Parents, Who’d have them?

by | Oct 11, 2010 | Family

Last week at a festive board there was a discussion on “kids, and the annoying requests they ask of you” The general opinion of the parents present was that in their days if you had a problem, like you broke down, or ran out of petrol you sorted it out yourself, and did not phone your parents expecting them to help.  My father was one of the strong voices against annoying kids expecting you to go out of your way to help. This conversation was brought back into my mind yesterday. And as a none-parent I want to point out its not just Children/Grandchildren  that are guilty of this.

Yesterday about 7pm I get a call from my mother. Turns out there was family up in the area on a canal boat holiday, and my parents had gone to visit them for a pub lunch. Only after the lunch they decided to travel along the canal for a while to enjoy the day, and my father had always fancied having a go on a canal boat. So at 7 when they decided to call it a day and come home after a day on the canal they realise they are now several miles or more away from where they parked their car.

So pour coffee down sink, take a moment to morn its loss, and jump in car to drive to the middle of nowhere to pick up parents.  I arrive at a small car-park near the canal, its miles from the nearest street light so its dark, cold, and abandoned. I am the only person about, so I phone my father to say I am here, and where are they?. “Oh, we had to move on. We’re a couple miles down the canal. We are just mooring up which should take twenty minutes or so, then we’ll walk the mile or so back to where you are. so just wait there”

Right, so I am to wait in a cold, dark, abandoned car park. And I can’t leave the engine running as I’m a bit low on diesel and probably shouldn’t waste it. Now the smarter amongst you are probably thinking . o (err. they were only guests on the boat, and they knew you were on route to collect them, so why did they not leave the boat at the location you were driving to, and wait for you to arrive?) The answer would be, they did not think of it.

About a half hour later I get a call from my father asking was I still there (like where else would I be?) and informing me they stopped off at a pub, so I should drive to pub to meet them. So it was a case of relocate to pub, (OK I did get a pint for my troubles. Not off my parents but of some random friend of the family who I do not know). Then a quick ten minute trip to go drop them off at their car, before I was able to go home.

PARENTS!!!!!!

Madness, Total Fraking Madness

by | Oct 6, 2010 | Office

The Mental Asylum where I work is an ISP, we supply all the usual stuff, Hosting, Domains, Email, ADSL, Dial-UP, Phone lines, VoIP, PBX’s, Virtual Servers, Co-Lo’s, etc, etc.  And as such we have a reasonably busy support department.  Oh and on top we also do IT Support, Site Visits, New Installations, etc.

So imagine the madness of letting all the support staff go off on holidays for the same two weeks? Yup, we are a ISP with no support staff for two weeks. How Fraking mad is that?

In fact we have Linux Sys.Admins taking 1st line calls. In the words of a black and white funeral director “we’re DOOOOOOOMED!!!”

When is a simple task not a simple task….

by | Oct 4, 2010 | Vehicles

Last Friday it was pointed out to me that the sidelight on the drivers side was not working on my car. Now changing the bulbs on a car is a simple task so I pencilled in doing some maintenance at the weekend.

So Saturday afternoon I pop the hood and look at the back of the light fitting to see what kind of bulb I need. Imagine my surprise when I realised the lamp I wanted was behind a bit of metal chassis. OK. Not to worry, I have the owners manual so I’ll check what they say about bulb replacement.

The entry for side lights & indicators was simply “For this task we suggest taking the vehicle to your supplier for them to deal with” WTF?? Since when has replacing a simple sidelight bulb needed the vehicle dealers to do? Pah at them.

So I take a look to see how big a job it is to gain access to the bulb. Right. to gain access to the back of the lighting unit you have to remove the lighting unit. So far so simple. Only the lighting unit is behind the front grill & bodywork. So you have to remove the front of the car to get at the lighting unit, to remove the lighting unit to gain access to the lamp to simply unplug it, and plug a new one in.

How fraking stupid is that design ?

Several hours of major mechanical work just to get access to a 30 second maintenance job.

Needless to say, my side light is still not working.