Phone Phail – Yet again!

THE ORANGE FAIL SAGA CONTINUETH

it continues!

Faults on this 2nd Vivaz handset:

• Random Hanging up during calls but especially just after picking up calls.
• Constant Dialing a call failure
• constant crashing / rebooting – at least 2-3 times a day.
• inconsistent connection to mail accounts
• GPS is inconsistent
• Auto Screen orientation has slowed down considerably.
• Struggles to reconnect to service when passing through an area of poor service to an area of good service. (this can take the phone more than 5 minutes to reconnect).
• Phone doesn’t power off properly when trying to power it off – it reboots – inconsistent occurrence.

Recurring issues from last phone

• music/pod-casts stutter
• Audio goes out of sync when recording video
• Screen goes glitchy in camera mode
• Constant freezing

Now i have to go back to Orange AGAIN and tell them i want to change it AGAIN and i will probably have the same argument AGAIN and it will be fun!

Father I pray that you will help and guide me through this process and that my anger will not take control.

See the last post about the phones faults here.

I have a Dodgy Elbow

I have a dodgy Elbow:

• I can pinpoint very tender area
• Burning sensation when rubbing outer area of muscle

The Orange Fail SAGA serialization!

COMING SOON!

THE ORANGE FAIL SAGA

With the on going saga or rather my ongoing battle with Orange I have come up with series of posts. I know how you have  all enjoyed the serialized posts to date. 50 Reasons & Poetry Too boosted the traffic to this website a long way so I thank you readers fopr the ….um….readershipness!?!?

Anyway – the point of this is that if you troll through this site you will see a bunch of posts  with me moaning about the crappy service that Orange has provided form time to time. When its been bad its been diabolical. It’s almost inspired me to douse my own eyes with a vinegar and lemon cocktail with extra salt to boot. I plan to email each of these posts to Orange in an attempt to get them to do one of two things.

• Hire me as an Special Undercover Customer Services Operative (SUCsO for short).
• Change their ways

Sadly I’m not hopeful either will happen – It’ll be a great and creative way to vent though!

I am 6 Today

This website is 6 today. 6 Years of bloggin at varying degrees of interest/boredom/moaning/exclaiming/ranting/showing/geeking/writing/living/suffering/experiencing and so on…wow! its amazing to look back on it all.

NOT ANOTHER CAR DING!!!!

Maaaaaan this is getting tiresome! Can people please stop hitting vehicles we are responsible for!!!!

So I was driving down Chase Road, as i do every morning at about 8:35 and i was coming up on the junction of Sunbeam Road heading north. As I approached I saw a car attempting to pull out of Sunbeam road onto Chase road. As I approached the car was stationary. The driver of the car was looking north while she was pulling out and not south thus she did not see me approaching.  I had to swerve to avoid her but this was not enough and she hit the rear left wheel arch.

Photos of both cars:

Her car:

Our courtesy car:

The conversation was a little barbed as i was quite angry with her to be honest and she was also quite defensive. I felt bad about being quite agitated with her so I apologized for my reaction and behaviour. I guess it was just shock. It was an easy mistake to make and we are all only human after all.

I prayed for her later as i was driving on top work but I should count my blessings really that it wasn’t worse! Had she pulled out any quicker it could have been quite messy.

So I wont be getting an iPhone then…

The past few days have been quite stressful actually due to my quest to see if I can get an iphone as my upgrade!

Orange, YET AGAIN. have failed me…

Bless them but  they have about as much integrity as a spoon trying to be a marshmallow.

They have this deal on their website which seems to be quite a good. Its offering to combine your Mobile, Landline and broadband all in to one unit at a cost of £60 per month. Sounds quite good so far, The real sweetener is that they’ll throw in an iPhone3GS 32GB for free!

Wow! – yes, that’s what i said, and out loud too!

…that is about as good as it all got as it got bad from there on in!

• The page on which the offer is on had some small print which was designed to be missed! On this I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and to carry on….i should trust my instincts more.

• Small print says nothing indicating that you wont get a 32GB handset if you only sign an 18 month contract.
• I tried really hard to find a positive review on-line about their broadband service. I know in most forums when people write reviews its mostly bad stuff but usual;ly there is one or two kind souls who will write about their positive experience – NOT ONE!
• The phone call was next – it didn’t go well
• The guy was cagey when i asked about the “fair usage” policy for the broadband
• I had to ask him 7/8 times for the info i wanted
• then he lied to me… i caught him out when he was feeding me bull and contradicted himself
• i still had to ask him another few times for the information i wanted

As you can read – I am not exactly filled with confidence with them. I still want to stick with Orange as we save quite a bit of money with their Orange Wednesday deals but i have lodged a complaint and will see if that lightens the situation any more than it has.

creativity burnout…

Sadly, this is how i feel at the moment at work.

I don’t feel like I’m getting the creative time i used to get when i was freelance. Well, i know i’m not.

Don’t worry, this is not me thinking of jacking in my job here at Tandem. God put me here and i’m not getting any vibes that he wants me elsewhere for the time being. What is happening is that i am getting quite fed up with the processes one has to put up with in a small production company. This has become quite tiresome and i’m beginning to fear for my creative abilities.

The creative mind is much like a muscle. If you don’t exercise it it will grow weak and less productive. When you do use it it will be a real effort to get anywhere. I use this analogy cause I’m also really unfit! I need to get in to some routines where I can get on my bike. Last few times i was out, i was left out of breath alot and it wasn’t as enjoyable as it used to be. I’m finding the same result with being creative.

At work my job is still very creative. Its just that it’s also very constrained. Constraints and creativity don’t get along very well. Within the corporate environment the constraints are mainly budget and time.

Budgets don’t usually allow for very adventurous things

Time is usually too tight to have any fun with ideas.

I feel like i’m completely done!

THIS IS SO WRONG!!!!!!

This is not what it should be and I think i need to go back to one of my original functions here at Tandem. That function was to bring a fresh perspective to the company. We need to go back to the roots of why we do this. I remember when i was freelancing with my bro. It was obviously very different for us as we didn’t have as many overheads so we were alot more free to try things but we did try things. I remember we used to sit and talk about ideas and when we realised we couldn’t afford to do something we would work out a way of doing so….it was great!

I want us to do this at Tandem. I need for us to smash out of this oppressive feeling we’re under and start being creative! REALLY CREATIVE. We need to be completely bonkers creative, think of the ludicrous, the obscene, the stupid, the funny, the outrageous, the bizarre and even the un-related!

WE NEED TO THINK!

WE NEED TO BE CREATIVE!

I’ve been thinking of all this stuff and what it all mans and trying to hear what God has to say about all of this. One of the cool things coming up is the iamsecond project. We will be doing the production on the UK version of this which is really awesome and a real answer to prayer. I’ve been praying that we get some new Christian projects and this landed in my lap in a way that could only have been from the Big Man.

This has had me thinking and praying more about where God is taking me. I’m seeing people serving Jesus full time and I’m so envious. There is a large part of me that just cannot be faffed with doing corporate work as I find it really difficult to see how a film on a tunnel or the construction of a building can further the Kingdom. I would love to be able to work full time on films that directly further the kingdom.

I pray that this feeling will go and I’ll be able to get my creative mojo back!

Stupid stupid STUPID PC

Earlier I was able to print and now I’ve been trying to print one doc for the past hour!!!!!

Mac’s dont have this problem – Why are you so annoyingly slow and cumbersome Windows XP?

Dodgy Organisations: Quickquid.co.uk

I’m sitting on the couch watching day time TV and along with that comes the daytime TV advertising. The above website was advertised with a great positive message. Here’s the idea:

If you have a bill to pay but your pay cheque has not come through yet to pay the bill then this site will give you a small load to pay that bill.

It souds pretty innocent except for the fact that the small print pn the screen stated a ludcrious APR percentage:

APR: 2356%

That is absolutely ridiculous! Can anyone spot the organisation trying to take advantage of people in a desperate situation   and completely screwing them in the process!!!!

Having done the CAP money course this just stinks and i would advise anyone finding themselves ever in this situation considering an option like this or looking at the option of consolidating their debts to STOP & THINK! Go check out the CAP website instead.

Rear-Ending Shots

It feels like only days since we got the car back from the last in incident when those chaps tore a hole in the door and then this morning as we pulled out of a motorway services car park we got Rear-Ended. The chap was very nice and simple about it – it was a straight up incident so we pulled over and exchanged details. I took some snaps and we were done in about 3 mins.

Such a faff to sort out though!

trapped nerve pain ow ow ow OW

Download now or watch on posterous

12112009068.mp4 (8693 KB)

Posted via email from irishmark’s posterous

STOP!….please?

Work is really crazy right now – i dont think i’ve ever endured this much crazy stressy times!

Robyn’s been hurt!!!

There i was in a waking up haze standing in front of the toilet bowl doing “the business” when i heard from out  side the low drawl of a diesel engine coupled with a man’s voice shouting: “WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOOOAAAA STOOOOP!” and then a crunch!

My immediate thought was that i’d parked the car across the street rather than the usual space and so it would have been in the direct line of sight for a lorry collision. As i was in the middle of…um…something…. i couldn’t run out and see. Once i was able i rushed to the window in the living room to see. The trees obscured my vision but everything looked ok. I then went to the bedroom to find wifey looking out the bedroom window. I told her i though it looked ok but she said she thought she’d noticed the trim was gone from th car door.

I took a look. At first it seemed ok but then between te gusts of wind moving the branches i saw tha she was right. The trim was gone. The next gust made my heart sink – it revealed a long silver scratch along the door. The Car is red and no amount of any silver colouring belongs there so i donned some jeans and shoes and went out to investigate.

Once on the street the damage was very obvious. They tore a hole in the bodywork… if cars could bleed then she’d be in a right mess needing many many stitches – see the image gallery below.

One more night of lorries

I craaaaaaaave a good nights sleep. Where we are camped is right beside the road. We are literally about 10 feet from the road – with a small hedge complete with hedge hogs between us which does nothing for blocking out the sound but the rumble is also a contributing factor.

I want sleep

oh CRAPSOCKS!

Dropped the car off to the garage ths morning for it’s 12k service.

The guy called with a price…

…

it was big…

…

…

£936.65…

…

C R A P S O C K S !

…

Now We were expecting it to be about £200/300 and we had budgeted for £500 so tis was a bit of a shock. Ruth was upset when i called her – admitedly i was in shock too. That is a silly high figure.

So here i the list:

In actualfact the total came to £898ish because the mechanic had fporgotten to put someting on the lis hich attributed to the higher costing but as i spotted it he’s letting us off it.

I’ve dropped the tyres as they are within the legal limits and i did a bit of research to get some prioce comparrissons and as a result we now only have to pay around £716. But even that is still a huge amount. Dunno if the Robinsons will be goingon holiday to ireland this year after all… We will have to be faithful and hop that the Big Man provides!

fatal error

I keep getting fatal errors on the site when trying to upload photos. I manages to sort it so that i ca do a standard upload but i just cant get it to work with seding  a photo from the mobile whcih is most frustrating!

arg

a bit stressed tpoday and last wee -must chiiiiiiiill

In the mean time – for an itensive monitor tidyup – TRY THIS:

new design

need a new design again soon

roomless….

SO the work going oni in our house that, after much deliberation, our landlord promised we would only need to be oput of our rooms for a day and no nights…..well looks like i’ll be lucky to ghet back into my room tonight!

 I am not a happy boy! The workmen also managed to nearly wreck my PC even thought i placed it somwehere safe! not impressed! – Want my room back! Got work to do!

css grr

been tryng to swap out the DHTML menu tony created for the Oak Tree site but each time i do it Firefox refuses to display it and IE puts it at the top of the page despite my placing it in the excat same Div tags and not changing the div settings in the css! Arg! – And i wanted an early night – its 4am! Doh! So much for a quick 10 mins!

And tomorrow I have to face putting up with our landlord and his crew of dodgy builders coming over to start work on the house! I really aint looking forward to the morning!

a bloody nose

This is getting flippin rediculous! I’ve been having bad nose bleeds sinc tuesday night! Been to A&E 3 times in 24 hours and they cant do anything. Grrr!I got a bit of a cold on Sunday. The nose bleeding started perfusley on Tuesday and just has not let up. I went to A7E on Wed eve at about 9:30 beuause it had benn on and off ALL day and it stopped when i got there so nowt they could do. Then I woke up at about 1:30am in a pool of my own blood! That was freaky. I couldnt stop the bleedso at3 am i rang Ruth and she helped me get down to A&E but again it stopped.

Got out of there by about 7:30am got home wnet to bed woke up and bang! started again. On and off all day again so decided to go to Northwichk park to see a specialist nose and ear doc. When we got there it had stopped again. Nothing they could do. Got back home and BANG! strated again! Managed to stop that one and got a good nights sleep but went to go get a drink and it started again this afternioon!

Was supposed to be going down to Devon to see Ruth’s folks! Shiiiizat