Posts by worldtraveller2

Price of Working Long Hours

Having been in IT related roles that required ridiculously long hours you soon realise the price that comes with that commitment includes a high degree of really stupid errors. I had to review some of my own work done during one such period and completely changed the resulting documentation.

Not a true National Health Service

Why is IT not the "Golden Bullet" that keeps on getting thrown about and why have so many IT initiatives failed?

From what I have experienced and been told by friends in the NHS is that it is not an NHS in that routine nursing practices vary by Trust and that you have to "be re-certified" when you work for a different Trust.

I used to have regular blood tests when on blood thinners and these were conducted either by my GP Surgery or remotely when on foreign assignment, with the results going to my local hospital to "manage" my condition. I then had an assignment which had me working at the company HQ in Hampshire and tried to setup the same arrangement. The local super surgery was in shock and denial when I tried asking them to arrange my blood testing and said I had to have a local GP to manage my condition as otherwise how would my local GP be able to do that for me. When I told them that my GP had no part in the process already, as managed by the local hospital they at first thought I was lying, but after my insistence and checking with my Surgery, they reluctantly agreed to my request.

I am sure that their must be many other similar examples of simple procedural differences that must be overcome before a standard IT system could be introduced, let alone for such differences in specialised units or when a patient receives both private and NHS treatment (from the same consultants).

I am sure that the process of making "One NHS" could provide tremendous advantages and also have some disadvantages, but it would be a massive task and take decades to evaluate and complete. However my personal feeling is that without that "throwing" IT at the NHS would be a largely wasted opportunity.

Now how could that go wrong?

If you replace people with machines I wonder how an argument I had with a large Utility provider would have played out. I was being billed for a night rate service as was as well as a day rate. Only trouble was the readings for these were exactly the same as I didn't have a dual rate meter. The Utility provider would not believe my protestations that I didn't have a dual rate meter as their records said otherwise, due to a mistake made when my meter was replaced. After many months of getting nowhere I suspended my Direct Debit payment, but even this did not bring them to see any sense with talk of debt collectors being called in to collect the amount outstanding. Through some lateral thinking I managed to get a different department involved who eventually agreed to come a check the meter type and suddenly the records were corrected, I was in credit, and I restarted my direct debits (although the apology was never received).

I sincerely hope that the Big Four don't try to pull the wool over the UK Guardians eyes with this load of cods wallop! We have far too much advertising already so adding to it should not be allowed - full stop.

W10 Good Enough

I have W10 and like all users it took some getting to know the new system. I wouldn't want to go back, but yet again my 7th generation processor is disallowed from joining the W11 club. However, having seen the interface I would need to install a product like Start11 to make it feel friendly again. Why do MS do this with every few issues of Windows and come up with s**t. Will probably wait for W12 to come along to see if they have had a better think about the UI.

SSD Failure

Whilst the figures reported show SSD's to live longer than HDD's my personal experience has been the opposite, with long lived HDD's still carrying on in service whilst SDD's have experienced total failure.

Oh No, Not the dreaded bubble car again

One of my mates had one of these in the late 60's and was locally renown for trying to stop too quickly on a wet morning and "blowing" head over heels down the road! Brings a totally new meaning to bubble car! Both survived, but the bubble was slightly less bubble shaped. Do you remember this John S?

Microsoft Money

Probably like many millions of others I never understood why MS ditched Money and believe that rather than messing with Excel spreadsheets they should do the job properly and release a new and updated version of the product, last updated 15 years ago!

Is it any surprise!

Is it any surprise, when they still have another 2 years to go before they can say they have anything near a 4G network, rather than a few very fragmented areas! Unless you live and only exist in 1 of those select areas why would you pay anything more????

Didn't work for me

When you upgrade surely you should be notified of additional standard available features without having to resort to reading on web! Rant over, I was able to download App Folder and Nokia Camera to my 920, but like the originator of this post got the same stupid messages!