All 11 entries tagged Work

Back to work

After a stuttery start to the holidays I’m back at work proper.

Yes I’m back on the pier, and yes I’m already counting down the days until I finish.

: 23 Mar 2007 12:06 |  Tags: Pda Pier Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Summer Break

I haven’t written in a while, or at least I haven’t written properly in a while. Well I’m here to change that.
It’s not for a lack of trying I’ve written about 8 posts on my Palm but not got around to actually putting them in WarwickBlogs.

Today I’d like to talk about my summer and the impending resumption of Uni.
The latter point both excites and scares me. I’m getting to the bussiness end of my degree and I’m going to be fored to pick some modules not to do. At the same time I’m really exited because I get to do some really cool modules, especially lots of algebra!

As for my summer here’s a selection of what I got up to:

• Working
• Cycling to Kent
• Redesigning the WMS website
• Karting
• Working
• Getting a tattoo (sometimes I even surprise myself)
• Working

I might blog later with some more details of other things, but maybe not.

: 11 Sep 2006 14:43 |  Tags: Syndicate Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Live Blog: Work work work…

I started back at work last saturday, at the Grand Pier for those of you not in the know, which is an amusement arcade. I'm spending most me my time rather predictibly in the change box, its like i never left! It only took about half an hour before i met the first horrible person, smoking right in my face.

Other highlights include saying "They're behind you!" when asked on several occasions where the toilets were. Someone even managed to find the Disabled toilets before the able bodied ones, the ones with the huge neon sign.

Anyways I write all this because I'm very bored, you see there are about 10 customers, and I'm all alone in the changebox. At least I'm being paid!

I'll end with an amusing pier story: a man comes up to the changebox the guy was clearly of asian origin, he spoke with a learnt english accent, after giving him his change he said, in the most unaccented voice: "thats champion."

Well, i thought it was quite funny.

: 29 Mar 2006 11:46 |  Tags: Bored Live Blog Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Days off work

Follow-up to End of Days… from Math.random(anything, everything);

wow, I've just realised that I now have ten days with no work/uni to go to! awesome that's the first time I've had more than two consecutive days off work since june 23.

: 15 Sep 2005 19:22 |  Tags: Work |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

End of Days…

well, days at work, for now at least. Yes today was my last day at my summer job, and like most days, I was stitched up like a woolly jumper. Freed, unwillingly from the burden of running the shore, I was back in the changebox (the cage). Without music, without books, I had only to provide my own entertainment, I came up with two rather good programs for my new mobile, and worked out some clever mathematics for one of them. But, if you've read this far, maybe you can help me. I'm after a very lightweight simple recursive descent parser, written in java, I'd rather not have to write my own, it took me ages when I did one in delphi a few months back.
Anyways, if you know of a good one, please comment with details.

: 15 Sep 2005 19:20 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Java Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Second Last

Okay, today I had decided to that I'd be happy and cheery at work, and until 2pm I was, truly. But after the same customers kept comming and changing notes into coins and then the same coins into notes, my mood changed. Why are people so stupid!
A smile was raised on my face when a boy (12) asked: "can I have pennies?" (No please btw)
I replied: "We don't 'do' pennies, I'm afraid."
"Where can I get pennies then?"
After a brief (but obvious look at my watch), "It's wednesday, go to a bank." I retorted.
Classic. (if a bit mean)

And! Why do people smell so much, I've got through an entire 300ml (standard size) can of air freshner in two days, this one guy, well who knows what he puts in his cigarettes, but I know that it makes me feel physically sick. Another, you could actually smell comming, awful.

Still it's my second-last day, so its not all bad.
A lot of the regulars smile and joke when they come back for more of what they wanted earlier, I wonder if they know that I think they're really sad. There are entire families here, they literally spend 7 days-a-week 'working' the machines, I guess if you want to see where tax-payers money goes, come here for a day.

: 14 Sep 2005 18:36 |  Tags: Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Changebox madness

It would seem that a lot of my creativity stems from boredom, i.e. when I'm bored I challenge said boredom by being moderately creative.

Today was such a slow day at work, which meant I had plenty of time to think, and read, I was reading a book on mathematics, and I was confronted by the usual mathematical language. I realised that the changebox lacked any specialised 'lingo'. So I got thinking, firstly I had to name the coins so,

• One pound coins become 'kings', not sure why but it sounds quite good I think,
• Twenty pence coins become 'geeks', since not one really wants them, but they do have their uses.
• Ten pence coins become 'whores', because ten pences are so dirty (Alan Partridge impression optional but recommended).
• Two pence coins become 'Old Ladies', because its always the old ladies who wan't them, but they always ask for something else, like some geeks, but you give them twos anyway, because you know thats what they want.
• A uniform set of coins becomes a deck, e.g ten ones is a deck, but nine ones and ten tens aren't.

Right, so now that I had a naming system, I needed some operations to perform on them.

The most common operation that I perform in the changebox is check that say a deck of ten coins is actually ten coins, I do this by quickly seperating the deck into two, and counting the two halves, this is defined as 'spitting the deck'. One can perform a uniform split, where the two halfs are of equal size. Also if the two halves are seperated fully, i.e. you not have two distinct decks, that is a 'hard split', otherwise, if the deck is just pushed apart briefly, then it is known as a 'soft split'.

Counting up money from bags onto the desk is now known as 'topping up'.

The coin counter, which is about to die btw, is to be known as 'stressed Eric' (in honour of cartoon of the same name). He always gets jammed after we put 50,000 coins through him in one day. He makes this horrible grinding noise every now and again, which makes you think that he's about to blow up.

The changebox itself is to be known as 'the cage' because thats what it feels like sometimes, you can't get away from the people, and sometimes you're in there for 4+ hours.

Customers are to be known as 'chumps' (least offensive thing I could come up with)

So now I can mildly amusing things like:
"I was in the cage putting some old ladies into stressed eric when this chump came up and demanded some whores, I replied that I hadn't topped up the whores yet and all I had were kings, geeks and old ladies. The chump then wanted a deck of eight kings, so I performed a uniform soft split on a deck of eight kings, before I ran off some cups of old ladies from stressed eric."

How bored was I? very.

: 09 Sep 2005 23:26 |  Tags: Mathematics Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What to do

For the first time in three weeks i'm home from work before 10(pm) and to be truthful I'm not sure what to do with myself, I guess I'd better start packing for uni etc, but I can't be bothered at the moment, so I'll just rest I think.

hmm…

: 05 Sep 2005 19:59 |  Tags: Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Stupid People

Why are people so stupid/horrible/nasty/ignorant/retared?

These two fools claimed that I had short changed them today, by £2, clearly I had not, and I take pride in the fact that I change huge amounts of money each and every day, with very, very few, mistakes, I was having none of it and refused to give them the £2. They persisted though and my supervisor was proptly called over, he basicially said that just to get rid of you, i'll give you the £2. It really sucked, I felt awful after, my integrity and trustworthyness had been called into question, two of the pillars of my life, but the more I thought about it, the more didn't add up. They had claimed they had counted the money twice, though the money was all mixed, twos and ones, why would you do that, why? The money didn't add up to say a whole amount of tens, they would have had three pennies left over, if I hadn't spotted some euro's and an irish penny. And they still claimed they counted it twice, retards.

People like that, who are just trying it on, really hack me off, they are a drain on society, and me, get lost.

Rant ends.

: 04 Sep 2005 23:28 |  Tags: Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Chemical Warfare

I'm not talking about chemical agents used in warfare, but instead about the drugs I use to suppress the head splitting headaches that I get. I had a 'migraine' last night a few hours from the end of work, luckily I get warning of the impending pain, because my vision goes very blurry, which is not a nice feeling. I know now that as soon as this happens I have to take something to take the edge off the headache that I'm about to get, usually thats 1g of Paracetamol and 16mg of codeine (both ph eur).

In case you didn't know codeine is in the same family of drugs as heroin and cocaine, but obviously no way near as powerful, still, codeine makes you feel horrible, and is only midly preferable to the migraine itself. I hate taking it, I hate the fact that I have to, if I didn't I hate the fact I couldn't do anything, I hate the fact I have to carry it with me wherever I go, I hate migraines!

I accept them though, I think of them as pennance for being quite clever, very arrogant but true. That way I can live with them, when I think they have a purpose I can knida deal with that. The only slightly worrying thing is that are get more frequent, but less severe, the fact that I can now bear to be in a bright room, or outside is testament to this. I have been very lucky so far in that I haven't had a migraine during an exam, if I did I think I would very much fail. The last time I tried to do some work during a migraine was in a chemistry class, I couldn't work out some standard electrode potenetials, it was so frustrating, and painful, so I just quit, walked out and went home.

Anyway, by a happy coincidence I have changed my days off work so i get a few to recover.

: 24 Aug 2005 10:42 |  Tags: Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem