Reminder about your invitation from Christopher Howarth

This is a reminder that on November 25, Christopher Howarth sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. Accept Christopher Howarth's Invitation On November 25, Christopher Howarth wrote: > To: Parenthood dummies [howarthc.brinsleydad@blogger.com] > From: Christopher Howarth [chowarth@juniper.net] > Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn > Parenthood, > > I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. > > - Christopher You are receiving Reminder emails for pending invitations. Unsubscribe. © 2011 LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

Reminder about your invitation from Christopher Howarth

This is a reminder that on November 25, Christopher Howarth sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. Accept Christopher Howarth's Invitation On November 25, Christopher Howarth wrote: > To: Parenthood dummies [howarthc.brinsleydad@blogger.com] > From: Christopher Howarth [chowarth@juniper.net] > Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn > Parenthood, > > I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. > > - Christopher You are receiving Reminder emails for pending invitations. Unsubscribe. © 2011 LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

From Christopher Howarth Manager, Advanced Services Consulting EMEA at Juniper Networks Guildford, United Kingdom Parenthood, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Christopher Confirm that you know Christopher You are receiving Invitation to Connect emails. Unsubscribe © 2011, LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct. Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

Son Number 3

So - we did it again. It is 11pm and I am trying to rock a wailing baby to sleep. His name is Finley and he is lovely.

Bye Bye Facebook - How to Delete your Facebook Account

I have just sent this message to all my facebook friends:

8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - -

To all my Facebook Friends,

I have got a bit sick of facebook over the past month and not at all comfortable with their policy of "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.” + many other concerns in regard to their privacy mechanisms & ethics.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Privacy
http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=1344

Uploading photos and videos for friends and family was my only reason for using FB. Also many of my friends & family have left or don't really use it any more. So I am calling it a day.

Why am I telling you? Well, I didn't want any of you seeing I have disappeared and thinking I have rudely deleted you. Thus I will hopefully avoid a potentially massive, relationship damaging social networking faux par :)

If you want details of my personal blog (of which I retain all rights to images, video and content :), twitter account or mobile phone details then email me and I will send them to you.

Many Thanks and Best Regards,

Chris

8< - - - 8< - - - 8< - - -

P.s. To REALLY delete your account and not just deactivate it, you need to do the following:

Go here: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account and fill out the form. APPARENTLY this will delete all your details and photos, etc. But I don't trust it. Do this instead:

1. Delete everything that is related to your profile. That includes, but is not limited to: pictures, friends, messages, wall-posts, mini-feeds, news-feeds, posted items, interests, groups, applications, gifts….etc etc etc… Get the picture? EVERYTHING!

2. Change your profile name to something unique like, Mr Sambuca Unbumpicooko

3. Contact the Facebook staff and request a permanent deletion of your account and that all information about you is fully erased. Of course, remember to tell them your user name. There is no offical contact here, so try the following:

privacy@facebook.com
comment-info-rt@facebook.com
info@facebook.com

If you live in the UK make sure you request confirmation that your account is deleted in accordance with the data protection act.

You should get a response within a week. If you don't then you need to contact them again.

4. Once you receive a reply from the Facebook staff confirming that your account is deleted, try logging in to Facebook as you used to. If you don’t get an invitation to reactivate your account it should now be permanently deleted.

5 Minute Chocolate Penny Cake

My wife just made this for me after a hard day at the office. It tasted great and took 5 minutes to make including the 3 minutes in the microwave! No measuring, no weird ingredients you don't have.

Try it and add a comment to this post to let me know your thoughts, adaptions, etc :)

5 Minute Chocolate Penny Cake Ingredients:
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips or chopped up chocolate or anything really (optional)
a small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract (if using), and mix again.

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes for a 1000 watts and 4 minutes for lesser wattage ovens. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

Let me know how you get on.

Surrey School Primary School Selection Process

I have just gone through the horrific process of applying for a school place for my first child. While I am happy with the outcome. I realise from talking to many of my parent friends that the application procedure is completely flawed. In fact, I would go further and say that the advice given to parents is utterly misleading. The result being a lot of unhappy parents.

It works like this. You have a form with 3 boxes. In them you write your first, second and third choice school.

Apparently THIS YEAR, the preference i.e. the 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice rankings, are ignored by the school you are applying to. Each of your choices will say yes or no irrespective of the preference you give. Purely based on your circumstances, i.e. distance from school, siblings, other special conditions. So a central body then get 3 responses back and your HIGHEST preference that said YES will be granted to you. They might ALL be YES, but the highest will count.

So you would be tempted to put a really top school that is miles away from your area and totally oversubscribed as your first choice right?

We are very lucky. Our closest school was, in our opinion having visited them all, the best in the area. So we popped the form in to them. We didn't have to worry too much about deciding how to play the game.

Here are the two ways people have played it, Person X is following the advice and taking a chance. Person Y is playing it safe.

Person X puts school c, b, a in that order. (putting "c" which is the best school but oversubscribed, "b" a school miles away that got good reviews and "a" the local good school). Person X is taking the advice that the preference is actually ignored and trying to get the best school. She knows that c will say yes because it is the local school, so why not have a go at trying to get in the other school?

Person Y puts school a, b & c in that order. (c is a great school but over subscribed, a is a good school and more local). Person Y is playing it safe.

It seems that Person Y will almost certainly get accepted into School A. Whereas Person X may be rejected from all 3 and dumped somewhere they don't want to be, perhaps MILES away from their area. This suggests that the local authority may have changed the preference system to be 3 equal choices, but nobody told the schools.

Here is another important paradoxical bit of advice. Once you have decided the order, you can either hand the form to your first choice school or submit it online. Hand in to your first choice school??? That doesn't sound like a process that would ignores preference?! So in respect to this, it seems that if you submit online you are unlikely to get your first or even your second choice, in fact you might be unlucky and get none of your choices. But if you hand it in you get a much higher chance. But this seems logical right? Why have the option of handing it in to the first choice school. Obviously the first choice school will give preference to the applications it has in hand. Because the first choice school KNOWS that it is first choice and doesn't want to say yes to a bunch or second or third choices which ultimately will result in more administration as they have to reprocess other applications when they say no.

Confused. Welcome to world of Parents in Surrey. Playing this stupid bureaucratic game, jumping though hoops and having to gamble and guess in order to get a better education for our children. Thanks for the added stress!

Credit Crunch

It has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Since I last wrote it seems the entire planet's financial system have gone into meltdown and the optimism and growth of the early 00's has turned into a dark, cold, depressing, homeless person vomiting on a puppy reality that we have today. People are loosing their jobs left, right and centre. Friends are getting laid off in other companies. I have to say (touching wood as I type this (I really am)) I have been unaffected, but that really isn't the point, the fact is that everyone, me included, feels like they are walking a tightrope between stability financial ruin. My house, my families greatest asset, seems to be shrinking in value every minute. This point alone doesn't really concern me, but so many people now have negative equity, it is frightening and adds to the sense of worry building in the UK today. Of course, being the miserable bunch of b*stards that we British are, we are sure to be the LAST to escape a recession. The US will pull through first, yanking most of the world with it, but the UK will continue to squelch around in our own media driven self-pity, it is what we do best. So, it looks like this cold depressing winter will be showering snow flurries of instability for a few years longer, I just hope I can stay on the tightrope until I get to the other end and make it to the springtime of financial growth, - I love a mixed metaphor coupled with a nice stretched analogy :)

P.s. I hate the term credit crunch.