Thursday 12 April 2012

review back-log

Last week I missed a post on Wednesday and I forgot why until I came to post today and realised I had a similar issue.

Essentially, on Wednesday every week I was posting up mini reviews for the DVDs and Blu-Rays I rented.  However, while I was on contract I was only posting once a week (if that) so I didn't even bother to write the reviews, let alone post them.

So last week when it came to the mid-week point and I was in my usual "I've run out of stuff to talk about again / I've not got the time to do a whole post" I didn't have the pre-written reviews to fall back on.  I also had the slightly tricky issue of not actually fully remembering what I felt about the earliest titles back from around Christmas time.

As mentioned I've sort of hit the same problem today - I've not a lot to really write off the top of my head today and I've not really got the time spare to generate a more in-depth post.

I should be able to spend some time to sit down and write a few reviews this weekend, and maybe pre-write a few entries, so hopefully the blog will start to really get back to normal soon.

It's weird - I've actually been struggling to find the time to do all the stuff I used to.  I think the whole contracting thing has spoiled me for time a bit (even with the huge commute).

Wednesday 11 April 2012

I've no idea

One thing I did do over the Easter weekend as part of the tidying up and cleaning was look for my exam certificates.

I didn't find them.  In fact, in looking for them it helped to clarify in my mind where they would have been, what I was therefore looking for and what has probably happened to them.

Basically as part of my extensive stuff clearance / downsizing activities I remember discovering all my old school reports and similar bits and pieces.  Now I know this is the sort of thing people like to hold on to for sentimental value, and I had been doing similar, but you have to bear in mind that I have enormous amounts of stuff and very little space to store it all.

As such I do recall taking the decision to get rid of it, but I have to confess I don't specifically remember binning them.  My guess is they just went in to a sack and got chucked with a load of other stuff.

Now the thing with the exam certificates is I think I had them tucked inside this binder thing that my school gave me when I left.  The idea of the binder was that it was meant to log your continuous professional development (CPD).  I remember I got actual certificates for the GCSE & A-level exams I passed and I'm now pretty sure I tucked them inside that binder.

And it's that binder I realised I was looking for and couldn't find.  Again, it's not something I specifically recall throwing away, but I do recall t being amongst my school-era stuff.  Since I now can't find it I must have thrown it away and the certificates have gone with it.

This is annoying mainly because I do not recall which subjects I took at GCSE and even for the ones I do recall I don't remember all of the grades.  I remember the A-levels, but GCSE I'm not at all sure beyond the 'core' subjects.

So obviously I will have done the likes of English, Maths and Science, but I don't know if I did all the humanities to GCSE level, for example.  Now I can work around it for my CV - I can probably guess at the number and put something along the lines of "10 GCSE, including Maths, English" and whatever.  The problem comes when you've got an application form that asks for them.

Quite why you have to fill out application forms and put all your qualifications I'm not sure.  When you do a CV the general advice is to focus on your "highest" academic qualifications, which is to say if you have a degree that's what you say and you'd don't even mention anything below that.  The exception is qualifications or similar you've received following your entry into the world of work, but even then it's generally good practice to only mention those that are relevant to the type of job you're going for.

Now you can actually get the exam boards to send you new copies of your certificates, but these are actually quite expensive.  The other option is I can ask what they have on me via a freedom of information request.  This is a lot cheaper, but the problem is that the exam boards are constantly changing and I don't actually know which of the exam boards they used.

I could also ask my old school, in theory, but it's a very long time ago now and they may not have the records.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

easter

Last Thursday I started on the following blog entry:

Happy bloke-nailed-to-a-cross day…?

No blog yesterday.  Usually I would have uploaded a review, but unfortunately I didn’t have one prepped.  While I’ve been on contract I’ve obviously still been getting my rental disks and watching them, but because I knew I wasn’t going to be doing much blogging I didn’t write any reviews.  That means I’m going to have to wrack my brains to remember what they were like.  I’ll sort something out, though.

It’s Easter weekend after today.  I can’t work out whether Easter is late or Early this year, which tends to suggest it’s neither.  It does, however, feel like it’s in a weird time.

I suspect that’s actually something to do with the weather more than the timing, as such.

It’s been bonkers the weather just recently.  We seem to have gone from a spectacularly hot end of March to a freezing April in no time flat.  I mean, Scotland had a record hot March day and then a week later they’re buried under 5 inches of snow.  Weird.

Whether this means we’ll have the same pattern of weather as in the last two years I’m not sure.  A part of me would quite like to have something of a warm summer, rather than the last couple of years where it’s been a bit nothing in particular.

Most of all I hope we get a mild winter next year.

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Unfortunately I got rather distracted with work and wasn’t able to actually find the time to post it.

The Easter weekend was both glorious and rubbish.  And all for the exact same reason – I did almost nothing of any value.

The only thing I did do was that I gave the bedsit a spring clean.  This took all day Friday and a good couple of hours on Sunday and Monday too, and even then I didn’t really do everything I’d put on my list.

The problem was that there was too much on my list for 1 day, but really I didn’t want to spend more than a day doing it.

Anyway, apart from that I basically did nothing.  I mean, I could have done stuff – there’s certainly plenty to do, but all I did was watch lots of TV that I’d recorded and play Civ3.

This was good in that it was quite relaxing.  I’ve found the return to RED somewhat stressful, not least of all because I've been looking in to getting a new job.

But it was bad because there was loads of stuff I could have done, but instead did nothing.

I think part of the problem is that I know I've got a week's holiday coming up and it's a week where I'm not going away properly so I'm already in the mind-set of "I'll do it in my holiday".  I always do this and it's not always helpful, because I end up with so much to do in my holiday that it's impossible to fit it all in.