Ordinary Ordinals

My day-job requires me sometimes to be a bit of a ‘wordsmith’. My word-processor of choice is the mighty Microsoft Word, but one of my pet irritations is the way Microsoft Word adds the date to your document when you use the ‘insert date & time’ feature.

01 March 2012 is one example.

I just hate the fact that there’s a preceding zero.

OK, with a bit more inspection, that’s easily fixed, and Word can be made to lose the ‘0’, but that still leaves it looking like this:

1 March 2012

On this side of the pond, many of us like our ordinals – that’s the ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’ that immediately follows the number of the month – so it looks like this:

1st March 2012

..and on the surface, Word can;t do this out-of-the-box

OK, so I could type the date in manually, when I create a letter, but that would take 3.5 seconds whilst the insert command in Word only takes 0.4 seconds. That’s a whopping 3.1 seconds saved every time I write a letter!!! Over the course of my (remaining) lifetime, I reckon that equates to 1200 letters, so if I use the insert command, it’ll give me back 60 minutes! :)

Imagine what I could do with all that time!!!!

Having just upgraded Word here, it seemed like a good opportunity to see if things had improved. They hadn’t, but with a bit of punting around the net, courtesy of Mr Google, I discovered something called field codes, and I can now display dates like this in all  my letters.

1st March 2012 or March 1st, 2012 or Thursday, 1st of March 2012 – just with the press of a button. In fact I can even set it up so that when I open my letter template, the current date is added automatically – so that’s another 0.4 seconds saved!!!! :) :)

If you like your ordinals as much as I do, drop me a line and I’ll show you how you can save 60 minutes in your lifetime!!

Mum’s sorted!

After an extended stay at King College Hospital – plus a few ‘false-starts’, (where we thought a solution was on the cards, only to find that ‘others’ were able to jump the queue), Mum seems to have been sorted.

Looks like they’ve done some work on Mum’s arteries and she should be discharged in the next few days – Phew! it’s been a bit nerve-wracking at this end especially when she was first admitted, and she turned into a most un-co-operative patient!
Poor nurses!

Anyway, as they say: ‘job done!’ and the next priority is to get her settled once she’s back at home.

First Service - Vauxhall Insignia

‘Ziggy’ went in today for its first service – I’ve covered just over 11000 miles. I’m continually impressed by the standard of customer service at my local Vauxhall Dealer – Forest Gate, Kettering. For a volume manufacturer, they demonstrated all the right moves – happy smiley people, small talk, efficiency and a good explanation of the work carried out – nice one folks!

As far as the car was concerned, no major worries after a year of ownership: a replacement switch is needed for the rear wipers and a small re-occurring issue with the paint finish on the rear bumper – that’s all. I’ve got a small scuff on the front offside alloy (my fault!) – but I’m amazed that’s the only damage I’ve experienced, given they’re massive wheels and ultra-low profile tyres (and, I live in Northamptonshire, the county that certainly seems to have its fair share of pot holes!!)