Time to update your Flash Player, to 9.0.124.0 (however that’s just until Adobe release another version hopefully soon) as looks like an exploit is doing the rounds on some websites that could install software to steal your usernames and passwords.
Article over at Security Focus, gives more details “Adobe investigates Flash Player attacks”. Update your Flash Player today at the official Adobe site, go here to do this now!
Way hey, I finally got my Blood Elf Paladin to level 70, my first Horde, this brings the total number of level 70’s in World of Warcraft I have to 4. On the Alliance I have 3 level 70s, a Shaman, Priest and Mage 
I totally love World of Warcraft and I will be going to Blizz Con Paris at the end of June this year. Have to say it was a chore to get my Pally to level 70 as to start with I was only doing it a couple of hours every other evening so took longer than it really should have, ah well it’s done now 
At the start of the year our landlords served notice on our city centre offices giving us 6 months to find a new place, as we already knew in advance that our office block was to be made in to flats we had started searching before, however it took until April before we found a half decent place. We acted quickly to make sure they had the information they needed and everything was going fine until this week, when all of a sudden the landlords of the new place stopped replying to our emails, and phone calls, we found out from another source also looking at the same office they where told end of last week that the office was no longer on the market as they where in final legal stages with new occupants, sadly not us, basically looks like either someone has come in after us with a better offer or we where getting strung along in case the other people pulled out. So that leaves us looking for a new office again (and legal costs from the other, gits), and we have until middle of August to find, and move in to a new place. Thankfully we have a few back up plans none of them ideal but then if you could see the state of what is on offer in Glasgow for a business of our size you would actually think the back up plans where very, very nice indeed.
Ah the trails of running a business, thankfully got few people around me who can deal with checking out offices to save me seeing the crap ones (however I have seen a few so maybe they need to vet them better LOL) but all in all moving offices is not top of my “want to do list” but certainly creates a challenge for a business that has expanded every year since we started, especially when we had pretty good, well priced and very centrally located office right on George Square. I guess it doesn’t help with everyone else in the building all looking for offices of similar size at the same time, so I won’t be letting on where we are thinking of moving to at this stage, just in case they stumble on this page LOL
Fame at last, I am in the Newspapers (again). When a bunch of us from Paid On Results (top right photo) went to the races last week, we got our photo taken by an Evening Times photographer and to be fair with far more interesting people around I didn’t expect we would actually be in the feature. I think Colin is trying his best to look like he won some money on the races LOL!
Yesterday I went to Rosshall Hospital in Glasgow, I been waiting to be seen on the NHS however it would be several months before my appointment would come through and while it’s not an emergency I didn’t fancy waiting this long, so I looked in to Private Hospitals. Initially I thought you could only visit one of these if you have Private Healthcare Insurance but it turns out they operate a self-pay scheme meaning you can be pretty much seen for and treated for most things in matter of weeks.
I called up last week and was given a brief outline of the costs involved, and was asked what Consultant I would like, having never been asked this question I had not expect it so hadn’t done any research. I was speaking to one of the ward nurses and ask her, who would you pick and she recommend one to me. I then looked him up on Google to see what I could find, interestingly he is one of the top consultants at the Royal Infirmary Hospital and if I was going the NHS route I probably would not have got to see him or if I did he certainly would not be the one carrying out the operation as it’s pretty minor as these things go. In fact what I found very interesting is that if you have the money you can pretty much meet a specialist consultant in most fields in matter of days, however you do need a referral letter from your local GP (and that I found took longer to get than the appointment to see the Consultant, madness!)
So the consultant explained what would happen and offered next week for the operation, now clearly he is undertaking this work after hours and on his days off from his NHS work, so not impacting anyone waiting to see him on the NHS but it got me thinking, why doesn’t the government pay these guys who want to work extra hours and days money to do this, wouldn’t everyone get treated and seen much quicker that way?
One interesting thing came out of the conversation with the consultant, he explained two things I didn’t know, 1st that most private hospitals in Scotland don’t treat children, you can meet a consultant who can explain what the problem is but you can’t get treated as most places don’t have paediatric nurses, kind of making Private Healthcare Insurance a bit of a waste of money for children (however I have a friend who has had very positive results going private with her kids) and 2nd thing was he doesn’t have Private Healthcare Insurance himself, simply said your better taking the money you would pay each month and saving it up, this way when you need access to Private care you can pay for it yourself and probably over the years have money leftover and I guess if you think about it, it costs £1,000+ a year for most people and if you have not been to hospital much or at all for many years and generally healthy that could be a considerable amount of money building up and besides long term conditions are not covered anyway.
So looks like the best idea is to apply for a BMI Card (the hospitals credit card that can only be used for medical stuff inside BMI) as you get 0% interest free for 6 months after any health care purchase and then a typical APR of 9.9% and save up the money I pay on Private Healthcare Insurance in something like Premium Bonds each month.
My company, Paid On Results has been shortlisted for two awards at this years Affiliates 4U Awards. Its split in to two sections, the judge based awards and for this we are up for Best Network Innovation 2008, not bad when you consider how many Networks are in the UK, and even with the least amount of investment Paid On Results still manage to bring out new innovations all over the place. And the section picked by the community we have been short listed for Publisher’s (that’s Affiliate to the man in the street) Choice of Network 2008. This one has more respect as it’s voted by the people who actually matter, the Affiliates themselves. However I don’t hold out much hope of us actually winning as we don’t have the budget to beg for votes, currently a couple of the networks are doing the rounds begging for votes, so all the best to them
It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part, yeah that’s a load of rubbish, it’s all about the winning but at least we got selected, many “bigger” Affiliate Networks with money to burn didn’t even get picked either by the judges or the Affiliates, that speaks volumes in it’s self, so while winning is better then taking part, at least we got selected for 2nd year in a row so I guess we must be doing something right
These days eBay selling stuff you no longer want is a lot easier, even taking the photo of the item has become simple task as more and more people these days have a digital camera.
I was showing my sister how to list items via eBay and I was shocked to see just how simple they have managed to make it, years ago when I used to buy and selling stuff on eBay for fun you had to know a bit of HTML to get a half decent listing, these days it’s one simple page that you fill in, upload your photo(s) on that page and press the button and your listing is live… costing around 25p to list the item.
So instead of letting your old stuff gather dust, waiting for the day you chuck them out, why not chuck them up on eBay and make a few quid.
On Friday night I enjoyed an evening at Hamilton Park Racecourse with some of the crew from Paid On Results, was one of our works trips out that we try to arrange every month or so, this being the first one I actually made it to, last one was Ten Pin Bowling.
It was a really good night out, Hamilton is just South East of Glasgow, so it was a quick train ride from the office, I let everyone leave 30 mins early to attend (should get employer of the year LOL) when we arrived we got our passes, headed off in to the ground for a couple of pints, a look at the first horses being walked around the paddock before it was off to select our bets.
We had a great view of the finishing line from the bar and there was plenty of bookies on hand to take bets close by, after the races where over, 6 in total (I managed to get a 50% strike rate, winning 3 out of 6 races) we went outside to watch Sophie Ellis Bextor doing a small performance on the stage at the racecourse, pretty much everyone was in good spirits, dancing away especially when she rounded off with Murder on the Dance Floor, when I was looking around me I was thinking, if the kids of these parents all dancing away could see them now they would be mortified, classic dad dancing from every quarter, don’t get me wrong wasn’t all mums and dads, loads of young people attend the horse racing, was a far few hen party’s and a couple of girls had the designer dresses with big hats on, I think they have got confused thinking it was ladies night where you are expect to wear that type of stuff, the night we went along was called Braveheart Night and can pretty much where what you like. Anyway was time to head back to Glasgow, quick stop off at Bar West next to the train station, a small band playing cover tracks was on. All in all a very good night was had by all.
Way hey, opened my mail and found 2 lovely cheques from NS&I Premium Bonds for the May draw, always good to get a tax free prize from the Government, my total win was 1x£50 and 1x£100. I use Premium Bonds as away to keep any money I am due to pay in personal tax each year out the way so I don’t try and spend it, and Premium Bonds are great for this because while you can access your money in about a week or so you have to complete a forum to get at it. Premium Bonds are basically like taking part in National Lottery only the 2 main prizes are limited to 1 million each and win or lose you always get your money back unlike the Lottery, so if you like taking part in the Lottery I would recommend that you seriously look at Premium Bonds, it’s a bit more costly than a lottery ticket to take part but like I say you get the money back, gambling without ant risk, so guess that’s not actually gambling.
If you need to access your health records be they at you GP, a hospital or your dentist. You can apply under the Data Protection Act 1998, as you have a legal right to access your health records.
Now you will probably have a cost to pay, around £10 administration charge is common and if you need a copy of records, notes, results and x-rays then you will probably be charged a photocopying and administration charge however you can only be charged a maximum of £50 in total for this.
You will have to submit your request in writing to the practice / GP surgery and should send the letter recorded delivery keeping a copy for yourself, and you should receive a response in 21 to 40 days, legally they can’t take any longer than 40 day to action your request.
Give your full name, address, date of birth and contact number, and state when you are requesting the records from, this could be all records they hold on you however in some cases this may only go back only 3 or 6 years depending on who it was and what work/advice give was undertaken.
Remember this applies to any health professional, be they GP, dentist, optician or intuitions like a hospital.