But Maizie. You ARE skiving. You're on here. Like me

I'm on here while a program is running and I can't do anything else until it is done That's not skiving, that's efficient use of time so that I don't have to skive when I should be working.

Manager has turned up, anyway. Other colleague hasn't. Ho well, postman has just brought me a parcel with a book in it (work-related but there you go).

Yeah, yeah. Me too.

Nicely put!

How did I manage to get 2 pieces in one morning ending on Bb?

Oh dear. My friend (new, and not VERY close) has just suffered a bereavement. I haven't seen her (as she went home) and haven't mentioned it, because she didn't tell me, and I don't think she'd want to think that everyone was talking about her life behind her back. Now it's her birthday, and I'm not sure what to say!

Should I just say Happy Birthday and leave it at that? Or Happy Birthday, I'm sorry for your loss? Or, I don't know "I know it must not be a very happy Birthday, but I hope it's as good as it can be."
It is all so complicated.

My birthday was 5 days after my Mum died last year. I appreciated the b'day messages a lot especially those saying 'have the best day you can' 'let's celebrate when you get home' or in some way acknowledged the situation. It was helpful to me to know who knew as I found it very hard at first to tell people what had happened.

Facebook seems to think its new messaging service will mean the end of phone numbers and emails.

But it won't mean the end of either, will it?...

Would you really want to send personal emails through a website like Facebook that has so far shown scant regard for privacy? Will they also reserve the right to use the content of your emails as they see fit?

I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them to be honest.

ahhhhhhh date for diploma exam through the door!!!!! Its all too soon now!!!

I keep getting e-mails from some "Women in Science, Engineering and Technology" group at my uni. Several people keep wanting to unsubscribe from the list - and click "Reply to All" instead of "Reply". I've had about an e-mail a minute saying "unsubscribe me" for the past 15 minutes.



I'm assuming it's all about being taken seriously as a woman in science - they must now think we're all stupid

ill and home from work, and got woken up by a text message from my other half informing me that I can't marry Prince William because he'd just got engaged.

Congratulations to the lad.

That sort of thing has gone on in all organistaions where I've done IT support. Some people just want EVERYONE to know. It can (often does) bring down email servers.


Agreed. I have a domain name so my email address goes with me if Facebook, GMail, Yahoo, MSN, my ISP all implode.

Yup, happens here from time to time. People are gradually starting to realise that the 'bcc' field is a good place to put large distribution lists to avoid 'reply to all syndrome'.

You always get someone saying 'Stop replying to all!!!' and someone replies to that saying 'Well you did, so you're just exacerbating the problem!!' and so on...

I've been thinking of that, mostly so I can gradually move all my e-mail over to it and potentially change ISP, since my current personal e-mail address is ISP specific (it never occurred to me at the time what a pain that could be).

But now I keep wondering how reliable the various organisations that host email (is host the right word?) are, and whether being reliant on one of these might end up being a bad thing. Do you mind me asking who you use? and whether you find the service is good?

http://www.just-the-name.co.uk/main.shtml

Service? I've never actually needed any.

Actually I could ditch it as I now have a Mobile Me (me.com) address which everything redirects to anyway (in order to synchronise the mac and iphone). Still, I prefer to have my own domain name.

Can I ask a really stupid question? How do you know if your email address is ISP specific? Is that like @tiscali.com or whatever?

Is Gmail ok?

I have Googlemail. My e-mail can either be sent to googlemail.com or gmail.com and they'll get delivered on either address.

Mad Tom has a doppelganger living in my home town! He's so alike, I almost went up and said to him!

Our new neighbours of 7 months have put a sale board up.

I wonder if it was my piano playing?

Yep : tiscali, orange, plusnet, btinternet etc.

Why is it that when things take a turn for the better, there's something big and nasty round the corner ready to jump out and knock you down again...... ???


And when will people learn that you can't just mess kids around? They're not pawns in a game but little highly-emotional people with valid thoughts and feelings, just like the rest of us !!!


You CAN'T just mess them around at will!!!

Um. How long has the Events tab had its own section on the Forums? Is that relatively new? Because I've only just noticed it.

Last Friday : and a very good move I feel it is, too

Hurrah for the Events forum tab - only noticed it myself yesterday too.

Wow! Goes to show how much I've been paying attention.


Glad to see I'm not the only slow one

oh yeah *duh*

(and it still took a while for me to see what you meant when I went to the front page!!!)

That's worse than me, Juniper

Hey, It's been a long day! lol

Just had an OMG moment in ToysRUs! Standing in the queue with my modest ?30 worth of goods, the lady in front started talking to me. She told me she'd lost count of the number of times she'd been to the store over the last few weeks and had already spent ?5000 (five thousand!!) on gifts for her 3 children and every day they ask for something else, (which obviously then goes out and buys)

I must be the meanest mother on earth budgeting ?150 each on the children.

Not at all! More fool the lady for giving in to her children. How is she funding all this? She's either lucky enough to be able to afford it, or she's getting up to her eyes in debt. Either way, giving them everything now will teach them nothing for later in life when they can't get what they want.

I totally agree Daisy Chain. My answer when they ask for something else is to remind them that they posted their letters to Santa a while back, and Santa only has a limited supply of toys to go around all the children in the world. We have a Mr X appeal in my area and I always make sure that they each give a present to this (either something new or maybe the things they've now grown out of). They know that there are children who don't get anything for Christmas or birthdays and (I hope) they appreciate what they do get.

They'll either grow up to be charity workers or go completely the opposite way and spend, spend, spend when they eventually earn their own money

<Brummie accent>
"Excuse me, but I couldn't help notice that we're considerably richer than yaou!"
</Brummie accent>

Seriously, that kind of huge budget is moronic. Those kids will grow up spoilt and expecting everything on a plate. She should be telling them that life isn't fair, and that you don't always get what you want.

I usually budget a few hundred on my niece, but my sister tries to avoid going OTT herself. I do like to buy her things like "experience" days rather than material goods, so she has memories to keep rather than a badly made bit of plastic that she'll forget about after a while.

How long does air mail from Canada usually take?


...... Impatient.....Me?

Depends on the type of pigeon they use really....

I had a very strange dream this morning.
We (as in we, the forum) were going to a forum event on a plane. Definitely there (because I spoke to them) were katyjay, andante_in_c, barry-clari and DaisyChain; plenty of other familiar faces in the background.
The problem was, we had to check in all our instruments in their cases. And none of them were lockable. So we just had to go for it and hope for the best.
Andante_in_c was busily disguising her flute in its case, by painting over the identifying marks on the outside of the case (make/model) with a different make and model so nobody would want to steal it.
I put my hoooge recorder case (sopranino to bass, with garklein popped in the music stand slot) in with much trepidation.
On arrival I opened my case up and it was mostly empty. But some bits were still in there. Notably a garklein that appeared to be made of gemshorn material (but shaped/sized like a garklein). There was also half a sopranino still in its slot. But the rest had fallen out - or rather, the case had been opened up, the loose bits tipped out and stolen, and then the case closed up and returned to me.
At this point my empty case suddenly de-emptied and there were all sorts of bits in there - like the middle joint of an unknown and jolly poor condition treble; a spikey bit from the bottom of a really big mutant recorder.
I was then wondering how andante_in_c's bass viol had got on, and whether it had been booked a seat or if it had been shoved in the hold too.
And then my alarm went off.

Maizie. Funnily enough I used to carry my flute round in an old Yamaha case until I bought a super-duper one. I always hoped it would signal 'grotty old flute, not worth nicking'.

5,000 pounds, that's ridiculous

I just wouldn't have known what to reply to her.

http://blogs.hereisthecity.com/2010/11/18/...-royal-wedding/

here I am thinking what sort of piano i could get for 5000 pounds... probably a good thing that I have no children.

I do however have a cat who just tried to steal my curry.

Absolutely not!!!! I've not even spent the hundred on each of mine !! But they don't go without. They don't ask for much either (except son who wanted a DS initially but soon accepted he wasn't going to get one, nor did he need one really). Daughter's list: Clarinet Cds (Emma Johnson), Purple Music stand, Clarinet stand and maybe a few surprises? Son's consists of a few Thomas Tank train items he wants for his rapidly expanding track - unfortunately most of which are not available so he's getting other stuff to go with said track.

This is Christmas - a Christian celebration of teh birth of Jesus not some big giveaway or free for all I don't get the rather OTT nature of it nowadays. Nice for the kids to get a few things but you don't nee dto go mad do you?

And my kids are getting music lessons and all that entails too!!




Mine too!!!

When talking about Children in need I asked tehm if they'd each give a coin from their penny boxes as well as Mummy and Daddy sending some in to school for their "Spotty Day" I was asked why but after I'd explained what it was all about, they were more than happy to do so.

My little random comment is somewhat related .... Why can school raise over ?400 through the book fair (a % of teh total spend goes to school) but only ?200+ for Children in need when all money given goes to the charity. And why is it that those that have least tend to give the most???? I never get this one!!

...but you don't know that - you only see the visible donation to Children in Need. You don't know if people are making charitable donations in other ways e.g. via payroll or regular direct debit, both of which may be more tax efficient than giving your children cash to take to school.

Indeed, some people may already have donated a substantial sum to Children in Need via another route. Or some people may have given their "charity quota" to a different charity from Children in Need, whether it's an alternative children's charity or a charity unconnected with children. Or maybe some people don't support any charity. It's impossible to make any judgement! I would go to a book fair to buy books irrespective of whether it was for a charity or not. I wouldn't necessarily go to any event just for the sake of supporting a charity. On the other hand, I might give X% of my income to a charity of my choice. Or I might give nothing. It's impossible to know!

I really hope we don't have snow next week. My family will be flying back from Prague

There were three things I absolutely had to do today.

The laundry was one of them. I've just about finished that.

Getting the website up and running for the Egham Adult Learners' Concert was another one. Done that too.

And something else..... Trouble is, I can't remember what the something else was.

I've asked Misterjay, and he doesn't know either.



So I'm going to wait until someone yells at me for something I've forgotten. And then I'll say "Oh yes, it's the very next thing on my list to do...."

Sorted

The roads have been gritted tonight. Perhaps we'll have snow tomorrow

I'm going to have an Alexander Technique lesson today...

I had a few, I'm still undecided on how beneficial they are... I've suspended them for the moment, need to rein in my spending!

We have a set budget for each person which is very much on the modest side (ie well below the hundred mark), whether kids or not. Presents are good fun, but they aren't what it's all about, really; and the idea of people spending 1,000s on Christmas presents plain horrifies me! If our kids express a wish for something expensive, then (assuming it's actually something worthwhile getting), we ask family members to club together to get it - the kids don't get that item PLUS everything else on their 'wish list'. I bet that lady's kids don't actually appreciate properly half of what they end up receiving, just because they get so much stuff (and they've never had to wait to get it, either).

We do the same, and often the grand parents give them money for Christmas with us being abroad, and the kids spend a little and bank the rest. We also budget ?100 max from us, usually it's much less, especially if we get lucky at a car boot sale!! Our kids have been brought up knowing money can be very tight, and really appreciate everything they get, new or not - they really are not bothered.
Having said that, lots of little presents always go down very well!!