An excuse worthy of my readers
Yes, I have been slack, as has been admitted, though now I can add a genuine excuse! You see I can't log on from home at the moment. To cut a long story short, my modem is dead, and it's Justin's fault. I could go into lengthy detal explaining how Justin, all the way from Germany was responsible for the death of my modem, but I won't. Suffice to say it was his fault and let's leave it at that.

So now what? Well, with the help of god and sixteen policemen, I'll have NTL boradband installed at my place within the next week or so. Until then, I'll try and post when and where I can. Not that there's anyone left to read this. I suspect that most of my readership have been so thoroughly annoyed by my pathetic recent postings that they've run off to seek the aid and comfort of Will Wheaton.

I don't blame them. Not one little bit.

To summarize, I will be picking this thing up again, but for the next week or so the postings will be intermitent. I know that's probably not how you spell it, but I'm not at home and I don't have my dictionary to hand and intermitent is one of those words I've never really come to terms with. Like Wednesday. Wednesday always looks wrong. And disillusionment.

Slack
Some of you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything new for a week. I have no clever excuses, but I have been busy with the new job and a few other things. Unfortunately writing for the blog has taken a bit of a back seat. I hope you can forgive my drunken, bone-idle laziness. If not, please express your anger in productive and helpful ways.

I could write about the daily toil of my work-a-day existence, but you don't care about that, do you? I know I don't. On the other hand, my new workmates are an interesting lot and certanly worthy of a few words. Already I am discovering perfect minefields of inter-personal feuds, intrigues and rivalries. I'm hardly prepared to take my first weary steps, so I sit and look on from the sidelines, sipping on my beverage with what I hope passes for quiet dignity.

At the centre of any social groupings are those bright stars whose moods and whims lead the action. The other night at the pub, one of these social celestial spheres decided to make her pointed dislike of another women absolutely clear. She left, capturing fully two thirds of the people in her orbit, and dragging them off to another pub. There was absolutely nothing subtle about it. That was, I suppose, the point.

People confuse me.

What else? I'm not sure if anyone will be even remotely interested, but couple of weeks ago I gave my 30 day notice on my SKY Digital satellite TV. I wanted to upgrade my Internet connection from 56k Dialup to Broadband. The deals NTL are offering on digital cable/broadband/phone packages seemed too good to pass up, so I signed up.

Or at least I thought I had signed up.

On Monday I gave NTL "a call" to find out why I haven't heard back about an installation date. When I hung up a total of TWO AND A HALF HOURS later, I felt none the wiser for my experience. In between being transferred no less than 5 times, I went through their entire classical "music on hold" CD twice! One jerk had the nerve to transfer me before I'd even got 4 words out of my mouth.

"Hello. I ordered..."

"One moment, transferring you!"

I called again from work Tuesday morning (and yes, I can write damn fine code and listen to music on hold at the same time). After half an hour of that fabulous CD, which I really must get, I finally got through to a human being with a brain. Turns out they have no record of my order on the system. Which is odd because I gave the sales person credit card details and the like when ordering two weeks earlier. It turned out that the Sales Reference number, which I had carefully scribbled down, didn't conform to their standard order numbering system. Did I imagine the whole thing? That seemed to be the implication. You know, I don't remember being on hold for very long during that initial call. Perhaps I am going insane.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, it seems that I have to order all over again.

NTL?!? N.T.Hell's more like it.

So, yes, I will be actually reading my credit card statement when it arrives this month. Anything amiss and I'll... I'll... I'll stamp my feet; that's what I'll do.

Which reminds me, who was it that used to always say "I'll scweem and scweem and scweem until I'm sthick. And I can!"? Oh, that one's going to bug me for days now.

P.S. Are any of you fellow Bloggers still getting the dreaded 503 error when posting? I've had it for over two weeks now and there seems no sign of a fix from Ev.