Front Page News. Not.

Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: News, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Hardly a headline, is it? “Politician caught lying“. Nope, doesn’t really do much for me either, particularly on the “shock” stakes.

It does seem like a particularly silly thing to do and lie about though. Even by political “standards”. (Now there’s two words you rarely see together)

Time Warp

Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Music | 2 Comments »

Tonight’s gig is The Levellers at Oxford Brookes University Student Union.

Quite a blast from the past! But it should be fun. I’m looking forward to it, anyway.

UPDATE : Knackers. Looks like the car’s buggered (brakes being fairly useful to the entire moving/stopping thing), so we may miss the gig after all. Fucking wankhand cunty bastard piece-of-crap shitbag junk.

Britannia

Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts | 10 Comments »

Ah, joy. About eighteen months ago I had to deal with a debt collection agency who were operating on behalf of Britannia.

Today, I got a snotty letter (to my old address, but we’ll gloss over that) from a different company. This time it’s some shower with the imaginative company name “Debt Managers Ltd.” Having checked with Companies House at least this time they’re a valid company, which makes a change.

Anyway, this letter said that I still owe Shitannia money from nearly three years ago. Yes, the self-same account I disputed a year ago with the Robinson Way agency, who then referred it back to Britannia. And it’s taken them a year of doing fuck all before referring it to another debt agency. No contact at all in the meantime. Tossers.

So, a call to Debt Managers ensues.

I’d like to find out why I’ve got this letter from yourselves regarding a debt from Britannia.
We can’t help, we just collect the debt.
Well, can you request that Britannia send me a statement explaining what I owe, in accordance with the Credit Act’s provisions.
No, we can’t. We don’t sort out disputes, we just collect the money.
Can you give me a number for Britannia so I can do it?
No.
Well, I’d just like to say that’s the worst bit of customer service I’ve seen in a long time.
We’re not trained to do customer service. You’re not a customer, you’re a debtor.

Finally I ended up speaking to a supervisor, and after another ten minutes she’s agreed to send it back to Britannia “as the account is obviously in dispute” and of course they don’t deal with disputes, merely debts. They can’t confirm this in writing to me “as it’s not a standard letter”. And apparently typing is beyond them too.

So – back to Britannia, and a shitty letter will be written to them in the meantime.

As for Debt Managers Ltd.? (company number SC219618) Well, all I can say is that they’re one of the rudest, most unhelpful companies it’s ever been my misfortune to deal with. With luck I’ll never have to hear from the useless tossers again.

Overheard

Posted: Mon 11 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Travel, Weirdness | 3 Comments »

Ah, knew I’d forgotten to write about something. (Actually, there’s a couple of things I’ve failed to write about, despite repeatedly thinking “Must do that”, but well, maybe I need a d4d™ to-do list as well!)

Anyway – while sat on the train to the DCD gig last week, I heard the most brilliant conversation…

Her (on mobile phone) : [blah, blah] and what time is ER on E4 tonight?
Him : [must’ve said 9pm, as that’s when it was]
Her : Oh, OK. I don’t think I’ll be back by then. What time does it start on E4+1?

This was said entirely straight-faced.

(For foreign readers, or those without satellite, I should point out that E4+1’s programmes start exactly one hour after E4’s hence the +1 in the name)

Office Move

Posted: Mon 11 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Work-related | 5 Comments »

Twunty Manager : “Just so you all know, I want you to help me with the office move this weekend. As of Monday we’ll be in the new place.”

Hey, thanks for the advanced warning. Because, like I observed at the end of last week some of us have lives, even if you don’t, you utter tossflap.

To Do

Posted: Mon 11 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts, Work-related | 5 Comments »

I don’t deny it – my organisational skills are, on occasion, somewhat lacking. If I’m not motivated to do something then it takes an age to get done. Of course, finding motivation for things can sometimes be a problem on its own. But that’s life.

Last week, we decided to get a white-board and write up to-do lists on it. More as a self-inflicted nag, rather than asking the other to keep on saying about it ’til it gets done.

Oddly, this doesn’t seem to be necessary for general domestic stuff – that all gets done no problem anyway. But it’s the “work” stuff that we both currently seem to be utterly demotivated on. I don’t know why – it’s still satisfying once it’s done, but getting there is a bit of a struggle. Mainly, I suspect, it’s because the time we had being single (or even when I was ‘just’ coming up on weekends) gave us a lot more opportunity to stay busy by doing “work” stuff at home and so on. By this I don’t necessarily mean “work from our day jobs that we bring home because we’ve nowt better to do”, but more “stuff that isn’t domestic, but isn’t our day jobs either”.

Anyway, the to-do list idea is a winner. Out of the stuff on there, I got four items out of the way over the weekend. Not bad going!

Archaic

Posted: Sun 10 April, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: Geeky | Leave a comment »

Over this weekend I’ve successfully moved Tivo, which means we now have something like 80 hours available for recording TV. I doubt we’ll need that much, but we’ll see.

I’ve also been plundering old data off old PCs before they go to the great repair shop in the sky, which has been kind of fun, in a very sad and geeky way.

One PC was old enough to be drawing an IT pension – a Pentium 1 chip, and still using a serial port for the mouse. No CD-Writer, no USB, no networking, Windows 95 (just), and no modem jack – that used a serial port too. The data’s been moved off that by floppy disk, it’s so old. I can’t remember the last time I used Win95, but hopefully I won’t have to do so again for a while.

The other one’s not quite so bad – Win 98, anyway. Still no USB, but at least it’s got standard mouse and keyboard sockets, so I could resurrect one of my old spare sets of gear. And I can use a CD burner on it, which makes life a lot easier.

After the data’s come off them both, I’m not quite sure what we’ll do with the (slightly) more modern one – it may end up servicing as a Linux machine or something. I just haven’t decided yet.

The other one though is likely to find it’s way to the IT dump in the sky. Even third world countries wouldn’t want it.

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