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Work Report - Mike Crowl focuses on jobs and work and anything connected to the two.
Mike blogs in two places on Orble, and two on Blogger. His wife thinks he writes too much.
In a recent post on Webitz I wrote about politicians on Facebook, and in the process finished up discovering I was already a member of Facebook from some time back. Must have signed up for it at some earlier point and then never bothered to go any further.
It’s got a good layout, and in general is easy to find your way around. (I certainly prefer it to MySpace, which seems to me to be badly laid out by comparison.)
As my geeky son said, (he who can’t be bothered with fiddling around with trivia like Facebook – even though he’s on it (under an alias!)) – Facebook is good for the way it invites users to created applications which everyone can get involved with. Yes, it certainly save Facebook themselves doing all the work
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I've talked a lot about the GPS we had in England while we were there. A great little device that we called Malvina (partly named after the New Zealand opera singer), and which took us from town to town with very few hitches. (I say 'very few' but in fact there were some occasional moments when Malvina's name was mud. A few.)
I've just seen advertised a different use of GPS: to track down your parents when they get lost! Both my parents are now long past the point when they're going to get lost on this earth, but it's an interesting idea: gps tracking of good old mum and dad (although, since this is America we're talking about, no doubt that should be good old mom and dad
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I've been selling books on Trade Me and Zillion since I came back from the UK - and was selling them before I went away. It began as a way of making a bit of money while I was out of work, and turned into an extra little business.
However, I've given it up again for the time being, partly because I'm doing this play at the moment, and it's taking up more time than I originally anticipated, and partly because bookselling online is quite time-consuming. There's not just the packaging up of all the books when they're sold, it's the detailing each one on the website, putting in all the info about the price and the condition and the postage, finding blurbs that can be used to interest the customer, taking photos and so on. And the profit at the end of the day isn't high. For some reason I don't seem to have been selling many of the books I've moved on at particularly good prices. They seldom go out at a loss, but the gain isn't that great.
To be quite honest, I make more money writing on the Net than I do selling books, and it's a darn sight easier
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I was at a conference for all of two days this week, plus another short session on Thursday, by which time ‘the boss’ and I were peopled out and needed some space.
I’ve felt worn out for the last couple of days, not helped by the fact that we’ve had a rehearsal for the play I’m doing both last night and the previous night, and fairly intense work during the day.
What I don’t much enjoy about conferences is that I get worn out just listening to people talking to me. However entertaining and inventive they may be in the way they present the material (and the main speaker was fine in this regard), there comes a point when the brain just wants out, because it’s had enough
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Everybody and his brother is jumping on the bandwagon when it comes to the best acne treatment. A number of sites recommend green tea as an effective herbal treatment. Right, I’ve noticed nobody who drinks green tea has acne – but then, of course, green tea drinkers are all over the age when most people get acne. Acne turns up in the teenage years; how many teenagers drink green tea?
Another site has Phlorogine, a newly discovered algae formula. Yet another uses tea tree oil, or olive leaf extract, or liquorice root extract, or that cure-all: alovera
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My wife and I had occasion to visit the Accident and Emergency Department of our local hospital yesterday (again! this is the fourth time in three years). My wife had a serious pain in her chest, similar to something she’s had before. Usually it’s turned up when she’s been doing something strenuous; yesterday it came out of the blue.
Anyway, after the usual several hours hanging around at A&E she was sent home. The problem wasn’t cardiac, which was good, but probably gastric, which is okay, but not wondrous.
In the usual long stages of hanging around watching doctors and nurses doing their stuff I was struck by the enormous wastage that goes on in a hospital
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For several weeks I’ve been keeping the lids of milk bottles, because they don’t get recycled along with the bottles. My intention was to make a statement (when I got round to it) about the
way in which only certain plastic things can be recycled. I had in mind a collage or found-object type of artwork where the lids would make a protest.
Well, so much for my art. And protest
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Next time your sending out baby shower invitations, just consider what you’ve become part of. What used to be a pleasant tradition, which aimed at helping parents-to-be, in particular, to cope with the cost of a baby arriving in the house, has become, in typical US fashion, an over-the-top retail opportunity. And of course US retailers have found all sorts of ways to go mad about it.
Many shops offer to keep lists of what you’d like for the baby. No longer ‘gifts’, which you choose without prompting, this situation is like the wedding list, which, while it might have been helpful to avoid getting three toasters, has now become a means of the young couple suggesting very expensive items without qualm.
I found on a Wikipedia article that the shower idea has extended further, until it’s now becoming absurd
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I’ve just been on a Retreat at a place called Karitane. We were only away from Friday evening till four this afternoon; long enough, and well worth doing.
Karitane, but on a rather dull-looking day
Karitane is the birthplace of the Plunket movement. Before Sir Truby King, the founder of the Plunket movement, opened his first hospital, here in Dunedin, in December 1907, he cared for 13 sick, emaciated babies at his own home, a cottage in Karitane. (The Plunket movement is a New Zealand institution: babies have been well cared for, monitored and generally kept in good health as a result of it for around a hundred years.)
I don’t know whether the place we’ve just stayed in was the ‘cottage’ but it was certainly another home that was used for mothers and their unwell babies. I certainly wouldn’t call it a cottage: it’s a long building with some nine or ten rooms all in a row. Originally some of these rooms were actually two rooms – they’ve been opened up to cater for visitors like us. Parallel with the rooms is an equally long closed-in verandah, full of large windows so that heaps of light gets in. Through these windows you get a view of the bay at Karitane – it’s like a second beach next to the main one
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The day held more than just fun playing with the printer.
I learned how to copy a graph from a PDF file, and plunk it into Word.
I wrote more pages of the piece I’m doing on the ethnic makeup of New Zealand, now and in the future. My boss brought back the last similar effort I did, on youth in New Zealand, and with great enthusiasm, showed me where it could be considerably improved. And she was right. And I will improve it. I have started to learn not to treat my first whacks at a topic as masterpieces that cannot be altered. In this office they’ll get altered
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Been an interesting day at work.
Yesterday our printer died. We could almost have cared less, since it’s been a pain every since I’ve been there, and apparently was from the time it was bought. The IT guy thinks it’s cheese and deserves to be grated into little pieces. I tend to agree.
However, when I say it died, I really mean it kept telling me that it had to be rebooted. I presumed this meant turning it on and off, but nope, it wanted to be rebooted. Who knows the mind of a printer when it’s malfunctioning
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I haven't been writing much on Orble just over the last week or so: too much else on my plate, so blogging has had to take a bit of a back seat. Still variety is good for us, eh?
Just came across a site called Treehugger. I don't know whether it has anything to with blokes as such, but it certainly has some interesting stuff on it. It's green-focused, of course, and in the post I picked up on the writer is talking about a house designed by Mihai "Nova" Popa, who may be an artist before he's an architect. Nevertheless he's built a most intriguing house near Bridgehampton, Long Island. It's made out of a demolished church, so the wood is wonderfully stained and glossy
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365 Posts dating from December 2006
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