Just when I was having a peaceful day - the hell of broken websites

It's raining hard here today. A perfect day to be inside. Wednesdays are a bit of a day off for me as my colleague at my main client's workplaces has the day off, so doesn't chase me with emails and phone calls.

I decided I would devote this afternoon to self-improvement and relaxation.

I attempted a twenty minute yoga session. I say attempted because every time I did the Downward Dog our puppy raced up and licked my nose. I should, on reflection, have shut her in the kitchen but her whimpering would have been too distracting.

After that I lit a candle and did a twenty minute guided meditation, and felt peace flowing through me. I was relaxed, so beautifully relaxed.

Then I made the mistake of checking my email. Another client had written saying she wanted a change on her website, which is one where people can buy tickets for a charity sleepout. She wanted an extra, cheaper, ticket for school students. I checked the back end of the website. Looked easy.

My second mistake was updating the core software and all the plugins including the event plugin. Suddenly there were no tickets any more - none on the front end and none on the back!

All my peacefulness vanished. I had a headache almost instantly.

Of all the clients, it had to be her site. I swear, this woman is a jinx. She has two websites and every time I touch them they misbehave. Something goes wrong. Now these are simple WordPress sites. There shouldn't be the issues I have with them; when I've fixed one thing another pops up. I don't have any other clients with the problems she has.

So I've given up and posted a question on a support forum for the event software. I've decided if it's all too hard I'm going to pay a contractor to fix it and bill my client for their time. I am OVER fixing websites, I find it all too stressful these days.

I'm now going to find a quiet corner and try and meditate again. I feel sick to my stomach with this website issue. If only I could afford to retire and give this website bullsh*t up!

In search of the perfect satchel

I love satchels and messenger bags. I like bags I can sling across my body; there is less chance that they'll slide down my arm and annoy me, as normal shoulder bags do. There's also less opportunities for thieves to whip my bag off my shoulder and unlike a backpack (another favourite) my wallet is closer to hand and a little safer.

A couple of years ago I bought a leather satchel on eBay; it was affordable and had enough compartments in it for me. Sadly, it hasn't weathered well. In fact, it's just ...weathered!  The very soft goat leather it's made from is prone to wrinkling and my once smart satchel now looks a bit too laid back and, to use that lovely Aussie word, daggy to take to client meetings.

So at the end of year sales I went in search of another satchel. I can tell you now there is nothing suitable in women's handbag departments or the women's section of bag and luggage shops. Inspired by massive Birkin bags the trend this year is for huge, heavy handbags with shortish straps which mean the bag sits just under your arm, big and unwieldy. 

Heavy handbags can lead to long term damage; a bag, fully laden, shouldn't be more than one tenth of your own weight. Some of the big bags I looked at had the potential to carry far more than any person should unless they weighed more the 120 kgs.

A criteria for my new satchel was a compartment to take my new best friend my iPad. So the satchel had to initially not weigh too much itself, as the iPad weighs close to 1kg. 

Many satchels and messenger bags don't have compartments. I like compartments. Particularly if I'm putting a larger item like an iPad in my bag; compartments make it easier to slot them in and keep them undamaged. In addition compartments help me keep track of items and find them easily in a hurry, rather than have to shuffle around the bottom of my bag looking for a pen or lipstick.

I found what I was looking for in the menswear section of a department store - a lined leather satchel with a sturdy lined strap, in mid-brown nubuck suede. While it wasn't cheap - $200! - it's very well made and I suspect the brand name, Trent Nathan, has something to do with the price. Trent Nathan is an Australian design house whose collections are slightly conservative but not as expensive as they used to be. Had this been one of Trent's women's handbags the price would have been double. (Thinks:... does Trent Nathan even design women's bags any more? Maybe not. The brand was taken over a few years back and the lines have been reduced.) Heaven only knows I've paid more than $200 in my mad, bad past for designer bags. In those days I had a good job so it was justifiable; I've justified the purchase of this satchel as it's well made, unpretentious, not markedly 'this year's fashion' and I'll get several years' worth of use from it.

This, then, is my new bag. No fancy stuff, not obviously blokey, but very practical:

In the main part of the bag there's a zippered section, where I typically keep my keys. Two other pockets are useful for makeup (probably not the designer's intention!). Sadly they are a mite too small for my iPhone in its leather case. Two penholders ensure I can always find a pen in a hurry. On the back side of the bag, which I didn't photograph, is another small zipped section suitable for a handkerchief or tissues.

And below, you can see the iPad sits in the front pocket. The flap happily and securely closes over the top.

Even with my everyday items in the bag - keys, wallet, lipstick, compact, small camera, business cards, a pack of ever-growing loyalty cards, iPhone - there is still plenty of room for small purchases or a water bottle and best of all it doesn't feel too heavy. I'm still toting about 2kg with the iPad on board, but it's a big improvement on a huge women's bag and of course I can ride a bike with this slung across my back.

I'll confess right now I love bags. I have several, ranging from tiny evening bags through leather backpacks to cane and woven zippered basket bags. I swap them around as the occasion or whimsy demands. The more technology I need to use in my work - mobile phones/iPhones, iPads - unfortunately the bigger bag I need. I have my trusty MacBook Pro, which I carry in a briefcase if I head into the office. The briefcase also doubles as a leather tote bag; it's not obviously briefcasey. Because of the iPhone and iPad I've trimmed down the essential stuff I carry in my bag to save weight and allow me to carry a bag that just fits my needs rather than weigh myself down with something that looks like an overnight bag. 

My new bag makes me feel liberated when I see other women toting massive bags. If you have a humungous handbag, what do you carry in it every day? How much does it weigh? Do you notice a soreness in your shoulders? And how the heck do you find things in it?  

PumpTV - just how much advertising is too much?

I rarely watch commercial television. The commercial breaks and station promos annoy the heck out of me and I get no pleasure from any show I enjoy being carved into 6 or 7 minute segments with 3 minute ad breaks. When I do watch television, it's usually the ABC (ad free) or SBS (fewer ads than commercial channels).

Once upon a time I rather fancied the idea of working in advertising. I used to amuse myself by making pithy captions for products ("Rectinol...shove it up your a*se" was the most memorable). But now, as I approach Grumpy Old Womanhood, I find the constant barrage of advertising in everything from TV to billboards to the internet annoys me. I don't want products pushed in my face. If I want to buy something, I'll research what deals are out there myself. I don't want to be convinced that I need the latest and greatest techno gadget. When this Mac's lease is up, I will lease a new Mac. When my mobile phone dies a final death I'll replace it with an iPhone. Those are simple decisions I have already made. I have no need for a Wii, a Playstation or any other timewaster and entertainer. I read books and ride a bike instead.

So I was both amused and appalled to read this little gem in yesterday's paper about installing little TV screens at the pumps at petrol stations. For heaven's sake! Are we so desperate for stimulation and entertainment that we can't spend 2 to 5 minutes filling up the car without having to watch telly? If you don't want to click on the link, let me assure you that what will be on these screens will be advertisements. Canny marketing merchants have found yet another way to pester potential customers. Quote: "As a result, the spare minutes we once called free time -- which marketers refer to as "dead time" -- are increasingly becoming more advertising time."

Well, we're not allowed use our mobile phones while pumping petrol, so presumably this is to keep the Twitter generation happy and entertained. And avoid the inevitable Tweets such as "Filling the car up. 2c a litre off. Need to wash windscreen." or "Pumping gas, what a waste of two minutes.'. As if Twitter didn't have enough rubbish tweets ricocheting across the ether.

Further on down the article it mentions the possibilities of installing similar screens in men's urinals courtesy of a Swiss invention which is becoming a common site in Europe.

Do we HAVE to be entertained every waking moment? I think not. I relish the opportunities to get away from the computer, the TV, the constant barrage of "Buy! Buy! Buy!" that assaults me at every retail outlet including the petrol station ("Spend $5 in store and get 4c a litre discount!"). I like to have some time when my thoughts can be my own.

And my final thought on TV screens at petrol stations is that it's very clever indeed - people will watch the screen rather than watch how many dollars worth of fuel they are putting into their cars. Ah yes, people who don't automatically 'fill her up' will be spending over their budget and the petrol companies will like that just fine.

Enough from me, I'm heading off for a bit of dead time and a cup of coffee.

Having a growly day. Thank technology.

Gosh I've been grumpy today. PMT? Possibly. But it's the sheer amount of interruptions and 'urgent's that has done me in and given me a headache. While I love my computer for the pleasure it gives me in my leisure time - surfing the net, catching up with friends on Facebook and email, reading other people's blogs - I'm finding technology increasingly annoying during work time.

The bloody phone hardly stopped today. It seems that in my role as admin/marketing/events/chief cat herder for a large Chamber of Commerce I have to be accessible at all times of the day. Of course everything is urgent. From having a great day yesterday where I actually got things done, the General Public has bounced back from Melbourne Cup day in a frantic, nagging mood. I've been lucky to get to the loo without the phone bleating.

If I turn the phone off for a bit to get some work completed, then I get emails which tell me about the phone message they've just left. One guy left three messages asking me to call the other day. I politely told him leaving one would do in the future, as I do get back to people as soon as practicably possible. I think I'm too polite sometimes. I refrained from saying I actually have a life, and two of those messages were out of business hours. I'm stupid enough to reply to emails out of hours if I check the inbox; my own fault for creating a rod for my own back.

But...has technology created rods for backs for most of us? Thanks to the wonders of the mobile phone and the internet, we are now contactable just about all the time. Who hasn't seen someone texting on the train (or, God help us, driving a car!), or even (rudely) at the cinema? Sit at a cafe and you'll be guaranteed people yakking away as they walk by or sit at the next table. We have made ourselves too available. If you want to 'get off the world' for a day, you face a deluge of messages, a flood of 'where are you?s' which induce annoyance in this little black duck.

Life was so easy when I was younger. The pre-computer days (yes, Virginia, they DID exist). The pre mobile-phone days. We didn't have an answering machine at home then. If you were out, you missed a call. Tough. I think it gave me a lot more freedom. If I was out and about and had to phone someone, I used a callbox. The postman came once a day with letters. Things took longer to happen; life was more relaxed. More frustrating admittedly if you wanted to research anything compared to the Internet Joy we have at our fingertips, but I didn't feel the pressures I feel now, this sense of people crowding me into a corner, with demands coming thicker and faster by the day.

Now there's social media to blend into the mix. I've organised a breakfast workshop for later this month with a speaker who'll be explaining how social media works and how you can use it to promote your business. Bookings are coming out of the woodwork. I think about Twitter and sigh that if I go onto it that's one more bloody thing I have to do on a regular if not daily basis; another 15 - 30 minutes a day to put aside for a task. I'm just a bit over it all at the moment.

Am I alone in getting annoyed with the expectancy that I have to be constantly available?

Grr.