Hey ho, The Wind and The Rain!

Tuesday. 10.00 a.m. I should have been going to Camphill this morning, but there's been a problem with one of the payments for my car insurance. It wasn't taken out of my bank account. I had thought I could drive without any concerns, but then I thought, on the one day my insurance isn't absolutely cut and dried, I could have an incident, either me colliding with another vehicle, or someone running into my car, scratching either vehicle. It would be very stressful and I preferred to not risk it, so I'm at home. 

It's a really stormy day, wet and windy. Alfie keeps looking at me and almost saying, 'please, take me out!' but I know he won't like it. He's not a wet-weather sort of dog, so here we are, staying in the flat. 

I have rung Mears again, regarding not only the extractor fan, but the bathroom refit. It didn't take long to get a response, fortunately, but the line was indistinct. On the extractor fan front, apparently the company who will install the fan are waiting for glass to arrive. Which I wasn't aware of. I assumed that they would cut a hole in the existing glass in the kitchen window, but no, they will presumably take out the glass already in the window and put the new glass in, with a hole cut in it to take the extractor fan. I also asked about the bathroom, and I am still on the waiting list, but no word as to when the work will start. One lives in hope.

12.15 p.m. I have been experimenting with the Procreate app on my new iPad. It's actually quite easy to use, once you've been through some of the things it's capable of. I have been following a couple of YouTube videos and have actually posted my first piece of work on Facebook. Once you have mastered the fact that each colour you use can be adjusted separately,  because it's on a different 'layer', it means that it's possible to redo any of the layers, which means you can improve things easily.

Wednesday. 8.45 a.m. It seems like quite a calm sort of morning on the weather front. Let's just hope it stays that way.

11.05 a.m. As mentioned above, I had a missed payment for my car insurance. I had to ring the AA, my provider, and sort this payment out, as I was concerned that I wouldn't otherwise be covered if there was an incident. I rang the number on the AA documentation, but I got a menu which asked me which number to key into my phone. I went round and round, and it became really difficult to get to the right department. After several attempts, I did manage to reach the right department and explained my difficulties getting to the right place. I eventually had to key in the long number on my debit card, but the computerized system wouldn't work for me, regardless of how many times I attempted. Then the lady at the call centre told me to speak the numbers, which I found quite difficult, but eventually the payment went through, thank goodness, and the situation was rectified.

3.35 p.m. The weather has got worse. Wind and rain as I write this. 

I have been into Central Barbers to get my hair cut. I booked online, as is my custom now. At least, if you book this way, you know you'll be attended to quickly and there's no waiting.

I had a conversation with the young man who cut my hair. We got onto discussing things, and he mentioned a book he had read, about five young daughters who were going to be married off by their parents. I immediately recognized it as 'Pride and Prejudice' and I said it's not the sort of book that most men read, if they read anything. I know it's more of a female readers choice and Carol enjoyed it. Anyway, I am pleased to have had my hair cut and, after leaving Central Barbers, I walked through the shopping centre and had a browse in some of the shops, T.K.Maax in particular.

Sky Q Box playing Up

We up-graded our Sky package some while ago and have SkyQ. The Sky Q box has a far greater hard-drive capacity. You can record something like 300 hours of material if you are that way inclined. You can also record around 4 programmes on at the same time, which can be useful. Ours came with two remotes, one the more traditional remote, but the second one works with a sort of 'touch' facility and a large central section which works in a similar way to a 'touch pad' on a laptop computer, in the place of a traditional computer mouse. The 'touch' remote ceased functioning a couple of weeks ago. We assumed it must have required new batteries, as all these gadgets require their batteries replacing regularly. Usually AAA sized batteries, which be got in Morrison's a couple of weeks ago when we did our usual weekly shop. I put them in the remote, but the thing still didn't work. The remote hasn't been dropped or damaged in any way, so there's no real reason for it not to work. We've also had problems getting the SkyQ box to start when it's initially turned on, most particularly when we want to see BBC Breakfast first thing in the morning. We have a mini box in our bedroom which feeds the smaller television we bought from Sainsbury's. It's supposed to work via the wifi router in the hall downstairs but it never seems to do that and needs re-booting. You have to turn on the main box in the lounge and then it's meant to 'talk' to the mini box in our bedroom. 

Last Friday I had to go into the main Milton Keynes shopping centre as I needed to go to NatWest. Having some time spare before I went to the bank (as they open at 9.30) I happened to walk past the Sky display and asked the man on duty there about the Sky Q touch remote not working, so he said if I rang the Sky helpline I could order a new one. Well, as we pay a fair amount monthly for our Sky package, which includes telephone, internet and television, it it seemed only fair that we have all our equipment working as it should. I had to look for the telephone number on the Sky website when I got home and then had to endure the wait when I eventually got through, a voice telling me that 'all agents are busy. Your call is important to us. Please hold and one of our agents will speak to you.' Some hope. You have to go through the usual list of numbers and options. 1- Change your package 2- Make a payment 3- Complaints etc etc. A lot of it is done with automated machinery. You put in a key password or voice-activated, speak 'yes' or 'no' to some of the questions. Ingenious, I know, but I'm not over-keen. I gave up after about ten minutes as I really wanted to speak to a human.

I had another go at ringing the Sky helpline. No success at getting through at the next attempt, but I eventually go through, having made it through the menu selection and eventually got to speak to a really lovely lady who knew what she was doing. She took me through the re-booting process a couple of times and I mentioned the fact that the touch remote wasn't working and that I'd tried it with new batteries, but still it didn't work. She had a definite sense of humour. Some of the people who work in call centres, answering the phone and helping people with their queries, are generally a dull set of folk. But she was different, I have to say. I could hear a strange clanking sound in the background. I mentioned it, and she said it was due to a campaign going on regarding Sky Mobile. In the office they were making tin-can phones, the sort of thing children made when I was a child, cocoa tins with string attached and you drew the string tight, and, over a considerable distance, you talked into the tin and could hear one another speak. Crazy thing to do in an office, I thought. But that was going on besides trying to get our SkyQ box sorted as well as the touch remote. It might have something to do with the remote not working which is my the Sky Q box is playing up. It couldn't be fixed there and then, with her giving me instructions, re-booting the thing by turning it off at the wall socket and so on and on. It was getting annoying that it couldn't be fixed. She said that a Sky engineer could come and fix it and made an appointment for next Monday morning. So hopefully, once the engineer has been, things will return to normal. Whether this fixes the touch remote it wasn't clear, but if it doesn't then we'll be given a new one to replace it.

Internet Off-Line

We had problems with the internet, starting last Tuesday, when the modem/router got damaged. I had to ring TalkTalk (our internet service provider) to get a replacement. Have you ever had to deal with a company through it's call centre? I bet you have, and I bet it's been a really awful experience, having to listen to dreadful music when you're put on hold, and the droning voice of a woman who say 'your call is important to us.' The endless waiting, the patronising tone of the person who eventually answers. The ridiculous questions. The security checks. I could go on and on. And then, eventually,  getting through to some sort of menu and THEN having to make the decision on what key to press. Or to just 'hold' until 'one of our agents is free to speak to you.'

I eventually got through (after about three attempts. I almost lost the will to live, or to throw the phone out of the window . . .) I had to go through a load of nonsense to find out what was wrong with the router, at one point having to stick a sharp point in a hole in the back of the thing. I used a ball-point pen. It didn't get the thing to work, as you would imagine. I was then passed on to another person, and each time this happened I had to go through all the security rigmarole. They decided that the old router wasn't going to work so they'd have to send us a new one. This arrived yesterday, when I went into Central Milton Keynes yesterday morning. There was a  card from the Post Office stuck through the door when I got home to say that they couldn't put the parcel through the letterbox as it was too big (and thank goodness they didn't as it would most likely have broken the router.) and if I went to the sorting office after three hours I could collect it.

Anyway, it took most of the evening to set up the new router (a considerably smaller and less complicated gadget compared to the old one.) and get the internet working again as we couldn't work out which password and username was which, as the broadband had one and the connection between the iMac and the router had another.

On a different matter, but still with TalkTalk. You have to pay your monthly bill by direct debit. By the time this is due there is never enough money in the bank account to actually cover the bill, so this gets returned to TalkTalk (as it would with any company who you pay your bills with.) As a result the amount we owed got into arrears. I rang up last week and payed the outstanding bill using my debit card, a simple enough task. But the whole idea of setting up a direct debit, you would have thought, was that it's an easier, simpler means of paying your bill, as you can just forget it and the company gets it's payment without any fuss. Further to this, you tell them when you want the money to come out of your account, usually at the time when you have money going IN to the account, so that the direct debits are covered. Well, this is what I tried to explain to the person I spoke to at TalkTalk. They told me that it wasn't possible to change the day that the money came out of our account. I said that virtually all the other companies we pay our bills to by direct debit allowed us to set up the day they are paid. But TalkTalk won't play ball over this issue. I said that they were totally inflexible. I will have to wait for them to phone up so each monthly bill can be paid by debit card. I'd just like to know if other people find this a really annoying business and totally inflexible. There must be  a few as I'd expect them to have quite a lot of customers.

Anyway, all this to explain why I havent' managed to post anything to this blog for a week.