From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V8 #48 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Thursday, March 27 2003 Volume 08 : Number 048 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: (OT) checking in [Robyn Moore ] Re: Alloy: (OT) checking in [Slarvibarglhee@alloy99.freeserve.co.uk] Alloy: Submarines EP [Thomas Dolby Robertson ] Re: Alloy: Submarines EP ["Andrea Allen" ] Re: Alloy: Submarines EP [Brian Clayton ] Re: Alloy: Submarines EP [CJMark@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 00:20:52 -0800 From: Robyn Moore Subject: Re: Alloy: (OT) checking in Hello all - Robin - Sorry to hear about your ferret. It's always hard when a pet goes. :( Your new little guy sounds like a real cutie, though. :) That info about aspartame is pretty scary, but I'm not desperately surprised - I was always suspicious of it. I'm considering giving Sucralose a try, since I'm supposed to be losing weight to prevent the development of diabetes. Or I could go the natural route and rely on water and tea. Crackers - I'm sorry to hear your arthritis has been acting up, but I'm glad to hear you managed to avoid your usual bouts of illness this winter. Your strip is great, as always. In fact, you're about the only person I vote for, because I usually don't get into the whole site ranking thing. (Oh, and I feel the same about Wil Wheaton - charter member of the "Wesley Crusher must die" club, but the guy himself seems to be a pretty okay dude.) Which anime con have you been invited to? I keep meaning to get to SakuraCon, seeing as it's the closest one to me, but I never seem to remember to send in a registration early enough to get a decent rate. Maybe I'll remember this year. Mark - Your current project sounds like a lot of fun. Too bad the producer/director on the last one was such a jerk. Your trip sounds great too - maybe one of these years I'll manage to get some serious travelling in. :) Ian - Kudos for getting the London awards set up - I'll have to remember to check out the webcast. I'm glad to hear things are going well for you in general. :) Keith - Yeesh, what a storm. I hope things have worked out with your satellite dish and you've managed to dig yourself out. I can relate to your drought concerns - we had so little weather this past winter that I expect we'll be facing another water rights (fish or farmers) situation this summer. I'm doing well enough - other than the potential diabetes issue, I'm reasonably healthy and didn't have any more than a moderate cold or two over the winter. Brigid's had last week and this week off of school - last week due to conferences and budget cuts, this week is Spring Break. For anyone who reads Doonesbury, Trudeau wasn't exaggerating about the Portland school situation. We live in a Portland suburb, our school district lost 10 days over the rest of the year due to budget issues, and we were glad it was that little. Kevin left on a business trip this morning and won't be back until the weekend, so Brigid and I are trying to keep busy to avoid being mopey about missing him. She's got a friend over for the night, so we've been hanging out watching anime and stuff. As usual, I've been spending most of my time being mom, which is getting tricky, as Brigid's entering the haywire hormones stage. I try to be patient with her, because I know being 11 is awkward, but sometimes I'm not as good at it as I'd like. But then, who is? Like Ian, I may not be saying much, but I'm still around. Here's hoping we have something new and exciting to talk about soon. :) Love to all, Robyn M @ Robyn Moore @ http://www.wiccans.net/robyn.html @ You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. - S.C. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 23:42:12 -0000 From: Slarvibarglhee@alloy99.freeserve.co.uk Subject: Re: Alloy: (OT) checking in Evenin' all, Robin - so sorry to hear about your loss. Pets are a great comfort. We don't always realise how much until we lose them, but I'm glad you've gone ahead and got little Nemo. Not a replacement, I know, but a new friend. Now, here is the news from the Slarvibarglhee household. A bit of a saga, I'm afraid, so don't be afraid to just hit the key if it all seems too much. Some of you may remember that my wife, daughter and sister-in-law were all made redundant from the same company in June last year, when it was found that one of the partners had been fiddling with company funds. My son worked for their estate agent office and although that branch didn't close down, it had to be sold off and the new owners had cash flow problems, so he never knew when he was going to be paid, or how much. Not a good working environment!! He'd been there just a year, and apart from the first week when the office was held up by a guy with a shotgun, he's enjoyed the work and has taken to it well. But it's been a real roller coaster year for us. My wife managed to get a part time job within a couple of months of losing her last one, and has now worked up to full time - the first time she's worked full time since our son was born, 24 years ago. It's a good job, but in a dodgy area of Old Trafford and really awkward to get to on public transport from where we live. My daughter probably came out of the whole thing best. She got a job almost immedaitely after losing the first one, but hated it and left after two weeks. A month later she'd got another job and had managed to up her salary by about #3k in the process. She now gives my wife a ride half way to work each day, and picks her up on the way home. The two problems have been my sister-in-law and my son. My sister-in-law is in her mid-fifties and had never used a computer up to when she was made redundant. She's single so has no one to rely on to help with the bills. She registered for work, got a pitiful #55 per week jobseeker's allowance, and put her CV through every office door in the vicinity. She did some casual work for a while, and bought a computer in the new year so she could learn how to use the thing and give herself a better chance in the job market. She took a job in an insurance office, but had to leave after a week because the environment was awful and the promised training was not materialising. Luckily she got a job at a solicitor's a couple of weeks later .... but these people are in the stone age and don't use computers at all, which is terribly ironic really. But, she understands the work and it'll probably suit her until she retires. My son's office finally had to close when the phones were cut off, they couldn't pay the advertising bill in the local papers, and the two other staff left to work for rival firms. He managed to get a job, within a week, at another rival company, but his basic is less than half of what he earned before, the rest being made up in commission. He's not keen, but at least he know's he'll be paid on time each month and there IS potential for making some commission. My wife had to go to London last week, to appear as a witness in her old boss's disciplinary hearing at The Law Society. One of the ex-conveyancers had written an affidavit to the effect that the original partner knew all about the company's finances. He is in his 70's, has a heart condition and had handed over the reigns to the other partner about 2 years ago. The Law Society wrote to Lyn for her version of events, which was completely at odds with almost everything this woman had said. She had a kind of Walter Mitty complex, constantly lying and making things up, which is why she was sacked. Anyway, Lyn was summonned to be a witness for the old guy and I took the day off to go to with her, to give moral support. We had to get the 5:20am train to be there in time, sat in reception for about 5 hours, then she wasn't called because they'd done a deal and accepted Lyn's affidavit. She was relieved, as she really didn't want to give evidence. The old man got off with a #1k costs and his practicing cert suspended for 2 years. He's now 72 so probably wouldn't have worked again anyway. But the other partner has been struck off and has to pay #7.5k costs and may still be prosecuted for fraud, in which case Lyn may still have to give evidence. What happened to the #300k that 'went missing'? No one seems to know. A lot was spent on the office, but mostly it was juggled around by the boss and is very difficult to trace. Maybe he salted some of it away; maybe we'll never know. I'm still very busy, working a lot of overtime at the week ends because we have so much to do, but the money is coming in handy, so I don't mind. Now I not only run the IT network, but also the phone system, the voicemail system, and the security door system. We've lost one colleage from our sister office, in Liverpool, through alcoholism and this has caused problems for us as we've had to cover for her. We're just about back up to full strength again now, but my director is talking about another reorganisation, so just as we've all got our bums on what we thought was a safe seat, it may well be musical chairs again before long. OK that brings you up to date I think, so it's back to lurk mode for me. Slarv ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 20:28:02 -0800 From: Thomas Dolby Robertson Subject: Alloy: Submarines EP Hi all, I'm getting ready to put a few hundred signed and numbered copies of the German "One Of Our Submarines" EP for sale on CD Baby. It has not been altered musically from the version compiled and sold in Europe by Salz, but as there's been quite a lot of interest in it over here we arranged with Salz to press some in the US and sell them on the Web. It should be ready in about 3 weeks. I need your input: after the bad experience some Alloyites had when they placed early orders for "Forty" but didn't receive low-numbered CDs, I want to make sure you have a good shot at it this time. So here's what I propose, tell me what you think: the moment the CD goes up for sale on CDBaby, I will notify this List, which goes out to less than 100 people. I will not publicize it in any other way for 3 days. During that time, if you place an order at CDBaby you're quite likely to get a low-numbered (<100?) CD. I will give CDBaby clear instructions that they need to allocate the CDs on a first come, first served basis (none of us thought of that last time!) Of course, I can't prevent others who happen to be browsing the site during those days from buying one ahead of you. Then, after 3 days, we'll link to it from thomasdolby.com, email others on the CDBaby mailing list, post it on a few newsgroups etc. Is this a fair system? TMDR ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 22:43:13 -0600 From: "Andrea Allen" Subject: Re: Alloy: Submarines EP Being an Alloyite I would have to say... yes! Andrea. On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 20:28:02 -0800 Thomas Dolby Robertson wrote: > Is this a fair system? > > TMDR ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:49:36 -0800 From: Brian Clayton Subject: Re: Alloy: Submarines EP Sounds like a pretty good plan, Thomas. It will certainly keep us all watching our mailboxes very closely! Do you know what the price per disc will be? BC ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 00:59:41 EST From: CJMark@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: Submarines EP Hey Thomas.. First of all.. thanks so much for thinking of us out here and our desires! I appreciate it very much.. and think that your idea is extremely fair! I'll be ready the moment I see the posting! Ciao for now. Mark ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V8 #48 **************************