Menodaizykul; a little chain of random thoughts.

Beg your indulgence as I ramble and grumble. Am a little unprepared this week. Paralympics are paralyzing! I even watch the track and field (athletics) when its the Paras. The strength and determination of these athletes knows no bounds. The adaptations in many of the sports, and even one or two events which are specific to Paras, are awe-inspiring... and I love that there is no holding back, no 'pandering'. This is mean, lean, sports-machine stuff and compelling viewing. Am watching murderball wheelchair rugby even as I type this; Aus v GB. Think daleks meets stockcars with a ball to chase. Here's another thing to love - the GB team is mixed gender. Yup. There's a gal playing with the boys!

Being stuck to my chair and keyboard hasn't been too onerous. Particularly as, despite what is happening just about everywhere else in the country, the weather has been consistently disgusting. No going out in that stuff anyway. Not voluntarily.

Which may explain why the delivery that was scheduled for Monday didn't turn up. I think the TNT driver took one look at the rough crossing and decided to stay the other side of the water. That he wrote he had attempted delivery but no one home on the tracker was as blatant a lie as I have come across in some time. Needless to say I was onto that like a rash. Having been monitoring the tracker and looking out the window all day, I was able to alert the 'live chatter' within minutes of this supposed drop attempt. The promised one hour follow up from that enquiry, didn't happen, so two hours later I was onto it again. When the ten minute 'call back' didn't arrive, I got hold of the phone number. The YAMster doesn't shout; she doesn't yell. She does, however, become cold and abrupt. Even I draw back from the YAMster when she is in that frame of mind. It's rare, thank goodness. The silly young thing who is the 'sorterer-outerer' in their call centre seemed to think it was fine there had been such a clear and erroneous statement made on behalf of their company. At no time did I ever feel that there was a genuine concern for the customer, it was all about whether it was convenient for TNT. After all, the driver has to cross water doesn't he? SAY WHAT?!!.................................@#$$$$% ^^^^^^^^^^^....

Long story short, by the end of that call the girl accepted at least that the truck must have gone to a totally different William Street (???????????????).. and she would ensure delivery next day.

Then she asked if there was anything else she could 'do for you today'?

Anyway, the driver at least had the sense to look sheepish when he brought the box to me yesterday. The 'express' service from Edinburgh to Dunoon took exactly five days. sigh. No other delivery - and there have been many, from several different companies - has done this. 

TNT, black black demerits to you!

Another thing I have been wrangling with over the past fortnight is Google Plus pages. September 1st hit and they were automatically updated. At the moment, one can revert to the original format and I have to say I was sorely tempted. However, I resolved to not be such a stick in the mud and worked my way through the help pages and the video guides. However, neither of these pointed me to how I stream only the updates from my 'following' circle, rather than the entire world. This was easy in the old setup; but persistence of hitting links and playing around with the different categories, I did find it... if this is your preference also and you have been wondering, you need to go to 'people', select the 'following' tab at top of that screen, then hit the three-dots sign top right, where you will see 'posts from circle'.

Clearly the idea is to maximise networking; and this must be behind the prominence now put on having 'collections'. At first I was using a few unprintawords about this. However, I can see a purpose for embracing the collections format. As it stands at the moment I have set up two; one dedicated to my RedBubble shop, and one to show off some screen shots from my 'fish farm'. That is purely an exercise in using the facility and may not hang around for long if nobody follows it. 

The thing is, you see, now there is the possibility to link all one's posts into collections and readers can follow only those threads which are of special interest to them. If you have been clicked over to the new format and are finding lots of posts from strangers or posts from those you follow that are extraneous to your interest, you can choose only to look at 'following' posts and you can further refine by selecting which of their collections are your faves ... provided they have set them up. Quite a useful tool - but it is going to take some work to get the collections up and running. Why put in the effort? G+ is the only 'social media' tool in my kit. I might as well make it work as best it can for me.

Click here to go to the fishies page!

That's enough rambling for today. To finish... blogpal Peppylady's daughter has an Etsy shop selling handmade dog bandanas. Check it out! Also thought there would be a few of you out there who might find this article quite interesting. How many signs do you exhibit??! Go on, go across. You'll see lots of stuff like this...