And there we go.
So today is my last day of work for the week, the month and, indeed, the year. Since I generally write this blog at work, it's highly unlikely I'll be posting again until the new year, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to leave a festive message up.
Or, to put it simply, I hope you have a good festive period and a happy New Year and I'll see you again when the calendar says 2010!
Friday 18 December 2009
Thursday 17 December 2009
unff
So the post office on Tuesday was not as bad as I'd feared.
Don't get me wrong - it was busy, just not as busy as I was afraid it was going to be. I'd say it was about as busy as a normal Tuesday, or the end of the month when loads of people get their car tax.
Why do people bother getting their car tax from the post office any more?
You can do it online and it's so simple and easy, once you've done it that way once you'll never want to bother queuing at the post office for it ever again. I mean, seriously - click, click, click, enter your card details, click, and you're done. It really is that easy and simple.
Plus it's all on databases now, so the little paper disk you get is just a formality and they send it to you in the post anyway, so you just do not need to bother going to the post office and clogging up the queues for those of us that want to do proper post office stuff.
But the big surprise was yesterday when I went to post the next couple of e-bay items. There were actually more staff there than customers.
I don't know if it was the snow or the freezing temperatures that were putting people off from going, or it was the timing (last post for 2nd class is Friday and Monday for 1st class, I believe), but I was straight in, no waiting, do the business and out again. Really simple and easy.
Of course now that I've said that when I go there today I bet it'll be queuing out the door again!
This is one of the pain in the arse things with e-bay - a lot of people pay almost instantly, which puts a lot of pressure on you to get their things sent as soon as you can. I also try to do that anyway in order to avoid the dreaded poor rating of course, but it does make things more complex.
The reason being because there's always one or two people who take a while to pay. So, for example, I had about 15 auctions end on Sunday and by Monday morning, two-thirds of them were paid up.
Now I couldn't actually go on Monday as that's when I go shopping, but Tuesday I dutifully lugged all their parcels (plus the couple that had paid by Tuesday) to the post office and sent them all off.
So I was basically left with only 4 parcels unpaid by Tuesday afternoon. I sent them all an invoice by way of a reminder and two people paid up. So I trekked to the post office again yesterday, with only 2 parcels.
One more person paid last night, so I'm going again today.
That leaves 1 person unpaid and I sent them another message yesterday basically saying "if you don't pay by tonight it'll be next week before I send it"... and he's not even acknowledged my message.
It's a right-royal pain in the arse. If I waited until all the auctions were paid I'd piss off the early payers and get poor rating. But this way I end up having to make loads of trips, which is both really annoying and also costs me loads in postage.
This is part of the reason why I get sick of doing e-bay stuff every time I start on a new session of selling stuff. All the lunch-times wasted in post office queues just becomes really draining. Plus of course there's the fact that it gets really annoying the small return I get.
When you look at the total amount I'm supposed to get by way of payment from people winning my stuff, around half of it goes to other people. First off, e-bay charge you insertion fees (!), then they take 10% of the winnings (for doing very little). PayPal take a big slice in fees (for doing jack shit) and then of course there's postal fees (about the only bit I don't really mind, except for the fact that recorded costs too much).
When you then start to consider how much padded envelopes, sellotape and even car park charges cost it all gets a bit depressing really.
And yes, I did say earlier on that we got some snow yesterday. It started coming down about mid-morning, and somewhat to my surprise it settled on the ground. Well. it wasn't really surprising, because it was so frigging cold for most of yesterday the snow couldn't possibly have melted.
It's meant to be okayish today, but then there's going to be a cold snap tonight and heavy snow is forecast for tomorrow around here. I don't expect I'll be dramatically snowed in like the last time. I expect it'll just make the journey to work treacherous.
It's a pretty miserable and rant-filled post today, huh?
Well, I'm tired and I've had too much work to do and my holiday is still two days away.
Don't get me wrong - it was busy, just not as busy as I was afraid it was going to be. I'd say it was about as busy as a normal Tuesday, or the end of the month when loads of people get their car tax.
Why do people bother getting their car tax from the post office any more?
You can do it online and it's so simple and easy, once you've done it that way once you'll never want to bother queuing at the post office for it ever again. I mean, seriously - click, click, click, enter your card details, click, and you're done. It really is that easy and simple.
Plus it's all on databases now, so the little paper disk you get is just a formality and they send it to you in the post anyway, so you just do not need to bother going to the post office and clogging up the queues for those of us that want to do proper post office stuff.
But the big surprise was yesterday when I went to post the next couple of e-bay items. There were actually more staff there than customers.
I don't know if it was the snow or the freezing temperatures that were putting people off from going, or it was the timing (last post for 2nd class is Friday and Monday for 1st class, I believe), but I was straight in, no waiting, do the business and out again. Really simple and easy.
Of course now that I've said that when I go there today I bet it'll be queuing out the door again!
This is one of the pain in the arse things with e-bay - a lot of people pay almost instantly, which puts a lot of pressure on you to get their things sent as soon as you can. I also try to do that anyway in order to avoid the dreaded poor rating of course, but it does make things more complex.
The reason being because there's always one or two people who take a while to pay. So, for example, I had about 15 auctions end on Sunday and by Monday morning, two-thirds of them were paid up.
Now I couldn't actually go on Monday as that's when I go shopping, but Tuesday I dutifully lugged all their parcels (plus the couple that had paid by Tuesday) to the post office and sent them all off.
So I was basically left with only 4 parcels unpaid by Tuesday afternoon. I sent them all an invoice by way of a reminder and two people paid up. So I trekked to the post office again yesterday, with only 2 parcels.
One more person paid last night, so I'm going again today.
That leaves 1 person unpaid and I sent them another message yesterday basically saying "if you don't pay by tonight it'll be next week before I send it"... and he's not even acknowledged my message.
It's a right-royal pain in the arse. If I waited until all the auctions were paid I'd piss off the early payers and get poor rating. But this way I end up having to make loads of trips, which is both really annoying and also costs me loads in postage.
This is part of the reason why I get sick of doing e-bay stuff every time I start on a new session of selling stuff. All the lunch-times wasted in post office queues just becomes really draining. Plus of course there's the fact that it gets really annoying the small return I get.
When you look at the total amount I'm supposed to get by way of payment from people winning my stuff, around half of it goes to other people. First off, e-bay charge you insertion fees (!), then they take 10% of the winnings (for doing very little). PayPal take a big slice in fees (for doing jack shit) and then of course there's postal fees (about the only bit I don't really mind, except for the fact that recorded costs too much).
When you then start to consider how much padded envelopes, sellotape and even car park charges cost it all gets a bit depressing really.
And yes, I did say earlier on that we got some snow yesterday. It started coming down about mid-morning, and somewhat to my surprise it settled on the ground. Well. it wasn't really surprising, because it was so frigging cold for most of yesterday the snow couldn't possibly have melted.
It's meant to be okayish today, but then there's going to be a cold snap tonight and heavy snow is forecast for tomorrow around here. I don't expect I'll be dramatically snowed in like the last time. I expect it'll just make the journey to work treacherous.
It's a pretty miserable and rant-filled post today, huh?
Well, I'm tired and I've had too much work to do and my holiday is still two days away.
Wednesday 16 December 2009
the illusionist
Rental service was back to normal this weekend with the illusionist.
It's weird how sometimes there's nothing in a particular genre and then several things come along at once. The Illusionist was released in 2006, the same year as The Prestige.
I reviewed the prestige a while back (or if it was before I started blogging, be assured I have watched it) and quite enjoyed it. Why it's similar to the illusionist, if you can't guess or don't know already is that they're both Magic films.
I appreciate Magic films is not really a genre as such, but that's the best phrase to describe them. They're also both based on books and both are set roughly at the turn of the previous century. Certainly they have a Victorian feel to them.
Both are also focused on grand stage magic, rather than smaller sleight of hand stuff and both feature a "grand illusion" as the central crux of the film. Both also try to blur the lines between real magic and mere illusions. They differ mainly in the central theme, I would say. The prestige was about a rivalry between two magicians, where the illusionist is really a love story at heart.
But they're both similar in the sense that both are entertaining and I enjoyed them both.
There's a bit of a difficult nowadays with films based in the world of magic, because we all know that movies sometimes feature a lot of CGI. And CGI is getting to the stage where it's so good that it's possible to make unreal things seem real.
So the problem magic has on the big screen is that the true skill that is behind magic, such as things like misdirection or even sleight of hand, can simply be faked. You don't really need an actual skilled magician, or a clever contraption to pull of a trick in a film, you can just let computers and animators do their thing.
And at points it's quite obvious that CGI is how they're doing some of the tricks. However to some degree, this actually works in the illusionist's favour, because part of the story we're being shown is the idea that maybe the illusionist Eisenheim really can do actual magic.
Part of the idea is that he's so good he's got tricks that people genuinely can't figure out. He's either one step ahead of the current magic skill level or he can do real magic - and by mixing real tricks with a bit of CGI it helps that idea more than it does undermine the practical magic trick side of things.
Something else that helps is the treatment that's been done to the film, which makes it seem like a really old print. Initially I wasn't sure about this, but after a while it becomes kind of natural and really helps you feel that it's a story from that era.
This is also aided by the (roughly) consistent accents everyone uses and some truly involving performances. It's also a good story, with an engaging, well portrayed love story.
So yeah, overall I really enjoyed the film.
It's weird how sometimes there's nothing in a particular genre and then several things come along at once. The Illusionist was released in 2006, the same year as The Prestige.
I reviewed the prestige a while back (or if it was before I started blogging, be assured I have watched it) and quite enjoyed it. Why it's similar to the illusionist, if you can't guess or don't know already is that they're both Magic films.
I appreciate Magic films is not really a genre as such, but that's the best phrase to describe them. They're also both based on books and both are set roughly at the turn of the previous century. Certainly they have a Victorian feel to them.
Both are also focused on grand stage magic, rather than smaller sleight of hand stuff and both feature a "grand illusion" as the central crux of the film. Both also try to blur the lines between real magic and mere illusions. They differ mainly in the central theme, I would say. The prestige was about a rivalry between two magicians, where the illusionist is really a love story at heart.
But they're both similar in the sense that both are entertaining and I enjoyed them both.
There's a bit of a difficult nowadays with films based in the world of magic, because we all know that movies sometimes feature a lot of CGI. And CGI is getting to the stage where it's so good that it's possible to make unreal things seem real.
So the problem magic has on the big screen is that the true skill that is behind magic, such as things like misdirection or even sleight of hand, can simply be faked. You don't really need an actual skilled magician, or a clever contraption to pull of a trick in a film, you can just let computers and animators do their thing.
And at points it's quite obvious that CGI is how they're doing some of the tricks. However to some degree, this actually works in the illusionist's favour, because part of the story we're being shown is the idea that maybe the illusionist Eisenheim really can do actual magic.
Part of the idea is that he's so good he's got tricks that people genuinely can't figure out. He's either one step ahead of the current magic skill level or he can do real magic - and by mixing real tricks with a bit of CGI it helps that idea more than it does undermine the practical magic trick side of things.
Something else that helps is the treatment that's been done to the film, which makes it seem like a really old print. Initially I wasn't sure about this, but after a while it becomes kind of natural and really helps you feel that it's a story from that era.
This is also aided by the (roughly) consistent accents everyone uses and some truly involving performances. It's also a good story, with an engaging, well portrayed love story.
So yeah, overall I really enjoyed the film.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
post office horror
This last weekend a bunch of e-bay auctions I had up came to an end. This means that today I have the rather un-enviable task of going to the post office. At lunch time.
I wasn't worried about it until yesterday when one of my work colleagues went to the post office. She was gone about an hour and when she returned she said they'd been queuing out of the door.
Now you could say well part of that is because it was Monday and it's always busy on a Monday. But then today is Market day in Alton, and so it's always busy on a Tuesday too.
But adding into that I believe today is one of the last posting days, and I think it's the last posting day for parcels. I may be wrong on that.
Last Christmas post is a bit of a myth actually. My dad used to work at the post office and he said that the effect it had was to get people to post early and therefore in the actual build up to Christmas there was often less post than usual, which meant there weren't many delays.
Of course, if they didn't set a day, loads of people would leave it until late and then there would be too much and it could potentially cause delays :/. So what the last day means is that that's when they stop guaranteeing delivery before Chrimbo. It doesn't mean your stuff won't make it in time, just that it's not guaranteed.
So yeah, lunch could be fun. Plus I'll have to do it all again later in the week, because some people haven't paid yet. Thankfully it's only a couple, plus if they had all paid I'm not sure I could have carried it all, to be honest, so I'd have had to make two trips anyway.
I wasn't worried about it until yesterday when one of my work colleagues went to the post office. She was gone about an hour and when she returned she said they'd been queuing out of the door.
Now you could say well part of that is because it was Monday and it's always busy on a Monday. But then today is Market day in Alton, and so it's always busy on a Tuesday too.
But adding into that I believe today is one of the last posting days, and I think it's the last posting day for parcels. I may be wrong on that.
Last Christmas post is a bit of a myth actually. My dad used to work at the post office and he said that the effect it had was to get people to post early and therefore in the actual build up to Christmas there was often less post than usual, which meant there weren't many delays.
Of course, if they didn't set a day, loads of people would leave it until late and then there would be too much and it could potentially cause delays :/. So what the last day means is that that's when they stop guaranteeing delivery before Chrimbo. It doesn't mean your stuff won't make it in time, just that it's not guaranteed.
So yeah, lunch could be fun. Plus I'll have to do it all again later in the week, because some people haven't paid yet. Thankfully it's only a couple, plus if they had all paid I'm not sure I could have carried it all, to be honest, so I'd have had to make two trips anyway.
Monday 14 December 2009
last working week of the year
I start my last week of work this week for the whole of 2009. It's a little weird when you start thinking in those terms, so I may not think abut it again until Friday when it'll almost be all over.
The Chrimbo meal was nice on Friday. The place we had it is kinda one of those Gastro pub jobs I think. We've been there before and the menu struck me as a little bit poncy, but not overly so, and the Chrimbo food was of a similar style.
If I was to make one complaint it would be the coffee they served at the end. I really didn't like whatever blend it was they were using. Plus it had a very powdery texture to it - like the filter hadn't done its job properly.
Well, actually, if I was to make one complaint it would be that the service was really slow. The whole meal took three hours and that was with us cutting it short because we'd all only paid for 3 hours in the car park. It was a bit of a case of throw down your coffee and go.
However, relatively speaking the chair I was on wasn't too bad, so it wasn't as unpleasant as it could have been.
I tried to do the handover with the now ex-RED employee on Friday too, but really we needed more time. He had to go at 4 and with 3 hours lost to lunch, it just wasn't enough time.
To be frank, I'm basically left with my fingers crossed, hoping nothing he handed over becomes active in any way. If it does I'm going to be having a few problems, I think.
The weekend wasn't a total disaster area. I'd didn't get the "do stuff" bug I was kinda hoping for, but equally I ticked everything off on my basic to do list.
I also found the time to finish off watching the Monty Python documentary I bought a while back. It was pretty good. The series featured 6 episodes and the last 3 focused on the post-TV series stuff, with the films and stuff like the Spamalot musical.
It was quite interesting, though I've heard much of that stuff before, as if I'm honest I tend to regard the films as being much better than the TV series, which was a bit hit and miss at times. I've therefore watched quite a few documentaries and stuff about the films.
Still, as a whole the series was entertaining and interesting. The extras were quite good, adding another good couple of hours of interviews and outtakes.
So yeah, if you like a bit of python then well worth checking out, though I'm not sure if non-Python fans would really gain much from it.
The Chrimbo meal was nice on Friday. The place we had it is kinda one of those Gastro pub jobs I think. We've been there before and the menu struck me as a little bit poncy, but not overly so, and the Chrimbo food was of a similar style.
If I was to make one complaint it would be the coffee they served at the end. I really didn't like whatever blend it was they were using. Plus it had a very powdery texture to it - like the filter hadn't done its job properly.
Well, actually, if I was to make one complaint it would be that the service was really slow. The whole meal took three hours and that was with us cutting it short because we'd all only paid for 3 hours in the car park. It was a bit of a case of throw down your coffee and go.
However, relatively speaking the chair I was on wasn't too bad, so it wasn't as unpleasant as it could have been.
I tried to do the handover with the now ex-RED employee on Friday too, but really we needed more time. He had to go at 4 and with 3 hours lost to lunch, it just wasn't enough time.
To be frank, I'm basically left with my fingers crossed, hoping nothing he handed over becomes active in any way. If it does I'm going to be having a few problems, I think.
The weekend wasn't a total disaster area. I'd didn't get the "do stuff" bug I was kinda hoping for, but equally I ticked everything off on my basic to do list.
I also found the time to finish off watching the Monty Python documentary I bought a while back. It was pretty good. The series featured 6 episodes and the last 3 focused on the post-TV series stuff, with the films and stuff like the Spamalot musical.
It was quite interesting, though I've heard much of that stuff before, as if I'm honest I tend to regard the films as being much better than the TV series, which was a bit hit and miss at times. I've therefore watched quite a few documentaries and stuff about the films.
Still, as a whole the series was entertaining and interesting. The extras were quite good, adding another good couple of hours of interviews and outtakes.
So yeah, if you like a bit of python then well worth checking out, though I'm not sure if non-Python fans would really gain much from it.
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