Connected? Revisited

Posted: Wed 30 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: BT, Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Utilities | Leave a comment »

Back at the start of March, I was having issues with my Broadband connection, which BT was doing a fantastic job of avoiding. Because it would’ve cost me significant amounts of money to take the day off and wait for BT to chuff about investigating. Besides, while the weather’s been fine it hasn’t been that much of a problem.

So I’d postponed the appointment, BT had promised to make it again – and hadn’t. Quelle surprise.

Last week it got worse again – ‘coincidentally’ after it had pissed down with rain – so I got back on to BT. We went through all the rigmarole again, including dealing with similar levels of understanding (or lack thereof) from the first-level support people. It amazes me just how effing dumb their script is, and how incapable they are of deviating from it when they’ve already been given the relevant information.

Still, one conversation with the supervisor/manager later we got progress, and my line being monitored (again) for 24 hours by second-line support.

They’ve called today, and confirmed that (yet again) my line is shit. This time, because I’m working from home, there’s an engineer coming out on Thursday to fix it. There’s still been all the bollocks about “If it’s a fault inside the house you’re liable for it”, but I’m pretty damn sure it’ll turn out to be an external issue. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough.

And after that I suspect I shall be having words with them about why it’s taken five months to fix a problem that (I predict) required no access at all to my house.

Ups and Downs

Posted: Tue 29 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Health, Introspective, Work-related | Leave a comment »

It’s a new week, and a new contract. The most recent one in Cambridge has been – hmmm, how to put this? – not fun at all. Chaotically disorganised would be another way to put it – they weren’t even aware that the contract came to a close last Friday. Not a word was said, even on the last day – and I got a call on the Monday asking where I was.

So yeah, it’s not been overly fun, and I’m glad to be done with it.

The downside though, is that I’m now doing my standard thing of having relaxed post-contract, which leaves me open and vulnerable to any bugs that happen to be lurking around. My resistance is dog-shit, because I’ve been stressed with work etc., and the reduction of stress increases the likelihood of my feeling like death warmed up for a few days.

If I were smart I’d book a few days out between each contract, just to let myself get back on an even keel. Indeed, I might even start thinking about doing exactly that.

Of course, if I were really smart, I wouldn’t work for shithead companies, and/or wouldn’t get stressed about doing so. But meanwhile, back in reality…

It’s nothing life-threatening – it never is – and this time it’s just (another) rotten stinking cold. I’ll get over it – I always do – and I’ll try to not make things overly dramatic in the meantime.

But Lordy, I do wish I had enough common sense to spot those stress-levels ahead of time.

 

Inspection

Posted: Fri 25 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Housing | Leave a comment »

Back on Tuesday, I had a (pre-arranged) visit from the Landlord, needing to do the annual gas safety checks and so on.

Compared to a lot of people I see on Facebook et al., I’m pretty lucky with my landlord. We get on OK, and he always calls (or sends a text, anyway) to let me know it’s happening, and that he’ll be there to keep an eye on the person doing the checks.  He doesn’t organise unannounced random visits, take the piss, or generally do a lot of the stuff I hear about, but have never experienced from a landlord. (And that’s probably a different post entirely)

Getting the checks done is always fine with me, and if nothing else it’s good to know that everything is tested and safe.

This time though, it was a bit different. Everything passed and was all OK, but when I got home I found that they’d managed to close the cats upstairs for the best part of the day. With no food or water. Or litter tray.  So yeah, that was fun – and necessitated use of the washing machine. We’ll leave it at that.

There were a couple of other niggles as well – nothing major, just stuff that’d been moved to get to the boiler etc., and hadn’t been returned to their original places and so on – and a broken shower-head bracket, meaning the shower wasn’t working properly.

He came round again yesterday to fix the shower head, and we had a bit of a chat about the other stuff. It’s nothing major – indeed, you feel pretty petty mentioning it – but it’s my place, and it annoyed. (I know, rented etc., but still – my place in all but mortgage)

I’m pretty sure it’ll all be fine again now, but it just annoyed for a while this week. Such is life.

 

Parking Mad

Posted: Thu 24 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Customer Services, Cynicism, Driving, Parking, People, Thoughts, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

At the moment, the BBC has a documentary series on about Traffic Wardens (Parking Agents, Collection Agents, whatever else you want to call them) called “Parking Mad” and it’s been pretty interesting.

What I find most interesting is the people who don’t pay their parking fines, then get all snotty and sweary about it when the costs for it go up and up.

No matter how paranoid you are, I think the great majority of parking wardens just give tickets to people who’ve overstayed their tickets, not bothered, or are parking like cunts in the first place. I’ve spoken to a fair few over the years (I’m a twat for talking to just about anyone) and haven’t ever really come across a bad one. I’m sure they exist, don’t get me wrong – I just don’t believe every one is a bastard, or hates every other driver.

So if you’ve got a ticket- and again I emphasise that this is In My Experience Only – the odds are that you’ve fucked up and done something wrong. The ticket is going to cost you £30 to pay in the next 28 days, or £60 after that (and with extra costs the more they have to do to recover it) – so just sodding pay it. It’s a fee for fucking up.

I think I’ve now had four parking tickets. Two in Cambridge (where I’d be the first to admit that I pushed my luck anyway, and/or forgot to renew the ticket at the end of its duration) and two in London when I was commuting, and had a brain-fart about paying the ticket. The London ones were a pain, because you couldn’t buy the ticket before 9am- not from the machine, not online. I *know* it was a plan to get more people to forget to pay it, and thus do the tickets. But in six months, I forgot a grand total of twice.

I just don’t get the point of not paying a ticket – you know you’re going to lose anyway, so you might as well get it paid while it’s cheap.  Even if I were going to protest it, I’d pay while lodging the appeal. (Unless it’s better to not do so – I don’t know, never had to do it)

The programme seems to specialise in these ball-bags who park like twats, make a mistake, and then blame everyone but themselves. Of course, they don’t pay, and then bitch even more when the bailiffs come round (or stop them in the road) and charge £500 for what could’ve been dealt with for £30.

I’ve said many times that there’s whole heaps of stuff about people that I simply don’t get. Parking tickets are just one more facet of that lack of knowledge/understanding.

Gabriel Again

Posted: Wed 23 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Getting Organised, Gigs, Music | Leave a comment »

Back in October, I was supposed to go and see Peter Gabriel at the O2. Tickets paid for, car-parking paid for, all prepared. And then my body rebelled, so I didn’t get to see the concert. Which was seriously bloody annoying.

Today, tickets went on sale for another concert, this time in December at Wembley Arena.

I’ve got a ticket.

I’m going to go. I am, I am.

Anti-Spam

Posted: Wed 23 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, WordPress | 2 Comments »

Since updating to WordPress 3.9, D4D™ was getting thrashed with spam comments – something that hasn’t happened for a long time. Nothing else changed, so I assume that there’s an issue somewhere within 3.9 that’s opened up again.

Anyway, having seen upwards of 200 spam comments per day, I asked around for some advice on other things to block it, and on Twitter Laura came through with a suggestion to use another plugin called WP Hashcash which I’ve done.

So far, it appears to be working very nicely, and I’ve not seen any more spam comments coming through at all. Definite win.

Of course, it may be that some valid comments get blocked too – if so, email me at lyle2 at the domain name…

Safety Checks

Posted: Tue 22 April, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic | Leave a comment »

Today I’ve got the annual safety checks going on at the house for gas, electric and the like.

It’s also the annual inspection by the landlord, so I’ve spent a bit of time sorting out the house over the Easter weekend. It hasn’t needed much, it’s just making sure that all is well and tidy.

I keep the place pretty decent anyway – it’s not big enough to be a mess – but knowing the landlord’s visiting adds extra impetus to making sure the floors are mopped and so on as well. They’re the bits I don’t bother with as much, but still do fairly regularly. And of course a visit adds motivation.

It’s also meant having to move some things around, just so that they have access to meters etc. No big thing, just a minor-league pain.

[Updated : Everything came through fine. Happy Day]

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