A Partner at Accenture said to me ‘nobody gives a s**t about your career except you, so take responsibility and manage it’.

Good advice I reckon: If you don’t actively manage it, you can get sucked into all sorts of rubbish. I left ACN to do stuff that was more suited to me but the time I served was definitely a good investment.

Worked for Accenture for a while – strategic IT transformation stuff. Left as I got bogged down in IT and hated it.

Now: internal consultant for a big northern company. It’s much better -annual market review and strategy setting, mergers and acquisitions, basically go and make a nuisance of myself and get other people to improve things.

If you get somewhere good it’s ace. If you get pushed to where you don’t want to be, it’s hellish.

Also, remember that the work is where the client is. I went 2 years at Accenture without seeing the office – all was on client sites from Aberdeen to Colchester.

Got to go now. Back later.

Yep.

Don’t mention it at parties though. It’s a guaranteed conversation-killer.

Hold your horses. Typical consultant answer coming up: It depends.

1) Consultant at what level? Managing consultants need to be able to win work before they do anything
2) What are you doing with this ‘IS to business’? Selling it? Developing it? Implementing it? Strategising it?

Consultants need to:
1) Understand the client context
2) Have the credibility, experience and ability to improve how the client works
3) Deliver on what has been agreed.

Someone also once said that if the consultant can see light at the end of the tunnel, they need to build more tunnel – repeat business is king!

There are nearly as many tea snobs as there are coffee snobs!

Tea isn’t just the brown stuff with milk.

For black teas I like darjeeling (light and good with lemon. No milk) or Assam (dark, strong and milky). Or Yorkshire Tea, obviously.

Green teas are good but try jasmine teas first – they’re a bit easier to drink than pure green. Asian supermarkets are your best bet. Get loose leaf, not bags.

White tea is good too. I think it’s Whittards that do a white tea with cherries.

Fruit teas generally small amazing but just taste of hot water.

It’s a self-preservation strategy: fat people are harder to kidnap.

What do you/ the kids like to eat?

Why is he given so much airtime?

He might have some valid views on occasion but much of what he spouts is nuts. In any case, his voice should carry the same weight as anyone else’s.

We need a written doctrine of separation of church and state. Other religions and cults don’t have anywhere near as much of a voice in the mainstream media.

There is the oxfam furniture shop near huddesfield

Didn’t this burn down recently?

There are a couple of second hand furniture places on Kirkstall Road. The biggest is (I think) a converted pub on the right as you’re heading out of town. A friend got an ace leather sofa for £60.

Our routine is similar:

– Up at 6.30ish
– Play with little fella while gulping down scalding tea
– Leave for work at 7 for 75min ish commute including up to an hour’s run or ride.
– Home 6.15 for half an hour’s playtime
– Bath and bed 6.45-7.30ish
– Dinner 8.15ish
– Bed 10.30ish

He’s not yet 2 and is having good naps over lunchtime so I get a 2 hour run/ ride during naptime at weekends if we’re home.

Oh and he tends to eat our leftovers from previous night’s dinner.

osteo1 – Member
I would say that if anyone gets shin splints regularly then there is an issue with the mechanics of the body!

This!

I had similar problems. My pelvis was very slightly out of alignment, which had caused the muscles on one side of my spine to compensate, leading ultimately to shin pain on my right leg.

Don’t treat the symptoms – get the causes looked at.

Physio cracked my pelvis back into shape and gave me lots of targeted core strengthening exercises to do and it only cost £50.

A man walked into a bar…. and the rest of the joke unfolded with a tedious inevitability.

Bill Bailey

The management plan is useful – thanks for that. The maps are terrible though!

It looks like the western end of the urban common is around Windgate Nick. Anyone know of a way of getting onto the urban common from the Silsden/ Addingham end?

If you just want pain and don’t mind main roads……

That’s a hardcore route. Get your head down, clench your teeth and hate lots of it!

Be careful between Hayfield and Chinley (before the left under the bridge to Chapel). A friend was very nearly killed instantly on this road. She died about 5 years later of complications caused by the crash. She’s the reason they changed it to a 50 limit. I would never ride that road.

I’d head north – Bakewell, Ashford, Hassop, Calver, Froggatt, Fox House, Hathersage, Edale, Castleton, Tideswell, Litton, Gt Longstone, Baslow, Chatsworth, Bakewell.

Plenty of little roads to play on too.

Lovely!

I was shot in the thigh, at point blank range, with a bb gun as I passed some ‘acquaintances’.

They thought it was hilarious. I turned round, gave them a bit of a friendly beating, then collapsed in agony when the adrenaline wore off.

“but then I’m not a fatty so weight loss isn’t an issue…….”

Me too but I’m interested by the whole insulin regulation thing.

Is this diet malarky ‘all-or-nothing’ or would compliant lunches and a few dinners have any benefit?

Two fish in a tank, one says to the other – you drive I’ll man the guns.

What do you call a scouser in a white tracksuit?

The bride

Struggling with a sweet tooth, so here’s daft question of the day:

Unripe bananas?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1395467

There’s a pub on Hills Road, near the station, which is run by a Thai family. Beer, football and a curry or prawn crackers is amazing.

I liked Varsity – mediterranean restaurant. Also there’s an amazing Med takeaway in one of the alleys off the marketplace.

The walk to Granchester is nice and the kayak club plays on the river in the evenings.

I had a similar problem last week.

Took the filter out, took the cover plate off the drain and found that someone (either my toddler or my wife) had put a load of stones in there to get nice and clean. Apparently these don’t mix well with the filter.

There’s your problem. Stones.

41mpg from an Auris 1.6

Depends entirely on the individual – some people are at max heart rate and going furiously at 10 min miles. 10 min miling is definitely running for them.

For me a jog is if I’m not training for anything and have a short bimble to the co-op for beer. All the other running I do is running.

Packet mediterranean cous cous, tin of 3 bean salad, tin of tuna = 2 lunches

I was sent for some training in Chicago. At 9.30am on day 1 the door burst open and in ran a very enthusiastic woman covered in lycra.

We spent 20 mins doing aerobics to ‘energise’ us for our day ahead. The brits fell about laughing. The locals were really earnest about the whole thing.

It happened every day for two weeks.

I ran the Ras Yr Aran a while back. It’s pretty rough in places on the ridge and there are few easily identifiable paths and lots of stiles.

It’s a pretty sensitive area. Personally, I wouldn’t ride it.

Companies’ strategies, policies and procedures are often more accessible than they should be.

Try “metadata strategy”

It’s not ‘retro’ – it’s just old and you probably found it in the back of your shed. Or a skip.

National 3 Peaks or Yorkshire 3 Peaks?

A triathlete told me that Ryvita and peanut butter is a healthy snack.

I have a nearly full pack of Ryvita and three quarters of a pot of peanut butter available if anyone wants them.

I no longer trust triathletes.

This:

at the moment I’d rather have more spare time than more stuff.

And a cyclocross bike.

Oh, and some Paclite trousers.

Lots of myths and propaganda about this.

For a rational, clear, unbiased view, see here:

http://www.psa.ac.uk/PSAPubs/TheAlternativeVoteBriefingPaper.pdf

Exec summary is good if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

Buttermere Round is good – Red Pike along the ridge to Haystacks, then Honister to Robinson. If you’re feeling fit you can get up onto Grassmoor too.

Mayfly

Doffs hat.

Longevity depends on the purpose of the shoe, not generally the brand.

Lightweight racing shoes don’t last. Some Nikes (can’t remember which model) say on the box that they’re racing shoes and will only last 100km. This is because they weigh about 100grams and what little cushioning they provide gets squashed quickly.

Most running shoes are designed to last about 500km. Again, after this, the cushioning gets squashed.

Corrupting the bikes quote: durable, lightweight, cheap – pick 2!

Avoid Nike and Adidas – sh1te

Rubbish.

Depends entirely on what you want and what foot structure you have.

I was gait analysed a while ago but didn’t really get on with the shoes I bought as a result – for some reason I run differently on a treadmill.

I now do all my road running in racing flats – Adidas Adizero Adios and they’re perfect for me. I have relatively narrow feet.

Off-road is much better and I wear Inov-8 Roclites and X-talons.

Ah, helmets: quickly being added to lists of what not to talk about at dinner parties, along with sex, politics and religion.

Conclusive research would be nice but, until a credible meta-analysis shows strong evidence one way or another, I’m going to err on the side of caution and wear my helmet.

So is my little boy. I’d never forgive myself if he bashed his bonce badly and I had even the slightest worry that it was reasonably preventable.

In my experience if you have a good local plumber it’s not worth it.

If you don’t have the cover or know a plumber and your boiler breaks down just before Christmas, you’re screwed.

I stuck blu tack under the body of the light.

Crude but effective.