Amazing Supermarket Disaster : Aaaahh!

For anyone living within the United Kingdom, inflation has recently become a real problem. Every supermarket is boasting the fact that they are "rolling back prices" , but what are the effects of that on supermarket employees? From very recent personal experience, the damage of super high inflation on a highly competitive market is showing through.

Normally around May, the job market tends to be saturated. If you’re a University student returning home, you’re normally guaranteed a job for the summer. Not this year though. After 8 applications and 3 interviews for jobs that barely met national minimum wage, only one company had the courtesy to tell me that they had considered my application. After two further interviews, the first being a gruelling group selection, and an induction which was focused on teaching new employees the importance of the individual, I started work as a checkout operative in a leading supermarket.

My training for checkouts was minimal at best, but wasn’t really an issue. It was company standard to put all new employees on a 12 week probation period. In normal jobs in offices, this probation is usually 3 to 6 months long, but 12 weeks of training/probation for a supermarket job is a little much.

The first two weeks went pretty quickly and the job seemed relatively easy. However, the first cracks were showing through. The store I worked in was less than 6 months old and was one of the companies most celebrated achievements in the area. Apparently we had built up a good rapport with the community and apparently we offered the most choice compared to our competitors. What they didn’t mention is that the store suffers from broken “travelators” , broken conveyer belts on the tills, broken slam locks for the tills and broken management. It seems that this particular supermarket was achieving inflation busting prices by destroying half the store. They would rather charge a penny less for milk than employ a bloke with a can of oil.

The lack of good management in these stores is what affects employees the most. After three weeks I was already filing a complaint against a night manager for harassment. My normal day manager had “sorted” the problem, but not addressed the issue. The night manager had stopped harassing me, in fact he stopped talking to me full stop, but that only meant he started harassing a colleague. All the official channels were avoided because they could not afford to fire this particular night manager. This again is an example of money before employee safety.

A week after that I had called in sick with a stomach bug. After only taking one day off, I was back to work the next day. My manager had called me over and told me that my probation was being extended by 4 weeks because I took a day off. She had also said that I had to go through HR because apparently a day off sick was cause for concern. As she failed to spell correctly on the HR form ,I asked my manager what I should have done with a stomach bug, her answer was for me to come in to work regardless. Again, it seems supermarkets are more interested in money than in employee safety and customer safety.

I gave my notice in the following Saturday..

Final Thought Byte : Inflation is really starting to hit the UK bad. Petrol prices are stupidly high and food prices even higher. Supermarkets are fighting each other to the death in an attempt to get all the customers. And to the death they shall fight. Supermarkets would rather lower prices than ensure the safety and comfort of customers and employees. People are going to catch onto this soon enough...

Tags : competition, Economy, food prices, Inflation, supermarket, UK, work

One child policy doesn't apply to Pandas?

Earlier this July, four baby giant pandas were born in China. For a species which has more stuffed toys in its image than actual animals, four pandas in two weeks is pretty good going. Although giant pandas are very very cute and get loads of publicity, I don't think they are worth the trouble. We've all seen the youtube video where the mother panda freaks out as the baby panda sneezes, so why should we bother saving a species that can't even handle a sneeze from its children?

The fact that it's in China means that we should be skeptical to begin with anyway. When was the last time you heard the news quote the Chinese Government as a reliable source? I wouldn't be surprised if they killed one of the twin baby pandas to conform with the famous 'One Child' policy.

I know what you're all thinking: suggesting the murder of a new born panda is brutal. And that's the thing, it would be murder. So what about all those unborn children in China? Or even those babies that "go missing" in families that already have one child? To be fair, there was talk about changing the policy, but it's probably not going to happen. (BBC News Report)

Final Thought Byte : It seems to me that we should spend more time and effort on addressing the human population problem in China rather than the Panda population problem. It's a shame though, that as a Western society we don't get involved unless we're under direct threat or if we can get some money out of it. I guess we'll have to wait until Global Warming starts to fry us....

Tags : BBC, China, news, One Child Policy, Panda, youtube

El Orfanato, scorchio?

Ok, so maybe I'm being a bit stereotypical when it comes to the Spanish. (See the BBC : Fast Show)

My girlfriend came over last night after work with two pizza's and a copy of The Orphanage. We thought it was going to be some lame American ghost movie, but we were wrong. Instead, we got the Spanish version of a Sixth Sense and The Others hybrid.

Now, I haven't exactly seen many Spanish movies, and if I didn't know better I would be saying that most foreign movies are badly scripted and badly acted. The Orphanage, however, has superb acting, a great script and very good camera work. I was on edge throughout the whole movie and even jumped once or twice despite having to the read subtitles.

As you can probably imagine, the film is set in Spain. The main character, Laura, is an orphan that grows up and returns to buy the old decrepit Orphanage 30 years later, where she is subject to broken limbs and pulled nails when she gets chased by a child in a mask during the house warming party. The plan was for Laura to re-open the orphanage and to look after special needs children, but the disappearance of her adopted son (who is terminally ill) shatters her dreams and drives her a little nuts.

After about an hour of freaky encounters with ghosts, ghost hunters and dead bodies, the end comes bearing a clever yet understated twist. I won't share this twist, because you should watch the movie yourself.

Final Thought Byte : The Orphanage is a movie well worth watching if you don't mind reading subtitles. The storyline and acting is consistent throughout and can really draw you into the horror action. This movie should definitely be put next to Day Watch and Night Watch in the "Good Foreign Movies" list.

Tags : El Organato, Horror, movies, Sixth Sense, Spanish, The Orphanage, The Others

Power that GRID? You got to be joking!

Race Driver : Grid is like GT3 with a university degree in "kick-ass". The only problem though... is that anyone using a keyboard will find themselves spinning round in circles.

To add to the difficulty of the game, you'll also need a top of the range PC to play it properly. My tests (well...observations) have shown that Grid has a tendency to put a massive load on graphics cards and causes them to get really...really hot. The temperature of my 8600 GT was getting up to around 100 C and more. People with mid-range rigs will be experiencing much less detail, a forced max screen resolution of 1280x800 and a lot of hangs throughout loading , races and even the menus.

But, if you have a Xbox 360 wired controller plugged into your top of the range Quad Core, 9800GTX SLi power house with Nvidia's new PhysX drivers installed, you'll be laughing your socks off in pure enjoyment. The game starts by putting you straight into a race where you only have to finish in your overpowered Dodge to get your Rookie License. After you complete the race, your "manager" gets you to raise enough cash to start your own team. Each race gets you reputation points , which you need to gain new licenses and sponsors for your team and every time you finish a season you get the chance to race in the 24 Hours Le Mans.

The graphics are probably the best out there in terms of driving games. I haven't seen any Need For Speed games come close to the attention to detail that Codemasters put into Grid. One of the best features of the game is the ability to manipulate instant replays and to use "Flash Backs". On the easy mode you'll get 5 flash backs per race, which means you can screw up 5 times and still win the race. The instant replay is also good for viewing some amazing near misses in slow motion.

Final Thought Byte : With superb physics and graphics, Grid is definitely a game worth considering. But most people will be really pushed to play the game at it's full potential, whether it be a hardware limitation or a talent limitation.

Tags : Codemasters, Driving, games, GT3, Nvidia 8600 GT, PC, Race Driver : Grid

Open that Valve on the Speaker!

What happens when you stick some water on hot coals? You get Steam.

So what happens when you stick some hot ideas in the hands of the people who made Half Life? You get Steam.

A review on Steam seemed like a pretty good thing to do, considering it is at the forefront of online media distribution. IT also seemed to be a good idea considering the laws being passed throughout the Western hemisphere regarding illegal file sharing.

The other day, the British government helped make a deal between the UK’s biggest ISP’s and the music industries (BBC News Report). The BBC and other bloggers pointed out a few problems with the deals and how pissed off people are going to get. At the very basic level, anyone who downloads any songs illegally is likely to get a letter through the door. The chances of any legal action being taken are probably low, but it seems there is a definite crack-down on downloading music. I expect that the music industry realised that it probably shot itself in the foot, so there is talk about introducing services that allow people to download music for an annual fee. Problem is, no –one really knows what this fee will be. iTunes is a leading distributor of online DRM protected music and the prices on there are ridiculous, I’m never going to use iTunes if I’m perfectly honest.

So where does Steam come in? The attack on illegal music file sharing is only the first phase of a wider crack-down. Game companies are reporting losses on most PC game titles and that means most of them are moving towards consoles. Look at Unreal Tournament 3 for example. The game, which was traditionally a PC only game, was released for both the PC and PS3. A couple months later it was released for the Xbox 360. Although game development companies have more control and power over use of cracked games, they are probably still losing money.

Steam, however, seems to completely fix this problem. The software is full of rock solid security features that protects all the games that are featured. The prices are also pretty good and the weekend deals are a great idea. The fact that you can download demos for most games in one place before buying them and being able to talk to your friends whilst doing the Master levels on Peggle Deluxe makes Steam an all-in-one wonder package. I must have spent about £30 buying games on there already and I don’t have a problem spending more.

If the music industry really is thinking about creating internet based services, they should talk to Valve. People already use Steam for games, so they might as well use it for listening to music. Heck, Valve should just set up its own record label. Many indie software developers use Steam as an easy and cheap platform for releasing their games without having to give a ton of cash to software distributers. Unknown music artists could really use that type of ideology. Most of the music that’s in the in the charts is complete crap anyway, we could really use an incentive to actually pay for music.

Final Thought Byte : Change is in the air when it comes to music, gaming and movies. Everyone is going to start complaining and we all know that governments can’t really stop illegal file sharing. What they need to do is create an incentive for people to actually spend their hard earned cash on music. Steam has done this for games, so they might as well do it for music.

Tags : DRM, file sharing, games, music, Steam, Valve

You made Vista cry...

Well, actually Vista nearly made me cry. You'd be surprised how hard it is to actually update a PC...

It all started about 3 weeks ago when I ordered a Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB from Dabs. From what I read in Tom's Hardware, this piece of kit was meant to be super fast and more reliable than other hard drives out there. After waiting for over two weeks, the package finally arrived. Installing a new hard drive is pretty easy, you just have to slot it in , put a screw in and attach the power and SATA cables. The hard part comes when you try to install Windows Vista Home Premium 64.

I had bought Vista 64 about a month ago hoping to upgrade the whole PC. Vista 64 is meant to be able to handle over 4 Gigs of RAM and it's also meant to make your computer a whole lot faster. Its a shame Microsoft forgot to say "Vista 64 only works if you have a lucky horseshoe nailed to your motherboard". After doing 4 clean installs of Vista 64 and getting massive problems with a file called “nvlddmkm.sys”, I eventually gave up and installed the 32 bit version.

Trying to go to a 64-bit operating system is a bit of a hit and miss affair. My brother, who had bought a Dell, upgraded to vista 64 without a problem. But if you have the slightest hardware compatibility problem , everything will break and overheat. The most common problem with trying to install Vista 64 seems to be something to do with the RAM and your BIOS. This will cause problems with graphics and it'll stop you from connecting to a wifi internet connection...at the very best.

So all in all, don't even bother upgrading to Vista 64-bit unless your 100% sure that your PC can take it. In fact, don't even bother installing Vista on a computer that hasn’t come with it as standard. One good thing about this whole experience, other than having spent £70 on a piece of software I can't use, is that the Hard drive is very good. You'll get something like 695 GB after formatting, and that’s not bad for just under £70. It's a little noisy when its reading/writing on full load, but that can't be avoided with high performance hardware.

Final Thought Byte : Upgrading your PC isn't as hard as it seems anymore, but if your unlucky it can be just as frustrating . Be sure to make a checklist of things to download and install when upgrading your system, whether it be extra drivers or a new BIOS. Always do your homework before fiddling with the innards of your metal pet...

Tags : 64-bit, Computer, Microsoft, nvlddmkm, Samsung, Spinpoint F1, Upgrading, Vista

Buttercups meet monkey?

Ok, so none of this probably makes any sense. But that's good, because if it made sense, it would be boring and no-one would probably read this.

So time for an introduction. If there was a giant drape somewhere I would try and use that to uncover this blog in an impressive fireworks show, but considering this is just a bunch of "thought bytes", that's a little difficult.

As for the "thought bytes", its a play on words for something similar to "bite size thoughts". I'll try and keep things short and interesting....and as frequent as possible. It will also mean that I get to write about pretty much everything. Ranging from reviews on games, music, movies or just general views on anything interesting (including the news...which we all know is ridiculous sometimes).

First up is a review on some hardware...and how crap Microsoft is.
Technorati Profile

Tags : Buttercup, bytes, games, introduction, monkey, movies, music, news, thought, thoughts