… I pop my head up again. Same old story.
So what have I been up to? The boring and the interesting. Had few things I’ve been wanting to go on about recently 
I had nice drive (not, it was pissing it down) to Manchester and back in early January for an interesting day at Zen HQ (an ISP) for a DSL diagnostics training session. We are partners with Zen at work. Highly recommended. Nice to phone up an ISP, and to talk techy and get some one who understands. Unlike Virgin. In January I ended up shouting down the phone at them on behalf of my parents. I’m normally very tollerent with call centre staff, having been one for many years. The idiot in India just couldn’t grasp the fact the cable modem was at fault. It was just totally locking up randomly, completely inaccessible. Fool wanted me to do diags and stuff on my PC. He couldn’t grasp I was more qualified than he was and had a clue. The cable modem was from the dark ages where cable modem broadband was 128k!! It was OLD. Ended up posting on the ISPs support newsgroups, who booked an engineer no problems. English tech support FTW. When the engineer turned up he just laughed because of how old it was and replaced it. No testing, no questions
I have a new phone! Vodafone v1415 (actually a HTC S710). Another Microsoft Windows Mobile phone, yes I know, but I am Microsoft Exchange girl these days. After recent experience of setting up of mail servers on Linux, even more so too! Now it isn’t as high
spec’d as my old TYTN but it’s more like a normal phone. Normal size. Normal numeric keypad - but still has a qwerty keyboard hidden away! I have a PDA style (touch screen) phone for work like my old Tytn (currently a O2 XDA Mini S (Qtek 9100)). I don’t need 2 though, especially 2 bulky phones. Work phone soon to get upgraded to a Tytn II anyway! 
I’ve been really happy with Vodafone. I rang them up last week as my TYTN was faulty yet again. Must have got through 3 or 4 of them. 1 had a jammed button. Another had a dodgy keyboard after a while. Then the last one they sent me didn’t charge the battery properly so it was dead in less than 24 hours. I just politely explained I had lost faith in Tytns. Now I’d seen the new phone I had now and was aiming at getting one somehow. I was expecting to have to pay something as when I asked before how much it would cost me to just get one they said £225 but because I’m nice customer they’d sell me one for £150. I’m only about 8 months into this contract.. they turned around with out me asking and just gave it me for nothing!
Complete contrast to Orange and why I left them a few years ago. A decade ago they were the best. No more though. Orange really don’t care any more, and if they mess up are not interested in fixing it, or owning up to it and apologising. They let me go with no effort to keep me over a £50 phone. Vodafone have kept me now no arguments over 2 phones each being approx £200 phones! I pay about the same a month to Vodafone as I did to Orange. Vodafone have made a few cock ups but they’ve been straight up with them and apologised, and admitted their faults. We’re having right problems at work at the moment with clients who use Orange and have Blackberry’s. Orange seem to have lost the ability now to even set up accounts correctly! I once wrote Orange a bloody long letter because I could not all of a sudden access my account online. I was told to call a 50p/min line. I reluctantly did as I heavily used the online service. They didn’t fix it. I rang customer services and explained I was not doing that again, it was clearly their side that was broken. Not interested. As I said, I wrote a 2 page letter about this and general annoyances I had with their recent crappyness. I got a 2 line letter back just telling me to call the 50p a min number… I left them a few weeks later.
Spent the last week recovering from a horrible stomach bug or food poisoning or something 
Never fun. Sister had been staying with me and it started the evening she left (last Tuesday). She felt ill a few days later, so I’m thinking it’s a stomach bug. We hardly ate that day and what we did we both had. For hers to come on days later it couldn’t have been something we ate!
Nicky stayed over from the Saturday to the Tuesday and we did all touristy stuff in London. A sorry for me as I buggered off to Germany for her 18th birthday. We spent Sunday in The Strand/Trafalgar Square/Leicester Square/China Town enjoying all the Chinese New Year celebrations. Monday’s highlight was the evening at the theatre seeing Cabaret with Julian Clarey, and some guy who was in Home and Away. It was, err, different to my previous theatre experiences. That’s what I get for telling my sister to choose I guess. She was interested in the whole dancing side of it. I wasn’t expecting the nudity - I wasn’t expecting an evening with Julian Clarey’s back side 
We Will Rock You is still my favourite though Avenue Q was hilarious. From a musical stand point though, We Will Rock You was just an experience and a half. Tuesday we went to the London Dungeons. Now me and my sister are not wimps, like the screaming teenage girls who ended up being in our group going round. There were several points we were stood/sat there holding on to each other though lol. An experience I highly recommend (unless you have heart issues!!). It’s basically a whole set up of scenes etc that you go through with actors leading you through it, being part of it with a few rides and various ’stages’, all to do with the history of London. The gory history. Make sure you take an Oyster card and you get buy 1 get 1 free on tickets too.
Looks like my sister may be down this way come September It’s uni time for her, already! She is doing ‘Fashion Management’. She’s got an offer from Manchester Uni. She is more impressed though by Westminster uni who have given her an offer too (campus in Harrow though for her degree) as she will get to go America for a while to study and a year out working. They’ve also offered her a scholarship which will help out with finances hugely! The only other one she is interested in is The London College of Fashion, right off Oxford Street. It’s a ‘Who knows who’ nose in the air place though. She has her interview there next week but she’s growing less and less fond on the idea of the place. I think she would like to get an offer just to say she got an offer but think she would go to Harrow though! Also the fact Harrow is just outside London so cheaper, but only 20 mins on the tube away. She loves the idea of living in London.
Doing the Tutankhamun exhibition at the 02 and Terracotta Army at the British Museum in a few weeks with my mum (got to keep them all happy…!). Will let you know if they are not as boring as I am expecting
Off to Swansea this weekend to enjoy the nice Welsh scenery and beer with Hyphen. Well in need of it at the moment.
Still got to sort out going to Copenhagen to see lovely Ida. I will get round to it Ida! Especially as the plane tickets to get there and back are cheaper than going to Swansea and back on the train. How stupid?! A rant for another day..
Got Ubuntu on my laptop now seeing as how pissed off I was getting with Vista, and how Linux now understands the stupid sound+modem chip in 1 in it and can produce sound. Also how friggin easy they’ve made wireless now. Yay! Also doing a n Ubuntu server at the moment. I did start but had HDD over heating issues, and splat. 0Expect to see some random Ubuntu-y posts with links/howtos to stuff. Nothing more annoying then forgetting how you sorted something out last time when you spent hours doing so. It’s good to share.
Desktop with 64bit XP OS and 4GB RAM for gaming FTUW though.
Currently listening to and enjoying ‘Ministry Of Sound Anthems 1991-2008′ album. Classic.
Well I’ve been wanting one for ages, and I’m going to Paris in a few weeks… and I’ve just got a pay rise, so I thought hell. I’ll finally get one.
The reason I’ve wanted one so long!
