Rambolic

Well, tonight I wasted a few hours with my mate playing guitar, eating pizza and messing about on the xbox. Very productive. I might go out and buy HMV tomorrow – I’ve got enough vouchers to buy a branch or two. Yesterday I spent most of the day at my parents’ house with my Grandma and auntie. My auntie’s all right… she means well, but she’s hard work sometimes. She still doesn’t know the name of my girlfriend after five years of us being together. She put “Alan and Racal” on our card / She was telling everybody that I’d told her that we were getting married in spring. She’s a bit odd like that. Her son, my cousin, is apparently in a secure medical unit for reasons we know not. He’s in and out of prison all the time. I try to distance myself from him, and have succeeded – I haven’t seen him in about 15 years. He writes now and again but we tend to ignore him as it seems to be all favours and money he wants. He once told a lawyer he lived at our house. I’m glad I don’t live there anymore – God knows who could turn up.

Speaking of lawyery types, I’m due in court soon. Date tbc. It seems that the defendant in the car accident case could have gone back on his original statement and decided that he’s not admitting liability. Fuck knows on what grounds. I’ve had to give another statement of something that happened nearly two years ago now. Fucking sick of the whole thing now.

More legal stuff… About six or seven years ago I ran a website for Leafeater. They supported Terrorvision on a couple of tours. Anyway, Terrorvision’s singer was mates with a guy who owned an internet provider, Legend Internet. This guy offered to give us free webspace, but we had to pay for the domain name, leafeater.com. In 2001 the band split, and I contacted Legend to cancel the domain, which they didn’t. I kept getting bills despite not being the billing contact, and each time I contacted them. Invoices turned into final demands, then eventually I moved.

In the mean time the guy I knew sold Legend Internet to Business Serve who then rebranded themselves as Legend Communications. When they did this they began to chase up all the old debters… me included it seemed. They sent me a letter with “IMPENDING COURT ACTION” in bold red lettering on the envelope. I wrote to them, then again, and again… No response, so eventually I bundled all the letters together and threatened them with legal action and they finally responded saying they’d drop the charge. I didn’t hear anything after that.

Well, that was until about three weeks ago when another letter fell upon my parents’ doormat, this time from 1st Credit, a debt collection agency. I tried contacting Legend again – no response. Calling didn’t get through to anybody. I looked on their website and it looks like they’ve been bought by Demon/Thus, one of the biggest ISPs in the country. After a couple of weeks of trying to get through to Legend I got another letter from 1st Credit, advising of legal action if I didn’t pay within 7 days. I contacted 1st Credit who gave me a number for Legend Internet/Communications/Demon/whoever they are this week. They I told them the whole story, and the guy said that there were notes on my account that reflected everything I’d just said. Why the hell was it passed to a debt collector then?! Apparently my account hadn’t been closed down properly.

Anyway, I’m hoping that’s just about the end of it now. I need to make a couple more phone calls to make sure everything’s dealt with. I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve been trying to order a new phone but it keeps failing the credit checks as my credit’s fooked now. Hey well.

Trials and tribulations… Bah…

Nobody would believe me! As per usual I performed the British male tradition of shopping on Christmas Eve. Everybody told me not to bother because I’d never be able to park, and wouldn’t be able to move for people. I argued that for that exact reason nobody would go and it’d be dead. I was right.

I went against all my principles though and bought tickets from Jumbo Records. The other year I had a massive argument in the store with their owner because she sent 3 tickets for 3 Colours Red instead of 2, and wouldn’t refund. Alas, she did in the end… took a lot of arguing on my part though.

Anyway, I’m off to get ready to go out tonight – got an important engagement with the Gasworks for a night of rawk. Dunno whether to get the bus or drive – no idea what the buses are doing today.

I wasn’t drunk… much… honest.

CCL Christmas Party 2006

So, I did a course the other month to become a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (w00t!) and I did some exam questions. I failed miserably. Basically they cram loads and loads of work into a week, and skim over each topic missing out loads of key info, then you do the exam and the questions relate to stuff you haven’t even seen. It didn’t fill me with confidence when I found out that the tutor on my course was a student on the same course when my colleague studied it a few weeks prior. Anyway, my manager wants me to study these books and take the exam next month. I say that’s harsh, but we’ll see how I go.

Well, I’ve almost got a copy of the release to manufacturer of Vista… it’s out of beta, and I’ve blagged a key from work. That means I get to play soon and run a demonstration on its features for the plebs I work with before we start selling it. I’ve never really done a training sesh before, basically because I hate PowerPoint (but also because I’ve never had anything to train people on). Should be fun. Here’s hoping it’ll work on my laptop. Was a bastard to install XP last time around.

We went to look at a house the other day to get an idea of what we can get for our money if we took out a mortgage. It was only a back to back jobber, but it was a decent size for one. Very tidy inside, nicely done out, etc. But the estate agent keep calling me constantly. It’s verging on annoying. I blame my mum for giving them my mobile number. They leave numerous voicemails daily asking me to call back. It must be quiet season. I’ve seen another similarly priced in a nearby village which looks nice. From the inside. The outside’s painted pink. Why would anybody do that?!

Went to the cinema the other night too. I wrote a letter of complaint today. Basically it was a new film, so it was busy. When we walked in we were about 10 minutes late so it was half way through the trailers. The place was packed out, apart from two rows of ‘premium’ seats, so I headed for them. The usher came over and checked my ticket and said we couldn’t sit there. He started walking off so I asked him if he would help us find somewhere to sit (isn’t that their fucking job??) and he pointed at a single seat. There was a girl in the seat next to it leaning onto her boyfriend. I explained there were two of us and needed two seats together, and he said “there’s two seats there, look…!” I said “well, if you ‘look’ you’ll see that there’s actually someone sat there! Can you help me find two seats?!” Not that hard… but he chose to walk off instead. Ugh.

I got my credit report today, which I’m going to show to my manager. With all the problems getting a new contract for my phone I need to clear some crappy data off there that’s making the checks fail. I don’t understand why if you have a few credit checks it makes your credit rating shit. Surely it should be down to how many times you actually take out credit. Anyway, my manager used to work at a bank so I’ll hopefully have it all in hand soon. All this for a bloody phone!

Thursday, electric went dodgy in the evening. Lights dimmed for a minute or two and fecked by router. Went to band practise and played some meaty licks (though not many) and went to pub for food. Friday bought a new router. Wireless connection’s questionable so might be getting it replaced – undecided. Saturday we drove to Bracknell and headed straight off to Camden to see 7 Seconds of Love (see Rather Good link on the right) – great gig. Managed to skank the train company by deciding to pay on the train, to find they weren’t manned by a conductor (inspector, whatever they’re called these days), so that saved us £30 or something stupid. On the train home was some hyperactive middle-aged Cockney who decided he’d give us all the meaning of life. He was quite worrying at first, but he was all right… I think. Don’t start a conversation about politics with a Cockney though – bad idea. The train did a weird u-turn thing too… We set off in the wrong direction and still ended up back where we needed to be. Half the people were freaking out, most of all the Cockney. Sunday we drove to Nuneaton to see some of Andrea’s family and eat some. Drove home and slept some. Today worked and spent half the day pissing about with the settings for the live chat thing we’ve got on our website. I’m guessing the management don’t mind otherwise they’d have taken the admin privileges off me before now. After work decided not to go to the pub, but was nagged (a single phone call did it) so we set off. Obediah Brooke was shut, so we went to the New Inn. That was shut (wtf?!) so we went to the Brickworks. That was open. I ordered food – Chicken Tikka Masala. They had none, so I opted for the lime marinated chicken. They had none of that so I settled for the veggie burger. I think companies hate me in general. Tomorrow I’m off to a Microsoft conference. Should be mildly interesting. We’ll see. No free bar like the Netgear one though – boo!

That was one damn big paragraph…

…wishing I hadn’t eaten so much at Pizza Hut, fretting that I haven’t learnt any songs for Thursday’s practise, getting sick of Moroccan guys calling me on Skype, and very soon to be absolutely stinking of peaches. No, really. Damn handwash. It doesn’t clean you – it just masks the smell, I’m sure.

The mobile companies I’ve been fruitlessly dealing with this week have basically pretty much fucked my credit rating completely, rendering it impossible for me to order a phone, or anything else that requires a credit check. And there’s fuck all I can do about it.

I’m pretty sure that everybody hates me at this present moment in time. And I’m wide awake, which means I’ll be absolutely knackered at work tomorrow. I feel like I haven’t had a weekend this week.

So, it’s the 5th of November, and I’ve avoided all the local bonfires on Friday and Saturday. Shame really – could murder a pie & peas. Now it’s the actual day Mr Fawkes broke into the houses of parliament and was caught, you’d think I’d be out celebrating the fact he didn’t topple the government. I should be out to catch one of the last bonfires and watch him burn on the top. But there’s much better things to do with your Sunday night! “Like what?” I hear you cry. Like MONSTER TRUCKS!!

So tonight me and Rik headed off to Odsal Stadium to watch some car crushing action. As soon as we walked in and found a space to stand we looked to the side of us and we were stood next to Paul. Now this makes me feel really old, but he’s 21, and I used to babysit him years ago. He was in Rik’s year at school. Anyway, to be honest, it felt like a bit of a waste of cash. £9 to wait in the longest queue I’ve ever seen in my life. We finally got in about an hour later to watch another hour of some guy on a BMX bouncing about on a car roof, a couple of car crashes, two guys on motorbikes pulling stunts on a ramp (I say ‘stunts’, one of the guys seemed to only know one) and watching some hoola girl dance while they spent half an hour changing the ramps. Yeah, there were monster trucks… for about ten minutes at the end. They ran over 4 cars, choreographed an ending and left the vehicles there for a photo shoot.

The night ended with a firework display… which seemed to be quite, well, average, and not so choreographed. The guys doing the display had to run for their lives once or twice when a couple of the huge fireworks exploded a little too close to the ground. I’m gonna post the vid, but you can’t see too well. That and Google Video seems to convert the vid to one frame per second. Let’s see if Youtube’s any better. Okay, no, but it looks alright on Myspace. Be warned: the vid’s quite loud… as fireworks tend to be!

I soooo want one of these…

It goes up to 11 and everything! You know, like, one louder!

Taken on Saturday in Keighley… the best name for a mobile shop ever!

My heater’s kicking out carbon monoxide like there’s no tomorrow. I got a detector and waved it in front of the fire for about a minute today and it turned black. Obviously not used the heater since. Anyway, I told the estate agent about that and a dodgy tap a week ago because I rent and they’ve done fuck all about it. I’m getting seriously pissed off with them now. The last time I contacted them the bath was leaking, and it took them 6 weeks to come and look at it. They take the fucking piss. This isn’t a case of me having to wear an extra sweater for a while. It’s basica health and safety! And pretty damned important health and safety. I think I’m gonna get a plumber to visit tomorrow and send them the bill. Tossers.