Yearly Archives: 2003

I forgot to mention that I put the car in for its first service last week. ?170 quid it cost, which was a bit of an unpleasant surprize, as I had figured it would be around ?70 beforehand.

The money wasn’t the important thing, really, it was more the level of service… or rather, the lack of it. The, I’m assuming, ex-prison warden Sue Marsden at Kings of Liverpool Chrysler centre could not have been more cold and harsh if she had tried.

Or perhaps maybe she was trying.

Anyway, straight out of the get a job you fucking like department, she totally snaps at me for having the gaul to use a discount voucher given to me when I bought the car. “You’re supposed to hand that in when you hand the car in” she growled, adding “Now I’ll have to re-do your bill.”

Considering this took her all of a minute to do, including printing it out, I couldn’t see what her problem was, other than simply being a stroppy cow. I was also unable to find instruction anywhere on my discount voucher saying that it should have been handed in first thing that morning when she had greeted me with all the candour of George W Bush at a charity fund raiser for homeless terrorists.

But I digress – the car, I’m fairly content with so far. I kind of wish sometimes that we’d picked something more mainsteam and maybe five grand cheaper. Other than that it has been comfortable, reliable, and an absolute magic carpet ride on the motorway. However, if this is the level of customer satisfaction I’m going to face over the next four years of servicing to keep my warranty intact, then this will be the first and last Chrysler I own.

Sue Marsden – couldn’t warm to you if we were cremated together. Good work.

After a whole load of frantic work, the project at work was put on hold for a couple of weeks. Doh!

I was 50/50 about it. 50% relieved and 50% peeved that all the excitement didn’t lead anywhere. Well, actually, it did – it led to a pat on the back and they were impressed enough with what I had done to confirm they did want the solution I was providing. So that led me to about 40% relieved and 60% thinking that it had been worth the effort. Which is what counts at the end of the day.

Been hard at it this week on another one of those pressure gigs I get a kick out of every now and then.

One of the other studios asked if they could have something implemented by Wednesday the 15th, which was pretty difficult when I was asked back on the 9th. Anyhoo, I decided to have a stab at it and treat it like the client work of yore, when some stroppy French woman would be growling down the phone from an hour ahead in French time, wondering where here site was. (No bonus points to Mr Jess for working that one out!)

Everything was going fine until the central heating broke down at home on Monday morning. I had to take four hours out of the day to come home and wait while the engineer fixed it. (Strangely it takes exactly two games of Madden NFL 2003 set to 7 minute quarters to fetch and fit a new central heating pump. Not a lot of people know that… or care.)

When I got back to work I realised that missing four hours of the day with a looming deadline on the horison was not the done thing, so I stayed late to catch up with where I should have been. Weary eyed I decided I was back on schedule at just after seven o’clock and was confident that on Tuesday I’d be able to deliver ahead of schedule.

Why do I fall for that notion every single time?

Tuesday brought a whole lotta heartache as the afternoon wore on, mostly from this free “WYSIWYG” editor I was using to replace text boxes in a content managment system. The thing would either add paragraph tags or it would not, but there seemed to be no easy way to make it stick to one or the other.

Lots of messing about later and I’m back behind schedule again, although fortunately I’ve been evasive bug free thus far. (Evasive bugs being the kind that aren’t wearing deeley boppers and making themselves obvious.)

Hopefully tomorrow I can rescue the situation, as it would be a shame to look like a fuckwitosaurus after promising to deliver. Fingers crossed. :o)