15-03-2014, 10:35 AM
Hi,
Many thanks Lawrence; Refugee and Colin.
If I tried to shoot myself I would miss!! You beat me to it this morning Colin and no the phone line isn't fixed but thanks for asking. The Virgin engineer visited as arranged yesterday arriving at 4:15pm and as was the previous engineer he was very pleasant and tried his best to explain the problem.
I mistakenly assumed our phone had been disconnected and the connection used for another customer because the last time this problem occurred when I reported the phone line was dead it was re-connected very quickly?
This time however it appears to be a Virgin Media equipment problem at the large control box located at the end of our driveway; this box has been in position now for around 25 years so is suffering from wear and tare to the point the engineer could no longer connect us because there is now nothing to connect to and no extra connections available this possibly causing problems for other neighbours too?
The bottom line is that it now appears our road has to come up for new cable installation and we are quoted a maximum of three weeks without phone? Bron and I are decent people and had this been explained to us fully a couple of weeks ago we would of course be upset to lose the phone for so long but what the heck these things happen and we can be grown up and accept it; it's not the end of the world to be without a phone? The problem though has been mostly due to being kept in the dark and little communication from Virgin Media ending up in me in particular becoming increasing hostile towards Virgin Media for not replying to my emails? Why not just be honest and straightforward up front with us saying "sorry but we are having serious problems but we will promise to sort your phone line out just as soon as we can and we will make things right for you"?
If the road is eventually dug up and the line restored then normal service will resume and we can then understand and accept what caused the initial problem but I feel that many big companies such as Virgin have an internal communications problem where one section fails to talk to another section; I saw lots of this whilst working at Brook Motors and it will always happen?
I have said previously that having been long term customers of firstly NTL and now Virgin usually their service has been excellent and generally very reliable but this phone line fault which should have been so easily resolved with a frank explanation has been allowed to escalate virtually destroying so many years of goodwill.
Bron and I are very hopeful that given a bit of time our phone line will once again be re-connected and that we can settle down once again to excellent relations with Virgin Media and put this incident behind us; life is too short for falling out.
Please get a second hankie out Lawrence because over the last two weeks my digital camera died; our TV died; Our phone line died; our can opener died and yesterday our DVD player died.
After the engineer left us yesterday Bron and I visited Curry's once again; we had only just bought the Samsung TV and Camera so this time we were buying a new DVD player. Our old DVD player was a Philips which cost around £80 many years ago and I remember this was quite easy to install being mostly plug and play? I let Bron choose the new player and she chose well; at £99.99 it was a Samsung Blu-ray Disc Player BD-F6500; handing over the cash we returned home and I thought I'll quickly set the player up then we can watch another downloaded episode of Dallas from DVD disc? The player was removed from it's box and all the protective transit covers removed then I tried to install it; OK where's the scart socket? No scart socket and no suitable cable supplied so off I went again to Curry's returning with the HDMI cable; I'm a guy so always read instruction as a desperate last resort; I hooked up the player to the TV but it was not communicating with the TV; by now I was working in my usual black hole and trying to look at cables and assorted connections using a torch; then though I admitted defeat and went to bed fed up. Before visiting Curry's for the second time I thought I would be clever and use a cable pinched from my computer but once I finally extracted the cable found it had a wrong connector at one end. Before going to bed I thought I'll check for emails only to find now I had a dead computer; at this point I was about to explode with frustration.
I had already suffered in the garage during the day working on the Lorch; I wanted to spray paint but it was blowing a gale; I was still having a let of grief with my right elbow and as I worked at the bench with one garage door open I saw a big white van pull up directly across the road; I thought here we go again; a young lady got out of the van and rang the bell and knocked on the door a few times across the road then of course she wandered across to ask if I would accept a parcel for this neighbour? This neighbour must be getting much quicker because he finally opened his door so I said you can now deliver it direct and with a cheerio she was gone. I won't be rude and say what I think of a neighbour who is too downright lazy to answer the door but happy to put other neighbours to trouble?
Anyway after this interruption I came up into the bungalow and having just settled at the computer I was once again interrupted whilst yet another begging bag was thrust through the letter box dropping gracefully by my feet; where I go for a bit of peace beats me nothing but interruptions in my life shattering my concentration and will to live.
This morning being in a lot of pain with my elbow I got up early declaring war on everything and determined to get this DVD player sorted? What a palaver this turned out to be; I needed the instruction manuals for both the player and TV; there is no doubt that the new TV and player are wonders of modern technology but my poor head. A YouTube video helped a great deal but even this made it appear so easy which it is if the TV and player are communicating? All is now well though and what a wonderful picture as I loaded the Dallas DVD; I'd better enroll Bron at night school though in order for her to learn how to use all the remotes etc because I've only got the DVD sorted next comes Blu-ray; white lip furrowed brow etc as I try to set the lot up to play from a network connection? As I say; my poor head; I can manage a big hammer and an RSJ but all this modern electronic kit makes me suffer; I always did have trouble just using a TV remote and still don't fully understand how to use a mobile phone and don't even want to either.
Just another day here in paradise; who is going to pester me today; what begging bag is going to arrive; who wants a parcel taking in; it's windy again so no spraying; my elbow still smarts; is another neighbour going to empty ashtrays into our rear garden resulting in me paying them a visit to say please don't do that because it isn't neighbourly? Add to this lots of personal problems so it's a miracle I ever do complete any restoration; if I hadn't such a wonderful wife in Bron I think I would just disappear without trace to hide away from everything; there sure is very little pleasure in my restorations which really are more of a punishment. I'll keep fighting though because I've never been one to quit easily.
Thanks for taking the trouble to read thus far and I will eventually complete this Lorch restoration but just letting you know what I'm up against which isn't shown in the progress pictures; life can be good but it takes a lot of searching for. In the meantime here is another picture; this is part of the compound slide which I spent about four hours on yesterday cleaning and polishing; this is why my elbow is hurting so much; I'm unable to use power tools because it is much too easy to inflict damage and coarse abrasive paper is also out so start with 240G and suffer some pain; is it all worth it; course it is otherwise I would have nothing to moan about.
Another van and parcel has just arrived across the road; Bron watched as the guy tried to raise contact and just as he was about to push a card he had filled in through the letter box the door opened; so things are already improving; I could have been in the garage to accept the parcel? I'm having an easy day today because the harder I try to spend quality time on the Lorch the worse it gets; bring it on!!
Kind regards, Col.
Many thanks Lawrence; Refugee and Colin.
If I tried to shoot myself I would miss!! You beat me to it this morning Colin and no the phone line isn't fixed but thanks for asking. The Virgin engineer visited as arranged yesterday arriving at 4:15pm and as was the previous engineer he was very pleasant and tried his best to explain the problem.
I mistakenly assumed our phone had been disconnected and the connection used for another customer because the last time this problem occurred when I reported the phone line was dead it was re-connected very quickly?
This time however it appears to be a Virgin Media equipment problem at the large control box located at the end of our driveway; this box has been in position now for around 25 years so is suffering from wear and tare to the point the engineer could no longer connect us because there is now nothing to connect to and no extra connections available this possibly causing problems for other neighbours too?
The bottom line is that it now appears our road has to come up for new cable installation and we are quoted a maximum of three weeks without phone? Bron and I are decent people and had this been explained to us fully a couple of weeks ago we would of course be upset to lose the phone for so long but what the heck these things happen and we can be grown up and accept it; it's not the end of the world to be without a phone? The problem though has been mostly due to being kept in the dark and little communication from Virgin Media ending up in me in particular becoming increasing hostile towards Virgin Media for not replying to my emails? Why not just be honest and straightforward up front with us saying "sorry but we are having serious problems but we will promise to sort your phone line out just as soon as we can and we will make things right for you"?
If the road is eventually dug up and the line restored then normal service will resume and we can then understand and accept what caused the initial problem but I feel that many big companies such as Virgin have an internal communications problem where one section fails to talk to another section; I saw lots of this whilst working at Brook Motors and it will always happen?
I have said previously that having been long term customers of firstly NTL and now Virgin usually their service has been excellent and generally very reliable but this phone line fault which should have been so easily resolved with a frank explanation has been allowed to escalate virtually destroying so many years of goodwill.
Bron and I are very hopeful that given a bit of time our phone line will once again be re-connected and that we can settle down once again to excellent relations with Virgin Media and put this incident behind us; life is too short for falling out.
Please get a second hankie out Lawrence because over the last two weeks my digital camera died; our TV died; Our phone line died; our can opener died and yesterday our DVD player died.
After the engineer left us yesterday Bron and I visited Curry's once again; we had only just bought the Samsung TV and Camera so this time we were buying a new DVD player. Our old DVD player was a Philips which cost around £80 many years ago and I remember this was quite easy to install being mostly plug and play? I let Bron choose the new player and she chose well; at £99.99 it was a Samsung Blu-ray Disc Player BD-F6500; handing over the cash we returned home and I thought I'll quickly set the player up then we can watch another downloaded episode of Dallas from DVD disc? The player was removed from it's box and all the protective transit covers removed then I tried to install it; OK where's the scart socket? No scart socket and no suitable cable supplied so off I went again to Curry's returning with the HDMI cable; I'm a guy so always read instruction as a desperate last resort; I hooked up the player to the TV but it was not communicating with the TV; by now I was working in my usual black hole and trying to look at cables and assorted connections using a torch; then though I admitted defeat and went to bed fed up. Before visiting Curry's for the second time I thought I would be clever and use a cable pinched from my computer but once I finally extracted the cable found it had a wrong connector at one end. Before going to bed I thought I'll check for emails only to find now I had a dead computer; at this point I was about to explode with frustration.
I had already suffered in the garage during the day working on the Lorch; I wanted to spray paint but it was blowing a gale; I was still having a let of grief with my right elbow and as I worked at the bench with one garage door open I saw a big white van pull up directly across the road; I thought here we go again; a young lady got out of the van and rang the bell and knocked on the door a few times across the road then of course she wandered across to ask if I would accept a parcel for this neighbour? This neighbour must be getting much quicker because he finally opened his door so I said you can now deliver it direct and with a cheerio she was gone. I won't be rude and say what I think of a neighbour who is too downright lazy to answer the door but happy to put other neighbours to trouble?
Anyway after this interruption I came up into the bungalow and having just settled at the computer I was once again interrupted whilst yet another begging bag was thrust through the letter box dropping gracefully by my feet; where I go for a bit of peace beats me nothing but interruptions in my life shattering my concentration and will to live.
This morning being in a lot of pain with my elbow I got up early declaring war on everything and determined to get this DVD player sorted? What a palaver this turned out to be; I needed the instruction manuals for both the player and TV; there is no doubt that the new TV and player are wonders of modern technology but my poor head. A YouTube video helped a great deal but even this made it appear so easy which it is if the TV and player are communicating? All is now well though and what a wonderful picture as I loaded the Dallas DVD; I'd better enroll Bron at night school though in order for her to learn how to use all the remotes etc because I've only got the DVD sorted next comes Blu-ray; white lip furrowed brow etc as I try to set the lot up to play from a network connection? As I say; my poor head; I can manage a big hammer and an RSJ but all this modern electronic kit makes me suffer; I always did have trouble just using a TV remote and still don't fully understand how to use a mobile phone and don't even want to either.
Just another day here in paradise; who is going to pester me today; what begging bag is going to arrive; who wants a parcel taking in; it's windy again so no spraying; my elbow still smarts; is another neighbour going to empty ashtrays into our rear garden resulting in me paying them a visit to say please don't do that because it isn't neighbourly? Add to this lots of personal problems so it's a miracle I ever do complete any restoration; if I hadn't such a wonderful wife in Bron I think I would just disappear without trace to hide away from everything; there sure is very little pleasure in my restorations which really are more of a punishment. I'll keep fighting though because I've never been one to quit easily.
Thanks for taking the trouble to read thus far and I will eventually complete this Lorch restoration but just letting you know what I'm up against which isn't shown in the progress pictures; life can be good but it takes a lot of searching for. In the meantime here is another picture; this is part of the compound slide which I spent about four hours on yesterday cleaning and polishing; this is why my elbow is hurting so much; I'm unable to use power tools because it is much too easy to inflict damage and coarse abrasive paper is also out so start with 240G and suffer some pain; is it all worth it; course it is otherwise I would have nothing to moan about.
Another van and parcel has just arrived across the road; Bron watched as the guy tried to raise contact and just as he was about to push a card he had filled in through the letter box the door opened; so things are already improving; I could have been in the garage to accept the parcel? I'm having an easy day today because the harder I try to spend quality time on the Lorch the worse it gets; bring it on!!
Kind regards, Col.
Happiness is a wreck of a cabinet to restore.
