h2g2 - The man who is

The man who is

WHY DO PEOPLE STARE AT ME WHEN I DANCE TO THE MUSIC IN MY HEAD ?

Shy, unassuming father of 6. Born 1954, married 1984. Still on first wife, and almost house-trained. Supporter of Coventry City Football Club, aspiring writer, but employed in the computer industry. (Hint : Do not EVER reply to those adverts about the "exciting" world of computing.)

I have 5 daughters, 1 son, 2 cats, 1 dog, and a not inconsiderable number of hats. If you want to make God laugh make a plan they say, mine went out the window some time ago.

I usually log on from work, so I'm online all hours of the day and night.

You know what, Unknown Visitor,instead of hanging around here marvelling at my wit, why don't you go here ? Or if you'd like to contribute to a new art-form, accidently triggered by myself, investigate Rimickles.

If you're looking for me I'm probably here at S.H.A.D.O.W. Headquarters, or I could be here at

or possibly I'm checking my league position here at Fantasy Football, or I might be here The over 50's nudist club being interesting. Failing that I'll be boozing, and banging my head on the counter in the Bar Humbug. Of course if they've barred me from there, then I'll be talking the beautiful game..
How am I scoring.

I'M A MEMBER OF THE H2G2 LUDDITE MOVEMENT- COWER BEFORE ME!

Purely for reference purposes named entries.

Stuff I've inflicted on people : - Coventry 31/01/03. Teletubby Gambling 28/02/03. Coventry City Football Club 08/06/04. The Coventry Carol 02/03/06. The Extraordinary 1932 Olympic 4 Man Bob Team 22/05/06. John Thomas Barnardo 13/07/06. William Stead 24/07/06. 'General' William Booth 14/01/08. The Coventry Martyrs 11/03/08. The Cross of Nails Society 06/05/08. Coventration 29/05/08. William Hall VC 23/09/08. She'll be Coming Round The Mountain 28/01/09

A couple of extracts from a poem that inspired me as a boy.

"If you can dream, but not make dreams your master,
If you can think, but not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build them up with worn out tools."

If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Then yours is the world, and all thats in it,
And, which is more, you'll be a man my son.

Rudyard Kipling

So Remember;

You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and stars
You have a right to be here

Also

Laugh, and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has worries enough of its own.

And finally a piece of advice from Trin - Footinooti.

Focus only on the issue, not outright on the individual ... Footinooti

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Journal Entries

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12 Months Later (Nov 7, 2010)
Well it's bben about a year since the last journal entry ~ what's happened ?

No 1 is still at home and still working in retail.
No 2 has moved back home with her husband so they can save to put down a deposit on a house.
No 3 is working as a relief teacher in various schools and is also duty manager at the theatre in the evenings
No 4 has recovered from the stroke and is currently in Australia.
No 5 is hammering his old dad on the X-Box but is still a great guy.
No 6 Is still small enough to get away with being cute, but her autism still causes challanges.
Mrs D. is still married to me (just) and now totally veggie.
Me ? I'm just plodding along. My intention is to be happy, in my marriage, in my life, and with my children, but I don't seem to be doing too well at it.
Work - chaos ~ they're off-shoring more and more work, and ignoring the lowering of quality, because its cheaper.

How did we ever let the bean-counters take over the world ?

Click here to discuss this
(27 replies, Latest reply: Mar 14, 2013)

Life sucks sometimes (Nov 14, 2009)
Got a phone call a couple of weeks ago, from one of my daughters friends.
They were in A&E at Kingston hospital, No. 4 had a headache and had gone numb all down the right side of her body.
My wife set off to catch the train.

Halfway down they say the hospital have sent her home - they say it's a migraine and she should go to a chemist and get some pain-killers. After 4 hours waiting ~ do I spot a Government target here ?

She's so ill her friends take her to Charing Cross Hospital, the neurologist there gets her admitted, does a cat scan and a lumber puncture, he want to do an MRI, but because its been out-sourced only the consultant can arrange it. By now my wife is there and I'm driving down.

Next day the boss neurologist arrives, says its migraine, no MRI, go home, have a nice weekend.

We bring her back to Coventry.

Next day she is worse so we go to our local hospital. They manage to pull up her tests from London, and they decide to do an MRI.

She has had a stroke. She's 21.

Two weeks later she is still numb down her right side, and they don't know why.

I feel useless.

Click here to discuss this
(10 replies, Latest reply: Nov 17, 2009)

Work & missing from h2g2 (Aug 15, 2009)
Not been online too much lately due to the situation at work ~ pull up a

and I'll tell you about it.

About a month ago we were called into a meeting during which they informed us there were going to be redundancies. In fact there were going to be 9 job losses, however network staff and managers were exempt. That meant there were 9 jobs going out of 21 staff.

I questioned how we would therefore manage our workload, I was told that some work would be moved overseas, and we would make more use of automation products. I questioned how this would be achieved in the 5 weeks they has allowed.

When I came into work that Friday night there was an envelope with my name on it, inside were 3 sheets of paper telling members of my team they were 'at risk.' There was no explanation about how they had been chosen, or what I was to do with these letters, so I rang my manager ~ no reply. So I rang his boss ~ no reply. I therefore just put the envelope in my bag and said nothing.

Nest day one of the other team leaders told me that he'd been asked to give the news to one of his shift who'd been off until that day. He did that during the day. That night when we came in my shift were aware of what had happened, and that I had 'an envelope.'

I still had no instruction and so did nothing, but as the night wore on I realised that my guys were assuming they were not on the list, because I was saying nothing. I therefore took each of the three in turn and gave them the letters.

I was less than chuffed, if I'd been involved, I wouldn't have minded passing on the news and explaining my decision, however passing on someone else's bad news stuck in my craw. Especially when I was handing out bits of paper to people I felt shouldn't be receiving one.

Since then they've all had the face to face with personell and are now waiting to hear if and when they go - 4 by the end of this month.

We've also had the team from Malaysia who will be running some of these systems working alongside us - learning from the people they're replacing. (Nice huh ?)

I'll tell you more about them later.

Click here to discuss this
(9 replies, Latest reply: Feb 20, 2010)

The Wedding (Aug 22, 2008)
Well its been a couple of weeks now, and they're due back from the honeymoon on Sunday.

The day went really well, it was raining when we arrived, which made it a bit dodgy getting out of the car, and under cover, but by the time we came out the rain had stopped. This meant loads of photographs outside, then by the time we got to the hotel the sun was shining so we could take photos on the lawns.

The lad looked absolutely fantastic in his kilt, and all the women wanted to take him home with them, he went round with the guest book getting people to sign it, chatting away with everyone, and thoroughly enjoyed the day.

The bride looked lovely, the speeches went down well, nobody got stupidly drunk, the food was good, and everybody seemed to have a good time.

1 down - 4 to go.

Click here to discuss this
(7 replies, Latest reply: Aug 24, 2008)

Legends (May 15, 2008)
Number 4 has a part time job at the Apollo in London while she's at university.

She sells the junk people buy when they go to concerts - there were nearly fights when they ran out of Thomas The Tank Engine balloons at �10 each !

Anyway the artist this week is Willie Nelson. The manager was really excited and telling everyone they should pop in and catch part of the show - "he's the country equivelant of Elvis." The place was heaving with "over-excited Americans."

The kids selling the mechandise couldn't understand all the excitement, and it transpired that none of them had actually heard of Willie Nelson - but they'd all been told about him by their Dad.

Number One best selling item ? The bandana - four different styles available - The Lone Star being the most popular.

Click here to discuss this
(9 replies, Latest reply: Jun 1, 2008)

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