General

I get tonnes of email, at home, at work. Unlike most people most of mine isn’t your regular spam, I run a hosting company so manage to filter the vast majority of it out for me (and my clients).

A lot of mine are newsletters (which I really should unsubscribe to because I just delete them anyway), or funnies.

Now,I like a funny as much as the next person, but I do object to my email address being given out to all and sundry (where it can then be picked up by spam address harvesters to send me more adverts for viagra and the like!), and then forwarded on, and on, and on.

A Solution?

You’ll probably know I’m a big fan of Getting Things Done, and one of their biggest followers is Merlin Mann of 43 folders, and he’s set up “Thanks. No.“, I might include this in my signature for some people!

BCC Please is another fine example, and that one actually educates people on using BCC. That would be a start!

I might even be able to do this “Five Sentences“, let’s face it - most people text - they’ll understand? Won’t they?

photo credit: Tim Morgan

Since we moved house, my other half has been quite keen on us purchasing a shed… Not being a gardener I’ve shown about as much interest as a chocolate fireguard shows in a trip to Barbados!

We’ve got a Garage - it might be full of furniture at the minute, but once we’ve got rid of that I can’t see us storing a  car in it (the vast majority of UK garages if you drive your car into you can’t actually get out of the car!!!). Won’t that act as a “huge” shed?  Apparently not!

We need to redesign the whole garden so I’ve immediately said I’ll put power to that end of the garden (think lights and water feature maybe?).

WAIT!

After seeing this at LifeHacker I’ve got some real plans! Although I have an office in the house these days, Brian DeHamer’s home/shed office is fantastic! Particularly with his “Upgrades“.

If I didn’t have an office in the house - this would be a serious consideration!!!

photo credit: foxypar4

Kate’s post on iRamble got me thinking….

It’s always intrigued me when people have an irrational hatred of something, what caused it? Some things are just downright irritating, for example I get really annoyed by blister packs for things… Alright I know the thieves can’t get into them and steal the product - but I can’t get into the damned things either!!!

The Meme

So here’s the meme, list two things that irritate you for a reason (and list the reason!), and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever!!

Things that irritate me, and why!

1. Blister packs
   (as I explained above) I know the thieves can’t get into them and steal the product - but I can’t get into the damned things either!!!
2. Chain Letters, Forward this to five friends or else etc.
   I have to fight my way through enough junk in my inbox in a day, without being told my leg will fall off if I don’t forward this to six friends, a dog and a chicken (just to annoy them and fill up their inbox as well!!).

And the interesting one, List two irrational annoyances that you can’t quite put your finger on.

1. Jim Carey
   Don’t ask me why - haven’t the foggiest!
2. Mobile Phones
   This isn’t mobile phones in general, heck I work for a company that makes them. It’s when I watch someone (usually a businessman in a suit), frantically scrabbling through his pockets for a mobile phone that’s ringing at full volume - playing the most annoying ringtone ever (usually Barbie Girl - or something equally daft). You put it in your pocket just a minute ago, for goodness sake - put it on vibrate then you’d be able to find it!!!!!

The Rules

I may make a complete hash of this as I’ve not started one of these before, but lets give it a go!

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason (and list the reason!), and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever!!
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
   
3. Link your answers to the original blog, that’s here (http://www.skillett.com)!
4. Tag four new people to participate.

So come on then… What really gets your goat?

I’ll tag, Kate, Dan, Grandad and Amy.

photo credit: Rev Dan Catt

I’m liking Creatope’s Card Cable Organizer! Using an old card, a whole punch and a pair of scissors you can have your cables organised in minutes (and not so knotted as mine are in cable-ties!).

More to the point if I do this with my Visa card, I’ll stop spending money anyway because I won’t have it with me - a win, win situation!

photo credit: Peter Kaminski

I’d planned on doing this for a while, and just hadn’t got around to it. Today’s the first day I’ve really had to think about it - getting a comment from a Pomegranate Fruit has prompted it a little bit - but not entirely (I’ve let that one slide, purely because Mr/Mrs/Miss Fruit makes some quite good points in the comment!).

The Commenting Policy, and Legal Notices have been on another of my sites for full time so it’s about time they were introduced here!

After the recent post about Orange, it seems that details of the new data plans are available from coolsmartphone.com and that the HTC Diamond will be available on July 14th.…..

I’d almost bordered on getting rid of my Orange contract recently, and moving over to either T-Mobile (for their data plans) or O2 (for the iPhone obviously!), but they’ve surprised me in the last 24 hours and I may well stay with them.

Yesterday for some unknown reason the main keypad on my SPV M700 (O2 XDA IIs, HTC Trinity, HTC P3600 whichever you want to call it!) just stopped working. I promptly rang Orange and asked the all important question…..

No, it wasn’t will they replace it, it was:

“When are you going to release the HTC Diamond?”

I’d noticed it on their website as “Coming Soon” and already knew it was a phone I wanted. The very helpful lady at Orange couldn’t give me any answer of when, but immediately offered to have a new handset to me this morning…

I now have a nice new SPV M700 and am frantically installing all my software back onto it!

In the midst of some of the tinkering I have to do to get my phone talking to Thunderbird/Lightning (not as easy as it is with just Outlook!) I spotted the news from CoolSmartphone.com that data tariffs look set to improve with Orange!

UPDATED: More info available here!