where art collides philosoperontap

May 12, 2013

3rd Law Part 27 – efficiency

Filed under: 3rd law — Tags: — Trefor Davies @ 10:41 am

It’s a funny old world innit. You have good times, bad times, calm days and days when the wind blows. I’ve noticed that the trees are noisy at this time of year when the wind blows. They have leaves that aren’t there during the winter and offer far more resistance. It’s a bit of a dual edged sword, leaves on trees. On the one hand they provide very welcome shade on hot sunny days. On the other hand they then proceed to deposit all the leaves on our lawn when they have done their job for the season.

It is a lot of clearing up for someone though not nearly as bad a job these days since we got the leaf blower. Anne loves to get the leaf  blower out. If she spots more than one leaf on the front drive she whips it out and gets blowing. If it’s only one leaf she does that job manually. I felt compelled to add that caveat just in case you thought she was some nutter who has a compulsive disorder re tidying up leaves. She isn’t/doesn’t (your choice of good or poor grammar there).

She is pretty fanatical about keeping the house tidy though which isn’t a bad thing. It has led to some amusing incidents such as the time I was getting ready to go out and play rugby. I had taken a clean pair of jeans out of the drawer and disappeared out of the room for something. When I got back the jeans had gone – they were going round and round in the washing machine. Oops. Clean out of the drawer! That’s efficiency for you.

It’s a good watchword: efficiency. Defined as “the quality or property of being efficient” efficiency is used in many scenarios in our daily lives. It applies to the home environment as well as in business. An efficient home is a happy home (I assume) and an efficient business is a profitable business which usually in turn leads to happiness for the staff.

The biggest problem with that definition is that it assumes you know what “efficient” means. I imagine that most of you do but it might be interesting to see what definitions everyone came up with. I knew a guy called Jos at University in Bangor who did a PhD in Welsh Language and then got a job at the University compiling the latest edition of the Welsh Dictionary. They set him going on the letter P. At some stage there was a break in at his office at the uni and someone nicked his computer, including the letter P!!! He had to redo P from scratch, if you see what I mean, together with a few other letters that he had worked his way through.

The technology around at the time was not like it is today. No tinternet, no offsite backup and storage. Life must have trundled along at a delightfully slow pace. “What are you doing today?” “I’m on Ss today”, yawn, snore, snooze, sleep, somnambulant. Spot the odd one out. It isn’t a trick question.

There are however lots of trick questions to watch out for in life. Probably. Having made that statement I can’t quite think of one right now but if I do later on I’ll come back to it. Gotta move on. Can’t dwell. It would, in my opinion not be time well spent if I took the next few minutes to think of a suitable trick question. I could be doing something far more useful, like making a cup of tea which will then give me the opportunity to lab test the 3rd law again.

This 3rd Law must be the most lab tested law of the internet in the game. In fact it’s been thoroughly field tested an all. The an all reveals my roots. Not the Queen’s English but how many people actually speak “corgi”. Not many I tell you. As far as I know the 3rd Law is still the only Law of Tinternet though I am constantly on the lookout for others. Sometimes when I think I’ve found one it disappears in front of my very eyes.

Yes I do have very eyes. Some have blue, some are bloodshot but mine are very. Hows about that for a game of soldiers. I find that having very eyes can be a bit of a nuisance. It means I always have to wear a hat when it’s very sunny. At least it isn’t sunny all that often in the UK which is obviously a mixed blessing and not a hugely popular statement. Most of us want a bit of sunshine in our lives. It uplifts. Elevates, raises up.

I’ll match your cloudy day and raise you sunshine. In this case I would be wearing one of those peaked caps you see on card dealers in old FBI movies. That and sleeve clips or whatever they are called. Those things that people used to use to keep their sleeves up. Bit odd really because I don’t usually have a problem with my sleeves. Why didn’t they just buy shirts with the right length sleeves. Maybe they didn’t have the same range of sizes available to them in the old days. I quite liked the old collarless “grandad” shirts. You don’t see em around any more, at least not where I get my shirts from. Tbh I don’t buy many proper work shirts. I usually wear branded freebies. Makes it easy to decide what to wear for work. I have a choice between black and turquoise which doesn’t make it as difficult a decision as you might imagine because I don‘t really care which one I wear. It’s whatever is available and at the top of the pile in the wardrobe.

I have three shelves in my wardrobe. One for socks and underpants, one for tshirts and similar and one for jumpers. The bottom of the wardrobe is reserved for shoes and other odds and sods. It needs a bit of a clear out. I’m sure there are one or two single shoes in there that have lost their partners – don’t ask me how. Discarded in some clear out or other. It’s the way of things. You have to remove emotion from these decisions. Emotion means a house full of clutter, of old things you no longer really need but are reluctant to chuck in case one day they will be useful again.

Our attic is like that. I’m amazed we can even get up there though it is quite a large space. We have a really cool train set layout that unfortunately doesn’t really get used. Choo choo. Had the shelf for it built specially. It runs around the outside of the loft and must be 7m x 3m square or thereabouts. That’s a good size track with three loops and a bunch of sidings. I used to keep the record player up there but that has been purloined by a kid for his own use in his bedroom. Vinyl is the new sliced bread or similar – you know what I mean.

Ciao baby…

3rd Law Part 28 here

Previous 3rd Law post here

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