December Blues part II

Right here we go....

Interview no 1: Went really well, the chappie that interview me was from my neck of the wood, Lancashire! yippee, got really good vibes from this and it ain't through an agency. Will get to know by Friday if I am the lucky candidate.

Interview no 2: Again went really well, the lady was really nice and we seemed to get on, but they will be doing second interviews next week, got feedback from the agency and they were really impressed with me. Just received another call from the agency and they want me back for a second interview on Monday.

Interview no 3: Not so sure about this one, the accounts are in a mess and they don't class Credit Control as accounts but sales! I am a bit confuddled by this one.

By the time I had done everything yesterday and the phone had finally stopped ringing it was 7pm, hey ho, beans on toast for tea, mind you Paulie loved it.

This morning we have woken up to a blanket of SNOW, yes SNOW, the side roads were a nightmare and the mains roads were just as bad, I had to nip to the newsagents this morning, boy that was scary!

Then Paul insisted the car stay at home, so Hench yet another journey taking Paul to work, even more scary as more people on the roads, we had to wait a good twenty mins for Paul's boss to arrive to open up, I managed to park in a lay by and we watched all the other cars slip sliding all over the road.

I managed to get home OK, just took it steady even thought I had a pillock behind me trying all the way to get me to go faster, not a chance in hell, now it raining very hard at this rate the snow will have disappeared by lunch time.

Debbie

December Blues

Well, I worked my notice and finished my job Friday 28Th November....yikes.... Tears were flowing freely especially when I had to make a speech!

The Chief Executive has taken my number and says he will be ringing me to let me know if the business gets over the dark side of Christmas as they want me back!!

Saturday and Sunday seem to just fly by as usual, lovely walks with Lucy and Paul, I even managed to take me camera with me and got some cracking shot, Paul please put them on the computer.......

Monday morning came, I took Paul to work then returned home to scour the web for jobs, applied for another job but hey ho its through yet another agency so I have got another interview with them today.

I am going STIR CRAZY with all this time on my hands.

I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom then started on the living room and dining room, put some washing in then made corn beef hash, all the time willing the phone to ring with interview dates, nothing at all, then 3pm it all went hectic, now I have got three interviews tomorrow, one is looking very promising, fingers crossed.

I picked Paul up from work and set off home for some well earned chill time, Paul was over the moon with his evening meal and is looking forward to see what delights I muster up today.

Debbie

BAD LUCK! IT COMES IN THREES!!

Well, just when I thought life could not get any worse, I had a bump in my car on Tuesday evening!

Coming home from work (yes i have agreed to work my notice as my employer asked so nicely) the FOG and rain were a nightmare, I always come home on the country roads as the M1 is too busy, I was so careful and kept my speed down as did most of the other drivers I followed.

I was almost there another 3 mins and I would be picking Paulie up, going on to a duel carriage way me and the car in front were waiting to join, I looked his way and saw him set off then looked in the direction of the on coming traffic and set off only to find he had hesitated and STOPPED and my ickle car ran into the back of his!

Shaking like a leaf I managed to control my nerves while we swapped insurance details, he was very nice about it all and agreed to ring me later with policy numbers etc.

I rang my insurance company and they said someone would call me back the morning after, about 10.30 not hearing anything I rang and they sorted me out over the phone, the lady said she had rung me at home leaving a message on the answer machine, I gave her my mobile number for all future calls.

I am really chuffed with my insurance company and my ickle car is leaving home tomorrow to be mended and will return after a nice stay in the car hospital. I just wish the job hunting was this easy!

Arriving home on Tuesday evening was the final straw, still shaking like a leaf, we found the entire contents of the kitchen bin scattered across the floor and a white scruffy thing on four legs scampering past us to hide!

Just hoping that was number three and there are no more nasty surprises lurking round the corner!

Debbie

Redundancy

Yikes, I can not believe it, but I have just been made REDUNDANT, me really I am GOB SMACKED!! I feel like my heart has been ripped out!

Friday morning went into work as normal, big smile on me face as weekend is here and some chill time with me Paulie....yippee....then 11.30am comes the phone call from HELL!

Hello Debbie please can you attend the Board Meeting Room......YIKES....HEART POUNDING....I went and there is the Financial Director, Commercial Director and HR Manager all waiting for me.....We are sorry to tell you this but unfortunately we have to make you REDUNDANT, the company is running at a loss and we can not afford to employ you anymore!

Even though My Credit Manager and myself are doing an outstanding job collecting monies in, the construction industry is drying up and the bills have to be paid even if sales are down.

I sat and looked at all three of them and before I knew it the water works had started, each man shifted very uncomfortably in their chairs, they say that they might not be able to manage without me and if so will find a way to keep me on, so if this is the case they would have tried harder in the first place.

I have since Friday applied for 24 jobs online and sent out loads of emails to various companies to see if any have any vacancies for a REDUNDANT CREDIT CONTROLLER!!

So if anyone knows of a Credit Control position in the South Yorkshire area please let me know.

Thanks
Debbie

Stuck!

What we need here is a cunning plan.

Lovely Cold Morning

No snow about in these parts but we had a lovely walk this morning with Lucy. Nice to see the sun rise again now the clocks have gone back.

Paul.

Mad About Mippin

Since getting the sluggish Nintendo Opera Browser and finding that Mippin worked really well, I've been using it alot more on the mobile as well. Then yesterday I noticed that the link to our Mippin site wasn't working, I've fixed this and while I was at it, thought it might be nice to post a little about Mippin and how why I use it so much.

I started using Mippin last year not long after venturing on the web with my Nokia 6120 Classic. It works well using the native browser but it really hurtles along using Opera Mini. This because the small pages are reduced in size even more by the Opera server and because Opera Mini caches pages, allowing you to surf backwards and forwards instantly.

Basically Mippin uses rss feeds to show any web site in a mobile format, you can use Mippin without signing up but for the few clicks it takes and the advantages gained, you might as well go the whole hog straight away.

Once signed in, you are presented with you're personalised home page, this includes your favourites which are built up by hitting the 'Add To Home Page' link at the bottom of every site that you view.

Selecting the 'My Latest Stories' link shows all the updates from your favorite sites in the last 24 hours. One thing I've noticed is that while you can search for any site and add a Mippin feed to your homepage, if it's not been added to the Mippin directory by the site owner, updates don't automatically show in your latest stories. So, if you have a site that's not already on Mippin you should head over to Mippin Maker and spend a few seconds adding it for free.

In addition to your favorites, you can also add widgets to your home page such as weather, news, popular stories etc. It is possible to add your own Twitter feed to your home page but for some reason this hasn't worked for some time, Twitter's own updates are usually about something else that's broken so the problem may be there.

However, you can still post Twitter updates from here and if you have set this up, you can Twitter any posts that you find through Mippin. This works great as it sorts out the url, all you have to do is add a short message if you wish, the resulting tweet then shows a link to the post viewed through Mippin which will work on just about any mobile, great stuff!

Something new on Mippin is social interaction, you can now add Mippin users to your connections, if they subsequently return the favour, you become friends and can send messages. I've never sent or received a message so I don't know how well this works but that's not really the best part of this new feature.

Once you've added a user to your connections, any site or post that user recommends appears on your home page, this is great because you can quickly connect to users with similar interests to yourself and follow the stories they've found interesting and in turn they can follow yours.

I can't see any way of searching for users but as you add sites to your home page, a user is shown that has also added that site. There are also 5 featured users shown on your home page, you can add these and also see who they are connected to and add those as well.

Selecting 'View Profile' from your home page shows the stories that you've shared, your favorites and your connections.

All in all, I'm finding that Mippin is a great tool for floating around the web and keeping up to date with what's going down in the world. If you've never tried it, give it a go and don't forget to add user Snowstorm to your list of connections if he pops up somewhere!

Paul.

Autumn Sunshine

We've been out for a lovely walk this afternoon in the local woods taking advantage of the Autumn sunshine. I don't know what it is about tree's around here, they seem to take for ever to turn that lovely golden brown colour. By the time we've managed to get some nice Autumn colours, everyone else is posting pictures of daffodils!

Paul.

Simple Maths

Eight times Old Speckled Hen equals one Pickeled Paul.

Nintendo DS Lite Browser

I've just got the Nintendo DS Lite Browser based on Opera Mobile. It's
a strange beast, if you stick to mobile sites it faster than Opera
Mini on my mobile. However, straying on to non mobile sites results in
page load times of up to 5 minutes!

I'm sticking with it though because the user interface is fantastic
and as long as I stick to the mobile sites, it's a dream to use.

All I need now is for the big players like Blogger and Flickr to start
making more features availabe in mobile mode.

Paul.