Earth Hour

Today at 20:00 (local time) is "Earth Hour". The idea is that you turn off as much as you can for this hour in an attempt to reduce your countries carbon footprint.

Calculate your own carbon footprint
Use a computer? See here
Also see www.earthhour.org for more information.

So if you can, turn off your lights, computer TV etc. and make a difference!

"Please don't cross any railings lest suddenness happens!"

Quote of the day from the BBC.
But as the article says, at least it is their second language!

F1 GP - Qualifying

Just had to smile today when the two McLaren drivers got demoted 5 grid places for hindering other drivers on their 'quick' laps.

Maybe this will stop ITV treating every race as the Lewis Hamilton show. Then again, probably not :(

----

I was right unfortunately, they (ITV) cut the press conference short (bearing in mind that two people in the press conference aren't normally in the top three) to go to a 'live' interview with Lewis. Could it not have waited until after? I have been accused of not supporting British drivers - this is absolutely not true. I would however, like to support all four of them and not just the one who happens to be doing quite well at the moment!

Roll on next year, when the (hopefully) less biased BBC get the coverage back.

A few lunchtime drinks

Our office had Thursday afternoon off this week, so we (and when i say we I mean a pitiful 4 out of an office of 14) decided that a few lunchtime drinks were in order - well it is Easter after all.

So there we were, having a quite few drinks, when some people from another department came in in a not-so-quiet way. All in good spirit though. So after not so much arm twisting we were off down town for a few drinks. This lasted until about 01:00, which is pretty much unheard of for our office. Got to go out with a few people that I normally wouldn't as well, so that was different, and as they say, anything different is good!!

I was supposed to be studying that afternoon, but as the one doing the arm twisting put it: "It'll still be there tomorrow", and it was, funny that.

So now we, and by this time when I say we I mean us and the other department, are planning our next trip out. Can't wait...

Chocolate

Probably the best chocolate in the world!

Stopping Time

Courtesy of the Howies blog, I came across this excellent video:



If you can't see embedded video, try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

New Blog

It's not often I find a blog that I enjoy reading, so it came as a (small) surprise when I found this:
http://franceshonours.blogspot.com/

Maybe it's because they are doing the same course as me, but it just rang true...

The good and the bad

There's an advert on TV at the moment (Egg Credit Card I think) that says when something clever happens somewhere, something stupid happens somewhere else to offset it. Silly advert, but amusing, and unfortunately it does seem true of life.

For the past eight months I have had a running battle with Virgin Media (Cable TV/Broadband supplier) about my bill - they keep getting it wrong, sometimes VERY wrong. But all sorted now. Successfully applied for my passport, and completed my first two OU assignments of the new year way before time, and that never ever happens.

So on the face of it, all going well. That is until I ordered some books off Amazon. They were in stock, and I chose the free, super-saver delivery method. So why do they take a month to be dispatched (they were in stock) and then when they are dispatched, one of them can't be because it is NOW out of stock. Why wait the month?!

I also ordered two copies of the Alien Quadrilogy box set, one for me and one for my sister. Mine arrived fine, hers hasn't arrived yet. Phone call there then.

And then there is work, trying to roll out Windows XP without fully testing it first. I know, why are we rolling out XP only now when Vista has just been released? What can I say, I'm just glad we've actually moved from Windows 2000 to XP, at least we are moving forward. A bit more testing would not go a miss though. So far we are two days into our office being XP (the only office too), and we're firefighting little issues. Not work-stoppers admittedly, but small issues, and personally I don't think we should be putting XP on peoples desktops whilst we're still finding these little issues. Doesn't reflect well on us as a section. But that's just my opinion.

On a happier note, Blu-Ray seems to have won the format war against HD-DVD. Yay!!!
Can't tell you how happy I am on that one. Some people seem to saying that HD-DVD should have won as i was the better format, but personally I don't see it myself.

Thought for the weak:
A friend of mine gave me this book for Christmas, and whilst it is full of handy hints on how not to let things in life get you down, the best seems to be the title:
"Don't sweat the small stuff" and don't forget "It's all small stuff".
Words to live by if ever there were any :)