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Accidentally . . .

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I applied for another job last week! It was entirely by accident. I have been casually looking for another job for a few weeks now. A previous post explains some of the reasons. I visited the “Indeed” website and entered the search criteria for the particular type of job I was looking for. I spotted one at the local Sainsbury’s which seemed quite interesting. There were no details regarding hours or pay rates, but I thought that was because I had not logged into my Indeed account.

I clicked the “Sign in” button, but it would not let me sign in and asked me to create a profile. I’ve not used the site since getting my current job, and I assumed that my account had expired. I began to enter the details it was asking for. Some of the questions I remembered from the last time, the general ones “Name”, “Address”, “DoB” that kind of thing. But some seemed a little more direct “Why Do you want this job?” was one of the questions, which I thought was a little odd.

I finished entering the required details and pressed the save/submit button. A few seconds later, I received an email notification which I took to be a confirmation. I read a few more job descriptions and then left the site. A quick flick through my emails and a surprise, surprise … there was an email from … the Local Sainsbury’s! It was thanking me for my interest in ‘applying‘ for the position and advised me that I would hear from them soon if I was successful in getting an interview. I could not believe it, I had actually applied for the job!

Fast forward 30 minutes and another email arrives congratulating me on my success and inviting me to select the time I would like for my interview.

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It’s now Friday morning and I’m pacing up and down the street next to the supermarket, passing time before my interview start time. I’m chattering away to myself, practising what I was going to say to the questions I may be asked. I was getting some funny looks even though I had a pair of earphones and was looking at my phone.

About five minutes before my allotted time I entered the store and spoke to someone at the customer service desk. I was shown to a room and told that the manager would be with me soon. She arrived very quickly and we went through a few legal details. She then explained the hours. It was evenings on two of the days I could not do. We both agreed that it was pointless to continue and we shook hands and thanked each other.

I left feeling a bit dejected but also a bit relieved. It had been a long time since I had a proper interview. Even though it was ‘short and sweet‘ I felt I had achieved something. There would not be as many self-doubt nerves the next time.

A bit of a nightmare . . .

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I opened up my laptop this morning as I had a couple of things I needed to do before R*** came home. To my total surprise and annoyance, there was that little box at the bottom right of my screen, telling me that my computer needs to restart to complete the update process. I thought it sensible to do it straight away. After about 10 minutes, the system began to start-up again. But what was that? A pop-up message telling me that my profile had failed to install and was advising me to sign out. This was duly done and the start-up continued. My laptop is always slow to start so I wasn’t worried.

That is when the trouble started. My desktop screen had changed. All my usual icons had gone, only to be replaced with some random ones. It actually made to screen less cluttered which is not a bad thing. I then had to check that a document had been scanned and I needed to print it. This is when the real nightmare began. All the documents I had saved seemed to be missing. Everything for the funding review had gone! Months and months of work were nowhere to be found!

I headed straight to Google, but that produced nothing helpful. After about an hour of frantically pulling out what little hair I have, I decided to search for one of the documents. To my amazement, they were still on my machine, only in a TEMP folder. It seems that when the profile failed, any saved stuff was moved into this temporary folder. All I now needed to do was to move the files back into the main part of the storage area. This is going to take some time.

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After a lot more hours on Mr Google things are still not right, but better than first thing. I’m not holding my breath that everything will get back to ‘normal’, this is Windows after all.

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I continued with the Googling and profane language when some of the basic apps just wouldn’t work. then hidden on one of the Microsoft ‘help’ pages I spotted something. It appears that I was signed into my machine with a temporary login. The puzzled look on my face got more and more contorted as I scrambled about looking for my normal login. I found it and signed in using this profile, and everything opened up as normal. Everything I had lost was back in the correct place.

I have to admit that the foul language did not lesson very quickly and I was still more than a little angry about the whole experience, but all is good again (until the next time!)

It’s a mystery …

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Well, I think it’s unnerving as well as a mystery. Usually, as a matter of courtesy, when somebody decides to follow me, I will take a look at their blog/site to see if it is something that may interest me. A few weeks ago, a ‘person‘ (called @mmcadmintx) followed me. I clicked on the name and WordPress tells me that the site cannot be found. the only thing that comes up their Gravatar profile. So ‘taking my bat and ball home’ I removed the follower and thought that was that. But no! Three days later, a notification pops up telling me that ‘mmcadmintx‘ is now following me. Another trip to the People setting and another removal takes place. Again, within three to four days, this follower is back. I was starting to get a little concerned about who this persistent ‘person’ was and what if anything did I need to do about it.

I posted a support request on the WordPress Forum to see if they could come up with any ideas. They basically told me that their domain had probably expired and just to ignore them. Apparently, there is no facility to ‘block’ anyone who wants to read a post. I did a few Googles on the name and eventually came up with “http://www.momoneyclues.com” as the source of the follower. It turns out that it is/was a help site for people who had money problems. The site doesn’t look like it is still in use as when I put the URL into a browser, I end up at a site to buy cheap domain names. So I’ll remove the site from my follow list and take it from there.

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It bothers me a little that anyone can follow a blog, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. WordPress doesn’t think that it is an issue. My site is public so the public and the person that follows is part of the public. Maybe it is time to have a facility to block fake followers or followers we do not want.

Nearly there and other things …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It’s painting time. Eldest son came around to do the ceiling as Mrs H thought I would struggle. I’m not sure if she thought I was too short or too old. He is about 5′ 7″ and I’m 5′ 4″. I don’t think it was a height issue. There was huge amount to cover, but we got the undercoat done in one day.

The following day, I cracked on with the top coat on the walls. We are using the same neutral colour that we have throughout the house. It’s a colour called “Natural Hessian” and it’s a bit like a marriage between magnolia and beige. It looks awful when being applied, but it improves vastly as it dries. The picture doesn’t really do it justice. I just need to give the main wall another coat, as it has dried a little patchy where I have done the cutting in.

Now all that is needed, is the new flooring and the electrics to be sorted. When the electrician came to connect the new roof lights, he did some testing so he could sign off the work. He then found some issue with the house electrics. He thinks it is something to do with the ‘zoning’ in the fuse box. So he is coming back in the middle of March to sort that out. Meanwhile, we had booked the flooring guy to come next week to fit the new floor and as the electrician may have to lift some floorboards, having a new floor would be another issue. And so the saga continues.

Recently, I have revisited the online chat rooms that I used to use a few years ago. The site is supposed to be a ship, with lots of decks and rooms. There are people who monitor what is going on, so in theory, it is pretty much safe. I stopped about three five years ago as I was getting bored with it. Then there were issues with some of the chatters who were not as pleasant as they should be. However, about a month ago I signed up again, with a different profile and username just to see if anything had changed. Guess what? I found myself getting back into the swing of it. Only problem was that I was now a very basic user with limited access to the main site. You have to progress through the levels by chatting more. Last, when I changed my browser and tried to login to the chat room, the browser had remembered my old login and I was now using my old profile, that had 11 years experience. I was back at a quite high level.

I’m not sure how long it will last, but for the time being it’s all well.