Am I the only person that thinks it rather odd that the word "Firefox" isn't pre-loaded into the British English Dictionary Add-on for the Firefox spellchecker?
I know that it isn't feasible to include every word and acronym, but not including your own product name does seem to be a bit of a fail.
Furthermore, I'd have expected plenty of techie terminology to be in there too, but it ain't so. Here are some words and abbreviations which I expected to be listed but which don't merit inclusion:
When my car-insurance renewal docket arrived last June I was so bemused by the hiked premium that I rang the insurers to check the reasons for the increase. After I'd listened to the explanation I was put on hold [cue the music] while the assistant went in search of a supervisor, and when the conversation resumed I was offered a 10% discount which I gratefully accepted.
Anyway, one year on and this year's premium was due. I did the usual exercise of finding the best like-for-like deals via the various price-comparison sites out there on the interwebnet thingy. The results weren't good - prices are much higher this year due to interest-rate hikes, the global financial meltdown and all of the natural disasters that have led to huge insurance claims.
Eventually this year's renewal docket arrived and to be honest when I was opening the envelope I was expecting to be faced with the 10% back on AND a huge premium increase. Imagine my surprise when I found that the premium had gone up by much less than I'd been expecting! In fact, it was such a shock that I decided to break out the plastic and pay for the whole year in one hit as opposed to by DD as I usually do. I phoned the insurers to sort the details and just as I'd calculated I saved having to pay about 43 quid in credit interest. During the conversation, and with no provocation whatsoever from me, the nice lass I was dealing with said that she was going to put me on hold for a while [cue the music again]... after a few minutes she came back and offered me a discount of just over 11%.
Sweet!
I do realise that I'm probably not getting any preferential treatment, and that other folk who make the call will be offered discounts too, but it does make me wonder how much other folk miss out by letting their renewals go through on auto and not bothering to make that call.
My thanks go to Rhona for sorting this for me.
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope and Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward clearly know what they're on about, if the Government won't listen to them there's little chance that they'll listen to anyone else:
In an unprecedented attack, Sir Mark also made it clear that the decision to axe the Harrier jump jet and Britain’s last aircraft carrier has undermined the war effort against Colonel Gaddafi. He said it would have been far cheaper and more effective militarily to fly from HMS Ark Royal, rather than launching air attacks from bases in Italy. Sir Mark said the loss of the combination that won the Falklands War has had a ‘corrosive’ effect on morale.
Embarrassingly for ministers, Admiral Stanhope believes the Navy is almost stretched to its limit even though it has only four warships involved in the Libyan conflict. These are the destroyer HMS Liverpool, the mine clearance vessel HMS Bangor, a Trafalgar class submarine and the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean off the coast. HMS Cumberland, which played a key role evacuating scores of Britons from Libya, recently returned to Britain to be decommissioned on June 23 because of cuts to the defence budget.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward says the Falklands ‘are now perilously close to being indefensible’...
"... what the politicians won’t tell you is that Mount Pleasant was, until recently, equipped with only four ageing and ineffective Tornados – the same attack aircraft that have made such heavy weather recently of providing air support in Libya. When they were needed at short notice, only three of the RAF’s 135 aircraft were ready for action. Apparently these Tornadoes have now been replaced by four Typhoons, about which there have been many rumours of too few trained pilots, inadequate spares and poor ability in aerial combat. Neither type of aircraft has any anti-ship weapons systems, which would be vital against any invasion by sea."
Pretty soon, HMS Liverpool will be gone too.
I keep thinking of Private Frost's words in Aliens...
"What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?"
You know what it's like - you're out on the hills and it's time to make a brew or a meal. You get the kit out and find that in your rush to get away earlier you didn't clean the pan/mug/spoon and now it's all looking a bit unhealthy. To add insult to injury all your tinder for your wood-burner is damp, you've run out of belly-button fluff, it's rained all day and you can't find any dry stuff to get you started.
You need one of these:
These handy wipes are brilliant - not only do they kill a multitude of nasty bugs that might be contaminating your cookset, they also burn like stink at the slightest provocation so they're great for starting your twig-furnace. If you click the pics to see the bigger versions you can read the box-blurb to see just what's what.
The wipes are in individual sealed foil sachets and have a 4-year shelf-life. Each sachet is a measly 5g. These boxes of 20 are currently on sale again for just £1.49 at Aldi.
Just one bit of advice - don't keep them in your first-aid kit. Accidentally use one of these instead of an antiseptic wipe to clean up a wound and it's not a pleasant experience.
