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Waste ! ! !

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Medical Centre

Back in the middle of September, I received a text message from my GP’s surgery. It was an invite to book a Covid 19 booster jab. Because of my age, I had become eligible for the “Autumn Booster” jab. The date they had offered was not a particularly good date for us for a number of reasons. However, as I had an appointment a day or two after receiving the text, I was able to make a different appointment.

COVID-19

At the beginning of October, another text message appeared. This time, it was from the NHS, inviting me to book an appointment for the booster jab. I checked with the GP’s surgery and they told me that I was booked with them and it was on my medical record. So I left it at that making the assumption that there had been some kind of crossover delay or something.

This morning, the Royal Mail delivered a letter. It was from the NHS reminding me to book my booster jab, and explaining all the problems that ‘could’ occur should I fail to take advantage of the booster.

It seems to be such a waste of valuable Health Service resources to issue an invite and a reminder for something that is already booked. It’s not the first time this has happened. Last year I received an invite and reminder from the NHS about the annual flu jab, that I was entitled to. This was two weeks after I received the flu jab. I’m having the flu one today so will be looking out for messages and letters in the coming weeks.

Rant over !!!

“Jab Done” …

/ Tony / 3 Comments

I had my first Covid-19 jab yesterday. I had to go the a mass vaccination centre at Askham Bar Park & Ride car park, near York. I have to say it was an extremely well managed operation. There were signs on the A64, about a mile from the Park & Ride junction and once off the main road there were numerous signs showing the way. That, coupled with many officials directing cars made it one of the easiest things I had done.

Mass Vaccination Centre

Cars were parked with an empty bay separating each one. I was asked to wait in my car, and someone would come and tell me were to go. I was early by just 25 minutes and I told them I was not in any rush and didn’t want to queue jump. They told me that it wasn’t too busy and I could go straight in. Once in the centre, I queued along with the others for about 10 minutes before entering the ‘Vaccination Clinic’.

I was told to take a seat, whilst a member of the local Fire Service took my details. I had a list of my medications and dates of both my flu jab and last INR test. The doctor seemed a little reluctant at first, as he felt it would have been better if I had taken my last test last week. However I explained that if I had a problem, I could get an emergency INR test done the following day. I had the jab, waited in the car for 15 minutes and that was it. My second one is due on the 12th of May and the only side effect (and I’m not even sure it is a side effect) is a slight headache this morning.

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I noticed when I started WordPress up earlier in the week, that WordPress seemed to be a promoting a Podcasting service called Anchor.fm. After a bit of research, it seems that this is one of the biggest podcasting services around and it’s ‘owned’ by Spotify. From what I understand, it is only recently that WordPress.com has started using the service.

I have often wondered about doing some kind of podcast, but a couple of things have stopped me. Namely not knowing what to ‘cast’ about and the fact that I know what I sound like. I don’t like the sound of my own voice sometimes. There is a built in voice that will read text and convert it to audio. The downside is that the built-in voice is American as you would expect. I have tried this new service, and succeeded in converting one of my posts into an audio post (now deleted). It worked quite well, I thought but it sounded a little weird with the accent. I may have to give it another go using my own voice.

Giving it another go …

/ Tony / 4 Comments

I have this feeling that the Classic Editor my soon be on it’s way out.

Given that thought, I’m determined to have another crack at mastering this Block Editor. The issue I have is the formatting of images. I prefer to have my images either left or right aligned with the text wrapping justified at the side of the image. The only way that I have found to do this, is to insert the image before I start to write the accompanying text. This not the way I am used to. Often as I’m writing, I get the inspiration to add an image. I suppose, if I wish to use the Block Editor, I will have to think about images first.

Now, when you look at this post with it’s aligned random images, you can see another issue. The top of the images do not appear to align with the top of the text, which looks rather odd as you can see in the first image. .

Another issue is that there does not seem to be a way to remove the caption area from below the image. For most of my posts, the image is there to add a touch of personality to the post. I rarely need to add an attribution or a description of the image.

However, I’m beginning (slightly) to get to like parts of this editor. The posts do look reasonable on a tablet and a phone. I’m now wondering if there is any way to change the default font. I can see that there are a variety of font sizes available but not sure about font type. Need to do further digging.

A bit of a quandary …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

For a while now, I have been considering changing the theme for this blog. The reason it’s taking time, is that I don’t know what I want. I have looked at a few themes recently but nothing really jumps out at me. I currently use the Karuna theme and previous to that I had the Twenty Twelve theme. I did like that one and I quite like the Twenty Sixteen. What I need is a theme that is basically text based with a few images per post.

I’ve narrowed it down to five at the moment and those are Elegant Grunge, Notepad, Ocean Mist, Pilcrow and Twenty Ten. Elegant Grunge seems to be leading at the moment with Twenty Ten as a close second. Watch this space!

A good deal …

/ Tony / 2 Comments

I have been thinking about changing my mobile supplier for a while now. I’m with Three and have been for a good few years. My most recent contract, was a 12 month deal with 8gb of data and unlimited text and calls for £10.27 a month. The contract formally ended towards the end of last month, so I was looking around the deals that were available to see if I could get a better one.

I came across an advert for a company called TalkMobile and the deal there were offering was, again a 12 month contract with 9gb of data and unlimited text and calls for £9 a month. They were also give the 1st 3 months at £4.50 a month. this worked out at a saving of £28.50 in the first year. It sounded a great deal and all I needed to do was get PAC (Porting Authorisation Code ) from Three and I could keep my same number.

The code was duly requested and I was all ready to change companies. However, within a couple of hours, I got a text message from Three which asked me to get in touch to talk about what they could do to ‘keep me on board’ as they said.

What followed was one of those ‘web-chat’ meetings (which I prefer). The operator wanted to know why, after all these years, was I looking to change? I explained that I wanted a cheaper deal. I explained the contract I had been looking at and asked the question “Can you equal or better that deal?” Very quickly, he came back with two offerings. The 1st was a 12 month contract with unlimited text and calls and 12gb of data for £8.00 a month. Or a similar contract with only 4gb of data for £5.00 a month. Success!

I decided that the 1st option was the best and I agreed. It was explained that when the paper version of the contract came through, It would show a monthly charge of £26.00, but would also show ‘recurring discounts’ of £8.00 and £10.00 in the final details. The new contact doesn’t start until the end of this month as it was explained that I was now into a new month and should have contacted them the week before. But that’s not a problem, so I’m one ‘happy bunny’ as they say.

Wasn’t expecting that …

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I got a text message from my boss, who is in Mexico at the moment for their annual holiday. The text said that she had received a ‘picture message’ from me, but could not open it. I quickly checked my phone, but I hadn’t sent a picture message to anyone, which I explained. It was then I noticed that there was an extra charge of £3.84 on my next bill. Very puzzling!

I went on to the providers website, but could find no nothing to say what the charge was for, until I got my next bill. The online ‘chat support’ was available, so I sent a message, basically asking questions: 1) who sent the picture and 2) what was the charge for.

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I had a very informative ‘chat’ with someone using the alias ‘Zahir’. He explained that I had sent an MMS message to eight of my contacts on the 1st January. I disputed this and explained that I had only sent a text stating “Happy New Year” to a group of contacts. He then informed me, that a group text, with my provider is sent as a text to the first in the list, then as a picture message to the rest. The picture being charged at £0.55 per message. It was then that I vaguely remembered being told this before. I thanked Zahir (or whatever his real name was) and quickly closed the call.

**Note to self: NO MORE group text messages !

How did it look ?

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     Well the text handling did what I had hoped for. I was able indent the first line, no problems (someone has since advised that all I need to do in Writer is hit the spacebar five times). Paragraph indentation worked well, but will I use it ? Not sure. Inserting a single image was not really a problem, except for the sizing issue. I understand that the image style I chose was the problem with space. I chose a random style that had a part mirror image at the bottom. What it does is creates another image, inverted and fades it. So basically it was one image on top of the other. There also seemed to be no way to add tags easily. Writer does have a plugin, which does it in a round about way. It’s not perfect, but it’s there. I miss the Writer preview function and the ability to write in the blog format, which is a  really useful feature.

     I also found that I could upload the whole document to my WordPress blog, but I usually cross-post to Blogger, which did not seem to allow me to use images. Writer does not have this problem. So, for the immediate future, it looks like I will stick to Writer.

Back to work ….

/ Tony / 1 Comment

   The rest of Sunday went quite well. Youngest came back in a good mood. It sounds like he had had a good time. Eldest called, but I’m not sure he knew what day it was. Tried to ring Mrs H, but forgot she was working.

   Then it was work !!!!! D*** is on holiday for a week, so it was up to K**** to cover some of his work. It’s not fair really, as P*** is the supervisor, and it should be him that runs the show. Still K**** is the better of the two. It’s just a shame she does not get paid for what she does. Still having some issues with some of the routines and procedures. Certain people, think they know what they are doing. I think they are beginning to realise that they know a lot less than they thought.

   It was a busy day though. There was a lot of jobs to get through, but I got my head down, and they all got done. I don’t think G***, my colleague that sits opposite me was too happy with me. Lots of tuts and sighing. But there are times when I just need to crack on, and chatting over the desktop is not a priority. No doubt she will have a moan to the boss about it.

    Mrs H talked to S**** tonight. She tried chatting on MSN, but he was not answering. I think he was using his mobile to connect, and it does not always show when someone comes online. Anyway, I texted him to say she wanted to chat, and he said she could ring. From what I could make out, he did not get up until 06:00pm, and was just making some food at 10:00pm !!! Mrs H did not look pleased. He does not make it easy !!!

   Now, the question is …… do I go to the quiz-night tomorrow ??? Sometimes, I think I’m expected, then other times, I feel like a spare part. I’ll not decide until the last moment, but I’ll be out on Wednesday night (drama group), and may be out on Saturday (?), and definitely out on Sunday, so who knows .

A good day

/ Tony / 2 Comments

   A very enjoyable day in York, today. Pizza Express, YorkWe had a good look around the shops, then lunch at Pizza Express. No bargains for me, unfortunately, but we got 3 pair of trousers for R***, in last bit of the sale at M&S. Lunch was followed, by a walk around the city walls. It was quite exhausting in the heat. You are very exposed to the elements, on Hare & Hounds - Stutton the walls, and the sun was very hot. Another stroll round the shopping area, then back home, with just a little stop at the Hare & Hounds pub, in Stutton. Now this used to be a great place to eat. However, the brewery, Samuel Smiths, seem to have imposed a set menu on all their pubs. As a consequence, the Hare & Hounds food is not as good as it used to be.

   Eldest was working today. We have not really heard how it all went. He texted around lunchtime, but we’ve not heard anything since. He is either out spending his earnings, or else he is having an early night. I know which my money is on ! He does not seem to be online at the moment, and he has not answered the texts I have sent. I may be wrong ! He could be in bed. If the work has been a hard slog, then he could be tired. We may hear tomorrow.

Sunday am …

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Well here goes with the ‘write something everyday’ idea. We shall see how long this lasts.

Surprise mobile MSN from J**** this morning. I did not expect to here from her for a few days. On her way to Ireland and messaging from the coach. What a nice thing to do.

Waiting for a text from the eldest. Going to see if he needs picking up before 6pm. If he does, it means taking youngest with me. Don’t think either of them would be too pleased about that !!

A couple of jobs to do today. Going to get them done ASAP. Get them over with.

That’s it for now. Not much I know, but I may add a little more later … watch this space !

….. back to work we go ……

/ Tony / Leave a comment

What a horrible Bank Holiday Monday it has been. Rain all day, and cold too. It has been a strange weekend really. The youngest has been fine all three days, which was a help. The eldest……well that’s another story. He left his wallet at work on Saturday, he hopes. Then Sunday night him, his girlfriend and some friends went to the pub, then onto the friends house later. Did not get in until 3:30am. Then his girlfriend was ill all night, and this morning had to Harrogate for 11:00am. We left at 10:41am !!!!!!! I think I did pretty well to get them there for 11:10.  I thought he was going to burst into tears when he got in my car. He looked so depressed, and she looked upset too. so what could you do or say ? He had not even said goodbye. I told him to either say goodbye or go ! So he went! He was supposed to come home with me, but he decided to go out with them for the day, and stop the night. It is very upsetting for Mrs H.

It’s a four day week for the next four weeks. A leave day, another Bank Holiday and my hospital appointment. I could get used to this. Dentist tomorrow though and this time I need some work doing. I think I lost part of a filling. The tooth is quite sharp and was a little sensitive a week or two ago.

I put the new wheel trims on yesterday. They look very good. I also tried putting the graphics on, but that was not as successful. I got one on, but it did not look right. In fact it looked quite tacky. Not at all like I expected, so I took it off straight away.

Still no sign of Mrs C on MSN. As before, she has been in facebook, but not at the same time. I’ll just check MySpace ……nope not there. I’ll tell you what though JM left a tweeted at around 6:00pm that she was having a nap, and would someone text her at 6:45pm. So I picked up her mobile number from facebook and sent a text at around 6:50pm. Thought no more of it, until she replied back by text to say thanks. I was amazed … the power of Twitter I suppose.