Pleasant End To a Bad Week

It's not been a brilliant week this week, nothing too serious mind you but annoying just the same. It was all around the problems that I am having trying to buy my Music Keg Player. A week to get Pixmania to send it out and then DHL lose the parcel!

The real problem is that "Customer Care" means something different to large organisations compared to the general public - For Pixmania it means only the Customer cares because the companies don't - about service that is.

Add to that the fact that I bought a lead for my hands free kit which was wrong and has damaged the car kit itself. So my day off on Friday was a bit of a waste of time aaaggghhh!

Saturday was much better though - went to the Southampton Boat show. Great weather and the latest models to lust after err... you know what I mean.

Seriously the choice of boats was good and it helped a lot with a future choice of boat it will probably be a single hander now with a few miles on the clock just to get into it. The particular model I am interested in at the moment is a Comet Solo but we will see what is available.

In two weeks time I am off to Reading to try one of these out at a demo day - if it's not too cold!!!

Delivery Delays, interesting visits and an unexpected windfall

I ordered a smart little gadget on Tuesday its a Kenwood Music Keg which will connect to my Kenwood CD reciever in the car and allow me access to 10GByte of MP3 files. The problem is getting it delivered and I am currently locking horns with Pixmania on this.

Friday I had confirmation that I would get some "overtime" payment for Romania - it works a strange way in Arup you actually recieve an ex gratia payment because at my grade I don't get paid overtime. The £1900 will come in very handy though!

Friday was an interesting day for another reason. I got to take a trip around the BBC as we had to do an audit of the building services. Saw a few well known faces and what was particularly useful was that they even offered us an alternative form of transport back home on Friday night.

So this blog is being sent by thought process onto a Pentium 500 with 600 Terrabytes of Ram and a HSB connection (Human Serial Bus). Think that I will have to go back to 2005 tomorrow as everyone around me are old buggers - no change there then!!

This week - back at work

Wasn't really looking forward to going back to work this week after my enforced "break" but it wasn't too bad. After the events of the week before some good news - I have collected my new car and it's great! I have already done around 500 miles in it and it drives really well. The trip computer says that I am getting a little over 40 mpg on a run with the car beween 75-80 mph which for a 2.2 Litre petrol car is very good. I now realise all of the comforts that I didn't have on the old car like the a/c (which had broken 18 months ago) heater (stopped working recently) as welll as lots of rattles and bumps that aren't there with the new car.

This weekend I am fitting a tow bar and installing my handsfreee kit for my mobile as I won't be going sailing this weekend. My crew member Elaine banged her head last week on the boom and it still is feeling a bit bruised and painful apparently.

The solicitors have made contact with us now and they have our case to pursue with the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) - so far they seem generally quite efficient.There are some out of pocket expenses that we need to get back and we are saving all of the receipts for these.

The old car has been written off - much as I expected it to be. The assessor has given us a value £2076 (strange figure) for the car which is unbelievable given the mileage and general condition of the car - but I'm not complaining...

So a busy day today with a few things to do in WSM first like paying th holiday balance collecting some new furniture and bits and pieces for the car.

See Ya.

Accident Update

It has still been quite a busy week but by Friday things are starting to move along a little better.

11.00 am Friday The Police have finally released the car and I have spoken to Direct lIne insurance

12.00 am Friday The car is being collected for transfer to Weston super Mare

3.00pm Friday Direct line called to say that they would be contacting the Motor Insurance Bureau to see if we can claim any uninsured losses.

5.00pm Friday Bought a new car!! It's a Vauxhall Vectra 2.2 l CDX (read high spec) Blue, Petrol, Manual, 5dr, ABS, Air Conditioning / Climate, Alarm / Immobiliser, Alloy Wheels, Central Locking, Cruise Control, Driver Airbag, Electric everything, PAS, Sunroof, CD Player, Full Service History, and only 25k miles. I have sorted out the insurance on the vehicle and I am just waiting to get the Tax and MOT sorted. Hope to be back on the road by Wednesday/Thursday next week.

Today Saturday -

Going to visit the car at the repairers

Going sailing for the first time in a few weeks and I am really looking forward to it - it will make a nice change from phone people and waiting for phone calls

Oh and ny cold that I have had all week is getting better too.