All this week I’ve been preparing to take my iMac in for its replacement hard drive, after getting the email that stated I may have an iMac with a Seagate drive that have now been recalled due to a high failure rate. To cut a long story short, I didn’t end up taking in my iMac for its appointment, instead I used the appointment to sort out my iPhone 5 (that’s a whole other story!) – after speaking with the Apple Genius there, I explained how I had left my iMac at home, manually doing a backup but wondered how long in total they would need it for, when I did bring it in. As I was standing there, an elderly couple bought in a boxed iMac stating they had “got the email” too. The Apple Genius remarked that the “whole of Essex” seem to be bringing them in at the moment when actually, they’re getting to them and finding that many need not be brought in in the first place.

He said Apple have no way of determining what is in your iMac, only that you bought it between certain dates, and during those dates, they sometimes used Seagate drives. So, regardless of whether you have a Seagate drive or not, you would have got the email. Most people don’t know how to check what drive they have and so are bringing them in regardless. He said the drives in question are the ST31000 drives, and if your drive starts with anything other than ST, you’re absolutely fine and not affected.

I came home to check what my secondary drive was, (I have an SSD for the OS and Applications) and it was indeed a Western Digital. It would have been an entirely wasted trip.

Worth a check before you go dusting off that box in the loft and traipsing up to the nearest Apple store.

Friday I had one of those awful days of realisation, Mum is not suddenly going to turn up on my doorstep for a cup of tea, nor can I ring her to share something funny. She’s not coming back. I knew grief would be a rollercoaster but Friday started with one of those awful crying sessions, the type where you pull really unattractive faces, your nose runs and you hear seagulls in your head. I needed to let it out, I’ve been strong infront of lots of people and something set me off. Just as I had resigned myself to the fact there wasn’t a lot of point in getting out of bed, there was a knock at the door and the postman was standing with a parcel. As I shut the door I turned the parcel over and read a return label that said “David Parsons“, I knew whatever was in the envelope was going to make me smile as Parsons is one of the nicest guys in the industry.

I took it up to my room and unwrapped it on the bed, upon seeing the familiar maroon of the Brooklyn Beta lanyard, I burst into tears. Happy tears. My Dad had told me that was one of the last things him and Mum sat down to complete together, the Sunday before she died on the Wednesday. Brooklyn Beta had asked our parents to give them personal information about us all for our lanyard descriptions, the kind that is hard to find on the internet, and I knew instantly which parts my Mum had helped to complete. I suddenly realised I’d taken the lanyard out of a Moleskine, presuming the Moleskine was there to keep it from breaking, and that I would give it back to Parsons when I saw him at Build – it fell open to a letter he had written and I quickly realised the book was filled with messages from friends and well wishers from Brooklyn Beta. I sat quietly reading each and every message, began to compose myself and instead of feeling down, I felt like I was being caught in the arms of friends, even thousands of miles away. It was quite a surreal experience, one I’ll never forget.

I won’t post the messages here, they were intended for my eyes only and I’d like to keep it that way but feeling so much love, warmth and friendship from these friends has certainly got me through some dark days so far and on that day, when I felt like I had nothing to get out of bed for, I realised I had plenty. My friends were there to catch me and take me as they find me, they’re not judging me or rushing me, they’re simply there, like the most beautiful, comforting, security blanket you’ve ever seen.

To all those who sent me messages, you know who you are and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Also, a big thank you to those friends also in the Authentic Jobs network, I’ll never forget what you did for me, you know I’d do it all for you in return, in a heartbeat.

A week on, and I’m still numb and still very much in disbelief over losing my Mum so suddenly last Wednesday. While events of that day are still fresh, I want to talk about some of the things that negatively added to an already godawful day – the worst day of my life by far.

Some precursors. What I am about to say isn’t “NHS” bashing. I want to make that very clear. Everything that could have been thrown to help Mum, truly was. Also, when I was born, I was left with facial scarring due to the hurried and panicked way the doctors delivered me. I had the opportunity to sue the NHS for a significant sum of money up to the age of 21, I didn’t. Mum’s words rang in my ears “If someone you love in the future needs critical care, and you feel like you took money away that could have saved them, don’t do it. You’ll forever feel guilty, even if it does come from a separate pot, and even if other people do it. It doesn’t make it right”. Mum was also a nurse.

I won’t go through the events of last Wednesday, but what I will tell you is that we were put into a private side room in A&E, with a clear view to the door where Mum was, and we were being updated every 20 minutes by a consultant who was working on trying to save her. He came in twice, twice with the same news, “I’m sorry – it does not look good”. The third person to walk through the door a further 10 minutes later was a nurse. A warm, kind and friendly nurse who quietly said “Can I please move you to somewhere more private?”. I exchanged a glance with Dad and we knew what was coming. Why did we have to move though? In the short time we’d been in the room in A&E, we’d made it our fortress, we’d become comfortable with our surroundings, why did we have to move? We had to then walk, what felt like forever, to a “family room” where upon walking in, if you haven’t sussed what you’re going to hear already, there’s boxes of tissues on the table, berevement counselling posters on the wall, and a telephone in a prominent place. We were then left alone with the promise of a consultant coming shortly to speak to us. As the nurse left, I begged her to tell me and put me out of my misery, she looked me in the eyes and said “I’ll just get the consultant”.

The consultant that delivered the news didn’t have a particularly warm bedside manner, I have my own issues with what was said, the way she said it and so forth, but my Dad doesn’t want me to voice those, since when he was in hospital himself, she was the one that saw the severity of his situation and got him the help he needed – “Just because she didn’t say it very nicely, doesn’t mean she’s not bloody good at her job, Sarah”. Fair enough, but I take umbrage over anything in that situation that made me feel like a number, a case, a fact of hospital life. With both parents having worked in hospitals (infact, it’s where they met) both have voiced how sometimes you have to emotionally detach from situations, otherwise you’ll never get through the day. I understand that but there are things that the hospital itself can do to not make it feel like a conveyor belt of life.

There was one nurse, Dani – who we were handed over to after we’d heard the news, she was amazing, around my age and couldn’t do enough for us. The one thing I was’t prepared for were all the questions, emotional questions about really important things, of which you’re constantly trying to second guess what the person you have lost would answer, when you’re not in a fit state to be answering them yourself. Dani helped guide and provide gentle answers, she helped me to decide to remove Mums jewellery and take it home with me, for example, after I explained that I felt like a vulture and wasn’t comfortable with taking things from her at this early stage.

We were then handed back to the consultant who told us the news, and again, I was jilted back into the hospital system being churned out the other side and being made to feel like they needed the room we were in. My Dad and I were handed two booklets, the one pictured below.

After getting home and having a mad rush to phone family members because someone had already posted the news to Facebook, I sat down to read some of the book. The first paragraph made my blood boil upon seeing a blank space for the name of the nurse who had taken care of us.

Why put something there that allows for failure and makes me feel like a number? In an ideal world I’d want a list of everyone who helped to treat Mum, the paramedics, the consultants, the nurses – I’d want to send them something to say thank you for what they did, or if I had an issue I’d want to be able to address them by name. Instead we get a bog-standard booklet that hasn’t been filled out properly, twice, and get ushered to start wrapping things up to go. The “user experience” so to speak, of the process you go through when you lose someone in hospital, is messed up. Don’t move us to another room, don’t make me wait in the other room surrounded by clues as to what news is coming, don’t give me booklets that make me feel like a number at my lowest point. Make me feel like my Mum is important to you, as important as she was to me and my family, not that she just becomes another statistic from the 3rd of October 2012. Then, when you do want to get news about your loved one, you read a paragraph in said “booklet” below. Not on.

Yesterday, my dress arrived for the funeral. I opened the package to find a notelet ontop.

For a dress? A bloody dress. Say no more.

UPDATE: Rik Penny from Ripe Digital took care of all the print for the funeral. I was overwhelmed with the quality, professionalism and kindness they showed me and can wholeheartedly recommend them for any print work.

Note. I’m not looking for freebies whatsoever, I just don’t know the best way of getting them printed.

Lots and lots of people kindly tweeted condolences, messages of hope and offers of help to me last week, after I suddenly lost my Mum on Wednesday. There’s never anything anyone can do or say in these situations to help ease the immense heartache and pain you’re feeling – only time heals that I’m sure, however, there are a lot of logistical things I’m struggling with, and I wonder if anyone can help.

I need to lay my hands on 200 card butterflies, in exactly the colours shown in this photograph plus maybe a magenta. There’s lots of cut-outs or hole-punch type things, but they are meant for scrapbooking and far too small. These need to be around 15cm wide. Mum worked in a school (as the school nurse) and they are all missing her greatly. I want to get all the children to either write Mum a message, or draw her a picture, then we’re going to stick them all over that horrible “box” one has to go into (I still can’t say the “c” word, yet), to take the sting out of that visual for all of us on the day we’re all dreading.

Anyone know the best way to achieve this? I know die-cutting is an option but with 4 colours, I think it’s going to get super expensive? Any help greatly appreciated.

This is the third time I’ve seen a request for proposal like this in 2 months – I’ve now seen red, since this was from a “multinational firm”, I felt the need to blog it. How on earth is providing 3 different sample designs, simply for the purposes of pitching for the work, fair? Then the “client” who has paid nothing for this process, being able to retain the copyright of anything you do for them? Wow. Where do I sign? At what point in that board meeting did someone think this was the correct way to do business? All it shows me is how little value your business puts on design, and the work involved in it.

Simply producing three homepage designs, without any background into your company or the problems your website is currently facing, is just making a pretty, but useless, picture, with no thought into solving real issues. What are you even judging the designs on?

Friends of the web, please bite back at companies who send RFP like this, don’t ignore them – write back, educate them and say how ridiculous their “offer” is (politely of course, we’re not assholes), and for goodness sake don’t even think about completing a thing for them, no matter how much you need the work.

Resources:
No Spec
AIGA on Spec Work