Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Got out of work about 3ish last night / this morning and went over to pick Michelle up for some late night random driving about. I really, really hate Sunday trading laws in that the supermarkets are closed at like 4am two nights a week, Saturday and Sunday, the two nights I would geniunely want to use a 24 hour supermarket given I tend to work the Saturday and Sunday closes.

We tried about 3-4 different supermarket petrol stations none of which were open and ended up at Texaco (after dropping by the Tesco car park to shout at Rich for telling me the Sainsburys one would be). We then dropped by my McDs and then went off in search of stars. We ended up going as far as Otley but still couldn’t see any. Maybe they aren’t there anymore?

Ok, time for a rant. I’m sick and tired of people almost looking down on me whenever I mention I have a credit card. I actually have 2. And I’m applying for a third one. (There are reasons, I’m planning to cancel one and there are reasons for having two which I’m not going to go into here but ask me if you really want to know).

As soon as I mention “oh, I have a credit card” it’s all “oh well you’re going to end up in loads of debt you won’t be able to pay off.” No, I really won’t. Just because you may be a retard who can’t handle money, doesn’t mean I am. For your information I’ve had a credit card for a year and I’ve done just fine with my repayments thank you. And that is really the only bad side to credit cards, the fact you can get into debt if you’re not careful (even though students get really low credit limits anyway).

So with that in mind, here are the arguments for having credit cards. First of all, and I think this reason makes it silly not to have a credit card. Making purchases online. If you buy something that never arrives or you get ripped off, what are you going to do? Chances are loose your money and feel bad about it. But if you have paid for it on your credit card, your credit card company will refund you. Debit card purchases aren’t protected like this. PayPal’s “buyer insurance” is limited and doesn’t cover most internet purchases.” Your credit card does. Buying things on your credit card is the best fraud protection out there.

Secondly, if you need to buy anything in an emergency you have you’re card.

Thirdly, if you are using your card so you don’t need to carry as much cash around. Therefore if you get mugged they won’t get your cash and you can simply cancel your credit card as soon as you get home, they mail you out a new one and everything is good.

Forthly, as well as giving you protection online it more simply allows you to buy things online. I’ve come across instances where online stores will only take Visa or Mastercard, without one you simply can’t get what you want.

Indeed, to extend that point some highstreet stores won’t take all cards. Lots of places didn’t take my Solo card and just the other day I was in Debenhams who were telling customers trying to pay with a Visa Electron card that they couldn’t accept it. That’s one of the biggest department stores in the UK.

Fifthly, I’ve just applied for a credit card that gives me cash back on everything I buy just for using the card. They are giving me money to use this card. Why would I not want that?

Finally, you get a period of a month or two between spending the money and having to pay for it. That is a month or two, the money you have spent is still sitting in your bank account earning interest.

So, to conclude. I fully understand some (indeed many) people have problems managing money and so should avoid credit cards as they can cause lots of debt. But used wisely, credit cards are amazing things so for those of you who like to preach the evils of credit cards please hold your judgement and take a minute to consider the fact it is you who has the problem managing money, not us.

I love the internet industry. It’s probably the only industry in the world where it can be better to be the new and tiny tech start-up than the massive corporation. Being big means nothing. It didn’t save any of the major search engines from Google kicking their ass. A decade latter and it didn’t save Google from YouTube kicking their ass.

More recently however the response from the established media is just to buy out the new start-ups. There are a million examples of this that I can’t think of but here’s a quick few: Google bought Picasa and Blogger, Yahoo bought Launch, Fox bought MySpace. Those are bad examples as they aren’t really Web 2.0 except MySpace in which case Fox is old media rather than established new media. But I hope you can get the point.

Yahoo are currently in talks to buy Facebook while recently Google closed a deal to buy YouTube. The price was a hefty $1.6 billion adding yet more fuel to the idea that Fox got an absolute bargin when paying only a third of that for MySpace.

Is this a good thing though? I wasn’t big on the idea. I was naive enough to believe YouTube CEO Chad Hurley when he said he wasn’t planning to sell out (I know, I know but I like to believe there are some people out there like myself who are in it for the business and not purely for the money, he seemed like one of them). YouTube was amazing because it so powerful even though it was still an independent and brand new tech start-up (it’s only been around like 18 months or so) and there aren’t really any problems for Google to come in and solve like Fox could have done for MySpace (but haven’t for some reason).

Of course it was a good move for Google – their currently offering, Google Video sucks. It really does. Yeah it’s an ok service but it’s not the type of offering an exciting new tech start-up would roll out. It was the type of offering a large corporation that can leverage it’s existing userbase would roll out. YouTube rolled out the exciting tech start-up style offering, Google just isn’t that company any more.

Last night I got 14 hours in! Well almost, Michelle came round to mine at 6 to pick up her clothes and after that I just kind of lay on my bed and feel alseep. She then came back to wake up up a few hours later. After that I thought I would get a bit more rest then order dinner as I hadn’t eaten. But I just kind of didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Quality night’s sleep!

I’m tired. After my lack of sleep on Sunday night I managed to increase that to 6 hours on Monday night as I got watching a movie. Then last night I tried to get to bed as early as possible but it was still like 11 or something. Reason being I had to be up at 6am this morning for work.

Work was fun though. I wasn’t looking forward to it to be honest, I don’t like breakfast shifts because they have a whole different menu which I’m not 100% on and I just generally prefer main menu. Maybe if I had, had as much experiance on it but then I can manage grill side by myself easily enough on a night whereas Debbie said she hated when she had to do breakfast kitchen by herself.

But when I got there I was pleasently suprised when James suggested I should have a go on front counter. I was quite pleased with this as I was going to start nagging people for this. Ever since Neil showed he can do grill side I’ve needed to up my game a little. I don’t know why I wanted to do it actually as everyone says kitchen is way better and they hate front counter.

It does have some advantages though. It means I will be able to get a bit more job variety, I will be able to mock people who can’t work the tills without fear that I won’t be able to work them either. Finally it makes me a more valuable crew member when there are shortages so I’m less likely to get stuck on dining area.

As with anywhere you work the till system is awful. You can’t actually take anything off once it’s one without a manager’s swipe card so if you put something on and then the customer changes his mind or you put the wrong thing on you’re basically screwed.

However I managed ok, James seemed to think I had done well. I managed to get it spot on which was cool as people can come off tills and be like £20 down or something. I’m not sure how, you get a total, you get the money from the customer, type it into the till how much they have given you and it tells you how much change to give them. Even when I entered the wrong amount I just gave them the right change and it’s all good so as long as you can do basic subtraction it’s not a real problem. Still, I shall reserve judgement until I have worked it more, when we’re busy it’s probably a different story and I can see plenty of places where it can go wrong if you struggle with maths or aren’t paying mega close attention which I am at the moment while I learn but probably won’t be later.

I only worked the breakfast menu on till anyway as it’s easier to work than the main menu and so I could get used to how it works on there first. I might suggest to Liz that I do tills on my closes on Saturday and Sunday when it’s quite although front counter might not be possible as I can’t do front counter close so if there is stuff to do all night on front counter I won’t be able to do that. I could do booth one (drive-thru) though I don’t have anyone around up there for when it all goes wrong.

I got a grand total of 5 hours sleep Sunday night. Why you ask? Well, you probably didn’t ask as most of the people that read this blog already know. But for those who don’t it’s because I was working. I had Saturday Sunday close at work which in the case of Sunday as I previously mentioned was two people down as one simply wasn’t scheduled and the other was Ash who quit.

Danny had talked Zoe into coming in (though she didn’t come in until 7) and Johnny (who didn’t start till 11 and didn’t get in till closer to midnight). So we were already a little understaffed due to the delayed start times. Because of this I didn’t get chance to take a grill off because there was only me in the kitchen and so what normally would have taken place at 8-9ish (along with the other grill at 12:10-12:15), both grills were still on until 12:30.

About 11ish or something Zoe discovered that Becky’s car had been broken into and so she was quite shaken by this and ended up going home. This left us in the interesting situation that none of the closers we had working knew how to do front closer close so we were going to have to wait for Danny to finish his paperwork to get it done.

Kitchen close managed to get done alright including everything getting pulled and Hannah and Johnny blitzed DA although by this time it was like 3am already and then disaster struck again. The bag that the grease traps had been emptied into exploded on it’s way to the bin covering the koral in grease. Here is an interesting fact. When you have that much grease solidifying it takes on a quality much like some form of sticky sand that is almost impossible to get off.

So that took about an hour to clean up while Hannah and Danny battled with front counter and by the time everything was done it was 5am. Which is the latest close I have ever done and indeed the equal latest close I have ever heard of – the last nightmare close was short staff and millions of customers that resulted in them getting out at 5 and indeed still being outside when Rob turned up to do the open. That too was Danny’s close. I felt sorry for Danny as he always seems to get the nightmare shifts which seems quite unfair given he is the newest shift runner and is having to learn everything on his feat.

So yeah I ended up getting to bed at 6am and getting up at 11 to grab a shower before heading back to uni to make my first lecture. Next week’s Saturday Sunday closes aren’t going to be that bad right?

I felt I needed a seperate post for this as it deserves the attention. Tonight is the Seether gig. The Seether gig that I will not be going to because I have to work. I’m annoyed at wasting a £10 ticket though even more so that I won’t be able to see Seether as they are an awesome band and I bed they are wicked live.

I bought my ticket ages ago, like 2 months ago. Didn’t think I would still be working at McD’s by this time so I didn’t rush straight in to book the time off. Besides, I wouldn’t be working late on Sunday’s anyway as I would have uni in the morning.

Got to uni, got my timetable, turned out I could work closes so I went to book the time off. However, James Martin who does the schedule was going away for two weeks so had done the schedules 4 weeks in advance. The very last today of which he had done to is guess what – today of course. The schedule for today was finalised over a month go or something.

So as soon as I found out I was working that Sunday I arranged cover by swapping shifts with Johnny – I was going to do his Saturday close and he was going to do my Sunday close. Then last week I found out I had the Saturday close as well so I lost my cover. By the time I managed to contact Johnny and sort it all out and was back in work again it was yesterday.

So now I had like 24 hours and was still down to work today. Luckily Zoe and Johnny weren’t working today so if I could talk one of them into doing the close it would all be ok. Until Danny looks down the schedule to notice that there are only 4 people scheduled (there should be 5). He talks Zoe into doing the close so it’s all good right?

Except that one of the people on the closing team is Ash – Ash who turned up yesterday and announced that he was resigning with immediate effect. Yet again we were one short on the closing team which Johnny is now filling in and thereby leaving no one left to cover.

Tell me that is not a conspiracy. Schedule in advanced, yeah ok so that happened. Working both weekend closes even though I’m a full time student. Ok, by itself maybe that could happen too. Not enough people being scheduled on the close? Haven’t seen that one before. One of those things happening I could accept, 2 well that’s really bad luck. 3 of them? That’s conspiracy territory. Now add that to the fact Ash quit yesterday and isn’t going to be working the notice period he is required to give. Seriously, give me a break here.

I could go on. How about the fact that because I’m still working at Colton Mill I am crashing at home home rather than at uni and therefore am not around to pass the ticket on to someone else who could use it.

The universe owes me some serious positive karma.

Hmm, I’m using the desktop at home to write so I’m using Beonex. I used to love this browser as it was my first escape from Internet Explorer and I still do although there are things that annoy me now I am so used to using Firefox and the two do things a little differently.

Anyway, I’m working this weekend, I did a close last night and I have another one night. While I can’t say I’m looking forward to it massively, I quite enjoyed last night. I have another 3 shifts next week though Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday (the weekend being closes) as well as doing VSA on Thursday and Friday and working for SoC on Thursday. So I’m working 5 days next week on top of my full time university degree.

It is bringing the money in though which is always welcome as I really want my new laptop now. With all this traveling around for work and such I really want something I can bring home and just connect up to the net and continue with all my work, code, emails, etc.

It’s looking like it’s going to cost like £1,000 though so I really need to dig into my finances sometime this week and see how everything is going.

Did my first ISS appointment today. Consisted of ringing ISS up after my appointment disappeared, they said someone had forgotten to put the appointment on and put it back on. I then turned up on time, nobody answered the door. Phoned Victoria, she said it was fixed. 4 minutes, not bad at all.

Ok so I had an DivX file I wanted to to take the audio from. It can’t be that hard to do right?

Well Premiere can’t deal with DivX. Indeed nothing can deal with DivX. None of the conversion software seems to be able to. The only thing that could out of all things was Windows Movie Maker. So I imported it into there and exported it as a WMV file.

I then imported this into the Windows Media Stream Editor so that I could convert it into an audio file. This managed to convert it into a WMA file. I then imported this into Premiere. Premiere conformed it so that it could be edited in the timeline and by the time it was done the file had been re-arranged and randomly restarted the whole audio at points (for example at 3 minutes in it jumped back to the start – but it didn’t jump, it was still playing the file, it’s just the file at this point was the same as the start even though the original file was different if that makes sense. Basically instead of it playing 1, 2, 3, etc it would play 1, 1, 2, 1, and so on).

It as weird that it did this as it plays fine when you just open the file in Windows Media Player. So I took the file into Audio Conversion Wizard. Which crashed the first time I tried to convert it. I then went through again and altered some settings and exported it as a WAV file.

Ok so I now have a standard WAV file that I imported into Premiere. That so far doesn’t seem to be jumping back to the start. I then go through the file splitting into sections I want. Once I have done this I have to, section by section, copy and paste that section into a different timeline and export it as a WAV.

Done that, now it’s a case of going through the songs one by one and working out what song it is so I can rename the file appropriately. The audio files are also hidiously quite. So after all this what do I have? A bunch of MP3s (as I originally wanted them) but they are too quiet and only have artist details in the ID3 tags – no track numbers or titles. Brilliant. And that is presuming Audio Conversation Wizard which is currently converting them from WAV to MP3 completes without problems.