The state I am in

Sometimes everything is wrong. Lately a heck of a lot of things have been getting the better of me, my job and renovating my house have eaten away all my time and energy. I have put on a few kilo because I haven't had (or made) enough time to get to the gym or sleep. I got the Saab back from the garage but its still not right the only thing I can think to do is trade it in. This causes something of cashflow crisis though. Tomorrow I have to pay the plumbers as they have practically finished installing the central heating system tomorrow they just have a few small bits to finish off. That and the money I owe Nick is practically all of my savings exhausted and I still have a kitchen, flooring and decorating to do. Oh might need some furniture as well :S

I got to the house tonight to find two letters from utility companies. First one from Scottish Power, a final bill using estimated gas usage. They estimate I have used a heck of a lot more Gas than the 1 unit I have so I phoned to report that and to pay. After going through 3 levels of automated services I got a message telling me all of the operators were busy after which it hung up. Sigh, the other letter was from British gas telling me they were now suppling me gas only could I confirm the property they were suppling to was a flat in Milton Keynes, sigh. I spent 20 minutes on hold at the end of which the operator told me their computer system was down so could I call back another time. I was pretty enraged by this point, a phone call from Phil basically telling me he couldn't be bothered to get things organised for Saturday did little to improve my mood.

I went round to Martinas for some food and to watch Nip Tuck, my god its depraved and twisted. A murderous teddy bear making agent, cannibalistic newlyweds and self destruction seem to be the main themes. Her brother arrives tomorrow, he doesn't speak English and is apparently wary of meeting too many people so I may or may not get to meet him.

Whos money (Banks Suck)

I had a pretty hectic day yesterday quiet a few things went a bit pear shaped both at work and personally. I got especially pissed off with Alliance and Leicester. I needed to get a lump of cash (£1000) to Nick to pay for various materials for the house.
I walked into Bramhall branch had to wait for what seemed like an age. It was the usual story only one teller working with several other staff standing around generally ignoring the growing queue. My money is in a savings account linked to my main account so firstly I asked to move the money between my accounts. I was told the only way I could do this was to use the internet or the phone banking. I responded I expected a teller to be able to do this and I needed to withdraw said cash so I didnt see much point leaving the queue only to rejoin it to get the money. She kept on telling me that she couldn't help. She then went on to tell me my account had a £250 daily withdrawal limit. At this point I basically hit the roof and demanded either my money or I would close my account and come back with a baliff to collect it. She offered to make an exception, I thought exception, how is that, this is a bank its my money I am perfectly entitled to withdraw it.

I walked out with my money, paid Nick and drafted a letter of complaint, I'll let you know how it goes.

Vodafone suck!

I have been full of a cold today, so I stayed at home in the warm and had a play around with a few things. I found out that my phone has some interesting applications. Including the ability to upload photos directly to the Flickr photo sharing page. I spent about 3 hours messing with my phone trying to get the photos I took to be uploaded directly to my blog. I tried lots of different settings but only after searching Flickrs N-Series site did I find that Vodafone block Flickr. They don't make that fact clear, even leaving behind the options to set up an account, unfortunately the communication always fails. I tried directly browsing on the mobile internet and couldn't get to http://www.flickr.com either. I finally realised I have been messing about trying to make it work in vain, very frustrating!

7 deadly sins / 7 Virtues

I am damned?

I think I have been guilty of them all this week.

Lust

I a single guy I cant help looking ;)

Gluttony

Yeah eating on the company expense account at the start of the week, well not just the start of the week I have been hungry a lot this week.

Avarice

I want to be rich trust me having no money isn't much fun.

Sloth

I haven't published a blog in ages mainly because I have been busy but also because I have been very lazy. I have hardly even made it to the gym either.

Wrath

I was SO angry with one of my colleagues I could easy have laid down my wraith,
in fact I contemplated many forms of revenge but in the end was too busy / lazy / cowardly or perhaps sensible to put them into action.

Envy

I was incredibly jealous of Lulu blog, she made her first post for months and immediately received more comments on it than mine had din its entire life. Mind you her next post was to thank me for fixing her shuffle so that made me smile.

Pride

I was ashamed to tell someone I still lied with my parents, always trying to keep up the good image.


or can I be redeemed?

Chastity

Being single its easy to be chaste

Abstinence

Hmm haven't done too well on this score I have eaten way too much this week.

Temperance

I do enjoy that beer goodness, so I guess I fall flat on my face with this one.

Diligence

Thanks to careful planning and execution my installation went like a dream score one for goodness :)

Patience

I have had moment of patients but overall I am a pretty impatient person :(

Kindness

I have given to charity and even helped out a few people

Humility

I think Im a pretty humble self deprecating guy most of the time.

So thats sins 7 Virtues 3 oh dear I am in trouble going to have to mend my ways I think!

Feeling frustrated

Going back to work was difficult, there is so much going on.

Ian's wireless link has been suffering recently so I had bought a new access point, well second hand from ebay access point. It has been sat in my room for weeks, only when I took it out to set it up it didn't work. Its broken! What a pain I was so annoyed I smashed it to pieces with Nick's sledgehammer.

I went round for some beers and a chat setting the world to rights. He seemed a little sad but trying to make the best of it.

Too many meetings

Today was a real pain rather than being able to get on with things and try and make a dent in my ever increasing workload, I spent the day in meetings. Whilst I understand the need to meet up and arrange thing sometimes it seems like we just keep going of the same ground. Nobody really seems to have the will to move things forward, turn down of back out so we remain over comitted and stretched even with extra bodies working.

Also a lot of work is stacking up not getting through testing which is a real problem, work gets done stacks up and can cause issues, sometime things accidentally get transferred, causing untold problems like last week.

I also lost out on my day working on the next generation project this week thanks to another colleague getting called away to another site meaning there would be no cover.

Japanese was very difficult this evening, we had a mock test which would be set to allow any newbies onto the intermediate course next year. I think on the basis of the test we would all fail. My vocabulary is limited as I don't practice enough and only doing one lesson a week means the words are not reinforced enough for me to recall them. I am really going to have to add in a lot more revision time to make significant strides.

I had an argument with one my fellow Nihon students (who else but Martine) regarding a art. I suppose I am a bit of a Philistine in that I really don't like modern art, so Damien Hursts skull nor the graffiti inspired London 2012 logo just look like rubbish to me. I much prefer Bejing's Panda bears or a beautiful Renascence work to Sheep in formaldehyde. I guess the stupid amount of money languished on this stuff that upsets me too. Ill never forget when I read about the forty thousand pound pebble outside the Bridgewater Hall.

I went for a drink with Bruce, he has spent the last few days trekking round the country on an emergency replacement mission. His company suffer from bad planning just like most others, only its competent people like him and myself that end up having to pick up the ball after its been dropped. Sigh, at least we had a nice chat and a drink.

Coding Hell

Sometimes the world can be a very weird place, In my function as a code monkey I have dome some pretty boring stuff. This week I have mostly been busy writing a system which calculates apr and repayments changes them in fact so they are much less accurate! Believe it or not one of the lenders systems it actually less accurate than ours and they refuse to believe our figures so I have been copiing their web calculator which as far as I can see has three major areas in which mathmatically it is far less preceise than advances. Apart from the fact its very difficult to follow the mess of java script and bizzaro way in which they round figures or choose not to round others; division by 12 on a number which is not divisable by three leaving trailing 3 or 6 into infinty is not smart.
Anyway I am fed up this has taken so long and my figures still don't match they rubbish its driving me to distraction. Add into that the volume of work sat for me to do and its not a very happy John writing this.

Rant over, Liz sent me a funny link to dressing room website which made me smile, thanks.

Other amusment includes my boss and his son also on staff entering the London marathon, I hope theyy make it must be some serious training going on they neither struck me as the marathon type, but I wish them luck wish I was fit or motivated enough. Even the Manchester 10k seemed scary to me.

Printer Rant

First Published on Slashdot Journal
Gah I am fed up with printers, some days it seems all users problem are in some way printing related. Printers are dirty and noisy, I always end up covered in toner, and its even worse on the colour printer I am left in cyan yellow magentry mess :-(
And Inkjets arghh dont even get me startered the cost the crapness of the drivers and the rubbish build quality argh who cares if it does photo quality if after the cost of the special ink and paper it ends up being greater than the cost of going down to a developer and getting top quality prints :'(