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

Due to some confusion on how our Paid Time Off accrues (any hours beyond 80, use it or lose it before the end of the year) I had to take an extra day and a half off for a total of about a week and a half over the holidays. It was grey the entire time. I felt grey the entire time. I had no motivation to do anything, especially photo or drone related. When I did finally go fly my quadcopter, I wrecked it.

PH: unresponsive management and HR personnel. I have yet to get clarification regarding when, exactly, our PTO accrues. I'm fairly certain now, after carefully monitoring my PTO on our "time card" app that I did not have to take that extra 15 hours. While I didn't lose any time, I feel like it was wasted, sitting at home in a deep grey funk.

PH: Tight spaces between seats in cars, large enough for a cell phone to fall into, but too narrow to insert a hand.

Oh yes, I've nearly lost my ipod nano & keys like that!

Sounds like FB had a lot of feedback about their format change - I logged on to a different computer today and see that they've changed it again so it is black text on white bubbles in a sea of blue, which is much better for my eyes PH: Why didn't they do that in the first place?


Sounds like more than a PH, Baron Grim, that you haven't yet had an answer to your question... I hope you get things sorted out soon

Latest PH: people who give you their name/phone number for you to write down, but spell/say it too fast for you to follow.

Or those who say "Jerzy Szymankowszczyzna"

"And how do you spell that?"

"Oh, you spell it as it sounds." *click*

The people who irritate me are the presenters who mispronounce foreign names when their area of expertise/interest means that they really should know better. There's one motoring presenter who keeps saying Mitsibushi instead of Mitsubishi. He was a car dealer at one time, so he has no excuse. Then there are the people who say Meshersmit instead of Messerschmitt. These are people who claim to be interested in military aircraft/history. It's not that hard to say!

The price of a family cinema ticket has this month gone up at the local cinema from £20 to £40 . This was to see a film that came out at the beginning of December.

<BB<

I only go to the cinema on weekday afternoons to catch the matinee pricing and avoid kids and crowds.

The trend here now is to push reserved ticket sales on-line and recliner seats.


While I do find these seats quite comfortable, I can't help but be reminded of this...

http://youtu.be/ohcwksrvDOg

A while ago somebody complained about apps that force you to use your device in a particular orientation. I can't remember if it was mentioned at the time but I'd like to add apps that won't flip when you rotate the device through 180°.

I'd also like to voice a few gripes about are in apps. I know that are are necessary in free apps, but some apps have far too many. Sometimes I get the same ad several times in succession. I'd love to have a way to opt out of seeing certain ads. There are a couple for "weed" growing games that I find distasteful. Drug dealing isn't a game, and these apps seem to make it acceptable rather than a crime. Then there's the increasing number of ads that don't just tell you about a game, they expect you to play a demo before you close the ad.

That would be a shock that the price has doubled in a relatively short space of time, <BB<! Sometimes the prices do seem like 'spin the wheel and see what number comes up', though, as the film, the time of day and the location all seem to have an effect on the price...

I agree with you about the ads in apps, CD - I'm fortunate to have not seen anything distasteful, but it does get boring when the same ad appears over and over again... Although on the plus side, at least I learn where the x is when that happens - different ads put it in different places so people (eg me) click through by mistake...

That's interesting about the demo ads - I've seen some of those, but thought that it was just pretend so if I tried to play the demo it would just click through... Boring waiting for the time allocated to the ad to finish while the button just says 'press me, you know you want to...' but satisfying in a very small way for me to be able to say 'ha - I didn't press the button!'

The £40 was to see the film at the Vue, which has fairly standard seats, so we went to the Showcase which has the posh reclining seats and a much bigger screen instead, where a family ticket cost £28.

<BB<

We're off to our local Community cinema tonight - not quite as posh but for us two oldies it's £7 each. Free parking as well!

Nose rings.

Ugh!


And lip rings.

When I was a kid, I never had a lucky horse-shoe or rabbit's foot.

Instead, I had a hog's nose ring and a mink-foot key chain, suitable for hanging from the hog-ring.

Just thought I'd throw that in here for the shudder of revulsion I knew it would evoke.

The new BBC weather map.
Once again, when they label places like 'Plymouth' or 'Bournemouth' the whole of the south coast is hidden and you can't see what the weather's going to be doing on the Isle of Wight. From now on they should only label places with short names, such as 'Hove', 'Bath' and 'Hull'.

<BB<

Or Ryde?

And if it's still not good enough, we can resort to Wem, Rye and Usk.

Why the need to label so many places anyway?