat gear, standing with his back to me.  He was armed and looked dangerous.  But I thought I’d ask him what the hell was going on.

I reached out and was just about to tap him on the shoulder when his radio squawked and he rushed off somewhere.

I walked back to the hotel.  I met no one.  I went up to my room. 

The phone rang.  It was Herself and she sounded like she was in a state.

"Are you all right?" says Herself.

"Why wouldn’t I be?" says I.

"Jayzus! Have you not seen the news?" says she.

Apparently the IRA had just launched a morter attack on Heathrow, and they launched it from the car park of the office I’d been working in.

I often wonder what would have happened if I had managed to tap that soldier on the shoulder and ask in an Irish accent ‘what the f*ck was going on’?

I’ve been tagged again

Grandad November 11th, 2007

Our K8 has come up with a new meme.

And, bless her little cotton socks, she has passed it on to me.

She wants me to write a post that uses every tag. It’s all very well for her - she only has a few. I have loads. The cow!

Now I may be getting old but I find these difficult. I had a hard days blogging yesterday, as I had a good rant on a podcast to America. That was after I did my post on Cully and Sully.

So today I went for a ramble around the garden, trying to think of a topic. No go. There was no inspiration around the house either, and I’m damned if I’m going around the village or around the town for something so trivial.

Back in the 70’s life was a lot simpler. There were no computers or Internet, or even television so there were no memes. I had no irritating daughter in the family either. We found our pleasures in simple things. I remember learning to drive so we could go on holidays touring in the West, with no worries about flying and Global Warming. We had such simple sports as children in times past, like watching spiders spin their webs, and the designs they’d make. We’d go for rambles through the woods and have picnics of tea and spam sandwiches. We were a lot healthier for it.

Nowadays, work is the new religion and people have lost the use of their imagination. People only get worked up over celebrities and smoking out corrupt politicians. They panic over property prices and have lost sight of the soul of life.

No.

I can’t think of anything.

I elect not to do it.

I’m going to file this under Uncatagorised.

Maybe Sixty should have a bash at this?

Or how about Kirk at Just Thinkin’? I haven’t tagged him before.

And it’s a while since I annoyed Grannymar!!

tag-award

F*cking memes….

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Grandad October 23rd, 2007

There seems to be a rumour doing the rounds that I am dead.

My obituary even appears in Damien Mulley’s site.

The bad news is that I’m not. I know this will come as a shock to many of my loyal fans [like Bertie, Harney and Dubya] but that’s the way it is. You’ll just have to put up with it.

One interesting bit of mind-rambling I did yesterday was to take some figures off Google Analytics.

Apparently in the year, I had around 66,000 visitors. Each of them spent an average of three minutes on the site. So this makes a total of 198,000 minutes spent viewing the site.

I know you all view the site during working hours, in between sessions of poker, Facebook and searching for p0rn on Google, so this represents 3,300 hours of productivity lost.

I haven’t a clue what you earn, but you all have computers, so you mostly have office jobs, and must be reasonably intelligent, so I will assume an average salary of €15 an hour [I may be wrong - I'm way out of touch with these things].

This means I am costing the world economy €49,500 a year. And that is a first year, with a bit of growth to be expected in my second year.

So it would pay Dubya and Bertie [and George?] to get together and grant me an annual salary of [say] €50,000 a year to stop blogging. It would have to be index linked, of course.

Am I being unreasonable?

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