bookmark_borderOne for my Dad

Apparently I’ve not been blogging much. My Dad commented on this last night when I phoned so I thought I’d post a wee update for all my tens of avid readers.

Not much is happening.

I’m working.

I have no internets. I will not have internets until November 23rd. In a royal cock up between O2 (with whom I’d like to have both my home phone and broadband services) and BT OpenReach (the engineer part of BT, the only people allowed to touch the exchange, apparently), I managed to have my new home phone number wrongly allocated to someone else (by BT).

That bit was funny actually. I got a txt from O2 to say my phone line was now connected and “here is your new phone number”. I thought I’d test it by phoning my landline from my mobile. It’s a weird thing to be staring at a phone, as you dial the number that should make it ring, for it not only to not make a sound but for someone to pick up and say “hello?”. Freaked me out that did!

Upon reporting that error, O2 said (after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing) that they’d have to cancel the order and set up a new one (which is where the 23rd November date comes in). I was supposed to have an engineer out today but O2 said, no, it’s cancelled now.

So when a BT engineer phoned today to say he was on his way … I was a bit perturbed. Nevertheless I went home, he fixed the line and got the phone number allocated to me. I happily phoned O2 to tell them this, presuming that as it had been sorted then they could just turn things back on at their end (or whatever it is they actually do) only to be told that as the order had been cancelled yesterday there wasn’t anything they could do and that they would, yes really, have to disconnect that number and issue me a new one (and a second wireless router for the broadband connection too. Yes, really).

Which all seems a bit fucked up and which will be the subject of a detailed complaint to O2 wherein I will ask for compensation as I have websites to fix/design/build and I’m losing money all the time I’m not doing those things!

OK, so strictly speaking I will have internet access via a USB dongle which O2 issued to me but it’s not quite the same!

Aside from that, nothing much is happening. The flat is slowly taking shape (the purchase of some new furniture will help), and I’m reasonably settled into my new routine although I’ve yet to add “going to the gym cos I’m a fat bastard” to that yet so we will see how that goes.

Ohh yeah, and I’m off to Bristol on Friday for a wedding. I fly down Friday morning and, thanks to EasyJet who only do one flight back on a Saturday, I’ll be getting up at 6.15am on Saturday. The day after a wedding. Where they will be serving alcohol. This strikes me as “not fair”. On the other hand I am getting to meet a lot of blogger-type people who I’ve never met before and that’s ALWAYS fun.

bookmark_borderLoon

Yesterday I received an email from a friend, who lives in London, asking me, amongst other things if I was working today. Here is the ‘abbreviated’ email exchange:

K: Whereabouts is your office in Glasgow?
Me: Near the Casino on the river – next door to BT office.. why?
K: Casino in Glasgow? I know where the BT office is, what is the address?
Me: [OFFICE ADDRESS DELETED] WHY!!!!!!!
K: Are you in the office tomorrow?
Me: Yes. Stop teasing and tell me why!
K: You will find out tomorrow.
Me: It’s nothing that would get me sacked… right?
K: Depends how strict your boss is…
Me: Hmmmm deeply suspicious….
K: However it might be an idea for you to drive to work tomorrow, now that I think about it.

So it was with great apprehension that I walked round to reception to pick up this mysterious parcel (fingers were crossed that he’d won the lottery and bought me a Mercedes-Benz 500SL).

Turns out he does read this site now and again.

Cheers mate!

Hungover
Drinks with two best mates – good
Kronenburg 1664 – bad. Oh so v.bad.

And I’m slightly miffed that my blog entry at 1am from an BT Internet point hasn’t appeared… christ knows what it said mind you..

UK privatisation
I have to agree with Stuart on all of his points in his recent posting Public Pride, Private Shame, it also doubles as a well written snapshot of modern Britain. If any of my American readers are wondering why we keep banging on about Thatcher, railways, water companies, BT etc, give it a read.

Aside: I’ve just realised why ‘Great Britain’, and ‘Britain’ are used in conversational sentences (like mine above). Same reason that the USA is wrongly referred to as America (which isn’t strictly accurate either as it is a split continent). It’s because it begins with a U. Much harder to form sentences round the word ‘United’ or even the shorthand ‘UK’.

Another aside: The previous aside was rather long, don’t you think?

bookmark_borderFuture now

I ache. As usual I did too much in the gym on Wednesday, so my shoulders and arms are stiff and sore. The pain in my legs is nothing new and I’m used to it. We play football every Thursday (should I say soccer? Hell no!) and every Friday I’m stiff – is regular exercise not supposed to improve this? Mind you the game of netball on Tuesday should prove fun…

Looks like I’ll soon have SurfTime (Evenings and Weekends) setup – for those outside the UK, it is an unmetered service offered by BT and chosen ISPs. Unfortunately everytime an ISP launches an affordable 24/7 unmetered package the end up pulling it, or poorly implementing it because “some people abuse it, staying online for 16 hours at a time…”. I kinda thought that was the whole point… so I could have my PC online all the time and harness the power of the Internet. Have news delivered instantly, have my fridge order milk when I run out, etc etc. Or at the very least allow me to melt my retinas playing Half-Life! 😉

bookmark_borderScrewed

My ISP (LineOne) recently ended the payment scheme I was using. I had 24/7 access for £5 a month. They are now offering LineOne SurfTime (run of the back of the BT SurfTime package) for £9.99 a month for off-peak access only. Unfortunately my local exchange is not yet equipped to handle SurfTime so it isn’t available to me. Which means I am left to pay for any Internet calls as I make them – an expensive business. We rent our accomodation so can’t get cable in. In short I’m screwed.

BT have promised my exchange will be SurfTime compatible by the end of October. Until that time these will be the only updates you see on this site. Once I regain my Internet access, I will post the new design (which is 95% done), and upload a lot of stuff that has been waiting for a while…

So Great Britain is at the forefront of technology? I don’t flaming well think so!! BAH!!