November 21, 2006

deb's birthday -supplimentary

I dashed off to JB Hi-Fi on Saturday morning to get a couple of DVDs for Deb. She was hungover again, so I probably didn't have to rush but I wanted to have something to actually give her on the day.
Later we went down and ordered a frame for a print that Deb's had lying around since London. That was the main gift and I think it's going to look pretty cool once it's up on the wall.
A professional hangover can last all day. Ours did, so we went out for dinner on Sunday night instead.
Wagyu beef carpaccio (with truffle oil of course) is probably the ponciest food I've had this year. It's also the tastiest which just makes me question my masculinity.
After dinner, we went to the poker room at the casino for a quick look. It's a very serious place and just made me more nervous about the poker night I have for work tomorrow. There's going to be a number of tables playing off for a single winner so I think I'll be spending most of the time as an observer. I guess that means more time for drinking and food, so it's win-win really

November 16, 2006

deb's birthday

So, it's Thursday the 16th of November. I have roughly 34 hours to organise a birthday present for Deb and I still have no fucking idea what to get her.

I thought I had a great idea a few months back, so I rested on my laurels. When I finally looked into it, I discovered that it was about 4 times the price I expected, so that idea was shelved.

It's hard because Deb doesn't even know what she would buy for herself, letalone what I could get.
I do have a sort-of-idea, but there's no way I could get it to her in time for Saturday. I'll have to get a stunt double to stand in for the real gift until it's ready.

Procrastination got me through high school, and since then I've never learned to organise my time properly. Next year maybe...

customer service does exist...

I had a spare minute on Tuesday, so I called Dodo (our ISP) with the intention of getting some money back for the lost week of broadband. I expected to get the runaround with them saying Telstra was at fault etc.

The call was answered within the first minute. Two minutes later and I'd got the refund from an account overpayment in September and a refund for the lost week.

I'm stunned.

November 13, 2006

no internet

On Sunday, November the 5th, our internet connection fell over. I called our ISP who (as usual) was so busy that I had to leave my phone number on their voicemail system so they could call me back. I managed to speak to a real person on Tuesday, which was also Melbourne Cup day (a public holiday here). After running through all of the obvious tests (I guess they have to do that as a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable factory resetting their modem), he put me through to the next tier of technical support who in turn said that Telstra would call me on Wednesday to book in a technician to come round on the Thursday. No phone call until Friday evening when they said that someone would be around on Monday morning.

The Telstra guy was in the house for all of two minutes, then went to the exchange, fiddled around for a second and it was fixed.

Why didn't Telstra just try checking their end first? Why make me take half a day off work to wait for someone to verify that the problem wasn't at my end just as I'd told them from the start?

I don't really know where I was going with that story, but I just wanted to put the details down for when I try to get someone to pay for my week of missing broadband.