roadworks

Going back even further into stuff I should have blogged about at the time, I've been experiencing quite the horrible time with traffic lights.

It started about 6 months ago when they started doing some work in Farnham.

It appeared to be water works, but it was quite widespread.  Indeed, they shut off Upper Hale Road, which is a pretty major route and takes a lot of traffic - particularly at commuting time.  There are a couple of ways around, but most are fairly long-winded.  They diverted traffic around, but it sent it into the clutches of more of the same roadworks, so the roads got pretty busy for a while.

And then they got worse.

You see, at the exact same time some work was done on the house that's on the corner of that upper hale junction.  This necessitated lights as they had to block off one of the carriageways, so now you've got traffic being diverted that's also being subjected to temporary lights, and temporary lights are always a traffic snarl up.

Okay, no problem, I can take a slightly longer route along Weybourne Road that allows me to avoid that whole junction... except they then started some work at the cross-roads there that also necessitated some temporary lights.  So you've now got people who know the ways round the original lights adding to the originally busy traffic that's also subject to lights.

To get around these I had to use one of my super long cuts, which meant I still had to go through the lights, but I was coming at them from a direction with a lot fewer cars, so I had one long wait, rather than 3 or 4.  However, it was a good 10 minutes plus longer journey time anyway, so I wasn't really saving anything.

And then things got even more fun, as they started some work on the roads near Farnham station and suddenly we've got temporary lights on the A31 and a load of displaced traffic as well.

Honestly, it felt like they were attempting to block me in with roadwork's - it eventually got to the stage that I couldn't even contemplate a super-bonkers "drive in the opposite direction" route to get avoid roadworks as they had some in the other direction as well.

I copied the following pic from a website that shows works. I'm not sure it's 100% clear, but you can see all the roadworks in what is a very small area so you get the point.

The thing is, though, once they'd finished all that in Farnham, they've decided to dig up Alton as well.  It's water works again, so I'm guessing they're doing the same sort of thing.  They're certainly slowly making their way up a road, but with these Alton works they're doing them across one of the main routes in from the A31.

Indeed, while there are some rat-runs you can use, they're huge extra distance.  Plus they're on quite minor roads, and it can be quite painful if cars are coming the other way.  I actually swore off using one of them some time ago for these reasons.

With how early I come in in the morning, it usually only adds about 5 minutes to my journey, but in the evenings if I'm not hanging round it can be a good 10 to 15 minutes.  On a half hour journey that's pretty significant.

At least with these they're not really doubling them up.

christmas

I thought I'd give a bit of a wrap-up of the Christmas holiday.

We had the company christmas lunch quite late this year, but then the positioning of Christmas Day is a little unusual, so it wasn't as late as it seemed in terms fo the acual date.  If I hadn't had quite so much leave left over I'd have had to work some odd random days or bring them forward from next year.  I guess the flip-side was that I got over two weeks leave and have only used up 3 days of my 2014 leave.

I had so much leave left over for several reasons - one was that I carried a couple of days over from the previous year, but the other was that I kinda saved it up with the anticipation that I might be attending interviews, but in the end it was quite late before I properly went back on the job market and then had to effectively stop looking a long way before Christmas.  Anyway, I'm goign to need that leave this year, but more on that another day.

We used to spend Christmas at my Dads, down in Deveon, but he seems to have decided that he doesn't like doing this anymore, and my sister hosts.  I find this really quite unsatisfactory, particularly as she lives ina tiny flat, which she shares with her flatmate, so it also becomes a double-Christmas thing with the flat-mates family too.

I don't really like Christmas, and spending it with someone else's family makes it quite uninteresting.  The biggest problem is that they all know each other - the flatmate is a long term friend fo my sister, and my dad knows her and her family quite well as well.  This leads to long periods of them rabbitting on about people I don't know "Did you hear Fred has moved in with Brenda?" "I have no idea who Fred and Brenda are, and care even less."

It would be far easier if they just put the telly on and then I could watch that and they could natter.

It doesn't help - and I'll be upfront that this is not a nice thing - that they're not my sort of people.  I mean, I'm a nerd.  They're not.  I wouldn't have anything to talk to them about, even if they weren't twittering on about people I've never even heard of.

My hope is that by next year my life will be sorted out and I'll have moved somewhere where I can play host to my family.

Having said that, there is another less-outspoken reason why my sister hosts, which is that she's tight.  By hosting she doesn't have spend the petrol money to drive down.  Instead my Dad pays for a hotel for me and him (her place is too small for us all to stay and he knows I would refuse to pay for a hotel) and we both drive to her.  There's even a bizarre situation each year where he then takes her to one of her friends "on the way back" (it's nothign fo the sort as it's at least 100 miles out of his way).. and then a few days later drives her home again.

She kinda has him wrapped around her finger, as she's always been his favourite.  Note that I don't care as such, but ti woudl be nice if he at least realised she was doing it because she's tight - Indeed, I think he'd be pleased, as he's of the "careful with money" persuassion himself.

Well this wasn't so much a round-up of Christmas as a moan about the day itself!

I'll try to cover the rest in another post (if I can be arsed), although one thing just to note - the joruney down to my sister has been horrendous both years.  Last year it was because it was on Christmas morning and kinda poxed up the day, but this time it was because of the horrible weather.

The A31 was closed on one part as a river had burst its banks, so they sent us down a diversion to rejoin it about 2 miles further down.  This distance took me 3 hours.  The whole journey took me 5 and a half hours.  Not fun.

well that's just great

So I blogged on Monday about how I had been hit by someone while driving a courtesy car, well I went out to my car yesterday lunchtime to find that someone has hit my proper car.

We're not talking major damage - it's a scratch on the rear bumper - but that's not the point.  Actually it kinda is - it's a small scratch so they've obviously just fucked off so that I don't demand they pay to repair it.

It's actually the second time it's been scratched on the bumper in that exact place.  I therefore suspect that it's the same idiot that's done it.  Indeed I actually suspect it's not happened at work at all, but it's the fucktard neighbours where I live.

I know they've already driven into my landlord's garage a couple of times.  Part of the problem is they're builders and both the houses next to us have had a lot of building work recently as well and builders are the exact archetype that is the wine van man - or "cunt in a van" as I like to call them.

Of course it could be at work it's happening - that's certainly where I notice it, but then that's where I see the car in proper full light and when I'm not tired.  If it is work my guess is it's people who go to the dump and don't find the right turn.  We're near the dump/recycling place and although clearly signed a lot of people miss it and end up having to turn around.

I'm surprised there aren't more accidents actually as the roads of the industrial estate have become chocked with parked cars.  It started last year after the big snow - I think a lot of people decided not to try parking in the proper car parks when it was snowy and then decided they liked parking on the road.  Certainly the proper car parks don't seem full yet there's all these cars.

Although saying that I think also they've been moved over from a neighbouring industrial park that has very little parking.  There certainly used to be a lot more cars parked on the proper roads than there is nowadays.

I seem to have really been in the wars with the car recently.

I don't think I blogged about it but a couple of weeks ago I was following a large articulated lorry (it's from a delivery company from the industrial estate and I've seen it a few times).  It was going down totally inappropriate roads, because it's shorter/quicker than using the main roads.

But for a big artic that also means he's slow so I was quite close behind.  Well, he went through a bit where there's some low-hanging trees (well, for an artic or a bus - they're not low for normal cars!) and he broke off a big chunk of tree that fell off and bounced off my bonnet.

In some ways I was lucky - it was a big piece and wood is quite dense so it would have been heavy and could easily have smashed my entire windscreen.  And of course in other ways I was unlucky, because it hit me and could easily have simply hit the road or whatever.  It's left a really noticeable dent in the bonnet but again, nothing that requires repairs, it just makes the car look beat-up.

Of course I considered an insurance claim, but unlike the hire car accident it wouldn't have been too difficult for them to say I was too close.  Plus it's not really his fault - the road doesn't ban wide/tall vehicles, so could they even argue it was the council's or the homeowners fault for not properly trimming the trees?

And speaking of windscreens, not long after the bonnet I got a stone chip on my windscreen.  This of course was just a couple of weeks before the MOT (chips above a certain size in certain zones of the screen are failures) so I didn't have a chance to get it looked at.  Small chips can often grow but this one seems stable.

As I say, my car is quite dinged up.  A lot of it comes from people in supermarket car parks hitting you with doors or bumping you as they manoeuvre (badly).  I always try to park out of the way in empty bits but that isn't always possible and doesn't seem to have helped.

a minor prang

So yesterday I didn't post, and it was basically because the day was very chaotic.

My car was in for a service and MOT and I'd decided to get a courtesy car.  I don't usually do this as the garage and where I work are close enough for the train to be a sensible (if bizarrely costly) option.  However, this time I'd thought I would.

So I dropped my car off and signed all the paperwork for the car, which was a Nissan Note, but when I got in the fuel warning was going - there was just 30miles worth of fuel in it.  However, I wasn't sure if it was diesel or not (I suspected it was) so I had to dash back in to check.

This and the time it took me to fill up (I had to stop at the Tesco garage as it's the only one I knew I could get to and they had some weird thing on the pump where you have to press if you want to pay at the kiosk or at the pump and I didn't work this out for a while) meant I was late getting to work - not by much, but still late and of course I was wanting to go early in order to pick up my car.

And then the fun really started.  I'd figured I would use the courtesy car as a bit of a test drive as I've never driven a note before, but as part of this I checked out the boot and the seats and all the things like that.  This made me slightly later setting off than usual and unfortunately it also meant that I was leaving at the same time as someone who works in the office next to ours.

And she hit me.

I was driving along the bit that leads out to the main part of the industrial estate and she basically reversed straight out and hit the car.  The damage was pretty minor - scuffed bumper sort of territory - and if it had been my own car I'd have been keen to help her out and let her pay for the repairs direct.

However, it was a courtesy car.  Not my car.  The damage was also way too obvious that I could have tried to pretend it hadn't happened.  If they'd have taken even a cursory look at the vehicle it would have been obvious and if I'd not said anything then that wouldn't be a good situation to be in.

I swapped what details we had (difficult for me as obviously it was the garage's coverage, not mine and she didn't have hers to hand) and then called the garage.  Which was when I got my next shock - unless she admitted liability I would have to pay them a £500 excess.  Obviously I'd then have to try to recover this from her insurer (or also the garage if it was less than £500).

But of course my car was in for a service and MOT, and of course it was the level 3 (most expensive) service which meant, all together with a few parts that needed doing, it was already going to cost me £390.  That could have meant I would have to pay £890!

I therefore decided to dash back home and get my own policy to see if it covered me for driving other vehicles, and the answer was sort of - I was covered for 3rd party when driving other vehicles.

Luckily she did admit liability and the garage therefore said they wouldn't take the excess (although noted that if there was a problem they may need to).

Anyway, that also meant I had to go extra early and of course had to make lots of personal calls in the afternoon and, to be frank, I was rather flustered, so I didn't get any chance to even think about a blog, let alone do all my work.

rather damp

I'm back off of holiday.

And I have a bit of a case of post-holiday blues if I'm honest.  I think it's particularly affected by the work related situation (looking for a job, getting an offer, turning it down, expecting things to improve) this year.

The holiday was gone in a flash.

It rained quite a bit and if the rain had been accompanied by thunder and lightning that would have been an even more cool statement, but it was mostly just regular rain and lots of it.

It wasn't quite as bad as up north.  The forecasts had been very bad before the week and I think the rain they got was basically predicted to also badly hit the south West.  Well it got it on the Sunday when I drove down, but then Monday it was actually rather bright.

Indeed, although it was wetter than was ideal compared to what the forecasts had said it wasn't actually all that bad.  It was only really Wednesday where it poxed things up - I'd planned a beach walk day and it rained almost constantly so I couldn't really do that.

Generally I did lots of walking.  For the first couple of days I was also very good with diet as I was expecting that when I went to my Dad's at the end of the week I'd end up eating badly, and this was the case, so I think overall it's all sort of balanced out.

However what was very clear to me is how much fitter I am.  The walks I did were generally a breeze and they were of a similar length to last year when I found them much more challenging. Indeed I did further walks more often and felt fine.

I've not much else to say - I didn't take any pictures with the weather.  I also tried a new route home, which was a lot more fun to drive, but was also therefore more tiring as it required a lot more concentration.

fit to drop

Yesterday was a very long day.

It started early with me getting up at 5:00AM in order to get ready for my first interview.  I set of at about 6:30AM and this was too early.  I arrived at about 8:00AM and sat in the multi-storey for about an hour before heading out to the interview.

I've discussed before how I'm pathologically incapable of being late, and this was another example of it, although in my defence I was heading into London and had no idea how the traffic would be.  Indeed, if the end of the day was any judge I could easily have been several hours late!

The second interview went okay.  The plan was a bit wholly and I ended up sat in what was essentially a team meeting.  I wasn't at all sure what, if anything, I was meant to contribute to this.

Also I was obviously handicapped by being quite shy.  this is a particular problem around new people (as I'm sure it is with all shy people) but also with larger groups and it turned out the team was quite large.  I was introduced to them all, but I am terrible with names, so 2 seconds after the introductions I had utterly forgotten who they were.

It didn't help of course that I had my second interview in the afternoon and I was worried about having enough time to get up there, so when it came to questions each time I was more keen to move on than ask a lot of questions.

While I think I would like the people there and the job sounded interesting, I would have two problems - it's a little outside of my experience and I'm still not sure about working in London.  Certainly I don't think I could stand moving into London.

The second interview was in Cambridge.  I set off for it a bit later than I'd hoped and so put my foot down on the motorway.  It had thankfully cleared from the rush-hour so I made it up in time, but if I'd travelled at my usual pace I'd have been late.  As it was I only had about 20 minutes for my lunch.

The second interview was the technical one.

I'd spent as much time as I could doing the prep work, but it was quite difficult to know what direction to take that - should I focus on the physics or the kit they actually sell?  Should I try and memorise a handful of the facts or get a more general feel.

As it turned out they covered a good range of topics, but didn't go too deep into the areas.  Also I got to play with a couple of their products, which was interesting.

My fear on this job is that they are quite focused on that one small area.  On the plus side it turns out their products are really clever and complicated, but I keep flip-flopping - is it too specialised, or is it techy enough to compensate for that.

I felt this one went better than the first, but I did find I couldn't answer some of their questions and also made some clear errors that would have been solved if I'd sat and thought for a while, rather than just blurting out answers.

The fit to drop of the title comes from the fact that, having been up since five, done some 5 or 6 hours of driving and not finished the second interview until 4PM I then had the journey from hell home.

Basically it didn't start well, as there was an accident on the M11.  Now, to be fair, the people on the other carriageway had an utter nightmare, because it was queued back for miles, and was literally stopped.  Most of the people there had actually gotten out of their cars.

On my side the problem was caused by people rubber-necking - slowing down to look at the accident.

I'm not sure if it was this delay or the fact the accident on the M11 meant people would be taking different routes, but when I arrived at the M4 / M3 area of the M25 it ground to a halt.  I must have crawled along for about an hour before finally getting on to the A3.

Now admittedly I did go and get some petrol and grab some junk food to cheer me up, but it was 8:00PM before I got home.  So that must have been about 8 hours I spent driving yesterday.

Hence why I was shattered and today I have basically been useless.

two down, ten to go

So the second week on my contracting job has finished.

It was a bit better this week in some ways.  I got a better idea of what I'm meant to be doing, but it's not really my cup of tea.  I mean, it's interesting, but not really the sort of work I'd have brought me in for.

Part of the problem is I'm meant to be doing two projects, but one of them has basically evaporated.  In a way that's good as I don't know that what I've been given to do would really fit into the time unless I was able to work on it full time.

The commute is going to be a bit of a drag.  It's turning out to be just under an hour, but only if I do two things: set off before seven and push it on the A3.

This clearly has two issues - it means I have to get up at 6AM and it's costing me in fuel economy.  The first isn't too bad, as I'm a bit of an early riser, although I have to say 6AM is probably my breaking point.  6:30AM I've been doing for years, but 6AM has a bit too much of an impact on when I have to go to bed (I have to get 8 hours every night or I feel cranky all day).

Since it's only 3 months, I can probably cope with the time, but the fuel economy is more of a bugger.  See, the real issue is that the cost of petrol is so high and my company's fuel allowance is pretty crap.  That means I'm not really making much over and above what I'm spending.  Now, that's okay in the sense that at least I'm not out of pocket, except of course that the increased mileage means increased wear on tyres, more frequent services, etc, etc.  And those things are pretty expensive.

Again, 3 months will be okay, but I really wouldn't want to do this long term.

Well, I say that, as there are other options.

Firstly, I could not push it and just arrive when I arrive.  That means the journey will take a long time if I still set off early, because I'll start to hit traffic relating to kids going to school.

The other option is to go in later.  They work flexi where I'm contracting, and at the moment I'm going to work early so I can come home early.  I could alternatively try to go in later and come back later.

I'm not really sure about this, as I am a 'lark', rather than an 'owl' and my body clock is really locked in to doing early, rather than later.

Also, there are going to be days when I have early meetings, etc, anyway.

Part of me is still hopeful that I'll have a bit of a gain of time in the evenings, though.  Because I can do flexi, I can take short lunches and stuff, so once I'm properly used to it I will hopefully have a few extra hours in the evenings across the week.

My weight basically didn't change this week.  To some extent that was because I found work less stressful, I think, but also I had a poor week diet wise anyway, and then my landlord came back from holiday and gave me a gift of chocolates to say thanks for house-sitting... and I ate the lot in a few days :/

I think if I can avoid slipping up too badly with normal diet stuff then I should get back to weight loss next week.  The idea of going for a walk after work is an okay one.  It doesn't work quite as well as my former walking regime and I think it might be a case of picking days to do it on.  For example, some evenings I can get petrol or shopping or whatever and the other I can come back and go for a walk.

road works

There have been a lot of road works around my local roads recently.

The first lot are gas works in the estate where I live. These have actually been on the go for ages. It turned out that this was in no small part down to the fact that the contractors hired to do the actual work went bust.

I'm not at all sure what they're actually doing. They only seem to dig bits of the road up and from looking in the holes, it's mainly around the actual junctions. So, if you've got the main gas line going down the road, where you have the branches to take gas into people's individual houses - those are the bits they've been digging up.

This also means they seem to have worked their way along the pipes, digging up small bits like that in sequence. This means that while there's been general disruption for ages, the specific bit that disrupts each house only lasts for a short while.

So when they did where I am, they completely blocked off the road for about 3 days, so I had to park in the estate, but then they moved on further up the road.

As I say, it has been a general pain, though, as there's bits you have to avoid and cones and barriers and machinery all over the shop.

The other bit of road works that's been a pain has been some way down the road. They appear to be putting in some bits for pedestrians to be able to cross the A325 close to the first of the big roundabouts.

At first I thought it was more of the gasworks, but then it became apparent it involved pedestrian crossing elements. I've been a bit cagey with how I describe that, because the place where they're putting it in is actually a rather busy part where both sides of the road are dual carriageway. However, it doesn't currently look like it will involve any sort of pelican crossing or traffic lights to actually stop the traffic.

I know from experience as it's where I often walk at the weekend that crossing these roads on foot is tricky so part of me is keen for them to put proper crossings in, but I'm very mindful of the fact that without lights or a pelican crossing, it won't actually make it any easier to cross.

The part of me that has to drive that way to get too and from work is also mindful of the fact that traffic already queues around there, so sticking in lights for pedestrians won't really help traffic flow. To be fair you don't see that many pedestrians around there as it's kinda in the middle of nowhere, so I think I'd prefer if there was a proper crossing with lights.

It does make you wonder where they get the money to pay for these things, though. I mean, gas I guess is private companies nowadays (although it wouldn't surprise me if actually it's coming out of the public purse - that's how a lot of these "privatisations" seem to work) but the pedestrian crossing has to be public money.

Not that I fundamentally mind them doing the work, it's more that if the country is so cash-strapped at the moment, surely that sort of money could be better spent. And if they have to do work on the roads, I'd have thought repairing a few more potholes would be a better use of the cash.

man flu

A bit crappy weekend was a bit crappy.

On Saturday I woke up with a lot of discomfort in the roof of my mouth. I sometimes get the effect if I've been snoring particularly badly during the night, but this was slightly different. This was the prelude to disease.

Basically, I've got a bit of a cold. It kinda developed more during Sunday, with me getting a runny nose and sneezing and generally feeling tired and under the weather.

I was therefore fully expecting to get up this morning and be fully in the throws of a proper bout of manflu, except I'm not. There's actually been very little change from yesterday - my nose is a bit runny and the roof of my mouth hurts and while I feel a bit rubbish, it's not too bad.

I get these occasionally, where the cold never really gets going. I don't know why - it's like the cold is a wimpy strain or my body manages to fight it off before it really gets a foothold. Of course it could still get worse, but at the moment it's just a bit annoying.

It also made the weekend a vaguely unpleasant experience, but not enough so that I stayed in bed or anything.

On Saturday morning I went for a bit of a drive. My main intention was to see how the car was after its second new wheel and the results are good. I was a little afraid that the second bent wheel wouldn't be the only reason for the wobble, but signs were good.

It's great to be able to drive it down the A31 and not feel like it's shaking itself to pieces.

Sunday I went to the Opticians for my "these glasses are wrong" appointment and basically they've taken them and are going to replace the right lens.

The bit that I found bizarre was that from what the optician said, the lens they were going to put in the right eye was now basically identical to my old lens. I found this bizarre because at my first test the optician said that the test indicated that my eyes hadn't really changed and so they would put in the same lenses I had before.

So basically, I don't really understand what happened. It sound like, even though she said that, actually, they put in different lenses. So in other words, there would have been no problems if they'd just done what they said they would do :/.

I mean, I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere, but that's what it sounded like.

ouch!

Well, the weekend was horribly expensive, as expected.

And not quite in all the ways I was expecting.

For example, the MOT and Service cost me more than expected, because they'd replaced my wipers. Now really they're mean to phone me if they want to do stuff like that, but they didn't, and it meant the total charge was around £65 (wipers are one of those things that cost way more than you'd think).

But also I got some horrible news. You remember the pothole I hit and that has been the bane of my existence (and bank account) for months? Well it turns out the wheel wobble I was getting was because the back wheel was also dented.

That means that hitting one pot hole has damaged 2 of my alloy wheels, which cost £185 each, and a tyre, which costs about £120. With labour, that's more than £500 for hitting 1 pothole.

It also means I've got to go back next Friday and get the wheel replaced (and the tyre changed over and rebalanced and that).

I also did the Nissan Roadside assistance, which was actually cheaper than I was expecting at £65 for the year and paid my Road Tax, which was £150; however after the depressing news at even more expense I didn't do my insurance as well. I'm thinking about protecting my no-claims, which costs about £50, but will also mean if I have an accident (and the way my luck's been going it seems likely) it'll save me money in the long term.

And speaking of my luck, I picked up my glasses on Saturday. And I've come to the conclusion that the right lens isn't the correct prescription. At distance and when reading subtitles on a DVD it's definitely slightly blurry. It's not enough to mean I can't see, but it's not right.

Which means I'll have the hassle of getting it fixed. I mean, why can't I just have something that goes really well and is better than expected?

If I believed in such things as karma, it means I must have been very naughty in a previous life.

hole in my bucket, dear liza

Today marks the start of a very expensive period, all of which relates to my car.

I got the new car in April 3 years ago and so this year my free service comes to an end. I mean, I get this one free, but from now on it's going to cost me money. And it's going to cost me money anyway today, because as well as being in for its service, its first MOT is due. Not sure how much that is since I've not had one in a long time, but it's got to be about £35.

I'm not anticipating any particular problems, though I suspect I made need some new brake pads, which I'm guessing will be fairly expensive. Also, there's the wheel wobble which I'm hoping doesn't point to anything more than a wheel weight being in the wrong place.

Anyway, the other stuff is that I also need to get my car tax. I can do that online, but it's still another £150 or so.

Then of course there's the Nissan roadside assistance (the RAC, basically) and given the problems I had with the wheel not so long ago, I don't fancy giving that up. I've still to look at the details, but I think it's about £100 for the equivalent level to what I've got now.

And finally of course, there's my insurance, which is due. Now that I'm in my thirties and I've got a long period of no claims, that's not actually bad value, but it's still the best part of £350 for a year, which all adds up.

So yeah - at minimum, this weekend is going to cost me about £650. Money will be veritably pissing out of the bucket that is my bank account.

the dreaded return

Well, I'm back at work.

Boo!

And of course, there's been tonnes for me to do. That's one of the problems with only having a couple of days off - people just stack things up on your desk 'because he'll be in a couple of days'. If you're off for two weeks, they don't because it would take so long before you turned it around.

The weekend was pretty much a success. Certainly I did, like, 95% of what I'd intended to. Here's a bit of a list/run-down:

1) Opticians

Went and got my eyes checked. I went to the Specsavers in Farnham - well, when I got the right place I did. Bizarrely, there's another opticians just 2 doors down and I initially went in there. I used to go to an independent opticians in Alton, but the last time they bent the frames of the glasses I'd picked and so I decided not to go there again.

I haven't really had any troubles with the glasses I've got, other than they're scratched to buggery - so much so that I can see weird lines across my vision. Interestingly they said my prescription hadn't really changed, which think is the first time I've ever had them checked and they've not changed, but I got some new specs anyway because of the scratches.

It was a bit weird actually in Specsavers - all of the employees seemed to be in a rush. They all even spoke really quickly. It was like they'd all been downing coffee all day :/. I'll pick the glasses up next Saturday and I guess I can check if they're still all in hyper-fast mode.

2) My dental hygienist is a sadist

You know when the dentist tells you to "have a rinse"? There are two reasons for that - they've either just done something messy, like polish your teeth, so there's gunk all over the shop, or, they've done you some damage and they can't see anymore for all the blood.

I had to rinse three times during my hygienist appointment. None of which were due to polishing.

On the third time she'd given me my glasses back (taken off to prevent splashes getting on them) and I could clearly see big clumps of flesh in the bowl.

A big part of the problem is that the inside edge of my gums is higher than the outside edge, so whenever you stick something through the gap from the outside, there's a good chance you'll injure or impale my gum. She did that a lot.

3) Halfords don't sell wheel nuts!

This was a bizarre one. I've detailed in the blog about my wheel/tyre problems, one of which was these appalling locking wheel nuts, so I thought I'd go to Halfords and see if I could get some ordinary ones to replace them.

But they don't do them - they only sell locking wheel nuts. Initially I thought I was being stupid or that they might only be available to order, so I asked the guy at the parts desk and he said they didn't do them. The reason - they can't make any money on them.

I was a bit stunned, so I just left, but I've been thinking about it and I might get some of the locking nuts. There seemed to be some with much better designs so I may get them. Plus it means I still get the security side of having locking nuts.

4) Got my windscreen fixed and car booked in

It's only taken, like, 5 months, but I went to Autoglass and they did the old crack filling thing. Obviously I wasn't in any sort of a rush, but it took them a good 45 minutes to turn it around from when I got there.

To be perfectly frank, it's not really a lot different to what it was before, but it only cost me £10 and hopefully it means it's sufficiently good to pass an MOT. It's not in the main line of sight, so I think it should be all right.

And I booked said MOT for Next Friday. It's also going in for a service, which will be the last free one as part of my service plan. I've also asked them to take a look at the wheel wobble I've been getting. I've a dreaded feeling it might be damage from the pothole, but I'm hoping it's just a wheel weight not on right.

5) I figured out what I'd done wrong with my scanner

Basically - the answer was the same as the answer to "what's the shortest distance between two points? A straight line - basically, I was trying to thread the cables around the desk, like I do with the other cables, but actually what I did with them was simply have them hanging loose.

Unfortunately, I'd already been to PC World and bought a hugely long USB cable, but I'm sure it'll come in useful anyway. It wasn't cheap - cables are a right rip off at PC World - but I had a voucher thing my dad had given me, so it wasn't too bad.
I also...

Actually, this post is already massive, so I'll chop it in half and post the rest tomorrow, I think. That'll actually help me out because I'm off to a meeting tomorrow.

flake of the week

I've been really flaky just recently.

This is over and above my usual flakiness that is.

The best example is my windscreen. Before Christmas I visited my Dad down in Devon and on the journey down I got a stone chip in my windscreen.

Now it was impractical to do anything about it while I was down there and also it didn't spread. Sometimes cracks and chips can grow and spread, but this one hasn't changed at all - it didn't even react when I hit that huge pothole that bent my wheel.

Plus it'll cost me money to repair. It's not in my eyeline, which they often won't repair and would instead need to replace the screen, so it's only a small amount, but it's still money. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's one of those insurance jobs, so it really is a small amount, but still.

I think I've been blaming the weather for this one - it always seems to be either raining or snowing recently and I don't think they can repair them when it's like that. Or maybe they can - I dunno, that's where the flakiness really comes into it.

Another example is my internet.

A while back John put in the wire to let me access his cable broadband. Since then I've been using it quite a lot and of course the whole intention was that I was going to switch my own phone line broadband off and hence same myself a lot of money.

Trouble is that the cable broadband is rather flaky itself. When it's working I can get some really high speeds, but they only allow you 1gb of bandwidth before they start throttling the connection. 1gb is not a lot.

And even when that's not in effect the connection speed can be all over the place - sometimes really fast, sometimes really slow, and unpredictably so. Plus, it completely dies a hell of a lot.

Now I know how to fix these deaths - you reboot the router by switching it off and on and it re-synchs itself. Problem is of course that I can't get in to do that, because it's in John's house. And h doesn't use the net a lot so he sometimes doesn't notice for several days.

Which all means I can't get rid of my broadband. I therefore had a look for something cheaper and none of the other packages people offer are as good as my current one. So what about downgrading? Well, although there are cheaper options from the same company I'm worried that if I switch something will go wrong.

I've no idea how to change the IP of my router, for example, so I'm worried that if I change it'll go tits up. I could probably sort this out by phoning them, but as previously noted, I've been really flaky about this stuff and haven't bothered.

And there's loads of other stuff. For example, I've got loads of e-mails flagged as needing action covering everything from buying some more clothes to joining forums.

I'm just being totally rubbish.

I also keep wondering where the time goes. I remember not so long ago I had the time to watch anime and scan stuff and do all these little jobs as well, but just recently it seems like I don't have any spare time to do anything.

And then I remember - I must spend at least 8 hours every week playing Anno, absolute minimum. When you factor in work and sleep and shopping all the other crap I have to do that's a huge chunk of all my spare time.

a hole in the pocket

So this weekend cost me about £320.

I ended up ordering the tyre from Nissan and it cam in on Saturday morning. Not that the guy called me. I'm not really sure why I keep using the Aldershot Westway Nissan dealership, as the customer service is shit.

I've always maintained that in terms of the back room - the mechanics, for example - they do a really good job, but the problem is the front end. Whenever I call them up and they say "do you want to leave a message and he'll call you back" I've learnt not to bother, because they never, ever do call me back. It's far better to simply call back.

I mean, the guy said he'd phone me when I ordered it on Friday, but he didn't. I had to call in and check. Of course, being Saturday, he was pretty busy, so I had to keep calling - on one of the occasions I did leave a message, but he didn't call back.

Anyway, the wheel had come in, so I limped to the dealership. It cost about £185 (ouch!).

I then limped all the way over to Alton Qwik Fit where the tyre I ordered was. That was a fairly painless process, because I'd ordered the tyre and I had lucked out with the timing and got straight in and served. Painless apart front he price that is - £135 (double ouch!).

Not heard a peep from this guy who was supposed to fix my bent wheel. It's like he's dropped off the face of the earth :/.

Saturday was about the first time I've driven around with it being light out. I thought I'd have a drive around with the new tyre and see where all the potholes were, plus I needed some petrol. The A31 is like a dirt track in places. There's one place coming off of the roundabout after Farnham where the hole is like a crevasse, it's so big and deep. The one I hit was like that, but they've patched that one up.

Anyway, when I got back on Saturday, I thought I'd give the old girl a bit of a treat after having to limp around with a lame leg all week and gave her a good clean. Unfortunately, the light faded before I'd finished, so I had to finish off on Sunday morning.

Weirdly, normally when I clean the car I get a lot of pain in my hamstring down the back of my legs from bending over so much. However, Sunday morning I was fine, but this morning I'm in agony. That suggests the little bit of bending down I did when finishing off on the Sunday had more impact than everything on Saturday, which is a bit weird.

I also couldn't be arsed to go the whole hog and polish the car. There was also another reason for that - I seem to have a lot of... well, they're not really scratches, as such - the paint isn't gone, but the finish seems to have come off. I dunno, it's a little difficult to explain, especially as I haven't a clue what has caused it.

I do have this stuff that claims to restore the finish, but I've never tried it, and I couldn't be bothered to start experimenting on the Sunday.

Anyway, it looks pretty good, so I'm fairly happy.

tyre-d out

Right then, so this tyre/pothole situation.

To summarise what I've posted - Monday on the way home from work I hit a pothole REALLY hard. Continued home, but failed to check the tyre that evening, because I'm stupid. Tuesday I drove in, I now realise with the tyre deflating. By the time I got to work the tyre was totally dead.

My plan was to hope for the best - assume it was just a knackered tyre, get it off at lunchtime, go down kwik-fit and start the ball rolling on getting new one.

The first problem was that I could not get the tyre off. There are four nuts that you need to unscrew and I could do three of them, but the fourth was one of these locking wheel nuts. The idea seems to be that there's a kind of "key" that fits onto the nut and clips into your wrench, but for the life of me I just could not get any purchase to turn it.

Luckily, I'm a member of the RAC, so I called them up. I called them at about 1:30pm and they said it would probably not be until 4pm that someone would get to me. Fine - I was at work, I wasn't going anywhere any way.

However, because I knew my tyres are rather rare, I thought I'd call kwik fit and try to get the ball rolling. So I did that, explain the tyre size and stuff and that all 4 of my current tyres are continentals. The guy said they'd need to check the stocks and get back to me.

So, 4pm rolled around and no sign of the RAC. I phoned them up, chasing, and they said it was going to be 6pm before someone could get to me! I appreciate I'm not pregnant and stuck by the side of the motorway, but come on - that's just taking the piss. 4 and a half hours to get to me!

Next thing, I hadn't heard anything from kwik fit, so I called them up. Well, it turns out that there are no Continental tyres in my size in the entire country! Not even Continental themselves have got any in stock!

Well, I know that you're not supposed to mix tread patterns on your driving wheels, which are the ones with power going to them. In my case that's the fronts and it was the front left that was knackered. However, the guy said we could order another brand - Pirelli in this case - and swap one from the back to the front.

The RAC guy eventually turned up at 5:45pm and of course he had the tyre off and changed in less than 5 minutes!

Unfortunately, I've got one of these shitty space saver tyres. That means I can't go above 50, and in reality I've been driving everywhere at 40, because it's far too easy to go above and if I was at 50 and did that, Christ knows what would happen.

Anyway, got home and decided I'd tidy up so that my tyre was in easy reach for the next day and I'd put all the bits and pieces for changing the tyre away too.

Well, while I was doing that, I noticed that the inside of the wheel - the inner rim - looked a bit funny. Using a tape measure, I was able to determine that the wheel is actually bent! There's a part of it that isn't as round as it should be! I'm guessing that's actually why the tyre deflated - I certainly couldn't see any holes in it.

But that also means I can't just put a new tyre on it - it needs properly fixing. I therefore investigated this on the internet that night and a guy I e-mailed called me right back.

He said it was going to be about £75 to repair, which isn't cheap, but is a lot cheaper than a new wheel. He also said it was going to take a couple of days (there are loads and loads of people hitting potholes and bending alloys because the roads have been fucked up by the recent bad weather)and he'd pick it up on Thursday.

So I've been driving on this crappy space saver in the meant time and it's not fun I can tell you.

And guess what? Thursday rolls around and there's not a peep from this guy at all. I phoned him up towards the end of the day and it just went straight to voicemail. So I e-mailed him late last night and I've not had a reply yet - to be honest, that's kind of fair enough, because it was late, but it also means he's still not answered my phone message.

It's getting silly - he also said it would take about 48 hours to repair, because of the backlog, so that means it'll be ages before it's done. I therefore phoned the Nissan garage this morning and asked how much a new alloy would be. It's more expensive - £180 - but he said I could have it tomorrow if I ordered by 11am (not sure this would actually be the case, but even if it was Monday, that'd be quicker).

The way I'm currently feeling about the situation I'll probably actually do both. That way I might be able to have an actual proper spare tyre, rather than this space saver shit.

fucking potholes

Last night I hit a pothole.

And when I say hit, I mean mother fucking hit (I should warn that this blog entry may be a little more sweary than usual as I'm a rather pissed off). It felt like I was mounting the curb. And since I was on the A31 doing the best part of 60 miles an hour it was not a fun experience. It was a massive jolt and a there was a huge bang as I guess the shocks slammed up to take the impact.

Unfortunately, however, when I got home I was not sensible.

When I got home I should have checked out the tyre. I can't really check out the suspension, but the tyre is easily checkable and I now appreciate I should have had a look.

The reason I should have had a look is because the tyre has punctured. I don't think it could have burst as I didn't detect anything odd on the rest of the drive home. However, the drive in this morning got increasingly worse as I went.

I realise now that this was the tyre deflating. It's currently sat in the office car park awaiting me putting the skinny space-saver tyre on.

And that'll be a fucking nightmare. I've never changed the tyres before and it's got one of those locking wheel nuts, which I bet will be a pig to do. That's assuming the garage hasn't done the usual trick of tightening the tyres to such a degree that even bloody Hercules couldn't get them off.

So now I have a catalogue of potential problems.

First off the obvious - I'll need a new tyre. My tyres are a special size that are both quite rare and fucking expensive. We're talking at least £100. That's a lot of money. This means that even getting it sorted now will mean it will be tomorrow before a new one arrives. That means I'll have to drive on the skinny tyre, which is not the safest thing to be doing.

Next up the alignment/tracking could have been put out, which is not a big fix, but obviously represents more money.

Then it gets horrible - the shocks could have been damaged, the springs could have been damaged, the wheel bearing could have been damaged or the damn steering rack could even have been damaged. Those are all fucking expensive.

This is all assuming I've not caused even more damage by running on a flat tyre like a stupid idiot. Which, knowing my luck, I'm sure I have.

it's snow joke

It was like déjà vu all over again last week.

After my big old couple of weeks off for Chrimbo and the New Year I was supposed to start work again on the Wednesday. I always like to take a couple of extra days and come back mid-week when I have any sort of holiday, because I find that shift to a full working week from holiday quite stressful.

Well my timing weirdly meant that I was coming back on Wednesday and Tuesday night was when it snowed heavily. Of course it had snowed before Christmas and had been pretty horrendous by all accounts, but it wasn't too bad while I was at work and then when it got bad I was off.

In fact, that pre-Christmas snow actually ended when I went down to Devon to visit my Dad - it was milder and rained heavily that morning I went down and that actually cleared away the snow, so my journey down was okay. And of course down in the South west they never have it so bad anyway.

I did have scary moment, though. I stopped at Cartgate services to have a pea and when I was driving out of their I hit some black ice on the road out. I turned left and the car went straight on.

It was my own fault because I was going too fast and it was just lucky that no-one was coming the other way. I didn't make it all the way across to the other side of the road, but I crossed the line marking the middle of the road.

Anyway, the déjà vu came because the snow that fell on Tuesday night was almost the exact same depth at what we got last February. And as then, I was trapped.

To be frank I probably would have stayed trapped as well if it wasn't for the fact that my landlord was going on holiday on the Sunday. That meant that he organised a "digging party" and we dug ourselves out on the Thursday.

Also, what would have encouraged me to stay is that I can actually work remotely from home. Plus, because of my pack rat mentality, I'd estimate that I had about 2 weeks of food that I coudl have lived off of. Admittedly, after a while my diet would have gotten a bit bland - lots of pasta and chicken and rice (which aren't great breakfast choices, in my opinion), but I could have survived.

Anyway, the dig out meant it was worth attempting to come to work on the Friday. The journey wasn't great to be frank. The roads had been cleared a bit, but they were a long way from being properly cleared. Especially when you got off the main roads - the industrial estate I work in was almost impassable and I actually got stuck. Luckily my boss has a 4x4 and was able to tow me out.

I took it steady both going and coming back, especially given my experience before Christmas, but that didn't seem to be the attitudes of most people on the roads - I had loads of people tailgating me, which seems the most ridiculous behaviour imaginable in this weather.

One slip or slide and what would have been me having a scary moment on my own could easily become a horrendous pile-up, just because people weren't giving enough space.

*yawn*

Pretty good weekend, but I'm really quite knackered.

I went down to Devon to visit my Dad and we gave him his birthday present. It was a digital camera. It was only a compact model, but we also got him lots of gubbins to go with it - a stand-alone printer, and inks and paper for it.

He's a bit of a photography fan and he's mentioned digital cameras to me several times before. I'd therefore initially wanted to get him a full-on digital SLR camera, but my sister convinced me that it would be better to get a compact.

She was quite right - this gives him a 'taste' of the digital world and a chance to play and investigate. Plus SLR's are not cheap. Well, good digital compacts aren't really 'cheap' either, but you know what I mean.

His actual birthday isn't until October, but we wanted to get it him now because of the whole trip to Monaco. It'll give him a chance to play with it before-hand and then he can use it there too.

I'm knackered because it was quite an intense weekend. It was actually one of my scheduled cleaning weekends and while I could have left it, with the ant problems I've been having I really wanted to at least have a wipe around.

I therefore had to cram all that into Friday morning and then drive down in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the trip down was horrible - I got stuck around Stonehenge and it meant the whole journey took five-and-a-half hours. I normally reckon on it being up to about 4 hours (which is what it took me on Monday). So that was tiring.

Then, on Saturday there was all the present stuff, which was fairly tiring as I had to explain everything to Dad. In the afternoon we then went for this huge long walk at Braunton Burrows, which is this area of sand-dunes.

I really need to get used to walking distances again for the Monaco trip, so it was good from that point of view, but it was still pretty tiring. On top of that on Sunday we went for another walk and that pretty much finished me off - Sunday afternoon I almost couldn't walk and had to take painkillers on Monday. I'm still aching in my calves now.

Monday was the drive back - I had to head off really early as I need to get back so that I could do all the other stuff I needed to, like ironing, etc.

So as you can see, it was a really rather busy and active weekend. I could almost do with a holiday to recover from my holiday!

day of truth

Potentially there's some big news at work today, assuming things go as planned.

It involves either a 'yes' or a 'no' and part of me is quite keen on it being a yes, whereas another part of me quite wants it to be a no.

I know that's all a bit cryptic, but it's a business thing so I dunno if putting it into the public domain is a good idea.

This weekend will be an expensive and long-winded one I fear. The snow's really played havoc with... well everything, but one of the things has been the postal system. As such I've been getting loads of parcels and stuff quite late. Two of them appear to be more stuff from Japan and I've been hit with customs charges on them.

Interestingly, I'm collecting these from Farnham post office. Normally I pick them up from the depot in Aldershot. Not sure what that means (other than that the charges seem to be cheaper this time).

But also the couriers tried to deliver the latest newtype, animedia and animage to me but left one of those 'missed you' notes. Luckily they always try redelivery the next day, so hopefully my landlord will be in to collect, but if not, it probably means a drive over to Reading (which is bloody miles away).

I'll need to go shopping on Saturday morning too, which will be a big one as the whole snow cut-off thing means I've not been able to shop properly for several weeks. On the plus side this meant I've cleared out some older stuff from the cupboards/freezer that needed eating, but then it also means I've used up all sorts of bits and bobs that now need replacing in one hit.

I think I'll therefore probably try to do as little else that involves spending money over the weekend as possible. I certainly need to give the place a good clean, so I'll probably do that.

I did actually find a work-around for the whole Civ3 space-race victory bug by searching online, btw. It was to do with the movie it tries to play - I guess there's some incompatibility or other with XP or something. But that means I won that game, although I do seem to still be playing (if you win early it lets you play on) but my interest has waned.

I'm hoping therefore this weekend will basically be Civ-less and I can crack into loads of stuff (especially finishing bloomin trigun and blassreiter!). But then best laid plans and all that :/.

Oh, I forgot - another thing the snow seems to have knackered is the roads. The roads around Alton are in a shocking state. I'm assuming it's the snow and not the heavy rain we had, though it could be a combination of both.

But anyway, great big holes seem to have been gouged in the roads, with loads of loose gravel from them. It's odd, but it kinda reminds me of geography lessons and the whole "glaciation" type of weathering, where glaciers grind rocks along. But I'm sure this is more about the snow affecting where cars could drive and how they drove.

yesterday's meeting

I was away all day yesterday for a work meeting. It wasn't the most productive. I thought I'd laid quite a good groundwork for a suggestion I made, but when it came down to it the customer didn't really seem at all keen.

I was told to give it a go, but as a 'redo' so that she could compare it to the existing one. So I've now got to do that, but I think I need to make it somewhat funky so that it's more impressive than I would otherwise have done and so wins the point.

Anyway I was a bit disheartened by that result to the meeting, so I was edging towards a bad mood. Then, when I was driving home the traffic was horrendous.

A while back some signs went up saying that they were going to be some roadwork's at the traffic lights that are just down the road from me. When the date came the workmen appeared, but the roadwork's actually seemed fairly minor.

However, I now suspect that was due to the extremely cold weather and they've only now started properly.

It's an absolute nightmare - they've turned the normal lights off and put temporary ones it. But of course the temporary ones have a completely different timing to the normal ones so that traffic quickly backs up and I got trapped in it yesterday.

I've had a look on multimap as I've always know there are some rat-run type minor roads that connect the main roads. I think I've identified an alternative route.

It kinda depends on the queue not reaching biblical proportions - if it spills all the way back on the A31 there's little I can do - but otherwise I should be able to muddle my way through.

This last weekend was a bit of an odd one. I sort of dashed around on Friday and Saturday like a blue-arsed fly. I was trying to get stuff done so I clear the decks and spend all Sunday scanning staff but I think I actually burnt myself out a bit so I only did a bit of scanning (well, it was a fair bit, but not quite what I'd planned).

Anyway, I watched some of the last stuff from the October '08 season:

• Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy) was, if I'm honest, dull. It's sort of set in England from around the Edwardian or Victorian era somewhere, though only nominally - loads of it is inaccurate/fictionalised. It's also clearly aimed at girls with a pretty boy male lead who the girl is falling in love with but he's a bit of a bad boy rogue type... blah, blah, dull.
• Inazuma Eleven was okay, I guess. It's a kid's show and as those sorts of things go it was reasonable enough. It was sort of about a football (soccer) team, but it was quickly apparent this was more fantasy than actual football.
• Mouryou no Hako was really good. It was a bit on the weird side - there seems to be a lot of hidden mystery and quite a complex plot, but then those are never bad things :).

There are only one or two more shows to go, which is quite good timing as the half-season January '09 shows are just starting to get fansubbed.

Interestingly, though, quite a few appear to be now featuring on Crunchyroll. I have mixed feelings about that, as I'm not a fan of the crunchyroll site, but it's good to see that it's starting to happen.