The stockroom guy at work said it would take two people a month to enter the prices for all the stock items into the new accounts/stock system. I spent three hours preparing the data and importing it, thereby saving nearly 300 man-hours of work. Will I get a thank you? Will I get a bonus? Will I get I warm fuzzy feeling of a job well done?

One out of three ain’t bad.

A friend of mine works in a petrol station, and at this station they also do maintenance and repair work on cars. Today, two of the mechanics took a car back to a client, who was out of the house when they arrived. They left the car where they’d picked it up that morning, which was on the neighbour’s driveway. One of the mechanics (we’ll call him “Bill”) knew it was the neighbour’s house, the other one (we’ll call him “John” for the sake of it) didn’t. So Bill lets John post the keys through the neighbour’s letterbox before piping up “Hey, this isn’t the guy’s house, he lives next door.” Bill’s good like that, he likes to see other people cock things up.

Let’s skip forward a couple of hours. The client calls in to the garage (I’m not sure how he got there, maybe a friend gave him a lift). “Is my car ready?” he asked. “Sure is,” said “George”, the boss, “and it’s back at home waiting for you.” So off the guy goes and half an hour later there’s a phone call to the garage.

“Where are the keys?”

“Through the letterbox.”

“Which letterbox? Mine or the house you left it outside?”

“The one we left it at.”

“That’s my neighbour’s house, she’s away in China for three weeks. I need my car keys.”

Bill and George then go off to the neighbour’s house, where George makes Bill dangle a magnet through the letterbox on a piece of string to try and get the keys back. The more they try, the more they don’t get the keys. The client is going mad, he’s off on holiday himself in a few days and needs to pack his family and luggage in the car to drive to the airport 250 miles away.

After an hour, the neighbour’s neighbour, a little old lady, comes out. “I’ve been watching you for a while, trying to work out if you’re up to no good or not. You don’t look like burglars, what’s going on?” she asks.

“We posted this guy’s car keys through the wrong letterbox by mistake.”

“Oh,” she says. She pauses, and then remembers something. “She left me with a spare key to the house. Shall I go and get it for you?”

Well, duh!

Whoosh, thunk. That’s the sound a throwing knife makes as it flies through the air and lands perfectly in the target. Whoosh, clang is the sound it makes when it’s not thrown quite so well, hits the target sideways on, and falls to the floor.
Yes folks, today I have mainly been picking knives up off the floor after they missed their targets. I heard about this day out on a forum somewhere on the internet (no, I’m not going to tell you where!) and thought “hey, that sounds like fun!” I’ve always been a bit of a have-a-go person, having done fire eating, circus skills etc in the past. Knife throwing seemed to fit in with all that, so why not give it a go!
The directions to the place were excellent, it was about 55 miles away from home so I gave myself plenty of time to get there. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place though, as there had seemed to be a lot of interest in the day out on the forum, but there were no cars in the car park. However the directions or my navigational skills didn’t let me down and within 10 minutes I was lobbing sharp pointy things at bits of tree trunk on the wall.
My initial throws were very much like a dart player, I had the same stance as a dart player – right foot forward so I could get the throwing arm nearer the target – and I was also trying to aim the knife. John, the instructor, put me right straight away, showing me that if I put my left foot forward, and started with my right arm higher, the knife would fly straighter and stronger.
After just 20 minutes or so I was getting more knives in the target than I was getting on the floor, which is always a good sign. John had several types of knives to throw, different sizes and weights, and also a tomahawk, which I threw at the end of the day (mainly because I’d forgotten all about it and wanted to have a go with it before I left!) In total about 5 or 6 people turned up, so we weren’t fighting over which targets to throw at, and I was there from about 11am to 4pm, so made a full day of it.
I’ll definitely be going back and doing this again – it was great fun!

Today I helped my cousin move into her new flat. It’s only a mile up the road from her old place, and by recruiting the help of my brother (and his trailer), my nephew, myself (and my car), and a friend of hers to help her unpack, we managed to get everything moved in about 5 or 6 hours.
But during the day I heard a few things you don’t really want to hear while moving house:
“Have you seen the box? You know, the one with the thing in it?”
“Get that washing machine off my hand!” (not only did I not want to hear that one, I didn’t really enjoy saying it either!)
“Here’s a cup of tea, sorry I couldn’t find the sweeteners.”
“Er…. I thought you had the keys….”

It’s my son’s birthday coming up in a few weeks. My ex-wife wants to get him a Nintendo DS, which is fair enough I suppose. She sent me a link to one being sold on eBay, with a request for me to buy it on her behalf as she’s skint, and she’ll pay me back as soon as possible. I had a look at the link, and saw that it was going to be shipped from Hong Kong. The DS itself was £36, but the postage was £40. I pointed out that they weren’t all that much more expensive to buy here, plus you get a guarantee or warranty with it. Fair point, she replied.
So I get a phone call from her a couple of hours later. “I’m in the shop, they won’t take a cheque without a card, can you pay for it over the phone on your card please?” Well, I could, if it wasn’t two days before pay day and I had more than about £20 to my name. “Oh,” she says, “I’ll try my dad then.”
The question is… why does she have to get it now? It’s not his birthday for 5 more weeks, and he’ll be back at school next week anyway. Can’t people think ahead any more?
The final straw was when she later emailed me to say that yes, she’s got the DS, it came with a game included, it’s got a 2 year warrantry on it, and here’s a list of other games that would be suitable for him to play. I wonder where she expects me to find the money for games on top of the child support, birthday bash and guitar lessons she also expects me to contribute towards. I can only give her what I have to give, and no more!