OH wow what a damn hard day I have had!

Oh well, keeping it short and sweet.... off to my double bed with my two cats and a bottle of beer. I got NTL coming tomorrow to convert my AO-Hell £20 a month 1Mb cable broadband to £17 NTL 4Mb Broadband! I suspect I will call them NTHell soon enough!

I hate busy days. Yesterday was nothing short of hectic.

Got phone calls left right and centre from various sources at the two hospitals I broadcast hospital radio to (along with many other great volunteers). One hospital can no longer hear us! Damn! So guess what, straight after I press send on this muggins is off to Hospital to see what the hell is wrong. PatientLine (the company running the pay TV and the radio in the wards) claim its their fault, but they are not sure.

Then its off to that hell hole I call work.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but it is run by a bunch of incompetants, who blindly follow their company edicts and have absolutly no humane input (yes humane, its not a typo). Running a train means that safety is our top priority. We run trains that are too long for our platforms, so guards are increasingly having to move between 2 specific places on the train so that they can operate the technology to open open sections of the train. OBVIOUSLY this means that it is less likely that they can check/sell tickets as safety come first!

Ohhhhhh NO!

Even though our depot has a "history" of safety critical failures (opening too many doors, opening doors on a junction (!!), allowing a driver to try to start a train against a red signal (!!!) ) guards are now being set targets for how much money they should take a day! Like whoop-fecking-do! Lets go and make people think money money money, when really they should be thinking safety safety money.

Then we come to the most important problem facing my local management team to-date. The colour of trousers.....

The company issues us with Navy Blue trousers, they are okay actually, if they were just a little bit bigger around my thunder-thighs. With that in mind, I develop holes very quickly in that general area and go through a pair in around 3 months, have done for the time I have been on the railway. The uniform supplier however, can not keep up, so I am resorted to wearing the same three pairs of trousers that I use for off-duty, on-duty.

So not only are they the wrong colour, which is wrong, but they invariably have the obvious signs of being worn all day, which is also wrong. So now, my uniform is being monitored because I am an "untidy" guard. GO FIGURE! I know some will think I am being melodromatic, but why should I go out and buy a pair of trousers, in a colour which I only would use for work, because they can not be arsed to kick their supplier up the jacksie!

Anyway. Rant Over. Time to find out why this studio is not broadcasting.

Wow. What a start to the day I am having! I don't start work until 14:00 (and doing a 10 hour shift) but the paperwork is already mounting up for my many other bits of life.

First the good news. I applies for an Amex Card - purely for the bonus points on my Sainsburys Nectar card, and I was surprised to get accepted! Not only that, but they gave me a £4100 credit limit! OMG! Shock Horror! Make my one purchase (to get more bonus points) and cut the damn thing up!

Secondly, my role as Committee Technician at the Hospital Radio station got technical last night. We now have to get two racked CD players to replace our fast failing units. Yeah I can purchase like a demon, but its going be a poitn where I am hoping to rip one out and plug the second straight in! At £250+ per unit, I don't want to cock it up!

Thirdly I got this months new releases to filter into the stations computerised playout system. This is easy, I can take them in on CD and read them into the system. The LEGAL dilema that I face is that although I legally own the tracks, and I can under the terms of the various licences we hold, put them onto the system, I need to find out if I can also create a seperate CD for the benefit of those presenters who do not/can not use the computer.

Technically it is creating a back-up for use in lieu of the electronic version on the computer! As you can imagine, I also have pages of terms, conditions and legal crap on the desk.... Thankfully I don't smoke!

On the downside, I have started gambling again. I hate doing it, but get a few beers inside me and I m straight to the fruit machines. I already have a gambling site blocker on my computer from when I got depressed before christmas and did a lot of money online on betting sites. It does not stop me playing damn pub machines though!

Oh well. I am off to grab a shower before my paid work. My unpaid work will have to wait until I get home at midnight.

So its been FIVE MONTHS and everything has changed! Where to start!

I have finally started to ditch my pi$$-poor lousy ISP AO-Hell. They cocked it up big time this month, finally pushing me towards the cheaper and faster cable service from NTL! I asked them on the 10th Jan about moving ISP's and how much notice do I need to give, they said none as cable broadband supplies are instantly disconnectable. As I had only just paid for a months service, I said fine, I will do that on Feb 9th. After I put th phone down it turns out the "Customer Service agent" in New Delhi (No I am serious, I managed to get it out of him where he actually was), went and processed a cancellation order, with no authorisation and no reason! Tonight they decided that although I have cancelled my Direct Debit on their advice, they would cut me off completely from my AOL account for cancelling my Direct Debit. CRAZY!

At work, they are still trying to sack me. I have so far been investigated for everything from not walking through a train making sure everyone had tickets (the train was half length and packed) to not paying in my money at the end of the shift (even though the camera clearly shows me paying it in)! The quicker I get to transfer out to another job, the better! I even had a manager LIE to get me into trouble, saying that I had made announcements that I had not, and then had the cheek the next day to file an official report saying that I did my job perfectly!

When I last posted, I had just about started my new job at a hospital radio station (voluntary work) as a presenter. In the short turbulent time that I have been there, I have been voted onto the charities committee and become the resident technician. I am enjoying it, and its a shame I can not make a full time paid job out of it.... oh well!

I am still living alone in my one bedroom flat, although I now have two cats for company. I adopted them from a rescue shelter, bth 7 years old and a lovely pair of moggies. I love them to bits and do not know what I would do without them now! The house is still an absolute tip, which does not help that NTL are coming tomorrow to sort out a duff phone line (this was due to vandalism apparently) and I am sure that the cats will love a new playmate trying to fix my phone!

Well I am going now. AOL have just unblocked my BBand, dred to think when they will decide to block it again when they realise I got free BBand access while they cocked up the account!

TTFN!

Blimey. I have not posted on here for FIVE MONTHS!

Where have I been? God Knows, I spent most of it drunk, drinking, or getting kinky with my better half.

I will make a nice long post overnight telling you all how I have been, but until then my beer is getting warm!