Thursday, February 4, 2010

Lies, Inc.

I'm getting really pissed off with companies wasting my time and telling lies. Just in the last couple of weeks :

My neighbour's phone line broke. At first BT claimed there was no fault on the line. Then they didn't phone back when they promised to. Appointments were booked for an engineer to call, but no one arrived. Since she had no phone, her daughter and I had to do all the calling. After seven days, five hours of my time on the phone (plus however long her daughter spent), four missed appointments, two broken promises of "they'll get someone out today," and numerous missed callbacks, we finally got an engineer out, who spent two hours replacing the cable that had "no fault" in it. I need to check if my neighbour got any compensation for all this - I got nothing for my time they wasted.

Parcelforce were supposed to deliver a package on Tuesday. No sign of it, so Wednesday I phoned the sender. Parcelforce had told them they'd "tried to deliver, no one in, so left a card". The last bit at the very least is a lie. I called the local depot, to be greeted with an attitude of "it's at the local post office, you can pick it up whenever you want, why are you upset?" Complained to head office, who gave a vague apology, a vaguer promise to "talk to the people involved", and a stern "Parcelforce does not pay compensation".

An order from Dabs.com was showing on their website as "shipped" yesterday, with a note that they'd emailled me tracking information, but that the email might take 24 hours to arrive. Still no sign of the email this morning, so contacted dabs through their webchat window. "It hasn't shipped yet, you'll get an email when it does." They did offer me £5 off my next order, but I don't feel inclined to order again.

I'm starting to wonder if I can start suing for every time someone wastes my time or lies to me like this. I could make a freaking fortune.

Posted by graham @ 11:53 am

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Not Twitching, Honest

The rough weather has led a number of unusual birds to our back garden in search of food, or at least bird species we don't normally see. A couple of times I've managed to grab a camera, and got these just-about-good-enough-for-id-purposes shoots of a redwing (top) and blackcap (below).

We also saw a fieldfare at Claire's parents on the second, though I didn't get a picture. The visit to Claire's parents was fun and relaxing. I should have probably mentioned it in the last post, but it didn't seem to fit into the general theme of doom.

***

Strangeness of the day #1. Someone has been along the footpath outside our house in some sort of mini-halftrack, maybe three feet wide. It's left a trail of what looks like charcoal - not evenly spread, more sort of here and there. Is this supposed to be some sort of council pavement gritter? The stuff isn't melting the snow/ice, nor does it provide any traction (if anything it makes the surface more slippery). But if it isn't the council, who would have such a vehicle? Some sort of all-terrain mobility scooter? Odd.

***

Yesterday, we had a few friends round to play boardgames. Well, Battlestar Galactica. It was a disaster (from the human perspective). One jump in it was all a little dull. I'd become Admiral Vice-President Tigh, most of the dials were at full or nearly so, and there was little sign of a player-cylon. Tyrol had got brigged, but that was easily fixed - I had a presidential pardon card. Then it all went pear-shaped. Three successive crisis cards left only one cylon ship (a heavy raider) off the board. President Zarek declared himself a cylon, leaving Helo in charge. The next crisis card was the map to Kobol, pushing us over the magic 4 distance, so sleeper loyalty cards were distributed. I sprang Tyrol from the brig so he could repair the FTL and jump us out of there. He'd just got a "you are a cylon" card, and promptly defected. We made the jump anyway, got slammed with the super-crisis cards, losing Colonial One and gaining two centurions on board Galactica. With nearly everything at one or two (other than food, we had a tonne of food), we made one last jump, reaching one jump from Kobol before three heavy raider activations in a row (crisis card, cylon player, cylon player) stomped us under a swarm of centurions.

Was fun anyway...

***

Strangeness of the day #2. Earlier, I got an automated phonecall from Southern Electric, wanting me to phone back with the meter reading for the electricity account they'd taken over last month. In a bit of a panic - we're not planning to change electricity suppliers - I found a phone number for them. Turns out that it was actually Scottish Hydro wanting the gas reading for the account they're taking over today. Which we did know about, but hard to see how the phonecall could have been more misleading.

***

We've spent this evening taking down the Christmas decorations, and Christmas is officially over. I always feel rather melancholy on this day. Still, at least Alfie seems to be on the mend.

Posted by graham @ 10:07 pm

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Drowning

Not the best start to the new year. Alfie's pretty ill - everything he eats goes straight through. One emergency vet visit later, and he has a host of pills, powders, and pastes. Hopefully he'll feel better soon...

***

We saw in the new year at chris's. More a gathering than a party, but the company of good friends is a good start to any year. Several people failed to notice the bells - distracted by fireworks over edinburgh castle.

By the time we got home and walked dogs it was gone three. We were awoken after 4 hours sleep by the phone ringing. Both of us jumped out of bed in a panic - no one would phone that early unless it was an emergency... In fact, it was a badly generated voice saying, "You have a text message. Happy new year." all of which had woken the dogs, so I had to walk them, and didn't get back to bed. Good start to the day. Then Alfie became ill...

***

I did get to see Doctor Who almost live, and before seeing any spoilers this time. I rather enjoyed it. I loved that the regeneration happened for noble rather than heroic reasons. I liked that John Simm got more to do. I liked that the Master drifted towards "amoral schemer" and away from "I'm mad, so I'm evil!" I loved Bernard Cribbens. I liked that the plot more or less worked, and that the solution to the dilemma followed obviously from the whole set-up. Sure there were flaws - not least the long, dull last fifteen minutes - but overall quite enjoyable. And as for Matt Smith, from the couple of minutes he got at the end, he looks rather good. He's got an intriguing alien quality that Tenant always lacked. Looking forward to seeing what Moffat has in store for him...

***

Anyway, I've had about 14 hours sleep between the last three nights, so I'm ging to crash soon. Hope your year so far has been better than mine, and that everyone's gets better.

Posted by graham @ 09:12 pm

Thursday, December 31, 2009

So That Was Christmas

So, we managed to get through Christmas without anyone getting stuck in the snow. We did chicken out of heading into Edinburgh to meet friends on Christmas Eve. We got as far as getting in the car, at which point a snow storm started, and we quickly retreated home...

Our parents were round at ours on Christmas Day, then over to Mum's for Boxing Day to see my sister and her family. Anne and I had bought Mum a Wii/Sports/Wii Fit Plus combo. Yep, Mum got a games console before I did. My own presents were largely of the pile of books/CDs/DVDs variety, plus the Battlestar boardgame, and various edibles. My nephew is turning into quite the gamer, though being ten he's mainly focused on yugioh (or however it's spelt...) I'm slowly weaning him on to real games. So far, Dragon Dice and Lord of the Fries seem to be the successes.

***

I didn't get to see Doctor Who until a few days after Christmas. Thanks to everyone who needed to post spoilers all over Facebook and blogs... I thought it was alright, so far. Much will depend how good the second half is. Oh, sure, it suffered from the usual Davis problems - bad guys who lack any motivation beyond being "evil" or "mad", an unjustified fascination with its own continuity, failure to lay pipe, and a "shock ending" that was telegraphed 15 minutes in - and John Simm's maniacal laugh isn't much cop, which is a shame given how little else he was given to do. But I enjoyed it anyway. Hopefully the second half will pick up the pace, and not descend into techno-babble...

***

I've been witness to two violent incidents since Christmas, both on the street outside our house. The first occurred in the early hours of Monday morning. A group of four or five blokes having a drunken argumetn woke me up, but the noise didn't last long, so I went back to sleep without looking out the window. Turns out that one of them had thrown a bin across the road, someone had staggered off bleeding, and someone else had been knocked over before staggering off in a different direction. The police seemed to be taking it all pretty seriously, spending most of the day going door to door collecting statements, despite not appearing to know the identity of any victim, or indeed whether any of those involved was particularly innocent.

The second was Monday evening. The driver of a pickup truck (going well over the speed limit on an icy road) got annoyed at a bus with right of way turning into the road some 300 yards away. He showed his annoyance by turning on full beam lights (including stupid flood lights on top of the cab), blaring his horn, slamming his brakes on, skidding, and shouting abuse at the bus, which completely ignored him and carried out the turn calmly and safely. The pickup driver then reversed, blocked the bus into the bus stop (using a parked police van to do so), got out and started abusing the bus driver. The police officers (who'd been gathering statements from the previous incident) turned up at this point, and despite having a witness (I was walking Alfie and saw the whole thing) merely nodded their heads at the guy's ranting, then let him drive off. Presumably charging the guy for dangerous driving, breach of the peace, and possibly driving under the influence would have required too much paperwork...

***

And so we reach Hogmanay. No idea what we'll be doing for the bells. There's a couple of parties, but we haven't decided which to go to, or whether to do something else. Still, tomorrow is clear for recovering, and I've done all the shopping that needs done before next week. Have a good New Year when it reaches you.

Posted by graham @ 11:40 am

Monday, December 21, 2009

Driving Home for Christmas

Mum lives about 50 miles away, with motorways covering most of the distance between us. Normally, it takes us about an hour to travel door-to-door. Yesterday was Mum's birthday, so we'd bundled the dogs into the car, and headed over for Chinese and presents and chat. So far, a very good day.

We left Mum's just before 9, taking it easy as the gritters hadn't reached Mum's road. Signs in Glasgow warned that the A80 was shut (turned out a lorry had jack-knifed) and to use an alternative route. (Why do they always say "alternative"? What's wrong with "different"?) So, we stayed on the M8. By 9:45 we were stationary, just past Airdrie. And there we sat. And sat. Somewhere between Airdrie and Harthill, another lorry had jack-knifed. I called the neighbours, so they could let Cisco in. I like having friendly, helpful neighbours you can leave a key with. The 1am news announced that the lorry had been moved, and they were just clearing enough snow for us to be able to drive on. We started moving about 20 minutes later, and crawled on ice and slush at 5 to 10 mph over the spine of Scotland. East of Livingston, the road started to clear, and we reached previously undreamed of speeds like 40. We finally got home around 3:15, walked the dogs, and collapsed. I got to sleep about 4. Alfie was up and pacing by 6:45...

I'm moderately awake, though twitchy and desperately in need of more tea. Claire's working from home today, to avoid driving in snow while exhausted. She did quite enough of that last night. And the pets are all fast asleep. The dogs were angelic last night, coping with hours stuck in a car without complaint. I really hope not to repeat this exercise any time soon...

***

One side effect of having to listen to the radio for traffic news is that I've now heard the X Factor winner Christmas single. Reminds me why I don't watch such shows. The song is bland and instantly forgotten, performed by a barely-competent singer and a bunch of session musicians with their brains firmly in "off". And that was the winner? Sheesh. Not that I have any more time for the anti-X Factor. Giving 400 grand to EMI and their corporate distributers ain't my idea of an act of rebellion...

Right, more tea. Now.

Posted by graham @ 08:51 am

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Watching Me, Watching You

Yesterday, I wrote a long blog post, then managed to delete it before publishing it. So you'll never know my thoughts on Robert Holdstock's passing, or how wonderful his "Mythago Wood" series is, or the sparrow hawk that was watching me through the study window.

***

Christmas is fast approaching, and like everyone else, I'm in the middle of buying presents. I'm well aware that I'm difficult to buy for, and kind thoughts are more than enough. But if people are determined to part with money, could I suggest making a charitable donation instead? I've made a couple of suggestions below, but there are thousands of others, just as deserving.

Greyhound Gap - the charity who rescued Alfie, and nursed him through his hernia operation and recovery.

Marie Curie Nurses

Amnesty International

Posted by graham @ 08:28 pm

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

No Spoilers

Adrian has caught some of the finer fireworks on camera...

***

Sunday's Doctor Who - Waters of Mars - is well worth catching if you missed it. Strangely, the worst bit about it was the Doctor. His presence added little, almost adding an unwelcome levity. Lindsay Duncan was strong enough to serve as the viewpoint character, and removing the Doctor would have given space to provide much-needed characterisation for the minor parts and a proper lead-in to the slightly arbitrary ending. Admittedly, there was a sort of b-story foreshadowing the next tale, but that foreshadowing's been going on since the start of the last series, so I doubt culling the b-story would have mattered much. Overall, though - good fun.

Posted by graham @ 09:07 pm

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