Be Excellent To Each Other

The noise of snow ploughs is getting old fast.

I might nip down to the lobby and get another plate of bacon.

Bacon in the lobby? What kind of lobby is this?

Film set?

Ha! No.

This hotel munges lobby, bar, breakfast room and seating area into one space.

Just changed tariffs with Npower to the cheapest. It was relatively painless apart from listening to someone read crap off a screen at me as robotically as they could muster.

Does anyone know anything about finding an IFA to see about switching to a cheaper mortgage? How simple is it and where's best to look? Would I be an idiot to just march into my bank (who isn't my current mortgage provider) and see what they could do since they've been bothering me about it for a while?

I've just done this. Can give you the contact details for my mortgage broker if you want. He's based in Nottingham and is independent.

What's the process - have a meeting, they give you a number of different mortgage providers and advise on the cheapest and then they do all the work? How does the IFA get paid?

PM incoming

We found an IFA to get our mortgage by googling. It's generally been easy enough though the guy is difficult to get hold of. Not sure how much time and effort we've saved overall, or that it's been worth the £150 we paid.

I don't really know how they can write that article without referencing the fact that it says 'once opened, keep refrigerated' on the side of the bottle.

There was an office debate about this today. As the dust settled, we decided that everyone was wrong and we shouldn't discuss it any more. Germophobia is shockingly common!

Oxford Mail: Bürger angry over burgers



Balliol. Pah.

Davpaz - why does it take these Uni PC's so long to work?! Sort it out!

Which uni?

Does it matter? Chop chop, get it fixed IT monkey

Ok, I rebooted the server Try it now.

What server

SVFMLSERVER01, or course

What does it do?

Carries stuff to the altar

Serves.

Passes the butter.

NTU - thank you!

De nada

https://www.aenorminiatures.com/en/blog ... -pre-order


Ooooh yes

There is something charmingly British about the signs at Cambridge station telling you it is the home of Anglia Ruskin University.

Are you in Cambridge today? I'm in Cambridge.

No, took the train from York to King's Cross this morning and it passed slowly through it. Seeing Ely Cathedral rise from the fog was a pretty impressive sight.

The monkey pupet in Mrs Doubtfire is called Kovacs

Seems legit

This evening's ferry into Douglas docked in a slightly unusual manner..... (Not my video, being shared a lot on Facebook amongst IOM-ers.)

This one is the main freight carrier as well, (there's also a fastcraft that's more for people and cars with less freight), so hopefully it won't be out of action for too long or indeed at all, otherwise there'll be riots at Tesco for bog rolls.

(They can and do draft in other vessels if required of course, as the Ben can't be in operation 100% of the time, but when it gets knocked out of action we can have a day or two where certain shelves start to look a bit bare.)

It's very windy here this evening, and it's a big high-sided boat, but even so, crashing the thing is a bit pants.

Damn!

Whoops.

'Hey Kern, could you summarise your paper covering a variety of complex issues and actions into two slides?'

Gah. I hate Powerpoint. Other than using it to show charts or maps, I much prefer to talk and let people read the summaries and backing notes later. I think I might write it in purple Comic Sans.

I get a lot of emails at work from Indian based web development companies saying that they can increase our Google ranking or make us a completely new website. They all come from Gmail addresses and one day, I'm going to reply to one to start up a conversation to see exactly what they're offering.

All of my academic Powerpoints consisted of full screen pictures with small title text and me wittering about them for up to 5 minutes per slide. Screw letting people read

I can never understand people's desire to project a whole block of text onto a screen and then read it out. A lot of it is probably a confidence thing, admittedly but it's still something that makes me wonder why people never seek to do something different. I'm just taking this task as a summary exercise.

Admittedly, I learned public speaking by only having a musket, some hardtack, and my wits to work with for props so I'm aware I approach things differently.

Yup.

I sometimes put important words on the screen, but normally it was a big photo and a title, and then ME ME ME LOOK AT ME

I helps being... you, I guess.

But yeah. Confidence and a maxed out bullshit bar always works for me.

The promise of food afterwards helps too.

Our sales guys actually had us convert all the marketing PDFs into PowerPoint. Not reworking the content so it works as a presentation, just reformatting them all to fit on landscape slides. They'd only have to read all the content out anyway as none of them actually know our products well enough.

Plus our guys who write the content seem to think everything can just be made into bullet points.

I was supposed to do a presentation for my interview for this job and my last job but I turned up on the day, bold as brass without one.

Both times, when they asked if I needed a laptop for my presentation I told them that I didn't. I explained that having them look at a presentation means that they won't be looking at me and therefore, not buying into me. If nothing else, it makes me memorable.

I got both jobs.




In hindsight, I should have done a presentation.

Good way of putting it.



For an example, I refer the honourable gentleman to his previous posting

I bring a packet of biscuits/jug or bottle of water and cups* on to the table and say that i wanted one so i thought I'd share. This genetates a reciprical obligation so they pay attention to me as I drop my science on those assembled.

*Turn heat up in room 15 mins beforehand and turn down before meeting starts.

I like to think this had nothing to do with your reenactment, but was a technique you learnt whilst presenting financial forecasting data to the CFO or something.

Happy valentine's!

Giphy "beating heart":
http://media2.giphy.com/media/eHRsVnabguXTi/giphy-loop.mp4

Happy Valentines Day beexers (if it's your sorta thing)