work

here’s a thing of use from MSN. if you are a young’un or have young’uns and you want to use the interwebular safely then go there and see. or something.

it’s 100 days until the olympics. here is Beth Tweddle a UK olympic team person and she won some medal at the last olympics. (i know as much about sport as i do about flowers)

i had a media training thing at work today which was very funny.
here is me (I?) doing an appalling pretend TV interview.
i’ve got my eyes closed in this picture. i’m probably trying to block the whole thing from my mind.
you’ll be relieved to know that i’ve decided to stick to blogging rather than becoming a TV presenter.

remember this ? well it ended up in a magazine like this (full page on the left and blown up on the right):

i’ve become nothing more than a commodity. a brand to be bought and sold on ebay. there’ll be taxidermists knocking at my door next.

to lighten the mood, here is a picture of walter showing us how firemen put out fires (by blowing on them).
with his headset telephone he looks like he could be a contender for the next pop idol.

here is john outside my office drinking from a giant water bottle. he’s been constantly thirsty ever since he got bitten by that foaming-mouthed dog a few weeks ago.

here’s the team having a conference call in my office -harry, pete and john. the other participants are down my phone.

today, hopefully, i shall be dining up here at lunch time. i’m really hoping the sky will stay as clear and blue as it is right now. unlikely though i think.

so no updates til this evening again. how did you get on with your pancakes by the way ?

it was a big awards night for the industry i work in last night. my company won two awards, but the real highlight for me was the triangular arctic-roll chocolate cake. i wasn’t the only one who was impressed

i discovered that if you stuck your face against the transparent plastic award you could achieve a highly upleasant effect. It also make an attractive dagger.

i gave a talk this afternoon as part of a regulatory conference at the Royal Institute of Great Briitian. It’s an amazing place bursting full of historical science.
the lecture hall we were in was where faraday first demonstrated electricity (around the mid 1800s). it’s also where they do those christmas lectures you see on TV at … er … christmas.
Faraday’s table (the lecturing desk) has little gas pipes either side of the main desk for bunsen burners (which i didn’t use).
and i got to stand and wave my arms around and point at photos i’d taken of street cleaning vehicle to explain the progress of Broadband Internet access in the UK. how bizarre/fantastic is that !

in the world of work it’s possible to collect a large number of complimentary pens. occasionally you’ll go to a meeting and they’ll also provide some paper. even less occasionally you’ll be furnished with gratuitous confectionary.
i went to a meeting earlier today, and in addition to free wi-fi access the venue provided little mint sweets which looked just like those Pez sweets which were very popular when i was a little girl.
i only wished i had a funny plastic dispenser thing. perhaps next year they’ll provide the dispensers as well. hopefully in the shape of the people who were running the meeting.

the modern office is a delicate equilibrium. things are created and destroyed following a careful and seemingly endless pattern.
letters are written on word processors, printed out, put in envelopes, posted, opened, read and destroyed, and/or filed, but whatever, mostly eventually land filled.
each piece of equipment in the office has its nemesis. for the printer, it’s legion: the dustbin, the shredder, the recycling bag etc.
for the stapler it’s the staple remover (seen here). it could be argued the remover is only needed when mistakes are made.
but i say removing staples is just part of the process.

i love my stapler. it’s grip is great. and you can store it vertically on its nose.

it’s 4am and i’m sitting here working. the early bird catches the worm. but i think even the worms are still asleep.
it’s kezia’s birthday today and i’ve got a ton of work to do so this seemed the best plan. we’ll see …

i was working from home today and to my surprise a man arrived at my window.
why was it a surprise you ask ? well, it’s because my office at home is upstairs.
how can he hear my thoughts you ask again ? i cannot answer that question without revealing secrets, sorry
meanwhile, outside my house there was loud dance music and a familiar flashing orange light. i looked again and the man outside my window was in a basket.
“my Lord”, i cried, (displaying a rare use of a capital letter) and ran outside with esther and kezia to show them the mobile disco which had pulled up outside our house. the exact same sort i had seen yesterday.

this picture, taken outside our front door, appeals to me from a gravitational pull point of view. the man (who is actually cleaning the street lights and checking the bulbs despite none of them being broken) is dangling over the pavement whilst his van is parked on the other side of the street. he’s chosen to hover over some parked cars for dramatic effect.
i may tell you a bit more about street lightbulbs in a moment … (and so i did)

here is harry looking mouse-like with his fan behind him.

i was lucky enough to be invited to an event in London Aquarium hosted by BT. There were lots of current and ex-colleagues there and i really enjoyed the evening.
I got lost looking for the toilets at one point and ended up wandering around the museum on my own which was very bizarre. just me, the fish and a couple of turtles.


here is a man in with the sharks:

… tedious beyond belief.
but life is like that sometimes and days like this are rare.
highlight of the day was someone describing something as ‘same meat, different gravy’. i chuckled, but no one else did.

there was more dangling today. walter was so excited by what was going on that he pointed at john and laughed

nerd alert – switch off now if you aren’t interested in telecoms regulation …
i’ve noticed that a number of people have ended up at this site looking for the Oftel / Ofcom Review of the retail leased lines, symmetric broadband origination and wholesale trunk segments markets. How disappointed they would have been to end up here.
So, as a service to the telecommunications industry, here is a link to the main document. It seems to have got lost on the Ofcom site. I’ll have a word with their webman and see what happens.
the same people might also be interested in the Ofcom broadband review and the discontinuation notices