Richard (The Sane)

My hound is not from the oldies club, but he did ask for a pipe and slipper for his birthday, does he count? Welcome

Tippy seemed somewhat more... well... comatose than usual... And his manners seemed to have taken a significant turn for the worse Also it looks like he may have lost control of his tounge. What on earth could cause such strangeness? Ah Maybe Sussed it! He forgot to tidy stuff away!!!! Or maybe he didn't touch a drop and is a natural frootloop.

Got this one http://www.saynotobsl.org.uk/index.php?opt...7&Itemid=34

On

I've had that mail too I'll stick it on later

Ah, maybe I should have said, I emailed them to ask too

Added as link and newsflash - nice one Ange

Would it be posible to get permission to post this on the website we are putting together? Cheers

Tippy would like to ask if he can appear in the video, he was somewhat interested in the fantastic song and would like to hear it in person (well, hound) Truly great. Honest.

Fee, you are most definitly not the sort of manager I critisised - sorry if I gave that impression. I still maintain that the NHS is badly managed, but this is high level management strategy I am referring to. You talk about targets - to be honest the service is over-targetted. Let me move away from the NHS for a moment but what I describe may strike a similarity. The company I work for was, 18 months ago, the bottom of the league table in the industry when it came to customer service - based on the number of customer complaints to an independent body. We had targets coming out of our ears and to meet them often was detremental to providing good service. We had a change of high level management - a total and complete change (Unusual for a huge company, but necessary). The first thing the new management team did was strip out most of the targets and leave just a few really high level ones for upper management only. Result? Staff morale went up instantly as everyone could get on with their jobs. Customer service has improved over 100% and is still rising - customer complaints is less than 25% of the number we saw this time last year. Last month all outsourced operations were closed, so everything is back 'in house' - we expect more improvement there. All the above was brought about by a different management strategy. That is how I mean the NHS is badly managed. Often it is not the individual managers such as yourself, but the overall strategy derermined by whatever board does that. Sorry for the waffle, the only way I could really clarify what I mean was through my own experience

Overall I think the people in the NHS do a fantastic job. I mean the real people, the ones you see when you need help etc. But the NHS itself is a badly managed mess that could be so much more than it is. Doctors who work in hospitals are paid a fair wage but GP's - well they really are overpaid and certainly in our area are not worth a quarter of what they are paid. I have health insurance as Sam gets it though her work (She works for the solicitors that represent quite a few of the NHS trusts in their negligence cases) and it is about 1/3 of the normal price. It is also true that quite a few fundamental cokk ups happen on a regular basis which contribute heavily to why the NHS gets a lot of flack. Some justified, some not. Ask anyone who has had to use the health service more than 10 times in 2 years - I'll bet they would tell you about the 1 time it was a bad experience before the 9+ times everything went fine...

Amazon are actually really good for returns, it is worth phoning them if you get no joy. Sam bought me a stargate boxset last year but then it arrived some sod had opened the box, stolen the DVD's but left all the cases. They just sent a new one out next day delivery. Great bunch.

The oil warning light is generally the sign of impending doom if left unchecked. Do put some oil in, and maybe get it looked at as to what part of the engine is leaking oil too..

I see this a slightly different way as it is not an hourly rate. I suspect there was not a full waiting room when you went, in fact you may have been the only visitor that night. However the vet practice still has to pay a premium to the staff for being present at night, and they have to pay for the surgery to be open, even if at a reduced rate - they have to heat more of it if someone is present all night too. The cost adds up! Personally I think you paid a fair price.

With a pay&go phone you can register online so can put whatever name you like on it. I believe you can do a credit report online with experian and find out staright away, although I don't think p&G phones appear on credit reports. Should pick anything else up though!

UK is definitly Region 2 - as is the rest of europe - map below http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm Should work fine in the portable player, but laptops & computers have more than one place to change the region. On the laptop you have the player software, and also the DVD drive hardware. If you have not used the DVD drive in the laptop then you will need to set the region before it will play a region encoded disk. WHat is the DVD player software you have?

A great game to get rid of all the pre-Xmas stress HERE

Is it completely not working or just doing odd stuff?

Also, if you get mad etc with her then that is definitly the worse way to persuade her to stop. All it will do is stop her telling you/talking to you about it.

What can you get if you put a bit towards it? The quality of phone you get usually (depending on network) goes up significantly if you want to put £20 quid in

Nothing stopping you. 123 reg have a control panel where you can set up domain forwarding. If you set your domain to forward to the address of your board then anyone going to the web address will automatically be redirected to your board. Although you might be better looking at a hosting package and running the board yourself. My webhost costs £26 a year for package including a domain name. They also have an installer for Phpbb2 which will set the board up for you - but then you have full access to every aspect of it rather than being restricted in the way free sites are. I'm sure there are other hosts out there that do similar things too. You get a far better service if you are willing to pay a bit

OK, this is for all thos photos you want to post just because! I'll move the ones from picture chat and update this thread with more meaningful info later

There is also the annoyed tentative "anyone..?"

For all of you who are having a bad day, here is something to cheer you up...its a crack up! Next time you have a bad day at work... Think of this guy. Rob is a commercial saturation Diver for Global Divers in Western Australia. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to a radio station in Perth, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won. G'day Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial 'waterheater'; This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a hose,which is taped to the side of the suit. I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was already done. In agony I realized what had happened. The machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all in fits of hysterical laughter. I was then instructed to make three agonizing in-water compression stops totalling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the Medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got into the chamber. Yes the cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poo for two days because my butt was swollen shut. So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your bum.

Indeed it has - the switch to turn it off was flicked a few months back.