Month: May 2004

Working at home has it’s advantages. I get oodles more done as there are no interruptions, impromptu meetings or random co-worker distractions (I’m as good/bad as anyone at all providing all of these mind you). Yet home working is still viewed with some scepticism.

Sure it means you can structure your day differently than a 9-to-5 day in the office but that does not mean that your productivity goes down.

For example, I will be working at home today. I will start around 8am. Take a break around 12noon and go out and do some light gardening for 45 mins or so. I’ll grab some lunch and work until Louise comes home at 6pm.

Add to that the 4 hours I’ve just done, and the few hours I’ll do over the weekend and what do you have? Well around 8 hours extra time worked at easily double the productivity. It’s not always like this mind you, it just so happens that I’m researching some new ideas and working practises and will be trying out some of the supporting technology. Just the thing to motivate an “idea implementor” like myself.

It also means that I’m not helping the stats that say we (in the UK) have the longest working hours in Europe, but for once I’m feeling good about the direction my team is heading in and I’m determined to make it happen.

Right, that’s enough about work, it’s 1.05am and I’m off to bed. Expect things to be quiet around here tomorrow today.

So, having made several calls I’ve gotten to the root of the problem and found further justification for dumping 1&1.

The story:
Yesterday I received an invoice from 1&1. It had no payment date on it, but I recalled from their T&C that it needed to be paid within 14 days and they would attempt to take funds from my account at the end of that period.

Guess what.

No, surprisingly they didn’t try and grab the money from my account that day, well they did but that wasn’t the problem. No, this is even better.

They charged me £50 for a credit check as I was paying by Switch. £50. To credit check details that hadn’t changed.

Having bemused the phone bank people (“No we don’t know who it’s going to” – wtf?), I phoned the Billing department at 1&1. I asked if they had tried to take payment for the recent invoice. The girl at the end of the line said they HAD tried but failed and would be trying again tomorrow.

After tearing a strip off her for breaking their OWN terms (but not too harshly as she obviously couldn’t see on her system that I’d already requested a cancellation of the contract) I happened to mention that what had confused me was the amount being processed as £50.

“Ohh that’ll be the credit check, but it should be an instant, ‘in-and-out’ transaction”

Cue much swearing (Lyle, you would’ve been so proud of me!) amidst which I pointed out that the “in-and-out transaction” had managed to bump me over my overdraft limit and I would be incurring additional bank charges.

Thankfully this isn’t true, for once my bank have been quite good about it and won’t be charging me at all (and here was me bemoaning them earlier, tut tut).

So farewell 1&1. Strike that, I hope they get everything they deserve. As a comparison; in the hours since I’ve signed up with 34sp I’ve received better information and support than I did during two and a bit years with 1&1, and at more than half the price.

There is another lesson here.

I jump to conclusions far too fast for my own good. I need to learn to pause.

Normally I’d post something like this in the miniblog but it’s too good to ‘lose’ in there.

If you are at all interested in web design you’ll know the name Jakob Neilsen, he’s been around since the dawning of (internet) time. Many other designers take umbrage at the things he says, whilst agreeing that he means well. One of the main gripes, and rightly so in my opinion, is the usability and design of his own site.

So it was with great pleasure that I read the recent post over at Design by Fire: Design Eye for the Usability Guy. In it, several ‘leading lights’ in the web design arena provide a reasoned and well thought out re-design for Jakob Neilsen’s site.

If you are considering doing ANY kind of design on your site, I suggest you read the article as it gives a fascinating breakdown into the processes and thoughts used by the designers involved. If nothing else it should give you a few ideas of your own.

I’ve toyed with posting this several times in the past few days, but a comment on one of yesterday’s posts helped me make up my mind – namely.. bugger it, post and be damned!

Michael Moore is in the news again. He seems to becoming more and more prominent, especially since I saw him speak in Glasgow and people are picking up on this and suggesting that he is venturing further and further from the truth in his documentaries.

But is that the point? I mean, of course it is a valid point, if someone is holding up damning evidence it should be true. Right? But isn’t he just changing his approach to match those of his ‘opponents’. The well known quote about statistics (lies, damn lies and…) makes part of my case here. Michael Moore produces thought provoking films. He is promoting his new film. The film tells a story. It follows a script and direction set by Moore.

So the question is: When is a documentary not a documentary? When it’s a film?

As I said before, I agree with the general aims and principles he is campaigning for, and no I don’t agree with a lot of his tactics. But this is far from a level playing ground, and the higher the profile Moore can maintain, the safer he is. Unfortunately that usually involves subterfuge, underhand tactics and … well.. all that stuff we associate with political parties. But then, that’s what Moore is now, in all but name.

And of course, this being the internet, the polar opposite to Michael Moore’s views can be found at Moore Watch – Watching Michael Moore’s every move, which current has an interesting letter featured on it’s front page. The letter reads like it comes from the disillusioned everyman who wants to have the information to make up his own mind and yet seems to have been hi-jacked to a degree to fan some flames under Moore. The letter itself makes some good points, the surrounding editorial reads like some sort of brain-washed idealist propaganda. Mind you, some of the editorial on Moore’s own site reads the same way.

What we need, as human beings sharing one planet, is to find some form of middle ground. A compromise. Granted I’ll fall on the liberal side on most issues, if not all, but too far either way and you end up with lunacy.

All those in favour? Viva la revolution!!

I remember going on a management training course and taking a Belbin test. It’s designed to help you create a perfectly balanced team with the right mix of ideas people to “do-ers”. I think I was pegged as the type of person who takes an idea and expands on it, plans it then hands it on to be completed. Obviously this is a theoretical model and most of us will have had to play one or more of these roles at any given time (ohh ok, we’ve all been ALL those roles at once).

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about but it popped into my head.

Remember when I bought www.gordonmclean.co.uk and www.gordonmclean.com, well I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with them since then and have finally decided. You’ll not that the idea phase took ages, and the planning stage has taken me all of 30 mins.

So here’s how it’ll all break down:
1. http://www.snowgoon.co.uk will remain the URL for the blog, forever and ever, amen.
2. gordonmclean.co.uk and gordonmclean.com will point to a ‘homepage’ – remember them!

The homepage will link out to all my sites, including this one, Scottish Blogs (planned quickly, still in development, can you see a pattern forming here?), my Photo Gallery which will be under it’s own sub-domain, and Hospital Radio Lennox. I’ll probably put the more ‘me’ centric stuff there and link to it from here (probably move the About page and some other bits and bobs).

Why? Well this here page is getting awfully cluttered and needs tidied up.

So, that’s that planned then. Expect all this to happen sometime in 2006.

Gay marriages meet frosty silence . Seemingly, according to this piece by the BBC, most Americans do not approve of gay marriage.

One of the protestors outside the town hall where the first wedding was performed is quoted as saying:

“God will be offended. He’s the one we have to worry about. This is the beginning of chaos.”

It’s really quite worrying that kind of thing and, in some sort of weird juxtapositioning of thought streams, I find myself recalling some dialogue from Troy – namely Achilles questioning the almighty Gods by asking why Apollo has not struck him down for sacking a temple dedicated to the God of the Sun.

In a way I have to admit that Bush, or rather his advisors and speech writers at least, have been quite clever in ensuring that God and religion remains on the table as a legitimate part of the political and sociological equation. After all, you can’t argue against faith.

Update: I’ll let razorhead’s post make it’s own statement about religion. Sheesh.