Panorama on the Gulf Oil Spill
A fascinating program, which probably asked more questions than it answered.
I’ve worked on some fairly dangerous chemical plants and you always put safety first, last and at every place in between. You might be lucky taking a short cut, but can you live at peace with yourself, if that short-cut proves to be fatal for others? I couldn’t!
So when doubts are raised about the working state of the blow-out protector by an engineer and it would seem these warning are ignored by BP and Transocean, I raise my engineer’s head in despair.
But then other engineers and managers have ignored such calls. I worked on a plant at ICI Mond in the late 1960s, where one of my colleagues installed an instrument, that said under some operating conditions, the plant could explode. The plant operation was immediately modified to avoid this condition. However the non-ICI designers of the plant saidthat no instrument could measure what we had found and refused to shut a similar plant in continental Europe.
They were wrong, not to do something which may have been important for safety.
Why We All Hate Couriers
My new phone was supposed to be delivered today, but the courier loused up. If people use DHL, ParcelForce or the plain old Royal Mail, goods always appear on time and usually with a joke and a smile. O2 in the past have used DHL, but this time they didn’t.
The courier actually did turn up, but didn’t come to the house. He claimed on the company’s web site, that he had texted me and left a card at my red front door. I didn’t find the card and didn’t receive the message on my phone. But he did talk to one of my stud staff and didn’t even ask him where I was! I was actually sitting in the garden.
After three calls to O2 on a landline, I got a promise of delivery tomorrow. We shall see! O2 incidentally were very helpful and polite, despite the fact I cut myself off twice, as you do with a gammy hand. I’m sure that they will complain on my behalf to the courier!
At least though they did get to roughly the right place. There are several farms and two studs on my postcode, so in some cases, I find couriers assume, that as I’m the biggest farm and the one at the centroid of the post code, that I am someone else and they just dump the goods and run! I wonder what proportion of goods ordered over the Internet never end up where they should?
Remember though that for outgoing letters and parcels to exotic places, Royal Mail have an excellent on-line system for printing postage and customs declarations. Today, I sent a book to Hong Kong and it took me just a few minutes. It’s ideal in my current situation as I can’t drive to the Post Office. As the stamps are a complex bar code, everything is fully-traceable and so far nothing has gone astray.
Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
I have found a full list here on Microsoft’s web site.
But I reaaly need some way of turning them off, or at least restricting them to the ones I want, to solve my keyboard problems.
One that seems to have caught me out is using the Windows key with L. This locks the computer.
Stroke-Friendly Keyboard
I know it will get better with practice, but my typing annoys me!
I usually hit the right key, or one that a spell-checker will correct, but it is the caps lock, shift and control keys that are the problem. For example :-
- I sometimes hit the caps lock instead of shift and get everything in caps. That is very rude in an e-mail and one has to have standards doesn’t one!
- I do a lot of shift characters by using two fingers of the right hand, rather than shift with the left hand and and the character with the right. But thinking back, I’ve always done this to a certain extent, but really I shouldn’t as it’s ignoring getting the left hand back in good form.
- I sometimes, hold the shift down with my left hand and not release it for the next characters. So I end up having to retype a whole phrase or sentence.
- But the major problem is that as the control and shift are so close together, I sometimes use control instead of shift. As control with a character has a meaning in most programs like Word or Internet Explorer,I tend to get in a mess, with all sorts of unwanted actions being carried out.
These problems are caused because the keys are so close together on my laptop, but even on a 2005-vintage Dell keyboard, I get the same problems.
I thought about disabling the control stroke, but that would mean I couldn’t use control-C and control-V for cut and paste. Old habits die hard.
How about the shift, control and old keys being something like piano keys on the edge of the keyboard.
Has anybody got a better solution?
Why Haven’t the Germans Struck Off Incompetent Doctor?
A local story that has been around for months, is the case of the German doctor, Daniel Ubani, who killed a patient in Cambridgeshire. He refused to appear at the inquest and a couple of weeks ago, was struck off in the UK by the GMC.
But yesterday, two brothers were arrested in Germany for protesting, where the doctor was giving a lecture.
Obviously, Germany treats its bad doctors differently to how we do!
John Bird on Benefits
John Bird,the founder of the Big Issue.should know a thing or two about poverty and also how the benefit system works. One thing he said was that to deliver a pound of benfit to someone who needs it costs five times that amount.
He’s just been on BBC Breakfast more or less saying that no-one should get benefits unless they sign a contract to perhaps do voluntary work.
If you can see the interview watch it.
I think he’s right, as from experience of life, I know of various families, who do nothing except sponge on the rest of us. And they have done for several generations! With the budget on Tuesday promising pain for us all, those on benefit must do something in return. One thing they should do as a condition of benefits is look after their health. After all is fair to fund their drinking, smoking, drug abuse and over-eating and then have to pay further costs for their treatment on the NHS?
One thing that annoys me, is if you drive past the Job Centre in Cambridge at say ten in the morning, there are always a few scruffy individuals outside smoking and drinking lager. Surely there is something more productive that they could do!
The Anonymous Widower 