Too Much Computer…

I have spent nearly all day on the computer and I’m sure there are roots growing out of my legs instead of feet.
 
I’m still officially on holiday, but I had two little tasks to do – they both relate to work that I do on a self-employed basis, so holiday times don’t really matter.
 
First one was to register my learners who will be taking Functional Skills exams. Before I even started, I had to trawl my way through a minefield of acronymns – the registration is through MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) and the part of their website I needed to access was LRS (Learner Registration Service) so that I could get their ULN’s (Unique Learner Numbers). That’s only the start – altogether I counted 14 separate acronyms that were used in the instructions for the process!
 
For each and every young person I had to search the national database to see if they were already registered; which of course they weren’t, as this is a pilot! So I input their full name, date of birth, postcode and our centre details, to be told there is no record and would I like to create one? Yes please. Next online form came up needing all the same information plus details of ethnicity and verification. Ok, did that (but I did swear at the ethnicity drop down list, as it was really a list of countries and as United Kingdom is near the bottom with no quick access, I had to scroll down again and again…). Unless I’d made an error, which happened a couple of times, the registration was then accepted and I was given a number onscreen for the learner. 
 
And I had to do that process for every single student. My eyes were square and my roots were well and truly established! And it was so, so lucky that I’d made a note of the numbers allocated as they came up, as there was no report generated at the end of the exercise! I did look for one and even called MIAP, who told me there isn’t although it’s being looked at for the future. Then the nice helpful MIAP guy told me about batch submissions.
 
I swore loudly and passionately after that!
 
However, bright side stuff; this was a first time and the end result, albeit rather lengthy, was a successful registration for everybody.
 
The second task was to update our local council’s youth council part of their website. I don’t quite know how or why, but if I do any website updating stuff, it seems that time changes totally and speeds up to a terrifying rate. How comes that in an hour, three or four hours had passed?
 
It’s done now 🙂
 
Totally unrelated question. When I was at Emma’s, I was playing with Jack’s toys (as one does) and picked up a cute little teething ring. Or I thought it was cute – when I pressed a little bump on it, the whole thing started vibrating! It should have been in Emma’s drawer, not in a pile of toys! Anyway, because I couldn’t resist it, I let Jack have a chomp of it and turned it on. His little face lit up like a beacon, he smiled, dribbled, drooled and poked his tongue out, trying to wrap it round the teether.
 
Are these things normal?