Managing Work Demands
Posted: Sun 3 June, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »Over the next few weeks, I’ve got one hell of a lot of work to complete, and that’s starting today.
However, with Herself being at work today, there’s also been the problem of dealing with Hound, who sees it more that I’m at home, and thus should be throwing a ball in the garden for her.
On a side point, I’m seriously considering buying one of those tennis-ball serving machines, so I can load it with 50 balls in the garden, and leave it to keep Buggerlugs amused. Very tempting.
So today has started off with taking her out for a long walk, and then also nipping out in the car for a drive, taking her with me, so she kept on seeing new stuff and so on – I’ve found it’s a plan that works.
And now she’s laid here in the living room. Fast asleep. So I’d best get on with doing some work…
Busy
Posted: Fri 1 June, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Work-related | Leave a comment »So yes, I get broadband back, and can I think of anything to post? Can I chuff.
So it may be quiet here today. What with work, other work, emails, finances, (invoices and the like) and then sloping off to see Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 tonight, well, updates may be sparse.
On the other hand, they may not.
Who knows?
56k (Again)
Posted: Thu 31 May, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | 4 Comments »In some ways it’s actually kind of interesting to be back on 56k dial-up for a few days.
I’d forgotten just how slow it really is, and how much I take for granted that I can access pretty much anything I want without having to wait for it. (As Lionel said) YouTube is an absolute no-no – not that I use it all that much anyway, but still.
And it’s surprising just how many sites fall into the trap of taking broadband for granted. Some of the sites I’ve done certainly do – although, thankfully, not the photography portfolio site, which still loads pretty quickly. (well, in comparison to other photo sites, although it’s still painfully slow on the available bandwidth)
Taking a positive from this enforced period of online-dragging is that I’ve now checked all the sites I’ve done of late, and there’s at least one that may get a rewrite at some point because of those tests. But for the most part, I’m actually feeling quite chuffed that none of them are too painful to load up on this slow-ass piece of crap non-broadband connection.
Moving Phones
Posted: Wed 30 May, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, House Purchase, Work-related | Leave a comment »I should’ve known that the efficiency of BT in the last move was an exception, rather than a rule. I should’ve chased them up more, I know.
I was lulled into a false sense of security by someone who sounded efficient, but wasn’t.
So on Friday when I tested the old phone number at 3:30pm, and got a ringtone, I thought “Oh, bollocks.” So I rang BT’s Moving Home department, and eventually got through.
“Oh, I don’t know what’s happened there – the system seems to have decided that there was a problem with the order, and then we didn’t tell you about it”
Yeah, no shit. At 4pm on a Friday, imagine how happy that makes me.
As it turns out, the order had got completely lost in the system. No idea why, and no-one can tell me, either. Bunch of tossers.
But in fairness to them, within 2 hours of being told, the landline had switched over to the new number and the new place without any further hitches. That bit is simple, by all accounts. (Doesn’t explain why it takes them two weeks notice usually, but there we go)
Broadband, however, is a problem. Supposedly it takes five working days, regartdless of anything else. It’s incredibly annoying, but again it’s one of those things where there’s really nothing I can do except wait. Oh, and phone them on a daily basis to see how it’s going. *grin*
But ’til Monday June 4th, it looks like I’m stuck with slowband. And oh God is it slow, after being used to ADSL for the last four and a bit years…
Late
Posted: Tue 29 May, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »And just to top things off, this morning I didn’t take into account that we now live about four miles further away from the train station than we did on Friday.
So I left ‘on time’ and got to the train station late – just missed it by a couple of minutes.
Which means that today I’ve ended up driving in to work. Not great, but it does mean I got here pretty much still on time (depending on the time of day, the train journey and car journey take pretty much the same time, roughly an hour each way) and just have to sort out where to park. Still, could be worse.
And it also meant I got in to work at just about the time I’d have been catching the next train to Cambridge, and would then still have had an hour to travel, so *shrug*
But I’ll remember to readjust my timings tomorrow, you can be sure…
56k
Posted: Mon 28 May, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Work-related | 2 Comments »So yes, the move went fine. Well, except that BT ballsed up the number move, so I won’t have any broadband access ’til June the fucking 4th.
Needless to say, I’m bloody furious with them. But then, I’ve also got three free months of broadband once it does get connected, so *shrug* could be worse.
And for now? Well, dial-up access at a max of 56Kbps is – how shall I put this – interesting. If dull.
Working
Posted: Sat 26 May, 2007 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Purchase, House Work, Work-related | Leave a comment »Before anyone asks, yes, I ddi feel somewhat guilty about working while all the moving stuff was going on. However, it had been agreed between Herself and I that this was the best way to do it. There’s a few good reasons, but the main one is always the best. Money.
Because I’m a contractor, I don’t really get sick pay, or time off pay. Not going in to work costs me/us money – and it’s a fair amount on a daily rate. While we’re not on the breadline- far from it- nor are we so rich that we can say ‘oh, sod it, a couple of days off, doesn’t matter’.
Equally, well, most of the work was being done by other people. We’d got a removals company doing all that side of things, loading up their truck/lorry/whatever and so on. We’d already packed just about everything – the PC etc. got done on Thursday night- so it was a matter of taking the bed and desk apart, and all the rest got done by the removals people. Herself had her family helping too, which was another great bonus, and meant that things ran smoothly.
Oh yeah, and it also means I was up at 6am, working from 8-4 so that I could then get home and carry on doing work on getting stuff set up and so on once it’d been moved in to the house. Equally, with the way the house will be worked on, we’d only really got four rooms to get sorted out initially (living room, bedroom, office, and kitchen) – most of the rest of our combined stuff is going to be put in storage in the garage at first, and will be gradually migrated as we sort the place out.
So while it may sound like chaos (and probably is chaos) there’s method in our madness. And I’m sure I’ll be made to make up for it over the weekend. (Particularly if the fucking phone and broadband aren’t sorted out)