16 February 2015 (Monday) - This n That

I was fast asleep shortly before 5am when for no fathomable reason my dog declared "Red Alert" and was running round the house barking. It is possible that the sparrows chirping outside might have startled him; I hope not. We don't need him accompanying the dawn chorus every morning. Ironically he then slept (and snored) whilst I watched "Dad's Army" over brekkie. Arguably a lame show, but it's entertaining enough at 6am.

My dog got up just as I got dressed. I settled him down and set off to work.

I drove to work through a rather foggy morning. As I drove the radio was talking about easing the burdens of our legal system by using "on-line courts." Apparently the powers that be beleive that eBay's electronic dispute arbitration system works so well that in principle it could be rolled out on a larger scale. The theory is that most matters currently dealt with by small claims courts could be dealt with by a similar on-line system.

The fact that no matter what the issue, eBay's eBay's electronic dispute arbitration system just tells the seller to refund the buyer's money is neither here nor there...

I stopped off for supplies at Morrisons. And as usual the self-service checkouts failed. They work fine until you try to weigh something and then their screens start flashing error messages. That was what happened (again) to me this morning. As I abandoned the broken machine and moved to another, the sour-faced harridan charged with overseeing the self service checkouts came bustling over. "What's wrong with that one?" she rudely demanded of me. I told he that she knew full well what was wrong with it; it was the same problem I'd pointed out to her on my last visit. I also told her (rather loudly) that the machines in Sainsburys work fine and the staff there don't have attitude problems.

I could see that she didn't like that, but she realised she was in the wrong. I left her muttering over the broken machine and drove off to work.

Pausing only briefly to replace a missing geocache I got to work for the early shift and did my thing. At lunch time I took myself out to the car park and saxed. "The Pink Panther" is coming along nicely. "When I'm sixty-four" is very much a work in progress, but I'm making progress. Unfortunately "One Step Beyond" is still very much at the aspirational stage though.

My piss did simmer somewhat; I play my sax at the far end of the car park away from the entrance and all the other cars. During my practice about a dozen people went to their cars and drove all the way round the car park (having a good stare at me as they passed) before leaving. What's so fascinating about a fat bald middle aged bloke playing a saxophone rather badly?

An early start made for an early finish, and I was (just) home before it got dark. I got the lead onto "Furry Face ^TM" and we went for a quick walk round the block. We would have gone further had it not been raining.

I then spent a very frustrating half-hour doing e-shopping. I've nearly got to the end of my sax music book. That book was a general introduction and Teacher recommended I move on to a series of music books called "Guest Spot"; she said I could choose whatever one I liked because they all have different tunes and genres. Both eBay and Amazon sold them, but both filled the the descriptions with what I can only describe as "corporate bollox". With several thousand listed terms and conditions, neither one of them actually listed the tunes in any of the books. Sometimes there is no subsititute to actually going shopping.

With "er indoors ^TM" off bowling I set about ironing shirts that I didn't iron at the weekend. Being on day shifts at the moment means I'm on five-day weeks. I prefer the longer night shifts - longer shifts mean less of them and so I get more days at home so I can catch up on stuff like ironing. Otehr than ironing shirts this evening I didn't get much else done as a small dog spent much of the evening bothering me to fuss him.

There was an interesting mockumentary about what might happen if UKIP won the upcoming general election. I expect the pundits will be up in arms about it on the radio tomorrow...