Work at Home Dad

There are a few online survey sites around - that ask you to complete surveys and they offer you payment in the form of vouchers or cash etc. None of these survey sites are going to enable you to give up your day job - but they are a useful and easy way of earning small amounts of cash.
Never pay any money to any survey site - as a registration fee etc. If they want money from you - then it is probably a scam.
One of the major survey companies in Ireland is My Survey (previously known as LightSpeed). When you join you are entered into a draw to win points worth €2500 .
Every survey you complete earns you points which can be redeemed for “Rewards”
For example 115 points gets you €1 (you need a Paypal account)
You can also get Amazon Vouchers, Argos Vouchers .
You are more likely to be offered more surveys if you are the main income earner in a household - and/or do most of the shopping.
Give it a try - you have nothing to lose and who knows it could be better than time wasted on Facebook !

I’m not a big user of Facebook myself - but from the small amounts I’ve used it I can see how people could spend hours on it every day. My kids seem to be on it a lot - it is a one stop shop for connecting with friends. The amount of data and information it throws at you can be overwhelming and I can see how some people might get hooked or addicted to Facebook.
In my few journeys into Facebook I hace discovered this page Online Shopping Ireland . It has regular updates of bargains and discount codes for online shops that deliver to Ireland. Much better than someone telling you they’ve bought a horse on flippin Farmville or found someone on Mafia Wars! Become a fan of Online Shopping Ireland instead

Don’t forget to set your clocks forward by one hour on Sunday 28th March 2010.
The change officially takes place at 01.00 Greenwich Mean Time.

We may be losing an hour of sleep on Sunday morning but the extra hour of daylight in the evenings will be nice

Mothers Day is coming up soon - I know because I’ve seen a few ads online for flowers. I had to check what date Mother’s day was - it’s confusing beacuse in the USA it is on a different date to here. In America it falls on May 9th 2010 - but here in Ireland and the UK Mothers Day or Mothering Sunday falls on March 14th in 2010.

Our youngest (7) will probably make something at school for his mum - but the others (teenage boys) as usual won’t bother doing anything. I usually end up buying the card and present for my wife for them and they just sign the card. It will have to stop one day.. maybe this year?

For my own mother it’s usually flowers or a plant.
Flowers are always a safe bet for Mothers Day - and what could be easier than ordering flowers online?

Order Flowers Online for UK and Ireland

Marks and Spencers UK Only
EFlorist
Interflora

First the Bosch dishwasher went just over a year ago (replaced with a Beko One) - then just before Christmas the Bosch tumble dryer packed up. The melted ballpoint pen probably didn’t help much (that my wife left in a pocket ). The Bosch dryer might have been repairable - but we had already had a repair done on it a year ago that cost about €80 - so I didn’t think it was worth spending at least another €80 just to find out that something major was wrong and have to fork out more for parts.
Just like the dishwasher - I decided that the Bosch tumble drier had to be replaced. It had lasted over 5 years of fairly heavy use - in the Irish climate there isn’t much chance of drying clothes on the line.
With all the wet and cold - it was a fairly urgent requirement to get a new tumble drier. I did some research on which models had the best energy rating and was surprised to see that many newer condenser driers had a B rating and a few were even A rated. Generally - condenser driers (this is what we had to replace) seem to have got more energy efficient in the past 5 years.

The difference in energy consumption between an A rated drier and a “C” rated drier is quite significant - especially in a house like ours where the drier would be in use once or twice or more in a day.
Some C rated tumble driers use over 5kwH per drying cycle and would cost around €400 a year to run - based on 600 6kg drying cycles per year. Some of the “B” rated driers would cost about €300 a year for the same usage and an A rated one would cost about €170 a year.
The extra price of the A rated driers in Ireland would probably be worth the extra money in the long term - but there were none available in stock anywhere that I tried in Ireland.
I then started looking at B rated Siemens driers because of their 5 year parts and labour warranty - but again they were hard to find in stock and I just didn’t want to wait maybe a week or more . The 5 year warranty sounds good - but the price is higher.
I ended up getting this Zanussi Condenser Dryer (B Rated) . I arranged to pick it up in Galway (we have a people carrier) to speed things up. I even did something that I have never done before - and purchased an extra 2 year warranty on parts and labour for 99 Euro.

THis week the final Bosch appliance in the house also stopped working - the Bosch washing machine which was bought at the same time as the Bosch Tumble drier about 5 years ago. It just stopped spinning - the drum wouldn’t turn at all during washing cycles or spin. I had noticed a kind of grinding noise in the last few days when the drum was spinning - it sounded like something had got trapped somewhere and was slowing the drum. The first thing I noticed was that the washing was soaking wet when it had finished. I checked if it was the pump or a blocked pipe that was stopping it from draining. After putting it on a spin cycle I saw that the drum just wouldn’t spin. Something electrical must have gone wrong - because the circuit board trip switch went earlier in the day. Once again - the choice was repair or replace. It had already had one repair carried out outside the warranty a couple of years ago - the rubber surround had split . Is it worth spending any more on it ?
With 6 of us in the house - speed was essential. A few searches on google made me think that it could be something simple like the bushes or something worse like the whole motor. A call out would probably take 2 or 3 days to arrange and would cost about €80 plus parts. Is it worth investing more money in a 5 year old washing machine that would probably go wrong again within a year or two. A new one could cost as little as €300.
So it was down to the local electrical shop this time to buy a new one. Energy ratings on most washing machines are “A” - so the main criteria was price and size. The old one coped with a 6kg load - so this time I was looking for 7kg or 8kg. I picked a mid range priced Whirlpool washing machine €450 - and it was was in the house about 3 hours after I paid for it. It only came with a 1 year guarantee though . We’ll have to see how long this one lasts.

Batt O’Keefe has finally seen sense and reversed the order to keep all schools closed until Thursday .
The Minister for Education and Science Batt O’Keeffe has decided that schools can reopen tomorrow if local management decide it is safe to do so.
He should really be issung statements encouraging the schools to get back to work - they have had a few days now where staff have been paid - it wouldn’y have been hard to organise snow clearing and gritting of playgrounds etc.
Hopefully all the kids will be back at school tomorrow?

The minister for education - Batt O’Keefe - ordered all schools in Ireland to shut until Thurdsay because of the bad weather. He said he is concerned for the safety of the children and the teachers.
While the roads may be bad in some places - having a 100% enforced closure is just stupid. The roads where I live aren’t great - but with care they are passable and everyone is going about their normal business going to shops/pub/mass etc. Why shut the schools? I am OK for childcare - being a work at home dad - I will do less work during these days but I will be here to look after the kids. What about parents who both go out to work - what will they do for childcare? They will have to take time off too. No other occupation has shut down because of bad weather.

In the UK - the opposite is being encouraged by the government. The UK schools secretary Ed Balls (We have Batt they have Balls !) today urged schools to reopen “if at all possible”.
He said -
“Heads have got difficult judgments to make,” I am sure no head wants to close their school if they can avoid it. “But it is really important to take a balanced view and not to overstate risks like slipping in the playground, or having slightly less supervision. The important thing to do is, if at all possible, open schools, get our children learning, stop the disruption for working parents and also make sure that those exams can go ahead today and over the course of this week.”

It’s a pity that the Irish minister hasn’t got the same common sense as Mr Balls.

From what I have seen the UK weather has been worse than it is here in Ireland - there were satellite pictures showing the whole of the UK covered in snow - yet many parts of Ireland were still green.
How much longer will the schools stay shut in Ireland? Will the holidays be cut short to make up for this lost teaching time. The school year is short enough without taking even more days off.

Now the Christmas shopping rush is over - the January Sales have already started. (Or the Winter Sales as the shops now call them) . Years ago most big Sales began on Jan 1st or 2nd - but now most begin on 27th December and many start on December 26th (Boxing Day or St Stephen’s Day).
There is a useful posting here about all the January Sales in Ireland.

I know I will be doing most of my shopping online - I did almost all the Christmas present shopping online at Amazon . With free delivery to Ireland on orders over £25 - you can’t go wrong . Delivery was really fast - orders made on a Saturday were here on Tuesday. The postman did a great job in the snow. Much more choice online - and nearly always lower prices.
I use this Amazon Discount Finder to help spot the bargains.

Happy Christmas to anyone reading this.

Many places in Ireland are still living in the 20th Century - we still have banks and shops that close for lunch. As far as I know - the banks in my local town shut for an hour at lunch (Ulster Bank does anyway). How do they get away with it? Does it happen in the larger towns too? Some shops close for lunch too . (They don’t seem to have moved on much since the 1970’s) . Why can’t businesses think of customers and organise lunch time rotas so that they can remain open all day. Many people who work and want to go to the bank probably only get that chance on their lunch break - but the banks are shut!! It’s laziness and poor customer service. I can understand it in small shops with maybe just the owner running it - but not in banks with 3 or 4 counter staff. They don’t even open until 10am either !!

I like buying books - and the nearest good bookshop is about 45 minutes drive away - so online shopping comes in useful. I noticed Easons were advertising free delivery for orders over €25 euro for Christmas - and I know that Amazon are doing free delivery as an option to Ireland on orders over £25. I’ve also seen good things mentioned about Book Depository who do free delivery on everything to Ireland. Waterstones sometimes have special offers on - but there is no free delivery option for Ireland

Well - after a few checks of the above 4 websites I have come to the conclusion that Amazon is the cheapest (especially if your order is over £25. This article here comparing the prices of online bookshops also agrees with me.
The only thing is - once you go on to Amazon you can spend hours looking at all the great stuff they have and sometimes end up ordering a few extra items. Ah well - I deserve a treat in this bad weather and to cheer myself up after the Irish defeat at the hands of France yesterday…