Be Excellent To Each Other

Thanks, both. I do really appreciate the support, because I do find standing up for myself and any kind of confrontation so difficult.

I should say that the rest of the day, whilst hard work, has been very positive. I’ve rearranged all the cupboards to get a good workflow going, moved the dry store goods to a place that’s *not* above where all of the water gets boiled, and put a load of FSA guidance into good practice, so the kitchen feels a lot better to be in as it’s efficient and flows better. Calibrated the temperature probes and the hot holding, and all my safety and receiving logs into place.

Russell laughed at a bit in my CV where I said that I was good at devising workflow systems in pretty much any role, because he said it was a bit bullshitty*, but actually it’s my favourite thing to do, and I really like frictionless ways of working.

*I mean, the whole CV was, simply as I’d already taken the job and was asked for a CV for the file, so I made a one-pager just for filing’s sake.

Sounds like have settled in.. I should borrow you to help me sort my kitchen

Yeah, I have. I felt in a bit of a spin today but it’s Monday, innit? And I had a particularly quiet weekend as Bean was camping with the Cub Scouts, so the contrast with me Swedish Cheffing it up is quite high, but it’s going well so far.

Giphy "swedish chef":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/ppyvw6iUQjdja/giphy-loop.mp4?cid=3bc9e717f69zv60mwwuxggo0s3p7ku2rv7j7c6x9l5vbzyl7&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy-loop.mp4&ct=g

It's the most wonderful time of the year tomorrow.

Pancake Day.

Lemon and sugar. Get in my face.

I’ve got my pancake pans ready for some (egg free) pancake making at work and then will be coming home and making pancakes.

Giphy "pancake day":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTNiYzllNzE3NmF0bGY3czl3N2NhNGwzNG1iaDd1OWZzOHVqZW9mMGVqNzNwY2xnMCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/QZQCixAAYuGIl9nkOh/giphy-loop.mp4

Also, some of my favourite photos are from pancake day. If you’re lucky enough to be around a toddler tomorrow give them a small, light, completely cold frying pan and a small cool pancake and let them try to flip it. Great fun.

Meems is that a serving hatch in your kitchen? I do like a serving hatch and have memories of going to a friends house for a social gathering with refreshments and a number of guests ended up climbing through the hatch to gather some lightly sparkling beverages instead of using the door, japes and hijinks indeed.

As for the work, how has it been going since last week?

I have never understood it but some people are just jerks and the bigger a place gets, the greater the chance of accumulating one (or more) of them. I also think there's a lot of curiosity whenever a new person joins and it takes time to settle. It does sound like there are some strong positives in there too.

It does make me think and worry about the place I work, we have just over 60 staff.

It is a serving hatch! That was in our old flat, and I loved it. Not only was it incredibly handy for serving food from, but it meant that when Darwin was very young he could remain playing in the main room and I could be in that kitchen area where I could keep and eye on him and he could still see me.

There’s also a serving hatch at my new job, which, again, is incredibly convenient. And it’s going pretty well, thanks for asking. I did reply to a problematic member of staff that her words were unhelpful and unnecessary. I told the owner that there may be some friction with that member of staff but asked her not to intervene as I just wanted to see if it eased off or developed, and rather told her so that the incidents had been ‘logged’ just I case anything happened in the future so it didn’t come out of just nowhere. But I’ve not seen that member of staff since, so we’ll see how it goes I guess.

Thank you for asking. It’s all calming down, I’m happy to say

Abrdn adds back vowels after widely mocked rebrand

News item about an investment firm's ridiculous rebranding failure. The item is amusing, but I urge you to read the user comments. Entirely predictable when you've read the item, but great fun.

Sometimes they should consider why

Gool Peran lowen!

Kernow Bys Vykkenn!

Trust the Honeybun has been suitably sated.

Appropriately enough, Radio 3's Choral Evensong came from Truro Cathedral today.

I’m making Cornish Pasties on Friday. If I’d know ln I’d have made them today instead.

Because of st Davids day?

I have just changed to Octopus Intelligent Go. Which means form 11:30pm to 5:30am, I get electricity at 7p/KW, for cheap car charging. I have discovered my washing machine has a delayed start function, so I am timing my washes to finish at 5:30.

Going to get some smart plugs so I can start all my charging of devices at 11:30. Might as well take advantage.

Depending on what devices you mean, I wouldn't bother with the smart plugs. Most devices (like iPhones and what not) use such a tiny amount of electricity (relatively speaking) to charge that it'd take years for any saving you make here to pay off the cost of the smart plugs.

If you want the smart plugs for other things of course, then knock yourself out, but yeah, don't look at it as a purely cost saving measure.

Like, my new phone (iPhone 16 Pro) would cost £1.41 per year to charge from 0-100% every day, at a per kWh rate of 24.86p. Which, if I've done my maths correctly, means 40p per year at 7p/kWh. So you're saving £1 per year, but the smart plugs are gonna cost you at least £10 each I would have thought.

Also, you should look into Octopus Agile if you weren't on that before. It's been a little bit lairy this winter with prices higher than normal, but the vast majority of the time you save a stupid amount of money every day.

I have just moved from agile to intellegent go.. for the 7p electric.

Good call witht the plugs, I will look at head touch, earphones, battery packs for the phone. I have a lot.

Yeah, I'm with GazChap here, if you look at the amount of power those things use it's not much at all in the scheme of things, not worth the effort of worrying about. Big things at home worth considering tend to be anything that uses electricity to make a lot of heat so washing machine, drier, dishwasher, shower, oven etc.

A young person today asked me if I liked Guardians Of The Galaxy (not seen it) because the song I was listening to (Mr Blue Sky) was from the film. I said I hadn’t seen it but know the song as it is a classic from the 70s. She said she didn’t know that one but that ‘this’ version (ELO, 1978) was recorded for the film soundtrack.

I just said it was a great song, and then turned back to the onion I was chopping so she couldn’t see my old lady tears of dust.

The Guardians of the Galaxy films all have great soundtracks. Great films too, and a Christmas Special!

Reminds me when we had a new graduate on the team. We were all talking about films. Asked him if he had seen Star Wars, he said 'no, he does not watch old films'

I think the whole team got a twitch at the same time..

A film from 1977 is pretty old, bud. That's just numbers

What Kov isn't saying is that this conversation happened in 1989... that's just how old Kov is.

He was not wrong. Just not used to thinking of it as old. I mean the 1990s was only a decade ago... right, right

Grumbles

On Sunday, I was cleaning the top of the cooker, when I caught my right thumb on one of the ignition things and it left a papercut like cut, it was stinging a lot, so I put a plaster on it.

I finally took it off today, and it's fine.

Just now, I went through to the kitchen to grab a snack, and there was some recycling on the side that I thought I might as well take through to the recycling crates in the porch.

I went to stack up a few things and caught left thumb on a sardine can!

Sliced right into it, only a couple of mm long, but so much blood for such a small cut.

Now I am back to having a plaster on my thumbs!

Still, I had 2 hours of freedom!

Finally got a frame on my signed pop memorabilia.

Nice!

Oohhh I love being able to chip in with 'yep I'm old too' and 'flaming kids', especially when I can dust off an old anecdote.

Back in 2002, when xfactor/popstars/pop idol were hyuge things, I was in the lab training up a new young student when The Doors 'Light My Fire' came on the radio. Sweet young lass that she was, comments 'wow someone has covered the Will Young song, bit soon for that innit'. I think she may also have said something about 'this version not being very good'.

Friends, I audibly gasped in a dramatic fashion and then gently explained. I really hope I wasn't a jerk about it but nowadays I just cant be sure.

My kids also like to refer to my birth year as being in the 'late ninteen-hundreds' , which I don't love.

Someone at my old workplace once stupidly referred to Crossroads as a Blazin’ Squad song, so me and some chap I’d maybe shared five words with up to that point both roundly school the room on Bone Thugs N’ Harmony with what I now fondly think of as an *amazing* and not at all embarrassing rendition of the song, and instantly became pals for life.

Work life anyway. Didn’t keep in touch and can’t remember his name now.

I’m not even late nineteen hundreds.

I'd view early twentieth century as 1900-1924, mid 1925-1975, late 1976 to 1999

That makes sense mathematically I suppose, but I've always thought of mid century as the post war period up to the late 60s or early 70s.

Oh, ok, I qualify for late nineteen hundreds by this measure.

I see mid century as 1945-1965ish, but that’s because I watched a lot of Antiques Roadshow as a child and that’s when Midcentury Modern pieces seemed to be from.

I am rounding to the nearest half or whole.

OR

I'm gerrymandering time.

My step-kids call me "ancient" and I'm not even as old as their actual Dad, I dread to think what they call him (although, as I'm sure Jem will attest, some choice words spring to mind...)

My kids just call me "baldy".

Which is fair

And risky! See 2 Kings 2:23-24

Is that the she-bears?

[edit] yassssss

you read "some small boys" and you expect maybe a dozen at most, and then you read that she-bears mauled 42 of them!

Implying there were even more than that!

To be fair, I am also now "really old" because I'm "nearly 40"

Imagine being heckled by at least 42 small boys and deciding to use your divine she-bear power

Baldness is evolution.

A girl in my last office had never heard of Jimi Hendrix, which initially alarmed me but then I thought, yeah fair enough he died in like 1973 or something. But then I found out she'd never heard of The Prodigy. And this was a girl who was also working weekends at a nightclub. Eesh!

Smack that bitch up.

Otis Redding died in 1967 but we’ve all heard of him. Someone born in 1998 the other day claimed to not know who David Bowie was, and rather than feel shocked or pity them I decided to internalise the idea that they were simply fibbing.

Edit: oh, I forgot what set this train of posts off and it was the same person as the ELO/Guardians Of The Galaxy convo.

Mrs. W and I are always amused when people on quiz shows haven't heard of The Beatles.

As far as Light My Fire is concerned, the first version I heard was José Feliciano's, which came out in July 68, 18 months after The Doors' version.

I didn't realise Crocs were back 'in' until recently.

I remember the first time they were 'in', about 20 years ago. In fact I still have some from then

I realise that this could be an Australia thing, as mullets and moustaches have been popular here for quite a few years.