In work the other day we found out that the company that provide us with Christmas toy catalogues had gone into administration. That means all the customers who have gone through us to buy Christmas toys (and there’s a good few customers who have bought things from the catalogue) can’t get them, unless we already had have them delivered.. funnily enough we only have about 3 toys in the shop out of about 10 we have on back order.

Guess who’d to call the customers to tell them this? Me! Not fun. The worst part is that I probably look like a liar because the website for the company (http://www.magson.co.uk) is still live with no indication about them no longer trading, even though I just heard it on the news!

Sorry customers, not our fault!

I am so darn annoyed right now. Like I said in the last aside that I posted, I’ve spent the entire day typing up the last module of my management training program which is due in tomorrow. I knew that I was either there tomorrow or next Wednesday, but wasn’t too sure.

The reason I found out that it was tomorrow? My ex boss text me this morning to tell me. Apparently there was an email sent to our stores informing us that we were to attend head office tomorrow and take everything with us as it’s to be handed into the operations director at the end of the meeting.

Question is, why didn’t somebody from my store phone me to let me know that I’d to take all my folders with me? Is it that darn hard to pick up the phone and let me know? I know that I’m not liked that much in this shop (mainly due to the fact I work damn bloody hard and show them up) but trying to sabotage my career by not passing on important information? That’s pissed me off.

So now, I’m going into the shop tomorrow morning. Just show up at 7am in order to print a few things off that can only be accessed and printed via the POS systems back computer and to make a point of asking why on earth nobody called me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d have realised that I was there tomorrow by reading the timetable that’s in my folder. But I wouldn’t have known that it had to be 100% completed in order to be handed in and checked to allow us to pass the course.

Thankfully I’m just tying up loose ends now and just need to collect some evidence in the morning. And print about 200+ pages using the shop’s computer… hopefully we’ve got loads of paper in the shop or I’m in big trouble!

1. How’s your health?
2. How was your day?
3. How’s the weather?
4. How do you expect to get anywhere in life with an attitude like that?
5. How many people made you smile today?

1. My health is actually very good for a change. For once in my life I’ve spent the entire month of November free from the cold or flu (touch wood) and haven’t had anything wrong with me in a few months. Heck, now I think about it I haven’t even suffered from PMT as badly as I used to in about 5 months. Result.
2. My day has been very good, thank you very much. I slept late (well, 9am) and got up to a lovely breakfast of strong black coffee and a chocolate croissant. Not a pain au chocolate, you understand. But a gorgeous all-butter croissant covered in chocolate flakes. It was delicious. Very French. I went to the post office and posted six parcels and met the boyfriend for lunch. Then we came home, had some couple time and when he left I jumped online. Been sitting on my laptop for a few hours now
3. The weather is quite good for Scotland today, actually. No rain. No snow. Damn cold though. But I like cold, it means I can wear my gorgeous heavy knit scarves and my military-esque black wool coat. And not look like some strange peeping-Tom
4. I have a pretty carefree attitude, so I expect I’ll go far. Thanks for the concern, though.
5. I know I made my boyfriend smile! And hopefully when the people who bought things from me will smile when they receive their (amazing wrapped and packaged) jewellery on Monday will smile too.
   As for people making me smile? I suppose my dog when she came bounding at me when I got home, and my boyfriend ♥

from Friday5.org

Uh, the new release of Twitter Tools has a bug. Sorry for everyone who got 100+ ‘weekly Tweets updates’ in their RSS reader. It’s disabled now.

Dearest customers,

If you happened to buy food from our hot food take-away or any in-shop baked bread today I’m really, really sorry if you end up with food poisoning. It’s an outside chance, since the ovens are all on timers but just in case - sorry.

See, the boy who does the hot food / bake off at the weekend turned out still drunk this morning. Couldn’t stand up quite right drunk. And obviously I’d to send him home which meant I’d to make the bread and cook the sausages and bacon for all your breakfasts. Now, that sounds easy right? Yeah well I can burn water.

I’m guessing that you’re pretty safe with the bread and croissants and pastries that I made (apologies for the bad icing job on the cinnamon swirls!), it’s just the bacon and sausages that I’m worried about. Saying that I had a roll and sausage for my breakfast and I’m ok so we should be good.

Normal service with the hot food will resume tomorrow!

Yours,
Melissa
Supervisor who doesn’t like shouting at her staff, even when they roll into work drunk

Winter Weekend Uniform by AshesFromStars

This is what I’ll be wearing all winter.

Finally I have a week off of work when the boyfriend is off too, we’ve been trying to arrange the same week off together for what seems like months and finally we’ve got it. Not that it’s going to be a week off for me though - I’ve got a meeting at the office on Wednesday for my MTP and tomorrow night I’m going out for coffee with a girl I used to work with for a gossip session. He’s at the dentist today and will currently be knocked for six with whatever drugs they’ve pumped him full of this time, as he’s the world’s biggest scaredy cat when it comes to the dentist and goes to a specialist who gives him drugs before doing any work, so I’m not seeing him until later on. Oh and I’ve got a million and one things to do tomorrow during the day including posting the things that I’ve sold on eBay, buying something pink to wear for the meeting on Wednesday as they’re having a Breast Cancer dress-in-pink day and try not to spend money on clothes that I don’t need.

I was planning on going somewhere this week as well, we’ve been checking out last minute breaks for the past few weeks, just looking for a couple of days away somewhere. I wanted to go back to Blackpool because it’s my favourite place in the UK outside Glasgow, because of the Pleasure Beach and the tacky shops and the trams. I’m a geek, I love getting the tram in Blackpool. It’s not because I’m some anorak or anything, it’s just because I go everywhere by bus and the trams are different to what I’m used to! The chips are amazing too, and nothing beats Blackpool Rock!
We were also looking at Cardiff, but that’s just because I am a geek and want to stand in the same place John Barrowman and David Tennant have in Cardiff Bay…

As it turns out, we’re going nowhere. There’s no point going away for a couple of days when we can just stay in the house which we’ll have to ourself. Sorted. I’ll just drag him into Glasgow for a change of scenery when shopping…

cupcake 004, originally uploaded by Melissa Gray.

My new hoodie, how cute is it? Seriously lovin’ it.

I’ve had enough domain names in my life to know how hard it really is to find a good, reliable web host. I’ve been with all the big players, past and present, and on countless reseller accounts for both myself personally and for client’s websites.

When I first started out blogging (although, it wasn’t really blogging back then - more personal websites with a tonne of stolen graphic content - sorry!) I generally went with the first host that I came across with a good offer. In fact my first domain, sparkling-stars.co.uk (yuck) cost me something like 99p and had a banner and popup even though it was a fully paid hosting package. Yes, I was naive. I’ve learned my lessons now though, although that cannot be said for everyone. Including my mother.

You see she’s heard me talking about my blog countless times. In fact I’m sure she visits here sometimes (hi mum!) even though I don’t know if I’m too happy with that. Anyway, she decided that she wanted to be a blogger. Not quite sure why, but there you go. Instead of asking me for help with setting it up, registering a domain name or purchasing hosting she went right ahead and paid well over the odds for a crap .co.uk domain and hosting from the big white moon company. Silly woman.

If she’d actually asked me for my help, since I do know what I’m talking about, I’d have jumped straight to my usual port of call when buying domain names or web hosting - Web Hosting Geeks.com. That website has saved me a lot of money since I first came across it, especially their great Free Google Adword Credits which has come in handy for websites for clients who aren’t willing to start spending money before their website starts making them money.

They also have a great section dedicated to hosting packages especially for bloggers, with some great companies listed who are, in my experience, excellent hosts to go with.

So before you spend money that you don’t need to on webhosting check out WebHostingGeeks.com - they really do know what they’re talking about.