Day Off Work

It's half term, so I took a day off work today.

Spent the morning with the kids in UnderWaterStreet.

Then we went for a walk around town to view an oversized Spider, "Turning the Place Over" and SuperLambBanana.

Walkie Talkies

For a Valentine's day treat I bought Frodo and Samwise a set of decent little Binatone Latitude 100 walkie-talkies.

They've been running round the house on rescue missions all weekend calling each other up and ending every sentence with "Over", or "Over and Out".

Wii Fit Obsession

I'm becoming hooked on Wii Fit.

I'm at the -starting to hallucinate whilst jogging around the Wii Fit island- stage.

Why do I find myself waving back at the Mii's who wave at mine on the roadside?

Why do I laugh as other Mii's fall on their faces?

Did that cute blonde Mii really flutter her eyes at my Mii as she went past? Look she did it again! Why did she ignore me the third time?

Why do I start to loathe the supercilious grins on the faces of the faster Mii's who overtake mine?

I'm not the only person with connectivity problems...

I picked this little gem up from a tweet by cha0tic

No Twitter for Hitler


There's loads of different interpretations of the same scene on YouTube
including
Hitler is invaded by Mexicans
Hitler gets banned from World of Warcraft
Somebody Stole Hitlers Car
etc.

And Now, The Gallery...

First of all Oliver Postgate* takes the music boat to the Iron Chicken and dies just before Christmas, and now Tony Hart packs up his paint box.

There's a lot of obituaries out there saying how he inspired a generation of children. Far from inspiring me to artistic achievements, he made me realise that I would never, ever be as good as that, so why bother trying :)

* Something I never knew before. I spotted a link on Oliver Postgate's wikipedia page that looked like it might be out of place, but discovered that in fact it wasn't.
Oliver Postgate had a hand in creating Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines!!

Disconnected (2)

I spoke to soon in my Disconnected post - the broadband connection went down the day after, just after midday.

Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support, back through the "diagnostics" umpteen times again. They told me to wait for the replacement router that was in it's way, and the callback that was due on Tuesday 13th at 7pm.

8pm on Tuesday 13th. No replacement router and No callback! Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support who passed the buck to Customer Services. Customer Services, who also sounded like they might be in India, told me that there didn't appear to be an order for a router. They passed me to the escalation team.

The chap on the escalation team sounded very sheepish when I asked him why there had been no callback at 7pm. He told me that not only had the callback been missed, but they hadn't ordered the replacement router! (What a bunch of numpties?) He said that he'd immediately ordered the router, which should arrive on Friday.

Thursday morning and the new router arrived. Tried it out on Thursday night, and as I suspected no connection. Back on the phone to Orange, back to India Technical Support - ran through the usual diagnostics. Tried to pass me back to the escalation team, who tried to fob me off as a courtesy callback was due on 19th Jan. I demanded to speak to them so I was put through. The lady who answered told me that all diagnostics had been done, so she couldn't help and that I should await the callback on the 19th Jan. I demanded an earlier callback, so the best she could do was 09:30 on 17th Jan.

09:30 am today and I found myself speaking to the chap who had forgotten to call on Tuesday. He said that he would now ask BT to investigate and arranged a follow up callback on Monday 19th to let me know what they had found out.

10:45 am and we noticed the internet connection come back online for a minute or so. Looks like somebody is doing some testing on the network.

13:00 and we're back online, and have been so since then.

Why oh why oh why can't the numpties at Orange involve BT at an earlier stage? I explained to them the history of this case. They should have been able to see for themselves that we'd had a similar situation in May last year, where the Orange customer equipment and connection diagnostics all check out OK, but the BT line tests show "no fault".
They seem to have a reluctance to escalate to BT. It should not take 15 days to get to this stage.

I'm going to wait for their callback on the 19th and ask for an explanation as to what BT said the problem was. My own suspicion is that maintenance work in the exchange around Bank Holidays causes a configuration change that affects our service. There's probably a special set up for our line, or for Orange customers (and I bet that there's not many left in Liverpool) that they keep resetting and forgetting to reconfigure.

I'd like to know as I believe the root cause lies with BT. This is compounded by Orange's inability to quickly establish that the fault is not with the customer's setup or equipment, and not with them.

Then I'll be calling Orange Customer Services and asking for my MAC code.

Originally we used Demon, but when free dial up access became available, we opted for Freeserve. Freeserve were OK and then were taken over by Wanadoo who gave us our first taste of broadband. We had no problems with Wanadoo. Our experience of the service has gone downhill since Orange took over.

We're now both suffering from online access withdrawal and need a heavy fix of email, web and download time to feel normal again :) It's actually a little scary - you don't realise how much you depend on something like the internet access from home, until it's not there. The local library and work is no substitute.

Tired and Emotional

Novelist Supermum came back from hospital today after her operation

She went in on Monday and had the op on Tuesday.

Frodo and Samwise were in tears when we left her in the ward on Monday night. When I asked in the car why they were crying the reply was "because we wanted Spaghetti for tea!"

Disconnected

I've only just got the internet connection back after a 6 day outage.

This time it took me 5 days to exhaust all of the possibilities for a fault at my end with the Indian call centre before I finally persuaded them to pass the case onto the "Escalation Team" i.e. the technical staff in the UK.

Went through a set of diagnostics, and a couple of router reboots, with a helpful chap last night, who then told me that someone would call this morning. At 11 am today a pleasant lady informed me that the technicians could not identify the fault, as the line test showed 'no fault' (as it has done on other occasions) and could only conclude that my router might be faulty. They have despatched a replacement router to me.

Just after this phone call I thought that I'd give my current router one last reboot - and it connected! Hmmmm.

I immediately rang the call centre and got them to update the case with this information.

So either the router has an intermittent fault, or (as I strongly suspect) it's a case of good old Orange or BT not admitting that they've screwed up something on the network again, and have quietly corrected it. It's notable that I seem to get these issues around, or just after a Bank Holiday.

My 12 month contract with Orange is now up, so I think that it's time to switch broadband suppliers. Might not make any difference if it's BT who's causing this, but at least I might get the same amount of frustration for a cheaper price :)

Happy New Year

Whoosh! What was that?"

"2008 mate".

"Do I get another one?"

"'Fraid not".

Happy New Year everybody! All the best for 2009.

New Years Eve - Snow

It's been a foggy New Years Eve today.

Got back a little early from work to find that it's been snowing all day, but only in a square mile or so around our house.

Samwise said that he'd wished for Snow at Christmas, so I guess that he's got his Christmas Wish. Slightly late, but close enough, and just for him, as the rest of the city appears to be frozen, but doesn't have snow!

Christmas Day (just)

No point in going down the pub after work, as I'm on the late shift/on-call, so I took the car in to work today. I was allowed to leave early at 15:30, but only after all but 3 of us had gone.

Got home to a mega-excited Frodo and Samwise. They are usually allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve (which usually turns out to be pyjamas). This year they went up to bed to find that Ben 10 and Dr Who bed covers had been magically put on their beds.

They both had real trouble going to sleep. They went to bed early around 7 pm. Samwise didn't get to sleep until about 9 pm and Frodo was still awake and trying to spot Santa at 10 pm. They were both fast asleep at 11pm.

Santa finished delivering his presents around midnight. (Check out the Norad Santa Tracker if you don't believe me) ). All wrapped and under the tree, with an extra surprise of a Nintendo Wii and a new TV set up in the playroom (they'll find that one last tomorrow).

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas time again. Lots of work places wind down for Christmas - my place as usual winds up!

Didn't get home until 7:30pm tonight, because somebody was panicking and demanded an unnecessary server reboot, even though we'd agreed earlier in the day not to do it.

Got back just in time to nip out with the boys to a neighbours Christmas Party. They host one every year, just before Christmas - how they manage to do this with everything else that's going on beats me. They lay everything on and ask for a donation to a charity, which I'm quite happy to do.

The boys had a good time, and I got to chat with a few of the neighbours. I also met a couple of mad old ladies, who I've passed before now in the street walking their dog. We found that we had a few things in common, and had quite a laugh.

It's now officially Christmas Eve. I've got one last stint in work - hopefully I'll be allowed to shoot off early. I'm on call Christmas day and Boxing day - I've been assured that call outs are very rare when the systems aren't in use - but there's always a chance that something unexpected might happen. Rumour has it that any Christmas day call outs will be allowed to be responded to the next day - but that has yet to be confirmed.

The Goose is defrosting in the kitchen, and we're almost ready for the main event. The boys have been told that there's only 2 more sleeps to go. So time to wish all of my blog readers - whoever you may be - a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Giant Christmas Greetings

I've just received an E-Christmas card from La Princess. Nice to see that she's not forgotten us (probably because I bought the T-shirt and poster from Artichoke).

Forgetful Santa

Grandma took Samwise and Frodo to see Father Christmas at a local grotto last weekend. Samwise had seen him earlier in the week on a School trip to a different place.

A couple of days later Samwise said to me - "You know what Dad, when I saw Santa again I had to remind him what I'd asked for the first time, because he'd forgotten!".

Magic!

Xmas Do's

The work Xmas party was on Friday. We were at the Crowne Plaza hotel again this year - the usual sort of corporate booze-up, meal and Dad-dancing session that these places put on at this time of year. We were mixed in with a few other companies who'd also booked some tables.

As some sort of team-building exercise the manager who'd booked the do had decided who was going to sit at which table - rather than it being a free for all. Managerial 'hosts' rotated tables between each course. This put a few people off, and there were a few last minute no-shows as a result. Personally I found that this arrangement worked OK, since our department has expanded rapidly over the last year - I got to chat to a few people that I've seen around, but wouldn't normally have spoken too.

I managed to get a taxi home, without too much trouble, as I dived out of the hotel just before the music stopped, beating the rush to get a cab.

Saturday was a "meet the Dad's" night out - a first time get together with some of the other Father's from Samwise' year at school. This was a good night out - a few pints out and a lot of natter - "which one is your child?", "what do you do?" and a mutual agreement on who is the hottest teacher at the school.

Church of the Bright Green Neon Rabbit

Took my own picture of this on the way back from work the other night. Not as good as this one of course. I thought I'd better get a snap, as the Liverpool Biennial public art event is due to finish at the end of November, so they might switch it off soon.

National Blog Posting Month 2008 - Blew It

The target was 30, and I did 17 posts in 30 days, - oh well, there's always next year...

First Reading Book

Samwise brought his first ever reading book home from school today.

It's fairly basic, but he can read all the words in it already - I was really proud.
He read it to me first, and then to his Mum. He's going to read it to Grandma tomorrow.

Eddie Stobart Fan Club - How Much?

Speaking of Motorways - although a family of regular Eddie Stobart spotters, i.e. will shout "Eddie Stobart" whenever we see one of the company's lorries, and will attempt to identify which girls name is on the front of the cab, there is absolutely no way I will pay 12 quid a year just to get some more info from the Eddie Stobart Club Website!

Maybe we should switch to Norbert Dentressangle instead? :)

Motorway Messages

Sighted on the Motorway on the way back from Wolves on Sunday

1. A Tanker, with the words "Succumb to the Darkness" written in the dirt on it's rear.

2. A Mercedes with the registration plate of "B1G B0SS".