Hiring

Over the weekend, I’m going to be up in Nottinghamshire, and as we haven’t yet got round to buying Car 2 , I’m hiring one again.

No idea what I’ll get, but I’m sure it’ll be fun. And considering that I’ll be covering at least 350-400 miles, well, at least it’ll be in someone else’s car… Heh.

Update, once I’d collected the car : Ha! It’s a Peugeot 407. The thing’s fuckin’ gorgeous. It’s going to be a fun weekend.


Organising That Health-check

So yes, the healthcheck that finally happened on Friday was an utter nightmare to organise.

It started off with being told that I needed to sort one out, and that the insurance company had engaged a third party who would contact me to organise an appointment at my convenience.

Yeah, right. What actually happened was that the company called me up and said “We’ve made an appointment for one of our nurses to come and see you at home on Tuesday at 4pm”. Which is hardly at my convenience. So I called them back and told them so.

Them : “But why don’t you want an appointment at home on Tuesday at 4pm? We’ve made all the arrangements”
Me : “Because I’m not going to be at home at that time. I’ll be at work. If your company is willing to pay me to take half a day off work to come and see you, I might consider it”
Them : “No, we can’t do that. But we don’t understand what the problem is with this appointment, it’s at your home at 4pm”
Me : “Amazing as this may seem to you, I work. Maybe I’m the only person you’ve ever dealt with who works, but there we go. So 4pm on a weekday is not convenient. I’m home for about 7pm, if that helps”
Them : “Oh no, our nurses only work 9-5”.

At which point I ended up going back to the insurers and telling them they could stuff their business. The people they engaged would have problems discerning between an arse and an elbow, and there was no way I was using them. So they promised to organise something else, a proper medical at a proper doctor’s surgery. However, it would still be organised through a third party.

And then I got another call about a week later, from the first third party, still trying to make a ‘convenient’ appointment for me on a workday at 4pm, and which for an appointment ‘at my convenience’ was strangely immovable. This time they got told to sod off.

When the second third party finally called, the first thing they said was “So, you need an appointment in Norfolk?”. At which I think I growled. The woman at the other end certainly seemed surprised. I re-explained the situation (actually, that’s probably more like re-re-re-re-explained, but there we go), and they finally discovered a surgery that was close to the workplace. Halle-bloody-lujah.

But all told it’s still taken four weeks to organise a poxy medical. But if my blood-pressure is too high (I doubt it will be, but still) I’m going to blame it all on the poxy fucking insurance company and their medical third parties. So there.


Patronised

Ah, the joys of being patronised by medical ‘professionals’.
Well, Mr Lyle, you’re really rather overweight, aren’t you?

which really should get the response “Really? And there I was, hoping to climb Everest tomorrow“, instead of the one I gave, which was “Yes. And?“. To which the twat had no answer.


Amateur Hour

As regular readers of D4D™ will have noticed by now, I absolutely hate working with bloody amateurs.

At the moment, the entire network at work has the stability of overcooked spaghetti, and completely dies with depressing regularity. By which I mean roughly every 20-25 minutes. No connection to network servers, no connection to the outside world, no nothing. Even when it is working, it’s still flakier than the Singing Detective, with particular gems including that (according to our system) the BBC News website doesn’t exist. Not even that it’s taking longer than usual to connect, but it just doesn’t exist.

And yet the IT support department insists there isn’t a problem.
“Oh, we’ve checked, and everything’s fine”
“So why can’t I connect to anything?”
“Um, dunno. But we’ve checked, and everything’s fine”

It’s driving me (and everyone else in the office) fuckin’ mental. And the IT Support (and their superiors that this is already being escalated to) have all the technical skills of yoghurt.

It’s going to be a very long day…


Holmes Place

You’d think I’d have had enough of Holmes Place over the last year – and you’d be right.

Yesterday, though, I got a call from the Wokingham gym, telling me that they’d been bought out by Virgin Active, and would I like to go for a free visit there, and take a partner with me?

Me : How blunt do you want me to be?
HP/VA Person : As blunt as you want. (Ooooh, that could’ve been a bad move…)
Me : OK then. I wouldn’t rejoin Holmes Place, regardless of who owns you. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, even my worst enemy. In fact, I’d go so far as to actively encourage anyone thinking of joining to not do so.
HP/VA Person : Oh.
[there followed an explanation of all the old crap about contracts, HP being unable to provide a gym at all, and threatening me with a bailiff if I didn’t pay the entire remaining sum.]
Me : So overall, I wouldn’t trust HP as far as I can throw them, nor their new owners. And in my opinion, they’re scumbags.
HP/VA Person: OK, well, thank you for being so honest in your response.

Now, I have to say, I think that she actually handled the call really well, and there was nothing nasty about the entire thing. An apology would’ve been nice, but now I’m done with them, I know it’d be too late for one anyway – and so did she.

All the same, though, you’d think they might’ve taken me off their ‘to call’ list…


Wide Open Vista

When it was released, I wrote a small post about why I had no intention of moving to MS Vista® – and from the news stories etc. that’ve followed on, I have to say I’m pretty cool with being right about it.

This piece from The Register demonstrates my case nicely.

The basic summary? Wait at least until Service Pack 1 is released.


Handwritten – an Update

About a week ago, I wrote about the cashpoint (ATM) machine with the handwritten notice on it – which (to my surprise) garnered no comments at all.

Anyway, walking past the same pair of machines today, I noticed that this time the same one was out of order, but had up the machine’s default “Out of service – please use another machine” message on the display. No handwritten sign was in evidence at all.

I wonder if anyone’s noticed yet that they lost money last week?