Scargill

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I’ve just realised I’ve not been maintaining my Google photos properly – by default you needed a link to see most of them – so for those of you who want to see more photos – or better quality etc… head on over to http://picasaweb.google.com/peterscargill and they should all be there sorted into albums.

I’m feeling a little guilty as I’ve not been updating this blog since we headed off to Spain. All’s well, we have folk looking after our house in the UK though we understand that the weather up North has been atrocious and I do miss my kitten who’s probably forgotten all about me now – meanwhile in Andalucía we had a couple of days of heavy rain… in a month – otherwise it’s been 35 degrees perhaps every afternoon – not a lot of fun unless you can escape and of course that’s exactly what we can do… our cave rarely gets over 25C. I’m really getting into this idea of working mornings and evenings – and doing SOD ALL in between – it really does have it’s merits.

Maureen and I have been trying our best to have a holiday but between her backlog of schoolwork and my constant emails which apparently only I can resolve (nice ego trip but not too good for holidaying).. it’s been a relaxing but not entirely isolated break!

It’s amazing how we as human beings just simply cannot grasp the big picture – it’s as if we’re programmed like machines to only think within our comfort zones. Here I am worrying about work – and the issues others are having as if it is my ultimate role in life to solve problems for others… Maureen is determined to get her work done – even though some of that work means missing out on sunshine – abundant over here but so scarce back in the UK. At 56 the chances are that we’ll only be here for 10-20 years – and that’s not a long time after which everything is utterly and completely irrelevant FOREVER…. such a short time to take in the wonders of the world we’ve yet to discover and yet here we are writing blogs, doing schoolwork, solving other people’s problems… we HAVE been taking the time to watch on the EDEN channel, later at night the EXCELLENT heritage of nature programs that Attenborough has left us…. they’ve been having an Attenborough week and some of the stuff on there is amazing. Personally I’d scrap ALL religious education worldwide and replace it with Attenborough lessons – we’d all be a LOT better off.

Still, I suppose it beats getting bored. In the next couple of days we’ve a trip WAY up in the mountains where despite the tremendous heat here in Spain, there is STILL snow at the top… I’ll have my camera and if you look in I’ll do my best to document!

Hot sun, cool water, chocolate Ice-Cream and stunning imagery shared with your partner – THAT’S what it’s all about…

Read the rest of this entry »

A good thing about being in the USA is it makes me feel thin. Not that servings are large here but last night we popped over to Hackneys, one of my favourite places to eat when I’m here – and the picture shows the starter which is their “famous” onion dish…. and very nice with it… there are some large people here – given the choice they have in the supermarkets and the quality of the food, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why it’s so easy to put on weight.

As always, everyone is super nice – granted not the best of circumstances being here this time… and after the horrifying discovery this morning that Vodafone were ripping us at £29.95 for 50 meg which they deem “adequate” for most people and which I polished off in the first hour of handling emails etc, we finally got the WIFI working so at least from that perspective, all’s well.  Interestingly there’s a box with a telephone line attached that produces telephone, TV and WIFI all in one – you cannot tell the difference between the TV which is clearly coming in via the Internet – and normal TV. The usual endless channels etc.. none of which stops the WIFI coming in at up to 20meg and the phone working at the same time.

Weather is fine – it’s hot and sunny though a little humid right now, I can’t remember how to convert back to old-style Fahrenheit but I reckon it’s in the lower 30s centigrade here.  As soon as I have some transport I intend to do looking for an iPad case. Maureen has gone off shopping with her sisters.

Here’s a thing – www.bbc.co.uk – the news pages etc.. you’d expect them to be the same everywhere? Wrong – the same pages here in the US are different!!!!

I note the expected response from Labour to the budget. You would THINK that having put the country in the MESS it’s in – they would have the grace to keep quiet for a while as the coalition try to mend the damage – but no- straight in on the defensive with their pals in the unions… what WERE we thinking about keeping those guys in jobs for so long…

Oh! Nearly forgot – as you walk through the door at Hackneys – you come across this – a genuine red British phone-box! Not very often you see those in the UK!!

It’s a tough life being a cat. In the first photo, I  must’ve sat most of the day working on a document and the only time I moved was to yank young Ollie back off the floor as he slowly slid off the edge of the bench fast asleep and eventually fell off, via me. I think the mouse movement on the screen hypnotises him….

Here then are a few recent pics of my cat in action…

Sadly it looks as if Rosie our cat managed to get run over by truck or similar in Wark. So if you’re looking in and remember running over a long-haired ginger cat recently – here’s a wish for a lifelong and painful curse upon you and all your relatives!

Rosie was still under a year old and carrying kittens… thankfully they were her second attempt and from the first lot we have young Ollie who’s turned out to be a winner.

You just can’t beat a sunny day and a garden full of flowers…

in December 2009 I bought a TV from Tescos, right at the end of a special offer that said something like "Get Sky HD and a TV from us and you get free installation and a £50 Tescos voucher".

At the time I wrote a blog about the issues I had getting this going, wrong telephone numbers on the offer, Sky employees who knew nothing about a Tesco deal etc. Well, eventually after many phone calls I got the installation – and all’s well… except, no Tesco voucher.

Now you may say that a Tesco voucher is no big deal, but put it this way, how would you feel if someone stole £50 cash from you.. it’s the same thing, it’s now MAY and I still don’t have the Tesco voucher. As we get our groceries there it’s half the week’s groceries!

I tried again at the Hexham store last week and the assistant eventually got very embarrassed about the fact she had to wait for ages on the phone to SKY only to get through to someone – who passed her onto another department – who in turn put her on hold got ages… EXACTLY what I had to go through with Sky…(I think it’s fair to say that by and large, call centres just DON’T work for customers). Eventually I had to leave, empty-handed. She was very helpful and took my number – but the end result was no result. Several days later I’ve had no call from her despite the promise!

I’ve now written off AGAIN to SKY to ask them where my voucher is…4 months and a week down the line. I received an email from SKY to say they had no TESCO £50 vouchers but they had a Marks and Spencer £50 voucher. Not the same thing I’m afraid so I wrote back to remind them that the Tesco’s voucher was part of the deal.

Apparently they’ve been on the phone to say they have TWO £25 Tescos vouchers on the way. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Don’t you get REALLY, REALLY sick of having to chase up large companies who promise perfection and can’t organise a brewery visit?

Update 22/5/2010 – the two vouchers did eventually turn up  – thanks to Sky, not Tescos – 5 months – not bad.

If I’ve done this right, not only will Twitter now automatically announce any new blog posts in www.scargill.net but also the site display will adjust automatically for iPhone users. That’s the theory. It’s snowing AGAIN today and my meetings have been cancelled – I had no faith that the public transport would be working anyway so that’s a relief. There’s been more ground cover overnight and as I write this it’s snowing AGAIN – my car is not going anywhere until we get some melting!

As a total aside, I’ve just installed Safari 4 on my PC, so now I have IE8, Firefox 3.5, Chrome and Safari. I’m amazed, not that long ago the latter seemed useless, would not work on lots of sites etc, now, it just works. NICE interface! Sadly, almost no plug-ins! Firefox still wins! Windows fans will note I’m now running all of this on Windows 7 64-bit platform and I agree, it’s Microsoft’s best effort to date. There are a couple of things that don’t run on the 64-bitter so I’m running VMWare and a 32-bit Windows 7 on the same machine – with very little speed loss. I leave it running constantly and so there is no inconvenience there.  Amazing what we can now take for granted.

Mid-afternoon January 1st 2010 – it just keeps getting better. As the snow continues to fall, the sun has come out at LAST and it’s like Winter Wonderland here in Wark!

If you look at my earlier blog you’ll note a family out in the fields behind our house. Well, SADLY they’ve gone – and I say that because now you can’t see the scale of this MASSIVE snowball – suffice it to say it looks to be at least 5ft diameter. I’m guessing they’ll come back and build a very large snowman at some point – note the blue sky behind – we’ve just gone from a completely white sky to a largely blue sky  – sadly it’s that time of day and the sun is now going down – I have high hopes for a sunny white weekend!

What a DIFFERENCE a bit of sun makes!

The view from my office

Looking up the street from our front garden – looks like a parking disaster area.