All Change In The Office

When I arrived at Instanta this morning it looked like a bomb had dropped. The place was a mess. We gave Jenny the challenge of reorganising the office by Christmas and she set about the task with her typical energy and efficiency and last night the local office furniture people came round with a load of new desks. It didn't take long for the place to start to take shape and by late morning the office was back up and running. There's still some decorating to be done and I think that a new carpet is on the way but it's starting to look good. We need a new phone system next as, although the VOIP system is very economical, it's not very good and we frequently lose calls or have terrible line quality. I am all for new technology but it's only good when it works properly.

Back up and running in a couple of hours.

If you wacthed "A League Of Their Own" on Sky1 last night you might have caught a glimpse of me and Marion with our son Paul. We were in the audience for the recording and were required at one point to blow vuvuzuelas. We couldn't hear the noise as we had to wear ear plugs but it sounded pretty loud on the show last night. The show was very funny. Watch out for next week when Sky are broadcasting two episodes back to back - 10pm Sky1 and Sky1 HD.

I was too busy to find time to complete the blog yesterday as I was working on the final audited figures for our year end. It's that time when all the final journal entries need to be posted on our computer and balanced to the accountants' figures. Being something of a nerdy pedant I have to get this right to the penny so it takes a lot longer than it should. Anyway I said that I would report back on "The Social Network" which we went to on Wednesday night. The cinema was packed but the vast majority of the audience was under twenty five and we looked like a couple of grandparents gatecrashing the grandchildrens' trip to the pictures. However, the film was certainly not a juvenile one. It told the story of the setting up of Facebook by a couple of Harvard university misfits and the claims and counterclaims that ensued after other students alledged that Mark Zuckerberg (brilliantly portrayed by Jesse Eissenberg ,above left) had stolen their ideas. The film is set in the lawyers' offices where the claims are being heard and comprises a series of flashbacks to 2003 and onwards.Whilst the subject of lawsuits sounds very dry, the film  moves with great pace. All of the cast are strong and Justin Timberlake (centre) puts in a fine performance as Napster creator Sean Parker and Andrew Garfield plays the most sympathetic role as Zuckerberg's co-creator Eduardo Saverin very convincingly.


It's a very good film and well worth going to see. My only difficulties were knowing that the Winklevoss twins were both played by the same actor Arnie Hammer which made me keep looking for the join in the film when they were on screen together and the fact that the film is based on a book by Eduardo Saverin which makes you question the partiality of the storyline. As I said above, Saverin is the most sympathetic character but he wasn't going to depict himself badly was he? A good four stars from us. It's quite fascinating to see that the world's biggest social networking site was set up by a young man with virtually no social skills whatsoever and whose Facebook business card read "I'm CEO Bitch".


I'lle leave you today with one of this week's mosty popular videos on YouTube. Rumour has it that this newscaster was fired for this. If that's true I wonder does anybody in authority have a sense of humour any more? And don't forget, if the video doesn't fit in the screen, double click and it will open in another window.

Welcome Barbara

With the clock ticking down towards our retirement, it's time to make sure that the office continues to be adequately manned and we are delighted to welcome Barbara Banks to Instanta. Barbara will be helping out with the bookkeeping and other office jobs and will be here from 1pm from Tuesday to Friday. Barbara once worked for my old employer Barclays Bank and her banking experience should stand her in good stead to help with our ledgers. Married to Bob and with a grown up son David, Barbara lives in the nearby village of Hesketh Bank. She enjoys going to the gym but I don't thinks she'll be trying out the exercise equipment in the shed at the back of the factory. It hasn't had a lot of use since we installed it and it's pretty cold down there. Anyway welcome Barbara, we all hope that you have an enjoyable time working here at Instanta.

Here's our super new pocket brochure. Printed in house by our parent company, it arrived today hot off the press. Nick calls it a DL but I don't know what DL stands for. Maybe we could offer a prize for the best suggestion. It's all Nick's own work so in the unlikely event that there are any spelling mistakes for once it won't be me that carries the can.I missed a glaring mistake on one output figure in our super main brochure in February. Mind you that mistake was so big I don't think that anybody could possibly take it as correct.

Orange Wednesday tomorrow and this week's choice is "The Social Network". If you aren't familiar with it, it's a film about the birth of Facebook and by all accounts it's a fascinating story about geeky computer students and the legal battles that arose over who actually created the site. I used to be quite active on Facebook but haven't logged on for quite a while now. I wonder if we will be giving it the Facebook thumbs up on Thursday. I'll let you know what we think of it here.

And speaking of Thursday don't forget "A League Of Their Own" on Sky1 at 10pm. See how well you can do by playing the game by clicking on this link.  http://tiny.cc/zl6qm

Another big Sky favourite is "The Simpsons". The show has been all over the internet this week due to an intro to the show baing done by the famous street artist Banksy. Here's a brief news article about it and below that is the intro itself. Unfortunately it seems that every time it goes up on YouTube somebody takes it down so if the video has gone by the time you read this, sorry.

Joined Twitter But Haven't Tweeted Yet

I like to think of myself as an early adopter of new technology.I joined Facebook ages ago (have since left),had Skyplus and HD tv from the start and was at the Apple store for the launch of the iPad (although they didn't persuade me to buy one). But Twitter is something that I have been aware of but haven't felt the urge to join. However, I noticed that our son Paul was using it a lot when we were with him last week so I decided to look into it. Haven't really sussed it or its potential out yet but I plan to find out more soon. In the meantime if you are a blog reader and you are on Twitter, please get in touch and I will add you to those I am following.If you are interested my tag is lfcchampions (don't ask).



Whilst on the subject of new technology, I keep seeing the adverts at the cinema for the new 3DTVs. I would love to have one of these but is it worth it yet? When we got HD there were only about three channels to watch and it was several years before we got the service that we get today and I suspect that there will be very little to watch in 3D at the moment and the near future. Will probably wait on this one.



Whilst I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for a visit from one of our Zip colleagues I have been having a sneaky look at Max's warranty figures. And very good they are too this month with jobs given out to our agents at less than fifty percent of the target figure. As we set the target pretty low anyway, that is a remarkable result and I hope that I am not tempting fate by drawing attention to it and go on to find out next week that the number of calls has doubled. Well done to everyone for making the boilers so reliable.




Magic Numbers on ITV1 on Saturday night at 8 o'clock promises to be a lot of fun again with X Factor's Diana Vickers performing and BGT judge Amanda Holden joining Stephen Mulhern for the show. Stephen seems to be a very popular choice of host and is very well liked. Nick's daughter Laura is working on the show and she told Nick that she met Stephen yesterday and he was very friendly. I think that the way that they react to humble runners in the production team is a true measure of the star quality of "celebrities" and, from what Paul has also told me, I think that Stephen has a very bright future. I really hope that a viewer wins a huge cash prize this week to shut up the Internet knockers who think that it is impossible - it isn't.

To get an idea of the flavour of the show - remember it's LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT, here is a clip from last week.

Orange? We were seeing red!

When the phone rings in the middle of the night it's usually a cause for panic. Has the burglar alarm at the factory been activated? Has a relative been involved in an accident? So when we were woken up at 1.30 this morning by my mobile beeping we were a a bit shaken. And when Marion's did the same a few seconds later we were really worried. Sitting up in bed with a jolt I grabbed the phones to find on both a message from Orange. It seems that they were updating our phones' software. Well thanks a lot Orange. Next time you choose to do so how about doing it at a time when your customers are awake?



I don't want to get at Orange too much as they are, of course, the sponsors of our favourite Orange Wednesday and dedicated to the film industry which is our passion. It's quite strange at the moment with a great choice of films on this week after weeks of our struggling to find something to see.This week there is Sherlock Holmes, The Road, Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll and we still haven't seem Avatar yet. I wish the film industry could get its act together and spread the good films out over the year but, of course, we are in the Oscar season now, hence the glut.



I like to think that I keep up with what's going on in the world and in touch with all the latest trends so when I first heard about Facebook a few years ago I enrolled straight away and managed to find no less than ten friends (about five more than I have in real life). It was a bit of fun and I enjoyed the news feeds and the wall messages but at Christmas I realised that I had about forty friends and didn't really know any of them. Was I really bothered that they burned the turkey or went to watch Spurs or were happy that they won ten quid on the lottery? Did I want to join in a pillow fight check my IQ against theirs,see how alike my favourite song choices were or send them a cow for their farm? No. So I am no longer a member of Facebook and find I have a few minutes more time in my life and that's something that I do want.



It's about time that we told you a bit more about our superb new boilers that we are going to be launching at Hotelympia. We like to keep our cards close to our chests until fairly close to the exhibition as we don't want the competition to steal our thunder and copy us but I don't think that they will have time to catch up now. Here is the new CT8000. It's a bigger version of the CT6000 so, you might think, nothing much new there. But! The new CT8000 along with all the CT range of boilers AND the WM range will now include programmable timers. This means that customers will be able to chose the time of day when the boiler switches on and switches off on a seven day timer. This will enable users to gain the maximum energy efficiency and optimise their power consumption.

But that's not all. In addition, the CT and WM boiler programs will now have the scale monitor that was an optional extra built in as standard. This will allow the installers to choose from a range of scale treatment to suit the site and program the boilers to warn when the filter needs to be changed.

There's more too but I will save this for another blog.

Yesterday I finished with a dog. Today I'll end with a topical cat.