I’ve just woken up with a sore feeling down one side of my throat which immediately cast my mind back to yesterday when I sat in a course on Crystal Reports XI with a trainer who repeatedly sneezed into both hands then used the mouse on my computer.
One year I had so many colds one after the other I counted up that I spent 7 months of that year sick, thus embarked on my overprotectademic of anti-bacterial warfare. Much to Wil’s amusment – using my knuckle or a gloved hand to use press buttons on an ATM, using the squirty anti-germ hand cleaner in my bag whenever I’ve been touching foreign objects in the public domain or the anti-bacterial wipes I also keep in my bag to wipe door handles and shopping trollies before using them. Seven months of snot and phlegm is not happening again. Not on my watch.
Propping myself up in bed on a couple of pillows this morning my scowly face reflecting in the mirrorred wardrobe doors prompted Wil to ask if I was ok. I pointed out I had a sore feeling down one side of my throat that felt like I’d only been able to breathe on that side of my nose all night and that if it transpired I’d caught something off that germ-unconcious trainer man I’d drive to the West Country to hunt him down and attack him with so much germacide alcohol spray disinfectant he turn into super human Anti Snot Nose Man! dressed in a tight fitting green lyrca suit with a cartoon character of a grumpy germ on the chest crossed out with a massive X as if to say ‘No to germs’.
I appear to have thought about this too much.
“You could have picked up a cold anywhere Ren” came the reply. He’s right – after I left the training place I’d gone back to the car park where I paid at machine, ran up 5 flights of stairs and through the door on the floor where my car was parked. Then we went to the cinema and out for dinner before returning home. The multitude of surfaces, handles, cutlery, chair arms and other items that could have been hosting someones sharing of cold germs are nearly as uncountable as the amount of times my little bottle of hand cleaner was snatched from my bag and pumped vigorously into the palm of my hand during those hours.
What I needed, I explained with the previous days training fresh in my head ‘is a cross-tab report’. ‘Now how would I set that out? Items touched down the side…..’
Wil’s face snapped into work-consultant-mode and became thoughtful and serious.
At that moment in time something very wrong happened in the Kitcher-Fox bedroom in the Kitcher-Fox house.
“No no, let’s see, what would you hope to report from it..” Wil’s eyes cast to the ceiling briefly…
He continued…”Yeah so you want to see the correlation between the number of times items have been touched to see where the biggest contributing factor potentially came from to give you a cold – Could use a Boston Matrix, I’m into Boston Matrix at the moment.”
“I’m still liking a Cross Tab report – I can’t use my new skillz if I do a Boston Matrix”
“Ok, so you want ‘Items Touched’ across the top and ‘Person’ or ‘Place’ down the side, then the chart can give you the number of times so you can find the largest probability.
From the woman who gets the piss taken everytime that small bottle emerges from her bag to the man who is willing to wake up and discuss exactly what method of reporting to use to show where the biggest probability of germs found was – I’m not entirely sure if the share of piss taking is directed entirely to the right person in this house.
Fox's Den 