No thought!

No this isn't a rant at Lu customers, it's a list of REAL URLs of websites who obviously haven't thought about how their URLs could be read before they registered them!

"Who Represents?", a database for agencies to the rich and famous:
www.whorepresents.com

Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange
advice and views: www.expertsexchange.com

Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island: www.penisland.net

Need a therapist? www.therapistfinder.com

Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:
www.molestationnursery.com

New to Milan and you need electric light? Why not sign up on-line with
Power-Gen? www.powergenitalia.com [This just asked me for my password! Obviously for members only or something]

They are actual websites (I checked!) and they just made me chuckle! I do have a weird sense of humour!!

Time To Talk!

That's what these meetings with Tim O'Toole are entitled, and as I said in my last blog, I attended one of these during the week...

I don't know about time to talk, but it was certainly time to listen! We were given the opportunity to ask questions towards the end of the session, but that was means of a computer on each table, and they only picked out certain questions which they wanted to answer, so I'm still none the wiser what the future holds!
It is nice to get together and have a chat with the management, but the way these meetings are organised, when you go in, you get a coloured card. This shows which group of tables you are sitting at. They must have spent a lot of time ensuring that we were all seperated from each other! I didn't know anyone at the table I was sitting at, which was obviously a deliberate move to stop any chatter etc.

Anyway, Mr O'Toole touched on a number of subjects, but refused to mention anything we were wanting to know, like station staffing levels etc.
All in all, a pretty pointless excercise, but as I say, at least the current management are trying to talk to us which is a big improvement on the previous useless management who were never seen or heard!

One of the things Mr O'Toole was talking about was the long history of LUL, and this prompted me to have a look at the London Transport Museum's photograph collection. They have literally thousands of photographs online from days gone by, and personally I could (indeed have) spend hours looking at the pictures. I love history, and London Transport certainly has plenty of it!

Anyway, dead lates all this week again. Got a long weekend coming up in a fortnight which is taken up doing the lighting for my church's Christmas production, then come back down for three days and then off again until December 28th!
Unfortunately I didn't get picked to work New Years Eve... Because the company are offering extra money for working NY Eve, the people who we never see for the rest of the year (the skivers and the people who only ever do early duties) all suddenly crawl out of the woodwork to work that one nightshift a year!
Personally I don't think they should be allowed to work that nightshift if they only ever do early duties for the rest of the year, but this is all down to union politics. Our union rep has cunningly awarded himself a cushy spare duty overnight (Now that's a surprise) and his mates have all got nice cushy numbers as well!
There's quite a few of us are rather annoyed (to say the least) about this 'old boy network' which operates whenever the union is allowed to allocate duties (as they do over Christmas etc), but sadly there's sod all we can do about it.

Anyway, that's enough whinging for now. Hopefully I'll blog again during the week!

Back again!

I've had a thoroughly enjoyable holiday (although a bit on the cold side) but now I'm back and ready for work!
I'm actually at a meeting with our MD Tim O'Toole this afternoon, although what he's going to talk to us about I have no idea yet!

I'll be back here tonight to tell you of what Mr O'Toole had to say (if I'm allowed to say, that is!).

By the way: To my colleague The Great Orme, My fortnight in Kings Cross was very nice!! (Read the comments to my 'holiday time' post if you're confused!)

Holiday time!

At the time of posting, it's just after 7am on Friday 4th November and I'm just about to leave for Kings Cross station and the start of my holidays!

I'll be back around 21st (I think!) so I'll catch up with you all then!

Take Care everyone!