Load o’ Ballog

Will I ever learn?

I am a business process consultant by profession, which means I help companies improve their business processes. It’s a job that suits my character and type of intellect in that I am analytical and logical and I am a friendly enough person who likes to help people out. When I am working for any customer, I genuinely want to help them succeed.

I’m not one of those consultants whose ego is more important than the success of their customer and who would rather bluff it than say “Actually, this is outside my sphere of expertise.”

Because the way I act as a consultant is as much a product of my character as my training and professional experience, I sometimes offer free consultancy to friends and even strangers.

Yesterday, for example, I was in a lift (that’s elevator, if you don’t speak English) in the UK, and I was talking to a woman who had been waiting for the lift with me. After a couple of floors, a colleague of hers joined us and shared with us the startling news that she had made herself a piece of toast that morning only to find she had no butter! We were aghast.

That was when the Good Consultant reared his smiley head. Good Consultant likes to help people and where he thinks he can help, he will pipe up and offer a suggestion. So I thought I might offer her some advice, based on my experiences in Spain, that might be of use to her in such circumstances. So I suggested, in a friendly tone, that if she had a tomato and some olive oil, she could cut the tomato in two, rub its juicy innards on the toast, then drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle a little salt over it. A great alternative to butter if you don’t have any or just feel like a change.

How did she reply?

“That sounds tasty, I’ll give it a try tomorrow.” No.

“That does sound interesting, but I’m afraid I don’t like tomatoes.” No.

Any other reply that would demonstrate even rudimentary social skills? No.

Yeah, but I like my butter.

That was the reply.

That’s when Evil Consultant tried to rear his scowling head. Fortunately, Good Consultant held him down.

“You have already stated that you didn’t have any butter, you fucking ingrate! Butter is not a feasible option when you don’t fucking have any!” EC spluttered as he tried to wrest himself from GC’s grasp, “What’s the fucking point of hanging on sentimentally to an old process when you no longer have the means to implement that process?”

Fortunately, Good Consultant clamped a hand over his mouth, smiled at the woman and bade her “good morning” as he alighted the lift.

“Afraid to embrace change! Afraid to embrace change!” EC taunted as his better half dragged him away by the collar.

“You are just too intolerant,” GC gently chided.

“Will you ever fucking learn, you cretin?” EC retorted, “Some people just don’t appreciate help.”

Consideration for parents

I’ve just got off a flight from the UK and seated behind me was a mother and her two children aged roughly three and six.

She did a great job of managing them during the flight and the toddler only kicked my seat around twenty times (although the mother did yank on the back of my seat several times as she got in and out of their row).

Anyway, I began to think of how many things I have to remember when I am just trying to get myself out of the house and to the airport, so how much harder must it be for a mother on her own, trying to remember all of those things and get two small children ready. She couldn’t possibly think of everything. It occurred to me that I could do more to help, perhaps by carrying one or two essentials that the travelling and weary parent might have forgotten.

So next time, I’m carrying a roll of duct-tape in my hand luggage.

Air locks on airliners

Airliners should have airlocks, in other words two sets of doors. That way when drunk, violent scangers try to open the door mid-flight, they get the inner door open, the flight attendants close that behind them, and then they can open the outer door as wide as they want without compromising the cabin pressure.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Radovan Karadzic: healer

The story of the capture of Radovan Karadzic is all over the news.

Just to remind you, Mr. Karadzic is the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs and he has been indicted by the United Nations for war crimes and genocide.

What amazes me is that he has been practising alternative medicine in Belgrade. It seems he has also written articles for “Healthy Life” magazine.

A key feature of many “alternative” therapies is preventative medicine, so I imagine Mr. Karadzic gave his patients such advice as exercise regularly, eat plenty of fresh vegetables, avoid excess alcohol, stress and snipers’ bullets, try to avoid mortar fire and above all, if groups are being rounded up for massacre, it’s best not to be part of that.

This is where…

Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal

Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal

I’m confused.

Surely only about half the locals of Lesbos island had lesbian appeal in the first place. And how did they suddenly lose it?

I am disappointed with the BBC, though. They almost got the whole alliteration. They should have gone with…

Lesbos locals lose lesbian litigation.

My talents are wasted.

Dog rescues woman from kangaroo

It would appear that a dog in Australia came to the rescue of its owner when she was attacked by a kangaroo.

I can see lightbulbs going off over movie producers’ heads everywhere…

I’m sick of it!

I get about fifty spam comments a day in my comment moderation queue and I’m sick of it, so I have activated a plug-in called Challenge to see if it can keep the spambots at bay. Let me know how it works out, particularly if you think it isn’t working properly.

Wank Germany

Probably the kind of place you need to visit on your own…

Click on the image to go to the Google map if you don’t believe me.

Adding multiple profiles to iTunes

So more than one member of your household has an iPod but you only have one computer, so only one installation of iTunes. You don’t want Gloria Estefan’s greatest hits on your iPod and your wife/girlfriend/partner/flatmate doesn’t want want The Buzzcocks’ “Singles Going Steady” on hers.

Up to now, each time you updated your iPods, you have had to go in to iTunes and select/de-select songs depending on what melodies you wanted on your player what crap you didn’t. What a laborious pain in the arse, especially when you go in and find she has just been there and de-selected all of your songs!

Well, I am here to rescue you, but this only works for Windows users. As I don’t own a Mac, I don’t care about you Mac users. Nothing personal. I just have no feelings for you. You can try it though. It might work.

Step 1

Your iTunes libraries are held in the following location: “My Documents\My Music\iTunes”

Copy this folder…

… and rename the copy…

Now you have two iTunes folders and therefore two iTunes libraries.

Step 2

Hold down the SHIFT key… 

(that image is for any technopeasants out there)

THEN click on the iTunes icon…

DO NOT TAKE YOUR FINGER OFF THE SHIFT KEY UNTIL YOU SEE THIS DIALOGUE BOX…

Click the “Choose Library” button and make sure you are looking at the “My Music” folder.

You will see your original “iTunes” folder and the new “Her iTunes” folder…

Select your original iTunes folder and iTunes will launch itself.
Step 3

In iTunes, check all the songs you want on your iPod and uncheck all the songs you don’t want. Then plug in your iPod and let iTunes update it.

Now repeat steps 2 and 3, but this time select the folder you named “Her iTunes” and plug in her iPod.

Once you have done that, you are now effectively maintaining separate libraries. Now each time you go into your library, you will see that the songs you like are checked, regardless of what she has been doing in her library.

The neat thing about this is that when you copied your original iTunes folder, the actual music files weren’t copied, just the libraries that refer to them, so you don’t end up with two copies of the songs themselves. As you add new songs, they become available to both libraries. You can also have as many libraries as you want.

Don’t forget to back up your iTunes folders now and again.

There you have it, a quick and painless way to manage your libraries for multiple iPods. It’s actually not that easy to find this information on the Web.

You’re welcome.