h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

FS I'm guessing that the book you ordered was either second hand or from a small supplier with limited quantites available. It could be (because it's happened to me with much much cheaper second hand books) that two orders were received at the same time and only one was sent.

Possibly at the time your one was being picked from the warehouse the problem was noticed, and therefore you got your money credited back (pretty quickly it seems)

As for protecting you from third party vendors. Yes, it is partly to protect Amazon's fee (which they get because they host the 3rd party vendor's shop - there's no reason why they shouldn't get a fee for that, they are a business after all)

You can usually contact the seller directly, because if you do write to them, and they reply, you can see their mail address and write back to them (not via "reply" unless you copy/paste the message into a new one).

I've done that a few times too. Often with cheap-ish articles the vendor can write them off (or claim insurance) without too many problems, and it's cheaper to let you keep it than for them to refund a lot of postage.

(not that I'm a massive fan of Amazon's business practices but my experience of their customer service has been very very good. Excellent, even)

mu PH today.... zips placed in such a way as to make it very difficult if not impossible for the person wearing the garment to pull it all the way up/down themselves...

Those dresses in the fifties and sixties which had zips all the way up the back were like that, but what sort of clothes have them these days, Anthea?

I have two dresses one with a tiny zip you cant really grip properly that zips up the back
and one that has a zip under one arm so you can only clasp it with the other hand but the bust eh.. pushes the zip apart too much to get the zip up properly without pushing the fabric closed...

I should buy better clothes

string through the end (unless it's an invisible zip) is your friend there (although the underarm zips are a pain in the bazooms)

Isn't it a bit hard to untie the string after you've done up the zip?

No - because then it's just at the back of your neck. If you were a good Girl Guide and know your knots, no problem at all.

you don't tie it in a knot, you push it through and hold both loose ends

Except for my pair of jeans where the zip persists in falling down, then I use a thick elastic band to attach it to the button

unfortunately this zip doesn't have a hole in it as it's meant to be invisible i think anyway
I've now got a list of people I have to call tomorrow because I only just found out i need to contact them now that their offices are closed

Mosquito bites.

Thankfully, in the district where I live, mosquitoes are extinct, haven't seen one since a brief and quickly contained invasion by the Anopheles mosquito back in 1998.

On the down side, that's also meant near total disappearance of the giant blue and green devil's darning needle dragonflies which depend on mosquitoes for food.

A third dragonfly species, though, the red dragonfly has rallied and bounced back with a population explosion, apparently shifting to the common housefly as their new preferred prey species.

On mosquitoes, I used to make regular tours of the grounds in areas where I lived, dumping or draining standing water where they might breed, packing clefts of trees where water pooled with sphagnum moss, leaf mould or clay to deprive of that.

The mosquitoes that breed in water pooled in clefts of trees are also the ones implicated in spread of the canine heartworm parasite.

Job adverts and summaries which you have to plough through paragraphs of company background/commitment to equal opportunities/ company charter/application process BEFORE you actually get to what the job is and the person spec!

Here's a copy and paste of an example below. And yes the attachment has even more drivel which is only relevant to you when you get shortlisted/slected, before finally at the bottom, telling you about the job and what they are looking for

Honestly employers, please don't waste my time


Broomhill Depot, Kirkintilloch.


This post is to cover the transport aspects of the Land Planning Policy Officer post as set out in the role profile.

For further information please contact:
Alison Laurence - 0141 578 8619


CHARTER OF COMMITMENT


The commitment by East Dunbartonshire Council to job applicants is as follows:

• Individuals will be treated in a polite, friendly and welcoming manner.

• Equalities monitoring will be conducted to ensure a fair and equitable process with screening being carried out to anonymise sensitive information such as age, gender and disability.

• The information that we receive will be treated in confidence and with discretion. Only the relevant HR representative/team and the relevant service will see the application form.

• We will encourage and welcome applications from applicants under the disability symbol. Where the essential criteria are met an interview will be offered to those applying under the disability symbol.

• We will be pleased to make any reasonable adjustments to ensure accessibility at the interview.

• We will advise you within reasonable time after the closing date if you have not met the interview criteria. (Normally within 4 weeks)

• We will advise you of meeting the criteria for interview normally within 3 weeks.

• We will advise you if you have been successful or unsuccessful at the interview stage as soon as practically possible.

www.eastdunbarton.gov.uk

EAD003417 Role Profile.docEAD003417 Role Profile.doc

Actually, if anyone has time, go look at Historic Scotland job ads; they are the worst offender by a country mile. It has taken me minutes of opening attachments and ploughing through carp, to actually find out about the job.

I hear you! The number of sales jobs I get in my email which don't even mention the sector the un-named company work in and then just say the salary is "competitive".

I once replied to one of them saying my name was confidential but I had lots of experience in "things" and had "many skills".

Haha excellent waste their time right back. Might not sound like a big deal but when I'm looking through 20 or emails a day, most of which can be dismissed in seconds from the summary, the wasted time on these obscure ads can really add up.
Also it really shows that the beuarocrats have won when the legal disclaimers that should be a footnote at the end of the application, are actually the headline!

oh that is excellent, swl

PH: "Brunch". There's no such thing. There is no "brunch". It's just breakfast, taken at the wrong time because you were too lazy to get up out of your pit.

'Brunch', portmanteaux contraction of 'br'eakfast and l'unch' of American-Scottish derivation, combining breakfast and lunch for people who've missed breakfast and are ready for a somewhat more substantial early mid-day meal.

Frequently used in American restaurant advertising.

Listed in Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (of common neologisms and popular malapropisms).




'leakfast', unusual and infrequently used neologism of related derivation used only humorously for a liquid lunch or to the effect of saying something like, "Don't be a bug-blatter.".

Isn't Brunch the meal between elevenses and lunch?

Don't you mean after elevenses, between elevenandthreequarterses, twelvses and lunch?