The Ice Blog

A long overdue update…

2008-12-02T02:43:00.001Z

My goodness, it’s been, what, four months since my last post. So, here’s an update on what’s happened since then - there’s too much for me to talk about in great detail in one go (plus it’s pretty late), so just the main things…

My girlfriend and I have moved into separate places. We were due to renew our lease on our old place that we rented but I had had enough with our landlady and wanted to move out. At the same time, I wanted to move out into my own place. I’m not the easiest person to live with – I like a lot of space and time to myself, and it wasn’t really fair on my girlfriend. So we agreed to move out on our own a couple of months ago. It’s been ok really – yes I have to do a lot of things on my own now that in the past she would have done – getting the shopping in, cleaning the flat and generally just organising everything. But I’m happy with how things are now, and I only live a short distance away from my girlfriend’s new place. And thankfully my new landlord seems a decent chap.

Work is going fairly well at the moment although it is a bit up and down. Firstly, I’m taking a more senior role in my job, organising training sessions and got sent abroad recently to attend an IT conference for a week – nice. But the project I’m currently on is one that I’ve been brought into fairly late on, and am not really working in much of a senior role. But that happens from time to time – I don’t mind it so long as I get the opportunity for a better role in the not-too-distant future.

Tottenham are as up-and-down as they have ever been. For a while we looked relegation certainties but Harry Redknapp coming in seems to have sorted us out and we're more-or-less on the up-and-up.

Icesave – went bust, thank god I’m in the process of getting my money back – and about to transfer my savings across to RBS who seem to have a pretty decent ISA package.

To be continued…

HMV – thanks for nothing!

2008-07-05T22:10:00.001+01:00

I’m at home this weekend with a heavy head-cold, and my girlfriend is visiting her family this weekend. So, home alone with a headache and cough, I thought I’d put a little post on my blog which (for once) has a happy ending…

I went to our local pub a couple of weeks ago after work with my colleagues. After a few beers (evidently one too many) we headed on to another venue, which was a five/ ten minute walk away. We were just reaching the second pub when we heard someone calling after us from behind. It was the bartender from our local that we had just left, chasing after us. It turned out that I had left my bag in the pub and forgotten about it. I’m terrible with bags and have left one in countless pubs/ restaurants/ buses in various cities and countries. On one occasion I spent half a morning trying to speak Portuguese at a bus depot to explain the situation to try and find my bag with its camera inside.

Anyway. So, this time there wasn’t anything hugely of value in it – just a couple of things for my mum’s PC that I was going to drop off over the weekend – but I was still very grateful to the bartender for running after us and giving it back.

How does HMV fit into this little tale then? Well, the next week I popped into my local HMV in Harrow to pick up a gift voucher as my way of saying thanks. I put a little message in the card, and went to drop it off to the bartender. When I got there, another bartender told me that the first one had left the country the day before!!

So, I was stuck with a twenty-quid gift voucher. I don’t usually buy from HMV, and if I do, it’s nearly always via their web site (cheap, especially with QuidCo, and quick delivery) as I find their stores relatively pricey.

So, the next week I eventually went back to my local HMV for a refund of the gift voucher (with receipt and all) only to find that they don’t refund gift vouchers as it’s not their policy. I spoke to the store manager, same result. Funnily enough, they did ask me first why I wanted to get a refund. I got home and phoned their customer services helpline, same answer (although different reason – apparently it’s because their systems don’t have the capability to do it – what do I care?!). The store did helpfully offer to exchange the gift voucher for products in the store of the same value i.e. use the gift voucher.

So, still stuck with a £20 voucher and seemingly no way of getting rid of it. I chucked away the little gift card and just kept the voucher card itself, and the next day tried to flog it in my office for £15. Eventually that evening I was in the same pub where this whole story started, and was in the process of selling the card to a colleague, when who did I see behind the bar – the bartender that gave me my bag back! The same one that had moved abroad. Apparently she came back to the UK for some unknown reason a week later.

So, a happy ending after all. I gave her the gift voucher, she looked pleasantly surprised and said thanks, and I felt pleased that I had been able to express my gratitude for returning my bag.

I also can’t explain why, but felt somehow smug towards HMV i.e. I didn’t end up wasting the gift voucher on something overpriced in the store that I didn’t really want (I’ll leave that for the bartender to do ;-).

Ice

Abbey – incompetents

2008-07-03T01:47:00.001+01:00

I received that letter today right on time i.e. last day of the eight weeks with the long awaited explanation on their incompetence for what happened to my money whilst it was in their hands.

Except it doesn’t. The letter reads:

“I am writing again with reference to your recent complaint, which we are current investigating [we still haven’t found a decent excuse to justify why our staff and/or processes are so poor].

Unfortunately we are still unable to issue you with a response to your complaint, as the investigation is taking longer than anticipated [we haven’t gotten around to even looking into your complaint yet because our backlog is so big]. We will write to you as soon as the investigation is complete [hopefully you’ll give up expecting a response and we won’t have to deal with it or offer you any compensation].”

It then refers me to the Banking Ombudsman if I want to take up my complaint with them.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical and they’re working hard to find out why / how they lost my money for three weeks. The letter was signed personally by a Customer Service Assistant, after all, so maybe there is some human element involved in getting back to me.

Oh well. I have my money now with IceSave, which is the main thing I suppose. But if I can get some compensation from Abbey, so much the better.

Abbey update

2008-07-02T02:01:00.001+01:00

I got a letter from Abbey 4 weeks ago stating that they are still looking into my issue and I would get a resolution within the next four weeks. Tomorrow is that deadline….

On a similar note (i.e. banking), does anyone know how to transfer money into their IceSave ISA account via standard bank transfer i.e. sort code/ account number? They insist on setting up a Direct Debit with your preferred bank, except I used two different ones. Plus I would rather not set up a DD if I can avoid it.

Back to Moaning (Part 3)

2008-04-29T00:44:00.001+01:00

A quick update. I've received another two "courtesy calls" from Abbey telling me that they are investigating this matter. I guess they are fumbling around trying to find out what's happened to my money (despite my already telling them) or to try to think of a way to get it back in their hands... we'll see what happens. Either way I think I win: If IceSave end up with my savings, I have a good interest rate (6.10% at the moment) plus decent customer service (I hope!). Alternatively, if the cash stays with Abbey, I'll get a slightly better interest rate (6.25%) albeit with the (hopefully slight) risk of further rubbish. I hope that I would also be in a position to claim compensation from them for this.

Back to Moaning (Part 2)

2008-04-25T19:21:00.001+01:00

Phoned Abbey yesterday and asked them for a progress update (without telling them about the letter that I had received). They said that it is being progressed and that the account is closed. I then told them that I received a letter from them saying that it's been transferred to IceSave. They told me that they would chase it up and phone me back within 48 hours.

They phoned me again today to tell me that it's been escalated to a manager who will phone me back with an explanation within the next day or so. Hardly fills me with confidence.

I then phoned IceSave and they confirmed receipt of a cheque, from Abbey, to transfer an ISA across. I guess I should just stay with them as it seems that Abbey haven't got a clue as to what is going on. If they can't handle a transfer (and cancellation) properly, god knows what else could go wrong if they have my money.

Back to moaning...

2008-04-23T23:19:00.001+01:00

After a vacation, the moaner in me is back. But not by choice! My story - this time - begins with my ISA account. I've held it with Abbey for about a year now, but decided to transfer it to IceSave as they gave a superior rate of interest. This was back in early February, I believe. So, I contacted IceSave, who in turn sent a request through to Abbey. A month later and the account hadn't been opened because Abbey hadn't responded to their request. So, IceSave sent a second transfer request through.

A couple of weeks later, I got a call from Abbey asking me why I was leaving. On telling them why, they offered to beat the IceSave interest rate if I stayed with them, so I agreed. They said that within a few days I'd receive a letter confirming this all etc. etc.

A week passed with no letter, so I phoned them up to find out where it was. They replied that they had actually closed the account! I was, obviously, not best pleased since I'd effectively lost all my tax-free savings that I'd built up. They promised to chase up what had happened and get back to me.

To their credit, this they did. I was told that they had indeed closed the account and that a cheque was on its way to me. I was told that I should return the cheque to them with a covering letter, and they would "undo" the account closure.

Today I did receive a letter. It was indeed from Abbey. It reads:

-----------------------------------------

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your recent request to transfer to another provider. Following your request, your ISA has been transferred to: - ICESAVE.

If we can be of any further help, please do not hesitate to contact us.

-----------------------------------------

So it appears that the account was transferred to IceSave after all. I now have to phone Abbey and IceSave to find out what the hell is going on... *sigh*

Losing my wisdom...

2008-04-16T22:12:00.001+01:00

I'm now 33% stupider than I was yesterday as I have just had my second wisdom tooth removed. Fairly quick procedure although my mouth is bloody sore now.

A poll!

2008-04-03T00:01:00.001+01:00

Wow, just noticed that blogger lets you put polls on this site, so I've decided to make one about the Tube and delays. Please answer :-)

Ice

Red Eye Reduction

2008-04-01T23:40:00.001+01:00

I woke up yesterday with my right eye completely red, bloodshot. I thought maybe a blood vessel had burst. My girlfriend had commented that it was looking slightly red the day before, but I didn't bother checking it and slept with my contact lenses overnight (I have the one month "day-and-night" lenses) - this proved to be a mistake. The eye didn't hurt really - a bit dry, but not much more, apart from the redness.

Went to the optician and got saw (rather brusquely, I might add) by a woman who looked at my eye for a few minutes, and then looked a bit confused. She went off to get another colleague. At this point it's fair to say that I was somewhat concerned. Her colleague then examined my eye, and also looked a bit confused.

The upshot was that I may have some sort of infection that's in the early stages i.e. before other symptoms start to show themselves. So, I got some eyedrops that contain some sort of antibiotics. They are painless, but with some curious side effects. Firstly, a few minutes after putting a drop in the eye, I felt a strange taste in my mouth - I guess the liquid working it's way through my head - and spat into the sink - bright yellow. Disgusting.

Oh well. The eye seems to be better 36 hours later, and I have to take the course of eyedrops for a week and then see the optician for another checkup.

In another medical-related news, my teeth are giving me some aggravation - I suspect it's my wisdom teeth. The problem is that they (especially the bottom ones) are impacted. I've had one removed a few years ago, but there's still another top one there - I need to phone the dentists to get it removed but I don't seem able to pick up the phone; I guess I'm just too scared to do it! But I have to, because I've noticed in the past few months that my front teeth are getting closer and closer together; my gut feel is that my wisdom teeth are pushing them all together, so I want to get this sorted out sooner rather than later.

DVD Player update

2008-03-19T02:32:00.001Z

Got the player last Friday and spent the weekend playing with it. Excellent device - upscaling quality for DVDs in particular is excellent, and reasonably good for Freeview - and at any rate better than without the upscaling. Remote works with our Toshiba telly so saved a remote as well. Only job left is to figure out if I can get it hooked up to our surround sound system.

Funnily enough I noticed that on the Curry's website that it is now going for £250 - so I'm doubly pleased about the price that I got it for from them.

OUT - Part 2

2008-03-13T19:34:00.001Z

My suspicions were correct. My sources tell me that a long-term employee has handed in their notice as of yesterday. Management didn't really try to stop them from what I've been told. This person has been working with us for quite a few years (actually a few before I joined) and has, in my humble opinion, gotten a bit stale with us in the last couple of years, particularly after the merger that I wrote about not long after starting this blog. I suspect they'll be a happier person with a new start.

I'm actually quite amazed I've kept this blog going for that long - must be almost three years now. Wow.

Bartering for a new video recorder

2008-03-13T19:29:00.001Z

I decided to get a new video recorder recently. I'm fed up with my current DVD recorder refusing to record on the odd occasion when I desperately need something videoed. I wanted something which had the following features:

Hard Disk recording (and the usual stuff that comes with it, such as pause live TV)
DVD playback (and recording I suppose)
HDMI out
Upscaling of standard DVD to HDTV (and Freeview if possible)
Digital Tuner (i.e. Freeview channels)

In the end I settled on the SONY RDRHXD870 DVD Recorder. Usually I shop around online for purchases, but on this occasion I wanted to see if I could buy it in the high street for around the same price as online. On Currys, it was going for £230. Online on various websites I found it as low as £185 (and as high as £270!). I popped into our local Sony store first to see what price they were doing it at - £240. I asked if they could go lower and match Currys, they said no (even though they supposedly have a price-match promise on the window). So, onto Currys. I found the store manager and asked him about it, explained that I found it cheaper online and, although I didn't expect him to match that price, could he meet him some of the way. After a few minutes, he agreed to drop to £205 - saved £25 there. I was willing to pay a £15 premium to get it in my local store rather than ordering from some shop online - if something goes wrong, much easier to return it. He also sold me an HDMI cable for half price (£10) so, another £10 saved. So effectively I got the player £15 cheaper than was advertised and got an HDMI cable chucked in for free. I popped back into the Sony store on the way home and told them about it - they insisted I must have bought an ex-demo unit or similar, as there is no way that it could be sold under £240. We'll see.

The only fly in the ointment was that the unit wasn't in stock, but should be there tomorrow - so I'll be picking it up on Saturday.

OUT

2008-03-13T00:14:00.001Z

PSV 0 - 1 Tottenham. PSV win 6-5 on penalties. Great performance by us and we deserved to win it - very unlucky not to.

Whilst on the subject of exits, I have a feeling that another person at work will be giving their notice in very shortly - or perhaps has already done it. Watch this space.

Latest Tube Complaints...

2008-03-12T00:39:00.001Z

First moan. Heavy winds in the last couple of days caused a number of signal failures on the Tube. I had a client meeting at work at 10:30 on Monday. I left at around 9:15 when I read a text message from LU saying that there were severe delays due to a signal failure at Kings Cross (I have since heard conflicting stories now about where the signal failure was, including Finchley Road and Wembley Park - seems like basically any junction of any sort to me).

I arrived at HoH only to be told that there were no Metropolitan Line trains at all. I only found this out on the platform though, after I'd swiped my Oyster card, of course. So I walked across to the Chiltern Railways platform where there's a train to Marylebone that runs every 30-40 minutes to a timetable. The next one was due in but a few short minutes, and it duly arrived on time. The platform was choc-a-block and people pushed and shoved their way onto it like school kids. I managed to get on, and 15 minutes later was at Marylebone, where I intended to get a combination of Bakerloo and Central Line trains to work. Except that the Bakerloo wasn't running properly either! Apparently there were trains every 8-10 minutes, and I know from experience that this means that by the time the train reaches Marylebone it'll be packed to the rafter and there'll be no chance of getting on. I asked the helpful LU staff for advice - "Walk to Baker Street and get a Met Line!" - errr, except that the Met Line is out of action, too. Wonderful.

I ended up getting a bus to Kings Cross and walking to work from there. I work near Farringdon, so walked up Grays Inn Road to Chancery Lane and then turned left to the office. I got in just past 10:30, but thankfully had phoned the client at Marylebone to ask them to come at 11:00 instead. Nightmare.

Second moan. I put in a load of claims, but one of them wasn't received. After waiting about six weeks for the voucher, I sent them an email at the end of January asking for the voucher to be sent. I eventually received a reply a full month later, last week. The reply was a baffling collection of mishmash, the upshot of which seemed to be saying "According to our records, your claim was successful. Therefore we must have already sent it out to you and you must have received it." They even went so far as to imply that I must have lost the claim voucher and they can't replace ones that I've lost. Ridiculous. So I've replied back to them demanding a replacement. Watch this space.

On the way out?

2008-03-11T23:07:00.001Z

At work a few people have recently left - one junior manager (let's call them BP) who joined as a business analyst and was shuffled into project management. BP didn't really enjoy it, especially as they had a character clash with the person that they were working with/ managing on their first project (let's call this person TS). After that project, they both ended up together again on the next project. Apparently requests for assistance from BP's boss went unheeded for support and things just got worse. Eventually BP was moved back into a analyst role but then was offered a position to work as a part-time coordinator (not quite sure doing what though!) with reduced pay, no benefits etc., and so BP has decided to leave. I've worked with BP on my current project, as my project manager. BP is no doubt inexperienced but also supported me when required and I felt that they were somewhat harshly treated by management.

Another one out of the door is another junior project manager that's elected to move to a start-up company of sorts, no doubt doing something more challenging for better pay. I'll miss this person, always up for a laugh and a beer or two.

One developer's leaving, again for another company, doing in-house development rather than consultancy. Another one is trying to get a secondment to our illustrious (or should that read notorious ;-) ) US office. Whilst I wouldn't really want to work with some of the people out there, New York's a nice enough city to check out, plus the person in question has recently split up with their long-term partner so can't blame them for wanting to get away for a bit.

I met up for a beer with some old colleagues recently, some of whom are consulting with other (bigger, better) companies, others who are contracting. Obviously contractors get very well paid, particularly within my field - not unheard of for people with in demand skills to get £1000 a day. I couldn't command quite a salary like that, but I could probably double my salary. The good thing - aside from the obvious financial incentive - is that there's zero responsibility. The flipside of that is that you rarely get any real responsibility in the job and end up often doing the grunt work. I guess kind of as a hired gun that's what you expect. As a consultant there are some good things about my job - I get to meet clients and have a real impact on the solutions that we deliver. But, sometimes I wish I could just sit in the office and code away without having to worry about commercial constraints etc. and spend time training up.

Still on the subject of things on the way out, Spurs are playing at PSV tomorrow in the UEFA cup, having lost the first leg 1-0. I'm not particularly optimistic as PSV are no pushover, but we'll see.

Tottenham 2-1 Chelsea

2008-02-25T19:00:00.000Z

Spurs won the Carling Cup final 2-1 against Chelsea (BBC Report). I didn't go to the game, and although I wish I had done, circumstances conspired against me to prevent me from watching it in person. Allow me to explain...

I'm a Spurs Bronze Member. This is basically the "best" member level you can be before becoming a season ticket holder (which you can't become nowadays due to demand except by invitation from the Club when a space becomes available). When tickets became available for the Cup Final, I obviously knew that demand would far exceed supply. Therefore, tickets were allocated first to season ticket holders, who were guaranteed a ticket, and then the remainder to Members. Tickets to Members were allocated on the basis of loyalty points accumulated by going to past games etc..

On the train to Prague, I discovered that the required number of loyalty points to get a cup final ticket was 126. I checked my account details via my work Blackberry and - in an excruciatingly slow page load fashion - discovered that I had the grand total of 124 points. Oh well.

Later on in the week leading up to the Final, my missus had the idea of visiting Brighton over the weekend to see Adrian Legg, plus also just to get away for a couple of days. I felt at the time that it was a good idea - I was so gutted at missing out on the Final I'd rather have been anywhere than home where I'm just a 10 minute tube journey to Wembley. She booked the hotel and bought the concert tickets.

On the Friday I developed a sneeze, which rapidly degenerated into a full blown cold. I got back home and then received a phone call from none other that the Tottenham Hotspur Ticket Office. "We have a cancellation for the Cup Final, Sir!" they explained. Would I like to get a ticket to the final? Yes, but I'd already committed to the missus to go to Brighton. So I turned it down. Even now writing this I feel like a fool for having done it but I know (I think!) that it was the right thing to do. And it would have been unfair on my girlfriend to have backed out at the last minute.

Saturday we went to Brighton and I felt worse than ever. But I made a go of the trip and we saw the gig which, incidentally, was excellent. But on Sunday morning I woke up and told the GF that I had to go home as I felt terrible. So we got a train back to London, via Wembley, just in time to see all the Spurs fans heading to the stadium. I got home around 2pm and watched the game from my room via a dodgy Internet stream that cut out when we scored the winning goal and then came back afterwards.

I'm hoping that I'll have the fortune of actually going to see us win a Cup Final one day - who knows, maybe the UEFA Cup later on this year...

Back from Holiday

2008-02-17T19:41:00.001Z

Just came back from a week's holiday. First few days were spent with the missus' family in Germany. Apparently my German has improved some more, and I'm now able to more-or-less hold a conversation of sorts as long as I concentrate really hard to understand what's being said. My grammar is still as bad as ever.

Spent a day going to the old East-West German border and visited Point Alpha, which is a former US Army base which has now been converted into a museum. Very interesting, plus had the girlfriend's parents to chat to about it, as they only live about 25km from where the border used to be.

Then travelled to Prague for a few days and met up with some colleagues of mine to watch Spurs play Slavia Prague. I had a pretty good time, and explored a lot of the city. Some things surprised me - primarily, the extent of Macdonald-isation that's taken place in the city. Some streets are old (in a good way!) and have real character. But other sections of it have been Westernised so much that they could be picked up and placed in any other major Western city and you wouldn't know the difference. I suppose that's the price of going from a communist regime to a more capitalist one - that the economy has probably improved a lot through tourism etc., but perhaps at the cost of the history of parts of the city? Who knows. People are generally quite friendly and the majority spoke English. I also didn't think that the city was as cheap as everyone made out. Sure, it's a bit cheaper than buying drinks in the centre of London, but not massively so.

As for the actual football - Spurs won 2-1, although to be fair to us, it really could and should have been 4 or 5.

Also spent a day in Berlin, but got there quite late so didn't have much time to explore the city, although I did try out the nightlife and had a good laugh in the process.

Back in the UK now, ready to go back to work. Overall, it was a really good break. I probably did more than I do in a week's work here, but I think I am somewhat mentally refreshed now after the time off and (dare I say it) looking forward to getting back to work. Let's see how long that lasts :-)

Spurs on their way to Wembley!

2008-01-24T01:10:00.000Z

Unbelievable. Spurs have trounced the Gooners 5-1 in the second leg on the Carling Cup Semi Final to get through to the final, played next month. Can't wait.

Knights of the Round Table

2007-12-28T03:35:00.001Z

This is a film that, according to family folklore, I used to watch incessantly as a young child of maybe four or five years old (if that). It's basically a film about Lancelot and King Arthur etc. etc. made in 1953. Two scenes that were my favourites were known as "fighting on the stairs" (a dramatic fight when Lancelot kills five guys on the stairs of his castle) and "the muck" (climatic scene were Lancelot kills the evil protagonist Modrid, falls into some quicksand, and is then rescued by his trusty steed Berwick before he drowns). Apparently I watched those two scenes so much that the V2000 videotape that it was recorded on went "bad".

Anyway. I watched this tonight for the first time since then, maybe 20-25 years ago now, from start to finish, and all I could think about was my Dad; it was basically a film he loved etc. and that I used to watch with him. Even though I was only a child at the time, it brought back all sorts of feelings; probably tonight was the first time in the last few months since he died that I really felt a sharp pang of loss and missing him.

Atchooo!

2007-11-20T23:18:00.001Z

So, it's been a while since I've posted. I'm coming down with a cold, bleh, that's annoying. Work is really getting on my nerves at the moment - I've been working on a particularly difficult project for several months now and every time I think I'm getting to the end of it, my project manager tells me that I need to stay there for longer. I'm working on site as well now. I was promised I'd be off it several times, the most recent date being end of November. I heard yesterday that in fact it would now be the end of the year etc. etc. etc.. Big meeting on Thursday morning to try to sort this out. Fingers crossed I'll be out ASAP.

York

2007-11-13T20:29:00.001Z

Went for a few days to York on holiday with the missus. Had a pretty good time aside from the odd (inevitable) argument. Lovely city, lots of sights and museums, friendly people etc. I'm glad that we went during the week as on the weekend it got absolutely packed with bloody tourists (not like me, of course).

In other news - Spurs get back to winning ways, 4-0 over Wigan. Lovely.

Martin Jol sacked

2007-10-25T22:07:00.001+01:00

Just watched us lose to Getafe in the UEFA cup 2-1 - our first defeat at home in Europe for a long time (30 years or so?).

Apparently MJ resigned/ was sacked before the game:

BBC article

I've heard (and I trust the source) that it'll be Ramos and Poyet taking over by the time we play Blackpool next week.

Berbatov will be gone by the end of the season, no doubt about it.

Extremely disappointed with the state of the club but for some reason I don't know who to blame - MJ, the board (for their games over the past few months), the players - dunno! Very frustrating.

We can also write off this season now. It'll take at least until the summer for Ramos to get us playing the way that he wants.

P.S. Looks like Hughton is on the way out as well... shame if it's true I think.

Football funnies

2007-10-21T19:15:00.001+01:00

Decided to post a few football funnies on my blog. Just because I can.

Football Funny #1 - Harry Redknapp

Harry demonstrates his unique communication skills.

Football Funny #2 - Ian Holloway

Ian tries to describe his teams win in terms of an 18 year-old boy out on the pull.

Home Alone

2007-10-21T18:56:00.001+01:00

So, my good lady has gone back to Germany to visit her family for a week or so. I've had the weekend to myself and have been an absolute hermit. I stayed in the entire weekend without speaking to a single person except for her. However, next weekend is going to be a busy one including going to see the Spurs take on Blackburn (before that we play Newcastle on Monday night on Sky).

In other news... well, not much going on really. My brother has managed to get some monetary compensation from a company that shafted him the day before he was due to start working for them. He threatened to take them to an employment tribunal but when they started receiving letters from the tribunal, they got scared and have agreed to pay him a couple of weeks' wages.

My missus got pick-pocketed the other week - they took her wallet, the thieving so-and-so's. I've had to re-order our credit cards - took a few days but seems to have gone ok now. The police were generally very professional and helpful - well done the Met. Talking of which, this Menezes trial thingy is still going strong (Wikipedia Article) - my thoughts on this personally are that: -

1. Assuming that the men and women "on the ground" i.e. the ones that killed him etc. - were following their orders, and had no reason to believe that he wasn't this wanted terrorist, they shouldn't be liable at all. My understanding is that their job isn't to analyse the information, but to act on the orders given to them from the control room.

However, having said that - I remember reading all sorts of oddities such as the policeman due to be watching the block of flats where the terrorist lived was taking a wee at the time Menezes came out - so didn't have a proper look at him. Or that the Tube station where he first went to was closed, so he quickly jumped back on a bus to go to the next station - the police thought he was trying to drop his surveillance and didn't realise the Tube station was closed.

2. The people that should be under pressure are those in the control room. They had all the information available - if it can be proven that they either panicked or didn't have enough information about who this man was, then they're in a bit of trouble. At the same time - if it had been the bomber and the police had hesitated, you can imagine the uproar that would follow from the public and the politicians in general.

It's a difficult one to judge...

One saga out of the way....

2007-10-15T23:23:00.001+01:00

At least, I hope so. We finally got a replacement washing machine fitted in. Halleljah!

New look and feel

2007-10-15T13:06:00.000+01:00

Noticed that Blogger now has new styles etc. and a webpart-style look-and-feel, so I've taken the plunge and upgraded.

Films, films, films

2007-10-12T02:00:00.001+01:00

Just watched Spiderman 3 and Bourne Ultimatum - interesting combination of films. The latter was far better. Spiderman 3 was - in my opinion - quite poor, and not a patch on the first two. The baddies were not at all believable, even within the Spiderman setting. How can you have a baddy called the Sandman for a start! Bourne Identity was excellent, and had one brilliant fight scene in particular. I'm thinking of buying the books - apparently they are quite different but also very enjoyable.

No Spurs this weekend - England in action in the European Championship qualifiers. Wins against Russia (away) and Estonia (home) should see us through to the finals next summer in Switzerland / Austria.

Liverpool 2 - 2 Spurs

2007-10-08T21:35:00.001+01:00

Went down to an early goal, Robbo partially at fault. Equalised and took the lead in the space of about 5 minutes either side of half time, two identical goals: Robbo hoof, Berba flick and Keane finish. Last minute goal from Torres rescues a point for the scousers.

In other news, I got a promotion at work. This means that I get to take on some more responsibility at work and is a good step forward in my career. It also means that I lose the right to claim overtime any more, which is a shame. But in the long term it's a good thing, I think!

Anathansanashtntnahanstas Famagusta 1 - Spurs 1

2007-10-04T18:14:00.001+01:00

Terrible performance from us. Yet again we've proved that Huddlestone and Zokora are useless together because neither of them goes forward to support the strikers leaving them hopelessly unsupported.

1-0 down, brought on Keane and Bale and within 5 minutes had the equalizer.

Boatang played for the first team for the first team - not a great performance really. Taarabt impressed in the last few minutes when he came on for Bent, got a shot in at least.

Oh well, we go through 7-2 on aggregate anyway. Roll on Saturday away to Liverpool - a heavy defeat looms.

Typical Tottenham

2007-10-01T23:14:00.001+01:00

Well, just watched a crazy Spurs game home to the Villa. 1-0 up. 4-1 down. 4-4 draw.

BBC SPORT | Football | Premier League | Tottenham 4-4 Aston Villa

Absurd game.

In other news: I'm being sent back to the US on work for another week. Joy.

Also contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau regarding our landlady problem.

Landladies - argh!

2007-09-27T22:06:00.001+01:00

The dishwasher / washing machine saga continues. Engineers came over to check them out and confirmed that it would be economically smarter to replace them. The landlady has agreed to replace one but not the other, which I can't understand.

Everything I've read up on states that any appliances that were in the property when we moved in are the responsibility of the landowner to maintain, yet she doesn't think like that - cow.

I'm fuming about this, and thinking of how to get around it. Any ideas?

Spurs 2 - 0 Middlesboro

2007-09-27T00:47:00.001+01:00

Just got back from WHL, goals from Bale and Huddlestone see us progress into the fifth (?) round of the League Cup.

In other news, work is driving me absolutely potty. Client is demanding as ever, unwilling to understand the concept of "technical limitations" and generally just difficult to deal with. Oh well.

Also: Dishwasher and Washing Machine have both broken down simultaneously. Landlady seems to be refusing to pay for the repairs/ replacement of them - I fear that I may have to play hardball with her and simply get them sorted myself and take the money out of the rent at the end of the month.

New York City!

2007-09-26T02:18:00.001+01:00

I’m writing this as I’m flying somewhere (18th September) over the USA between New York City and Minneapolis. I’ve been sent out for work – after dropping hints over the past year or so and seeing various members of staff get trips to Norway, Germany, Switzerland – even Bermuda – I’ve finally gotten one myself. I was hoping to visit my cousin who moved to NYC a few years ago but he moved with his wife to Los Angeles just a few weeks ago.

Anyway, let’s talk about New York and America in general. I’ve never been to the US before, although of course I’ve seen loads of NYC on the telly etc. Most of what I’d heard and read about is true, although not everything. NYC people are generally quite friendly and talkative, although I’m still unconvinced as to how much of it is genuine and how much is just out of habit. I’m talking about people saying “you’re welcome” to every “thank you” etc. – I was pleasantly surprised by it, especially compared to the (what now seems) harshness and impersonal nature of Londoners. Most of the locals here and happy to talk and help you out. Policemen are commonplace on the streets and are generally very approachable. Despite the fact that they all carry guns, I think that I find UK policemen more intimidating!

(As an aside: I've discovered that you can get programs like Word and now Windows Live Writer which are Smart Client applications which allow publishing to your blog from a Windows application. So I now edit my blog on my desktop rather than on the browser, and can put in pictures, video links etc. with more ease than before...)

Going back to the people in general though, I think there’s an air of companionship and willingness to help each other out (at least, in Manhattan where I was staying) – not sure whether that’s as a direct result of 9/11 or whether it’s always been like this though. You are constantly reminded of the notion that NYC is part of the USA; the stars and stripes flag lurks about everywhere. Wherever there are flags, be they real or on TV etc., it’s always double the size of every other one, brighter and more vivid. Americans are extremely patriotic people – in some ways I envy that compared to the cynicism and critical nature of British people – maybe ignorance is bliss? I even think that there’s a bit of naivety and innocence about Americans – they truly believe that the USA is the greatest nation in the world, with the best of everything. Whether this is true or not is obviously open to debate ;-)

Over the past couple of days I did more tourism than I usually do when I visit other cities, in no small part due to the offer of a colleague at work and her boyfriend, who drove me around on Saturday and Sunday evening. But even aside from that, I spent a lot of time walking around Manhattan etc. NYC has a fairly logical grid-like structure which, once I got used to, meant I help relatively confident in wandering around aimlessly safe in the knowledge that I could find my way back (or get a cab) if needed. There’s obviously no language barrier here although I was somewhat surprised by the amount of Spanish-speaking people in the city.

My experience in the US didn’t get off to the best of starts. I got to NYC on Saturday afternoon after an eight-hour flight and a short nap on the plane just in time to get a text telling me that Spurs had just lost the North London derby at WHL for the umpteenth time. The last time we beat Arsenal in the league, if I’m correct, was in 2000 when George Graham was in charge. We won 2-1 thanks to goals from Tim Sherwood and Steffen Iversen, I believe. This time we lost 3-1. I had barely eaten all day – I’d had about four hours sleep and forgotten to ask for a vegetarian meal so had no lunch on the plane, so popped out and got a snack (although I forget what it was – but I must have eaten something!).

The location of my hotel in Manhattan...

I arrived at the hotel and gave the Hispanic receptionist my name. She couldn’t find my details until she realised that I’d been booked in for next week. Thus commenced an experience that was both incredibly frustrating and relieving at the same time: a phone call to Expedia. I had to speak to them to get my reservation amended (because it had been booked via them by my US boss). One number after another sent me around in circles. An automated phone system was of no help – either the system was rubbish or it simply couldn’t recognise my British accent. Eventually I got through to a human being who faxed over a document to the hotel authorising a change in dates of the reservation. After an hour or so wait I was in my hotel room. By 4pm I was out and about the city. I visited a few famous streets etc, went by the river (I think it was the Hudson) and wandered back in the general direction of my Hotel. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pub across the road and through the windows noticed the distinctive Sky Sports News screen and banner. I wandered in and got talking with three older men that were imports from Europe (France and Poland) to the US. They’d been living here for some years now, and all three were Gooners! But, they were very friendly and even bought me a beer. After a few drinks I left and got back to my room, changed, and met up with my work colleague. We went out to the Little Italy for a wander, and then on to a bar for a drink etc. By the time we left it was around 2am, meaning it was 7am UK time, so I’d been up for around 24 hours. I was knackered.

The next day I did more sightseeing, visiting Macys (a huge department store), the NYC museum, experienced the delights of the NYC subway, and then went up the Rockefeller building to view the city. Americans love their superlatives, and it annoys me that they overuse and somewhat devalue them as a result. However, the view of NYC was truly awesome from the top of the building. I was amazed at the number of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings that make up NYC, in a complete circle. It was incredible – just thinking about the amount of effort that went into making this city boggles the mind. However, NYC isn’t just buildings etc. – there’s a lot of greenery and parks etc, plus you have the harbours and rivers on both sides of New York. So there’s quite a lot of variety and things to do. I also visited Times Square and nearly managed to lose my camera. Thankfully I remembered where I left it and nipped back to pick it up.

I left NYC this afternoon (Monday) and am now on my way to Minneapolis for three days of fun and games at a client site to help try and get the project I’m working on back on track – I’m not optimistic and frankly simply can’t wait to get off this project and get onto something else. It was sold using the wrong technologies with a terrible requirements catalogue made up a bunch of screenshots that were drawn by graphic designers with no thought as to what was possible with said technology. Enter me to try to fill in the gaps.

Dad...

2007-09-25T22:16:00.001+01:00

Dad died almost a couple of months ago now. It was, of course, a very difficult time for the family – but also brought most of us closer together as well. In some ways, I have actually found this week or two much harder than I did the immediate time surrounding his death. When he first passed away, I was kind of on autopilot, and simply wanted to get away from everyone and just try to get on with my life. Jewish funerals make it difficult to do this, especially if you are next of kin, as for the week immediately after someone's death, you have to go to prayers every night and are visited by relatives and friends who want to pay their respects. I just wanted to crawl into a hole or lock myself in my room. My girlfriend really helped in that time and over the last few weeks and months of Dad's life. It wasn't easy on her at all – she had gotten really close to Dad and had to deal with his death but without the benefit of many other people appreciating that she was coping with a loss, too.

I was luckier than my Mum, Brother, and girlfriend as I had a job to go back to and that helped me try to get on with things. Ironically, now I feel like I would like to get away from work for a bit and just do something else. Maybe after I get back to UK we'll go away for a few days somewhere. My Mum and Brother have been left with the unenviable task of tidying up the loose ends of Dad's estate – closing down credit cards, getting life insurance policies etc – not really something you'd want to wish on anyone. I've tried to help where possible but it's not easy to do.

Dad was ill from February really, when he was diagnosed. I suppose that I wish I had spent more time with him both then and earlier on – but at the same time I know that I did what I felt able to do at the time. Sometimes I couldn't either emotionally or mentally go to the hospital or visit him back at home once he had been discharged. Once he went into hospital and they started giving him Morphine, he was never the same again. Initially I had hoped that, even if he didn't have a long time left, that he would be able to come home, take the odd painkiller, and then be back to his normal self. Sadly, that never happened – the amount of painkillers that he needed meant that he was either asleep, or when awake, often confused. My mum took it upon herself to care for him, being an ex-nurse. I know that it was very difficult for her – I couldn't have managed what she did. Sometimes I didn't agree with how she dealt with him though. I would tell her what I felt, and she would take it on board for a while – but I knew that once I was out of earshot she would slip back to her ways. She didn't mean it badly – she just wanted to take care of him and do everything for him – and ultimately even wanted to do his thinking and answer for him.

Eventually his condition worsened until my Mum eventually agreed he needed to go back to hospital. Thank god he ended up in a hospice near where we lived instead. The nurses there were amazing. They treated Dad with the utmost respect and were incredibly helpful to us as a family. I intend to write a letter to them in the next few weeks telling them what a great help they were to us at that time.

Now we are faced with the job of moving on, as I've said. It's not going to be easy for any of us – most of all my Mum – but I think that as long as the family stays close and pulls together, we'll pull through.

A little update

2007-06-10T23:01:00.000+01:00

So it's been some weeks since my last post. A brief update then...

Obviously, most important thing is my Dad's health. He's been discharged from hospital and is home now. He might have to go back in for further treatment (depending on the circumstances) but it looks like he'll be home for the foreseeable future. I'm glad at this - I think that I've already spoken about this, but again - whilst the nurses and the majority of the doctors were excellent in the hospital (RFH), the communications between departments (and ultimately the patients) was very poor. On two unforgettable occasions the ward ran out of morphine because evidently they'd forgotten to order more in advance.

Never mind, I suppose, he's home now. I intend to write a letter once this is all over but for the moment I'm happy to let the matter lie.

Other matters... some more positive than others...

- Work is going up and down. The project I'm on now is quite enjoyable and challenging but management are driving me potty. In addition, over the past couple of months a couple of people have threatened to leave (or left and then returned) for improved salaries (as much as 20%). One of them is on more than me which pisses me off. I've spoken to management - whilst these people were actually leaving, they were about to give me a nice raise but now those two people have come back, it's no longer panic stations so they've put me on the back burner. I've now started looking at other positions and am having a couple of phone interviews with them this week coming. Let's see where it leads; my ideal solution would be to stay but for the money I could be getting elsewhere (which is, again, about 20% more than what I'm on now).

- Tottenham had a good end of season and finished 5th again. Let's hope we invest wisely over the summer, sell the players that aren't (and won't be) getting a look in (e.g. Mido, Murphy, Staltieri - don't need now that we have Bale), and go for a top 4 spot. I wouldn't be disappointed with a cup and 5th though. The thing that worries me is that we've raised the bar now and other Spurs fans will start moaning if we don't win the league next year.

- Dream Theater's new album Systematic Chaos is out; it's pretty good although some parts are a bit too heavy for my taste. There are also some great tunes on there though.

- I've joined a couple of social networking sites. In fact three - LinkedIn, FaceBook and Last .fm. They're all not bad at all, I never usually go for these things but I don't mind using these ones - I've not quite found a specific use for any of them yet but I've got the feeling that something will present itself.

- I've upgraded to Vista. It's markedly better than XP and I wouldn't want to go back now, although I have found a few strange or annoying features in it - things that I guess I should expect with a new OS. The video card drivers aren't as good as the XP ones, so my games run a bit slower. Some games aren't 100% compatible. However, it's generally a better OS, with more features and existing features just more streamlined. I'm thinking seriously now about upgrading my PC - I want to get a faster CPU, but my existing motherboard can't get a better one. So I need a new motherboard as well. But the newer motherboards won't accept my existing RAM, so I'll need to buy new RAM. And my existing video card won't fit into a newer motherboard either, so I'll need to buy a new one. So I'm looking at about a £200 upgrade. Hopefully I can flog the older kit though and get maybe £50-£100 back on eBay.

Can't be bothered to write any more - will try to do some more in the next few weeks...

Latest tube fiasco

2007-05-28T02:09:00.000+01:00

Another atrocious journey from the Tube, so much so that I felt compelled to write a complaint to the Tube (in addition to my refund claim). Here is the message that I wrote:

"I boarded a northbound Northern line train at Belsize Park due to terminate at Edgware. My destination was Hendon Central - typical journey time: approximately ten minutes. On boarding, the driver warned us before train departed that train was going to be held on platform for unknown amount of time and that it had been "one of those days". Approximately twenty (20) minutes later we departed - no explanation as to what the delay was - I wonder if the driver himself even knew.

When we did leave, the driver told us that the train was in fact going to now terminate at Golders Green. This was half expected as virtually every time that I use the Northern Line in the evening, the train is prematurely terminated at Golders Green due to late running, so why should tonight be any different.

We reached Golders Green after some delays; the train stopped with no word on the final destination from the driver. Platform indicators stated that this train "Terminates Here". A train on the adjacent platform seemed to be in the same predicament, so after waiting for a few minutes, a load of us decided to debark and presumably use some other mode of transport - I intended to get a bus. As I was leaving the station, I asked a member of staff if there were any trains going further than Golders Green. The chap helpfully radioed and said that there were indeed trains going further - so we all went back up to the platform, just in time to see the train that we were originally on leaving for Edgware!! The station board still maintained that the train was "Terminating Here".

A few minutes later another train arrived, and we got on it. Ten minutes later it departed and we were on our way. Just as we were approaching Hendon, our helpful driver told us "Errr, as mentioned previously, this train is non-stopping at Hendon Central. Please take a southbound train from Colindale back to Hendon". There was no explanation as to why the train wasn't stopping. I thought I must have not heard the previous warning that she made reference to - but clearly it wasn't just me because virtually the entire carriage starting cursing the driver at this exact point. The driver herself seemed quite nervous when telling us about the non-stop - it seemed to me that she had simply forgotten to tell us in advance. There was certainly no warning at Golders Green or Brent Cross.

We reached Colindale and got a train going Southbound - it left approximately ten minutes later. I could hear the same female driver of the Northbound train telling passengers that the delays were due to "incidents" on the Northern Line today. Of course - "incidents"! Perhaps an explanation of what the incidents were might be helpful? A station announcement said that there was a track failure at Camden. The electronic destination board said that there were severe delays on the Northern Line due to a passenger under a train at Camden. Conflicting information, but either way - why does either problem at Camden cause a Northbound train at Belsize Park to be delayed when it's going in the opposite direction? Why does it cause the driver to not stop at Hendon?

When we eventually did arrive at Hendon (total journey time: one hour), I asked a member of staff what was going on tonight. He explained: -

1) A person was indeed under a train at Camden.
2) There were signal failures at Golders Green (heavy rain, perhaps?).
3) The work to install a lift at Hendon means that one platform is out of action on the weekend. I have just checked your website and there is no mention of this in your planned works page.

Can you see a pattern emerging here? Delays I can live with - I've grown used to them after twenty years of using the Tube. I appreciate that you are trying to renovate the Tube with new trains, signals, and tracks etc. However, what is inexcusable is the (frankly incompetent) level of communication and information - or should that be disinformation - that is imparted to the customer. The only bit of consistent information you tend to hear these days is "There is a good service operating on all lines" - which I don't want to be told. If the service is good, we don't need to be told about it! Just tell us if there are problems, and then, tell us: -

1) What the problem is.
2) Why the problem is occurring.
3) When the problem is likely to be resolved.

Most importantly: do it accurately! If your staff don't know what the problem is, rather than make something up, they should just admit that they don't know what the problem is.

If I had known, when I started my journey, that it was going to take an hour to get from Belsize Park to Hendon, I wouldn't have bothered. It wasn't the delays that annoyed me the most - it was the poor communications and information that aggravated me the most. Ironically, this concept of accurate information is something that doesn't need billions of pounds to improve - but I am sure would give an instant increase in the satisfaction of your customers."

My dad has cancer

2007-04-17T23:04:00.001+01:00

Title says it all really. Actually it doesn't. My dad's 69 years old. He's had cancer twice before - 20 years and ten years ago, beat it both times. He goes for regular check-ups etc. but a few months ago started complaining of back pains. Now, he's had a slipped disc for a couple of years and had an epidural to ease the pain for that maybe a year ago (or maybe less). But now the pain returned, so he got another epidural, which didn't help.

Eventually the hospital agreed to do an MRI scan of his back, which showed a "signal abnormality" in three parts of his spinal vertebrae, and this signal abnormality has turned out to be cancerous growths.

By this point, the pain was so bad that my Dad wasn't even sleeping really - but the hospital insisted that it would be a two-week wait to get the results of the MRI scan. Eventually we kicked up enough of a fuss and miraculously two days later they had the results. Then we had to get him into hospital - again, this was fraught with difficulty as they cancelled the ambulance pick up, then denied that they had space etc. - eventually we just took him into casualty and got him into the Cancer ward that way.

Once he got in, the treatment and care he got was fine - the nurses and doctors are caring, skilled, and hard-working; it's just the management upstairs in the NHS that haven't got a clue. IT systems appear to not be used or are not fit-for-purposes; organising ambulances is hard; staff don't give out a consistent story when asked questions etc.

My girlfriend's brother is a lead surgeon in his native Germany and offered to have a look at the MRI scans for us. At this point, we didn't have a clue what was going on as the hospital were running around a bit like headless chickens. Eventually things stabilised and they managed to get his pain under control through a constant supply of morphine-derivative drugs.

We got a copy of the scan (£15) from this hospital and posted it to him. He talked us through it a few days later, explaining how to read the scan and what the report meant etc.. Even then, we needed to wait for the results of further scans to let us know what sort of cancer he had in his back - the initial guess seemed to be a recurrence of the cancer ten years ago (Lymphoma) which was treated with Chemotherapy then.

A CT scan then revealed that he had a small tumour in his lung. At this point, although the doctors were disappointed to find that, they still seemed fairly optimistic and wanted to wait until they had a biopsy (sample) of the growth to tell us more. We didn't know if the growth was related to the one in the spine - it seemed possible, but then again the lung tumour was small (2-3 cm) and my Dad had no side-effects e.g. coughing blood etc., so we thought that they may be unrelated.

My brother and I decided to read up on lung cancer anyway. It made for somewhat distressing reading. Basically it can be divided into two types - small-cell and non-small-cell cancer. I don't fully understand the differences but I think that one of them often spreads more quickly than the other. The prognosis isn't particularly good for either one. A system called TNM Staging is used to measure what stage the Cancer is in; Stage 0 is where the growth is very early, Stage 3 is where it has become advanced locally (i.e. in the area where it exists) and by Stage 4 (the final stage) is where it has metastatised i.e. offshoots of it have spread into other parts of the body, aka secondaries. According to Wikipedia, for people in Stage 4 of lung cancer, the 5-year survival rate is 0-1% i.e. I understand from that that once lung cancer has spread, less than one in a hundred people survive for 5 years.

But we weren't sure of whether the growths in the spine were secondaries from the Lung - they could have been another form of cancer entirely - maybe it was a recurrence from ten years ago, and the lung cancer was in its early stages. Certainly, speaking to my girlfriend's brother, he said that we can't jump to conclusions and that it could be a number of things. One thing he did say though, and I had read this already, was that it is very common for lung cancer to spread to the spine.

The hospital then performed a Broncoscopy to take a sample from the lung. A week later they got the results, which were inconclusive. They then waited a week because some machine was broken and needed fixing before a further test could be made. Once fixed, they used it to remove a sample, and this time it was successful. They also performed a "bone scan", where they injected some radioactive material into my Dad which shows up bone abnormalities. This showed the signal abnormalities in the spine, as expected, but also in the sternum and the skull. It didn't really surprise me that much; based on my initial supposition that the cancer in the spine was a secondary and the lung the primary, it wouldn't be surprising if it had spread elsewhere too. I stress that these were not tumours per se but abnormalities with the bones themselves. My understanding is that the bones destabilise as the cancer cells invade.

Anyway. Today we were given the results from the lung biopsy, and they have confirmed my suspicions. They are sure that it is indeed lung cancer and that the spine and other areas are metastases i.e. secondary cancers. This means that my Dad is a stage four cancer patient, as explained earlier. They have given him a matter of months - although I only spoke to my Mum on the phone today to get the brief details, and plan to go tomorrow to the hospital to find out more.

I think that the most important thing - and this is something that my brother and I said to each other the day that we read about the cancer staging and lung cancer - is that our Dad is kept pain-free and with any luck can come home to spend some quality time with us.

I want to write more in the coming weeks about what happens, and my thoughts and feelings throughout what will no doubt be a difficult time for the whole family.

Ehhh...

2007-04-17T22:50:00.000+01:00

I've not posted for ages on here and have been putting this off for ages but have decided tonight to make one.

The last few months have been a very stressful period in my life for a number of reasons. Work for been piling up as the project that I've been leading for the past 18 months goes live. It's easily the most work-related responsibility I've had and I've been putting in extra hours to make sure it all goes to plan etc. Thankfully so far so good, and most people seem to be happy with it. This is just the beginning, though, and enhancements and fixes to it will keep me busy for probably another year I imagine.

Also work-related, our company is going through something of a transitional period. A lot of people have left in the last few months (maybe 7 or 8) and when you have a department of around 30-40 people, that's a bit hit. The really big one came a couple of weeks ago when a mate of mine handed in his resignation. The company panicked and eventually convinced him to stay but he's managed to get them to agree to hire a few new, quality staff. So that's looking reasonably good at least. I'm even getting involved in doing the interviews.

My girlfriend, after much soul searching and discussion with me decided to pack in her job last month. She started working there last August but soon after she joined, the team she was managing starting changing, her management changed, her co-worked couldn't handle working with someone else alongside her etc. - in the end it seemed to me that she was miserable in the job and we agreed together that she should just quit and look to find something else. She was concerned that I would then be the sole bread-winner in the house but I'm doing well enough to pay the bills, especially with all the overtime I've been putting in lately.

We're looking to move flat. We've been living here for about 30 months now, but my girlfriend can't handle to noise of the flat and it's boiling hot in here during the summer months, due to the direction the flat faces, and that it's directly above a busy road and train tracks. So she's looking for a new place for us, but, it's slow work. Hopefully we'll find something soon but we're in no hurry really.

Also in the flat, just last night the main water pipe into our flat started leaking. So we've had to get a plumber over to fix it all. Our landlady's been cool with it, she will of course pay for it (or try to recoup the money from the property manager of the entire block), but as she lives abroad we've had to organise it all, which is fine, I guess. The actual work isn't done yet but hopefully it'll all be done within the week.

Next post continues this theme of issues in my life...

End of my tether

2007-01-23T20:58:00.000Z

I can't remember being this stressed or f***ed off since I was at Uni and our landlord was screwing us out of £40 a week whilst not providing central heating throughout the winter - and if you've lived in Manchester as a student, you'll know how cold it can get. Especially when your windows aren't double glazed and you live in the front room downstairs.

Anyway - yesterday I got home from work and found a letter from "Collections Direct" , entitled "Notice of Legal Action by Debt Collection Agency". Basically, nPower have asked them to recover the £70 bill that they charged me based on an estimated bill. I spoke to them only last week and was told that there would be no problem to put the account on hold for a few more weeks until British Gas sent through the meter read that I submitted to them.

I was stewing when I read the letter. Today I woke up and phoned nPower to complain. The woman was quite friendly and competent and said that the last record that they have of my contacting them was the middle of December - despite the chap I spoke to last week saying that he'd put some notes on my account to keep it on hold etc. etc. etc. - basically all lies. Again.

The end result is that the woman has now cancelled this debt collection thing - or so she says - and will sort out everything. She gave me her name and extension number so I feel somewhat placated. But I still asked for their complaints department address to demand compensation and vent my anger at them (although I don't know how I'll be able to send the letter - remember that RM's "signed for" delivery isn't even "signed for"...).

I just feel like I haven't got the head for any of this crap any more. No company these days gives a toss about the customer. They send stinking letters without thought or care about the customer, and don't apologise or correct their problems when they are in the wrong. They play the percentages and hope that they can the mickey out of the average member of the public. It's gotten to the stage where I no longer about fighting against the corporation - maybe I should just give up with it all and become a bit more blase about it all.... I don't know.

Post Office - another useless company

2007-01-19T18:11:00.000Z

I mentioned in a recent post that I had a problem with British Gas failing to migrate my account from nPower to them, and got fed up a wrote a stinking letter to them - and that the RM website showed that it hadn't yet arrived but was told on the phone that it would within 48 hours (obviously a lie).

I phoned again this week and made a staggering discovery - "Royal Mail Signed For" isn't actually signed for!

According to the lovely lady I spoke to at RM customer services, when they deliver lots of letters to a single address, rather than get them signed on the spot, they batch them up into a big box or similar, and give the lot to the company. Then, a few days later, they come back and pick up the signed forms.

This is taken from the Signed For receipt that I got from my letter:

"Standard postal service with signature and barcode scanning on delivery. Ideal for items you might need to prove were received, like job applications or legal documents".

But it's not ideal, because RM never got British Gas to sign for it on deliver, and now have no idea where the letter is. They don't even know if they delivered it to BG or not.

Timewasters.

Linksys support - another doomed service

2007-01-12T13:19:00.000Z

My "Linksys WAG54G wireless router and modem gateway" is packing up. The wireless part barely works, so I can't use my PC to connect to the Internet.

I phoned them up and after going through the step-by-step diagnostics with a human/robot from India, was told that they would replace it for me with a new, improved model as it's still under the three-year warranty - result!

So, I fax through my proof of purchase to a number they provide me with, and then wait for them to issue me with an RMA number. Eventually they do (after a few phone calls back and forth) and now I'm told that I must first send my router to Holland before they will send a replacement - so I'll be without Internet access for a week or two...

But, at least they pay for the postage costs - UPS are supposed to email me a link to print out a free postage stamp to send the router. However, it's now a week late. Every time I phone LinkSys I have to fight to make the person at the end of the line understand me. They annoy me so much with their rehearsed phrases like "thank you so much Sir" and "Would you please mind if I put you on hold Sir?" - literally they repeat these phrases word-for-word, verbatim. They are human-robot hybrids.

If I don't get an answer by today, I'm going to ask them to send me the replacement before I send mine to them - this has been going on for two weeks now, pathetic.

That's another company in my black book, then.

The whole world is against me!

2007-01-12T13:13:00.000Z

With my British Gas argument not getting anywhere, I decided to write a length letter to them demanding resolution within 10 working days and claiming compensation for all the lies that I've been told.

The missus' sent it for me via Signed Delivery on the 6th of January. It still hasn't arrived according to RM's track-and-trace website.

So I phoned up today to find out what's going on. First, you get an automated system which asks for the track-and-trace code and then asks what date you posted it on. There's no way to avoid this before speaking to a human being. I presume that all this does is call the same underlying service that the website uses to check if your mail has been delivered - which I've already checked.

Then, it discovered that the mail hasn't yet been delivered, and transferred me through to the human-being queue. After a few minutes of being told that my call is important to them (emphasis on the "is" is mandatory for all such messages), I spoke to some bird who first asked me for exactly the same details that the automated voice had already collected off of me - and then told me exactly what the website had told me - it's not been delivered yet.

I wanted to know is it lost? Is it held up? How long will it take? etc. - she said it's not been lost and "should" arrive in the next couple of days. I know enough about such companies that she's just fobbing me off. But my nPower account is about to become active in the next week or so - at which point they'll start sending me snotty letters again demanding payment...

Energy supplies woes

2006-12-25T01:55:00.000Z

In October I decided, after experiencing yet another price rise at the hands of nPower, to switch energy supplier. All the switching sites told me that for our typical usage (i.e. working couple, out during the day, low gas, high electricity usage) to go for British Gas.

After the issues that I had when moving from Powergen to nPower, I made sure that on the exact date of the changeover, I took meter readings for both gas and electricity, and supplied them to British Gas.

Do I need to bother telling you what happened next?

A few weeks later (after all the "we are sorry to hear you are leaving us" junk mail), nPower informed us that they haven't yet received meter reads from BG so they have estimated the reads for both meters. What a surprise, they were higher than the actual reads (for electricity, only just, but for gas it was a large difference). So I contacted BG and was told the usual "it takes up 28 days for accounts to fully migrate, there's no problem, bla bla bla". One guy pissed me off though - when I phoned up, he said "Errr we don't have your details on our system. Are you sure that you're a British Gas customer??" Argh. I said something like "Oh, sorry - your system doesn't have the details, so I must be imagining it. Of course I'm sure, what do you think?" "Errr - dunno! ". Idiots.

I told nPower to wait for BG to send them final details - no problem, I was told. So - after eventually being assured by BG that it's all being sorted, I waited - and got another letter from nPower saying that my final bill is overdue and I should contact them to sort it. Another phone call, and eventually they agreed to put the account on hold for 14 days to wait for BG. Then phoned BG and after a lengthy call, they admitted that they can't find the original meter reading for the Gas, and that they would contact the original person who took the details and call me back within 48 hours.

Three days later, no phone call - rang BG and asked and the woman I spoke to sounded well annoyed, saying "yes, you probably won't get called before xmas now - I don't know why that person has lied to you, because they know full well that you don't get callbacks at the moment in less than five days..."

To make matters worse, I got TeleMessage from nPower telling me that if I refuse to pay up, they will contact a debt collection agency to recover the money! I phoned up and they said "oh yes, the account should have been placed on hold - but they don't seem to have done it. Sorry!". So now it's hold hold (for real) for 28 days. I asked to get it in writing but the chap said that they can't write out personal letters, just automated system-generated ones. Wonderful.

Tube stories....

2006-12-25T01:45:00.000Z

Can someone answer me this: Why does a signal failure in Moorgate cause there to be delays between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Uxbridge? This is the mystery that I was faced with a week ago. For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, my good lady booked us for a show (Stomp - http://www.stomplondon.com) for the weekend and a hotel to stay over in. On the way back home the day after, we were at the tube station when the absurd "delay" message was heard.
Sorry - why would a delay in Moorgate (i.e. Near the East end of the Met Line) cause there to be delays between HotH and Uxbridge? Wouldn't it affect the stations between as well? Why wouldn't it affect the stations on the other branch of the Met Line - towards Watford or Amersham? I think we should be told...

Another tale - last week I was on the tube home, a Circle line to Baker Street, where I intended to change to the Met and go home. The train stopped between Euston Road and Great Portland Street for a minute or two. Suddenly, I heard a female computerised voice saying "There is a delay on this service. Your driver is contacting ahead to find out the cause of the problem and will be informing you regarding this shortly". "Well done!" I thought - finally, some decent messages - being given information as to what is going on etc. Except that the driver didn't say anything - we just sat there for a few more minutes. Eventually, the driver did say something - "due to engineering works, Gt. Portland Street station is closed after 10pm". Oh well....

Last story - I am pleased to say that my decision to use PrePay on the Tube has been a financial success so far. I don't have the exact figures, but I estimate that I'm spending about £80 a month on tube travel, now that I'm using all vouchers that I receive. I haven't started using the auto-top-up Oyster feature yet but I'm considering doing it shortly.

1-0 to the Tott-en-ham

2006-11-29T22:05:00.000Z

So, back from Düsseldorf this time. My holiday started on Wednesday morning, waiting for a 140 bus to Heathrow airport. I decided to pop over to the Post Office and draw out £100 for the trip and, with any luck also change it at the PO whilst I was there. Unfortunately our Office doesn't open until 9.30 and since I had to be at the airport by 10.15 the latest, I couldn't wait.

I got the bus and arrived at Heathrow with barely minutes to spare, my two mates having already checked in. This is the first time for a while that I've willingly checked in baggage - usually I (a) can't be bothered to wait for the baggage check at the other end, and (b) don't trust the airlines with my bags, ever since they sent my luggage on a return flight from Finland to Denmark instead of the UK.

The flight was fairly uneventful and when we landed my luggage was out quickly; I went on to the arrivals lounge and looked around for the train station and waited for my mates to follow on. Eventually they turned up - but one of them without their luggage which hadn't arrived in Germany! BA said that they would send it on ASAP but since our trip was only two-and-a-half days long, that effectively meant at least one day without clean clothes etc..

We got to Düsseldorf without incident and checked into the Hotel, and then went out to sample the local delights, i.e.. beer and food. We found an small Irish bar and to my delight it was filled with Spurs fans. We got chatting to a few and discovered that the majority of Spurs fans here didn't actually have tickets - apparently as many at 8,000 had turned up (bear in mind that there were only 1,200 official Spurs' tickets available which had already sold out...). Also, we were told that Cologne was the place to be for the game rather than Düsseldorf. By this time we had consumed a fair few beers but then moved onto some bars. The majority of the rest of the evening is quite a blur, except that at some point we moved onto shots of Jagermeister and then some other concoction called Killerpitsch. I left at around 1ish or so and decided to walk home in a drunken stupor. I eventually made it, although it took around an hour (it's about a 15 minute walk normally) - and that was with a map. I dread to think what would have happened without one.

We had earlier gone back to the Spurs/Irish bar and I had shouted myself hoarse, so I could barely ask people for directions - my German is poor at the best of times but in this condition made it even worse. I made it back anyway though.

The next day I woke up with a roaring headache and decided to go for a wander, take some pictures etc. - but it was pissing down, really heavily. I bought some breakfast and then tried to go into town, but the rain was simply too heavy. I bought an umbrella but soon after the rain stopped - typical.

We got a train to Cologne - it annoyed me that I wanted to go to the travel centre to ask for the cheapest ticket (I know that in Germany you can get loads of different sorts of tickets, some much much cheaper than others) but my mates insisted on asking the first person and getting the first tickets available - which we later found out were over double the price of the cheapest ones available. Oh well. We got to Cologne - started raining again - and wandered around. The city was literally packed with Spurs fans, virtually every pub filled with them. I even saw a camera crew wandering around, no doubt reporting of the infestation of English hooligans. We soon realised that the game wasn't going to be shown in many pubs as most of them no longer have big TV screens (taken down after the World Cup, I presume) - so we ended up going back to Düsseldorf, but not before bumping into a Fin who had gotten a Spurs ticket from a mysterious source which he refused to disclose, and also not before we got on the wrong train - the S-Bahn (like a British Rail inner city train, that stops at every station). It took almost 90 minutes to get back, instead of the 30 minutes it took there. Never mind.

We ended up watching the game in a Sports Bar in town; it wasn't packed but there were a fair few Spurs fans there which made it quite enjoyable - more so that we actually won 1-0, and it was a very exciting game too.

Went out to pubs afterwards although I hadn't recovered from my drinking exertions from the night before, so left earlier than the boys (again) but this time made it back to the Hotel without incident.

Next day I got up early, went into town, bought some presents etc. and got back in time to catch the train back to airport etc. - back to UK without much incident.

Overall - had a pretty good time (if slightly expensive but never mind) and discovered that my German actually isn't so bad really - enough to get by in the shops, by stuff, order food, ask for directions etc. and I actually felt quite comfortable there, having now gone quite a few times in the past year or two.

Spurs vs Leverkusen

2006-11-21T21:49:00.000Z

So... tomorrow I'm off to Germany for 3 days to try to cheer on Spurs against Leverkusen in the UEFA cup. I'm going with two friends from work.

Sadly we don't actually have tickets :( The problem is that tickets are allocated two weeks after the fixture is announced and they go on sale. Therefore, if we waited until the allocation period was closed and discovered we had been selected for tickets (demand outstripped supply of tickets for this game - I think around 1,000 tickets available), the prices for suitable flights would have been very expensive.

So we bought flights as soon as the the match date was announced went on sale for around £60 and then applied for tickets a few days later, once they were made available. Unfortunately we were not chosen - although someone did contact me from a newsgroup with a spare ticket but since there are three of us going I didn't think that it was really fair to just go on my own (plus the ticket was £150...).

Anyway maybe we'll get lucky and get tickets out there but I doubt it - we're staying in Dusseldorf and will hopefully meet up with some Spurs fans there - let's just hope the lads put on a good performance as they have done so far in Europe (4 matches, 4 wins).

Oh, here's a tube tale for you. Got on tube today at Farringdon. Train was all stations to Uxbridge. As we boarded, the driver said twice in a particularly slow monotone that due to overcrowding, the train would be passing through Kings Cross station. One person got off. Everyone else just carried on what they were doing. The train stood still for a few seconds, and then the driver repeated himself once more. This usually annoys the hell out of me - he said it once, no-one got on the train in the meantime, so what's to gain by saying it again? But this time I was left bemused, as several people looked around like they'd just come out of hibernation and barged off the train before the doors closed - maybe the tube drivers have got it right in repeating themselves ad infinitum and I've got it wrong?

P.S. Got to Baker Street - was a train on the adjacent platform, probably a Watford. Popped my head out to read the screen - our train was "ready to depart". Driver said "This train is all stations to Watford" (note - originally it was an Uxbridge train). No-one seemed to notice. Train on other platform departed first. Got to Finchley Road - train became an Uxbridge again.

Tube Calculator

2006-11-19T00:22:00.000Z

Here's the a couple of screenshots of the Tube program I mentioned in my last post... if anyone's interested in it let me know...

Metropolitan Line - poor, poor commuters

2006-11-18T23:41:00.000Z

Just when I thought that the Northern Line was the worst one (see my last post), I have come to realise that virtually all the lines are as bad as one another, it just depends on (a) the time of day when you you each line, and (b) which staff are posted on which platforms.

My journey to my parents' on Friday evening was a case study in everything that is wrong with the Underground today: Staff disinformation, lies, incompetence, technical failures, and unreliability.

It began at around 7.15pm when I left my office in Farringdon. It was pissing down and I rapidly walked to the Tube station. On arriving, I saw that the Metropolitan/Circle/District Lines Northbound platform was absolutely choc-a-block with people - way more than even the busiest part of the rush hour, and there was a Circle Line train stuck in the platform, doors closed, going nowhere. No-one was attempting to get on, so it appeared that the train was being taken out of service or similar.

I immediately thought of getting back out of the station and going to another one - say, St Pauls, and try getting to Hendon from there. The problem was that since I'm now using Pre-Pay rather than Annual or even Monthly Travelcards, I was worried about being charged money just for the privilege of walking in and out of the gates.

I tried to speak to the one member of LU staff available and ask him if I was about to be charged for doing it. He seemed irate and busy by all the other customers asking him what was going on. I eventually got my turn, and when I explained it, he tersely said that there was nothing at all
with the service except that the train on the platform was going into the sidings - once that that train was out of the way, everything would be fine.

So I turned around and went back down the stairs - just as everyone else started to vacate the platform and leave! I waited around, and a few minutes later the train did indeed go into the sidings (back the way it came...). I then asked a different member of staff to confirm that the service was indeed OK - he looked at me like I was from another planet and said "No, of course not - there's been a signal failure at Kings Cross!" and walked off, muttering to himself, but not before helpfully offering the suggestion of trying the Thameslink trains on the other platform.

So, I walked back up the stairs, went back to the first guard to confront him as to why he'd told me a load of rubbish - only to hear him telling everyone that there was a "serious problem" on the lines. Why was he suddenly changing his story? Was he just trying to get rid of me when I asked him what was wrong? Was his source of information so bad that he got it completely wrong just five minutes earlier? Or, if he didn't know what the problem was then, why not just admit it then and there instead of telling me that the service was fine?

I then walk across to the Thameslink platform - only to see a Circle line train pull in on the original Tube platform! So, like an idiot, I ran back there and hopped on it just before the doors closed. What followed was one of the most frustrating 20 minutes I can remember on the Tube in recent memory. The train juddered, stopped, and started between Farringdon and Kings Cross (there are no stations in between, it's usually a 5 minute journey), intertwined with helpful offerings from our driver, such as "there is just one more train in between us and the station. Once it has passed through, we can move forward again, although we will stop again before the station".

He then informed us that the train was about to do an emergency stop - they often do this when there's been a signal failure - but two foreigners on the train didn't quite understand what was going on. Someone nearby tried to explain that the train was about to go forward and then stop suddenly (as per the driver's instructions); they appeared to understand, braced themselves - only for the train to go backwards and stop suddenly!

I was severely tempted to loudly ask all my fellow passengers to do me a favour tonight when they eventually got home: make a claim. It takes about 30 seconds on the Tube website (although the link is cunningly hidden) and gets you back the entire cost of your journey provided that the cumulative delays of your journey from start to finish total more than 15 minutes. My brother has suggested starting a chain e-mail instead, something I am considering doing.

Eventually we got to Kings Cross - it was now about 7.45. I scurried off the train and made it to the Northern Line Northbound platform, which whenever I use it, is always packed. It seems that on Fridays, each branch of the central Northern Line section (City or Charing Cross) goes either to Edgware or High Barnet, so if you want the other one, you need to change at Camden. Thankfully, today appeared to be Edgware day, as all the trains on the arrivals board were Edgware-bound, and the scrolling text underneath was advising people to "change where necessary if no through train is shown".

A train arrived after about 4-5 minutes - although I noticed that the destination on the front of it said "Golders Green"! I managed to get a seat, and just as I settled down, I got the confirmation that the train was indeed terminating at GG. The driver reminded us of this several times throughout the journey, and from Hampstead onwards, told us that an Edgware train was directly behind this one.

Credit where credit's due - the actual journey from Kings Cross to Golders Green was relatively quick. However, any goodwill that the Tube had reclaimed from me was lost a few minutes later... at Golders Green, I disembarked and got on the train on the adjacent platform, which was Edgware bound. It left a minute later - but by the time we'd reached Brent Cross, the driver told us all that this train was now terminating at - Colindale!!!! Thank god I got off at Hendon anyway.

The total journey time was about an hour and ten minutes - about double what it should normally take; of course, I will be making a claim for this journey, which brings me onto my report on how it's been for me using PrePay rather than the Annual Travelcard.

I wrote a little program which would calculate, based on how many journeys you typically make a week, between what Zones, how many days holiday, working at home, claim forms etc. you make, which is the cheapest price package for you. Anyway, for me, it suggested that Pre-pay could make me savings of several hundred pounds over an annual card, since I often travel after 9.30am or 7pm, both which make me savings, plus I work at home maybe once every couple of weeks.

I started this experiment on November 2nd. It should cost me around £7 a day - £3.50 each way, which works out at £84. However, due to the above reasons, plus all the claims I had made previously that are coming through now, I put on £40 the card at the beginning and actually have still got £40 on the card now, so in real terms it's cost me practically nothing at all - result!

At least this post ended on a somewhat happy note...

Northern Line - poor, poor commuters

2006-11-14T01:18:00.000Z

On the Met Line to work today, and heard another announcement about delays on the Northern Line.

On the Met Line home today, and heard another announcement about delays on the Northern Line.

Thank god I don't travel on it any more.

In other news - Spurs beat Chelsea after 16 years but then followed it up with defeat to Reading.

Excuses, excuses...

2006-11-02T23:26:00.000Z

Today was the first day I've used pre-pay Oyster for work-related travel. As mentioned already, my travel costs should be as much as 30% cheaper (upto £500 every year) using prepay than getting an annual card.

I was welcomed to this by another poor journey, which ultimately led to another claim being made. I've made five claims this week - one on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings, and two further claims yesterday evening and this evening.

Mon-Wed morning were the usual - slow trains with intermittent stoppages and no explanations as to why. Wednesday evening was infuriating. We travelled on to Wembley Park, at which point I realised that my girlfriend was on the same train as me, so she walked off her carriage and got onto mine, at which point we waited for the train to leave. And waited. We even noticed two slow (read: all stations) trains pass us on the adjacent platform - I even saw someone on the first of one who had stood opposite me on my train up until Finchley Road, but then disembarked to get an all-stations train which was arriving several minutes later.

Several people started looking around after 5-10 minutes and poking their heads out of the door towards the driver carriage to see what was going on. The driver was chatting with some station guard, laughing away - no-one bothered to tell us what was going on. All this time, a recorded (at least, I hope it was recorded - the voice sounded so monotone every time) message told us how to best leave the station and to be wary of pickpockets and ticket touts.

Eventually the station took the courtesy to explain to us that the delay was due to "staffing issues", i.e. the replacement driver was late. Ten more minutes later and eventually we were on our way. No apologies.

Today, I went to visit my family for my Mum's birthday. I was initially going to go via Thameslink but realised that you can't use pre-pay on that, so went via Farringdon on the Met line, changing at Kings Cross and getting the Northern Line to Hendon. Thank god I don't have to use this god awful line any more. The Metropolitan Line might be slow, it might have old fashion trains, but it has two things distinctly in it's advantage: (i) the trains are physically bigger i.e. cube-shaped rather than curved. For someone like myself (6"2), if you get stuck on the outer edges of the carriage, you have to arch your back which kills but a few short minutes. (ii) even at 7:30pm, the carriages were packed to the brim.

At Kings Cross, I battled my way onto the platform. A High Barnet train was due imminently, followed by a train in 4 minutes. Destination? "See front of train". The next train was a few minutes after that, so I decided to take the High Barnet one and change at Camden. It was jam-packed and when it left the station, wasn't able to go faster than 5 or 10 mph - either someone was leaning (or more likely being squashed) against the door thus causing the safety alert to go on the train, or the train couldn't build up speed due to the sheer weight of the collective number of passengers on board.

We got to Euston and then the train just stopped. We started to wonder why this had happened, and eventually the driver told us: "The train in front has been sent in the wrong direction at the junction so we have to wait for it to sort itself out". Cue sighs and laughs on the train. Someone next to me even remarked, "Hmm, it's just forwards or backwards - how hard can it be?". :-)

OK, Camden has four routes, two Northbound and two Southbound but come on, sort it out!

Eventually I got to Hendon just in time to see the majority of the first half of Spurs vs Club Brugge in our UEFA cup match which we ended up winning 3-1 thanks to a Berbatov double and a Keane strike.

Talking of football - looks like we (two work colleagues and myself) won't be qualifying for tickets for the Leverkusen game, but we're going anyway having already purchased flights. Hopefully my missus will be able to phone up the stadium directly and get us some tickets even if it's even the home supporters end.

Latest musings

2006-10-16T01:45:00.000+01:00

So, what's been happening recently?

- Spurs have made a poor start to the season, losing several of their opening matches. However, they have started to put things right recently with a couple of much-needed wins. In addition, we have qualified for the group stage of the UEFA Cup. I'll be travelling to Germany to see us playing Bayer Leverkusen later on this year... a great chance to try out my slowly-improving German without the safety net of the missus.

- I've been learning German using some audio books that a friend gave me, in mp3 format. They are pretty good and you really start to quickly get a feel for the language in terms of phonetics. The thing which I have found hardest in German is the word order - I would best describe it as talking like Yoda in Star Wars, all the time. Slowly, I'm developing an "inner ear" which is telling me what sounds "right" and what isn't... but it's taking a while. I'm on about lesson 50 now - I skipped the first 10-15 but it's now at the stage where I'm picking something up every lesson, and even though I usually still know bit of a lesson already, I'm getting more familiar and confident with it. I even started reading a book in German - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! I was surprised that I could actually make decent headway in it, although I did need help from my girlfriend.

- My annual Tube travel card is up for renewal next month. I have done some calculations and decided that I'll be about £250 better off per year if I go pre-pay on Oyster, for several reasons: -
(i) I work from home maybe once every two weeks, saving me £7 a week.
(ii) I sometimes (maybe once a week) leave work after 7pm. This saves me £1.50 a day.
(iii) I make, on average, one tube claim a week. I currently give these to my girlfriend, but by using them myself with pre-pay, I'll save around £4 a week.

- I got hold of the Vista pre-release, looks well smart. We are hopefully upgrading from XP at work to it by the end of the year.

- Had a look at some of the new .NET 3/ WinFX stuff that is coming out next year - again, well smart, can't wait to start using it in earnest.

- Changed Gas/Electricity suppliers from nPower to British Gas - nPower are pants and BG appear to be the cheapest option for me at the moment.

Back from .de

2006-08-19T11:44:00.000+01:00

Blimey. Just tried logging in and my blog didn't show up - panic stations! It turns out that Blogger are trying some new beta version with different sign ins or something. Anyway, I'm back.

I want to write about the holiday in Dortmund that we went on recently. It was from a Thursday night until early Monday evening. This was the flight that used the infamous easyJet tickets that paid me approximately £200 because of the compensation. The hotel ended up costing £185 or so (and I'm pleased - and relieved - to report that there were no real issues like the last time we went to a Frankfurt hotel) so we effectively didn't pay a penny.

The easyJet flight itself was, in fact, excellent! The planes both left on time, and the staff were friendly, courteous, and down-to-earth - all are criteria which I wouldn't attribute to Lufthsansa staff, who give out tiny sandwich portions without asking if you are vegetarian or not and just sort of chuck them at you.

I should note at this point that we went and came back before the current terrorist threat with the liquid explosives - so we actually were able to take everything through as hand luggage, allowing for a quick deboarding process when we landed.

We got a shuttle bus into the city (£3 per person, takes 15 minutes) and were pleased to see the hotel about 100 meters from the main train station - the NH Hotel. I would thoroughly recommend this hotel to people. Staff were helpful, spoke very good English (not that it matters when you have a native German girlfriend!) and when any issues popped, they resolved them quickly and correctly. The rooms were very large - a bedroom, huge lounge area and a good size bathroom. Probably we didn't need such a big room but since we spent four days there, I'm glad we had a better quality room rather than a poor one.

We then walked about the city centre to try to find something to eat. Dortmund city centre is quite small. It's basically a circular centre, with a main road running all around it - think a small north circular running around the west end. You can basically walk across the diameter of the city in about 25 minutes. There are a few nice sights - churches, fountains, statues etc. etc. and a smallish garden that had rabbits running around freely!

As it was about 11pm, we asked some pubs and bars if they served food but all had finished - but then we stumbled upon something called A La Carte, which is an annual beer festival where different brewers come together under a marquee. Food was also served there. Dortmund is famous for it's brewing, so this is a natural place to hold the festival. It ran from Wednesday to Monday morning, so that coincided beautifully with our holiday.

The people in Dortmund, like most places I have visited in Germany, are generally very helpful and kindly. They are mostly white Germans with a few Turkish people and (as my girlfriend pointed out with some annoyance) a large proportion of Polish migrants as well. I have to say that the most helpful are the German-German people.

Dortmund is still coming down from the high of the World Cup, which had finished barely a month after we got there - the Borussia Dortmund "Westfalen Staidon" (stadium) was used in the World Cup, ironically even in the semi-final where the hosts were knocked out by the eventual winners Italy 2-0. Football banners were still posted everywhere, a few large adverts for products being sponsored by German footballers etc. Talking of adverts, there seemed to be a large of stores willing to advertise their products - the vast majority of them were for two things - fags and Tchibo underwear.

The main reason we picked this weekend to go to Dortmund was because Spurs were playing BVB in a pre-season friendly. Incidentally, I found out later that BVB are actually in massive financial debt and to raise money sold (or leased?) their stadium to Signal Iduna, which is some insurance company I think. We went on the Friday to visit the stadium and pick up tickets. The stadium has good transport links, and the tube goes within a 5-10 minute walk of the stadium. Unfortunately, the ticket office isn't in the stadium, and it took us another 45 minutes to find it! When we did, I let my girlfriend do all the talking. She asked for 2 tickets in the Tottenham end. The silly bitch selling us tickets said that there were just standing tickets available, no seats. My girlfriend confirmed this from her, and so we bought two standing tickets for 10 euro each. We left, but then my girlfriend wanted to go to the loo, so we went back in. Whilst I was waiting for her, some other Spurs fans bought 5 seating tickets in the Spurs end!! So we went back to change our tickets and go two seats about 15 rows back quite behind the goal for 25 euro each.

As it turned out, the day after when we did go to the game, the standing area was packed with Spurs fans, and the seating area was practically empty (so why could we only get tickets at row 15?) Once the game started, we came down to row 2 or 3 and watched from there. It was a pretty good performance and ended up 1-1, Berbatov scoring for us. Whilst some of the players (Zokora notably) were unfit, it was a good warm up to the season (which starts tonight away at Bolton - I predict a 2-0 win for the Yids) and also good experience of us playing in European grounds. Even though it was just a friendly, the home fans packed out the entire North stand - a massive stand that probably holds 30,000 people. The whole stadium holds 80,000+ people (including standing). There were about 1,000 Spurs fans but to be honest, once our goal went in, the BVB fans were pretty silent.

One more note - that night there were reports of fighting breaking out between Spurs and BVB fans. I only have this to say: We were in the city centre wandering around and noticed a couple of police cars going past, but didn't see any fighting. We sat with some other Spurs and BVB fans in a couple of pubs and it was all really pleasant and friendly. From what I've heard, it was pretty much the same everywhere until a few neo-Nazis walked into one pub armed with pepper spray and started kicking things off. Sadly, the German police didn't mention any of this - they just said it was fighting with Englishmen and Germans. The BVB fans in general were pretty friendly and boistrous - except for on the way back from the game a few fans were chanting some phrases which although I didn't understand fully, the ashen faces of the Germans around me told me that they were all embarrassed by these fans. I did catch one "Sieg Heil!" at least.....

We did see some other interesting sights - a museum on Nazism and the SS during WWII, a beer Brewery museum, the largest canal in Europe (actually, that was a bit rubbish because the museum was closed when we got there), a large Zoo... but mostly just walking through the city was fine, there were lots of sights and monuments to see, enough for a long weekend. It's not too expensive either - a main course meal in the centre is typically about 10 euro, i.e. £6, so cheaper than London prices.

I would recommend going there for a weekend break, the flights with easyJet are cheap (very cheap in my case!), there are lots of hotels, various sightseeing and tourist attractions, and the city centre is really nice and not too big. One thing to note: outside the city is just industrial and not really much to see - so I would say make sure you get a hotel within the Wall.

I'll try and put some pictures up - my missus tells me it's easy to do these days on Blogger - we'll see.

Easyjet follow up

2006-08-03T16:01:00.000+01:00

Having posted my fortunate easyJet tale onto MoneySavingExpert.com, I got an email from them that the BBC wanted to interview me for one of their radio shows. It was also included on the MSE weekly mailshot :-)

Unfortunately I only got the email about the BBC a couple of days after they wanted to do interview, because I was in Germany visiting the missus' family and didn't check email until after I returned.

I'm on the way back to .de now, on the infamous easyJet flight, to Dortmund for a few days - and what a strange "coincidence" it is that Spurs happen to be playing there at this particular weekend! With any luck I'll take a few pictures of the Westfalstadion and might try to get in to watch them train.

I'll let you know if the easyJet flight was worth the £150 that I received for it on my return.

Wahey for easyJet!

2006-07-24T17:13:00.000+01:00

My faith in the travel industry has been partially restored, although of course not but LU (thieving sods they are who can't run a decent train service), but easyJet:

I got a flight for me and the missus to visit Dortmund next month on easyJet. On Saturday they cancelled my flight for "operational reasons" (I take this to mean that it was probably under-booked).

Whilst they offered me a free amendment to my flight or a full refund, I wanted something more. I checked the T&C and noticed something about the customer "may" being entitled to upto 250 Euro if: -

(a) The cancellation happens within two weeks of the flight - this was 11 days before the flight, and
(b) The only alternative flights are > 4 hours different from the original (in our case, 12 hours apart).

Phoned them up (found non-0871 number on www.saynoto0870.com - geographical number and completely skips the queue (which was already > 15 minutes at 9.05 am), after some confusion and denials they agreed I would be entitled to the compensation of 250 Euro. Then I realised that it's for two people - so I ended up with 500 Euro or £315.

This wasn't mentioned anywhere in the flight cancellation email and they never mentioned it on the phone - only when I asked them about it did they admit it, and even then they first said that I wasn't eligible for it.

Bearing in mind that the flight only cost about £125 for the pair of us, easyJet have effectively paid us almost £200 for the privilege of flying out with them. Result!

In other news, the weather is incredibly hot here for London standards - reaching 35+ it seems, for several days now. Global warming ahoy. Also - the missus is in Germany to visit her family this week. I go out on Thursday and will return on Saturday.

Laters

ARGH!

2006-07-17T19:48:00.000+01:00

Yet another appalling day on the tubes. Got to Farringdon at about 6.30 - platform chock full. The scoreboard has been defective for a couple of weeks now so it's impossible to know when the next Met is, consequently I just get on the first train and if it's not a Met I just change at Baker Street.

Thankfully a Met line was the first train there - an all stations to Uxbridge. It was packed to the rafters and went took almost 30 mins to get to Baker St. Once we got there, the train got even fuller - a bunch of Italian schoolkids got on but thankfully got confused with the direction it was in and hopped off - before yelling at me to get off the train as well, before realising I wasn't part of their little band of scallywags.

At this point, the train was diverted to become a fast Amersham (I use the word "fast" with great caution here). I suspect this was because fast Ams don't stick out two stations on the way to Harrow, thus cutting down journey time. Those passengers would just have to change at Harrow and go backwards to their station.

15 minutes later, we arrived at Finchley Road. The stationman announced that this was, in fact, a fast Watford train. Cue panicked expressions from half the train. He then changed his mind, and the train become a fast Amersham again.

On to Wembley Park at about 20 miles an hour - since Metronet forgot that in the summer it gets hot, they forgot to carry out essential track replacement work in the spring, thus whenever it gets above 20ish degrees, the trains can't do more than 20 mph. What a joke.

At Wembley, we waited for about 15 minutes. An Uxbridge train pulled up alongside us on the other platform, so a load of passengers did Benny Hills and swapped over. Then, the stationman there announced that the delays were not only due to speed restrictions, but also due to a signal failure at North Harrow on the Southbound branch - why should that then affect northbound trains?? And why would the driver have been telling us that there was a backlog of trains queued up ahead of him?

Eventually we got to Harrow, at which point I was hot, sweaty, and pissed off. The stationman there then told us that the delay was due to "Passenger Action" at Aldgate! No mention of speed restrictions, or signal failure at North Harrow. Just blame it on mysterious action by the invisible man at Aldgate - a station RIGHT AT THE END OF THE LINE, about 25 miles away from Harrow.

I am sick of paying about £1500 a year for a crap line run by morons without a clue of how to effectively communication and operate a train line. This political spin and 1984-esque lying is beyond a joke now.

Bah.

England at the World Cup

2006-06-19T00:07:00.000+01:00

Well as I write this, England have played two games in the group stages of the WC, winning both, scoring three goals and conceeding none - sounds fairly good, except it's been really poor. Why? Several reasons:

1. Strikers. We've taken Rooney, Owen, Crouch and Walcott. Rooney has just recovered (or is still recovering?) from a broken foot from six - eight weeks ago. He wasn't supposed to play until after the group stages, yet Eriksson is so obsessed about Rooney that he played him for a part of our second match and will start him in our next one. Woe betide if Rooney gets injured.

2. Secondly, Owen. He broke his foot around December 2006 and didn't play a full game until the end of the season. I think that at the time of writing he's played six hours of football this year. He's started both games of the World Cup for England, looked crap in both, and been substituted after an hour in both. He's not match fit - which leads me onto the question, if his foot was supposedly healed six- eight weeks ago and he's still not 100%, how can Rooney be 100% if his foot only healed last week?

3. Walcott. He's a 17 year old kid who signed for Arsenal recently. He's never played in the Premiership and played a total of 5 games in the Championship. Arsenal's manager doesn't think he's ready for the Premiership yet, but Eriksson took him to the World Cup - without even having seen him ever play before!!!

4. Eriksson only took four strikers. He left out Defoe and / or Bent, who have both had reasonable seasons (especially Bent). He subbed Owen against Paraguay and who did he replace him with? Downing - a winger, not a striker! Why didn't he use Walcott? If he's not ready to use him, why bloody well bring him?

5. Our performances against Paraguay (1-0) and Trinidad & Tobago (2-0) were poor. Both games we ran out of ideas and Eriksson didn't seem to know what to do. He did okay to bring Lennon on in the second game thankfully but in general I think that the guy is a tit. We seem to play long ball now and don't pass it well.

6. He's playing Hargreaves instead of Carrick, doh.

All in all, somehow we need to improve our game otherwise we'll soon be out of the tournament.

End of the month...

2006-05-28T22:47:00.000+01:00

Well it's May and Bank Holiday as well. Woopee.

I've been working quite late recently, because the project that I'm working on has slipped quite a bit so I'm having to do some extra work to make it up.

Today I went to a mates house to have a jam - first time I've played with other people in months. It wasn't amazing but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I'd never played with any of the other people before apart from my mate (who was on drums) but it was pretty good. They are all very good musicians, maybe I'll go again in a few weeks' time. I'd like that.

The roadworks near the jobcenter have suddenly moves away by a large amount so it seems that progress is actually being made there. It's only taken about six months.

I went to see Clapton the other day in the Royal Albert Hall. To be honest, it was a bit ... ehhh. It started well because we had Robert Cray as the warm up for about 40 minutes. This was a nice surprise, he's a really talented guitarist.

Then EC came on - with a massive band:

- 3 x guitarists (including the man himself) - one was a slide guitarist.
- 1 x bass player
- 1 x drummer
- 2 x keyboards/organs.
- 3 x horns
- 2 x backing vocals

At times the sound got a bit mushy with so much going on. He played some good tunes, a nice mixture of new and old, electric and acoustic. But through the whole gig he didn't say anything to the audience except for "Thank you" - I was hoping for a bit more interaction. I got the feeling that he just was almost looking to finish the gig as quickly as possible - perhaps it's because he has a week-long gig schedule at RAH.

Oh well. I'm off to watch some TV now I think.

Champions League

2006-05-18T01:08:00.000+01:00

Arsenal lost in the CL tonight. It's late here, so I won't go into it in depth, suffice it to say that the best team won - Barcelona - 2-1. Which means if Spurs had won against West Ham last week we would be in the CL next year. Oh well, never mind.

Water supply stopped from 5pm yesterday until 10am today. Customer Service lied about when it would be back - what's new?

Tubes!

2006-05-14T22:09:00.000+01:00

Oh before I forget - the Tube has sunk to new depths in this year. I don't know if it's because of this PPP stuff (I think that's Public Private Partnership...) but it's just crap these days.

From Jan to March, my gf and myself got around £100 of refunds from the Tube for delayed journeys - and I suspect that it could have been even more.

Every week I have at least one or two delayed journeys for various reasons - and they never make sense. Try this one from last week:

Get to Farringdon station to get a Met to Harrow. Am told that there are long delays due to a signal failure at Liverpool Street (which is actually before Farringdon on the line, so by the time I get on the train, it's already passed the signal failure). Train comes relatively quickly, but by the time we reach Baker Street, the train comes to a sudden stop - and then chugs all the way to Harrow. Can someone explain to me why a signal failure 20 miles behind us should affect our ability to drive in the outside at more than 15 mph?

The latest fiasco is that this year, the company responsible for maintaining the track on the Met line have forgotten that during the summer months, the track expands/contracts due to the heat (even mild London heat!). Now, seems to me that "summer" is a regular occurance which can be planned for months in advance so that the work needed to be done on the tracks can be done. But apparently not - they've only realised it now that the weather is perking up!

So for the next few months, whenever it gets hot, we have a speed restriction imposed on the trains. So lots more refunds coming up. By the time that they have finished the track work, it'll probably be Autumn.

Whilst I'm on the subject of refurbishment and repair work - Wembley is still being built. Probably it'll get done by the end of the year.

There's also a load of road/pavement work being done near the tube station. It's been going on for ages and very little progress appears to have been made on it. I intend to start a little photodiary to monitor it's progress, starting tomorrow.

Ice

Sigh...

2006-05-14T21:53:00.000+01:00

So, what's happened in the last month?

Most importantly, Spurs have been pipped to the post for 4th spot in the league by the scum on the last day of the season. Before kick off, we were 1 point ahead of them, meaning as long as we at least equalled the Gooners result (i.e. both of lost/ drew/ won our games) we would be guaranteed 4th spot and Champions League football provided that they don't win this year's Champions League final against Barcelona next week.
However, on the morning of this momentous day, half the Spurs day went down with food poisening. We gave it our best but went down to West Ham 2-1 on the day, whilst Arsenal beat Wigan 4-2 thanks to yet another Henry hat-trick, meaning we have to settle for 5th spot.
I find it incredibly suspicious that the day before our biggest game for years, the team mysteriously gets food poisening. Oh well, the FA hate us and refused to help us out by delaying the game till the day after - sods.
With any luck, Henry will leave the Arse at the end of this season which will hopefully prove that Arsenal rely on him much, much more than they should.

Work wise, things are going fairly well. I'm leading a project with one other person. He puts in teh hours but drives me mad sometimes - he doesn't take the time to do anything properly. About four or five times now he's said that he's "100%" done something when in reality it's nowhere near that. It's getting on my nerves now and I'm debating whether to have a word with someone else in the office about it for advice on how to deal with the guy. He's a really nice guy, but just doesn't seem to be bothered about the quality of his work.

My fitness regime was a dismal failure - I went that once to KM and never went again, because the Apprentice was on at the same time (or near enough). But now that's finished so I have no excuse - I'll have to admit to myself I'm a lazy sod indeed. However, I have a meeting with my old work mates from my last job on the annual treasure-hunt around central London so hopefully I'll get some much-needed exercise then. Last year we finished 2nd (I suspect by a matter of seconds) so with any luck we'll be able to actually win it this year! It'll be nice to meet up with some of my old work mates and see what's happening with them all.

Energy saving continues insofar as turning off devices at night etc.. Have also changed energy supplier (change over should be happening this week) - not a lot cheaper, but a little bit at least.

In the next few weeks I'm going to see Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall - never seen him before and always wanted to, so this is something of a long-time wish of mine being realised. Then not long after that comes Joe Satriani at the Hammersmith Apollo - should be a good gig.

That's about it. Was going to go to see that Body exhibition (the preserved bodies without skin etc.) but had a row with the gf so ended up staying in instead.

Laters

Quick update

2006-04-02T23:01:00.000+01:00

1. Spurs were on course for European Champions League but a defeat this weekend against Newcastle (3-1) means it's now going to be very difficult; Arsenal will probably take 4th place in our place.

2. Girlfriend's mum came over to stay for the week. She went back today. Surprised that my German has actually come on enough so that I could understand a fair amount of what was being said (although I still can't talk for toffee).

3. Work is going ok, relatively interesting project at the moment - see how long that lasts though...

4. Energy saving thing was a waste of time - bills didn't go down at all even with all that stuff, plus prices have risen in the meantime so I don't notice any difference in the bills anyway.

5. Made an effort to start some sort of fitness regime - consisted of me going once so far to Krav Magah training a couple of weeks ago; hopefully I can be a bit more enthiusiastic about this and do some more exercise.

L8rs

The method

2006-01-16T21:34:00.000Z

So... I have done some maths and have calculated that by doing a few simple things, I could reduce my bill from ~£300 to around £150:

- Firstly, we won't leave the A/V equipment in the lounge on overnight or when we're out of the house. By that, I mean we won't even leave them on standby, but just turn them off from the mains. As they are all connected to the same multiway adapter, it's just one switch, but it's a start at £20 over the year.
- In the spare room, I will turn the PC onto standby (or off) every night and leave it off during the day on weekdays. Usually it's on at night either for file transfers or indexing etc., and during the day so that I can remote desktop into it from work to check mails etc. This way I save money - around £65 a year - and don't use my PC so much.
- In the bedroom, we can do the same for my girlfriends PC, plus turn off the monitor more often (it was using the screensaver instead of power saving) plus turn off the router when it's not being used. This will save around another £70 a year.

Once that that's underway, we could go even further e.g. by not turning off my PC and my speakers from the mains, it would save another £15-20 a year, plus not using the standby features on the A/V equipment ever would save some more.

Hmmm... I smell a little X10 .net project coming on!

Sparfox!

2006-01-16T21:32:00.000Z

After a long while out, I am back - to save money. I came across this book the other day whilst mooching in the WH Smiths in Heathrow airport, something like "Save Money with Martin Lewis" basically just a book about how to be a tight bastard... actually, it's quite smart - just a sort of method and list of tips and tricks about how to beat the system, which is right up my alley.

My first goal is to reduce our electricity bills....

I have bought a wattmeter and used it to calculate the electricity costs of all A/V items in the flat. We live in a 2 bedroom flat and are out all day yet our electricity bills are ~£300 a year. I have split the list into three sections: The lounge (TV, DVD etc.), our room (girlfriend's PC and the router) and the spare room (my PC).

What I have done is individually recorded the power requirements of all items in both "On" and "Standby" modes, then estimated the average times a week that the devices are on, and from that calculated the running costs of them. I got the price of electricity from my last bill (£0.06636p at the time of writing, Powergen EnergyOnline DualFuel).

I have found that for the lounge equipment, the "standby" costs are about 4x that of the "on" costs! This is because we always leave four of the five items (TV, VCR, DVD Player/ Surround Sound, Freeview, and DVD Recorder) on standby when not in use. The Freeview box uses the same amount of electricity when On as when in Standby! I have estimated the total cost per annum at £33. Bearing in mind that the total cost for the flat is £300, this is only about 10-15% of that.

My room next - and I've found a BIG source of energy usage; my PC. When in use, it uses 150W of power; combined with the monitor @ 75W, this totals around 225W. The worst part is that, since I use my PC as a server from time to time, I leave it on practically 24/7. My PC alone is costing me £87 a year i.e. almost a third of the annual bill! The monitor, when connected to the PC (it draws power from them by means of a pass-thru to the wall) draws 24W - even when it's turned off! I suspect that the PC's power supply doesn't distinguish between the monitor being off and on standby, and just draws the standby power from the wall even though it's not necessary.

Our room is a similar story - my girlfriend's PC is on most of the time, whilst we have a broadband router which is on 24/7 so that either PC can connect to the Internet whenever required. Again, the PC is a large drain on power - 125W for the PC itself and 85W for the monitor. Also, whilst my PC has a proper "standby" mode of just 4W, hers stays running at 55W... fascinating.

There are a lot of items that whether on or on standby, they draw a similar amount of power e.g. my speakers (24), the router (19-16W), and the freeview box (16W).

I have decided to draw up a plan to cut down on the inefficient usage in the flat and see what I can save...

Eric Roche - RIP

2005-09-15T17:23:00.000+01:00

Last Tuesday Eric Roche passed away after a suffering from cancer for about a year or so. He had battled against it and seemingly beaten it but it came back with a vengeance and I read on his website last week that he had passed away. Born in America, raised in Ireland, and earning a living in England, Eric was one of the finest acoustic guitarists I ever saw play. He was a real talent and played with a unique style filled with intricate rhythms, hummable melodies and thoughtful harmonies.

I remember reading Guitar Techniques some years ago when I was at uni - must have been around 2000 or so. At the time I had an electric guitar or two and my sisters classical guitar. I used to read GT and learn all the rock tunes, fusion stuff etc. but I remember one day trying to play one of the acoustic tunes in the magazine (Eric had a monthly column in it) and being hooked. A few weeks later I had spent the better part of £600 on a brand new Yamaha acoustic. Nowadays I play acoustic more than electric, in no small part due to those tunes I learned from his column.

I had the opportunity to take lessons from him a few months after graduating, but various circumstances on both our parts conspired to prevent that happening (although if I had made a real effort I probably could have made the journey once a month). I saw him a couple of times in concert and was planning to attend one of his week-long schools in the next year - but sadly now I won't have the opportunity to do that.

Even if you don't play guitar, I would strongly recommend you listening to some of his tunes - believe me when I say a real talent has been lost with Eric's passing.

Football

2005-08-18T10:09:00.000+01:00

As I sit here in front of my PC, it's ten past ten. Sun is shining outside, and it's quite hot inside. I'm not going in to work today (or out to work, as I'm still working in Essex) because for the second year running I've got Pharyngitis - basically a very bad sort throat that feels like you are eating glass every time you swallow with ulcers down the back of it. I've been on anti biotics since last Friday but still got the damn infection.

Last night England played Denmark in a friendly and lost 4-1. Unbelievably bad performance in the second half, notably from goalkeeper David James. But also Glen Johnson was crap at right back. Thankfully this was just a friendly and it virtually assures Paul Robinson the number 1 spot for the forseeable future.

Back to domestic matters, Spurs have started the season pretty well, with a 2-0 away victory at Portsmouth (someone we haven't beaten away from home for 50-odd years). In the last 20 years I can't remember a squad as strong as we have this season. We've had first teams that have been roughly as good (compared to the rest of the league) as today's team but the squad this year is excellent - basically we have two quality players for each position. I am more optimistic than ever that we'll get into Europe via the league this year.

Our landlady has offered us another year here but for another £50 a month. Originally it was £75, I said no, so she has come down to £50, and I think we'll take it - can't be bothered with the hassle of moving and it is a very nice flat.

I'm off to make a hot cuppa now so catch you later.

Travelling...

2005-08-09T22:48:00.000+01:00

So, I'm still working in Essex on-site at a clients. My day usually consists of a leisurely45 minute trip from Harrow On The Hill to Liverpool Street (although this is usually longer - the official time from thetube.com is around 35 minutes), followed by another 45 minute journey on a "big" train out to the East.

If you remember how much I moaned when I just took the Met line into town, imagine how much worse it is now. During the last month, when the Met line (and the Circle, Hammersmith and City, and Piccadilly lines) were at least part-suspended, my journey was:

- Met Line from HoH to Finchley Road.
- Jubilee line from Finchley Road to Bond Street.
- Central Line from Bond Street to Liverpool Street.

OR

- Chiltern Railways from HoH to Marylebone.
- Bakerloo line from Marylebone to Bond Street.
- Central Line from Bond Street to Liverpool Street.

After that it was as usual, big train to Essex.

Typical journey times are between 90 and 120 minutes. Last week it took nearly 3 hours though, due to a jumper at Gidea Park, suspending the entire southeastern line. I can get a slow train from Liv Street to Brentwood - this stops 11 times, and takes around 40 minutes. Alternatively I can get a fast train from Liv Street to Shenfield, and then take a slow train back one stop, to Brentwood. That evening I elected to go home in the latter manner, so I took a slow train east from Brentwood to Shenfield, and awaited a fast back into London. However, once I got out there, the jumper did his thing and I was stuck there. So were loads of other people. Most were quite polite, but one posh woman pissed me off patronising the station attendant asking him what he was going to "do" about it so I asked her what exactly he could do, run down the track and pick up the body parts? Eventually I got a cab to Upminster, took a train to West Ham, took a Jubille to Finchley Road and then a Metropolitan to HoH. Got home at around 10. The only silver lining is that I'm charging my company two hours overtime a day for the extra travel. Haven't seen a penny of it yet, but hopefully will get it all in this months' pay packet. Hopefully.

Today was another fine example of what is wrong with the public transport system - communications. I got to Brentwood station and was debating whether to get the slow all stations to London or the slow out to Shenfield and then get a fast one in the other direction. A slow train to London came, but as one was due in the other direction a minute later, I opted to wait. 10 minutes later said train actually arrived - with no clue as to why it was delayed. Eventually got to Shenfield, just missed a fast train to London, and had to wait another 25 minutes for the next one - no reason given why there was such a big gap between trains. Got to Liverpool street, got a Met line to HoH. At Baker Street, the train waited for a good 10 minutes, opened and closed the doors 3 times, and eventually left the station. It must have gotten 10 meters inside the tunnel, at which point it stopped, made some unnerving creaking sounds, and then shut down. A few minutes later, the driver made an announcement that was utterly unintelligible in a strong non-English accent. Cue confused looks between all the passengers around me, who mumbling agreed that they didn't understand a word of it either. Must be the low-quality, high volume speakers that they use on the trains, I thought. Soon after, the driver came wandering down the carriage, so I stopped him and asked him what was going on. He said the same thing, and once again I didn't understand him. He wandered off, and everyone around me looked more confused than ever. "Now I know why we couldn't understand him" mused my fellow commuter. It wasn't the speakers on the train that didn't work, just the fact that the guy could barely speak English. I'm not being right-wing here or xenophobic - I'm only first generation born in UK - but for gods sake get someone that can talk proper English on the trains. And this guy bloody earns more than me as well! And gets more holiday, free travel for his family etc...

God, that was a long moan. I'm off now to fill in another tube claim form.

Until next time.....

Interviews...

2005-08-07T19:48:00.000+01:00

So, job interviews. I've only moved company once since I graduated - it was the right move at the time for me and I've no real regrets about moving on, as I've learnt a hell of a lot since then. Financially I'm probably no better or worse off than had I not moved, but my career prospects are much, much better now.

The main reasons I'm moving on is that since the merger, I just have a sort of dread about coming into the office - fed up with the huge amount of red tape, large number of junk emails from the rest of the "firm" about missing files, client details, or about electricity blackouts in Bermuda (I kid you not). I've been working offsite for the past few months (since May) and actually quite enjoy it there (apart from the journey), and don't actually look forward to coming back to working at the office, which tells me that sometihng is wrong.

However, I'm also unsure if I should be leaving since I am picking up skills and expect to get a decent pay rise in the next pay review, which is in October. But I could get both of those elsewhere, so I'm not entirely sure what I should do... but I don't mind looking around to see what's out there.

I had one job interview, for an American IT company out in the sticks. That was a great company and the interview went fairly well - had I been given an offer I probably would have taken it. Completely flexible working hours, table football and table tennis, great benefits package etc., and very good job prospects. The only area I came up lacking was the technical side of things - most of the questions were about algorithm design and complexity theory - stuff I touched on at Uni but not since then. Some of the questions were fine, others I just didn't know. Ironically the management interviews were fine.

Second interview was a complete waste of time. I knew within ten minutes of the interview starting that it wasn't for me - the department I would have joined would have literally just been me by myself, and one other guy (apparently a guru) in America. No test team, no formal procedures - just me coding user interfaces, no database exposure etc., so my responsibilities from what I'm currently doing would be cut by about 50%. The first interviewer guy was fine, then I had a the technical interview with the guru, an Russian in America. Barely understood him, but all he wanted to know about was, again, bloody complexity theory, big "o" notation and suchlike - questions that you would get out of a book and prove very little. I think just one question about .net, which is what the job was about. I was a bit surprised by the sorts of questions - especially as they had little relevance to the job spec. Unsurprisingly after I finished the tech interview, they told me I wasn't really what they were after - I wasn't bothered but annoyed that I wasn't given a proper tech interview (even though I would have said no to any offer anyway...).

Third interview is ongoing at the moment. Had one interview so far - got there 15 minutes late but never mind. The first part was a sort of technical test, where I sat infront of a laptop and had to do some tasks to prove my skills, except the test wasn't properly set up so I couldn't do it - they apologised and just skipped that out and went on to the main part of the interview. Quite gruelling but went quite well, I was able to answer most things that they asked. I'm having another interview with them next week.

Again, even if I got an offer there, I'm not sure if I would take it but would definitely consider it seriously.

Right, contact lense is playing up so I'm off now, back later.

Back - again

2005-08-04T23:13:00.000+01:00

Aaaaaaaand... after a long delay I'm back.

Since I've last written a fair few things have happened in my life:

- Had three job interviews. Two unsuccessful, one is going quite well and have a further meeting with them next week.

- Still working in Essex. Spending around 3-4 hours a day travelling, usually not getting home before 8pm.

- Got my parents a new TV.

- Barely been out, due to travelling to/ from work.

- Footy season starts soon - looking good for Spurs!

As it's 11:15pm now I'll sign off, but I'll be back to detail the above in the coming days. Adios.

Terrorism back in UK

2005-07-09T18:20:00.000+01:00

Well, what can you say? I suppose I wasn't extremely surprised at the attacks that happened a few days ago in London. I was on my way into Liverpool Street, about 15 minutes behind the bombs. I got as far as Baker Street when we were herded off, at first due to signal failures, and then due to "power surges". In 20 years off using the underground I've never heard of a power surge on it - so I was suspicious from the start.

I realised that there was no way for me to get to Liverpool Street and on to Essex (where I'm currently working on-site) in a reasonable time so I tried to get into my normal offices in Farringdon. Police and LU staff maintained that it was just a power failure at this stage - despite my seeing loads of police cars, fire engines, and ambulances whizzing past.

Like an idiot, I walked from Baker Street towards Kings Cross along Euston Road (I think). I got just past Euston station when police stopped me and cordoned off the entire area. They told me no-one will be going in towards Kings Cross now. They still maintained a power surge was the cause.

Eventually I wandered back towards Baker Street and another policeman admitted that two bombs had gone off and there was a fire in one underground tunnel.

I got back to Marylebone as quickly as possible and took the first train that I could out of town towards Harrow.

I have no doubt that the emergency services did great on that day - it seems really organised and efficient. However I can't understand why they maintained this ridiculous story of "power surges" etc. - was it to avoid a panic? Because if that is the case, I don't agree with it because people continued to go straight into London, instead of going away from it. People like those that got on the bus that blew up at 9.45; they may have not even gotten on it had they had known that there was a terrorist attack in progress in London.

I hope that we catch these people that have done this, but I'm not optimistic to be honest - and there will always be another fanatic around the corner ready to blow himself up for their cause. Unfortunately I doubt that London will ever be completely safe from these sorts of attacks - the sooner everyone else realises that, the better off we'll be I think.

Train woes

2005-06-21T23:38:00.000+01:00

Absolutely appalling service of the Met Line on Monday.

Firstly the line was basically non-functional in the morning - I waited for a train from Harrow On The Hill to Wembley, every train that arrived at HoH was supposed to go to Wembley either (a) allowed us to board and then after a 5/10 minute wait told us that it was in fact terminating at HoH, (b) terminated immediately at HoH, or (c) was too packed to use. I couldn't even use Chiltern Railways service because the platform there was also packed to the rafters. I ended up walking to Harrow & Wealdstone and getting a train from there into town.

In the evening, the train was fine until Baker Street, after which point it simply crawled along at a leisurely pace until Harrow, stopping at every Jubilee Line station along the way (presumably waiting for a green light). Two Jubilee Line trains even overtook us between Finchley Road and Wembley Park - if you have ever travelled on either lines before you will know that between FR and WP the Met Line goes direct, whereas the Jubilee trains stop around six or seven times. Even with those stops the JL was still way quicker.

Terrible...

Quick update

2005-06-20T21:03:00.000+01:00

Now that I've finished with the holiday stuff, I can write a bit about what I've been doing since then.

Work: Working in Essex at a clients. Ninety minute journey MINIMUM each way. Today took a grand total of around two and a half hours, since the met line was suspended. Oh well. At least I'm getting paid overtime 2 hours a day for this (or so I'm told...). The actual work is quite fine - stuff I'm learning about, in a managed way, and quite enjoyable - better than I'd expected. In fact, slightly worryingly, I'm finding myself enjoying it more than I do when I'm back in the main offices.....

I went to see a few old friends from my LTSB, where I used to work about 18 months ago. Things have changed a little bit there but a lot of people still seem quite unmotivated there. But they have great drink ups there! It was good to see so many people there that I hadn't seen for ages and I was glad for the evening. I also am happy I left there because I know that I learnt a load of things since I left that I wouldn't have got had I stayed there.

Tubes are still as crap as ever here - three significant delays in the last week alone.

Weather was baking this weekend, quite nice for a change. I visited my brother and my parents and had a pleasant time.

Have a job interview on Friday with a company for a new role. I had a lengthy phone interview with them and they have asked me to come in for a more detailed interview for the day. I am not so confident on getting it but then I thought that they wouldn't ask me in for the full interview so you never know. I intend to write a little piece in the near future on my thoughts about job agencies and have a good moan about them.

Oh well, I'm off now to fill in some claim forms.

L8RS

Back... (Part Four)

2005-06-20T20:35:00.000+01:00

OK - been a while since the journey but I'll try to briefly recap on what happened - apologies for not spending more time detailing it but I'm knackered after another terrible day of journeys on the Tube.

Day Seven: Wednesday

Started the day well - left relatively early for the trip back to Fulda to drop off the missus' brother's car back at his flat. Put in the new Dream Theater album that I bought yesterday - quite heavy, but not as heavy as Train of Thought, and more progressive elements akin to their earlier stuff. It seems a really good album, some great riffs and time signature stuff.... anyway.

A few hours later on the notorious Autobahn and we were back in Fulda to drop off the car. We started arguing about the map reading; eventually, the two of us managed to find the flat and dropped off the car - by this time we weren't on speaking terms. We ordered a cab and got back to the train station and got the train to Frankfurt.

Eventually we arrived there at around 5pm and started to look for our hotel - the hotel Elber. My girlfriend insisted on navigating so I followed her around aimlessly. We left the station, walked south (I think?), straight into the red light district. We walked left, then right, then straight ahead etc.. We must have passed every hotel in the surrounding area except for this hotel Elber. After around 30 minutes of this we were hot and tired, at which point I noticed in the distance the neon sign ELBER in big vertical letters. We approached it and noticed a sign next to it: NITECLUB HERE with an arrow pointing underneath it. Oh great I thought, we'll sleep well tonight... but worse was to come - as we reached the hotel I looked around and noticed we were right back where we started - in the middle of the red light district. As if to emphasise this, two prostitutes were standing right outside this brothel of a hotel. My girlfriend took one look around and said words to the effect of "We aren't staying here!". Can't say that I blamed her.... So, we wandered around to find another hotel, only to find that all of them were fully booked out that night. All except for one: a five star hotel on the outskirts of town. So, off we went! We tried to get a refund for the original hotel but they weren't having any of it, so we lost out there too - thankfully (and not surprisingly) it was probably the cheapest hotel in downtown Frankfurt. So we got to this five star hotel, checked in - massive room, well more like apartment - and unpacked and showered. Two TVs! Also a swimming pool but I had no trunks to try it out, shame.

We left for a walk after a while, and went for a bite to eat. The restaurant we picked was quite unforgettable. We picked one that seemed quite nice, except it was totally empty, except for three British people chatting amongst themselves, one of which seemed to be a waiter. We picked a table near the back, and waited for him to serve us. After 10 minutes I gave up and we moved to the front of the restaurant, at which point an old woman came out to take our orders. We picked whatever we picked - I can't remember what, and I can only assume that I am subconsciously blocking as much as I can of the place - and soon after the first course came. Then my girlfriend noticed something moving in the corner - I thought maybe a spider, but no - it was a mouse, looking like those ones that the lizards eat in that old 80s sci-fi/ horror series V. This cheeky chappy ran around our table, took a sniff, and buggered off. I was speechless. My girlfriend called the waitress, who then took a look around, and said "well, I can't do a lot, I can't see it now" and disappeared. Then against my better judgement, we decided to stay. Food itself was not so bad, but towards the end of the meal the V Mouse appeared again, walked nonchalantly up to my feet and then scampered off in the direction of one of his no-doubt-many hiding places. We didn't leave a tip and I felt physically sick afterwards. I got an ice cream to help me forget the last hour or so.

Day Eight: Thursday

And so, our little trip comes to an end. Briefly - got up, got a cab to the airport. Struggled with the Luthstansa automated ticket machine, which is presumably designed to aid customers picking up their tickets and allow staff to do other, more important things (like, er...?). Despite this, the machine was surrounded by no less than 5 staff, all of whom spoke worse German than I (which is saying something) and didn't have a clue about how to use the machine. One of the staff was a strange little woman from somewhere in America who even knew me well enough after 1 minute of helping to fix the machine to call me "baby". They also hadn't found my book, so that's lost now I suppose. On to the flight - after the fiasco with the tiny sandwich on the way there, things couldn't get any worse I thought - but in fact they did, because they only had Ham sandwiches here, so I got absolutely nothing for the in flight "meal". I made a sarcy remark to the gf, who had told me that I don't need to phone up Luthstansa to book a veggie meal because "every flight has a veggie option". She responded in kind, and shortly after we once again weren't talking, so we ended our holiday on pretty much the same terms that we started it on.

We got separate buses back, and I got home at about 9pm.

All in all a very good holiday, my only real regrets that my German wasn't better and that I didn't have a digicam (something I have now rectified for future excursions).

Tschuess.

Drat...

2005-06-14T22:36:00.000+01:00

Someone apparently has hacked into my blogger account and removed all my posts. Thankfully I kept copies in Thunderbird so I was able to restore all the posts. I'll finish off my holiday log in the next few days and fill you in on what's happened since we got back... two words: "job" and "interview"....

laters

Back..... (Part 3)

2005-06-10T22:35:00.000+01:00

Day Five: Monday

Off to France! We drove to Strasbourg, France which is about 100 km away from Karlsruhe. It was a bit strange just driving from one country to another just like that - signs all change etc.. Strasbourg is quite a lovely little city - nice tram system, lots of shops etc. and a river runs through it so you have some boat trips etc.. A lot of the architecture is quite classical in some parts of the city, yet in others just around the corner it's quite metropolitan and modern. I tried out my school French and failed miserably! Never mind.

I continued my search for a simple, cheap, watch but again failed to find anything that took my fancy.

I took a couple of pictures of this big Cathedral in the centre of the city and the river, I will try to publish them up here if I get this Hello thingy working properly...

So, we wandered around the city for a while, it was pissing down all the time, but we went for a bite to eat at some cafe. I ordered some sort of fish - eventually it arrived - it was a bloody fish, head and tail and all!!! Got the girlfriend to remove the head and tail and fillet it before I tucked in. Was quite nice although I had the head in the corner of my vision for the entire time. I recalled One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest when one of the guys plays around with a fish on the boat and eats the eye...

After all that we drove back to Germany via a little Ferryboat service, how quaint! The weather was absolutely terrible by this point, pissing down. When we got back to Karlsruhe we stopped off to pick up Elmar's car which was being repaired. I got into a short discussion with the mechanic about F1 racing. He informed that that Damon Hill was the greatest ever GP driver. My question of what about Michael Schumacher was greeted with a snigger and the response "He is the very biggest w***er ever.".

Weather perked up after this and we spent the evening looking through some holiday snaps that Elmar and his dad took of their trip to Italy, on a bloody great big OHP. Quite enjoyable actually, although by the time we reached the last set of slides (in fact, a bit before that...) I was already ready to fall asleep.

Day Six: Tuesday

Relatively early kick off, into the city to mooch about and try to find a cheap Digicam. Didn't find one at a spectacularly cheap price so I left it. Girlfriend managed to meet an old friend of hers. I got more and more frustrated at my lack of ability to understand their German and not able to interact in their conversations. Afterwards we went back to the house for a while and noticed a huge traffice jam... it seems that someone on the motorway somehow drove over the central reservation and onto the other side, killed a motorbike driver and then drove into a truck. Both surviving drivers were in critical condition when I last checked... god knows what speed they were all driving at.

Came back into town for dinner later on once the traffic had eased a bit, had a drink or two, then came home again.

More to come (just two more days but full of amusing tales nonetheless...)...

Back.... (Part 2)

2005-06-10T17:35:00.000+01:00

So, where were we? Oh yes...

Day 3: Saturday

So, the wedding. We left nice and early, supposedly to be there by 10.30 (kick off was 11) to help the parents unpack the car of food etc. for the after-ceremony reception. However, although we saw the rest of my girlfriend's family come by the front of the castle where the ceremony was, they drove past to find a parking space and never came back! At about ten to eleven we went in, realising that they had gone in via another entrance.

The wedding wasn't a church-thing, it was a registrar affair, quite small - just fifteen or twenty people for the actual ceremony but was very nice nonetheless, in a beautiful castle. It lasted around 15 minutes, during which time I managed to give the entire family a giggle by standing up at the wrong point, hoho, how amusing! Oh well. Afterwards I had a few glasses of champagne and giant pretzels, so I felt a bit better for it. I felt sorry for the registrars who seems to just read the same speech for couple after couple - he must get bored of it after a while. Oh well, it's a job I suppose.

Went for a lunch with the family after this at a restaurant at which I had a "real" black forest gateaux, yummy! People were amazed that we actually call it a Black Forest gateaux in England. Then we went home. We took Marcus' car for the rest of the holiday, to be returned at the end of the trip. I got on quite well with the family I think, and most of the other people were very friendly to me and curious about me etc. - a couple of arrogant people (no names, of course!) who just blanked me but there you go.

Day Four: Sunday

We visited my girlfriends parents in the morning. We spent about twenty minutes looking for an open flowershop beforehand, and after eventually finding one I picked up a small pot of yellow flowers. Then, to the parents. This went quite well, I had a very interesting discussion with my gf's father about aquariums and fishes (considering how bad my german is, I considering this quite an accomplishment). By the end, I was even told by my gf's parents to call them by Du rather than Sie (this is basically saying that one can be considered as an equal rather than as Sir etc.). We eventually left at around 2 or something like that, and set off to Karlsruhe, which is in the South of Germany, near the Schwarzwald (Black Forest).

Up until this point, as mentioned previously, I found most Germans to be quite pleasant and friendly people, talkative and open. However, once Germans get onto their Autobahn (motorway), these rules all go out the window and a new breed of German appears whose sole philosophy is "everyone for themselves". Aside from the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road, things are further complicated by loads of rapidly changing speed limits - sometimes you can go through a single stretch road of maybe 1km and have five or ten different speed limits in it. Of course, the main speed limit on the autobahn is that there isn't one. I think we drove along at as much as 190km (120mph) and there were still people shooting by us, who must have been doing around 150 mph at least. At these sorts of speeds, you would think that drivers would give each other a wide berth from each but apparently not; the German's love of efficiency even extends to saving space on the roads, so much so that they think that a gap of just a meter or so between you and the car behind is sufficient braking distance in the event of an accident - if the gap is much bigger than this, there is always the risk of a car on an adjacant lane suddenly moving into it (without indicating of course - saving on the battery life maybe?). I was pleased to get off the motorway for a break after a couple of hours. This proved more amusing than I thought. They have little "break spots" on the motorway - little more than sideroads maybe 50 meters long adjacant to the motorway, with a couple of tables to sit by and eat, plus a generous amount of trees and grass to let you have a piss if you feel the need to. I can't imagine you spending more than 10 or 15 minutes here, but just in case you were to fall asleep on this little sideroad, they have a no-entry sign for the entrance that you just came onto (if the cars whizzing by at 200+kph wasn't enough of an indicator...).

We got to Karlsruhe by around 6pm having made a couple more stops. Evening at our friend Elmar's house was very pleasant, we had a nice pasta supper before going into town to try a few beers etc. - but I was way too tired and couldn't finish my last sweet-beer.

Enough for now, back with more later...

Back.... (Part 1?)

2005-06-10T01:08:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm back from holiday in Germany where I have been for the last eight days for my girlfriend's brother's wedding plus a bit of travelling about to see her friends and family etc. So, an account of what I got up to for the holiday:

Day 1: Thursday 2nd

The day got off to a bad start with my girlfriend and me having an argument first thing in the morning, and by the time we got to the airport we were barely talking to each other (but the other people in the airport had fun watching us argue in public). We went our separate ways to cool off - she went for a fag and a coffee, I went to buy four books for £25 including the Asti Spumanti Code, a parody of the oh-so-popular Dan Brown book "The Da Vinci Code".

So, having made up with one another, we headed off to the boarding lounge and got on the plane - a Luthstansa one, who have been in my bad books ever since they cocked up my flight to Brasil resulting in a near-48 hour trip five years ago. Oh well, maybe they've improved since then? Well, the take off was awful, more like a roller coaster than a plane, easily the most uncomfortable take off I've endured since I started using planes - not that I've used that many but I know enough to know that this was a bad take off. Things got worse from then on - I settled down to read said parody of the Da Vinci Code, which as it turned out I found really funny, but no sooner than was I getting into it than a baby just across the aisle started whining and didn't stop until we landed, around 40 minutes later. Never mind, at least I'll have some lunch to tide me over - except Luthstansa's idea of lunch is a tiny glass of a juice of your choice, plus the TINIEST EVER cheese roll, EVER. Probably just a few inches in circumferences. Anyway the landing was just as bad as take off. As I got off, I noticed that someone had left their bag on the plane, and I pointed this out to one of the plane staff. However, in my eagerness to do a good deed for the day, I forgot my bloody book on the plane. I only realised this after getting a fish burger from the airport mcdonalds.

The fundbureau (read: lost and found department - incidentally this is the only phrase that is shorter in Deutsch than in English) said that they didn't find any book and we should try again in a few days. Fair enough.

We then headed off in the direction of Fulda, which is the town where Marcus lives and is getting married. This should have involved a short train ride from the airport station to the main Frankfurt mainline train station, and a longer (1 hour) journey from Frankfurt to Fulda via a "big" train. German trainlines don't give a discount for getting return tickets, so we just got two singles, totalling around 55 euro. I'm pleased to report that the Germany S-Bahn is just as bad as our London Underground. Trains are even more infrequent - every 5-10 mins - although at least they don't pretend that they are more frequent than they really are. Once on the crowded train (after I had negotiated opening the doors, which was more complex than it sounds) we got in the tunnel and just waited for 15 mins. Eventually - maybe 30 mins after getting into the tube station - did we get to the mainline station. The ICE (mainline) train was also delayed by a few minutes, in which time I wanted to take a piss, only to find out that it costs 50p to use the toilets here - crazy. So I held it in and waited for the train to arrive. ICE trains are much, much nicer than UK mainline trains - making our standard class (even on the fancy new Virgin ones) seem really inferior. You get much more legroom and huge, comfy seats. Apart from the passengers that inhabit these trains, who are typically arrogant old men that ignore you unless you speak German or moan at you or your girlfriend if your luggage comes within a 3 meter radius of them (under the premise that it invades their legroom). We got to Fulda and without too much difficulty found the Hotel. I passed a small watch/ jewellery stand on the way and had a look for a cheap watch but nothing got my eye.

We showered and changed in the hotel before meeting Marcus and Simone. We had a lovely dinner with them and wandered around the city center of Fulda whilst sampling some of the beers on offer. Fulda is a quite beautiful city, with contrasting areas - the outer section is quite a typical small european city - largish, square buildings in grid-like formation etc. - quite drab. But the center is much nicer, old-fashioned with cobblestones, lots of cafes with outdoor eating areas, pubs, restaurants, and plenty of shops etc.

There is also a lovely big castle with surrounding grounds, which is where Marcus and Simone were getting married on Saturday.

Day 2: Friday 3rd

Got up early to explore a bit of the city plus try and get a digital camera. Managed to explore, failed to buy the cam. The shop selling them seemed a bit dodgy and just trying to flog any old cam to us for what my instincts said was a high price; I was later proved right because at an Internet cafe I checked ebuyer.co.uk and found them to be maybe 15-20% cheaper. Weather was very nice. The Internet cafe was quite unique - run by someone of middle-eastern extraction, he had set all the PCs up to be in Arabic, including Internet Explorer - so that even the MSN toolbar went from right to left and the MSN read "NSM"... and he'd set the PC up so that only the administration could change this. So whilst I struggled with the PC, my girlfriend went to have a haircut at a place around the corner. Then I needed to take a dump, so I wandered off to find a dirty toilet. Having done my business, I then discovered that there was hardly any toilet roll. I then economically wiped myself as clean as possible with what little material was available, got out, and found about 25 loo rolls right outside the door - doh.

We then came back to the flat, met Marcus, and visited the little village where he has purchased some land and will buy a house. Very beautiful area, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests and such. Afterwards we went back to his and Simone's flat for dinner, where my gf's family promptly showed up! I had never met them before, and only spoken to her mum on the phone in broken German, so I was a bit nervous... but it actually went quite well (how badly could it have gone, they don't speak English and I barely speak Deutsch!). After all that we went back to the hotel to prepare for the wedding on Saturday.

Right, that's enough for now, I'll do some more later.

Auf Wiedersehen.

All good things...

2005-04-24T16:56:00.000+01:00

Well, just had a week off work and did very very little, relaxing. Went out here and there a few times but nothing major.

In other news my sister is having a baby this weekend so I'll be an uncle very soon hopefully :-)

L8RS

Ice

New Moanings

2005-04-08T21:03:00.000+01:00

Tired after a long day at work but just a quick message to fill you in on some moans.

First, builders. Apparently there is a crack on the outside of our flat - around several inches wide apparently. So builders have been called in to investigate. I received a letter on the Thursday evening directly before Good Friday, saying that from tomorrow there would be building works on the flat, but didn't say why. Oh well. Next morning at around 8am I was woken up to the sound of builders swearing, dropping hammers, drilling etc. This went on until around 11 or 12. I phoned up the company that manage the property, eventually got hold of some idiot and moaned a bit. The next day the same thing happened. And the next day.

I eventually found out from the concierge chap that there is a crack several inches wide in the block of flats going all the way from top to bottom, and they don't know why. But why the hell did they have to do all the work on Easter weekend? The scaffolding is still up as well, god knows when they will take it down. Idiots, ruined the whole weekend.

I also gave to make another tube refund for today's return journey.

OK, that's all I can think of at the moment, I'm now off to watch TV and try to enjoy the weekend. Adios.

Argh!

2005-04-06T00:28:00.000+01:00

Couldn't even claim a refund on the tube journey (see last post) because the tube website is so crap, they are evidently in the process of re-designing it and the page that submits the claim form crashes when you hit submit. Gahhhhhh!

The Post with no Title

2005-04-06T00:16:00.000+01:00

And so I return after a break from the blogging. Filling you in on the details since last time: -

Brother is still gainfully employed and I'm hopeful that he'll stay now.
My HR meeting was pretty pants, and I've written an email moaning about it to a boss but not plucked up the confidence to send it yet. Basically they aren't giving me anything.

On a brighter note, my payslip seems to have gone slightly wrong and I got an extra fifty odd quid after tax this month. So wahey!

Work in general is just the same like last time. Great new policies at work include opening up an browser with the company homepage EVERY TIME YOU BOOT UP THE PC. Bearing in mind that my work PC died last week, and it took them three days to repair it (they don't have any other PCs that are really powerful enough for us developers, see - just good enough for accountants), I've been rebooting a lot lately. Another one - I needed a specific website unblocked from the work firewall for work. This website was one that sold Java games. Helpdesk take my request, and the conversation goes something like this:-

ME: I know that it's a game website, but i need it for work purposes for development.
THEY: OK, I'll put in a request.

[one hour later]

THEY: Oh, this is a game website, what do you need it for?
ME: *sigh* It's for development, work purposes etc.
THEY: OK. Well, the team have gone home for the day [it's just turned 4pm], so they'll do it tomorrow.

[one day later]

MY BOSS: Helpdesk said that you want access to a game website? Why? They told me that they don't really know what it's for and want me to OK it...

[one hour later]

ME: Where's the unblocked website?
HELPDESK: Oh, the chap who does it has gone home, he'll hopefully do it tomorrow.

Absolutely shite! On a more interesting note, the bomb squad came around to investigate a suspicious VW car parked outside our building. There was some debate in the office as to whether it was a Golf or a Polo, but I was more interested in watching the policemen in gasmasks dance around the car for a good 30 mins. Then after that they decided it was the wrong car and danced around the adjacent car for another ten minutes - I took a picture with my mobile phone and will try to "attach" it to this blog after I finish writing it; here's hoping. We weren't even allowed out of the building during all this time - exciting stuff eh? The only disappointment was that the car didn't have a bomb in it and liven up my day even a bit.

^ The gasman - or is it the Fly - tries to attack the car.

Actually I take that back - that day was quite good since I was hotdesking onto someone else's development PC whilst they were away and had a good laugh on that floor, some nice people there.

In other news, I'm sending back my old DVD player for a full refund and for just £25 more getting a new DVD player with a surround sound system - can't beat that can you? Quite looking forward to trying that out, but I know that there will be some problem or other.

Final thing of the day to end on: a good moan about the Tube. This morning is a typical example of LT confusion and disinformation. I arrive at my local stop Harrow on the Hill, having negotiated the road works surrounding the station and bus station next door. An all stations Baker Street train is just pulling in, so I run up to the end of the platform to get a seat (plus at Farringdon that's the end where the stairs are). I get on, at which point the platform bod says: "Fast Aldgate service arriving on platform six". So I hop off and wait on the opposite platform. The all-stations Baker Street train leaves. I wait for a few minutes, and then a few minutes more. The "Fast" train finally arrives, and I get on, along with everyone else who thought that this train would be quicker than the other one (remember the Met line has two tracks in each direction so you can overtake the slower trains :-). It waits a couple of minutes, then the driver from some foreign country says something in barely understandable English about engine problems. Another all-stations train parks itself on the other platform, and whilst we all debate whether to wait here or get on that one, it promptly leaves after waiting maybe 10 seconds with its doors open. We wait a few more minutes, and eventually our "Fast" train leaves. We get to Baker Street ages later, at which point the driver abruptly mutters "Train will terminate here, sorry". So I was no better off than had a got on the first one I actually did get on. In fact I was worse off, because I got into work late thanks to that rubbish.

And now I'm off to fill in a claim form! Moans for next time: Builders outside my flat and Powergen.

Bye

Ice

Bah

2005-03-22T21:40:00.000Z

Just found out that my brother has been told by HR that he is unwanted at the company - funnily enough though, his boss says that he wants him to stay, so mixed signals coming out. I have my meeting with HR tomorrow regarding my contract and any issues - not really optimistic about it but there you go.

Started looking at job search websites this week, some decent positions available for better money than I'm on now - not sure whether I really want to go for them though, certainly not straight away.

Not really much else to chat about, just pissed off with work (still).

Oh, delays on the met line again today so I will claim again for money back. In fact I'm going to do that right now.

Ta ta.

we're back

2005-03-20T19:20:00.000Z

Yoyo,

Fixed my PC by buying a new motherboard, fitted it today. I had a pretty good weekend but quite hectic. Friday after work went out for drinks with workmates and my girlfriend and her sister, who was visiting for this week.

Then yesterday I went to see Spurs beat Man City - didn't play well at all but got the three points, which is the main thing - and then went to the local pubs with the girls and my bro and his housemate. Something caught my eye on the way home - there's no Metropolitan Line into town on the weekends until May, due to engineering works at Wembley Park, so we have to get the Chiltern Railways train in instead. On the way home we passed some stations where they were engineers - Kilburn, Willesden Green - but saw no-one at Wembley. Even more annoying is that out of maybe the 25 people I saw on the tracks, maybe two of them seemed to be working. The rest were chatting, sitting down, or in one case, sleeping in a forklift truck with feet up on the wheel. What the bloody hell are we paying for?!

This morning my girlfriends sister was going back to Germany so we were going to take her to Heathrow - but unfortunately my girlfriend had a migraine so I went by myself. Her sister doesn't really speak much English but we were able to muddle through with the aid of a pocket dictionary and my basic German that I've picked up over the past year or so. Dropped her off at Heathrow and then thought that I could pick up the motherboard that I bought on eBay. Got to the place and then waited for a bus back to the tube station - for over 45 minutes. Ironically, at the bus stop was one of Ken Livingstone's Big-Brother style posters: BUSES ARE GETTING BETTER! Like hell they are. On the bus stop, the bus I was waiting for was supposed to come once every 15 minutes or so. I can accept 20, even 25 minutes. But 45 minutes is taking the micky. When the bus finally came, I asked him how long is the usual wait for a bus here; he just replied "have you seen the traffic back there?" Traffic my arse, there were hardly any cars coming through the road for those 45 minutes. The problem was that he drove so bloody slowly and spent more time chatting with his mate on the bus than driving, arse.

Anyway the weekend is now pretty much over, the PC is pretty much working again, Coronation Street is on in a minute and I'm going to go watch it.

L8RS

Just a quickie

2005-03-17T22:35:00.000Z

Just got back from the pub with some workmates. The only news worth mentioning: -

Debbie debbie debbie our office admin has been made redundant. Our secretary Felicity is apparently also on the way out.
I figured out how to mark emails in Lotus Notes which are shown in the preview pane as "read".
There is a second stairwell with another set of toilets on every floor.
Spurs lost to Charlton 2-0 last night. This seriously impacts our chances of making Europe this year....

So, 2 and 3 have had a positive impact on my working life, whilst 1 and 4 have had the opposite effect. All in all I would say that the overall impact of these four points combines is probably negative. But I'm going to see Spurs play Man City on saturday, so let's hope for better things then.

Tchuess

So it begins...

2005-03-14T19:36:00.000Z

Well, first day at the new offices... to be honest, I'm not positive about it.

The day started off reasonably well but went downhill from there - got up quite early, not tired etc. Got dressed with plenty of time, got to Harrow On The Hill tube station and a fast baker street was waiting. Fast = good, Baker Street = bad, but under the circumstances it was ok because I was meeting my brother at Finchley Road so it was fine. However, as the doors start to shut, I realised that I'd left my phone at home, bugger.

Got to Finchley Road, brother not there yet. Waited a while, then went on to work. Eventually got there on time (for once), 9.20 on the dot, for our induction. Had to actually wait until around 10ish for it to start though - not a good sign.

The induction was pretty dull - the usual rubbish about this that and the other, but what was prevalent is how little the company understands the sort of staff it has bought on. They are an accountancy firm who have a small IT Consultancy subsiduary (different name and all to the parent firm), and it's in this subsiduary that we've become part of. However, throughout the entire induction they yapped on about being part of the "firm" , how important billing to clients is etc. etc. and even talked about us getting our chartered certificates - what's the point...

Next up was the office. I'm in the best position - right in the corner so no-one can see what I'm browsing etc. - except that I can't browse anything worthwhile; all webmail is blocked; I can understand them maybe blocking for accountants who don't spend their day on the PC but for developers what's the bloody harm? This once again shows the "firm's" lack of understanding of what software developers appreciate in their job , i.e. flexible working hours, responsibility, trust, and dress down code. Oh, and this company don't use Outlook and Exchange - no, instead they have wonderful Lotus Notes 6.0. What a pile of poo - you can't even mark an email as read without actually open it up - at which point it opens a new "tab" a la Netscape/ Firefox web browsers, in front of your inbox. So even if you have the preview pane turned on, and the email is just one line, to mark it as read I have to open it, wait a second or two for Lotus to sort itself out, and then close it down again.

At lunch before we went to the pub to sample the local hostilery, we all wanted a slash. We work on the third floor. This floor has a ladies toilet on it (literally, just one toilet). The floor below is a gents, again literally just the one loo. Unsurprisingly, with over what i'd estimate at around 200 people in the building it was busy. First floor - another ladies loo (didn't see if it was taken or not). Ground floor - disabled toilet. Basement floor - another women's toilet! So just one, i repeat one, mens loo between god knows how many people, on three floors. Fourth floor had a mens toilet too but some sod was reading the paper in there so i had to hang around for ages for a free toilet. What fun.

To make matters worse, Spurs lost to Newcastle yesterday 1-0 despite absolutely dominating the game. Ref had a howler of a game, two blatant pens and a goal disallowed for no reason other than Gardner is a tall bloke so it must be a foul if he heads the ball.

On a brighter note I finally had a bash of Starcraft with my bro and his flatmates. Lost the first in doublequick time because of gary and his infamous tactic: "I will make balloons and nothing else and beat you all through sheer brute force". Second map I did much better on and beat all four of 'em, ho ho.

So, to sum up - I hope to god work gets better, maybe this is just settling in stuff.

the weekend

2005-03-12T20:08:00.000Z

I'm writing this from my girlfriends pc since i have broken mine (i think). The usual round of hand-me-downs and PC upgrades has commenced, with me at the start as usual. I got a new processor for my PC, but in doing so somehow managed to break the motherboard, so I'm sniffing around on eBay for a replacement one. My brother gets my old CPU, who gives my girlfriend his old one (which was once mine as well, many moons ago). This might give me some more pluspoints for my girlfriend since her PC will be hopefully quite good then ;-) My parents neighbours will get my girlfriend's current PC.
I also got a 19" monitor from work this week, since we are moving offices and all the old stock will either be trashed, given to charity, or thieved.

Yes, we have finally left our current offices and start in the new ones on Monday. Induction @ 9.20am, shirt and tie (boo, hiss). I still haven't signed my contract until several issues are resolved with it - hopefully this will be done in the next few days.

Oh, and before I forget. It seems that the original promise that all staff will be taken across to the new company isn't going to be possible, and that the admin staff and all going to be made redundant. What a surprise...

Spurs play tomorrow against the toon army in the fa cup quarter finals. That'll not be an easy match but I am hopeful of a decent result, with a bit of luck this should see us into the semis. Manure and the scum won today so there's a more than even chance that we'll be playing one of them.

I'm off to play a bit of starcraft now in anticipation of the impending rematch against my brother and his flatmates, having already stuffed my brother twice i think he'll be up for a rematch soon.

Hi ho hi ho

2005-03-08T22:56:00.000Z

Another week and more fun and games.

Work has been damn busy this week ... the usual - a project which we have agreed to implement on a particular date with (in my opinion) not a huge amount of thought given to actual timescales - the end result is that yours truly and the other member of the team have to work extra to meet the deadlines, what fun.

Got my contract for the new firm that have consumed our old one. Some annoying omissions and changes e.g.

By signing the contract we waiver our right to EU working hour laws i.e. we can be expected to work more than 48 hours in a week. Even if we refuse we have to give 12 weeks notice, so in effect we are agreeing for 12 weeks whether we want to or not. I don't particularly mind the lack of a limit on number of weeks worked, but it's annoying that it is done implicitly rather than explicitly.
No change in salary (no surprises there), and more importantly salary review has been postponed from may until december...
Holiday reduced by 2 days.
Limit of five sick days per year, next year will be increased to ten (which is fine). I don't envisage taking more than that off in a year, but I think that it shows a lack of trust to explicitly limit it. I suppose in a big company it's necessary but I worked in a big one before and never heard of this. I feel sorry for people working for less than six months, they just get statutory sick pay i.e. basically sod all.

I've raised these issues and they are apparently being dealt with... we shall see....

In other news ... Spurs lost over the weekend, missing the opportunity to move upto 6th in the EPL. Still have a game in hand over Boro who lost again against Villa. Chelsea beat Barca tonight to go through to the next round of the Champions League... shame, I thought Barca were the better side but fluffed their chances. At least Manure are out.

Oh, our DVD player finally came back today, but it still doesn't work with DVDs - just with CDs. So I guess I'll have to send it back, again, and then wait another week or two. Plus I'm asking for a refund on the postage this time, silly arse can't repair it first time I'm not paying again.

I keep forgetting to print out that letter of complaint to Tescos at work, so I'm going to do it here and now before it slips my mind again.

TTYL

Home alone

2005-03-03T16:29:00.000Z

I ended up working from home today, was just too knackered to go in, go not a lot of sleep last night. Thankfully work are quite cool with that, but it's not quite as easy as working in the office if you're on a team project....

Have spent most of the day typing away, intertwined with a quick bash on the guitar, listening to music, taking the rubbish out, and mooching around the flat. Our DVD player is at the repairers, or at least was - apparently it's been sent back to us but I've yet to receive it.... maybe tomorrow.

Anyway I'd best get back to the grindstone.

Tchau

Stuck in colindale, among other things

2005-03-02T23:38:00.000Z

Got up at 7 today, because the girlfriends cough hasn't gotten better. She refuses steadfastly to go to the doctors. Wanted to leave for work by 7.30 but realised I didn't have the code to the office so waited till around 8ish to leave.

Work was ok, quite busy and long, but I managed to fit a complaint-call to Tescos over their continual ability to arse up a simple online order. The short version:-

Ordered stuff online
Didn't arrive that day, but was continually told by them that it will be, so I waited in for it all evening.
Came next day, but noticed that they'd charged me twice. Complained, but it took them a week to pay me the money back.
Got £30 in goodwill vouchers, to be used for next online purchase.
Received vouchers, noticed in big letters on the back: "NOT FOR USE WITH ONLINE PURCHASES"
Phoned to moan, told that it won't be a problem, we will discount the vouchers value from the cost of your next order and pick up the vouchers when we drop off food next.
Morning of the delivery: We can't actually do that, we'll charge you the full amount, collect the vouchers, and refund you value of the vouchers the next day.
Delivery came as planned, gave the vouchers to the chap, that was it.

One week later I still don't have my £30 back, so I phoned to complain today, only to be fobbed off with the usual crap: "I was on holiday so I gave it to someone else to do, but they were too busy for the whole week because we've been too busy with the busy period due to bad weather" etc.

What rubbish.

After work, came to Edgware to watch Spurs whup Nottingham Forest with the brother. Got as far as Colindale only for the train to randomly kick everyone off because "there are no free platforms at Edgware". Cue a ten minute wait in the freezing cold, and another tube refund form to fill in. I'm amazed how few people know that you can get a full refund for the cost of your tube journey if it's 15 minutes later than it should be... last month I got around £35 back.

Spurs were pretty good, nice to see Pamarot score, and Atouba is always good for a laugh with his park-football tricks.

Anyway I need a shower and some food - and then sleep. Adios.

"You're not gonna lose your job... y'know!"

2005-03-01T19:28:00.000Z

Well, it wasn't all too bad. Apparently we are being taken lock stock into this new company and will be given continuous contracts i.e. people that have built up long standing service get to continue it. Apparently everything is going to stay "as-is" in terms of roles etc. but I imagine in the medium term people will start to move about or whatever.

Working day is less, i.e. 35 hours a week - hopefully wages will stay the same though... journey will be a little bit longer from what i can tell but should be ok. We'll be moving in a couple of weeks I think.
I don't know what it is - in some ways this should be quite a positive move for me and for our company as it stands but for some reason I have a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that makes me feel quite negative about all of this. Who knows.

The real killer is the dress code... i.e. must wear "business attire" at all times, so no more jeans and t-shirts for me. I'm not really happy about this but what can one do, not a lot apart from adapt. So a trip to the shops becons in the near future to buy some trousers and stuff, wonderful.

Did very little else today, woke up at 4.30 because the girlfriend has a bad cough/cold and started coughing then until 7 or so, then left for work. Then she came home around 1-ish when she realised she was too ill to stay there. The worst part is that they only give five paid sick days a year (ridiculous!) so she isn't even getting paid for it.

Anyways... I'm off to watch the scum lose to sheffied utd now (hopefully). Oh wait, it's not on TV, funny, I thought it was - maybe it's on Sky... never mind.

Ok, catch y'all later

ice

Greets

2005-02-28T19:48:00.000Z

Yo.

I've started a blog (for the second time, nach) for two reasons:

I'm selfish, and I want to keep a diary and look back in years to come and amuse myself - which of course won't happen, but never mind.
It's a way to get stuff off of my chest.

We'll start with work (what a surprise). I work for a small IT firm in London, no doubt one of many. We found out today that we are closing down and being taken over by another, larger, as yet unnamed, company. Tomorrow we'll be told all the details (of course, you won't be told the key bits...). My mind flashed back to the last episode in the first season of The Office, where Brent has a meeting with his boss and she gives him the option either (a) getting a promotion at the cost of downsizing his branch to become part of Swindon, or (b) keeping his branch open but the Swindon boss gets the promotion. He of course takes the former option...

Kojak (can't remember his real name in the series): What's the damage?
Brent: (nervous grin) It's complicated...
Kojak: Are you gonna tell us?
Brent: Yep.... (locks himself in his office, smiling)

Some seconds later Kojak knocks on the door and says: "We want to know, now"... like the spokesman of the proles in the office. Brent then tells how they'll be downsized, some will lose their jobs etc. - oh, and by the way, I'm getting promoted.

It wasn't quite like that today, but there was a comedy element to our situation in that I missed the first minute or two of the meeting because I was busy beavering away at my PC listening to my old favourite, Dream Theater, whilst our MD gave us the news. Eventually they realised (maybe my hitting the keyboard in anger at lack of progress in my work gave it away....) and everyone had a good giggle at my expense.

Apparently the new company will be taking most of us on lock-stock but without all the details you can never tell. I can't believe that everyone will stay, for starters the admin/ secretarial team's heads must be on the chopping block. My brother also works at our company part time as a support chap and isn't feeling to good about his job either. He only started about six weeks ago, see.

To be honest I'm not too chuffed about all this, but you can never tell what will be... maybe it'll work out better than I'm making out, but I can't help feeling a bit negative and trepidatious (if there even exists such a word) about it.

Tune in tomorrow for a bit more of the nitty-gritty (provided I'm not made redundant and end up drowning my sorrows in my local pub)...