Jul. 19th, 2011

thessalian: (Yay)
So let's say you're someone who's been selling a bunch of BPAL imps and bottles they wanted to get shot of. And you take an order from someone in another country for one bottle and a bunch of imps. About a month later, you realise that, while the bottle is gone, you still have those imps. The customer in the other country hasn't been in touch with you to say that they got the bottle but that the imps were missing. So you, being a conscientious seller of such things, get in touch with the buyer and ask if they ever got the bottle. They tell you that no, the order never arrived. So there you are with the imps the buyer asked for, but no bottle. Whoops. After reaming out the person you put in charge of sending out the orders, what is your course of action?

a) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and offer a replacement bottle from the ones you haven't sold yet, hoping like hell there's something in there they want.
b) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle from a local distributor ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.
c) Apologise to the buyer, explain the situation and tell them that you are going to order a replacement bottle of that scent or any other general catalogue item that the buyer might want to make up for the inconvenience ... unless there's something they prefer from the ones you haven't sold yet.

In this case, I am the buyer. A particularly charming young lady on LJ was the seller. And I got option C. So for the record, [livejournal.com profile] miss_twilight is pure awesome (so seriously, if you happen to trip over any of her posts on the BPAL addict forums on LJ? And you like anything you see there? I recommend her highly), and I am getting a bottle of Shoggoth, which I have been looking for forever. Seriously, I thought the only way I was going to get my hands on that scent was to go through the BPAL site, which ... well, there are issues there with British shipping and card purchases and I prefer to avoid it where possible. And I at least still have the imp of the bottle I ordered in the first place (Sea of Glass, my first BPAL courtesy [livejournal.com profile] tithenai along with Sudha Segara). I wouldn't have minded both - I mean, I wouldn't have ordered it if I didn't like it; I ordered the bottle of Summer's Last Will and Testament on the strength of the imp, after all - but ... whole. Bottle. Of Shoggoth. I should feel bad for the whole thing where I'm getting something for a little bit less than it's worth, but I can't feel too bad because if I was going to get exactly what I ordered, the buyer would have lost money anyway to replace it and it was not my mistake that lost me the bottle in the first place.

Incidentally, still working on the whole WoD perfume thing. There's just not much to say until my bloody empty imps get here. But they're shipping from, like, South Korea or something so I am not panicking yet. I need more bottles and I desperately need a few more scented oils before I can make half of what I want, though. And if you could see the collection I've already amassed? The fact that I can still say that is scary.

*ahem* I had massive attack of migraine today. This was not fun, as you can well imagine. It's a fair bit better now, in that I can actually see straight and my head doesn't feel like someone's drilling in it. This was not so much the case this morning, when someone in the local area close by my open-because-of-the-muggy window was doing construction work. Sure, it's damn near impossible to deal with a migraine at work, where impromptu meetings happen maybe a foot away from the back of my chair a few times a day and I'm trying to type near-indecipherable, heavily-accented pseudo-English through a nasty tape hiss, but it's better than someone drilling. Still, I dosed myself with the knock-out painkillers (I pray this goes away entirely soon because I cannot afford more knock-out painkillers and average OTC paracetamol does not work) and when I woke up, the construction work had gone away and my head felt better.

Peering out the window this afternoon, though, netted me an interesting sight. In the back garden three doors down sits a blue box. With doors. Over which are written 'Police Public Call Box'. Yes, the neighbours three doors down have a freakin' TARDIS in their back garden. I just wish I knew which flat it was so I could leave a note saying, "Awesome TARDIS, guys".

And, to continue the theme of 'a Warcrack mention with every post' ... why are there level 85 Alliance NPCs in a level 30-40 zone? I went in what I thought was just a tiny touch over my head earlier (fighting level 35-36 bears with my level 33 paladin to get at gold and iron deposits in Western Plaguelands) and was doing really well until I wandered down the road and smacked into what I think was a Draenei and a Human. I just had enough time to mouse over them and read, "........What do you mean, level 85?!?" when ... smush. Dead belf. I have since moved back to Northern Stranglethorn. Amazing how good the mining is in a freakin' jungle ... plus I have all those quests. Mostly killing things. Woo.
thessalian: (Rant)
Twice in one day for posting. Gorgeous. And this time, it is to rant.

NHS services to be open to competition.

Essentially what this means is that parts of the NHS are going to be opened up to bids from private companies and charities. There is so much wrong with this that I cannot even begin to describe it. Okay, sometimes the NHS sucks rocks. I grant you that. But having worked in it for as long as I have, I can tell you why the NHS sucks rocks: because there is more and more emphasis put on a bottom-line, spend-as-little-as-possible running of the whole thing by officials who don't actually use the service because they can afford top-of-the-line private health insurance. They're cutting admin staff, which slows things up on the basic level, and what admin staff remain are overworked, underpaid, overstressed and underappreciated, badgered into doing more work for less money, not taking overtime and generally being blamed for every piece of shit that goes down ever. A great many doctors have private practices in other hospitals or clinics, which tend to take priority because that's where the money is. Everyone's getting pressurised into targets that they never have the time or money to meet because middle managers are eating the time and the funding by setting these unrealistic targets in the first place.

The NHS does not need to be privatised piece by piece, thank you. We tried that with the railways. There used to be British Rail. Now there are a conglomeration of different companies using the exact same sets of railway lines as there were under British Rail, and while I don't entirely know what it was like when there was a British Rail, I do know that the current way of doing things is confusing and at the very least not any better than it seems to have been at that time, railway commutes. Same tracks, same basic trains ... and so many different companies who're more concerned about their bottom lines than anything else so things like signal maintenance just don't happen, even if a train journey is delayed three days out of five every week for six months because of a signal failure at the same damn point on the lines every day. If it doesn't work for rail services, what makes people think it's going to work for healthcare?

Not to mention the fact that when this plan initially came under discussion, everyone disagreed with it. The current coalition nightmare of a government agreed to step back and we breathed a sigh of relief. Now, right in the middle of the Murdoch-blame media circus (which, let's face it, is important too), they announce this all quiet-like, likely because they know full well that the art of prestidigitation is to palm the object that you want to make vanish in your left hand while everyone's watching your right. The News of the World scandal must have been like winning the damn lottery for this lot.

This should not be ignored or forgotten or pushed by the wayside. This is too important. This is stealth privatisation that everyone from the British Medical Association to the general public disagreed with, privatisation that Cameron promised would never happen, and now he's doing it. And the plans for 2013 are even worse. 'Chemo at Home'? Cardiac diagnoses over the phone? Privatising children's wheelchair services? And they're sure as hell not talking about who exactly starts paying for all this. Will there be co-pay? Will we just get a bill? What exactly happens with this? No one is saying. They're just talking about 'competition', which always seems to be 'bottom line uber alles' - they can say 'quality over price' until they're blue in the face, but they're not saying who pays that price, and how will it be paid? Through taxes? Up-front in cash? What?

...And, on a somewhat personal note (as if it wasn't personal enough, given at least three chronic conditions that I suffer to levels that are debilitating, even if only occasionally and for shortish periods of time) ... what does this mean for my job?

In short, this is a mess and a travesty and we're being lied to and betrayed again and again by a PM who didn't even win by a clear majority. All manner of shit that wasn't in the coalition manifesto is being shoved down our collective throat and I think at this point the only thing that's going to stop it is outright riots. And even then...

*sigh* I want to go back to Canada. People are relatively sane there.

Profile

thessalian: (Default)
thessalian

July 2012

S M T W T F S
1234 567
891011121314
151617 18192021
22232425262728
2930 31    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 01:11 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios