Tiny Tim

Congratulations.

The first item I would liked tabled for discussion is the fact that I can buy a bottled of Scottish whisky cheaper in America or almost anywhere across the EU than I can in the UK. All those responsible for this disparity should also be shot. IMHO of course. I've not tried any of the more expensive JW blends, but if I saw them in a pub I would certainly be tempted to give them a go on the strength of how nice the double black is. Sadly not seen that many pubs offering any JW let alone a choice.

Johnnie Walker Double Black is an Islay blend that I enjoyed and have even purchased another bottle of. I tended to avoid blended whisky but gave this a go and was quite impressed. It's not as full bodied as a decent Islay but you can definitely identify it as an Islay blend. Plus Amazon often do this as a special so available for a decent price.

That is outstanding. The lunacy on this planet never ceases to amaze me. When I read the cactus bit I did wonder if this should be on the cross code forum...

Well that Amazon Prime super-dooper sale thing is a bit ######. It's the usual obsolete tech, chavtastic aftershave and random bits of tat that they normally try and flog off cheap anyway. I will admit I did buy a cheap secondhand book.

Lesson learnt.

You showed remarkable restraint to make it last that long (unless you bought a lot of bottles). Mine 'disappeared' rather too quickly. I made the mistake of buying some Laphroaig Select....I can only assume it the Select tag was not meant as a good one. It's pretty lifeless and doesn't deserve the Laphroaig label.

and to drink?

Sounds nasty. Get well soon.

My last client was in Los Angeles which resulted in some pretty hefty travel bills, but my current client is about 60 miles away from where I live so a pleasant drive across country. I am probably going to be working on this project for the next couple of years so other than the occasional trip to HQ in North Carolina I am not going to be doing too much international travel (apart from trips to Hungary and Turkey end of this year but they are one-offs). Flights, trains, hire cars, etc are booked and paid for by our travel agency so they never go on my card that's just for other travel costs.

With our wonderfully restrictive travel policy a £500 limit should cover us for most eventualities.....the IT folk can buy their own expensive toys and stick it on a card.

Pretty sure they aren't going to give all 5000+ employees an AMEX with a credit limit in excess of £100k ....which to be honest I am not too upset about as that's not an expense claim I would want to be waiting on.

My employer is looking at bringing in a corporate AMEX card, but I'm really not interested, I get 1.25% cashback on my personal credit card so prefer to use that.

Very demotivating when your employer start playing silly b*ggers with expenses when you are working on a project for a client worth well over £10 million. Bit soon to be thinking about moving on but the seed is planted if they carry on like this.

With very little effort you can certainly spend a lot more per bottle, but they're not exactly 'own-brand' whiskies. Whoever chose that selection certainly had good taste. I guess you are going to be visiting your dad very soon?

I have another new phone. Work just sent me an iPhone 5s.....really not sure what all the hype is around Apple products, I prefer my LG G3 to this which cost about half as much.

This week I will mostly be staying in a hotel in Farnborough. Bored already.

My Nexus 4 was on it's last legs but I am not really interested in paying silly money for a phone. The spec and quality of this phone for less than £250 is really quite impressive. I'm just listening to some Miles Davis on my phone, sound is not too bad at all.

Nearest I could find was the RWC app....close enough

I've got a new mobile phone. It's an LG G3. I'm rather pleased with it so far. That is all.

Nope, I had no idea. What a marvellous waste of money, and to add to that it's hard to put a value on just how demotivating all this constant change is for the poor people who have to work in the NHS. I love how they appear to have missed the qualifier that the transformation should be positive and considered an improvement and be measurable in some way. I really wish I got projects to lead that had insane budgets with no clear goals, limited over-site and pretty much an open agenda to do what I want.

Utter b*stards, have they no respect for tradition!!! There is no place in the United Kingdom for modern shiny nice hospitals....apart from Private Hospitals for people who can afford to avoid the NHS.

Very poor management. Being left alone for that long things might actually start working properly. Time for some disruption.....sorry change management/organisational review/role re-definement/right-sizing/restructuring/etc....

He normally makes the effort to visit the places he is writing about to try and get a feel for what it might have been like. While his books are not really challenging reads and never likely to achieve the more prestigious awards reserved for the more weird and wonderful authors out there, I think he writes a gripping story and develops interesting characters while at least following historical events reasonably accurately.

I am 40 years young today