Goodbye Abbie

Thanks for all the good times. ;)

Albert Hoffman dies

You couldn't make it up

So I have my broadband back. Fantastic.
And it's three times faster than it was before. Incredible.
This morning out of courtesy I ask my neighbour if her broadband is still working.
It went off yesterday. Probably at the same time as mine was fixed.

Hmmmm....

So, on the 19th of April my neighbour's connection is sorted out and my phone and broadband are down the shitter. 10 days later I get my broadband back and my neighbours goes down the shitter. Neither of us are impressed. I called BT to try and see if we can prevent it from happening again and was told that there's no one I can talk to about that. They can only respond when things go wrong, they don't do preventative.

How shit is that?

One of the largest companies in the world, making more money per second than I'll make in a lifetime and they can't (or rather won't) get their act together to make sure that they don't cut me off again in the near future.

Utter utter inept cunts!

Me and the neighbour are going to make the next engineer aware of the potential problem. I may be holding secateurs at the time.

Reeeeeeesult

The internet is saved. I'm back online baby!
Someone had fucked up a connection in a junction box. It's sorted.
As a bonus the engineer reckons he was getting 1.5mps when he was testing the line.
Slightly better than the 256kbs my ISP says I can have.
We'll be having words.

Gr@@@@@@@@@@hhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Still no fucking broadband.
Spoke to the isp on Saturday and the guy I was talking to expressed disbelief at the fact that a)BT hadn't sorted it. b) No one had arranged for an engineer to come out. c) That no one had thought to at least give me a dial up number to use. Which he did. And I have a BT engineer coming out tomorrow morning.
I'm hoping to be back online by tomorrow.

I'm deluded aren't I?

Hulk Smash!!!

It's times like this you really want to 'Hulk out' and smash the shit out of something corporate. Unfortunately I'm as puny as puny Banner so all I can do is be forthright on the phone and try not to lapse into default sweary mind, but for fuck's sake... I'm still without net access. The DSL light on my modem blinks at me like a stupid child. I called my ISP three times yesterday. The first time I had the standard foreign call centre working from a script bollocks. The second time after some stern negotiation :D I got through to someone who knew what they were on about but still gave me corporate bollocks while promising to keep me apprised of developments. The third attempt I got a result. I was polite but firm. Expressed my frustration and displeasure in the nicest possible way. Got the guy to admit that they hadn't actually called BT but were using the automated fault reporting system that BT wholesale (the cunts that sell the internet to all the other isp's) have in place. Was assured that BT wholesale wouldn't favour BT Internet customers over those of other ISP's (yeah... Riiiiiiiiiight) and that he'd call BT himself and get back to me within the hour.

And he did! :o

It turns out there's a complex fault on my line and it's been referred to BT's complex fault people. What this actually means is, that there's something wrong with a circuit at the phone exchange and they have to send in a real human engineer to do some actual work, rather than turning things off and on again via a computer.

I still have no idea when I get my home connection back.

I'm very very pissed off.

Cunts!

Six days

GLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! CUNTSCUNTSCUNTSCUNTSCUNTS!

And still...

No internet connection at home.
It took me the best part of an hour to convince my ISP to take it up with BT. At one point they told me that after I'd plugged the modem into my BT test socket I should wait 3 hours to see if the connection stabilised and if it didn't I was to ring back.
Fuck that! It took some gentle persuasion but eventually the call centre chappy saw my point of view.

The breadknife took a call from them (the ISP) yesterday. The guy she spoke to was pretty good (for a change) he's identified a rather large problem with the line. I think he went to turn down the gain and ended up cutting the connection, which is interesting. I obviously have a shite phone line.

I'm investigating mobile broadband now. It appears I can pay less and get a better connection speed using the mobile network than I can using BT's infrastructure. I'd absolutely love it if I could ring BT up and cancel the phone completely. :)

update: Perhaps I won't bother looking into mobile broadband right now. This is a reply from T-Mobile to my enquiry

"Thanks for your email Rad, asking me if you can try our Mobile Broadband service without going to any commitment. Also asking if our Mobile Broadband service is better than his landline service.



I can understand how concerned you may be about accessing internet with the Mobile Broadband of your choice. I'll surely advice you on this.



I'd like to tell you that our Mobile Broadband service will be better than your landline based service. As you'll be able to access internet on your mobile phone at a fixed price of £7.50 per MB extra every month. However I'm afraid to tell you that you'll not be able to use it for trial without going to any commitment.



However if you wish to view our various price plans with this service please click here.



Alternatively for any further information you can contact our customer services on 150 from your T-Mobile phone or 08454125000 from a landline (Landline calls are charged at local rates if you're a BT customer but if you're with another provider it may cost a bit more, so do check). We're available everyday from 7am to 10pm.



Thanks again for taking the time to email me Rad, I hope the information I've provided you regarding the Mobile Broadband service and its plans will be useful.



If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me and I'll be glad to help you.


Kind regards"

Doesn't really instill confidence does it? I didn't ask about mobile phone broadband, I asked about mobile broadband via a usb stick or dongle that you plug into your computer. I've also done some digging today and it appears that a lot of people using mobile broadband on all the networks are not best pleased with their service. Ho hum!

Cut off my right arm while you're at it.

BT: British Telecom; What a bunch of cunts.
My poor old next door neighbour has had no internet for a month. Kind of their fault for going with Talk Talk but they saw the error of their ways and signed up to BT again. BT turn up saturday morning to sort out their line. Saturday afternoon they have their internet, I have no phone and no internet. Now it doesn't take a degree in advanced mathmatics to add 2+2 and conclude that BT fucked up my phoneline on Saturday morning. So when will they fix it I ask the lovely Scottish person who's talking on BT's faultline. MONDAY AFTERNOON!!! WHAT THE FUCK! YOU BREAK IT AND THEN FUCK OFF FOR TWO DAYS? Ah silly me, of course, you endeavour to fix things in one working day. Tomorrow's Sunday. Therefore I can sit and spin. Well thank you very fucking much. State approved monopolies. Doncha just love em?

An old git writes...

Kids and mobile phones. Specifically kids playing their music aloud from their mobile phones. They're cunts really aren't they?

No mate, it really was funny

He got cautioned for anti social behaviour for doing this

Seems strange that people on council estates that get their windows put through. Graffiti daubed on their walls, and their children picked on, get fuck all protection against anti-social behaviour. But pretend to sneeze on some posh cunt's back and you're public enemy number one!

Poor cunt would have been hauled off to the Gulag if it'd been Brown.

Last week, I yar mostly being

... In Darzet! Which is in the Wez Gunry and is very nice.
We had weather. It was mainly sunny but a bit chilly. We had fun. We had booze. We had Fish and Chips at the seaside. Well, I had Sossinbatter and the Bread had Pineapple fritter, but you get the general idea. We had curry at a most excellent curry house in Dorchester. It's called Masala but don't let that put you off. Very good food. We also had a 12 hour journey to get there. Oh how we laughed when at 11am we came to grinding halt on the M11 just outside Harlow. We tuned in to the local news and discovered there had been a nasty accident at 8:30am and the road was closed. So it had been closed since 8.30 and yet they were still allowing cars to join the M11.

How efficient of our police.

Being in a huge traffic jam is bad enough. Factor in a two year old in the back seat and you have the definition of hell. To be fair to the little fella he was as good as gold. But obviously he got bored and he'd lose it. I have to admit to losing it myself on a couple of occasions, the pressure was a bit intense. At 3 o'clock, yes that's right Three 'o' clock in the afternoon we finally reached the outskirts of Harlow where our brilliant Police force were happily diverting all the M11 traffic through Harlow Town centre... On a Saturday. How clever!

We thought 'bollocks to that' and headed for Royden in Essex where we hoped to be able to find another way on to the M25. Before that though we stopped to change the little fella's nappy. Poor little mite had been in the same nappy since 9 in the morning. Luckily we'd opted to go disposables for the holiday (we use linen nappies at home) because quite frankly carrying a stinking nappy bucket around for a week didn't sound like a barrel of laughs. We stopped in a little strip mall type place and the little fella had his first ever McShit :D. Poor little fella was absolutely soaked, his nappy had finally given up the ghost so we had to change his vest and trousers but really he'd been so good not to complain about it. Now then, I've not been in a McDonalds for years. Partly because of the food (Burger King's much yummier) but also because of the McLibel case from a decade or so back, when McDonalds went after a couple of Greenpeace workers through the courts. However principles be damned. I was hungry. Gimme a fucking quarter pounder and some chips.

BEST. BURGER. EVER! :D

Mind you, I was so hungry I'd have eaten a horses arse. To be fair to McD's it wasn't a bad burger at all and the staff were fucking excellent. The breadknifes food was going to take a while so they said to sit down with our drinks and they'd bring it over. I've never experienced that in a fast food joint before.

Anyroad up... Royden... We sort of went through it, very expensive. Could we find the turn off we wanted? Could we bollocks! We ended up in Epping and picked our way down to the M25. The rest of the journey was thankfully uneventful. Even around Heathrow it was quiet. Not a suitcase to be seen. But, we finally found our place (in the dark) at gone nine in the evening. We were all shot through. Absolutely brain dead, grumpy and frazzled. And the fucking garage up the road from us had just shot so we had to drive to the next town to get some milk. Gah!

It turns out the whole nightmare was down to these cunts. They'd twocked a car in Twickenham, looks like they may have also burgled the house for the keys, and ended up smashing the shite out of it in Essex. I hope the two cunts that survived feel guilty for the rest of their lives and end up getting very sore bottoms indeed.

Still after all that we had a nice holiday. I might even post pictures at some point.

Leg-End

Well the end may be in sight.
After 16 months of what has at times been quite excruciating pain I finally have a firm diagnosis.

It's taken 16 months 3 GP's, One Urologist, 2 Physiotherapists, X-Rays, Ultrasound scans, and finally a consultation with an orthopaedic registrar. He tells me that I've damaged an adductor muscle where it attaches to my pelvis. It's very very common in cyclists (which I am) and will get better on it's own, but I'm welcome to go back any time and have a steroid injection if I don't feel it's healing fast enough.

The pain's not been that bad recently so I've opted for the time being to see how things go. I've also been told to go swimming as low impact exercise will promote the healing. The thought of me in public in nothing but swim trunks fills me with dread. Add to that the fact that I'm really shite at swimming. I told the doc I'm really uncoordinated, he said he could tell as despite my having very large leg muscles I couldn't push his hands much more than six inches above the examination couch. He was only using his index fingers to push against my shinss and I was straining like billy'o pushing against them. That's a bit crap innit?

I really really don't want to go swimming. But I'm going to have to. Aren't I?

(ooh look, less than a month between posts too!)