This weekend we finally admitted defeat and consigned the now 10 year old monitor to the scrap heap. While it was a very impressive flat screen CRT monitor, it’s colours had seen better days and it kept pretending to be broken. The random fix of unplugging all the cables waiting a indeterminate amount of time and plugging them back in bringing it back to life was begging to ware a bit thin.

After the latest bout of Monitor stroppyness on Friday, I trekked over to John Lewis and picked up an 21.4″ wide-screen monitor, For what was quite a reasonable price. The net effect on the study is a lot more desk space now we have got rid of the monster and massive screen real estate - we’ve gone from a fairly respectible 1280*1024 to a quite massive 1920*1080, which is a lot of desktop to fill.

While at work (and for a while at home) I have multi-monitors – having a single wide screen monitor is a different experience. for one you need a nice single picture to fill the screen. Since Saturday both Ruth and I have been looking for excuses not to use our laptops for a while and now we have both dug around and come up with our own 1920×1080 wallpapers for the superwide screen PC we hardly ever use.

Liverpool Skyline

Blossom (Ruth's Desktop)

Compton Bay

They are not quite all 1920*1080 because, well, we’re a bit lazy – but still they are very pretty on a very big screen – which means you will need a big screen to see them properly

All we do now is occasionally disappear upstairs turn the computer on and stare at the desktop. We haven’t worked out how to fill the space on the screen, websites full screen just look a bit lost, and well you need to be able to see the pretty pictures don’t you?

Having slow broadband is like having your arm cut off; well that might be a bit harsh. It’s more like when you trap your thumb in the door, and then it swells up a bit and then every time you do something it you knock it and start to realise just how much you actually use your thumbs for picking up stuff and holding on to things.

My Friendly Broadband Provider Virgin Media have told me that it’s something more complicated than they are willing to explain and it will take 6-8 weeks to fix – which is a long time to have a swollen thumb.

I’ve thought about moving to some other way of getting the internet into the house but the lack of physical BT wire means it would need reconnecting and surprise surprise that takes 6-8 weeks.

My Insecent moaning on twitter and in emails has gotten me £15 of my bill – but i still don’t have broadband I would call in any sense of the word broad.

Sorry for the rant I just need write that down.

Happy New Year –  yes we are still about - usually I start the new year with a whole lot of renewed enthusiasm and great ideals (I fool myself by not calling them resolutions) – but this year a combination of snow, over tiredness and a monumentally slow internet have all but sucked it all out of me I’m afraid.

I’m thinking of declaring January null and void and having a new new years day on 1st February - maybe without snow, and a bit of rest (I can’t dare to think my internet will still be slow) it might all start out better. It also gives me another month to actually think of some things to be all eager about.

Now before you all rant – remember I work in the public sector

BBC News – Public sector ’still expects raises despite recession’

Most public sector workers are still expecting a pay rise in 2010, despite the impending clampdown on earnings in the sector, a survey has found.

I am truely confused by this article. If you read it; it says public sector workers expect 2% pay rise – and private sector expect 3%. Then it goes on to suggest public sector workers are out of touch with reality?

“according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey, most public sector workers still expect a pay rise of 2% in 2010.

Workers in private firms predicted that their pay will rise by 3% next year.”

and

“Public sector workers are clearly not sensing that the pay storm clouds are gathering. It looks like 2010 will prove to be the last hurrah of this gilded age.”

Now I’m not suggesting anything about pay rises here – but just reading the article I can’t see it has this bias?

The only other stat in the article – is 20% of Public Sector workers don’t expect a pay rise while 25% of private don’t – so are they using that as the stat to beat up the public sector with? because the other stat suggests it’s the other way?

In reality does this research conclude that their is very little difference between people in these sectors but we need to publicise our story?

like with most news stories of this type I can’t get to the real numbers yet because the Beeb obviously have the report before the company that did it have bothered to put anything on their own website – at this point I could go on a rant about marketing and news releases – but I’ll save that.