Be Excellent To Each Other

Yay?

Going to buy a new TV tonight! A 42" Sony Bravia Smart TV, if you're into vague details. I don't know anything else about it really but it seemed like the best buy available to me immediately.

Yay for TV shopping with someone even more technologically blind than me!

We bought a 40 inch Bravia a couple of years ago and have been really happy with it. We don't use the smart functions too much purely because the PS3 does all the same stuff (indeed the interface and location of all the functions is in exactly the same place!) but my parents have the 32 inch variant and being able to call up YouTube or iPlayer at their house is really handy. The downside of the model we've got is that it's not wireless by default and you need to buy a proprietary dongle which was pretty pricey (because of course it was). Not a problem for us because the TVs within cable distance of the router but we had to buy the over-priced dongle thing for my parents.

Nice one Kern, did you find out what it was for? I got a little Miss Sunshine award at work just before Christmas.

Well done Cras, that's awesome news and very well deserved. Hope you celebrated.

Finding out tomorrow. Suppose I ought to polish my shoes.
Right now, all I can think about is:

Pay rise and bonus announcement day at my company today. Having only been here since July I was pre-warned I wouldn't get a payrise at all but I'd get some kind of bonus. Having come from a public sector background where 50p and a kick in the baws was reason to be grateful I had no real preconceptions and can only hope I hid my amazement when they gave me a frankly stupid amount of cash.

Amusingly, due to weird budgetary stuff, there's a chance this could be the highest bonus I'll ever get here so, although it's partially intended to encourage you to stay with the company long term, it could be viewed as incentive to only stay long enough to get your first bonus and then fuck off again.

Hooray!

Also, can you lend me a grand?

Well done. But 'pre-warned'? Get to fuck.

Congrats Bamba.

I won the 'One Team' award for my frantic work in November and December co-ordinating the production of 60 or so impact assessments (and editing them, and sending them back etc) for the budget process! Huzzah! Go One Team!

Congrats! Next year you'll have adjusted those preconceptions and will rage quit when you get offered a piffling amount again

That does seem to be the deal, I genuinely think of a bonus as being 'free money' but other people here apparently take it all very seriously.

As for the 'pre-warned' thing; it was just a comment from my boss that I wouldn't likely get anything because people aren't eligible for a payrise until they've been here for a year. Nothing's confirmed until it all comes down from on high today but he just wanted to let me know how it all works so I knew what to expect.

I think British Nervoso was more bothered about the 'pre' bit... I think.

Nice work!

Quite. A warning comes before the fact anyway. The pre part is redundant. Unless you had a pre-warning to alert you to the warning that was coming your way...

Been well out of the loop mate but fuck me, that's a glorious sight to see!

Looks like his Mum.

The software application that a friend and I have been working on for the last two years has just passed the final stages of compliance testing with the USA's governmental body for the information standards related to it, so now we can roll it out across the entire US. Woo!

*narrows eyes* Is this something for the NSA?

Is that FISMA? I had a brief run-in with that a few years back and it was a right old pain in the behind.

Give it a rest. No one cares about it.

oooh, well remembered.

Facebook Cleek!

First solid shit in a week.

Not much of a yay. But really makes me feel better.

Its Friday so this means that when I'm up with my son tomorrow morning between 3-4am, I don't have to get up again at 5.30am for work and can sleep in.

My daughter had a horrible night last night so I'm fully expecting to sleep in her room tonight. I echo your sentiment here.

Absolutely wonderful to hear that he's doing so well.

Every night is like this for us, he wakes up with wind. Last night he woke at 12 am and by the time I had calmed him down, made and given him a bottle it was 1.30am

Then he was up again at 4.30am!

My first two (aged 15 and 13 now) were like that, late night music TV was my friend, it was pretty much the only way to soothe them back to sleep.

Malc

I feel for you Asfish. I don't doubt that I'm extremely lucky that my daughter has had a lot of good nights so hopefully your bad nights won't last too long.

I've always wondered what people did in the days before mobile internet during those late nights, and thanks to Malc... Now I know.

Yeah, but what did they do before Cable/satelite TV?

Malc

Whiskey in the milk.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it goes...

Malc

Brandy.

My brother draws cartoons and he's got a 3 panel strip in next weeks Kerrang. It's quite a big deal by all accounts.

Check it out if you get chance.

Is it on News Stand?

Or a meringue?

I don't know. I would ask him but I doubt he'd know either.

My comment tying in to Trooper's from earlier in the week about how print media is dead has fallen flat.

What a fool I look now!

We have a Brabantia red 30 litre bin in our Kitchen

We must have paid pushing £100 as it came from John Lewis and was purchased with wedding present vouchers around 4 years ago.

On Friday my wife said that the pedal no longer opened the lid, a quick look found that a plastic loop had broken, so I looked on line for spares.

Couldn't find what I wanted so I called them and explained the issue.

The guy asked me to send pictures via email and is shipping us a brand new bin for nothing!

Never asked for proof of purchase or anything.

I really need to do this. Our bin's closing mechanism broke about two years ago and we've been using a cupcake stand to hold it down ever since!

This is the worst use the Yay thread has ever been put to.

…just to annoy Cras…

I've had a couple of new lids off Brabantia for gratis in the past. The only other company I know which replaces stuff for free like that are Oakley, who gave me a free set of M frames when one of my dogs ate them!

I hold mine shut with a roll of duct tape.

I've had free wooden knitting needle tips sent to me in the past when I have sat on them and broken them, and then once when I lost them.

I asked the Ducti people that made my wallet to send me a recipt that I could give to my insurers after I left mine on a plane, and when I ordered a new wallet they remembered and sent me a free chain thing to hook it to my trousers, which I thought was cute.

Oh that's

after our car accident Maxicosi sent us a completely new child seat for free
they only asked for a detailed description of our accident and the old seat so they could examine it to see how it had held up

I've just finished paying my 5-year loan off, which is the equivalent of getting a 4k pay rise.

That's quite nice.

Sweet!