Head Rambles

Grandad November 27th, 2006

I don’t know if any of you are following this saga, but there has been an interesting development.

The company rang me [and I'm still not going to say who they are. Yet....].

The engineer was extremely nice to me. He was nearly in tears at the upset they have caused me.

I cannot, for the life of me fathom what brought about this change of heart.
Maybe they read my blog and feel sorry for me? I doubt it.
Maybe it was the letter I sent threatening legal action and massive media coverage? Could be.
Maybe it was my daughters boyfriend and his “friends” rolling up to their head office on the motorbikes, smashing all the windows and daubing “Save Grandad” all over the walls? Another possibility.
Divine intervention [see this morning's blog]? God knows.

Anyway…..

They are apparently calling out on Wednesday. They are going to send “their” engineers [as distinct from fellas who haven't a clue?] who, I am promised, will speak fluent English. They are going to sort me out if it kills them. Or maybe they are going to sort me out and kill me. One or the other. They are going to be in constant touch with the Head Office Engineer [Hey!! Maybe they are sending Jack Bauer????].

They are going to try everything to get me a decent signal to my existing mast. If they can’t do that, they’ll try a different mast.

The fella who rang me actually got quite excited. He thinks I’m going to be OK. Not only that but they are going to try to give me faster speeds than I had before.

So tune in on Wednesday, but I’ll be late blogging as they are coming first thing in the morning. It looks like they are going to make a day of it, so I am laying in plenty of beer and sandwiches. [For me, you fool. Not them.]

No. Scrap the last paragraph. Tune in tomorrow. I might have something interesting to say for a change.

• Internet
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Grandad November 27th, 2006

I had a dream last night. I think it was a dream. Maybe it really happened.

I died and went up to the Pearly Gates.

“Howya Grandad” said Peter.

“Howya Pete” says I.

“Now what makes you think you are entitled to come in here?”

“I don’t know. I’m a nice bloke and can be the life and soul [if you'll pardon the expression] of a party?”

“We need more than that” says he. “Have you done any good works?”

“Like what?”

“Have you donated your entire income to the Third World?”

“No”

“Have you laid down your life to save another?”

“No”

“Have you contributed anything to life to make the world a better place?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Aw come on” says he, “you must have done something good?”

“Listen” says I, “I am, or rather was, just an ordinary bloke. I lived my life. I kept my head down. I’m a nonentity in the grand scheme of things. I’m just an ordinary Joe Soap.”

Just then he cocked his head to one side, and I realised he had one of those earpiece thingies.

“Himself wants to know if you are the bloke behind HeadRambles?” says Pete.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I suppose that means the Big Trip Downstairs for me?”

“No” says Pete. “Himself is a great fan. He reads it every day. He says your campaign against the Devil is remarkable. He says you’re in!”

“Great” says I, “but I never wrote about the Devil.”

“You were always on about him. Himself upstairs loved it. He nearly granted you another hundred years of life so He could go on reading it.”

“But I never wrote about the Devil” I repeated.

“Yes you did” says Pete, “but you always referred to him as ‘George W’”

• America , Rambles
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Grandad November 26th, 2006

Well, it has been a busy Saturday and a lot has been happening.

My two friends Ron and Dick have more or less moved in to help me. Herself is making the cheese on toast to keep us fed.

Ron and Dick did some forum posting about my plight and there has been a very kind response. I didn’t know so many people cared and I am touched and flattered. Thank you all.

Ron’s good friend Michele sent us some figures that proved that I have not been lying all along. Apparently Michele has been keeping records of how fast I connect to the Internet. Why she should do this just for me, I don’t know. Ron will explain no doubt. Thank you Michele anyway. You sound like a nice girl.

So we wrote a rather gruff letter to the company and enclosed the figures. We explained that they couldn’t possibly be telling the truth and that they should get things fixed straight away. Or else…….

We didn’t get a reply.

Dick apparently knows of another case like mine. They complained of a bad connection and our foreign friend came out to them and apparently they [our foreign friends] used exactly the same technique as they tried on me. The gentleman who lived there was at work at the time, and his wife believed them. She told them to take the equipment away, if it was no good. I believe he wasn’t too happy when he came home that evening and found he had no broadband.

Now, this morning an interesting thing happened.

Ron and Dick are still here. We made a night of it. Herself is getting a bit cheesed off with the cheese on toast making, and is begining to complain about all the empty beer cans.

Anyway, Ron and Dick were running some tests.

They ran one at around half eleven. There were sharp intakes of breath.

Dick told me I was getting 1meg down but nothing at all up. I was tempted to say that I am used to getting nothing up, but we’ll keep the talk technical here. Anyway, he said this was very bad. He said it looked like it was all over.

But then he ran another test and nearly passed out.

We revived him, and he told us that the signal was excellent. Well, not perfect but more than adeqate. He said it was 1.5 meg down and 1.2 meg up whatever that means.

So Ron and Dick are jumping for joy. I said it mightn’t last. They said it didn’t matter, because it proved that I could get a decent signal even after all the messing around that the company did, and that all their excuses had fallen flat.

So maybe they have fixed the fault at last?

Or maybe they undid whatever it was they did in the first place?

Or maybe they are beaming a special signal just to me?

Or maybe the CIA intevened because they didn’t want to lose track of me?

Or maybe they did read yesterdays mail?

We’ll have to wait ’till tomorrow when I can phone the company and find out what is going on……

Footnote to the above:

I have just received an invoice for next month’s service. Oh! Sweet irony!!

• Around the house , Internet , Rants
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Grandad November 25th, 2006

I’ve been having a little bit of trouble with my Internet connection. It has been grand for a long time, but it started to get a bit hairy this week. I asked my friend Ron about it and he suggested I phone the company.

So I rang them. I went through all the usual automatic switchboard rubbish and the piped music but finally got to speak to someone.

I told him my problem.

He did some tweaky things at his end and came up with the diagnosis [it's wonderful what they can do with computers these days].

“Your aerial is faulty, and we’ll have to come out and fix it” says he.

Fair enough.

Yesterday they called out.

It was lashing rain and I felt a bit sorry for them, but they set to work anyway.

They found the problem straight away.

“Trees have grown into the line of the signal.”

So I got out my binoculars and showed them the mast in the distance. It was a bit misty but we could see it. There were no trees in the way!

They cursed [in Polish, I think].

They beavered away, running up and down ladders and in and out of the house and muttering about technical thingys. They got more and more annoyed looking. They didn’t seem to be doing much apart from making a mess of my floor. They rang their office a few times. They tried different aerials. They tried moving the aerial around a bit. They rang their office a few more times.

They eventually came up to me with big smiles on their faces and gave me the good news….

“We are sorry but the signal is not available in your area. We are going to remove all the equipment.”

I turned purple. Herself grabbed the phone in case the doctor might be necessary. The dog had a fit and bit the leg off the table.

“But I have had good service for a long time and it has only just failed, and you are not removing my equipment.”

“Yes” says he, “But the signal is not available”. Here was one of these “I’ve found my story and I’m sticking to it” chaps.

I demanded to speak to an engineer on the phone.

When I spoke to him, the engineer said the same thing.

“We are sorry but the signal is not available in your area.”

I was dangerously near a heart attack at this stage.

I restrained myself and patiently explained that I had great service up to this week and it had only just failed.

He tried to persuade me that it had been failing since September.

“Tuesday” says I.

So he sighed and asked to speak to one of the lads again.

They muttered in a huddle and said they would try again.

They faffed around a bit and did all the things they had done before. Then I realised that they were on the phone to the engineer again. I grabbed the phone.

“What the flip [or words to that effect] is going on?” says I.

He gave me a lot of bullsh*t and said that the lads were going to restore the system and leave.

“It’s fixed” says the lads.

I tested the signal on my PC. It was exactly the same as before they arrived.

“It’s not ****** fixed. It’s the ******* same ******** service as I had before you ********* came” says I.

They left anyway.

I phoned the office and raised merry hell. When I get going, I am a sight to behold. I am used as an example in most anger management schools [what not to say...].

I finally got it out of a manager…………..

They had “upgraded the system to enhance the service for existing and future customers, and this had degraded my signal so that it was no longer viable”.

“That doesn’t make sense. I am an existing customer and my service hasn’t been enhanced!”

“Sorry about that” says he, “but some of our remoter customers will lose service”.

Says I “But the upgrade took place last Thursday, and my service was grand ’till Tuesday.”

“No” says he, “you had very bad service since Thursday”. There was really no getting through to this bloke.

At this stage, the steam coming out my ears could have driven Poolbeg Power Station. Herself was trying to insert a Prozac drip-feed into my arm.

“Let me get this straight” says I. “I have a contract with you people. I have been getting a great service up ’till Tuesday with no complaints whatsoever. Now you ‘upgraded’ the service on the 16th to improve it. Since then I have been continuing the good service for an additional five days after your tweaking, but you say that a signal is no longer available in my area?”

“That’s right” says he. “You never had a good signal. And as a result of the upgrade it is degraded below the level of viability.”

“Would you like to talk about this on the radio?” says I, playing one of my trump cards.

There was a long silence. “Leave it with me” says he. “I’ll see what I can do”.

To be continued…………….

• Around the house , Internet , Rants
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Grandad November 24th, 2006

Herself wanted to go to the city on Wednesday.

I said no.

She demanded.

I shut her in the coalhole.

She thanked me after, because that day, Ireland had its worst ever traffic jam in history.

Mind you, records only go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, so there may have been longer ones before that. But I doubt it.

Apparently a man dug a hole on the hard shoulder of the N11 in Bray, while 18 men watched him. Note that this was the hard shoulder, not part of the road. But they put up thousands of cones anyway. What the heck. They’re cheap.

Now no one thought to tell anyone about this. The Gardai didn’t know. The AA were very slow on the uptake. But not as slow as the drivers who got stuck in the jam. The jam eventually stretched back for fifteen miles along the M11 and the M50 [if you want that in new money, you can work it out for yourselves]. Some of these people were stuck for over seven hours.

Jam on M11 and M50

There were women with babies. There were women about to give birth. There were people trying to get to meetings. There were old people. There were people just trying to get home. And none of them had food or water. Or toilets.

Now when you get to my age, the first thing you think of when you get stuck in a jam, is “Thank God I don’t need a pee”. Of course that thought brings on the urge. And how do you hold onto an urge for six hours??

I could have been in there

And all of this was caused by a bloke digging a hole.

Now some people got wind of this and took to the back roads. But of course they were laying pipes there so the roads were all ripped up.

So some took to the mountains, but they were making a film up there so the road was closed.

So that basically left one road south. But a bloke was digging a hole. The entire south of Dublin and North Wicklow came to a standstill.

Herself has promised that the next time she wants to go to the city, she’ll lock herself in the coalhole.

• On the road
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Grandad November 23rd, 2006

I want to be a celebrity.

I’m not quite sure how I go about it, but I’m going to try.

First of all of course, I have to have a boob job. I think 40H would look good. A sort of Dolly Parton with a beard. It’ll give me something to play with when I’m bored.

Then there’ll be the total lobotomy. I have to fit in with the crowd after all. All my worries and cares gone. No thoughts at all.

I fancy the life of luxury, being whisked off to tropical islands and eating live maggots and things. I fancy being filmed while I take a dump. I fancy being headline news in the gossip magazines ["Grandad has trimmed his beard again"]. I fancy being chased by the paperazzi.

Imagine being a guest on Podge and Rodge! I might even be interviewed by The Plank on the Late Late.

And celebrities don’t seem to have to work at all. Unless of course you are David Beckham and you have to kick a ball around a field for a few days a year.

My only real problem is that I don’t really understand how to get there. There are loads of people out there with huge boobs and no brains who aren’t celebrities. Why not? Why didn’t they make the cut?

I’m not related to anyone famous [which seems to be one of the requirements], unless you count my Uncle Archie who was once arrested for exposing himself to a sheep? [The sheep didn't press charges, by the way. She quite fancied him].

Do I put an ad in the Sun saying “New celebrity on the block. Now available for mindless TV shows and interviews”? I’d include a topless photo of course. No point in wasting that surgery.

So if anyone knows how I get in with the “in crowd” [whatever that is], please drop me a line.

• Rambles
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