Asgrim

I just had a little rant post on a forum and I thought I’d post it here. The mentioned argument happened last Thursday.

I had an e-mail argument with Matthew Evans, the Assistant to the Chairman & Chief Executive, but they literally don’t care. He shoved all responsibility to BT Wholesale, and said they can’t do anything about it… I said why not, BT Wholesale is part of BT, and you’re the assistant to the CEO, surely you have some say over what BT Wholesale says - and to that he replied with the standard crap I’ve heard before - they’re non customer facing,and he doesn’t have access to the results and reasons why BT Openreach would not give me copper overlay… what does that say about BT??

Basically, you can’t complain to BT about this kind of thing, you have to complain to the ISP, because BT simply do not care.

BT Wholesale’s customers are the ISP’s i.e. BT Retail, Be Unlimited etc. Wholesale liaise with their customer’s only. Unfortunately you cannot liaise with Wholesale directly as you are a customer of the ISP. If you have a complaint re Wholesale you would make that to your ISP. Your ISP would then liaise with Wholesale to resolve the complaint and would then come back to you with the answer.

As far as I can see this process has now been followed and you need to accept that unfortunately, at this current period in time, it looks like a broadband service is not available to you. However in the future, as technology advances, this may change.

You really can’t take this matter any further.

Which translates to me as:

I couldn’t care less you can’t get internet, you didn’t go with BT as your ISP so we won’t bother sorting you out with internet. If you had gone with BT, we would’ve actually given you a copper overlay, but then screwed you over with a 2KB download limit. Haha, consumers are so stupid, look at my BIG PILE OF CASH SITTING ON MY DESK.

Grr.. BT annoy me. Supposedly they were supposed to fix my line yesterday, that never happened. Supposedly they are doing it today. I might get internet one day.. I might not.

Yes, another soppy gay post. Some of you may or may not know that Hannah and I are officially engaged. I recently finally purchased her engagement ring (pictured). I’m currently in the process of developing a website for the wedding and information about it, which will soon be available on this website.

Our current idea is to have the ceremony at a place called Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire. Unfortunately, the great hall (where the wedding itself takes place) can only accomodate 45 guests. However, our plan is to have the ceremony there, then have everybody waiting outside for photos… we’ll see if we can do that, as then most people (of the approximately 90-100 we are intending on inviting) will be able to be there for most of the celebrations.

Currently, there is no fixed date for the wedding, but we are aiming for summer next year! I’ll announce the location of the website when it’s ready!

I’m so happy - I’ve found the one. I just love the fact we are spending the rest of our lives together and we’re just so perfect for each other. I never want her to stop loving me like she does, otherwise I may not be happy ever again - she’s the bestest thing to ever happen to me. She makes me feel so special and loved and wanted - she’s like a goddess. I want to just cuddle her forever and hold her in my arms until death do us part… she’s that amazing. I never want her to forget that.

Teehee - As with most failblog posts, I can’t tell you if this is real or not, but it’s funny nonetheless:

Heh… As seen on failblog (and all over the internet). Not sure about the authenticity of this… but funny nonetheless.

I just don’t understand. It seems no-one will give Hannah a job! The interview she went for on Tuesday at the NHS in Winchester was for a student pharmacy technician. She was well over-qualified for the job with a pharmacology degree, and did really well in the interview, but they still found someone “better”. I say better in quotes because I doubt there really was anyone better. She’s been without a permanent job for absolutey ages, and no-one is giving her a break.

It’s really getting on my nerves as I know how much of a hard worker she is, and how she’d exceed all expectations if someone just gave her a chance. Not only that, but it puts more pressure on me as I have to pay for all the bills and rent etc., and support her as she doesn’t earn much here at Netbasic. Not only that, but we have a bloody wedding to save for, and they don’t come cheap. At this rate we won’t be married until 2018. It’s not even like we can afford a loan - between us we are just about managing to survive with food. It’s really bringing both of us down, so we wouldn’t be able to afford loan payments either.

I just wish someone would give her a job that she’ll enjoy. There’s gotta be someone out there…

I realised on Saturday that going out is a waste of time and money. For several reasons:

• Drinks are so much more expensive
• The DJs feel obliged to cater to “the masses” and play the same music EVERY week
• The smoking ban makes it difficult for many venues (e.g. no re-entry at the Wedgewood Rooms)
• The music is normally far too loud (or on rare occasion, too quiet!)
• Because of the volume of music, you normally have to shout to have a conversation, which gives you a lovely sore throat in the morning

I think from now on, I’ll be avoiding going to clubs and the like… perhaps it’s me just being a “grumpy old man”, despite not being old. I’d much prefer to sit at home with a couple of friends, have a nice few beers, play a game like Balderdash, and listen to some music that I didn’t hear last Friday at a respectable volume so that you can still hold a conversation.

So Friday we had a few people over for our House Warming / Engagement gathering. It was quite nice, we played a bit of Balderdash, but as normal I got very tired and quiet until everyone left, at which point I was suitably conked out. Saturday morning I cleaned the inside of my car, so it’s beautifully clean now, and I gassed up the air conditioning and cleaned it, so now I have a nice smelling car! We then went to pick up Sam, Collin, Finley and bump from Fareham, and headed up to Somerton to go to a family get-together.

It was nice seeing everyone again, and we had a little game of Charades. Unfortunately, again I got tired fairly early and wanted to go to bed… I think I’m turning into Uncle Kevin! I did have a nice hangover to match in the morning however, and got up very late (11am! Thats late for me…). After a wonderful cooked breakfast (thank you Aunty Joan!) we headed back, via our new house to show Sam & Collin. Not a bad weekend by any accounts.

After several days of stress, tiredness, anger, fustration and all sorts, we’ve moved into the new house and everything is done (for the mean time anyway…).

Firstly, the servers. I took them to a friend’s house to stay there temporarily until I could get my new internet line set up. Unfortunately after a day or two of waiting for DNS updates to propogate through the world, it looked like it just wouldn’t work. I didn’t have time to fiddle around making it work, I just needed the sites up as I have a couple of important clients. I’ve had to shell out at my own cost, temporary hosting at Newnet. So far so good except for the fact I cannot get any PHP error logs, which is fustrating as the Frosthold site does not work properly at the moment. I managed to get this blog back up and running after finding that my Feedburner Stats plug-in doesn’t work on the Newnet servers, so that’s disabled for now (coding fail perhaps?). I’m still waiting for their online support service to give me some sort of response (24 hours later, and not even a “we have acknowledged your ticket”… Unfortunately due to the temporary migration to newnet, Tom’s blog and Hannah’s blog won’t be working as I stupidly set them to use the same DB prefix (wp_), and I can only afford one MySQL database. Sorry chap and chapette…

The actual house move went fairly smoothly, albeit loads of heavy lifting and Hannah and I cursing at each other when boxes were dropped on each other (and no, thats not some kind of kinky game..). The new house is absolutely gorgeous, and we’re having a few people over tonight to celebrate our engagement as well as the house warming. Now I know that the blog is working, I’ll take a few pictures to show everyone what it’s like.

Firstly, I’m not a huge fan of gays really, I don’t like watching them kiss etc., but I’m quite happy to socialise with them. If you think that makes me homophobic, I think you’re wrong, but you’re entitiled to your opinion. However, this BBC article annoyed me. Those people at The World Centre For Banning Stuff have now decided to ban this advert for Heinz Deli Mayo, which depicts two men kissing. I mean really… who cares? And don’t even get me started on all those comments about religion… According to this American guy, SpiritandTruth7, I’m going to turn into a pillar of salt for sympathising with gays! Can you believe that?! I’m dreading being turned into a pillar of salt…

Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with the advert, but kudos go to Heinz for making it so controversial. I probably wouldn’t have heard of it until I found it in the supermarket, but I’m sorely tempted to get some Heinz Deli May now!

Image credit goes to David Firth.

In the wake of Hellfest and the build-up to house-moving, I’ll take this moment to review all the bands and my general festival experience. Tom was saying how unorganised previous years were, but I kept an open mind. Thankfully, on 99% of fronts, the festival was excellently organised. Toilets were cleaned every day which was more than most festivals. The weather was spectacularly hot (and sometimes too hot for Hannah who gets sunstroke very easily!), and it was ace. Not enough shade I think, I think the benches should’ve had umbrellas for shade as well. Managed to pick up a few new T-Shirts (Venom, Dimmu Borgir, Hellfest), as did Han. Read on for my review of most of the bands I saw…

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