Andy Ramblings

Yes, it's something some of us love, but most of us dread. I didn't really like them that much, but then I didn't have the wisdom of Wally from Dilbert. Wally, you see, always manages to find a way out of getting work done. He lives on nothing but coffee, so is always a wake, but a bit idle, or working hard to appear to be idle. On would could say, if he  were to put the same amount of work in to real work, that he puts into  trying to be idle, he would , I guess be one of the most productive people in the Dilbert office.

So, I present you with Wally's work appraisal.

So, when you have your next work appraisal, think of that oneliner.
I can only say that Scot Adams is a genius!

As quite a few of you may know, the education system in the UK isn't the best in the world. You can basically get through all the way till your 16 and get your GCSC, and not have the ability to Read, Write or do your Arithmetic (yep that's the 3 R's!). This is becoming rather worrisome for the people responsible for educating the country. What do they do instead, they go and do some research on where the problem could show it's self up. Yep, they found that it can show it's self up in the karaoke bars!

So, if you're one of those souls who goes to the Karaoke bars and can't read the prompts, it could be that you can't read?!

The lyrics of the 10 most popular karaoke songs have been assessed and rated by government literacy experts.

Those tackling Robbie Williams' Angels needed the reading skills required to pass five good GCSEs (Level 2).

Experts from the Get On literacy campaign said 17.8 million adults would not be able to follow the song.

Ok, Angels (Lyrics here) is a hard song to get right, I don't mean in the lyrics area, but in getting it to sound right. Most folk who do tend to 'try' and sing it tend to have had a few pints to many? Or did these experts test the folks make sure they didn't have a drop to drink or a splif to smoke?
Some other notable songs that suffer the same fate are:

• Gloria Gaynor: I will survive
• Queen: Don't Stop Me Now
• The Commitments: Mustang Sally
• Grease: Summer nights
• Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds
• Abba: Dancing Queen (not only is that hard, but like Angels, hard to get right!)

So, as the report says, get yer readin' up ta scratch before ya embarrass yerself on the Karaoke!
I'm not saying that you would ever, ever find me on a Karaoke Stage, Drunk or Sober! This was just a comment on that BBC news report...

More info on English GSCS here.

Well well weelll, Yesterday in my area of London, near the MI5/6 building, Ok, I'm about a 20min walk from it. All power just went! Now, I know my PC has a habit of just going wooops, lets reboot while I'm on Skype. This was a tad different as I didn't see that familiar, your using the DVI connector message pop up on my flat screen. Then I saw all my other electric devices just going wooops no power, off I go. Now that's not too much of a problem, what does one do when there is No power.

This got me thinking a bit, I was thinking of ways to find out what happened, I though, Oh I'll google it, easy, Duh Andy, there is NO power, your 'puter is no use... use your imagination... so I turned on my radio, But hey, that works on mains, so I was stuck there. Luckily, I had radio in my mobile. So on that went to listen to BBC London. No news on there, I had obviously missed the update.. I also hazard the guess that it had to be Local, as the radio was on air, but then they would be, it's the BBC! But it also had to be local, if it was affecting a wider area, the BBC would be having more important things to say about how not to panic, and that everything is being done to fix the problem as soon as possible,

What I did hear though, was on the traffic news, All traffic lights in the area around the MI5/6 building, OK , ok, they said Vauxhall.were out. kaput, not working, so there were huge traffic jams. nothing else, no further news.
So, I went for a walk around the block, it was a big walk as I never quiet got around a block when another one diverted me. But I did manged to ask a local Police man as to what all the commotion was about, he gave me the answer.
There was a power failure at the local Vauxhall sub-station and the local electric guys were doing their very best to fix the problem as soon a possible. I thanked him for his time and continued to get a bit lost...
Finally got home, Still no power, what can I do, I listen to more radio that bored me silly... then important things like, how am I going to feed myself this evening? I only have an electric cooker and combo-microwave. I though about cutting branches of the trees, to make a campfire... I now how to light them, after all I do have Ray Mears book on how to survive on a desert island.

Blip, PC kicks back into action.... Power failure over,  Ray Mear's  tips on how to have a campfire in your kitchen, and not burn the house down, will have to wait for another power outage.

Ok, so I was a wee bit cheeky the other week chez MBIAT. Yep, I kinda said, Phew I got away with it, then Sim from Sim's Blog thought otherwise. So, here's my first MeMe. It's all about Books! Bugger I don't read many I don't have room in my brain for stories, that make me laugh, cry or do anything, but here goes..... ready or not. (has a quick look at his great library or err 20 or so books. )

1. One book that changed your life - the hardest question first.
Now that's a very tough question, When I was younger, I did read quite a bit mainly because I had to, you know shool and all that. Am this is bleeding hard, As I can't remember most of the books I have read. (struggling at the first step.
Ok I could say the Bible, I was brought up in the west coast of Ireland, But the problem was, the more I read it, the more I realised that WTF is wall this claptrap. It wasn't long afterwards I became pretty much an atheist and became more into science and stuff like that.

2. One book that you've read more than once.
I'm not really someone to read books more than once, but then again, there are a few. This is one that comes to mind, The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier. This book still has resonance to this day, in any conflict.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island.
On a desert Island? Sheesh, It would have to be something on survival, but if it's one whith one Palm tree and a few nuts, Then that's a hard one. But I'm sure you can do things with the nuts, so it would be Ray Mears, watched him on TV and well he could light a fire in a few minutes!

4. One book that made you laugh.
The Dilbert Principle by Scot Adams, Ok not quite a book, but if your and engineer like me, then Dilbert's work place does resonate. Read More