I've had to ring in sick for my two weekend night shifts - I've had a cold coming on for the past couple of days, and it landed, as ever, on my chest this morning. I basically wasn't able to get any sleep at all, coughing as much as I was, the fatigue making me feel even worse. We're really short of staff at the moment, but all I could do was to be apologetic when I rang the duty shift manager this afternoon. After little more than four hours sleep yesterday, working last night, and then a restless day today, I'm simply not fit to go and do a safety critical job. If any of my colleagues think I might be skiving, they might like to reflect on the fact that by missing tonight's shift, and tomorrow's, which is classed as overtime, so I wouldn't be allowed to go back, even if I was feeling better, I'm going to take a hit of around £250 in lost wages. an expensive cold, and no mistake.
K has had a fraught weekend so far, too - her external hard drive, which has a lot of her AS Level work on it, has died. She has got a proportion of the work saved elsewhere, some on her laptop and some in 'the cloud', but there's quite a bit of stuff that she might lose altogether, as well as numerous personal photos. She took it to PC World this morning, to see if they could resurrect it, which they couldn't, and they then quoted her £700 for specialist data recovery, and with no fixed timescale for doing it. She was very unhappy, needless to say, and so was I, given that I bought her the device less than six months ago. I did come up with a suggestion, though, which might resolve the problem, given a little luck - my niece's new fiancé is a computer technician by profession, and, by all accounts, a pretty talented one, so K took an impromptu trip to Kent to hand the errant piece of kit to my brother. We should know by tomorrow whether the young man has managed to work the oracle - fingers, and everything else, are crossed in the meantime, needless to say.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
K has had a fraught weekend so far, too - her external hard drive, which has a lot of her AS Level work on it, has died. She has got a proportion of the work saved elsewhere, some on her laptop and some in 'the cloud', but there's quite a bit of stuff that she might lose altogether, as well as numerous personal photos. She took it to PC World this morning, to see if they could resurrect it, which they couldn't, and they then quoted her £700 for specialist data recovery, and with no fixed timescale for doing it. She was very unhappy, needless to say, and so was I, given that I bought her the device less than six months ago. I did come up with a suggestion, though, which might resolve the problem, given a little luck - my niece's new fiancé is a computer technician by profession, and, by all accounts, a pretty talented one, so K took an impromptu trip to Kent to hand the errant piece of kit to my brother. We should know by tomorrow whether the young man has managed to work the oracle - fingers, and everything else, are crossed in the meantime, needless to say.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
I feel for you, Sammy! I am FINALLY feeling almost back to 100%, I'd say about 95 or so, given that I still have uncontrolled fits of dry, unproductive coughing triggered by I don't know what. But they are finally getting fewer and further between. I hope you feel better soon.
ReplyDeleteI would also look at getting an exchange for that hard drive once your niece's fiance gets done with it. 6 months is pretty poor, and most warranties run 1 year. You might want to look into getting a Solid State Drive, though they tend to be more expensive. The newest ones are quite reliable (though not as large as typical mechanical hard drives).
Peace <3
Jay
Hello Jay
DeleteI'm sure my immune system must have a direct link to the roster clerk - the number of times I end up ill when I'm due to be taking time off (all of this coming week, in this instance) can't possibly be coincidence! I'm still feeling pretty ropey this morning, but I did, at least, manage to get 7 or 8 hours sleep, so, just maybe, I still might be able to do something beyond moping around in the flat like a wet rag in the coming days.
I would guess the warranty on K's hard drive would be invalidated by whatever repairs are attempted by 'unauthorised persons' - i.e. my niece's fiancé - and, in all honesty, I doubt she'd want another the same if they're so unreliable. Once the dust settles, we'll look around and see if we can find something better.
Love & best wishes
Sammy B