work chrimbo meal

Today is the work Christmas Meal day.

Basically, every Christmas, the company pays for us all to go out for a meal. Now the last few years we've always gone to the same place, but this year we're trying somewhere different.

Well, I say different - we've actually been there a couple of times before, but it's under new management, so it's effectively different.

Today also is when I have to do the handover stuff from a RED employee. Basically he's quit, so I have to go through some stuff with him.

I've mixed feeling about his quitting. He's an alright guy, but then he's also the guy who I moaned about because he tapped his feet and used to drive me insane. To be frank, he was also a bit of a slacker - if you didn't constantly give him stuff to do, he'd happily sit there all day on the internet. But then equally, when he did have stuff to do - especially analysis stuff - he was pretty good at it.

Plans for the weekend are pretty much non-existent.

I'm kinda aware that next week is my last week of work before I go on holiday for Christmas (hurrah), so I think my brain is going into that "well, I'll just do it next week when I'm on holiday" mode. Which is fair enough for some things, but really on others I should be trying to get them out of the way, so that I can properly enjoy my time off without having to worry about them.

So yeah, I'll either have one of those weekends where I do tonnes or absolutely bugger all. Place your bets now.

chrimbo radio times

I'm feeling pretty knackered today for some reason, so I thought I'd do a quick post about something completely random.

And that completely random something is the Christmas issue of Radio Times.

I've heard it said that for most people Christmas doesn't officially start until they see the Coca Cola add featuring Father Christmas and the trucks. Well for me, Christmas doesn't really start until I buy the Christmas issue of the Radio Times.

I actually buy RT every week as I'm a fan of television in general. I use it to help me plan what to watch and record, and I'm sufficiently anal as to be one of those people who circle the programs. Usually on Friday night I'll go through, highlighting the shows I'm already following and seeing if there's anything that peaks my interest.

My routine for the Chrimbo issue is almost identical. I'm expecting/hoping that it'll be on sale when I go into town today to drop my latest batch of washing off. I'll then scan through the articles while eating lunch and then Friday I'll plan out what I want to watch and record over Chrimbo.

Of course for those two weeks (if you've never seen it before the Chrimbo RT is a double issue that covers both the Christmas and New Year weeks) there'll be all sorts of specials and the schedules will be odd. Plus I'll be on holiday so there'll be more opportunity to catch some interesting things.

And that will be it - I'll officially be in festive mood.

Well, at least as festive as I'll get.

I have mixed feeling over Christmas.

First off I'm 100% atheist and, to be frank, the whole religious element actually gets on my nerves a bit. However, the thing about Christmas is it's essentially a winter feasting festival that was taken over by the organised religions, so I'm not totally against it.

The aspects I like are (predictably) the eating, the drinking and the relaxing, but also the spending a bit of time with your family and friends that you may not have seen in a while. The gift giving and receiving isn't bad too.

But, like most people, I get a bit sick of the saturation bombing that goes on. I'm very much on the side of people who complain about all the Christmas adverts. I caught an ad-break last week (so the first week in December) and every single ad was Christmas related.

I mean, it's not like we're going to forget about Christmas. We're well aware it's there and when it is, so the adverts are a bit excessive.

Although to be fair, the ads that really drive me bonkers are the post-Christmas sale ads, because they're fewer in number. At least before Christmas there's sufficient variety that you won't see the same ads over and over. But in that Sale period, every ad break will be identical, featuring the exact same 5 or six ads over-and-over, because the sales are much more restricted to certain types of businesses, like furniture stores or department stores.

Oops - got ranting and this post wasn't as short as I'd intended!

bonkers day

Yesterday was a little bit bonkers at work.

Basically, the person who handles a particular side of the RED business had a day off, and for some reason everyone chose that day to start sending her new requirements. I won't explain the boring tedium of it all, but basically it meant that I was running around like a headless chicken doing loads of stuff that I've never done before.

It wasn't too bad in a way, because otherwise I was waiting on loads of other stuff and so would have had not much to do. Thankfully they're now back in work today and also my other stuff has come back to me, so I can get on with it.

I also got a phone call late in the afternoon from Aldershot Parcel Force depot (I noted it was not from the number given to me and that was causing me all sort of problems) about my problem. Basically, the guy said that the payment had worked. Something he said made it sound like actually it was my re-attempts to pay that had worked, but, confusingly, he also seemed to imply the original payment had worked.

There's also the option that they've decided to wave the charge or there's some system error or something, but either way I guess I don't have to worry about it any more.

In the evening I just laid in bed and watched telly as I was a bit knackered after the bonkers day.

Normally Wednesday would be film review day, but as mentioned on Monday I didn't get a new review disks (it actually turned up in the post Tuesday) and didn't watch any films. As such, I thought I'd discuss a couple of the telly programmes I've been watching instead.

Dollhouse

I'd heard mixed things about this.

The show's actually by Joss Wheddon, who did Buffy, Angel and Firefly, all of which I enjoyed to varying degrees and I think that might have been part of the problem. See, the feeling I've been getting from the show so far is that it's an interesting idea that isn't explored enough in these earlier episodes.

The basic idea is that the Dollhouse is an organisation that can manipulate people's minds, wiping them and implanting new memories and personalities. They therefore recruit people who become the dolls of the title and then very rich people pay for them to fulfil certain rolls.

This could mean anything from them being a master thief to a hired assassin.

And that's sort of the problem - the show starts off too focused on the idea of being something different each week. It's kinda wrapped up in its own conceit - it's like normal telly, where at the end of the episode, the show resets and next week everything's back roughly to where it was.

Which is okay for normal telly, but being Joss Wheddon I think people were expecting more. It also didn't help that the resetting got it back to a weird position of implying "everything's worked out okay", yet you've got these girls who are essentially being abused and it's not making any real comment on that.

However, in more recent episodes, there's been a bit more of a hint of a longer story and it's actually started to focus a bit better on some of the moral issues as well as suggest there's more to the Dollhouse than it appears.

I've heard it gets quite good towards the end, but I'll have to wait and see.

Paradox

The other show I wanted to mention was Paradox.

This is essentially a new crime thriller type show, but it's tried to wrap itself around a bit of Science Fiction. In some ways it's like Bonekickers in that regard, but although I avoided Bonekickers like the plague, I thought I'd check this out.

My feelings are mixed - it kinda works and doesn't work in equal measure.

First up, the actual crime thriller type element combined with the premise (images from the future are downloaded by a scientist) works quite well. It's an intriguing way of providing a twist on the "whodunit" format.

You're effectively being given all these clues as to what's going to happen and then you have to try to work out what it is and how to stop it. It's quite satisfying on that front, in that it's a fair puzzle and you watch the police try to work it out too.

One of the big problems is with who they've decided to use as characters. Two of the worst culprit's are the Scottish detective, who always seems to be cynical about everything, but is also shagging Outhwaite in a "let's make the relationships complicated" fashion, and the Black detective. The black guy seems to be a sort of "always by the book" character so that the maverick Outhwaite can clash with him all the time.

Outhwaite's character and the scientist are actually okay, although again their kinda drawn from a pool of predictable character types, they don't clash with the basic idea of the show. See, the problem is that the way it's being presented is very much from their point of view, in that they believe the images are genuine and that they should try to stop them. The other two go against this and while that might suggest some good tension, in reality, because the scientist and Outhwaite are continuously proven right, it just makes the others seem a bit stupid.

There are also some problems regarding the whole paradox itself. My main one is where are the images coming from?

Weirdly, as they become real things, the camera does a sort of "photo still shot" effect as if it's the camera that took the picture that's been beamed back in time. But how does that work?

Are we supposed to believe that these people are watching grabbed moments from the telly show they're staring in? Very meta-textual, but also very non-sensical. Or in this universe is everyone chased after by film crews?

And if it's meant to be that they're photos taken by normal people or photographers, then how does that work? Some of them are so utterly random no-one in their right mind would take them.

a customs charge is due

About two weeks ago I got another of my parcels from Japan. I can't specifically remember which one it was, but the basic point is that it had a customs charge to pay.

This means that I got a letter telling me there was a payment due and directed me to pay online or at the depot. I always used to pay at the depot, but more recently I've been using the online system. It's relatively painless and avoids me having to make a trip across Aldershot.

Anyway, so in the usual way I paid up and the parcel was promptly delivered a couple of days later. All well and good.

However, a couple of days after that - so, Thursday of last week - I got another letter that told me that the payment had not worked properly. However, because they don't store card details they needed me to pay again.

Now, I try to be relatively honest, and given the number of parcels I receive I didn't want it to become some sort of black mark against me, so I tried to repay. This second letter also indicated that I could pay online again or via phone and it gave me the Aldershot depot phone number.

So this weekend I tried to pay.

I say try, because at every turn it seemed to block me from doing so.

First up I tried online again. I put the details in, it found the parcel and it indicated there was a charge to pay. However, no matter how many times I tried putting in my payment details (and I tried several times with several different cards) it just kept giving me an error message.

But that's all it said - an error has occurred. It didn't tell me what the error was or how I could remedy it or anything. Well, fine, I though, I'll just call them up.

But by this time, it was Saturday afternoon, and I know they don't work Saturday afternoon, but they do have one of those automated phone things where you press the numbers for the options. I therefore gave that a try.

It's a little tortuous, to say the least. The whole process is quite slow with you having to enter your details, but I persevered. It even at one point seemed to confirm that a payment was still due.

However, at the end of it, it told me "you've already paid for this" and that was that!

I then tried again, but exactly the same thing happened.

So I thought, right, I'll give them a call Monday morning and actually speak to someone. They open at 8am, so I'll phone just after that at work.

And this is where it becomes comical.

See, on the automated message it says press 4 for any other problem, which should route you through to an operator at the Aldershot depot.

I say should because it certainly routes you through to an operator. But it isn't one at Aldershot.

Of course, first try I didn't realise it had sent me someone else, so I was arguing with the poor woman about whether they delivered to my area. Eventually I twigged and asked her "Is this the Aldershot depot?" and she said "No, it's Lewisham."

She then tried to give me the Aldershot depot's number, but it was exactly the number I'd dialled. Plus when you get through it actually says Aldershot depot on the automated message thing.

So I tried again. Same basic thing, only it sent me to some depot in Middlesbrough.

I tried two more times up to 9'o'clock and each time it sent me somewhere completely random. And of course these random places can't help me because it's not part of their system.

By this time I was thoroughly pissed off (well, I say "by this time", I was actually pretty much pissed off after the whole internet failure) so I went to the Parcel Force site and sent them an e-mail telling them all the problems I was having and asking how to solve it. Of course, I don't actually expect them to reply. What I expect to happen is they'll ignore me and then I'll get some nasty letter saying "you still haven't paid". In the end I'll probably have to go down to the depot to sort it out.

See, what annoys me is that I'm having to do all the legwork. Y'see, I've already paid, and it's them that's cocked up. Why do I have to run around fixing their cock-up?

foot and stuff

My foot still hurts.

It's a lot better than it was, but it's still not right. I was pretty busy this weekend and I was moving around a lot, but I've no idea whether this is the sort of injury that's made better by using it or resting it.

I managed to tick a lot of stuff off of my to do list this weekend.

I bought my main presents, although I stopped short of buying more wrapping paper and cards. I could have done, it's just my energy started to flag after a while, so I ended up not bothering. There's plenty of time left, and it also occurred to me I might have some wrapping paper left from last year, so I should check first.

I watched everything I'd recorded on my PVR, which was good as there's been a real risk of it building up to silly amounts again. Well, I say everything - there are 3 films I've recorded that are still on their. It was a non-rental disk weekend again this weekend, and I thought about watching one of the films instead, but in the end I didn't find the time.

I also got a haircut. It's been ages since I last had one and to be honest I've been growing it with the thought of it keeping me warm, but my hair just looks so bad when it's long I ended up getting the short cut I'd normally have in summer.

It also means I'm nice and tidy for Friday, which is the work Christmas lunch day.

What else of note?

Well, there was the parcel thing, but I think I'm going to do a separate blog about that as it's quite a saga/pain in the arse.

I played quite a bit of Anno too, but not as much as I could have done. I think I was relatively restrained, actually.

Oh, and I put a load of stuff up on e-bay. 16 things, in fact, ranging across books, manga, anime and regular DVDs. I'd hoped to have a lot more to sell, but then that would require me to be sufficiently organised and sensible to watch and read the things I should watch and read.

But I'm not, so there isn't.