So, as you all no doubt know there are times in life when you have to rely on someone else, on this occasion the someone else in question is an Openreach engineer. Now, as you may be aware Openreach are not the best run organisation in the world, but they serve an important purpose when it comes to phone lines and such.
On Friday there was an Openreach engineer here to install a new phone line, and to look at our broadband to try and figure out why it was so slow.
So there he was, working away, and doing a perfectly competent job of it, when he loses his balance on the ladder. Trying to steady himself he grabs for anything he can get hold of, and ends up getting hold of the metal cabinet housing our network switch, etc. Now said cabinet happens to be laying on a board, not fixed, and so the cabinet comes off with him.
He recovered his balance and grabbed hold of it, and I was standing nearby and managed to get hold of it too so that it didn't fall to the floor, and I managed to take the router out (which is the only bit not screwed in) so that it didn't fall out.
Unfortunately the ladder he'd been standing on fell down, taking a couple of nice chunks out of the wall, and damaging the edge of a nearby work surface. In fairness, it is our ladder that we use to access the data cabinet, and so he shouldn't really have been using that one, but it was there so he used it... fair play.
So we managed to get everything back in order, he went and got a replacement for the one cable that was broken, and everything seemed to be ok. So other than the wall it was no harm done.
The boss, sat in his office, heard all the commotion. When the engineer next went to the exchange the boss approaches me, and asks if the cabinet had fallen down, I said yes... and then it began. Suddenly the engineer, who'd done a perfectly good job up until then was a "jerk", a "f*cking jobsworth", and a "c*nt".
So, I was tasked with getting the guy's name, ID no, etc... no problem.
Sadly the engineer arrived back when the boss was downstairs, and it kicked off. "you've done a good job there mate, you've f*cked that, you've f*cked that, you've f*cked that. You wanna watch what you're doing, and that ladder isn't there for you either". "yeah, ok, I'll get my steps in, no problem. You might want to fix that cabinet down though mate" was the only response from the engineer, that and to go and organise for a claim form to be sent out to us for it.
At the point the boss returns to his office, and tells the guy "leave the details with him" (that being me). Cheers boss, so you've just pissed the guy off and then left me to deal with it.
Anyway, luckily the guy wasn't too bothered, and after I commented that "hopefully he'll keep his head down" he laughed about it. He went off to the exchange again, and arrived back just as I was leaving. I apologised for leaving him to deal with the boss, he said it was me he felt sorry for and after exchanging a chuckle and some pleasantries I went on my way.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Stuff
So, as per one of my previous blogs (I forget which one) I lack money, and the willpower to save money!!
I've checked my bank balance this morning, and worked out which bills have yet to come out of the bank, and allowed for hte fact that I've gotta fuel up the car soon... and if (and this is a big IF) I'm really really really good between now and pay day then I could carry £160 over from last pay-day... that'd be a big improvement on the last couple of months of saving £20 a month.
Now the slight problem(s)... pay day is 3 weeks away, and that's a long time for me to not spend money. It's the 5 year anniversary of my first date with the other half on the 12th of August, and that's almost certainly going to involve spending some money at least.
In fact we're going out for the day on the 12th, although she's not decided where yet. I'm thinking maybe Port Lympne since we have year long entry from when we went in June... suppose that depends on weather though...
Ah well, wish me luck on the savings front dear reader!!
I've checked my bank balance this morning, and worked out which bills have yet to come out of the bank, and allowed for hte fact that I've gotta fuel up the car soon... and if (and this is a big IF) I'm really really really good between now and pay day then I could carry £160 over from last pay-day... that'd be a big improvement on the last couple of months of saving £20 a month.
Now the slight problem(s)... pay day is 3 weeks away, and that's a long time for me to not spend money. It's the 5 year anniversary of my first date with the other half on the 12th of August, and that's almost certainly going to involve spending some money at least.
In fact we're going out for the day on the 12th, although she's not decided where yet. I'm thinking maybe Port Lympne since we have year long entry from when we went in June... suppose that depends on weather though...
Ah well, wish me luck on the savings front dear reader!!
Nice while it lasted...
And there we are, after 2 days the Great British Summer seems to have gone on it's way again. We've gone from sunshine and 28 degrees to rain and 18 degrees... and I'm quite liking the change if I'm honest!!
The office was a bit on the warm side the last couple of days, since the air-con was never installed before we moved in... it's ok though, because the air-con has now been ordered...!! The problem there of course is that we need to use the air-con when it's hot, not order the air-con when it's hot and get it installed when it's not hot anymore!!
Hopefully the rain will hold off tomorrow as we're off to the races which should be a laugh, and a Boyzone convert which should be traumatising. Sadly I can't even have a drink to help me through the night, since I've been volunteered to drive everyone home... Aces!!
Still, maybe it wont be tooooo bad... I'm trying to stay up-beat here!!
The office was a bit on the warm side the last couple of days, since the air-con was never installed before we moved in... it's ok though, because the air-con has now been ordered...!! The problem there of course is that we need to use the air-con when it's hot, not order the air-con when it's hot and get it installed when it's not hot anymore!!
Hopefully the rain will hold off tomorrow as we're off to the races which should be a laugh, and a Boyzone convert which should be traumatising. Sadly I can't even have a drink to help me through the night, since I've been volunteered to drive everyone home... Aces!!
Still, maybe it wont be tooooo bad... I'm trying to stay up-beat here!!
Friday, 22 July 2011
Money money money... it's not funny
So, we all know that money makes the world go round, and we all know that those who don't have money are therefore on the back foot.
I've never quite understood the concept if I'm honest, money quite clearly makes a lot of people spend their lives doing things they hate for people they don't like just in order to survive. Is it just me or is that majorly screwed up?
Life is fleeting, and yet mankind has come up with a way to ensure that a large chunk of life is spent working in order to pay your bills. Now we're supposed to be the most super-duper advanced life-form in the whole known universe... so why are we so bloody stupid?
Animals don't worry about money, they forage, hunt, scavenge, etc for food, they make their homes out of twigs, caves, or burrows... in effect they do what they want to do. Yet here we are, the pinnacle of evolution, with such an idiotic concept.
Right now I know someone who's selling off stuff to pay bills, and someone who is looking at spending best part of 3 hours a day travelling to and from work... and that's not making anyone happy. So why dear reader, does man always look to make himself miserable?
I've never quite understood the concept if I'm honest, money quite clearly makes a lot of people spend their lives doing things they hate for people they don't like just in order to survive. Is it just me or is that majorly screwed up?
Life is fleeting, and yet mankind has come up with a way to ensure that a large chunk of life is spent working in order to pay your bills. Now we're supposed to be the most super-duper advanced life-form in the whole known universe... so why are we so bloody stupid?
Animals don't worry about money, they forage, hunt, scavenge, etc for food, they make their homes out of twigs, caves, or burrows... in effect they do what they want to do. Yet here we are, the pinnacle of evolution, with such an idiotic concept.
Right now I know someone who's selling off stuff to pay bills, and someone who is looking at spending best part of 3 hours a day travelling to and from work... and that's not making anyone happy. So why dear reader, does man always look to make himself miserable?
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Wanted: Willpower
Ok, so the title is pretty much self-explanatory. One thing that I lack in abundance is willpower, and that's the major contributing factor to two things that I dislike about my life.
First is my weight, no matter how good my intentions are when I start a diet I end up losing the willpower to keep it going more than a few weeks.
Second is my lack of money, which is actually linked to the weight thing as I spend quite a bit on junk food. The other thing I spend money on is video games. I suppose really that I don't want to stop buying games... in fact if anything I would probably end up spending more on games if I spent less on food. Still if I had a little more willpower then I could avoid making the spur of the moment purchases which have been so costly over the years.
So, the question is how to increase my willpower to the point that I don't spend the vast majority of my money, and I can actually put something away for the future as well as getting a bit healthier... that answer eludes me right now.
First is my weight, no matter how good my intentions are when I start a diet I end up losing the willpower to keep it going more than a few weeks.
Second is my lack of money, which is actually linked to the weight thing as I spend quite a bit on junk food. The other thing I spend money on is video games. I suppose really that I don't want to stop buying games... in fact if anything I would probably end up spending more on games if I spent less on food. Still if I had a little more willpower then I could avoid making the spur of the moment purchases which have been so costly over the years.
So, the question is how to increase my willpower to the point that I don't spend the vast majority of my money, and I can actually put something away for the future as well as getting a bit healthier... that answer eludes me right now.
Being British
Following on from my Sh*tish Telecom blog where I mentioned the past honour of Britishness I thought I'd have a think about the state of Britain nowadays.
Now, this is not going to be a "bloody foreigners are ruining our country" type blog, because that's a very narrow-minded and sensationalist view, if anything the cultural diversity of Britain should be a good thing.
The problems mainly originate in politics, while immigration is not a bad thing, and in many cases people who come to this country either do jobs that the British don't want, or bring expertise into the economy, there are too many people let into this country who do no want to work. In effect Britain has become a soft touch, and if you roll in from another country then you get given money, and a house. I've lived in this country for my whole life, and I don't see anyone lining up to give me a house just for the sake of it!!
Then we move on to the lazy folks, those proud British souls who frankly can't be bothered... lets give them some money as well, they don't want to work, so someone's got to keep them. I know the job hunting is hard, and if you happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself being out of work then you have my sympathy because I've been there and it's not nice. However, if you simply want to sit around the house and not even try and find work then shame on you. Why should the tax-payers subsidise people who refuse to work? Women who decide to pop out a few kids so they get plenty of benefit money? People who are not physically able to do a job, but someone are physically able to spend all day playing golf?
And my last target in this blog is the political correctness brigade... for you see we can't have "Christmas lights" anymore, we can't fly the Union Flag, we can't celebrate our national identity. Why is this? It's because we might upset people who've moved to our country... now pardon my attitude here, but if you move to a country then you accept their culture. I'm not saying that you adopt their beliefs, but you don't complain about them expressing their beliefs, and it's not like the majority of foreign people who come to this country have even taken offence to anything... but we "might" upset Hindus if we put up "Christmas lights"... the Brits who come up with this stuff need to grow a pair.
This was once a proud nation with a great culture, and populated by people who could feel genuinely happy to be British. It can be a great country again people, I know it can, but we (seemingly few) proud Brits need to take back the country from those who would try and force us from our own homeland...
Or maybe I should just move abroad.
Now, this is not going to be a "bloody foreigners are ruining our country" type blog, because that's a very narrow-minded and sensationalist view, if anything the cultural diversity of Britain should be a good thing.
The problems mainly originate in politics, while immigration is not a bad thing, and in many cases people who come to this country either do jobs that the British don't want, or bring expertise into the economy, there are too many people let into this country who do no want to work. In effect Britain has become a soft touch, and if you roll in from another country then you get given money, and a house. I've lived in this country for my whole life, and I don't see anyone lining up to give me a house just for the sake of it!!
Then we move on to the lazy folks, those proud British souls who frankly can't be bothered... lets give them some money as well, they don't want to work, so someone's got to keep them. I know the job hunting is hard, and if you happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself being out of work then you have my sympathy because I've been there and it's not nice. However, if you simply want to sit around the house and not even try and find work then shame on you. Why should the tax-payers subsidise people who refuse to work? Women who decide to pop out a few kids so they get plenty of benefit money? People who are not physically able to do a job, but someone are physically able to spend all day playing golf?
And my last target in this blog is the political correctness brigade... for you see we can't have "Christmas lights" anymore, we can't fly the Union Flag, we can't celebrate our national identity. Why is this? It's because we might upset people who've moved to our country... now pardon my attitude here, but if you move to a country then you accept their culture. I'm not saying that you adopt their beliefs, but you don't complain about them expressing their beliefs, and it's not like the majority of foreign people who come to this country have even taken offence to anything... but we "might" upset Hindus if we put up "Christmas lights"... the Brits who come up with this stuff need to grow a pair.
This was once a proud nation with a great culture, and populated by people who could feel genuinely happy to be British. It can be a great country again people, I know it can, but we (seemingly few) proud Brits need to take back the country from those who would try and force us from our own homeland...
Or maybe I should just move abroad.
Sh*tish Telecom
I've heard that once upon a time being British was something to be proud of, that our companies were world leaders, and that the very word British conjured up a dogged spirit and will to succeed.
So where did it all go so wrong? Well British Telecom have to take a chunk of that blame. We've asked them to do a relatively straightforward thing... to port three phone numbers from Virgin Media to BT, and install them in our new office unit.
The first two are done, although not without many, many phone calls and yelling. You see we ordered the transfer on June 9th, and the sales guy who took the order placed it on the 9th... however when he was asked to verify the post-code (it was different as we were moving office) he did nothing with it for 8 days... consequently having told us it'd be done on June 20th he suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth when it transpired that they would actually be doing it on July 1st.
Despite numerous attempts from all of us they couldn't improve on this date, and so we were stuck with it.
Things, in the end, worked out ok. The lines went in on moving day and we got up and running. Then came time to port the third number. This time the engineer arrived just 2 days after the order was placed... brilliant... although it turned out that in fact BT hadn't even asked Virgin to release the number by then, and so the engineer went on his way again.
What's followed has been a series of calls to BT (who say Virgin wont release the number, that the line has more than one number on it, and finally that a mistake was made on the order) and Virgin (who say that they've not received an order from BT). Now BT have decided to ask what sort of line it is, it's a Centrex line, whatever that means. Armed with this information they now think it should be ok... so why didn't you bloody well ask in the first place you idiots?!
So, in conclusion... BT Suck!!
So where did it all go so wrong? Well British Telecom have to take a chunk of that blame. We've asked them to do a relatively straightforward thing... to port three phone numbers from Virgin Media to BT, and install them in our new office unit.
The first two are done, although not without many, many phone calls and yelling. You see we ordered the transfer on June 9th, and the sales guy who took the order placed it on the 9th... however when he was asked to verify the post-code (it was different as we were moving office) he did nothing with it for 8 days... consequently having told us it'd be done on June 20th he suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth when it transpired that they would actually be doing it on July 1st.
Despite numerous attempts from all of us they couldn't improve on this date, and so we were stuck with it.
Things, in the end, worked out ok. The lines went in on moving day and we got up and running. Then came time to port the third number. This time the engineer arrived just 2 days after the order was placed... brilliant... although it turned out that in fact BT hadn't even asked Virgin to release the number by then, and so the engineer went on his way again.
What's followed has been a series of calls to BT (who say Virgin wont release the number, that the line has more than one number on it, and finally that a mistake was made on the order) and Virgin (who say that they've not received an order from BT). Now BT have decided to ask what sort of line it is, it's a Centrex line, whatever that means. Armed with this information they now think it should be ok... so why didn't you bloody well ask in the first place you idiots?!
So, in conclusion... BT Suck!!
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