Dom Davis (The Blog)

This weekend is the first time in 3 weeks that The Zozo and I have shared a day off so we decided to go out and do something. Being a bank holiday weekend there was lots of choice but we opted for village fête at one of the villages just down the road from us. It rained. But then it was a bank holiday.

Undeterred we went further along the coast road and visited a military vehicle museum. This post isn’t about that. Nope, this post is about the pointless ‘Please drive carefully’ signs all over the place, especially on the coast road.

Now don’t get me wrong here, the coast road going west from Cromer is windy¹, narrow and not something to be traversed at speed. By all means drop the limit from 60 to 40 well before the villages, and it’s eminently sensible to have a 30 limit in the villages themselves, or even 20 in some parts where it’s very narrow and has 90 degree corners. But do I really need “Welcome to Coastal Village, please drive carefully” on the 30 sign? No. And here’s why:

Firstly you should always drive carefully. It’s why we have the offence “Driving without due care and attention”.

Secondly you’ve slowed me from 60 to 40 to 30 and in 50 yards you’re going to drop me to 20. I’ve kind of worked out that some care is needed.

Thirdly at the 40 sign on the other side of the village you’re effectively saying “thankyou for driving carefully through our village, you may now drive like a moron”.

No, if they need reminding to drive carefully they shouldn’t be driving at all. What next: “Welcome to Coastal Village, please don’t rape, pillage and murder”?

¹As in bendy, but sometimes, depending on the weather, as in blowy too.

Now that nPower had my £40 I thought I was in for a long and protracted period of letter writing that would start with them sending me the final statement and end with me getting satisfaction. As has happened many times during the saga I was, once again, wrong. Just as I was phoning the Chinese for my dinner my mobile rang. It was the minion from nPower. It turns out he’d made a mistake (I retorted with “I thought you had”). It turns out that the final bill was in fact nearer £2 and he’d worked out the amount that the current bill was over, not the amount I was supposed to pay. £2 sounds a lot more sensible for the usage we had over that month and certainly better than £40. Of course the £40 payment had already gone through so there they were having taken nearly a year to sort the bill out, with a final demand for an incorrect amount having not acted on my previous call and me being overcharged to the tune of 20 times the size of my bill. Not a strong bargaining position. They knew this and instantly started with the actions they were going to take to placate me. The £40 would be refunded in full. The bill would be cancelled. A letter of apology would be sent and a cheque for £25 would be issued.

Now in the grand scheme of things £25 may not seem like a lot but you’ve got to remember that I only had nPower providing energy for a month and the house was empty for that month. The gas bill was pence. The electric bill was nothing and they’re giving me money. nPower have actually paid me to use them… and I still wont ever touch them with a barge pole again.

The only downside to this resolution is that I don’t get to write my indignant letter of outrage demanding an apology and recompense, although I may still write once the cheque has come through and demand I get written confirmation that nPower will never contact my mobile number or home number ever again unless they’re going to give me more money.

If you remember the Zozo and I aren’t overly keen on nPower. They didn’t do themselves any favours in how they [eventually] handled our final bill, but after phoning them up and complaining it seemed all was sorted. I just needed to wait for the new final bill, pay it and write a letter of complaint. Simple right? Wrong.

Today I [eventually - thanks NXEA] got home to a letter from nPower. ‘Finally!’ I thought, ‘A revised bill’. I cheerfully opened it wondering how much the final bill finally was. Oh look, it’s exactly the same amount as last time. Except this time it’s a final demand and if I don’t pay it in 7 days they’re passing me to the debt collectors. Great.

Girding myself I grabbed the phone and headed upstairs to get the old letters and the meter readings so I could tell them again. Phoning the special number reserved for debtors, paupers and criminals I enquired as to why I was holding an unrevised final demand when I was supposed to be receiving a revised bill that I could actually pay. The minion on the phone has a look into my account notes and indicated there may well have been a mistake. Indeed there has. To his credit the minion then suggested we sort it there and then over the phone rather that letting it go back into the bowels of the process to then no doubt surface again in a couple of months with nothing having changed. Agreeing with him I preferred my mobile number so he could call me back at the most expensive rate possible. There was then much being on hold while various departments were called and I was finally put through to another minion in the complains department.

The new minion was armed with my incorrect statement, my final readings and a new, freshly created statement and had the authority to sort everything there and then. He informed me that the old bill was over by 7 units on the night rate and 2 units on the day rate which sounded very low and proceeded to work out the new cost. Instead of being just of £53 the new bill was… just over £51! But as a gesture of good will they were willing to reduce it to £40. Lets just take a moment to let that sink in.

£51 to run a fridge for a month. Which was going to be discounted to £40 to run a fridge for a month.

I informed the minion that I thought that was quite steep given what was being powered then versus what’s being powered now and the relative prices. The minion said that this was now off my meter readings so I grudgingly accepted the £40 offer and paid with my card. I then asked for a breakdown of the bill including the start readings, final readings, amount per unit, final total of £51ish and the final discounted amount of £40 all clearly marked. The minion agreed, the call was terminated and my thoughts turned to dinner (Chinese, yay!) and the stinking letter of complaint I was going to write about the scandalous prices nPower seemed to have charged both The Zozo and I for power. After all, I wanted my £40 worth from them, and I was going to get it.

After the incident yesterday I was faced with a conductor this morning who looked at my ticket, looked confused, then went “ah!”, smiled and moved on. I checked my ticket, I’d put it back in upside down yesterday. So it’s acceptable and readable upside down.

To avoid any future problems though I riddled to the ticket office and got my replacement. While she was filling out the required forms (by hand, love this modern age we’re in) I mused about the plastic tickets.

“Our machines won’t print on plastic” was the reply.

“Yes, but you could print a temporary one and send a nice plastic one by post later”, I suggested.

“Our machines only print on plastic.”

Giving up I waited for the form filling to be complete and then enquired about a refund for yesterdays ticket.

“Oh dear, you leave your ticket at home yesterday?” was the slightly condescending reply.

“No, I’d have a return then”, I said, “The conductor wouldn’t accept it. Made me buy a ticket.”

“Really? Why?”

“Claimed he couldn’t read it.”

The lady actually got the ticket out from the drawer looked at it and said “Well I can see it’s faded, but you can still read the date.”

“Exactly!” I replied, “But I was told that if you can’t read the station names it’s not valid.”

“Really?” she said.

“Apparently so.”

And so we started filling in the refund forms. By hand. Joy.

Still, I got my new ticket, got my refund and was only 15 minutes late for work. God I hate NXEA.

Forget what I said in the last post, events have transpired that I need to rant about.

I have an annual season ticket printed, as with all annual season tickets, on the bog standard ticket stock using the normal printers. This fades with use going through the ticket machines. Why they don’t use the same plastic tickets they have for season direct I don’t know. I’d be willing to pay to have the paper ticket upgraded to a plastic one, even if it meant using a normal one for a week or two while waiting for the plastic one to be posted.

Anyway, every day I get on the train, every day the ticket inspectors either inspect the ticket, glance at it, point at me and give me a thumbs up because the recognise me or fail to notice me and don’t check the ticket (the latter two happen more in the morning when it’s quiet). Recently there have been incidents of the ticket inspectors taking a closer look at the ticket because it’s faded a bit, however, no one has told me I need to replace it (which is ball ache because it involves queuing at rush hour in the ticket office to get it sorted).

Until, that is today. One of the more regular conductors decided today that I’d have to take my ticket out of it’s holder so he could inspect it. He then declared it unreadable and told me I’d have to buy a ticket. When I asked why he told me it was because the destination station was not visible. It’s not been visible for about a month. I’ve had many season tickets where it’s not visible, it’s one of the first things to go. When the ruddy great big expiry date stops being visible, that’s when people start complaining. Never in my decade plus of commuting have I ever been faced with that argument. I’ve also never been forced to buy a ticket, I’ve always been told to get it sorted soon, and I have. Nope, jobsworth is having none of it. I have to buy a single ticket to Cromer. Great. What if I don’t have any money? Well then, it turns out, I get treated like a fare evader and would be treated the same way someone with no ticket who refused to buy one would be, i.e. like a common criminal. I paid.

I also asked would I have to pay to get into Norwich tomorrow and got met with a smug “If the conductor is doing their job correctly and not just glancing at the tickets then yes”. In other words if another jobsworth is on the train in the morning I’ll need to buy another ticket. It’s ‘OK though’, because I can get the tickets refunded. Well that’s fine, except getting a refund on a ticket is bigger ball ache than getting the ticket changed. I can see me wasting half an hour tomorrow all because some git (who has inspected my ticket already thus week I should point out) is in a bad mood.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

It’s too wet, windy a grey to blog today and even though I have my big brolly it’s hard to walk, type, fight the wind and keep the phone dry. I am aware that by telling you this I have in fact blogged and, therefore, contradicted myself but that’s my parogative. There is a certain irony that I’m listening to Queen The Show Must Go On while I write this. So yes, the show has gone on, but it’s actually a show about how the show is cancelled. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

I don’t know about you, but if I get woken in the night one of two things is going to happen. I’m either going to roll over and go to sleep straight away (sometimes not even remembering that I woke up at all according to The Zozo) or I’m awake for hours. There is no middle ground, it’s seconds or hours.

The tipping point seems to be how far my brain gets woken up. Occasionally my computer, which is in the bedroom, decides to wake up from sleep mode for no apparent reason. There is a click as the power supply goes from low power mode to fully on, the fans spin up to full speed for a few seconds before settling down and both monster screens turn on. You know how much light a 30″ TV throws out when you’re watching it? Double that. It ranks pretty low on my all time favourite ways to be woken up at random times but I can get up, put it to sleep and head back to bed and put myself back to sleep without really thinking.

Compare that with being woken by a machine that’s pulled your telephone number randomly out of a hat and forces your brain to actually do something. Still being woken, still having to get out of bed to do something but this time your brain has woken up too. You head back to bead and it suddenly decides were going to go over the points that need to be raised in my next meeting, the fix to my current coding problem…

…and no matter what you try it doesn’t let up until about 5am where it goes “phew, long night, let’s get some really deep sleep”. 90 minutes later and the alarm is letting you know that the extra 7 hours of that deep sleep you really need to face the day isn’t happening.

And it’s the time you need to wake up that dictates when your brain let’s up, not how long it’s been awake for. Don’t need to be up till 8? Fine, I’ll sit here and spin, keeping you awake until 6:30 instead.

As you can guess I didn’t get much sleep last night.

For the past 4 years I’ve used my mobile as my primary telephone number. The land line is really just for broadband, although the mobile reception in Little Cottage is a bit crap so we have started encouraging people to call the landline if there’s no answer on the mobile. Even so I couldn’t really tell you what the ring on the home phone sounds like, I hear it so infrequently. Which is why, when it rings at 00:40 it’s causes such confusion.

Here’s the scene. The Zozo and I sound asleep with that serenity being shattered by a noise. A few seconds confusion while we try and work out what’s going on followed by me getting out if bed to pick up the phone. It’s dark and the handset doesn’t light up when you pick it up. I can’t find the answer button. The phone goes to voicemail. Now we’re both awake and wondering what’s wrong and who’s calling.

I turn my mobile on in case someone is trying to get hold if me. The Zozo does 1471. Number withheld. She checks the message. Nothing. It’s a fucking automated dialler. Some bastard machine has called our number so that, on the off chance that we answer and there is an ‘agent’ free, some Indian sat in a call centre half way round the world can try to sell me something I have no interest in buying.

Does it matter that were on the TPS scheme? Does it fuck! To report the company you need to get some details from them which the ‘agents’ have been trained not to give. It’s not “Hello this is Mahindra from Annoying Corp.”, it’s “Hello sir, let me feed you some shit about why you need to buy something from me”. With a withheld number you can’t report them.

I’ve even had them phone up claiming my computer has returned diagnostic information that it’s booting up too slowly. Utter shite, especially when the ‘agent’ couldn’t tell me the make or model of my computer. They wanted me to ‘click start’ and pass that info to them. Firstly, if it’s calling some remote helpdesk to say it’s got problems then you have that information and secondly it’s a Mac. There is no start button, so kindly fuck off! I did get him to admit that he couldn’t help me because I didn’t have a Windows machine and that my computer didn’t cause them to call but I never got the company name to complain about them.

So here we are. An hour later. It’s nearly two in the sodding morning and I can’t get back to sleep, all thanks to some stupid fucking sales company and their bloody auto dialler. I want to hurt someone¹!

¹Given the state of this country on how the authorities can blow the simplest figure of speech way out of proportion I should probably point out that this is just a statement of frustration and not a threat, implied or otherwise, against any person or persons, living or dead. Anyone taking it as such is hereby admitting that they are a moron of the highest caliber and unfit to make judgement against me.

These days I’ve taken to sorting out my todo list, doing a load of admin and a bit of programming on the train to work. It’s the only way I can even hope to keep up with everything that needs to be done at work. It certainly helps that I now do 90% of my work on the laptop¹.

This morning I got on the train, grabbed a table seat² got out the laptop and hit big confusion. There were apps running that I hadn’t started, folders open that I hadn’t opened and files that I didn’t recognise. I’d picked up Zo’s laptop, a near identical one to mine. Crud.

My todo lists both sync to my phone, email and calendars are handled by exchange, code is all on a server and I could, in theory, move back to using my desktop for the day supplemented by my phone… or I could get off the train, go home, get my laptop and head into work a hour late.

I chose the latter; after all, I was in an hour early yesterday, I can work from home while waiting for the train and I’d probably get more done that way than ducking about with the other option. Teach me not to check which one I’d picked up

¹If anyone knows where I can get my hands on BEA weblogic 8.1 for AIX (don’t ask) I could make it 100%.
²Be interesting to see if I can still get a table when school starts again.

I needed to get to work early today so got the 06:46 instead of my usual train. That time in the morning is rush hour for Cromer station because both platforms have a trains at them.

Look at the TV screen, Sheringham service on platform 1, Norwich platform 2.

Look at the train on platform 1, says Norwich on the front. Train on platform 2 doesn’t have something on the outside to tell you where it’s going but the display in the carriage says Sheringham.

So which is which?¹ It’s little wonder the last time I got that train I got on the wrong one.

¹The correct answer is Sheringham platform 1, Norwich platform 2 (as per the TV screen). Barring incident the trains always leave from those platforms except for the first one where a big (i.e. 3 carriage train) comes into platform 1, divides and the rear carriage heads to Norwich and the front two go to Sheringham. But you need to know that, it’s not stated anywhere.