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

Spotify can be pretty dim, too. I listened to a track by foreign artist who was actually singing in English. The following week my Discover Weekly playlist was at least 50% foreign artists who *weren't* singing in English.

Going back a bit to Sho, you can get first class in commuter trains, I know a couple of people who have first class season tickets just to make sure they get a seat on the trains.

Sometimes they even open it to everyone when the previous train is cancelled or the train is only half its usual length.

no I know you can get first class in commuter trains. but I question the sense/efficiency of a whole (double decker) carriage with not one person using it. Ever.

The only sense is to encourage people who're fed up standing to fork out more money to get a seat.

but quite clearly they don't. I've been commuting by train for years and never once seen it happen.

This is something that others have complained about in the past: surgeries and clinics that only do appointments a limited time in the future. I had my follow-up eye check on Wednesday and wanted to book an appointment for June, four months away. I was told that appointments for June aren't available yet. The receptionist said that the specialist had made a note that my eyes need to be monitored, and they will write with appointment details when they are available. If I don't hear from them by May, I can call and be fast tracked for an appointment. Thats all very well, but it feels like the onus is on me to make sure my eyes are checked regularly, rather than the system being in place to book an appointment when I need to.

Another Petty Hate is having to tell the specialist more than once that my uveitis is asymptomatic. (It wasn't the same man I saw last time, btw.) He's going to write to my GP so that I can get the appropriate eye drops there, instead of making an inconvenient trip to Kidderminster Hospital. That's fine but, as I told him more than once, I don't usually have any symptoms. The only indication that anything was wrong this time was very mild pain when I pressed the top of my left eyeball, and I could quite easily ignored that. I will go to my GP the next time that happens, but there's no guarantee that I'll have the same symptom next time I have uveitis.

Tube socks.

PP.

You can't use tube socks to treat uveitis!?

A migrating testicle.

Will that require its own passport?

Bookmarks.

I'm talking about physical page markers, not the Internet things. And it's not the bookmarks that are the problem, it's the number I have and the storage/accessibility of them. I collect bookmarks as they're attractive, small, inexpensive souvenirs. I have bookmarks from almost every country and place of interest I've ever visited. At the moment they're stored in boxes and that's where the problem starts. I like to use a bookmark that has some connection with the book I'm reading. So the bookmark I'm using for "Agincourt" is a knight in armour, for example. Yesterday I wanted a bookmark for a book about Catherine de Medici. I got out my boxes and found bookmarks I'd forgotten about. I was spoiled for choice.

I think I'll have to catalogue them and put some of them into appropriate books. I'll also have to change the way the rest of them are stored so that I can find an appropriate bookmark more easily.

Hmm... this might be a creative opportunity. I can see re-purposing some piece of antique technical office furniture. Like maybe something like a old factory time card rack.

Today's PH: Being asked for help, offering that help willingly, and then having someone get their hackles up and stop you helping.

Ah well.

i have rather a huge PH. So not really petty but... I have spent years (lots of you have heard me whinge about it over the years) and years trying to get on in my job, get promotions and really really stuck my neck out to get the company to allow women returning from maternity leave to come back part time.

this could get too tl;dr so: I had a bit of an argument with one of these young women today because I asked her to do some work she considers too boring and she can't be bothered.

And I exploded a bit.

You know that feeling when you spend a lot of your working time doing the feminist solidarity thing but the minute you need some support and ... nothing? Yeah. That.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Really frustrating!

I attended a meeting and it was my turn to write the minutes, which I did yesterday and sent off to the Chair yesterday afternoon for approval.

This morning I had the following e-mail from the Chair: 'May I commend you on, and thank you for, a beautifully presented and well-articulated set of notes from our last team meeting. The attention to detail is fantastic… I have made very few amendments to the notes.'

The Chair then sent out a completely re-written set of minutes that changed almost everything I'd written, including adding things that hadn't been mentioned in the meeting.

<BB<

Something similar happened to my uncle once. He submitted a proposal from the vocational teachers at his college regarding a lot of issues they were concerned with. The administrators then edited his proposal and resubmitted it for a vote. Their editing negated many of the stances the teachers had on the issues they proposed and he got the blame for the submission.

BB that kind of thing drives me crazy. In the old days there was nothing you could do. In the days of email I make sure to cc at least one other person (i trust) if I have to do things like that. Just for the record. (and bcc to myself if I'm being really really sceptical)

Crikey - if anyone writes minutes in our place, they get sent around and no one has time to read them or check them, however much care is put into the formulation. Lots of the time, noone even bothers with minutes. I am still waiting for quite a few from previous meetings.

I could go on for ages about the total mismanagement that is making our life a misery at the moment, but I've got the next two days off (flight to the UK booked weeks ago) and I don't want to think about it.