ShareThis

My only problem is that I want to install an Eniscope in each of our five factories. Yes, I liked the Eniscope that much! In our second month of observation, we estimated we made a savings of 17.6% in electricity costs, which is why I’m keen to get these fitted. Enegin are of course more than happy to supply us with the extra Eniscopes. However, the installation documentation provided by Engin was too lengthy. Our engineers struggled with installing the first Eniscope because they had to wade through a lot of unnecessary technical specs and then had to remain in constant communication with the Enigin technicians.

Now, I have just learned that Enigin has updated their Knowledge Base

to include some Quick Guide sheets. The sheets are in pdf format, so they’re really easy to print off as needed. It means that whoever installs each Eniscope should have a clear understanding of the process.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a check sheet to help in choosing an IT guy to oversee the Eniscope project. Considering how long it took for my team to install the first one, I’m thinking it’s an area of expertise not currently found within the company.

These pdf files have impressed both in the concise delivery of relevant information and in the way Enigin has responded to this customer’s feedback. And of course the projected savings from an Eniscope is brilliant.

ShareThis

This blog highlights the first struggle that everyone has to endure every day - getting up in the morning! It can be so hard to wake up when your body still thinks it is the middle of the night and all you want to do is keep resting on that comfortable pillow. Facing the world of work on a grim Monday morning after only three hours sleep because a neighbourhood dog was barking all night is everyone’s worst nightmare. I think it’s amazing how people can still keep a schedule and wake up at the same time every morning, even if they have barely slept the night before.

I agree - getting up at the same time each day does have a positive effect on people’s lives. It programmes the biological clock into a routine, which is excellent for the brain and the body. When the body adapts to a routine, it works more efficiently, which as a consequence means people have more energy during the day. When you wake up at 6am every weekday morning you learn to love and cherish those wonderful Saturday and Sunday mornings when you get to have a lie in. However, it seems clear that the person who wrote this blog is very much a morning person - at least four months through this blogger’s experiment! I would generally have difficulty in getting up at 9am on a Sunday morning since I am up so late on a Saturday night. Meanwhile, I cannot remember the last time I woke up at 6am on any day - let alone a weekday. I think it takes a great deal of dedication to be able to wake up that early on a regular basis.

ShareThis

Some people subscribe to the theory that as you grow older (especially at around the age were you start to get excited by the latest in hr management software…), you inevitably grow more afraid of things. I say what a load of old rubbish! Why should you? What possible reason is there for that to happen? In fact you would think it should be the other way around; after all, with age comes experience and so surely that must mean that you get better at coping with things, so why be afraid of them more?

It’s similar to when people say “children pick up languages so much quicker, they just seem to absorb it”. Also a load of rubbish. Children, and this has been proven, don’t learn or ’’absorb’'information any quicker than adults. The only difference between the two is that children are newer to it and thus have less preconceptions. In other words, adults have a habit of getting jaded and giving up on things. I should know this, I am one of those people.

So with all this in mind I now have a new challenge: to scare myself every single day. I don’t necessarily mean go base jumping daily, or wrestle a crocodile (though they are on the list–and I may even try to do them simultaneously) I mean just get scared. Watch a scary film, learn a new language, dare to by a shandy in the pub. Go to bed without getting my mug and tea-spoon out ready for the morning–(such a ritual now that I would prefer to wrestle a crocodile than face this in the morning, and sadly I am not joking.)

Follow my lead if you wish. Go on, scare yourself, you only live once and you need to feel alive, don’t you?

ShareThis

However I read this article which nearly floored me. A woman in Wales took out a loan for £1800 and lived on beans on toast for a year to save her pet chicken. Despite this article being three years old, it is still a highly read article which is why it deserves a mention. It is surprising that someone would get into such debt to save her chicken’s leg, cutting into her personal budgets by living on baked beans for nearly a year and cancelling her holidays to pay for the seven operations. I love my pets but I’m not sure if I could fork out nearly £2,000 for an operation, this lady is an inspiration, the only thing she hasn’t done is to remortgage her house.

I know that vet jobs are hard, having to operate on animals which may be unruly, but I didn’t think that operations would cost that much. But it does make you think, what if a human’s life was at stake? Your family or friend needed an operation and you had to pay that much money, would you do it? Obviously in some countries that does happen, people have to pay privately for treatment, we have the NHS which has its good publicity and its bad publicity. I am sure of one thing, people will sacrifice everything in the world they own for the one thing that matters to them most.

ShareThis

I was minding my own business the other day, just sitting there watching TV. I wasn’t even really watching it. I was just dozing, finding joy in the little things: learning about cd duplication ; watching children’s programmes, touchingly boring news stories, that kind of thing.

Then I changed channels and suddenly I found myself intrigued and locked in to a fierce posture where my back was bolt-upright and my jaw was agape. It was a nature programme which delved deep in to the dramatic and often horrible world of Kingfishers. Not only did it have cameras in their nests and everything, so I felt like I was myself a Kingfisher stalking about menacingly, the commentary told a devastating tale of love and war, as one Kingfisher defended her territory against the might of an invading female. Wow!

It was captivating stuff. The story was horrific and truly disturbing…right up there with the greatest tragic modern classics where all is gambled on one precious moment. It went like this. A Kingfisher female had invaded (madness!) and the original female (whose territory it was) had, quite understandably, taken it upon herself to try and kill the invader by any means possible (which, when you are a Kingfisher with no hands, has to be pretty limited). And that was how it went. Over and over again they fought, until they both ended up in the water trying to drown one another.

I was sweating after the first battle, but after the second I was nearly in tears as they both drowned, right before my awestruck eyes!

ShareThis

People often say “humans are so cruel, aren’t they?” but here’s the thing: in terms of being unkind to one another and making each others lives a living hell, animals beat us hands down. And that’s not even on a bad day. On any normal day of the week animals are a nightmare, but if it’s an extra-special nightmarish occasion then the stakes get upped again:

Some examples.

Monkeys eat other monkeys. That’s right, they’re cannibals.

Big ducks drown small ducks. All of them get the little one in the middle, then they push it under and won’t let it come up for air. They don’t do it because they need to. Ducks are just really, really angry.

Some insects bite the head off each other and then mate. The Romance.

Leave two angry dogs in a room and don’t feed them for a week and they’ll tear each others skin off. The over-inflated prices of boob jobs that cause horrible diseases don’t even compare.

Jeremy Kyle’s verbal assault doesn’t even rank alongside the taunts of some animals. Say the wrong thing and it’s game over, a whole family wiped out.

So I don’t think we should be too hard on ourselves. Yes there are some bad things in our world, but it’ll never be as dog-eat-dog as is in the animal kingdom. And at least we can book a holiday and get away from it all when we’re sick of one another. Animals are sort of stuck there. They don’t even know what a holiday is.

Now, are you going to complain that you’re a human?

ShareThis

When I was reading this story, I could imagine a human family behaving in exactly the same manner. The way that these chimps sat and comforted their companion in her final hours is so similar to what we will do when an elderly relative is dying. The whole tale is incredibly touching and I felt a genuine lump in my throat as I read it (may have hidden myself in the work loo and cried into a c fold towel).

It also reminded me of a documentary I watched a while ago about the horrors of elephant poaching. It followed a group of elephants as they walked across many miles of countryside. At one point of their long journey, the herd came across the remains of a fellow elephant. Before continuing on their way they spent a very long time grieving over their fallen companion; nudging him/her gently and standing close by. They were obviously distressed at coming across this body and they were showing clear signs of dignity and respect.

Who can say just how deeply animals will experience loss; we certainly have a good deal of evidence to suggest that different creatures go through a period of grieving. And if they can feel loss so profoundly, then they must have the ability to love in the first place.

We think that we know a great deal about our fellow inhabitants on the planet, but it may be that we understand very little at all. What other emotions do Earth’s creatures’ experience? And what other incredible discoveries are waiting to be made in the animal kingdom?

ShareThis

We all know how critically important social networking is to the survival of a modern business–Or do we? Sadly, I’m not convinced that we all really do. While many companies are embracing new technology and jumping in head-first, many others are still holding back, afraid or unsure of how this can be of benefit to them. Because of this irrational fear, many companies who could do very well for themselves are being left behind while other more daring ones prosper and reap all the rewards!

The link you’ll see in a moment leads to an article all about this.

And Enigin know what they are talking about, if you ask me. They certainly have enough experience with this kind of thing to call themselves an authority on the subject. They know about blogging, and how to use Facebook, and pay per click campaigns, and all that important new-fangled stuff which the children pick up easily and us adults always struggle to get to grips with. OK, if Enigin only had one blog and this was it then I might be dubious, but the reality is very different. The company has many blogs which discuss everything from technology to a day in the life of running a business and many more things. If you’re looking for advice on how to make your company more visible in the global arena – while also saving tons of energy in ways you could never have foreseen – then you could do worse than have a look at their blogs.

ShareThis

Competitions get a bad rap and that’s a shame. When I mention to people that I regularly play (and win) competitions, a kind of look somewhere between awe and disgust comes over their faces, and they gaze at me as though I just asked them if I could borrow their T shirt for a bit. Or as if I’d just had laser skin treatment and it went really wrong.

But what they don’t realize is all the free stuff that is out there, and guess what? Yes, that’s right: winning it is completely free. There really is no catch.

OK, that’s an all-out lie, there is a catch. There has to be. But it’s not usually too bad. More often than not the catch is that you have to give the competition people your home address and telephone number. The problem with doing that is that every few days someone will call you and want a good old chat about pets, insurance, flying to the moon or a number of other things that the average person has very little interest in obtaining. And that can be a problem, because the more times you give out your details, the more people ring for a chat. Currently I get about fifty phone-calls a week. Not that I mind, no! I feel like the most popular man on earth!

How to avoid the catch? There’s really no way. Just be sure to read the small print at the end of your submission. That way, you might gain some small amount of control over who rings you up during all times of the day. But let’s be honest, you probably won’t–

ShareThis